Preggers!

It was bound to happen. The first of what will be many. The first of my friends to get pregnant. Holy crap. I'm entering a new phase of my life. Friends and family will start having kids and getting married. Sure, I know plenty of people that have kids. They were to young or not really friends. Usually too young. But now my friends, Laura and Bret, are having a child. Man oh man. It will not stop. This is the beginning. Everyone will be preggers. All my friends will grow up. . . and have children.
And the funny thing? I'm totally diggin' it.

Forever and a day

It seems to have been forever and a day since I last wrote here. This is typical behaviour for me. I tend to buy multiple journals but only fill up a few. Need to place it in the routine section of my brain or it is not done. Here's a little of what's happened recently:

1. Went on a date with a local. An HCN as the Peace Corps lingo goes. It was okay. It was an exceptionally odd/awkward date. Lots of silence. Shared silence is a wonderful thing when your sharing it around a fire or with people you know. Not appropriate for a date, where learning about the other person is the objective. I was on the fence on the whole thing but then she started calling me. A lot. A whole lot. So that basically was a huge turn off. That was ended.
2. Went to Adventure City. It was a waterpark with no rules. It was fun. We put as many people as possible on single rafts. It was dangerous. Chris from Tucson got hurt. He was bleeding around the eye because we flipped over and he rode on his face down the entire slide.
3. Had the flu. Missed a day and a half of work. That doesn't happen often. I don't like to call in sick. Never did it at Pesto Brothers. Never did it at Barnes & Noble. Never did it Windstone Rock Masonry. Yeah. I don't like to do it. Plus I'm never sick. But when I do, it's a doozy.
4. Everything else is boring.

Death and the Stages of Grief

A few days ago the guard to my apartment complex came up to me. He had been gone a few days. Nothing huge. I noticed but it didn't really effect me that much. Maybe my greetings were a little shortened with the "new guy." He came up to apologize for his absence.
"Are you sick, malaria?"
"Ah, no it is my child."
"Oh, your child is still suffering from the sickness?"
"She passed away."
I proceed to do the thing that I do best, stare at my feet and mumble. He then told me how sorry he was to have missed the past few days. Whoa. Priorities man. I said I was sorry several times because I don't think he knows the word "condolences." It's a long complicated english word that basically means "I feel sorry."
It's amazing how death is treated here. Someone dies, a child or parent, and after a few days of mourning and wailing, everything is fine. It's just a remark in a conversation. Something one skims over when they talk about their week.
"Oh, things have been just okay. I ate nshima. I bathed my dog. My child died. I ran out of talk time. Zambia tied Egypt yesterday. You know, bit by bit."
I wonder how I will react to death when it hits someone I love. My grandmother died while I was in college. That was sad, but I think that it was sadder to me to realize that my family only really gets together during funerals. My mother got married and I didn't attend it. How absolutely ridiculous and rude is that? I am an asshole. When someone close to me dies, and my entire family shows up, how will I react? Will I be stoic? Will I cry? Will I tell jokes that border on inappropriate? Probably all the above. I will give a stoic cry that seems controlled yet hints at my sensitivity. I will then ruin said sensitivity by saying something along the lines, "the bitch had it coming...get it? She was old!" I am quite pathetic but at least I understand my own psyche.

If I Was Affluent

Seems like in the movies/books all super rich people have a quirk. Something that makes them eccentric. Miss Humphrey in the James Harriot series is obsessed with Tricky-woo, her prize dog. Howard Hughes was famous for being filthy and pooping in jars. If I had a lot of money what would I do? I would have an entire year where I wore a new pair of socks for every day. That's 365 socks, brand new. I would wear a pair once and then put it in a box. The next day I would put on another new pair. At the end of the year I would then have 365 pairs of socks that had only been worn once. Not too bad.
Socks are the only piece of clothing that gets remarkably worse every time you were them. Matty G said today that socks are one of the few articles of clothing he cannot wear for more than a few days. Underwear? I've gone a week. Socks? That just gross. T-shirts (if you wash them) feel better the more you wear them. That's why thrift store shirts feel so awesome. They've been used. If I was an eccentric rich guy I would have a new pair of socks for every day.

Taxi Terror

I was at the Emory kids place in Emmasdale. It was a fun time filled with Butternut Squash Pasta and Wine.
It came time to leave, so we all piled into a taxi, a very stripped-down vehicle. We eventually dropped everyone off but eventually it was just I. Sitting in the back with the spikes from the window cranks pointing towards me. As we were rolling at incredible speeds down Independence Avenue something bizarre happened: the hood came up. We couldn't see at all. I yelled, "shit." The cabby slowed us down and we pulled to the side. It was late, so no cars. It was Independence so the road was straight. That is what saved us. I was even thinking about what it would be like to be in a horrible accident at the time of the opening hood. It was scary. I had adrenaline. It was an incredible experience with transport.

Rick Rolled

I just learned of an old internet phenomenom: being rick rolled. This is awesome. I have been utterly obsessed with current.tv. I watch countless segments from infomania and viral videos. It's pretty great. One of the segments was hosted by the hilarious Brett Elrich. In it he said something about being Rick Rolled. Then the Rick Asterly song played. It's hilarious. You basically put a link up for something in demand: See this link for new Starcraft mods! And then your unsuspecting viewer goes to a Rick video. Pretty darn funny. Like a more mischievious hamster dance. Far more entertaining actually.

Mozambique; Return 2

The bus station in Jo'burg isn't that bad. It's the surrounding city blocks that cause paranoia (well-founded from the horror stories one hears). A "crazy" person was spouting the typical "AIDS is God's way of punishing gays/women." I noticed several people finding his tirade amusing, including some white people. These white people ended up being Peace Corps Volunteers from Lesotho. I hung out with them for awhile. Because they were cool? Yes. Because we Volunteers tend to have much in common? Yes. Because we were stranded at a weigh station for seven hours while Intercape attempted to overload our bus with eggs and onions? Yes. It took forever. Everyone on the bus became good friends. Even a guy in a Masai plaid chitenge tried to get everyone to revolt. He eventually invited everyone on board to a wedding but said no one from the bus company could come because they suck (not his language, mine). We made it to Maputo, but most of us were cranky well before then.