bodhi tree swaying » Maia

Father’s Day greetings from my children

bodhipaksa — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 14:00:54 +0000

Father’s Day greetings from Maia and Malkias Related posts: Happy (Multi-Generational) Fathers’ Day Back online at last Back from Awassa and Aleta Chuko Related posts:

Today on Lake Winnipesaukee

bodhipaksa — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:16:21 +0000

The kids and I spent the day up at Lake Winnipesaukee today, celebrating a neighbor’s birthday. The birthday girl is standing on the left, and front. We had a great time. We took a boat trip to Meredith. Malkias saw a train and got very excited. Maia went swimming in the lake in her party dress. So it goes.

My daughter’s dance recital

bodhipaksa — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:21:31 +0000

Saturday was spent shuttling Maia back and forth to her rehearsal and dance recital. Here’s the final product!

Bear in mind they’re aged about 2 1/2 to 3 1/2, and mostly had only three lessons before going on stage.

Maia’s the only African-American kid on stage, so shes not hard to spot — also she keeps waving! Note the girl who comes on stage just before her, bawling her eyes out. And note how she manages to hid behind a pillar at about 3:04, until one of the dance instructors drags her back on stage! It’s hilarious, and also touching.

The tiny doctor will see you now

bodhipaksa — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:47:34 +0000

The Man Behind the New ‘Doctor Who,’ Changing British TV

Random musings

bodhipaksa — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:23:51 +0000

I managed to get a lot of writing done yesterday. I’ve been going back over a chapter I wrote on the Water Element (for a book on the Six Elements). I think I’m going to have to fork some of the material into a new chapter either at the start or end of the book, but that’s ultimately a good thing. I find sometimes I have to print stuff to be able to get some perspective on it — otherwise it’s hard to keep track of where I am in the document. Since I have a quiet morning I’m hoping to be able to get some more work done before heading off for a 4th July family gathering.
Watched the final episode of Frasier last night What a great show! I’m going go miss those characters and the wit of the script. Even though I have all eleven seasons on DVD and can watch it any time I want, I’m sorry I won’t be able to watch any new episodes. It’s interesting how with these shows like Friends and Frasier you start to feel like the characters are part of your own circle of friends.
Here’s one of my favorite scenes:

I was puzzled by lsmith1964 saying in her Twitter profile that she was "Liberal, female version of Joe the Plumber…but not as lame." I asked her about it and she said, "I’m not a plumber, I’m inconsequential to the political landscape, I’m not a looker…just like him!" I added that they have something else in common too — neither of them is called "Joe."
Yesterday Maia came out of a reverie and said to Shrijnana, "Mommy, I spaced out."
I enjoyed this article about paleontologists visiting the Creation Museum (or as I call it, the "Museum of Lies."
First Michael Jackson, now Compuserve (my first web/email account was with them.
Read an interesting article on happiness and financial outlay, which included the following:

"Dr. Miller asked readers of the blog to list the 10 most expensive things they had ever bought, and then list the 10 purchases that had brought them the most happiness. More than 200 responded. As we expected, many people rued spending lots of money for stuff that hadn’t brought them joy. Boats seemed to have particularly low utility in delivering happiness per dollar; many cars fit that category, too, and so did many expensive weddings.

"But we were struck by how much overlap there was between the most-expensive list and the most-happy list. People repeatedly included on both lists their homes, their college education, their vacation trips, their high-priced electronics (large-screen televisions, Blu-Ray player, audio equipment, computers) and certain models of cars (BMW 325, Audi A4, Jaguar, Subaru WRX, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic)."

Relatively pricey things I’ve purchased that have brought me a lot of pleasure are: my iPhone, the iPod Touch I owned before that, and in fact my LifeDrive and Palm Pilot; my $110 Skagen watch; my Macs; and my house. The only expensive thing I’ve bought that I can remember regretting was a laptop that had an embarrassingly noisy fan.
Oh, and it’s snowing on Mars. Sounds like they get some good powder there.

“He died in a hail of bullet points”

bodhipaksa — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:13:09 +0000

Apparently God does not like his followers to resign for ethical violations, misuse of taypayers’ money, lying, and dereliction of duty, as Mark Sandford attests.
"Joe" "The Plumber" calls for the assassination of a senator, or at least comes close. He also reveals a stunning grasp of history. I had no idea that Karl Marx predated the American Revolution.
3/4 of people in the US who are pushed into bankruptcy by medical problems have insurance. You can read about some health care horror stories in this NYT article.
My 2-year-old pointed to NYT columnist Maureen Dowd’s picture on my monitor this morning and identified her by name. Maia, you rock! (She’d asked me Maureen’s name at least two months ago).
Glenn Greenwald discusses the deaths (possibly by torture) of perhaps a hundred or more US detainees.
It was 13C (58F) in my town today. And rainy. It’s been raining for a month now, and it’s becoming rather depressing.
But I met with Nagabodhi this morning and we had coffee, talked Dharma, and compared iPhone/iPod Touch apps. That was fun. Sadly he only has the iPod Touch, so most of the things I was most excited about aren’t compatible with his device. Dukkha!
I bought a boxwood bush to screen the trashcan that sits by our front door. That means that tomorrow I get to be manly and dig a big hole!
Lastly, I’ve been moaning about the WordPress app for iPhone not working. It now is, presumably because I added a trailing slash to the URL when entering the details of the blog in the application. So that’s very handy! And the bugs that handicapped the previous version all seem to be fixed. Good job WordPress volunteers. It’s amazing really, that so many people are willing to devote so much time and expertise to making software available,

Adoption picnic

bodhipaksa — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:44:51 +0000

I’m mainly testing out the WordPress app for iPhone, which took a bit of fiddling before it would work, but I also wanted to say that all the adoptive families I meet are the coolest people. And here’s a picture of Maia.

My bullet-point life

bodhipaksa — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:52:30 +0000

A lot of people are moving on to posting “LifeStreams” or some such thing because it can be rather tedious to have to log into a blog to make a post. I sympathize. It’s a symptom of modern life can be rather daunting to log into a site to tell the world what you’re thinking about — in the way that one might inwardly groan when you realize you have to print out a letter, put in in an envelope, find a stamp, and make a trip to the Post Office. Anyway, here are a few tweet-like highlights of the last day or so.

Here’s an audio tweet:
In the middle of writing a blog post, Xmarks gets stuck while syncing and crashes Firefox. I’m experiencing some frustration.
Posted a new Meditation Zeitgeist article on Wildmind
Puzzled by the fact that wildmind.org is not on the first page of results for “meditation” on Google. Informed suggestions welcomed!
Followed a distant (4th) cousin from the UK on Twitter (Sian Tragheim). Looking forward to getting to know her.
Rankled a few people by saying that I didn’t find anything enjoyable or interesting in the late Michael Jackson’s music. But he had a sad life and if there is rebirth I hope he has a more peaceful one next time around. (And maybe my timing wasn’t great).
When I asked my daughter why she pinched me, she said “I did it automatically.” She’s two years old!
Former Sean Hannity buddy arrested for threats to kill judges. Hannity “pals around with terrorists,” eh? http://bit.ly/P4aPT
Enjoyed the sun today. An unexpected treat given the weather we’ve been having
Decided my office is too dark and gloomy for creative writing. I’m going to decamp to the library or a cafe more often in future.

Some pics from our Ethiopia trip

bodhipaksa — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:15:06 +0000

This is the window of Malkias’ aunt’s house in Aleta Chuko, south of Awassa. She had a lovely, spacious house, with a bamboo floor and a large garden to the rear.

In Oromia province, south of Addis, I saw a lot of men plowing with oxen. It was hard to get pictures because by the time I’d spotted them we’d have zoomed past.

There are loads of these storks at the fish market at Awassa. It’s hard to get decent pictures of them; every time I would point a camera at one, some “helpful” young boy would throw fish at it, hoping for a tip. It’s hard to photograph a stork when it’s running to get a piece of fish.

They have fish at the fish market too!

Maia and Malkias.

These are some of the kids who gathered outside Malkias’ aunt Yeshi’s house.

back online in Addis

bodhipaksa — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:18:51 +0000

I’m typing in an internet cafe on Bole Road in Addis on one of the world’s oldest and most rickety keyboards, so please excuse any typogaphical anomalies.

We moved in to Horizon house on Friday and took charge of malkias on Saturday. BY that time he knew us quite well since we’d been visiting him every day for two weeks, and we’ve had no problems with him accepting us. in fact he’s very calm and happy with us. By the time we moved in he was smiling broadly when he saw us.

He’s well, but is cutting a tooth (top left) and the excess salivation is causing him to cough, especially at night. This has caused some lack of sleep, but we’re all doing fine.

Maia’s showing some signs of jealousy, but she also loves him. She’s learning which way his body doesn’t bend.

We had our trip to the US Embassy yesterday (monday) and Malkias now has a visa to enter the US. We had a long wait, but the actual interview was painless.

Sadly, a baby died at the orphanage this morning. She’d been sick and was on a drip. I don’t know if this was a child who had been matched with a family.

I think I’ll call it a day here. Next time i’ll try to upload a few photographs.