counterclockwise

I firmly believe that Oprah will single-handedly undo every scientific advance from the Renaissance onward, and bring us back to four humors and a bucket of leeches if left unchecked.

Courtesy of GraphJam.com:

And many happy returns!

My mother and I were invited to attend Eid ul-Fitr celebrations with her colleague Asmaa, her family, and several members of the Knoxville Muslim Community. It was a wonderful experience.

Eid ul-Fitr, briefly, is the feast at the end of the fasting month Ramadan. We started the morning of 1 Shawwal 1430 Muslim calendar (or 20 September 2009 A.D.) by vising the prayer ceremony held for the community at large. That was followed by a traditional breakfast hosted by a dear friend of Asmaa’s family, a tour of Knoxville’s one Islamic school, the Annoor Academy, a break at Asmaa’s home, and then an excellent Indian meal at the home of Famirah and family.

So all in all, a very busy day (especially for the hosts and hostesses), but lots of fun.

This one is Magic.

Thanks, Young Williams Animal Center!

New car.

New computer.

New cell phone.

New cat.

Melting credit card.

I’m not really charmed by the name her previous owners gave her - Cheesy (or Cheesie, depending on how you feel about Spell Check). Anybody got a better idea?

I’m back in the United States.

I have a phone.

I don’t have anyone else’s number anymore.

E-mail me if you’d like to know the number I do have.

This is it. I’m out of Peace Corps this afternoon. I’ve turned in my cell phone and my Paraguayan foreign ministry ID card. Watch this space for pictures from Argentina. See you in the US.

South American barbecue, I’m told, is one of the wonders of the world. And I look forward to finding out about it; I’m a patron of those arts in North America as well. Today, for example, my mother, J, prepared a farewell rack of ribs in honor of my impending departure.

After 1997, when our family started shrinking, ribs overtook pork shoulder (also known as Boston Butt) as our barbecue course of choice. The current favorite recipe is one discovered and refined by my brother, B. For purposes of comparison, it’s documented below.

You start with pork loin ribs, which are meaty and tender, if relatively low on fat. For the first stage of cooking, you wrap each rack into foil packets with onion and several top secret spices.

The packet preserves the meat’s moisture, but allows for better smoke flavoring than stove top parboiling methods. It also saves you the trouble of doing a separate marinade step. You cook these over charcoal, of course.

When the ribs are approaching completion, you add vegetables (pictured here, sweet corn and vidalia onions) and place the meat directly over the fire to get a good sear on.

Serve with good beer, maybe some baked beans, and garlic bread.

Now how do you do yours?

Well, I’m running the full version of WordPress now, and vive la différence!

There are still some bugs to work out, and I don’t fully understand some of the new features yet, but I’m getting there. I’m sorry to say, however, that your previous comments are lost forever. I’ll do my level best to keep that from ever happening again, and I’d say our chances are pretty good. In fact, I’d say they’re better than ever. My favorite new advantage of using the full version is that my future backup files will be much more robust.

One thing I absolutely must do is give a shout out to Michael Hancock at the install4free project. This is a group of volunteer gurus who will quickly and cheerfully handle the most technically demanding aspects of installing WordPress with your hosting solution. These guys saved me literally weeks of baby steps and painful learning experiences. Thanks a million!

I’ve made a mistake.

I chose to use my web hosting company’s instant blog application. You see at the bottom of the page where it says “powered by WordPress”? That’s not the whole story. The other chapters go like this:

• Not all bloggers are technically savvy.
• Some of us are pretty much idiots.
• But idiots can pay hosting companies, too.
• Smart hosting companies make the blogging process close to idiot proof.
• In order to make a technical thing like WordPress software idiot proof, you have to strip out certain features. Simplify it. Dumb it down.
• That was OK for a while, but now I’ve hit a wall. I need more powerful tools, and I’m not afraid to be confused for a while as I learn.

So bear with me, and expect intermittent outages as I work my way up the learning curve.