Yesterday I ran into several of my former basketball players playing in a tournament in Minneapolis. I used to coach a group of these young guys through the Park Board in Minneapolis. They were 10th, 11th, and 12th graders back then, now some of them are married with kids. I coached some of the guys for 3 years. We picked up right were we left off joking and laughing. It was fun.
This photo was taken in 2002.
The Grand Forks Herald reported yesterday that a man impersonating the late theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was recently apprehended at a Grand Forks Walmart. He was armed and dangerous. Local authorities used pepper spray to apprehend the suspect. He is said to be suffering a serious case of Rogainaholism. The addiction and abuse of the treatment for baldness.
Here's another one for your viewing pleasure. Momma Normal is going to love hers.
I think this one is pretty accurate. It would be closer if my Uncle Jesse would also wear a toupee like Burt Reynolds. He sure could use one.
According to my new favorite website, Myheritage.com, the celebrity I most look like is the president... I guess this explains why several reporters have been chasing after me lately asking me about the war.
Yes it's true, I have a tooth abscess. Today I went in for the first of three appointments. It's not going to be cheap either. Let's just say I could buy a decent used car instead of getting this tooth fixed... if I had the option.
Here's a shot of my brother, brother-in-law and me tubing on Ottertail Lake. It was fun.
We flew over these iceberg making glaciers yesterday. Later we saw these massive icebergs in the North Atlantic. They were titanical.
The Tour de France came by today. As you can see from the photos the Green Shirt Man Group ran along side the leaders for awhile. As you can also see le flic came over to reprimand us afterwards. But French cops don’t really care about stuff like that.
We built a summer snowman in the mountains. It was the first time Thor had ever seen snow.
I thought this might be the case..."The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism issued a statement Monday
quoting "several very well informed sources from the world of football" as
saying Materazzi called Zidane a "dirty terrorist." It demanded that FIFA,
soccer's world governing body, investigate and take any appropriate action."
I could relate to Zinedane Zidane getting kicked out of the World Cup Final. Of course I’ve never played at that level but my blog entry from June 19th relates to it. http://thenormalfamily.blogspot.com/2006/06/national-championship.html
Here are Jane, Thor and their grandma Ginger. You can't see their hunched backs in this photo.
217 years and 12 days after the event the changed Western Europe, it was my turn to have a shot at it.
No we haven't died. Last monday morning we woke up to find our phone not working. Usually this is how the phone company tells you it's time to pay your bill. I knew this wasn't the problem since I just paid it. So I went to the company to complain and they said it was just a technical problem and they would send someone out the next day. This is normal since no one works in the afternoon especially the non-private sector. The next day nobody came to fix it. Yesterday and today were public holidays so no one works. Tomorrow I don't think it will get fixed and we are also going out of town for a while tomorrow... so no phone, no internet. I am currently writing from the university where I teach. It is abandoned for the summer.
It is not uncommon to be driving down the road and have to stop for different types of livestock. Goats are the most common but camels sometimes try to push you off the road too. It’s strange to be in the downtown areas and see these kinds of animals.
This is part of our routine every night. If we don’t tape him up, he walks out of his room in the morning in the buck but not before turning the sprinkler on his bed.
Here’s a photo of a gecko on the outside of a screened window. We regularly get these in our house. They kind of make me disgusted. Some western people we know tell us not to kill them because they eat mosquitoes and spiders inside the house. The locals tell us not to kill them because they are Shataan, or Satan.
Living in a place like we do we are not exposed to the same kind of things and social situations as we would be if we lived in America. For our children this can be a bit tricky. We want them also to be American; thus we like some Americana every now and then… We have the first and fourth seasons of the Brady Bunch on DVD. Our daughter Jane loves them. Every afternoon she begs us to watch them. We have seen every episode over and over. So as you can imagine the Brady influence has penetrated into her understanding of the world as well as her vocabulary. We don’t hear very many “groovy’s” or “far outs” and she hasn’t started to wear bell bottoms and disco pants yet but she has named her favorite stuffed toy dog Tiger and sometimes walks around with a magnifying glass held up to her eye imitating Peter who was pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. She often refers to Benedict Arnold in reference to the episode that Peter received a lot of flack for playing him in the school play. She likes to pretend to be like Cindy when she lost her mother’s earrings. She searches all over the house for them. One day she was worried about getting the “neasles” (a reference to how all six Brady kids got the measles). One day she asked about putting a pay phone in our house. It’s funny.
Today is our weekend. Tomorrow we start the work week again. We have a six day working week around here with Friday as the day off. Friday is the holy day like Sunday is in west. I don’t really like this 6 day work week thing. I prefer the 2-day weekend. We usually really lie low on Friday. We either go to the beach, the pool or we stay home and let the kids watch Tom and Jerry cartoons all morning. But don’t be deceived by the 6 day work week. Most people only work from about 8 in the morning to about noon everyday. They don’t usually return to work in the afternoon. So you are looking at about 24 hours a week. This makes it difficult to get things done as you can imagine since there is a lot of pressure during those few hours to accomplish everything. The afternoons are reserved for sleeping and the late afternoons are reserved for chewing khat, a mild narcotic leaf that almost every man in the country chews. See the photo of the khat seller.
Here is a photo I took on a coastal road. In the afternoons there is a sea of people wading in the sea because it is so hot. Most people can’t swim so they don’t go in very far. Notice the lack of swimming apparel on one of the guys. I never ever expected to see so much skin before I came to Africa, especially in an Islamic country. I like to blame it on the French.
In tribute to my close personal friend Sid Hartman I will give you a synopsis of happenings recently since it was impossible to write because the internet was out in the entire country the past couple of days.
I don’t know why I was worried (Re: the last posting, “Today is just another typical day in Africa”). Everything worked out better than expected tonight. I was supposed to pick up our guests but they found a taxi instead. When they got to our home, I finally heard from Omar my mechanic. He said he would bring the car to me. I was amazed. This kind of thing never happens here.
Happy 5th birthday to our daughter Jane. Here are some quotes that we can see the perspective of a little American growing up in the third world:
Last night the first lady hosted a concert/ dinner/ dance party, in honor of a famous singer, originally from here, that had come to visit from Minneapolis. She invited 200 of her closest friends. I guess it goes without saying that I wasn’t in the ‘200’, but I have friends that are, so they were able to get me a ticket.
