World Malaria Day

Hi Everyone.  It’s World Malaria Day so I thought I’d share this very handy and informative infographic with you.  Malaria is still prevalent in many countries, still kills millions of people and is still completely preventable.  “A child dies of malaria every minute,” tell me that doesn’t break your heart.

image via MACEPA

If you do want to help, there are some amazing organizations out there that take donations.  A few are listed here.  Also, check out last year’s World Malaria Day post to see pictures of the Malaria work my project did in Malawi.

Reading on the Road

If I didn’t already mention it, I’m in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and will be for another 2.5 weeks.  In total, I’ll be away from home for a little over 3 weeks.  It’s a long time in general but compared to my last two trips (4.5 and 5 weeks), it’s manageable.  One of the great things about being on the road and having time in the evenings (which I should use to blog) to reading.  I know I was sort of anti-Kindle before but that little devise has changed my travel life.  I read so much more on trips because I can load a bunch of books on before I go and even access library books and Amazon when I’m on the road.  But that’s enough with the love, let’s talk books.

I think I’m a fairly eclectic reader.  I’ll read most anything though I tend to stay away from Fantasy (does Harry Potter count?), Sci-Fi and real Romance novels.  I go through phases where I read only weird non-fiction (History of Cod anyone?) and then go on a fiction bender.  Right now I have a pretty diverse range of books I plan to read this trip which include the following:

We’ve been neglecting the blog a bit.  I know it needs some help so I thought while I had a bit of time, I’d do some blog related reading.  I randomly picked this book because I like the title, it had good reviews on Amazon (where the image is from) and it was available for checkout at the library with no wait.  I hope it’s helpful.

I love a good female comedy writer and after reading Tina Fey’s book, I decided I probably needed to read Mindy Kaling’s too.  I know some may not agree but I liked Mindy’s (I can call her Mindy because I know her – I did read the book) book better than I liked Tina Fey’s.  I think Tina Fey’s book had more laugh out loud moments but I think Mindy’s was consistently more funny and more relatable to me.  Maybe it’s the Asian upbringing, or the fact that I make that same face she has on the cover or because I feel the same about one night stands as she does, but I liked this book better.  I finished it in 6 hours. 

We’re going to Maine this summer.  I mentioned it before but you should check out the post if you missed it – we need recommendations.  We’re doing a road trip and we are spending over half our time in Maine.  I actually am really excited for Maine – more than I thought I would be. 

I think this may be the only fiction book I have on my list to read this trip.  I actually don’t know too much about the book except it takes place in the 1870s in the Ottoman Empire.  I think I picked this book because Amazon recommended it based on my reading history and again, there was not wait for it at the library.  I hope that isn’t a sign.

I am in the middle of this book and Dr. Hodes is an inspiring and amazing person.  I saw a documentary early last year about Dr. Hodes and was moved to tears.  If you know me, you will probably will say that’s not a huge feat but if you read this book or watch the documentary, you’ll be moved too.  If you are not, then you are a robot – just saying.  The short of it is that Dr. Hodes saves lives everyday.  He’s selfless, and giving and accepting of all people.  I’m only about 40% into the book and I think I’ve shed a tear 2 or 3 times already.  If you don’t have time for the book, check out his website.  It’s full amazing stories of the people he’s helped.

Early last year, I started taking on some new responsibilities on my project.  For most of my time on the project, I’ve been what I’d call an Administrative Coordinator or Administrative Jill of all Trades.  I work on budgets, opens new field offices, administratively supporting large field activities in a couple of African countries, dabble in recruiting and hiring and manage consultants and personnel issues.  Last year I had some time and starting working on project documentation.  It was only supposed to take up 15% of my time.  Eventually, I was asked if I wanted it to be 50% or more of my time.  I was really interested in the work and the guy leading it seemed happy to just have some staff time to utilize.  Let me just say that I have no experience in documentation unless this blog counts.  I had and have a lot to learn and luckily my team leader (we are officially a team of two now) has been happy (maybe) to coach me.  He recommended I read The Checklist Manifesto because he said that if I could master lists, I could do this job.  Clearly he doesn’t know me or he’d know that I LOVE lists.  This is clearly the book for me.  I’ll tell you how it is when I finish it but apparently it’s supposed to change the way I do things.  I say bring it.

Man, I love me a themed travel memoir.  Eric Weiner travels around the world to learn what makes people happy and who is actually happy.  I think we could all use a little bliss and to remember what makes us happy. 

So that’s what I’m reading this trip.  What’s on your nightstand?

A Northeastern Road Trip

Every year Micah and I take a trip during the summer. Last year we did a mountain west (can I call it that?) road trip that involved Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Oregon.  The year before we spent a few weeks in northern Italy visiting my sister.  We were hoping Micah could join me on a trip to Zambia but that doesn’t appear to be in the cards.  Instead, we’ve decided to take a trip through New England (ish).  Micah is spending a few weeks at Ohio State University this summer studying Central Asia (don’t ask). 

I’m actually really excited for him as I hope this means he’ll want to visit Central Asia.  I’d love to go to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and currently he isn’t interested in any of those destinations.  Anywho, Micah asked me if I wanted to come out to Columbus for a visit and I wasn’t entirely excited by the idea (no offense to those from Columbus).  Then he suggested we turn it into a road trip and visit upstate New York, Vermont and Maine.  We have friends who bought an old farm house and are slowly remodeling it.  We could spend some time with them and also go to Acadia National Park.  Once I started thinking about what we would see, I was sold. 

Of course, it’s not that easy.  We are playing with a few different routes, each with it’s own selling points.

Route 1 : Boston > Bangor (with side trip to Acadia) > Burlington > Montreal > Ithaca > Glen Falls > Boston

Route 2: Boston > Portland > Bangor > Acadia > Montreal > Burlington > Glen Falls > Boston

 

Route 3: Boston > Bangor (with side trip to Acadia) > Burlington > Niagara Falls > Ithaca > Glen Falls (or somewhere over there) > Boston

Route 4: Columbus > Niagara Falls > Ithaca > Glen Falls > Burlington > Bangor (with Acadia) > Boston

So here’s what we know we want and/or are working with: 

1.  We have between 12-14 days for this trip.  We could probably make it 16 days but we feel bad leaving Izzy for that long.  The 12-14 days include flying days.  If we start and end from Boston, Micah would have to fly to Boston so we’d lose one whole day to air travel.

2.  We definitely want to spend 2 or 3 days hanging with our friends at their farm which is somewhere around Bangor (I think).

3. Ben and Jerry’s factory tour is a must.  I do LOVE a good factory tour.  I know, it’s silly but I seriously do.

4.  Acadia has to happen.  Even better if we can camp there but that will depend on getting gear out there. 

5.  We want to spend some time in upstate New York – Glen Falls, Lake Placid – somewhere in the Adirondacks.

What We’d Like (if possible):

1. Hiking in and around Mt. Washington.

2. Maybe a visit to Cooperstown.  We aren’t HUGE baseball fans but it seems like something worth doing.  I did spent a majority of my teenage years working for an MLB team.

3. Montreal.  I’ve wanted to visit for a while.  Maybe even just a day trip.

What we may have to skip:

1. Niagara Fall.  We’d love to go but the routes to that would take us here would either rush the trip or cost a lot. Rent a car one-way is twice as much as returning it to the same city.

2. Montreal.  We may have to trade Montreal for more time in Maine.

3. Ithaca.  We really want to check the area out but it could be a stretch.

4. Seeing Boston.  Apart from Montreal, I think we want to stay out of big cities. 

It’s likely that we’re picking between routes one and two but I’m not eliminating 3 and 4 quite yet.  Any suggestions?  Places we have to see?  Places we can afford to miss given our time constraints?

FRÄCK Hack Copycat

Look what I made all by my little self!!

Awesome right?  Micah hasn’t had a bedside lamp in over 6 months.  We moved the cute wooden lamps that were in our room to the guest room.  They were great but didn’t really match the what we had going on in our master bedroom.  Micah does most of his reading on the ipad, so I slacked on getting a lamp put in. Then this beauty came into my life and I knew I had to have it.

I’d like to tell you this is an original idea but it so is not.  I “borrowed” it from Manhattan Nest.  I knew it was exactly what we needed when I saw it.  Fairly cheap, really chic and “easy” to put together.  It was SO easy to put together that I’m not going to bother giving you step by step instructions.  He does a good job of the basics and I used this tutorial to figure out how to wire a lamp.  It only took me 10 minutes to wire each lamp.

Easy right?  Well, once you get all the parts it’s easy.  It getting all the parts that is hard.  So, instead of telling you how to make this, I’m going to tell you where I got everything which may only be useful to people living in Seattle. 

A – Chrome tipped light bulb.  I thought this would be the hardest thing to locate but it in the end it wasn’t.  I found these online everywhere but it turned out that it would cost $15 to ship a $3 light bulb.  Awesome.  Even if I bought 4 bulbs, it would cost more to ship them than I paid for them.  After a few calls, I was able to locate my light bulb at the Seattle Lighting Warehouse.  I went to the retail stores and they told me it would take 2 weeks to arrive in the store but if I drove the 1.5 miles to the warehouse, I could pick it up that day.  I know, it makes no sense.  I wanted the globe shaped bulb but they didn’t carry them anymore so I went with A-shaped in a 60 watt.  It cost $3.50 a bulb but they put out over 1000 hours of light.

B – Lamp socket with cord hole on the side in chrome.  I tried a few places locally (Target, Lowes, Home Depot) and I could only find this in either brass or in chrome but with the hole coming out the bottom.  You NEED the hole to be on the side.  After few attempts at locating this I went to Ebay.  Yes, Ebay.  I found this guy who sells lamps parts, told him exactly what I was after and he set up an individualized sale from me.  I paid $6.15 for three lamp sockets including shipping. 

C – Adapter Nut.  THIS was the hardest thing to find.  I went to 3 different places and came up empty-handed.  My Dad recommended Tacoma Screw and that’s indeed where I found this little part.  The woman was unsure she could help me when I presented her with the base and the lamp socket but she found the piece in the end.  It cost me $0.80 for each nut.

D – The FRÄCK.  Yes, it’s called the FRÄCK.  It’s this:

Yup, it’s a $4.99 mirror from Ikea.  Easy.

E & F – Lamp Wire and plug (not shown).  I went with the place Manhattan Nest suggested which was Sundial Wire.  It cost $1.40 a foot and went with 5 ft per lamp.  The plug was there and I liked the interesting style which had a touch of yellow so I bought those from Sundial for $2 each.  Shipping was $3 for everything and I bought enough for 3 lamps.

Total per lamp (including tax and shipping) $21.35 per lamp.  I could have shaved a few bucks off by buying a cheaper plug and lamp socket elsewhere but it wasn’t worth my time to hunt for 2 hours to save $3.

I loved how it turned out.  It’s perfect for what we needed and wanted. 

We went with a 60w bulb because it’s what I could find.  It looks really bright in the picture but we actually found it to be perfect.  It’s bright enough to really see what you are reading but the chrome tip makes it dim enough that he can sleep when I want to keep reading.

I love this project; I learned how to wire a lamp, I found a new blog (to me), and I always love a good (and cheap) IKEA hack.  Anyone else going to attempt this hack?  It’s easy, really.  Well, once you know where to get everything.

Back from a Break

Man, it’s been FOREVER since we posted anything.  A lot has been going on around here and we needed time to sort things out.  Let’s see, we had a mini get together (Themed – Seattle stereotypes), Kate came to visit (and it was AWESOME), Micah got a new teaching gig for the fall (HOLLA!!), we got a new bed, added some new colors to the bedroom color palette, went to Vancouver for a long weekend, did a lot of yard clean up, I made a bedside lamp (It’s AMAZING), Izzy had a sleepover, lost a bit of weight (both of us) and we’ve been working on the master bathroom.  Whew!  That was a lot. 

We also managed to get 10 and 1/3 things done off our 101 in 1001 list.  Check out our progress.  We’ve also got a lot coming up.  I leave for Ethiopia next Friday, we’re hopefully planning a few road trips for summer and we have a few immediate projects up our sleeves.  We’re excited for the weekend.  My sister is coming over to BBQ, we’ve got plans to enjoy Seattle Restaurant week, we hope to see The Hunger Games and sometime during the weekend squeeze in a little yard work. 

We’ll be back to posting next week starting with the lamp project.  Happy Friday Everyone!!