February 09, 2005

Wednesday evening

Hello from the Fun Zone,

Coming to you live from Addis Ababa where the sun has fallen and the kids are laughing in the neighborhood. We've got a balmy 65 F, I'm guessing, and some nice cricket sounds heading in from the window. The Fun Zone just got back from the fun gym where he did a lot of weightlifting and no aerobic work. The Fun Zone is tired from previous efforts and wants to just strut around the gym looking in the mirror.

There was an interesting guy in the gym tonight - some kind of Eastern European and a fairly stocky guy. I thought he might have been a weighlifter - you know, the Olympic type, in a previous life. He was doing some pretty "springy" exercises on the squat bar. He was also livening up the gym with his crazy antics. At one point, he was dancing the Iskista (traditional Ethiopian dance) with the male aerobics instructor. Most aerobics instructors here are male and the constituents of aerobics class are often male, though that wasn't the case tonight. Actually, maybe that's why the guy was making all the antics.

You don't know this, but I was just pulled away from the keyboard because my 6 month old dog (definitely still a puppy), got into a bottle of ink used for refilling printer cartridges that I have had sitting on the floor. How did he find it and what motivated him to put it in his mouth, chew on it, and send a few squirts on my Persian rug will forever remain a mystery.

So anyway, back to the gym. The Eastern European guy was having a pretty good time and he was definitely the center of attention. When the music came on, he started dancing the Iskista and he was actually pretty good. I had to smile, even though he was stealing my unofficial thunder as the only farenj to frequent the gym. Come to think of it, there were two farenj in the gym tonight, bringing the total whiteness count to 3, an unheard of number in these parts. Well, enough gym. Suffice it to say, I am buff and tough.

I see that I stumped you all with the Rocking Fun Zone challenge question from the previous post. I will reiterate: Which columnist's writing style from one of Seattle's two daily newspapers does the Rocking Fun Zone most admire/model himself on? I will repeat my wish of good luck to you in answering this most challenging of questions.

The Rocking Fun Zone thinks he is not producing quality material this evening. Maybe it was the ink from the dog that took me off my mark.

Business goes well, moving ever closer to getting some samples available for distribution. My brother-in-law is turning out to be a pretty good find. He's actually got some unknown artistic ability that should turn out to be really useful. Yesterday, we made our first sample (after purchasing our first saw) and it came out much better than expected. Granted, the edges are really unfinished, as are some of the other details, but we were both pretty excited with how far we'd come. Definitely more to come on this.

Well, I'll sign off, as my powers of inanity seem to have weakened. My wife comes back tomorrow, so I'll be very happy for that. Also, I've got an informational interview with the head of one of the local NGOs, so I've got to get ready. Ciao.

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