Bits and transplants

light breathing may be possible

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 03:23:17 GMT

Training of trainers and orientation days are finished, and I’m back in the capital for the first full weekend “off” I’ve had here. Course, I’m working on other things – friends of mongolia newsletter, thesis, IT stuff, banana bread? – but at least it’s a change. It’s pretty quiet here due to world cup, but the most important development is that there is a korea-based donut chain with a branch in Mongolia. I haven’t been there yet, but it’s a major goal for next weekend.

The other thing is that there’s a place that makes pho here – Kenny Rogers Roasters(? which is similar-ish to Boston Market). It’s not tooo bad, but could be improved.

Randomly, the other person in the coffeeshop here is a lama who I assume is Tibetan as I can’t understand what he’s saying on skype. He also produced from somewhere in his robes an iPad and a 13″ macbook.

In other other news, no one has called me since I got here – I know I’m hard to get to, but huh.

Originally published at Ploofle
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Mongolia is super busy

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 03:36:39 GMT

aaaah work aah. Today’s the first day off in a bit and I’m working on other work. Baah.

On the other hand, walking around checking housing for the trainees was fun – and made me miss my host family. The training site soum we were at was so peaceful and the drive there was beautiful. Sigh.

Today is Children’s Day here, which means way too much sugar, theater shows, movies, parents spending time with their kids, and in all likelihood tantrums.

The trash trucks still sound like ice cream trucks.

Originally published at Ploofle
» Click here « to leave any comments.

my usual confusion with flying and Seoul continues

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:25:30 GMT

So, some may remember the boneheadedness I had last time in Seoul in missing my connecting flight back to UB, and having to live in the airport for an extra two days or so.

This morning I just realized, also in Seoul, that my 11:00 flight is 11:00 AM, not PM. I realized this at 9:00 AM when I woke up. Hopefully I won't miss it this time.

Off to change money and perhaps shower...

Oh, and by the way, I'm on my way back.

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

finishing service

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:54:00 GMT

I broke this blog somehow, but random copying and pasting of files figured things out, I believe.

Anywho, I COSed (close of service = wrapping up Peace Corps) technically last Friday. So I'm free and clear...though thesis-less still.

On the other hand, I just heard back from IRB that I qualify for exempt status possibly, so things may move on that soon - though I've already purchased an open ticket back in case I need to return to do data collection...pfft.

I'll try to trace back the past few days with all my free time in between hanging out with people for the last time here, but I do appreciate the Korean channel here with subtitles of variety shows - they just had a party game where everyone had to pretend to be blindfolded zombies except one person, who they were supposed to eventually find - which meant they "lost."

Today I made a chocolate stout cake with candied ginger for the picnic that's happening tomorrow and I drank a good cappuccino. At least it tasted like it was strong.

Hmm, maybe that's why I'm not sleepy yet. I *did* drink it at 6pm or so....

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

still alive

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:44:12 GMT

but here has been random and work-ful.

brief notes of things to come (in a marked lack of temporal order):

slow-dancing with 12-year-olds
being apartment-less yet still in Khovd
being overly directive and accidentally pressuring concerning eating a green bean off the sidewalk
offending people
smushing bugs with my hands then wiping them on my pants
foreign service examinations - why me?
meringue epic fail + destruction of immersion mixer + the Day We Made 4 Kinds of Pies (sort of)
Trying not to explode re: interpersonalities

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Boo

Wed, 20 May 2009 17:37:22 GMT

Long radio silence, but since our last episode:

Trip to Thailand - note that spiders = personal kryptonite and people are very very nice

Work in Khovd - some cool stuff working with adolescents - want to keep on doing this kind of work later, as they all are on break in a week and thus work will disappear

Close of service conference, BoarBQ, TOT, virtual moving to UB - seems to be happening too fast - as I was told really today I'm moving most-ish to UB except for like a week in July. Otherwise exciting - there will be an Iron Chef at COS conference, and BoarBQ just sounds fun...

Thesis - whimper ugh

Lust - I have an unaccountable desire for a nerd merit badge laptop sash.

More eventually, but for now I should pack, as I fly out Friday til end of June and it discombobulates me greatly.

Also my official COS date is 21 August, which means I in theory leave Mongolia that day. For those with large quantities of appendages, count up the days or something :)

Rarrrgh!

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

notes on airport living (Seoul)

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:34:25 GMT

it costs more to take a shower than to buy a Shanghai Spicy Chicken Sandwich meal at McDonald's. And they want to leave earlier than the posted hours.Suggestion for next time - the shower is free, it's the kit - namely, a Mongolia-sized (Bonnie knows what this means) towel and toiletries - that costs the money. So bring a little travel towel and bar soap and you'll be home free in theory.

Free wifi just about everywhere...Voltage and plug shape adapters are available for free at the info desks if you leave with them your boarding pass or a form of non-passport ID.Next time, give em the ID so you know when your flight actually leaves

Super comfy couches upstairs in the "rest and relax" area as well as internet stations that are sparsely populated. If you get in by 10ish you can get quite a nice setup, though a bit cool aircon-wise.Next time, use that travel towel you're bringing anyway for warmth perhaps.

For those looking for more culture, they have random traditional craft stations and music demos; plus today there was a quartet pl

Basketball and underappreciated statistics

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:18:11 GMT

This article (the No-Stats All-Star) from the New York Times is a nice combination of things I like - mostly because its main example is Shane Battier. And, of course, statistics. The analogies to how basketball is one of the sports more like real life are pretty interesting too.

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

random items I would like later

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 07:19:38 GMT

aka valuable future investments of my readjustment allowance:

geek clock

plush squid hat

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

brief thesis process update

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 14:27:40 GMT

In case you may be interested in this, it's sort of a mess as I feel like I read a good line of research/methods, dash off in that direction, just to find a then-better line of research methods, running at a slightly divergent angle from the current point. Looking over my shoulder at the original idea, I feel orthogonal. Blame the word on all the article-reading.

At first I was highlighting then copying relevant passages into a word document, but it rapidly became hard to organize and find cites. So now I've stepped back and am utilizing the note feature of Zotero with tagging. Now I can do full-text searches on notes and pdfs, or browse by thematic tags for different things, like "mongolia analogous" or "organizational culture".

The only problem is that this is a multi-step, tedious process - I read the PDF, highlight relevant bits, go back, copy and paste the relevant bits into a text editor, run a regex pattern I set up to remove extra hard returns and hyphenation due to papers' two-column justified layouts, copy to individual notes, then tag. Being a tad perfectionist, I guess - or just liking to gratuitously use regular expressions. It sure would be nice if I could directly edit those PDFs with Zotero and grab notes automatically, leaving only tagging to do by hand.

I suspect it wouldn't be so bad if I didn't know all the tools and regex bits, but it's definitely helping out. I think I'm going to do this for scholarly stuff I'm reading in general as it's a super useful writing aid. At least Zotero grabs the citation information first off (for most items) so I don't have to do that, and its citation plugin for Openoffice means I don't really have to pause mid-thought to write out all those little references.

Still, my current count for papers read and annotated in this manner is...63. And I have about 15 new things I found today to read. Ugh. I assume at some point I can stop reading and finally settle into doing.

If this is dissertation practice, I can't imagine ever being up for it.

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

about that inauguration...

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:29:18 GMT

I've heard there's some unprecedented stuff going on - Bonnie tells me people have like a 3-hour break off work to watch the inauguration and places all over campus will have things set up to watch. It also sounds like a bunch of people are getting themselves to DC, or having viewing parties, or even, as I've heard in Baltimore, students are getting the day off.

This sounds super exciting and I sure wish I could be participating in it. Maybe things are moving toward an upswing. I read this article here about Native folks and the inauguration, and the comments section is really interesting too.

What are you all out there doing specifically for the big day?

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

new pictures and year

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:01:14 GMT

Happy festivities to all and welcome to the year of my return!!!! bwahahahaha

With that, there are various (additional) random photos in my picasa thingy that illustrate the deep emotions and incredible personal expansion I've been having over the, oh, past two weeks. These events include cooking, standing on a frozen lake on and off for about 6 hours, and small children. It'll change your life too!

I did win half of my snow sumo matches on the lake, though. And I didn't completely freeze my hands and feet.

One of my sitemates did have a firework explode in her hand, but only bruised herself. Yay poor-quality fireworks! Boo inability to read the chinese instructions!

New year's day cooking extravaganza included, among other things, baklava, horse meat fajitas, pineapple-upside-down cake, pancakes, kahlua (making, not really drinking), and the final day of corning beef. Subsequent days were of eating glorious, glorious corned beef hash and some semi-ghetto reubens.

The new year's old man (similar in appearance to Santa Claus if he were a Mongolian man wearing a cotton beard and blue tinsel-edged robe-deel) terrified a few of my coworkers children and handed out candy, then took off his beard, which helped matters. Around New Year's in three days I ate cake approximately 5 times and drank champagne or harder stuff perhaps 4 times. I still have some cake in my fridge I need to throw out. Oh, and loads of candy from the Governor and the Health Department. Pleasant.

Internal apartment temperature is approximately 47F in the mornings, which is unacceptable. Unfortunately, out of my four electrical plugs, only one will not trip/smoke/melt with a heater plugged into it and it's the one that I use for cooking. So I am often faced with the choice of heating up to a more tolerable 52F (tolerable in that I can type without my hands being stiff and I'm wearing two shirts and pairs of pants and my deel and sometimes a hat) or having a fridge. Fridge tends to lose. Perhaps I overexaggerate, though. Well, actually, I'm not, but it sounds worse than it is, really. Though I wish I could heat up the room I sleep in rather than the kitchen, but once I'm in bed it's not bad.

We're in the coldest part of the winter, so my personal goal is to just get through January and it'll be ok. My choice of waiting until March to vacation is seeming increasingly silly...

Thesis notes are finally sorted and categorized, so I hope to push out a general proposal/overview tomorrow. By god, I will. Ugh. Otherwise things are calm outside of watering office plants and various lurking work tasks. I've noticed when I have something big, like this thesis thing, hanging over my head I suddenly come up with all sorts of other more interesting projects and thoughts. I suppose I should write them down for later, but typically I'd do them. But I'm trying to not procrastinate any further, so I just ignore them and hope they'll go away.

My officemates have discovered YouTube, and it has destroyed any semblance of me having an internet connection at work. Perhaps I will sneakily go onto the computer, edit the hosts file, and make it redirect to localhost...hmm...

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

external db authentication plugin now works with Wordpress 2.7

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:42:59 GMT

A quick note - the latest version (3.07) of ext_db_auth now works with Wordpres 2.7. It's in the same place as usual. This version, however, is NOT compatible with WPMU. You'll still need to use 2.05 with that.

Once WPMU hits 2.7 it may be broken again for that particular flavor; we'll see.

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

A busy new year so far (thought not necessarily productive)

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:48:55 GMT

New Year's day was pretty low-key - just a day full of cooking with one of my sitemates. It's apparently an enabling environment, as by the end of the day we had a liter and a half of kahlua, baklava, cream cheese-apricot strudel, pineapple upside-down cake, buttermilk pancakes, and an entire mexican dinner (horse-meat fajitas with homemade tortillas and from-America salsa and refried beans). In other words, it was *excellent* although almost sickness-inducing quantities of food. I still have most of the desserts here as well as 9/10 of the kahlua.

Yesterday I finally pulled out the pickling-in-process beef and made what I assume to be relatively authentic corned beef. As I'm typing I'm cooking up hash now and plan to have some nice fried eggs on top of it...yum...for dinner.

Today was the mandatory fun NGO/work event. For me, preparations involved getting to the meeting place at the agreed-up 10am, waiting for about two hours, then finally going when everyone else actually showed up. We went to the lake, and this apparently meant "drive on the lake and find a nice spot where we normally couldn't have a picnic as we'd be waist-deep in water". AND there was a Schedule of Events. Five hours later and after several bouts of woman Snow Sumo, group tug-of-war, random eating and drinkening, frost-defrost cycles, and way too many group photos I'm now back at home. Overall, I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, which is often the case with group events. Needless to say, from both the cooking extravaganza and this group event, there are a variety of awesome pictures, some of which will be posted in the subsequent blog update.

Oh, and during the process of baking and experimenting with puff pastry (see random baklava above), I found out that I bought not 10kg of normal flour but 10kg of semolina flour. Ugh. So now I have to look for lots and lots of recipes that use this kind of flour, as it normally takes me about 2 months to get through 10kg if I make bread, and I doubt I can make that much bread with this stuff.

Hope everyone had a good new year - last lap here for me - I'm actually leaving this year!

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

america's healthy cheap foods under $1 and their availability here

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:42:51 GMT

From this article from the NYTimes of cost-saving items...let's see how it fares here:

1. Oats: Expensive where I'm at, though not necessarily in UB. That typical cylinder-type thing here? About $3.
2. Eggs: Cost about twice as much here as what's cited in the article - around 30 cents apiece.

3. Kale: Hahaha...I wish.

4. Potatoes: Cheap for sure, at about 30 cents a kg

5. Apples: Kind of expensive (about $1.75 a kg here) but worth it.

6. Nuts: Um, nope. A can of peanuts here is about $2, and other nuts go up in price astronomically - there's a 1-lb bag of pecans randomly here, and it's like $20.

7. Bananas: Nope. Rarely here and expensive - I don't even know how much they cost.

8. Garbanzo Beans: Not here. You can get some dried pintos in UB of dubious quality, and recently I've seen cans of kidney beans here for about $1.25. Mysteriously, the newly-arrived cans of white beans are about double that price for the same amount.

9. Broccoli: Nope. Never even seen it here.

10. Watermelon: Uh, this is seasonal unless you live in America...

11. Wild Rice: I wish we had this. We do have millet and barley, though. And (yuck) buckwheat.

12. Beets: Yuck!

13. Butternut Squash: I think not - though maybe I've seen one once in the past year and a half - an accident, I'm sure.

14. Whole Grain Pasta: I don't think so, but it's all in Russian. Haven't seen anything that would match color-wise though.
15. Sardines: Now sardines we have - albeit generally in tomato sauce. Maybe I'll experiment with these they're less than a dollar a can.

16. Spinach: Ha!

17. Tofu: Dried tofu, along with the Supreme Master(tm), has come to Khovd. I don't know why, but I'll not complain...

18. Milk: Local milk is a bit farm-y, and you have to pasteurize/boil it yourself before using, but it's good. Box UHT milk, while less tasty, is more convenient and what I tend to use.

19. Pumpkin Seeds: Both yuck and ha!

20. Coffee: Well, this is just generally too effort-ful. So I'm good.

So, reasonably, the only really easy item on this list for me are...potatoes. :P

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

heh

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:53:19 GMT

I have to admit, there is a certain visceral happiness to eating cake and champagne twice in one day, as well as being given goodie bags by various people for new year's.

It doesn't match up at all, though, to the joy I experience watching my coworkers grimace and frown their way through a few shots of whiskey while I down mine with ease. FINALLY, the vodka-face is on *them*, bwahaha...

Hopefully, now that I know this, I can encourage more whiskey-drinking to share the, er, love :D

Happily heating up avgolemono-like soup!

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Watching the watchmen...and librarians meet zombies

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 04:23:11 GMT

An interesting article in the NYTimes about censorship at google. The accompanying pictures are happily pixel-like art and made me laugh.

In this case, there's not really anyone watching the de facto watchmen per se. But it's interesting to hear about how Google censors its content. Censor may be too strong a word, though...as it sounds more like stick to the strict rules and everything is free - something like what's in the 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Which, in my mind, is the way it should be. Laws and programs should be developed to protect rights and privileges, not restrict them. Hence a few very obvious disagreements with things like, oh, poll taxes, Prop 8, limiting health care rather than making health care a right for all, etc. etc.

Also, Bonnie sent me this silly "Thriller" video. This is what happens when librarians get together - a combo of book car drill teams, costume parties and...low production quality Matrix fight scenes?? Overall a compelling reason to be around librarians, I think. :)

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 12:36:34 GMT

writing makes it so, but fuck it.

I'm not sure if it was there already or put in my mind that I would come back and carry a shadow of sadness, but I have. I'm coming back to the uncertainties of life here, and the friendlessness and general inactivity that is the world I have been treading in for the last seventeen months.

I'm ready for it to be over. Perhaps this is the price you pay for finally getting to meet people you would love to work with all the time, people who are Mongolian and otherwise, and then going a thousand kilometers and 3 days' offroad bus ride to a place where you'll be both out of sight and mind.

Wah wah wah. :P

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

a few Mongolian words and some random links

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:04:26 GMT

First, a few words I want to remember:

- Similar to but used more in writing, while is more spoken. is often used in the sense of "How to do ____" rather than as a question word, or so I've been led to believe.

- Guessing from context, but I believe it means roughly team-building (and perhaps literally trust putting).

__ - I think this means "at least"...so like "At least 5 minutes." I was looking for how to say "less than" but I haven't figured it out, e.g., "Less than five minutes remaning"

- Literally "printed material" but I believe used as the term for "media" or "press." Perhaps a good indicator of why it's hard to explain media to be inclusive of radio/internet/video/etc.

- Used for both "survey" and "research" in Mongolian. It can be hard to differentiate between the two as a result.

Also just came across a potentially interesting site that has online Mongolian language listening comprehension exercises through Indiana University. I'm not sure why its domain is Russian (.ru) though.

Also amusing: On Drunkenfreude and an educational tv series from the 80s that combines evil aliens, benevolent child aliens, librarians, bookmobiles, post-apocalyptic settings, and how to use your local library resources aptly named Tomes & Talismans. Sound like a name rip-off of any, erm, 80s-emerging RPGs? Go Mississippi public broadcasting!

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

At supposedly 299 posts for quite a while...

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:41:31 GMT

Wordpress says in the back that I'm at post 299 - and it has said so for a while, even as I add posts. Apparently it just won't give me that nice 300.

In other news, my plane was delayed because the Prime Minister said so. Hmm.

In other other news, Jen said she dreamed about a Volunteer who bought an elephant for business purposes but she was criticizing them for it being an unsustainable venture (as they didn't consider the cost of keeping it fed, etc.). Blame the excess pumpkin pie...

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Thanksgiving

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:43:53 GMT

I'm tired, but damn, was it tasty...that's all I've eaten for the past 2 days - I'm kind of hoping there are still some leftovers to eat tomorrow too!

The local chicken, after all was said and done, was closer to a cornish game hen size, while the chicken that was brought from UB was a normal-sized monstrosity of a bird. Bayan-Ulgii (a province further north) folks came in and one of em is an excellent cook and put together three amazing casseroles - corn, broccoli, and green bean. We then had a huge bowl of stuffing, two large bowls of mashed potates, homemade applesauce and pseudo-cranberry sauce, glazed carrots, biscuits, and corn bread. There were 5 pies of 4 different kinds - lemon meringue, pecan, pumpkin (2), and apple. All of the crusts turned out great this time and the meringue was amazingly easy due to a pinch cream of tartar from a package Bonnie sent me. I'm going to need to make more lemon meringue here - I have all the ingredients and it's only 3 eggs - it was the first pie to go too.

After the main food, about half of the group of 12 was either laying on the ground or groaning about how they may be sick. Or both. So I consider that to be the sound of success. A couple hours later, after eating pies (we had about 1/2 pie baked for every person there), many laid down/groaned again. Today when we came back over to eat leftovers, same thing. This makes me pretty happy :)

Still, we're only making slow progress through the food - I may reacquire the cranberry sauce from Jen if there's not a likelihood it'll get finished - I made 3 good-sized jars' worth and I don't know if we even got through one yet.

I leave for UB this Tuesday but still haven't finished everything I wanted to do - like laundry, cleaning, actual work...so...time to turn in so as to do it tomorrow...

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

distressing numbers of babies and work

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:35:09 GMT

So, I believe the baby-in-progress count for people I know pretty well is at 3. Including people I don't know as well the count doubles. Ugh. What's with the babies!? Am I missing out on something?

Jen's cat is behind my computer and poking his head around the corner of the screen comically...

Oh, and work - I'm doing in-service training for the 19s and that means content creation. How one "teaches" peer education in a 45-minute slot and "research methods" in 1-1/2 hours I dunno, but it'll get done somehow. I'm pretty excited about this stuff, though, as I'll get to interact with youth and business dev people in addition to health volunteers - plus all their counterparts.

The side effect of this is that there are several things "I must do" at work before I am "allowed" to go to UB. And they're all time-consuming. Fund Peace Corps project is taking up a goodly amount of time, I'm reinforcing new contacts my program staff introduced me to while they were here, and thesis is again getting pushed to the end of the queue due to this stuff. Plus we need to kill a chicken or two sometime this week for Thanksgiving, so Fri night/Sat are definitely booked. I'm supposed to fly out this Tues, the 2nd...ugh. How will I get all of this done? And I've heard that the airline flight schedule will change on the 1st, so it's possible that I'm not leaving the 2nd.

Ah, Mongolia. And life. Thank you all :P

And I'm hungry.

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

this day in history...

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:17:27 GMT

I was almost excited to see that Dr. Who premiered on the 24th; unfortunately it was the 23rd.

From wikipedia, today in...

1898 - International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists opened (sorry Andy)
1940 - Slovakia officially joined the Axis powers
1966 - NYC experiences the smoggiest day in the city's history
...and about 6 airline hijackings or crashes. Also, William F. Buckley was born, as well as Beth Phoenix aka "The Glamazon".

Looks like they knew I was coming :P Hopefully the coming years will result in more propitious events on this day so I don't have to assume I'm following a trend.

Um, otherwise, I got a beautiful peach-colored sunset today. My office windows face west and with the smoke from the coal you get a lot of fuzzy light. It was really pretty.

On the other hand, rumor has it that something broke concerning the heating system here, so no heat for people for a few days, possibly longer. Overnight here it's about 13F/-10C. Day temperatures, at least according to the forecast, are just hovering around freezing.

My birthday treats were a shower at the showerhouse - wow, and I needed it - and the can of chili Bonnie sent me. I have to say I think homemade chili is better, but the beans were wonderfully cooked through and the meat was definitely something you don't see here everyday. I pulled out a ration of cheese Lisa gave me, and made some hoecakes based on this blog's recipe, and now back to work for me.

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Continuing the saturation...fund peace corps

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:48:38 GMT

Ok, now it's semi-official with a group and cause on Facebook and all. You all get to send me fewer packages if they let me buy cheese here :) Here's the deal:

Fund Peace Corps

What: A congressional letter writing campaign for individuals who care about Peace Corps to highlight the impact of the current budget crisis on volunteers' abilities to serve the goals of the organization.

When: December 1, 2008 December 15, 2008

Who: Current PCVs, RPCVs, and friends/family of the Peace Corps

How: Go to http://www.ploofle.com/petition/ and use the "contact my representative" link. Add in a personal story to illustrate how this shortfall is affecting you and send your message. Then pass the link and your story on to your friends, family, Facebook/MySpace, and/or blog. Submit e-mails between December 1 December 15!

Why: To help unite the voice of the current PCV community and inform decision makers in Congress of the significant impact current budget conditions are having on Peace Corps' ability to fulfill its mission in aiding underserved communities around the world.

Carry on, then. :)

Originally published at Ploofle.
» Click here « to leave any comments.

Bits and transplants

light breathing may be possible

Mongolia is super busy

my usual confusion with flying and Seoul continues

finishing service

still alive

Boo

notes on airport living (Seoul)

Basketball and underappreciated statistics

random items I would like later

brief thesis process update

more books to read and book-related things...

about that inauguration...

new pictures and year

external db authentication plugin now works with Wordpress 2.7

A busy new year so far (thought not necessarily productive)

america's healthy cheap foods under $1 and their availability here

heh

Watching the watchmen...and librarians meet zombies

a few Mongolian words and some random links

At supposedly 299 posts for quite a while...

Thanksgiving

distressing numbers of babies and work

this day in history...

Continuing the saturation...fund peace corps