Poor little piggy

While getting the swine flu vaccination today I noticed this cartoon hanging on the wall. So naturally I had to come home, find it on the internet, and share it with all of you.

Less than 50 days to go

Ah! Christmas! It's just around the corner. I was in the city center today and noticed that the Christmas decorations are already up. And with less than 50 days until the big day, why not!


Credit: "Vienna - Graben" by charley1965

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charley1965/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Here are some things I hope to do between now and Christmas:

• Make as many Christmas gifts as possible. I don't think all of the gifts will be handmade this year, but I hope that most of them will include something handmade.
• Bake Vanillekipferl (traditional Viennese Christmas cookies). Our neighbors gave us some last year and I decided then and there that I would make them this year.
• Visit a couple of Christmas markets. I might even buy something other than food and drinks this year.
  

Poor little bunny

I've been a little under the weather for the past week or two and now it looks like Brian is sick too. You know what that means.

blah blah blah

Have you noticed my absence lately? It seems like I've run out of things to say. I know. I never thought it would happen either. There are a few random things that I've thought were blog worthy, but they never seem to come out right when I sit down at the computer. So instead of making them into individual blog posts, I'll just share them in little bits and pieces. Yeah, I know that's pretty much the same thing I was doing with the Friday Filler, but it just never seems to come together on a Friday anymore.

So here goes...

I had just about decided to not make handmade Christmas gifts this year when my sister suggested that we all make handmade gifts. She said my gifts last year were an inspiration. She didn't use the words "inspire" or "inspiration" or "coolest sister ever", but I think we all know what she meant. So I jumped on the bandwagon and am pretty excited about it. Excited enough to make a list of what I'm making for everyone, but not excited enough to actually start on the gift-making yet.

While chatting with my other sister last week we found out that all three of us were planning on making the same thing for my dad. I guess we look at the same blogs. Not to worry girls, I already have something else planned.

On a completely unrelated topic, I help a woman with her grocery shopping every week and she's always saying the funniest things. Unintentionally, of course. I can't decide which of the following is funnier.

From two weeks ago: After spotting a billboard of two dogs sitting on a park bench she told me, "If I ever get another dog, it'll be a jack daniel."

Last week: She asked me when is Halloween and I told her Saturday. She responded, "Saturday? I thought it was always the last Thursday of the month."

And on a final note: meal moths. I hate them. I think I've gotten rid of them. But I know that as soon as I click Publish and go into the kitchen I'll find another one. It's inevitable.

Ethiopia photos

I finally got around to uploading my photos from Ethiopia over the weekend. You can see all of the photos here: Alisha's Ethiopia photos on Flickr.

Most of the Ethiopians we had contact with were very eager to know what thought about Ethiopia and Addis Ababa. The thing is, we saw very little of Ethiopia except for the areas between our guest house and the orphanage. Even though our driver took many different routes, we really didn't get to see a whole lot. Once while we were riding along the driver just happened to spot his friend and pulled over to say hello. His friend happened to be a tour guide and offered his services if we wanted to see more of the city. I felt like it was quite a coincidence that the one time we were alone with the driver he ran into this tour guide buddy. (We shared the driver with another family and we were almost always together in the car.) Later the other family was in the car alone with the driver and they happened to run into the tour guide as well.

So, we didn't see a whole lot, but here are a few tidbits from our trip.

One evening we went to an Ethiopian restaurant where we had injera and wot and watched traditional dances and musicians. Injera is a spongy bread, similar to a pancake. It's used to pick up and eat wot, which is any type of stew.


Injera and wot at Yod Abyssinia.
It was pretty good, but some of it was really too spicy for my taste. The restaurant had murals of famous sites in Ethiopia. Our driver, who joined us for the meal, sat next to Brian and told him about each of the sites. And, he said, his tour guide buddy could take us to some of the sites. I really liked our driver and rather enjoyed that he was trying to help his friend's business.

There's a lot to say about the driving in Ethiopia. We only saw one traffic light the whole week and there seemed to be few driving rules. Even the lanes were subjective. The roads usually had at least faint lane markings, but they were often ignored. A road could be vary from one to four or more lanes just based on the traffic at the time. And the roads were not just for vehicles, but for pedestrians and animals as well. Here's a short video of one of our drives. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road at this point, but there were a lot of pedestrians.

And the polution! It was unbelievable. It wasn't unbearable most of the time, but when we were on the road it was awful.


Many of the vehicles reminded me of Pig-Pen from Charlie Brown. Only it was a cloud of exhaust rather than dirt that followed them around.
The blue and white taxis became a very common site. We drove past a couple of locations where the taxis would collect to pick up passengers. The taxi vans were the most common. They had 5 rows of seating with 11 or 12 seats -- and usually 20 or more passengers -- all in about the size of a U.S. minivan. My guess is that they work similar to city buses and there are designated pick up and drop off areas rather than door to door service.


Another common site was the women cleaning the streets. They wore pink coveralls, large straw hats and a scarf cover most of the their face. The scarf, I'm pretty sure, was to keep out some of the exhaust and dirt. They worked in pairs or small groups -- one with a wheelbarrow and everyone with brooms.


Another thing of note was the construction. There were half-built buildings everywhere. Brian read that there was a big construction boom in Addis Ababa, but with the recent economic conditions many building projects were put on hold or abandoned. Some of the buildings were still being worked on, but it looked like many were just sitting there. In any case, we found the scaffolding quite impressive.


You can check out all of the photos here.

Not just for witches

Do you know how to tell if eggs are still good? See if they float.

After being away for two weeks I wasn't so sure I should eat the eggs in the fridge. After a few moments on the interwebs I found a simple way to test them. Here's what I found at http://whatscookingamerica.net/Eggs/EggsFloat.htm:

Carefully lower your eggs into fresh cold water (do not use salted water) using a spoon:

• If the egg stay at the bottom - it is fresh.

• If the egg is at an angle on the bottom - it is still fresh and good to eat.

• If the egg stands on its pointed end at the bottom - it is still safe to eat but best used for baking and making hard-cooked eggs.

• If the egg float - they're stale and best discarded.

I also learned that eggs typically stay fresh for 4 to 5 weeks. Who knew. I thought they'd only last a couple of weeks. After testing my eggs, I found that most were still good, but at least one was spoiled.



By the way, I have some photos to share from my recent trip to Ethiopia, but I haven't had the energy to blog this week. So maybe next week.

A quick hello

I'm back from the women's retreat in Filzmoos and should probably be packing for the next trip, but decided to drop in and share a few photos from the week.

We stayed at the same place as last year, which was a little up the mountain overlooking the town of Filzmoos. It seems like it was pretty foggy most mornings and it was really cool to watch the fog lift.


It's such a nice town. There are cows with bells...

"Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!"

And cows without bells...


And other farm animals like baby goats and tiny ponies and a donkey. But I didn't take any photos of those animals. I did however take a photo of the coffee and cake.


In addition to the food and the farm animals, the rest of the retreat was great as well.

And now I'm off for another week.