3 Days of Rain

**But first, a little Wednesday wisdom: When breaking the seal on a new bottle of water, be sure you aren't squeezing the bottle. The water may spill out alll over you. And your couch.**

I'm not big into New Year's resolutions. Or small into them. Or, really, into them at all.

I did, though, commit to doing a few things better this year. One of those is taking pictures. I have a friend who's doing a photo-a-day project for 2011, and I thought that was an awesome idea! But it didn't come to me until the 10th, and by then it was almost midnight, so my first picture looks like this:

I call it 'unpacked!'

That is the (flattened) duffel bag I took with me for my two-week trip in Egypt. Those are the fuzzy blue socks I wore around the ship because I forgot to bring those grey slippers. D'oh!

Aaaand I forgot again the next day, so I got this picture, taken well after midnight (but whatever. It still counts!)

Unfortunately, it's not what I was going for. I've never seen fog like that--just wisps, snaking through the air. It was eerie. I took this picture and ran inside.

Ah, look! A picture taken during the day:

And what a beautiful day it was.

One morning this week, the sky looked particularly amazing. This picture doesn't quite capture it, but it's the best I could do while driving...

...an activity I am not practiced at, I swear!

This was yesterday afternoon:

It's been raining all week.

Last night, Halina and I went to the mall. We ate Thai food until I had to unbutton my pants, and then we spent an hour digesting in Border's.

And then, when we were good and ready for more gorging, she introduced me to PinkBerry.

It's no SpoonMe, but it is delightfully aesthetic.

Tonight, I am excited because Halina saved me an empty Mayonnaise jar.

I am not a fan of mayonnaise, but I am a fan of bread, and I am really freaking excited to try making my own SOURDOUGH!

I have more pictures, but they are on my phone. One day, I might get around to uploading them.

In the meantime, I plan to do a whole lot more exploring around Dubai, and hope to bring you many wonderful pictures of the city and the people in it. It's my last year here. It's about time I did some exploring.

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr

is one of my heroes. My all-time favorite speech EVER is I've Been to the Mountaintop. I'm sure I've heard it well over a dozen times. It's just to powerful and beautiful not to listen to over and over again.

I'm sorry I missed his birthday celebrations yesterday, but his message is relevant--and crucial--across all days and times and so I figure now is as good a time as Monday to dedicate this post to him. May you take it to heart.

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

And to leave you with his final (publicly uttered) words:



I get chills every time I hear them.

Welcome to 2011

Wow, we are already over a week into the new year. Time just flies on by, don't it?

For reasons I can't put my finger on, I am really looking forward to 2011. I think it's because I did a lot of self-discovery last year and you know what I found? I'm freaking awesome. You know what else is freaking awesome? Life. Life, and me, and my freaking awesome life ROCK. 2010 taught me that there is a me-shaped hole in the universe and I am having one hell of a time filling it.

I hope you will too.

You-shaped Hole**

Sometimes the world feels inhospitable.
You feel all the ways that you and it don’t fit.
You see what’s missing, how it all could be different.


You feel as if you weren’t meant for the world, or the world wasn’t
meant for you.


As if the world is “the way it is” and your discomfort with it a problem.


So you get timid. You get quiet about what you see.


But what if this? What if you are meant
to feel the world is inhospitable, unfriendly, off-track
in just the particular ways that you do?


The world has a you-shaped hole in it.
It is missing what you see.
It lacks what you know.


And so you were called into being.
To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it.


Filling it is speaking what is missing.
Filling it is stepping into the center of the crowd, into a clearing, and
saying, here, my friends, is the future.
Filling it is being what is missing, becoming it.


You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to speak it.
You have to tell your slice of the truth.
You do have to walk toward it with your choices, with your own being.

Then allies and energies will come to you like fireflies swirling around
a light.

The roughness of the world, the off-track-ness, the folly that you see,
these are the most precious gifts you will receive in this lifetime.

They are not here to distance you from the world, but to guide you
into your contribution to it.

The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.
In that way you are important.
In that way you are here to make the world.
In that way you are called.

**by Tara Mohr. Her complete book of awesome poems can be found here, and I do recommend a read.