near tears

My computer is finding it humorous to wipe my Word docs of all the formatting I am so carefully applying. I'm going through some key documents and printing them to pdfs, but before I can do this I must first make sure they are looking as they must look. I got through a document and instead of printing it immediately did something else and when I got back to the doc I found it free of all formatting. ::SOB::

As frustrated as I am, my heart is heavy for more important reasons. There is something in the air today that keeps reminding me of Nigeria, and I know I cannot go back this year.

It has been a year since we got back. I can't help but wish I was returning. I remind myself that I chose not to go this year because when the time came to say yea or nay I knew it wasn't a good idea for me to go. But then I have to wonder why - was my attitude simply off that night and I made the easy decision? Or was I truly not meant to go? It was an easy call at the time.

Now it feels like death to know that I won't be going back.

LOST

I never thought I would ever post on such a subject.

Yesterday, while on a walk with Paul, I decided I will start watching LOST.

I blame it on the beautiful weather.

And, of course, all of my friends are pretty convincing.

There's no going back now, even though there's a good half a foot of snow on the ground.

Bush in Africa

Yesterday I took some time to read this article that was sent to me by a friend.

I really enjoyed the read because it shows a glimpse of what President Bush has done in Africa during his administration. I first learned of it a year ago when I was in Nigeria. We did a week-long VBS at Mashiah Foundation. When we first arrived in Jos and were given a tour of Mashiah, we were told about the reality of these women who are HIV positive and the drugs being too expensive for so long and now they were all on medication because of Bush's policies.
I was shocked. Sad, isn't it? I had to travel to Africa to learn of something my president had been doing for years.

Here is a man that has done so much good and is only ever talked about for all we do not agree with. I can only hope that President Bush's legacy, though blackened with the memory of Iraq, will have some luster added by his work in Africa.

-ish

For those of you that know my stance against the use of "ish," you will find this amusing, I am sure. I received an email on Friday from a friend of mine that included the following quote and a link to this article.

"The exhausted secret-service guys, the secretaries of state, the chief of staff, the assistants and advisers and the press pool attempt a fitful sleep in the gray-and-beige reclining seats. Some give up the unequal struggle and order dinner. Not fantastic food, with decentish wine served by nicely uniformed, friendly waiters." - Time Magazine

There it is, in Time, "-ish." Well, I laughed and appreciated the email and moved on with my day. I had no concept of the humbling that was headed my way. As I headed off to lunch later that same day, I said to myself (I talk to myself a lot when I'm alone in the office for any length of time), "I am feeling quite peckish."

I was suddenly aware of the fact that I had just used the suffix "-ish." The moment I was back in the office I looked "peckish" up on the online dictionary and there discovered that "-ish" is an actual suffix used to make adjectives out of nouns: "1. with the sense of 'belonging to', 'after the manner of', 'having the characteristics of,' 'like'; addicted to,' inclined or tending to'; 'near or about' 2. with the sense of 'somewhat,' 'rather.' Similar to the suffix "-esque."

Needless to say I had a good laugh at my own expense and will probably stop ranting about the use of "-ish" from now on (seeing as I never bothered looking it up all these months AND I never noticed that I've used -ish for a long time: "feverish", "ravish", "English", "Swedish").

Though I still believe if you are going to be somewhere you should tell people when you are going to be there not "about" when.

Okay...I'm done.

"-ish." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 01 Mar. 2008.