feyluck is visiting us for the holidays. She's been a wonderful help with the Beanlet. She goes home soon, and we'll miss her when she's gone.

And then, we played Munchkin.

( A savage tale of betrayal and foul play )

Merry Christmas, everyone! We have a special Christmas card just for you.

Jayme, Pascale, and I are off to California for a short holiday, starting tomorrow. We're visiting my family and then hers, and some friends while we're in SLO. I'm away for two weeks, while Jayme and Pascale are staying another two to spend time with the new grandparents.

And here's the bonus: they're bringing feyluck back with them! Morgan gets a ( Read more... )

Jayme and I are celebrating our first Christmas together this year.  This is also our first married Christmas, and we wanted to get the tradition off to a good start ( Read more... )

Jayme took the injured cat to the veterinarian today.  The verdict is: her pelvis is broken at the left hip.  The facilities to treat such an injury do not exist here.  We will make her comfortable and give her a warm place to sleep, food, and water.  If she's lucky, the bone will knit in a way that leaves her a good range of motion.  She hasn't ( Read more... )

Today slownewsday and I celebrated our second Thanksgiving in Iraq.  I took the morning off and did my husbandly turkey-cooking duties while Jayme did the not-insignificant task of preparing everything else.  We fed 15 people on a 5-kilogram bird, a huge pile of mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn & green beans, giblet gravy and toasted samoon (Iraqi bread).  ( Read more... )

I'm bored in Arbil.  It is a nice, quiet, pleasant place.  I'm free to walk around and go to the barber and talk to random people on the streets who are Very Amused by my pidgin Arabic.  But I feel like I've been torn away from the office that I spent so much time and energy building, and from the people that are my friends ( Read more... )

My company just opened an office in Arbil, one of the two capital cities of Iraqi Kurdistan.  We did this for two reasons: [1] to serve the customers in the northern areas, which is where many companies have pulled back to, and [2] provide a secondary location to run the business should things become too hot in Baghdad ( Read more... )

This post was written by both slownewsday and I.  My text is in a blue Sanserif font, hers is in red Serif font.

We get a lot of letters, comments, and chat messages from our friends and family.  Increasingly, these messages express how concerned the writer is for our safety, and admonishing us to leave immediately.  These letters are very hard for us.

( Read more... )

In Iraq, the ground water contains bacteria that will make those who are not exposed to it regularly very, very sick.  We call this terrible, ass-wrenching, intestinal disease "Saddam's Revenge".  Anyone who lives outside the sterilized environments of coalition bases (the bottled-water consumption of these places is simply amazing) is ineveitably ( Read more... )