Benchiness

Sometimes, if you warn that you may have to post a picture of a bench, sometimes you have to do it. This, thus is a picture of an extremely artistic bench that I saw in Port Charlotte this last spring. It's one that someone applied a great deal of loving attention to, and thus deserves an audience, even one as small as my humble blog.

Today I got another phone call from PP in Tanzania. It was again garbled, but this time it was live instead of on my answering machine. The garble was only one way. I could be understood clearly on that end, but any and all responses from there were garbled on the google phone connection. It made for tough communication, so we tried iChat with video feeds from both sides. Against my power to explain it, the iChat session was as clear as those to much more technologically inclined countries. So we chatted a while and I was able to see a bit of the place where she lives - including her mosquito netting. She's traveling to Mikumi National Park tomorrow, about two hours away, with her band of UMB grad students. It seems that all is well, and that she will have stories to tell.

I played some tennis today, and although the slump is not really over yet, I seem to be getting slightly better results. I will turn down the volume on my whine.