(late) Morning All:

Last night was a baby sitting night and Marcia and I now fully understand God’s reasoning for only letting young folk rear children. Jason came home from work and Marcia-all tethered out- thrust little Marin into his arms. Without much further adieu she climbed into her car to get home and—flop! I had gone over after work in my car and so stayed a while to talk with Jason, something we don’t often get much of a chance to do. Actually, I don’t think it was Marin who tired Marcia, I believe it was the climb up the hill with all three dogs to romp a bit in the park. PS. I had a great time and Marin was sheer joy.

So that caused a bit of a late start on this post. About the time I got a coffee at my side and ready to write Shang climbed upstairs and stood next to me. He explained, in perfect English mind you, that he was absolutely desperate for his morning constitutional walk. You might be saying to yourself; “oh right, here he goes again with his exaggerations”. Let me explain something to you right now. Dogs are amazing and can do things much beyond anything that we can comprehend. For example; in yesterday’s newspaper appeared a major article about one special dog. We have all seen and read about the wonderful exploits of the Seeing Eye dogs. Even police and cadaver searching dogs get write-ups with fair regularity. However, I had not seen anything such as this. The story dealt with a lead dog for a young woman with severe and largely uncontrolled Epilepsy. It appears that her trained dog senses the onset of a seizure about 15 minutes before the event and will stop and sit, thus alerting her owner that she needs to prepare herself. Amazing!

Jason had great news this week. For a long time he’s been searching for a career path with a community focus allowing for ecologically sound planning and that has “green” planning principles in place. One such cutting edge program is right here in Cin-city, and he will be joining this team. The agency is called Imago. He and Cathy are thrilled and Marcia and I are more than pleased.

For any that have not seen Adrianne’s update click on her link. Her life in the very different culture of Tonga is worth the read. Her post will also explain my picture of the week (top left), purposely left without caption. The first floor is to be the youth center and the second floor is scheduled to be her residence. Lastly, this weekend think of one very tired-of-it-all and churned out Briones family: 4 in 6 weeks—Ivan, Charley, Frances, Jeanne: enough said!

Have a great week.

Cheers,

Dirk