national geographic

vanuatu is in this month's national geographic. check it out.

barf

when i lived in belarus, an english-speaking friend of mine whipped out this detergent to clean her bathroom. we thought it was the funniest thing and i took several photos of her cleaning with "barf" like a happy housewife. now i see this video:

root signals has decided that our studio is my dad's office floor. this is how we spend sundays.

donors choose

i read an article about this site called donors choose a few weeks ago and thought it sounded like a great idea. donors can browse through different projects in low-income schools and pick specific projects to help fund. you know our public schools sorely need help; this is a way that we can make sure the money is going directly to the students and their classrooms.

i am not into selling stuff, but this is a worthy thing: a friend of mine is raising a few dollars to help transform the learning environment in her classroom at one of philadelphia's poorest, toughest high schools. her classroom is a stifling 80 degrees in january, far more conducive to her special ed students falling asleep than to them learning anything! it only gets worse as the spring term progresses. please consider helping out!

the toothbrushing incident

have you ever tried to brush your teeth while laughing hysterically? it's not easy.

this morning i was brushing my teeth, as i often do, and my toothbrush hit a particularly sensitive area in the back of my gums [i have already determined that i am a very sensitive and radicular person; the other night someone was trying to massage a knot out of my back and i felt it in my ear] and it made me gag. it also tickled and made me laugh.

the resulting sound was something like what i imagine a cow would sound like if it was surprised and angry. it also sounded a lot like jon stewart's impression of dick cheney, which i don't feel like finding online right now, but if you've heard it, you will certainly know what i mean.

i was so shocked and amused by the sound that i couldn't stop replaying it in my head, which meant i couldn't stop laughing, which made the rest of the toothbrushing experience quite a challenge. it's always good to laugh yourself to tears in the morning, i say.

lungs

i love the lung-off here between the singer and the bassoonist. and of course, i have always loved kitka ever so much.

man at work

putting dave's desk together. he's a good guy.

frozen

oh, this is great. "it must be some kind of protest."

"or acting class!" [via]

trampoline

i wonder if i can send pics? this is my man on a trampoline yesterday. hmm.

i'm testing sending this from

i'm testing sending this from my phone. i finally got a phone with a qwerty keyboard so i might find myself doing this at random.