twelve....

i have twelve girls on my volleyball team.

we had our first tournament today.

i had to be in olympia at 7:30 this morning...so i got roughly 4 hours of sleep.

we have to be in fife at 7:30 again tomorrow...so i need to go to bed.

i forgot my camera at home today...so here's another picture from last night.

it makes me laugh.

eleven

i should really be in bed right now. i really wanted to be in bed by eleven. i have to by in olympia at 7:30 in the morning for our first vball tournament of the year! i'm sooooo excited! (now if only i could get our rosters to print out on my ghetto-fabulous printer...argh!!)

tonight was a busy, fun-filled night:

first my co-workers and i went out to a fun, and extremely crowded german bar not too far from the office to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the program.

then i hightailed it up to the u-district for a fireside by elder richard g. scott. it was...interesting...

then i booked over to easy street in west seattle to see ian play. this was the first time he's done a show in about a year. "sea.mine" is no more...now he is part of the "black swedes." i miss hearing ian's voice percolating up through the floor of our house! (we discussed it extensively and determined that, yes, things can definitely percolate in an upward direction.) it was good to sit, listen to good, mellow music, and chat...even if only for a bit...

today was definately a 10

today i am cheating because i didn't take a picture. one of the elders in my parents' ward had surgery today, so he is staying at our house. when i got home from work i helped my mom take care of him...i love my mother to death, but let's be honest, she's not the most gentile person. she tends to forget, for example, that a person's nose is connected to their head...and for someone who has just had major surgery on their nose, it is excruciatingly painful to have her tugging and pulling on the velcro of their ice pack while it's still attached to their face (as opposed to sliding it off and then opening it up) or trying to scrape dried blood off their lip (as opposed to getting a warm washcloth).

poor kid.

anyway, today i'm going to post an old photo prompted by a conversation i had at work.

i took this picture two years ago as part of a project when i was working at the international rescue committee (www.theirc.org). these are the feet of a refugee man i got to know...


today i found out that one of the ladies i work for also worked for the irc. she was the country director in cote d'ivoire. we talked refugee camps and resettlement and the crazy folks at the irc...and i am taking her to meet the folks in the seattle office in a few weeks.

she also had a meeting with a really fabulous guy from the unhcr. i had a lovely chat with him and he gave me his card.

i finally feel like my career path is back in focus and it feels dang good!

nine...

854 million people suffer from hunger around the world. they are starving to death.

2 billion more people suffer from malnutrition and vitamin deficiency due to the low nutritional value of the food they do have. their quality of life is severely effected.



one of the things i love most about my job is the fact that i constantly have the opportunity to learn. i am really, really excited for my new position and the opportunities i'll have to learn more about and converse with folks on some really important issues. i already have a "reading file" chuck full of interesting articles and reports that i've accumulated in just the last week.

today i was able to attend a meeting on food aid and food security. it was very interesting. there were players from many different organizations, including the world food program. it brought to mind issues i studied in a sustainable development class my last year at uw.

it's difficult for me to understand why more "big players" (organizations, foundations, ngo's, and above all, governments) don't invest what is needed to really address the issues (yes, that is plural on purpose) of world hunger.

maybe because the solutions are so much more complex than simply dropping crates of food from the sky. if given in the wrong way, at the wrong time, or in the wrong amount, food aid can actually do more harm than good. so, how do we feed the people that are hungry now...while building a sustainable market system?

i think successful solutions have to approach the problem from many angles:

• international in-kind food aid - this is most crucial during or immediately following crises - one important key is that this needs to be the right kind of food, in the right amounts, at the right time - as one example, most food aid comes in the form of corn, wheat, and rice, while cassava is the staple of most households in africa. families will sell the 50 lbs of government wheat they are alloted to purchase 5 lbs of cassava.
  
• local/regional purchase of food aid - this helps to strengthen the regional economy, but there must be government regulation on markets for countries selling food to neighbors in crisis in order to avoid the ballooning of food prices to their own citizens.
  
• market improvement - communities need to be better insulated against crises in the future - this is possibly the most difficult because it must continue after the emotional draw of a crisis has passed.
  

obviously it's a complex problem and no one has found all the answers...but i'm glad there are folks like the ones i work for who are willing to help look for an answer. and i'm glad i get to play a small part in the search.

ocho

eat. your. veggies.

seventh heaven

if there is no volleyball in heaven, i don't wanna go...


these are my girls! i love them....

these are my girls conditioning! they love me...

lots of people don't understand why i do what i do. why i give up every single weekend for 6+ months out of the year. why i wake up at 5:00 am to drive to olympia or everett on a saturday morning. why i can work a 10 hour day and then turn around and head to the gym for another 3 or 4.

simply put, i do it because of what volleyball did for me when i was their age...

six...pick up sticks

high five

1 - happy birthday bridget!
2 - chuck norris
3 - coke whores
4 - cheesecake
5 - friends!!!

4 is delicious!

i wondered how long it would take before i had a last-minute panic submission of the one-armed kind. well, here it is...day 4. it's going to take some effort to get used to taking photos every single day. so far i haven't really remembered to do it until the end of the night (hence why the last two are night shots). but, i'll get there...

anyway, besides running out of time on day 4, there are two very good reasons why i am submitting this myspace-esque picture:

1) a coworker of mine make no-bake cookies for christmas. i heart no-bakes. i haven't had them since brye made them the last time we hung out. (i miss your face brye!!!) i've been craving them hard core for the last week. i was covering for another coworker who was gone for the holidays and her gift bag of cookies was staring me in the face all week long. i kid you not, i was tempted to eat them myself...she would have never even known...mwahahahaha! anyway, i finally made some tonight. after work i went over to lori's house to meet up and head to king's hardware (a most fantastic bar in ballard) and she was kind enough to let me use her kitchen! (thanks lori!!!)

2) today was "blue friday" and i wore my favorite seahawks shirt to work. they are going to kick butt tomorrow...go hawks!!



mmmmmmmmmmmmmm........dee-lish!!

drie

tonight was my first spin class. it totally kicked my butt...but i loved it!! on my drive home i passed this ghostcycle on eastlake.

the ghostcycle project is designed to help raise awareness of bicyclists in cities around the nation. white "ghost" bikes are placed in locations where a cyclist has been involved in an accident.

http://www.ghostcycle.org/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003992818_bikememorial04m.html

two

The Two Trees
by William Butler Yeats

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Joves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

i love trees and i really love that the people who own this house have placed spotlights on their little trees (my flash was turned off). i don't know what kind of trees these are (maybe aspens?), but i really like how the bark peels and curls.

ugh! i wish i had a better camera.

the first degree...

welcome to the first degree in a project that will take me 365 days to complete.

i've never really been into making new years resolutions. i try to avoid setting myself up for failure by embarking on half-hearted goals just for the sake of it. if i feel like i am in need of change, i don't wait. so, in lieu of a flippant resolution, i decided to start 2008 off with a new project. i've been thinking about doing something like this for a while, but my reluctance to live behind a lens has prevented me up to this point. right now, i think a little distance could be healthy for me.

"365 degrees of me" is an exercise in photography and self-reflection. the result after 365 days will be 365 photographs taken through the many facets of my life. some photos will be staged to make a statement, while others will simply be in the moment snapshots. some will be serious, others emotional, and still others utterly pointless and hysterical. hopefully over the course of the project there will not only be changes in photographic skill, but also in the way i perceive my world.

eventually i'm going to use the bonus that comes along with my new job to get a real camera and take a few classes, but for now my little digital point and shoot (with an incredibly irritating delay) will have to do.

and so it begins...



it's a shame to start off with such an esthetically lame picture, but for me this one sets an important emotional tone that i want to build on.

this year for christmas i put together a photo collage for my parents. i spent days looking through boxes of old pictures. it brought back so many great memories that i contacted a few people i haven't talked to in years. it was great.

today i found this box.

i've had this box for 10 years and use it to keep letters and cards from people i've loved over the years. if you're letter is in here, you must have been very special. it also probably means that i don't see you any more. i keep your letters tucked away so that i always remember - to say what needs to be said, to not be afraid, to always love - because you'll never know when all that's left is a letter in a box.

it's been years since the last time i looked through this box. at that time i couldn't read all the letters. i hadn't come to peace with some things that had happened. this time i read them all...and i smiled the whole time...even when i cried...

love is a gift.

i want to give lots of gifts this year.