Linaewen's Lake of Small Birds

Time for an update!  Think I'll use bullet form, as it's more concise.

• I am royally sick of coughing.  As far as I can tell, the only time I've been cough free this year is when I'm taking prednisone.  I might resort to that one more time before I see my doc next month, since I have a refill and since the coughing is getting to be pretty much unbearable.  I thought it was improving there for awhile, but either I was mistaken or the cough changed its mind and came back with friends.
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• The latest update from Pakistan is that those friends of ours who have lost their homes are going to be moving in to the housing on the compound where we used to live.  So our empty house will be useful again, yay!  Seems like there is more rain coming up north, and that will swell the river again and the whole mess could start all over.  :-(  I'm praying otherwise!
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• I just got back from a trip to New Jersey for a conference that was a nice break and a good time of visiting people we don't see often -- it would have been more relaxing if I could have coughed less throughout!
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• I am getting organized to go to Wisconsin for a week, partly to touch base with my dad and my son, but also to attend my 35th class reunion.  I'm really looking forward to that, it will be fun!  I had a great time at the last one, and I don't expect it to be any different this time around.  I'm looking forward to see friends I haven't seen for years, as well as the ones that I see every time I visit my home town.
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• The deadline for the Finish-a-thon I am taking part in, trying to get some more chapters written on Lords of Gondor, is coming up on Friday.  I am afraid I'm not going to make it, though I will go down trying.  I committed to 8,000 words, and I have only produced 2,000 so far -- though there is at least one chapter brewing that should be ready this week and which will up the count a bit.  Hopefully I'll have some time to work on this goal AND have the concentration it takes to actually stick to it to try to make it happen.  Concentration is rather lacking these days.  ;-)

Well, I have to get organized to go supervise some English students.  Hopefully there will be enough teachers available today that I won't have to teach.  I"m allergic to teaching these days, since it makes me cough.  ;-)

That was the cry from most of the floats at the parade we went to yesterday -- a parade celebrating Pakistan Independence Day (which actually was August 14th, but they held the parade on Sunday).  It means "Long Live Pakistan."  That parade was one of several events taking place in the South Asian part of Chicago this past weekend -- as India also celebrated Independence Day on the 15th with a parade, and our South Asian Friendship Center held a block party on Saturday to coincide with both events.

I was in charge of the food tent for the block party, which involved free water, lemonade, popcorn and watermelon.  I didn't really have my head on straight properly to be on top of things for the block party, due to arriving from our trip to New Jersey only the day before -- so I wasn't actually set up well enough before the inrush of thirsty folk after the parade.  It was almost overwhelming at first!  Also, I was stiff and sore from falling while setting up -- I tripped on a curb and fell on the grass, and bruised my knee severely (a bad bruise on top of a healing bruise from last time).  I'm such a klutz these days, I've fallen down hard twice this month!  Just rushing too much and not watching, I guess.  Anyway, that didn't help me at all to get around like I needed to, but I managed.  People who knew I had fallen helped me out a lot, so that was good!

We had a lot of volunteers from area churches to help out, which was wonderful, but my "assigned" ones always disappeared when I needed them!  Thankfully, I had a capable fellow manning the popcorn machine all day, so I didn't have to do that.  As it was, I was so busy frantically serving drinks and the other food (along with my helpers) that I hardly got a chance to even look at people, let alone chat with them.  And we were right next to one of the speakers which was blaring Hindi/Pakistani music -- fun stuff with a great beat, but so loud we couldn't hear ourselves think let alone hear what our customers were saying to us.  :-D

Local people kept taking my chairs and sitting in them along the street, so I never had one when I needed to sit down.  And I had to run back and forth a lot because we kept running out of lemonade and water.  It was a hot day, and people had been standing in the sun watching the parade, so we were a popular stop for a free drink -- plus the popcorn and watermelon.  My right arm is still stiff and sore today from slicing watermelon and pushing the spiggot on the lemonade jug repeatedly all afternoon!

In spite of all that, I was able to meet and chat with a number of my friends, as well as a bunch of kids who frequent the Center where they get help with English and schoolwork, so I was pleased about that.  And everything really went well and people had fun, and I got compliments on my Pakistani outfit -- which is nice because it's as old as the hills, but seemingly still in style and fitting properly.  ;-)

We were so busy with the block party that we didn't get to see any of the India Day parade, but we did get to see the Pakistan parade on the following day.  We actually skipped church to go see it!  It wasn't anything fancy, but it was fun to stand on the curb behind the police barricade, dressed like a Pakistani and wearing buttons that said Love Pakistan.  ;-)  It was overcast all morning, and sure enough, before the parade was over, a storm blew up.  Those poor people on the floats, lol!  We got soaked walking back home, but it was still fun.  We met lots of people we knew, and chatted a bit when the rain wasn't soaking us.  There was supposed to be a gathering in a nearby park afterwards, with booths for food and performances and such, but I didn't go.  It rained a fair bit, and then, even though it cleared up, it was really soggy out.

Anyway, I'm moving real slow today, as I'm quite stiff, and my bruised knee is a sight to behold.  I'll recover soon enough, hopefully!  It always takes a few days to recover from such a weekend, even when one doesn't fall all over the place and hurt oneself!  Too bad our lovely relaxing week in New Jersey got all used up in just two days, though!  We'll need to take another vacation now.  ;-)

The last day or two has been spent surrounded by stacks of slides taken during our 18 years of living overseas.  We want to get them all scanned into a digital format and put on CD so they can be used and viewed more easily with better technology than a slide projector.  We have a scanner, but it does a very poor job with slides.  However, there is a local grocery store chain here that does a beautiful job with scanning and if you take in batches of 100, it only costs 10 cents per slide plus the cost of the CD.    With the number of slides we have, it will still be a hefty sum to get them all done, but it will be worth it.

So I'm having to look at each one, sorting them by type of slide mount, cleaning the ones that are dusty, then getting taking out ones that are duplicates, or blurry, or so nondescript they aren't really interesting.  It's a bit hard on my back to be sitting and sorting for so long, but it's also really a lot of fun, too.  I'm feeling all nostalgic!!  It's great to see all those places and sights and people again that we knew during that time, and remember things in a happy nostalgic way.  I have chuckled more than a few times at pics of DH fixing his Land Rover or climbing on the roof to fix our electric wire -- or shots of the incredibly bad houses we lived in over the years.  Yikes!!  I'll have to share some of those with you when they are ready, you'll be amazed at my strength and endurance and flexibility, hehe!  There also pictures of our DS when he was a wee lad, and pictures of me when I was thin!  ;-)  And of course, all the lovely ones of places we visited, sunsets we saw, mountains we climbed, and friends we still miss.

There are some slides that are a bit too dark to see well when projected, but if they are scanned we might be able to fix them up with Photoshop, so I'm also excited to be able to have access to some of the pictures I haven't had copies of before this.

Once we get all these done, we will go back and sort through ones from the REALLY old days when we were kids and newlyweds and even before that, and choose the ones worth digitalizing.  That is, if we can find them all after they have been stored for umpteen years in other people's houses!

So, that's what I'm up to today, visiting Pakistan without having to actually go there!  :-D

radbooks gave me the year


I turned 35 in June of 1992, and celebrated 12 years of marriage in August of that year. Other than that, if I recall correctly,1992 was a fairly quiet year for me. Which was a good thing, because we were living overseas in Pakistan at the time, and the fact that nothing really significant happened over there (that I can recall) was definitely a good thing, lol!

During the course of 1992:

• We lived in HERE -- where we were among the staff teaching at a technical training and Bible school.
  
• We drove around the country in THIS -- only ours was older and not as nice as this. ;-) Some of the places we visited were villages where the students who boarded at the technical training school were from, many of which looked just like THIS. A lovely time was had by all when we went out on such visits, because even when the drive out was a bit of an adventure, we were always rewarded by wonderful hospitality that included chai and tasty curry and good conversation. ;-)
  
• Our son attended boarding school for part of that year, finishing 3rd grade and starting 4th grade.
  
• We spent the summer months of 1994 HERE in order to get out of the heat. Our summer place was pretty ramshackle -- an old building built during the British Raj -- but we got to look out upon scenes like THIS every day, so that made up for it!
• The Pakistan Cricket team led by Imran Khan won the World Cup Championship.  We still don't quite understand how the game of cricket works, but we do know this -- it was a very big deal that year to win the World Cup, even bigger than the Super Bowl is to Americans, lol!
  
• In December of that year, after the usual rigamarole and red tape runaround getting our passports renewed in a foreign country and getting reentry visas granted and stamped in, we returned to the States in time for Christmas, for a six month stay before going back overseas.

A few interesting things happened in the US during that year, which we heard about on the radio:

• I think there were elections happening.  ;-)  Bill Clinton eventually was elected president that year, defeating George Bush the elder and Ross Perot.  We voted by absentee ballot, as I recall.
• In Wisconsin news, a thing happened in the fall of 1992 that came to be quite significant to all of us Cheeseheads -- Brett Favre was traded to the Green Bay Packers, and began his long exciting career as a starting quarterback with my favorite team.  Here's some trivia for you -- did you know that Brett Favre's first pass as a Green Bay Packer was a completion to himself?  :-D

That's all I can think of for the year of 1992!

If you would like to do this meme, let me know and I'll give you a year.  Feel free to comment on my year, even if you don't want to do the meme yourself!