Adventures in Onionism

That title is actually an extremely obscure Vanilla Ice reference. Kudos to anyone that may have caught it, as unlikely as that is. Anyway, yesterday was the fourth Thursday in November. I am thankful for the fact that in addition to being able to quote Kanye West and name at least ten players from this year's NFL draft from memory (Mario Williams, Reggie Bush, Vince Young, AJ Hawk, Jay Cutler, Matt Leinart, Santonio Holmes, Bobby Carpenter, Nick Mangold, Marvin Philips, Lendale White), I am also able to quote Karl Popper, program computers, do statistics, and pretend to know what I'm talking about when it comes to Plato's analogy of the cave. However, it always bugs me that I don't know shit when it comes to fixing cars, building a house, or farming. So yesterday I bought a turkey, cut its head off, pulled out all its feathers, ripped out its intestines, and threw it in an oven for several hours. I don't think the details of the story are fabulously interesting, so...

A grad school friend and former EC in Busia sent me an article about flooding that made a hippo kill six people in town here. I'm pretty sure that it didn't actually happen, because there's no water here and no flooding. Especially if no one actually died, it's cool to see Busia in the news. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061118/ap_on_re_af/un_east_africa_floods_2 I also got an interesting e-mail from a stranger today: Dear Mr. Garret Christensen My name is Murteza Khodamoradi an MA economics student, University of Tehran ( Iran ). While studying the book Advanced Macroeconomics by David Romer, I came across with some difficulty to answer its end-of-chapter problems. Since there is no access to its solution manuals here in Iran , so I thought to mail for you and ask for its solution manuals in file text format or sending me a downloadable link to my email if possible. Since I'm in rush to access it please answer this mail as soon as possible. In trying to access i...

First off, it looks like I'll be here a little longer than expected. Ted really wants to get to 80% tracking, and there's no way that's happening by the end of the year as we'd hoped, so I'll probably be here until the mid/end February to see tracking out until the end. This also means that I finally mentioned my stay-dropped-out-of-school, stay-here-longer, then-hike-the-CDT plans to Ted, and his response was "wow, that sounds amazing." Woo-ha. Grad school has sucked so much for me that it is extremely cool to have a prof as supportive as Ted. Also, my sister Emily deserves a shout-out for once dating one of Ted's co-authors and now allowing me to mooch off her vast network of cool friends. It's not set in stone yet, as I have to run things by the grad chair, but all looks to be in order. Everyone pray for a low snow-year in Colorado so I can start northbound May 1. Crap, I totally just jinxed myself. So are you all sure that you don't ...

Four different people sent me links to newspaper articles about the death of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman today. I think he's the only person I've ever sent fan-mail to in my life, so I guess it makes sense, even though I now just respect him and no longer worship him like I used to (and like I still appear to if you google my name).

That's right, I'm a white man in Africa, so what could be more relevant than a discussion of the consistency and frequency of my bowel movements? Actually, I'll spare you the details since there aren't any funny stories about shitting myself in public places or witnessing miracle-diarrhea that manages to travel out your butt and down your pant leg without actually hitting your pants. I just think I have giardiasis. It's not a big deal, and I've got some old flagyl I scored a while back, and I'm in way more pain from the two canker sores in my mouth. I'm just disappointed in my genetics that I'm not one of the lucky people that get to carry giardia lamblia around in their gut without getting symptomatic. Also having the herpes strain that urban legend says causes canker sores sucks too. Anyway, I went to Sipi Falls in Uganda over the weekend. The three huge waterfalls are a beautiful sight, but the place is kind of touristy. The road up from th...

I'm trying to get some work done so that my data analysts will actually have work to do tomorrow while I go to the field, but my computer is taking forever so it's driving me nuts, so here are some pictures. kids taking roosters to town along the ridge of the Cherangani hills looking west at dusk from the ridge near Nyarkulyan flowers along the route the start of the marathon That's it for now. Things are good. I'm enjoying my 24 , I'm reading Moby Dick which is great (I finished The Kite Runner , which was good but made me realize I really just wanted to read a history of Afghanistan or better yet, visit Afghanistan) and I treated my mosquitoe net this morning, so all is well.

My buddy/Pacific Crest Trail legend Scott Williamson was in The New York Times yesterday. He's always jokingly told me he wanted to be in People magazine because Brian Robinson got in when he did the Triple Crown (AT, PCT, CDT) all in one year in 2001, but the Times is pretty cool. I was in the Times once. I'm the crazy bearded man at the end of the article. Seriously. I have pictures of me with the kids to prove it. Makes me pretty excited about my 2007 CDT plans. Oh, and if this entry shows up twice, it's because I'm impatient.

Dear Mr. Christensen, Thank you for taking the time to e-mail Cingular Wireless regarding yourrequest for a suspension of service without the monthly reoccurring charges for your service. I am happy to help you with your inquiry and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.I have discussed this matter with my direct supervisor, and he has authorized me to waive four months of monthly service fees from your account beginning on September 5, 2006. Unfortunately the option of suspending your service at no cost is no longer an option for our customers. This waiver of the fees that has been placed on your account is considered a one time courtesy waiver and as such, future suspensions would result in the charge remaining on your account. The credit remaining on your account is $99.23. You will note that if you view yourbalance online, the balance of $99.23 will appear in parenthesis; this is to indicate that the balance is a credit. Please allow 72 hours for this credit balanc...

a flower a lizard after the night fog rolled in the hillside descending into the Tamkal valley covered in huts and shamba a Turkana man in broad-rimmed hat and toga, carrying ubiquitous cattle stick and tiny stool, also Turkana girl with toga and necklaces