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chit-chat · giveaway · sewing

{ GIVEAWAY } May Day & Birthday month…

Welcome to May 2013….can you even believe its May already?!

Back when I was younger, birthdays were all about THE DAY only but these days I think its über cool to celebrate the whole darn month! & why not right?! Since May is the month of my birthday, I thought I would do a giveaway – so this Vogue 8872 pattern is up for grabs! Its in size 14-22, brand new & uncut. It features 6 lovely dress variations/options which can be sewn as & how you like.

If you would like to enter the giveaway, please pop a comment down below telling me whatever you’d like 🙂  I will close entries at 09h00 GMT on the 8th May 2013 & I will generate a winner soon thereafter. I post worldwide so dont be shy. { GOOD LUCK }

Also, { GOOD LUCK } to all of you participating in Me-Made-May ’13 kicking off today. Im so excited to see all the reviews on how you all put your MMM into action. I did not pledge to one handmade garment per day because thats just a little too much commitment for me but I did pledge to as many as possible. I will try to do a weekly roundup of what I wore & which days.

Ok girlies, get your comments in for that giveaway if your’e interested & have a lovely May x

PS { This is not a sponsored post. I purchased this pattern with my own hard earned cash }

17 thoughts on “{ GIVEAWAY } May Day & Birthday month…

      1. I would if I felt I could! Those dresses look GORGEOUS! But I have no ideas still on how I rank up on sizing. I would feel so guilty if I did win and turned out I had no idea how to cut to the right size. Super novice, I be! Haha.

          1. I’m hoping. 😀 Oh, one day! Now I have Wicked stuck in my head…
            Plus, I never EVER win giveaways. Haha. Sadly I tend to let stuff like that get to me and so I stopped entering most of them. Yes, I am a dork. Now I want to go through and read about all the dresses you have made, again!

  1. Firstly Happy Birthday to you… Ahhh.. I would love to win the pattern sheet.. looks very lovely and vintage.. may your birthday wishes come true.. cheers.. 😉

  2. Happy Birthday Month Girlie!!!! (It’s my birthday month, as well. I think there are a lot of Tuarus sewists. We’ll have to have a celebratory drink together). That dress is gorgeous, but please don’t enter me into the giveaway. The dress is too big a size for, so would rather let other people who can wear the dress win it!

  3. Happy birthday and thanks for the giveaway! I came across your blog from your comment on Megan Nielsen’s blog.

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August 4, 2014 AT 12:00 am

Physicist creates ice cream that changes color as it’s licked

Vis Phys.org.

Spanish physicist, engineer, professor and ice cream lover Manuel Linares has together with a couple of colleagues created an ice cream that changes colors when it’s licked—in a cone. Not content with the life of a physics professor, Linares signed up for training with Asociación Empresarial Nacional de Elaboradores Artesanos y Comerciantes de Helados y Horchatas—a craftsmen and businessmen association in Spain that offers mentored coursework.

Linares pursued what he has described as a “Masters Diploma in Creating Artisan Ice Cream.” Intrigued by the ice that changes color under fluorescent lights, created by Charlie Francis, Linares set his sights on figuring out a way to create a type of ice cream that would change color in response to temperature changes and acids found in the human mouth. He enlisted the assistance of a couple of unnamed buddies and they all got to work in a lab that Linares put together with his own funds. Linares has told the press that it took the three of them just one week to come up with the color changing ice cream. The final product, which reportedly has a similar taste to tutti-frutti, has been named Xamaleón.

The color changing comes about, some suspect due to the types of fruit that are used—plus a secondary ingredient, a spritz called the “love elixir” that gets sprayed onto the ice cream after its been scooped into a cone, which Linares has hinted, accelerates the color changing process. It starts out as periwinkle blue, then changes to pink and eventually becomes purple, as it’s licked.

The ice cream is made of all natural materials, Linares has revealed, but other than listing some of the normal ingredients found in regular ice cream, he’s kept mum. That’s because he has big plans for the ice cream. He’s already opened a shop in Blanes, his hometown, with the goal of creating many more types of exotic ice cream, such as a variety that mimics the ice created by Francis, and another he’s already named Xamán—it will be made with Peruvian and African medicinal plants which will supposedly provide an aphrodisiac effect.

Read more.

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A Conversation with Moz's Rand Fishkin: Focusing on Authenticity, not Conversions

In a generation, marketing has moved from being a profession of emotions to one of metrics. It's as if Don Draper left the office and Harry Crane took over. At Chartio, we're always catering to your desire to quantify marketing performance, but it's good to remind ourselves that marketing is also about emotions.

Earlier this month, Chartio's Sasha Blumenfeld interviewed Moz founder Rand Fishkin. And, although Moz certainly is numbers driven, it's also clear that they seek good content and a great connection with their audience.

watch inbound marketing with rand fishkin

Rather than summarize the conversation, I wanted to explore some of the themes that ran through the conversation.

Authenticity is what matters – If you can fake that, you've got it made

One of the elements of Moz's code of TAGFEE (Transparent, Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, Exceptional) is authenticity, and this was a major theme of Sasha and Rand's conversation.

Too much of what we think we know about SEO was discovered in 2003, according to Rand. Google has been changing constantly since then, and will change again in the next five years.

Rand emphasized that it's not Moz's top priority to convert visitors immediately. They don't aggressively focus on conversions, the way that some other sites or "growth hackers" might. Moz avoids overlays, pop-unders, and even the loaded language that these operators employ to increase engagement.

"You can read our blog, consume our content, and try out tools without being promoted to pay for our services," he said. He's confident that you'll eventually subscribe if you develop a relationship with Moz.

Moz's authenticity extends to the way they manage their blog. Moz recently conducted a joint experiment with Hubspot , where both sites tried doubling their blog postings for three weeks, and also reducing the number of posts by half.

They found that doubling posts did increase engagement, and halving the number of posts didn't increase quality. Rand couldn't necessarily explain it, but it did seem that their current blogging cadence was one that they had evolved authentically over time and was now resistant to change.

Branding is eclipsing direct marketing

After two decades of the ascendancy of direct marketing, branding is once again on the rise. Rand acknowledged that it's difficult for direct marketers (including SEOs) to think in terms of brand.

But the rise of branding results from the Internet's new status as the single most important platform for consumers. It is now both their key communications medium and increasingly their preferred buying channel.

Rand believes that brands will play a more important role not only in marketing, but in SEO. He noted that Google is already giving more weight to brands in search engine results. This will make it more difficult for relatively unknown sites to gain the attention of consumers above the clamor of the brands.

But he confessed that he's a relative beginner in understanding how to build a brand. He knows that advertising plays a significant role in building brands, but that this is a long and uncertain process compared to creating a presence with SEO.

Rand noted that Google is collecting more information about user behavior from its Chrome browser and Android OS. It's using this information to understand the level of engagement that users have with the information in search results.

Subtle behaviors, such as long clicks and user engagement with a site provide much clearer signals than the information in links. This information is also much more difficult to game than the links that made SEO such a buzzword in the mid-00s.

This trend will also give more power to well-known brands that are building on existing relationships with consumers.

Inbound marketing mistake: Prioritizing conversions vs. top of funnel

Rand noted that the middle of the funnel, where visitors become subscribers is not where Moz places their emphasis. Moz is focused on bringing more visitors to the site through its content, tools, and search rankings.

The typical Moz subscriber will visit the site 7.5 times before signing up for a subscription, says Rand. Moz works to make its site interesting and useful to encourage visits and trial, but takes a relatively hands-off approach to conversions. Still, about half of their trial users convert to paid subscriptions.

This respectful approach to visitors may not work as well for a site that doesn't have Moz's strength in search rankings and engagement with even casual visitors.

Instead, Moz focuses its attention on top-of-funnel metrics, such as audience size, new visits, returning visits, social audience, engagement (e.g. comments), and creative/content targets.

SEO is a process, not a project

Rand says that too many people sign up for Moz expecting to fix or update their SEO and then drop off when they think they're "done".

He feels that once you've addressed the basic SEO needs of your marketing strategy, you will need to continually improve your performance and adapt to changes in competition and Google's algorithm.

No business discipline is evolving faster than digital marketing and those who can't adapt to the new environment are unlikely to survive. But our interview with Rand reminded us that it's not just a numbers game.

Watch our full interview with Rand Fishkin here.


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– a new website for a new approach to healthcare

This week, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (“Innovation Center”) re-launched Along with providing information about the Innovation Center’s mission and values, the website provides ways for the Innovation Center to gather new ideas to improve our health care system. The Innovations website also encourages patients, clinicians, and others to share those ideas and get involved.

About the Innovation Center:
Established under the Affordable Care Act, the Innovation Center’s mission is to help transform the American health care system by delivering better health and better healthcare for Medicare, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) beneficiaries, and to reduce costs through improvement. The Center will accomplish these goals by being a constructive and trustworthy partner in identifying, testing and spreading successful new models of care and payment.

Clinicians, health systems and community leaders throughout the country are developing new models that provide better health and better health care at lower costs. We want to partner with these innovators to help them succeed. Using an open, transparent, and competitive process, the Innovation Center will identify, select, support and evaluate models that show promise.

Share your ideas for testing the next generation of health care models.
We want your input for building the Center, and for identifying ways to deliver and pay for care that save money while improving health and health care for Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries.

What can we do to improve our nation’s health? How can we improve patients’ experience with the health care system? What will make health care more efficient and affordable? What is successful about the health care system in your community? We’ll take the best ideas, turn them into Innovation Center programs, and invite you and others to compete to bring them to fruition.

Join us in developing the Innovation Center and improving our healthcare system. Visit to learn more. We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with you.

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CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

CSRHUB Releases Sustainability Ratings Widget

[fa icon="calendar'] May 26, 2011 12:07:00 PM / by CSRHub Blogging

New Paltz, NY

CSRHUB is proud to announce the launch of its Sustainability Ratings Widget. This tool, currently in beta, will enable users to quickly access environmental, employee, community and governance ratings on about 5,000 publicly-traded companies in 135 industries in 65 countries. The widget will appear on a new sustainability section of The Huffington Post and on Triple Pundit, an innovative sustainability new media site.

“We are excited to release our Sustainability Ratings Widget, and pleased that The Huffington Post and Triple Pundit share this excitement,” said CSRHUB Co-founder and CEO, Bahar Gidwani. “Knowledge is power, and CSRHUB gives the widest access to companies’ CSR and sustainability performance to help people make their social value convictions actionable.”

CSRHUB developed the widget as part of a suite of API tools that allow web publishers and software developers to integrate sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) information into their products. CSRHUB also plans to release a RESTful-API into its 1.9 million item database of sustainability information. You can see an early release of the widget at http://www.csrhub.com/content/sustainability-rating-widget.

CSRHUB announced its new tool at the Strategic News Service (SNS) Future in Review (FiRe) technology conference, where it was named a 2011 FiReStarter company. CSRHUB was showcased by the BBC and on panels throughout the conference. The Economist has called FiRe “The best technology conference in the world.”

“We were selected as a FiReStarter company based on our potential to bring positive change to the world,” said Cynthia Figge, CSRHUB Co-founder and COO. “This validates the significance of CSRHUB’s work providing open access to sustainability information.”

CSRHUB is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) ratings tool and sustainability information hub that enables managers, researchers, consultants, students and activists to track the CSR and sustainability performance of major companies. CSRHUB aggregates data from more 100 sources to provide its users with a comprehensive source of CSR information on about 5,000 publicly traded companies in 65 countries. CSRHUB is a B Corporation. Browse CSRHUB’s ratings at www.csrhub.com.

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[fa icon="comment"] 0 Comments posted in Bahar Gidwani, corporate social responsibility, corporate social responsibility ratings, Cynthia Figge, FiRe 2011, FiReStarter, Future in Review, sustainability ratings, Uncategorized, sustainability, The Huffington Post, technology, Triple Pundit, CSRHub

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new photo shoot!

I had my first newborn photo shoot today!  The little beauty peed on my backdrop in the first 30 seconds!  Right there I knew newborn photography is no joke!  We had to turn off the air conditioner so the baby would be comfortable naked…after 2 hours of sweating and 3 nursing sessions, we came up with some angelic shots of this full haired sweetie!  Click here to see more!

1 Response to “new photo shoot!”

  1. March 24, 2012 at 10:51 pm

    Great post today. I really enjoyed your photos very much. Thanks for sharing.

    Learn the Secrets to Trick Photography and Special Effects

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Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room, October 2012

JOHN LIZARS (1787?-1860). A system of anatomical plates of the human body. Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars, [1840?].

Lizars developed a great reputation as a teacher and was also a bold and forthright surgeon. He made a number of original contributions, was a pioneer in performing ovariotomies in Europe, and he clearly demonstrated the value of abdominal exploration as a diagnostic procedure. However, he was somewhat ahead of his time and received criticism for exploring new surgical techniques, though later many of his techniques became widely accepted. Lizars was an active writer and prepared many papers on hernia, lithotomy, and hemorrhoids. Although it contains no new discoveries, this superb atlas is certainly one of the most elegant works of the nineteenth century. The 101 lithographs were drawn by the author and his brother, William, from the author’s dissections.

Lizar illustration


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Recent Posts

New Brand Spotlight: Dr. Lip Bang’s

Filed Under: Anti-Aging,Personal Care at 7:00 am | By: Mauricio Matusiak, Senior Editor
22 Dr. Lip BangsLucky Vitamin is happy to introduce another cool brand of lip balm products to our customers: Dr. Lip Bang’s.

Doctor Lip Bang’s offers a 100% natural and 100% cool line of lip balm products created with super healthy moisturizing ingredients that will leave your lips soft and highly irresistible. The company uses only the best and healthiest ingredients because Dr. Lip Bang’s believes that what you put in and on your body should be good for you.

Dr. Lip Bang’s products are powerful, genuinely work and are good for your body. This new, cool brand believes that no matter what your shape, size, or hair color is today, you should rock it. Tattoos? Cool. Glasses and braces? Right on. If you want to wear a suit and tie, sports jersey, or festive holiday sweater? Dr. Lip Bang’s just want to say, “Hey, we like your style!”

Dr. Lip Bang’s lip balms are 100% natural and made with essential oils and the result is an excellent moisturizer product that feels electrifying. The company also wants to be a good human and do something good in the world as a portion of all the proceeds from Doctor Lip Bang’s goes to charity. When you buy Doctor Lip Bang’s products, every customer is making the world a better place. Every little bit helps!

You can save even more when you shop Doctor Lip Bang’s products at Just enter the promotional code NOV15NEW15 at checkout to save 15% on all items of this new brand.

More Related Products

Dr. Lip Bang’s – Lip Freak Lip Balm Bubble Trouble – 0.15 oz.
Dr. Lip Bang’s – Lip Freak Lip Balm Atomic Cherry – 0.15 oz.
Dr. Lip Bang’s – Lip Freak Lip Balm Clockwerk Orange – 0.15 oz.
Dr. Lip Bang’s – Lip Freak Lip Balm Berry Sinister – 0.15 oz.

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Story Board: Canadian freelancers turn to the US market to secure higher-paying gigs

This post is part of a series called “E-Lancer Writes,” exploring the working conditions, rights and collective organizing strategies of freelance journalists, interns and other low-wage or temporary digital media workers. Originally published on The Story Board and re-posted here with permission. By Errol Salamon.

When Canadian-based freelancer Katherine O’Brien started working as a web content and blog writer, she hadn’t made a conscious decision to publish with US companies to make a decent living.

Yet for over a year and a half, O’Brien has written mostly for companies south of the Canadian border, specializing in senior care, health and aging. O’Brien said it’s possible to make a decent living in Canada as long as it’s doing corporate work, but she has found it easier to get gigs in the US, given her specialty.

“When I started, I thought I’d be doing a lot of work with Toronto companies, thinking it would be an advantage that I was based in Toronto. I think it still could be an advantage to live in a market like Toronto where there are publications and you could meet or network with people,” O’Brien said in a recent interview. “But I get the majority of my business through email prospecting, not face-to-face networking, so it doesn’t seem to really matter where I live.”

It may not work for everyone, she said, but email prospecting has been her saving grace because she has found significantly more US companies in her field of specialization.

“Plus you get paid so much more in US funds. That’s a real bonus working in the US,” she said. “Some of the places I’ve worked at in Canada set the rates and they weren’t great. I’m doing better financially with what I’m doing now in the US.”

While digital communications have made it easier for Canadian freelancers like O’Brien to find clients outside of the country, writing for Canadian companies also has its advantages, said Aaron Broverman, a Canadian-based freelancer who writes for both US and Canadian publications.

“The community is smaller and everybody knows each other, so chances are good that you’ll be working with that person again, and they usually bring you back, or remember you or hire you for something else,” he said in an interview. “It’s just nice to represent the home team for Canadian publications.”

However, Broverman agrees that US companies generally pay better than Canadian ones.

“US companies seem to value the work a little bit more,” he said. “Whereas with Canadian publications, there’s always the story of ‘I don’t know where we’re going to get the funding.’”

Broverman also said he sometimes gets paid more writing for a US site than he does writing for the Canadian version of that site, such as US and Canada. Like other freelancers interviewed for this post, he speculated that the lower rates are a result of the smaller Canadian magazine market.

“When I write for the American site, I get a dollar a word US, but when I write for the Canadian site, I get only $350 US per article,” he said.

However, like some Canadian publications, not all US companies pay freelancers decently and some pay nothing, said Canadian-based freelancer Leslie Garrett, who also writes mostly for US companies. With 20 years of experience, Garrett targets employers she knows pay well, regardless of the side of the border the publications are on.

“I place a value on my work and those are the publications that I seek out,” she said in an interview. “I think that when writers give their work away, it devalues that work and we all end up being hurt by it.”

O’Brien, Broverman and Garrett are contemporary examples of Canadian freelancers who turn to US publications to make a decent living. But their income-boosting strategy has deep historical roots.

According to University of Toronto professor Nicole Cohen, as far back as the 1800s, Canadian freelancers struggled to earn a living from publishing in Canadian magazines that didn’t guarantee income in the country’s underdeveloped market. In her new book Writers’ Rights: Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age, Cohen says that in 1819, Canadian freelancers turned to the US, where magazines started paying writers for articles that year.

“Many American magazines paid for contributions, so Canadian writers sold their work in the United States while publishing for no pay at home,” writes Cohen.

By 1961, the Royal Commission on Publications, chaired by M. Grattan O’Leary, had recognized that Canadian freelance magazine writers had to look to the US to sell their work because Canada still had a small publishing market.

“As it is now, a professional freelance writer cannot live on the proceeds of writing only for Canadian periodicals,” wrote the O’Leary Commission in its report.

But despite the O’Leary Commission report, Canadian freelancers continued to earn low incomes over subsequent decades, according to a survey conducted by the Professional Writers Association of Canada (PWAC). The survey, which contains the most comprehensive and current data available, reveals that freelance writers in Canada made an average annual salary of $25,000 per year before tax in 1979, $26,500 per year in 1995 and only $24,035 per year in 2005. When these salaries are adjusted for inflation, they actually represent a decrease in income.

For Canadian freelancers who seek work abroad to increase their incomes, there are collective organizations here at home that offer support systems.

According to Don Genova, president of CMG Freelance, a branch of the Canadian Media Guild since 1998, the Guild doesn’t provide special services for its freelance members who do work for US companies.

“But within the services we offer to all of our members, we would definitely take on any queries people have about foreign contractors, including but not limited to reviewing contract language, suggestions on negotiating tactics and communicating with a foreign contractor if there are problems with payment,” Genova said in an email.

Although he hasn’t been asked for help with foreign contracts often, he does recall writing an email on behalf of a freelance broadcaster who was having problems getting paid by a BBC program.

“I sent the email, laying out the details of the work that had been done, and the next day, the freelancer finally heard back from the producer of the program, giving details of the payment about to be sent.”

Like CMG Freelance, PWAC, a not-for-profit writers’ organization since 1976, doesn’t offer a specific program for members who write for US publications.

“However, a key member benefit is the internal networking and peer support system we have in place through our members-only forums and internal listserv,” said Stephanie Lasuik, PWAC national communications committee chair, in an email.

“Members with questions or queries on any aspect of their writing business receive immediate feedback from peers across Canada.”

With 10 years of experience, Broverman has his own frank advice for his freelancer peers across the country:

“Freelancing is hard, and it’s hard to make a living just freelancing, so find American clients and don’t apologize for it,” he said. “You don’t hear about more Canadians doing this on a regular basis. At first it seemed like I cracked some sort of code to get more money, but everybody should try.”

Errol Salamon is a freelance writer and a visiting scholar in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s also co-editor and contributor to the book Journalism in Crisis: Bridging Theory and Practice for Democratic Media Strategies in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2016). Follow him on Twitter @errolouvrier.

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Christmas humour: You know if you’re a real photographer if…

_3100_DSC1844bw copy

Following on from the popularity of the last stereotype post that left no single photographer un-insulted, and in an attempt to bring some comedic relief to what is otherwise a very, very serious site: enjoy today’s post. Laugh if you recognize yourself or your friends. And feel free to suggest any additions in the comments.

And last but not least, Merry Christmas, everybody – I hope Santa brought you something photographic! MT

[Read more…]

Photographer stereotypes – a satire

Advanced warning: you will think this post is either humorous or insulting, depending on which camp you fall into…

Studio/ commercial photographers
Live inside white cubes with huge soft boxes suspended from rails; have one or two assistants to act as fluffers for various products – ‘Yes, oil up that bottle a bit more. Really work it. Niiiiice…’ Cannot function without a tripod and look down on anything less than medium format digital and a full set of Profotos. Almost always shoot tethered, and employ a separate retouching department to make everything look perfect afterwards. Are thought to have the uncanny ability to position things exactly in the same orientation time after time, but really rely on photoshop composites and duct tape to mark cues on the floor. Considers ISO 200 ‘a bit high’. Wistfully remembers the day when technical cameras were de rigeur and 8×10″ sheet film was chargeable to the client.

Wedding photographers
Now with video! Run around the world putting couples-to-be in increasingly odd locations and positions, with completely unrealistic settings and makeup – those are the good ones. The ensuing (retouched) images look nothing like the couple at all; the less they look like the couple, the better the wedding photographer. ‘Wedding photojournalism’ as a genre doesn’t work by definition, because retouching is the antithesis of every photojournalist, and every bride expects to look like a Vogue model even if they have skin like the surface of the moon and ‘freestyle’ teeth. Increasingly employing wide-angle lenses for portraiture, with either the bride a minor footnote in an expansive, dramatic landscape or with enormous manga eyes and tiny feet. Possibly the only paid photography market that’s expanding, with couples often paying thousands of dollars for pre-wedding location shoots where the intention is to pretend-fairytale that they met and fell in love in Paris, when the reality is that the photographer has booked six other couples back-to-back for that trip and will make exactly the same pictures seven times.

Event photographers
Rove in uniformly black-garbed packs; if they’re well-equipped, they’ll have two bodies and huge flashes. If your event organizer ran out of budget after spending too much on the meet and greet ‘talent’, then you’ll see somebody with an entry-level DSLR, kit zoom and pop-up flash continually chimping their screen trying to figure out why their images look horrible. They are probably students who just happened to agree to work for US$50 for the entire evening, and supply their own equipment. Regardless of expertise, will be cajoling random groups of non-associated strangers together for group shots against sponsor walls all night long. Doesn’t like raw files – have you ever tried to deliver a thousand edited raw images the next day? I thought so. The really good event photographers operate like good photojournalists – you don’t see them, but you see intimate moments (both involvingly touching and involving touching) well-captured afterwards.

Fashion photographers – editorial/ advertising
Employ armies of assistants, make up artists, wardrobe coordinators, location managers, stylists, art directors and general minions; all they have to do is hold the camera (and sometimes not even that) and push the button while shouting wildly and acting like a bit of a diva. A generally glamorous lifestyle that involves private jets both as transport, and later on, as props. Sometimes also lions, tigers and other wild beasts. Photographers also known to turn into wild beasts when informed of budget cuts by their clients.

Food photographers
Live pampered lives, eating their way from assignment to assignment, with Michelin-starred chefs on speed dial; that is, providing they haven’t covered their food in oil first and replaced all of the ice cream with mashed potatoes. Or gotten sick from the undercooked (but oh-so-juicy-looking) chicken. Known to obsess over the placement of a fork, or go in surgically with tweezers and surgical forceps to move around a leaf or two to the perfectly right position. Keeps a spritzer handy in their lighting bag just in case something needs to be made fresher, wetter, or shinier.

Fashion photographers – catwalk
Spend their working lives cooped up in a pit at the end of a runway with a hundred other photographers, trying to produce something different (if they’re freelancing) or cookie-cutteringly perfect (if they’re shooting for a magazine or agency). Standard equipment is a monopod and stepladder, or better yet, a monopod built into a stepladder. Must occupy a zen-like mental plane in order to work effectively; shoot like crazy during the fifteen minute shows, then spend the intervals running to the toilet and pressroom to upload the images to the agency server whilst their assistant guards their territory in the pit against possible intruders.

Sport photographers
Consider 8fps slow, and 300mm a short lens. Live for the moment, literally; it’s like being a wildlife photographer except you know the life is going to be wild and happening in front of you in neat 45-minute halves, ostensibly with rules but nothing that prevents a creative or curious photographer from being taken out by a ball, club, boot, bicycle or sometimes high-speed flying tyre. Like catwalk shooters, spend time between action running to the toilet, media center to upload stuff, and having their assistants defend their turf against other agencies – just go the media areas of any race circuit or stadium around the world, and you’ll see bits of tape or crash barriers marked with ‘AP F1 2005’ or similar marking territory. Also known to have very itchy trigger fingers, because moments are rare, worth a fortune if you get the right one, and never presented again for a do-over. Would probably make bad policemen or snipers because of this, despite likely possessing excellent marksmanship due the similar breath-control skills required for good long telephoto work.

A curious hybrid of sports photographer and catwalk fashion photographer with a singularly voyeuristic bent. Any photography of the target is a good one. Ready to shoot a picture at the very hint of a wardrobe malfunction, and pathologically unable to release the shutter or move away until attacked by bodyguards – just in case that image is the one. Also likes to get close – both for more unflattering detail, and to block out competitors. Know all the latest celebrity hangouts by memory, and sometimes try to make friends with the bouncers, but it never works because they’re always below celebrities in the pecking order. But might cultivate inside sources amongst the lowly-paid entourage with a grudge. Uses a moped to get around quickly, outrun celebrity motorcades and arrive at places before they do. Flashes with high voltage fast-cycle battery packs are a must. Disavowed by camera companies as being proper photographers, but secretly loved at the same time because they have the highest turnover for cameras out of any type of photographer – perhaps the camera companies have some bouncers and bodyguards in their employ, whose sole purpose is to ensure that any dropped or broken cameras are total loss incidents. Also known to use long lenses,

Underwater photographers
Use housings more expensive than their cameras; have constant nightmares about grains of sand in o-rings and flooding. Like seeing fish through the viewfinder, but not in the viewfinder. Always the first to buy the widest lenses possible to minimize the amount of water (and floating crap) between them and their subjects. Carry their strobes on arms; known for their sensitivity towards their subjects – most of the time. Those who are not have no qualms about picking up or poking rare endangered species to provoke a photographically favorable reaction. Always think of the camera as an impervious defense shield from attack by anything; won’t dare to swim with sharks and no cage, but would think nothing of poking their housing right up at the nose of an electric eel.

Photojournalists – the serious kind
Have a jumpy, taciturn attitude and a nervous tic that comes from being around one too many live explosives that have actually gone off; will often bear the scars to prove it, too. Tote around a pair of incredibly beaten-up cameras and a wide-angle lens; needs straps that will work comfortably with a flak jacket. Capable of sleeping anywhere, anytime, and surviving for weeks on end with nothing but coffee; no wonder images are almost always motion blurred (never mind the extreme lighting conditions they almost always work under). At the same time, also capable of waking up to the drop of a pin; it can mean the difference between receiving a World Press Photo Award in person or posthumously. Often gets themselves into locations that secret agents would envy. (Why hasn’t anybody made an action movie about the photojournalist who discovers something secret that he has to diffuse/ deactivate/ fix/ expose before the world all goes to hell?) The stuff that legends are made of, however most of the time it’s about luck, timing, and having the balls to raise one’s camera and shoot some pictures instead of crapping one’s pants in fear. Also known to strut like gunslingers or drink like fish (never the former after the latter) after returning to civilization.

Photojournalists – the average newspaper kind
Rove in packs to press conferences or outside courtrooms, aiming standard-issue 24-70s or 70-200s at their subjects from inside the media cordon or outside the police line. Doesn’t have to do much beyond capturing a useable image that allows subjects to be identified; they’re not paid enough or trained to do more than that (at least not in this part of the world). Has never heard of raw or bounce flash. Usually attached to a reporter.

Wildlife photographers
Covered from head to toe in camouflage gear, including their lenses and tripods. If they stood still against a bush, you wouldn’t see them taking a photo of you from three feet away, which of course they’d never do, because everybody knows that near focus limits of a 600mm lens are about two meters, even with extension tubes. Happy to spend days in a swamp being blood donors to an entire family of mosquitoes just to get that one shot of the rare lesser-spotted mangrove warbler, or something similar. Will use monopods and beanbags in a pinch, but much happier with those enormous 3-m tall Gitzo systematics and gimbal heads that look as though they could support a .50-caliber machine gun.

Street photographers
Black-Leica toting, hyperfocal-shooting; sometimes with flashes. Often spring up like flashers with camera at the ready and speed light firing into their startled subject’s face; have mastered the art of disappearing down a dark alleyway fast enough to prevent angry subjects from turning their beloved M9s into expensive paperweights. Alternatively, extremely stealthy like ninjas; shoot from the hip without looking at subject or finder. The smoothness of their shooting technique is counterbalanced by the incredibly chaotic nature of their photographs – just look at any of the modern Japanese work. Always eating ramen because they can’t afford both proper cameras and proper food; street photography is not a commercial occupation.

I include this category as an afterthought because most of them are either not photographers, or if they are, they’re covered by one of the other categories. (I think ISO 200 is a bit high’, so that should give you a hint.) Always carrying the latest equipment, sometimes lots of it as they’ve got many reviews to write; photograph anything and everything, so long as it makes a useable sample shot, or can be executed at ISO 104,000. Tend to classify themselves as street photographers, but this is a bit of a dangerous catch all term for people who just take random photographs when outside their homes. If engaged in conversation, they will wax lyrical about features they’ve never used or don’t understand, but be very shy about showing their photographs to anybody in person – yet be happy to let it all hang out on the internet. Is on first name terms with their referral account manager at B&H or Amazon.

If there’s anybody I haven’t managed to insult yet, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to get around to it. MT

Visit our Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including Photoshop Workflow DVDs and customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | 2012 onwards. All rights reserved

Clients from hell (or, some light partial humor)

I think a lot of working pros will be able to relate to this list, see the satire in it, and then commiserate with me that I was only partially joking…

Without further ado, in no particular order:

– Those who ask for endless retouching revisions, all of which creep increasingly outside scope – masking out figures to place from a location shot to garnish a text page in a brochure

– Those who haggle price with you til the last cent, then pay late (big companies are notorious for this; it’s as though there’s an internal KPI for creditor days – the higher the better)

– Those who haggle price with you til the last cent, and don’t pay at all

– Those who haggle price with you til the last cent, agree, then question every item on the bill again at payment date whilst of course contesting half of them

– Those who after agreeing price and scope, sneak something in under the pretense of ‘oh, can you also help me out with something small?’ (which is of course neither small nor easy)

– Those who pay for a fixed number of shots but ask for all of the raw files or expect at least 50% more final delivery shots, knowing you’ll produce far more than agreed to ensure the scope is completely met

– Those who ask for uncompressed maximum resolution 16bit CMYK TIFF files, then complain they can’t open them because their computers have ‘insufficient system resources’

– Those who don’t actually pay your work more than a cursory glance before finding one shot they didn’t like in the 200 you delivered, then demanding a discount even though they loved everything else

– Those who specifically look for one image they don’t like, so they can complain to you non-stop about it afterwards so they can get a discount

– Those who think their problems with other unrelated contractors are your fault, and either use that as an excuse as to why they can’t pay, or why they expect more from you

– Those who ask for your style, then hand you a book/ magazine/ menu and say ‘copy this’

– Those who approve every single shot on the camera review screen, then complain that you didn’t give them what they asked for afterwards

– Those who don’t supply any of the agreed props or items

– Those who supply you with objects or food to be photographed that are obviously unpresentable – they may be scratched, dented, cracked, partially eaten, or generally used

– Those who complain that your make the food look overcooked, when in fact that was the way it came out of the kitchen – identifiable by the fact that only the roast looks too dark, but every other object on the plate looks fine

– Those who don’t supply any of the agreed equipment/ props/ garnishes/ sauces/ spare parts

– Those who aren’t on time, and worse still, don’t tell you that they’re running late

– Those who want fully processed and retouched images the day after the shoot

– Those who expect you to reschedule all of your other shoots to accommodate them

– Those who leave all decisions to their creative agency, whose vision is substantially different to their own…you can imagine what happens after that

I’ve just realized that this list isn’t that funny after all, I’ve had some clients who qualify for almost every single item…MT

Visit our Teaching Store to up your photographic game – including Photoshop Workflow DVDs and customized Email School of Photography; or go mobile with the Photography Compendium for iPad. You can also get your gear from B&H and Amazon. Prices are the same as normal, however a small portion of your purchase value is referred back to me. Thanks!

Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and join the reader Flickr group!

Images and content copyright Ming Thein | 2012 onwards. All rights reserved


text:
Looking at Scripture Mastery - Revelation 20:12-13

Looking at Scripture Mastery - Revelation 20:12-13

Greek: 12 καὶ εἶδον τοὺς νεκρούς, τοὺς μεγάλους καὶ τοὺς μικρούς, ἑστῶτας ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου, καὶ βιβλία ἠνοίχθησαν· καὶ ἄλλο βιβλίον ἠνοίχθη, ὅ ἐστιν τῆς ζωῆς· καὶ ἐκρίθησαν οἱ νεκροὶ ἐκ τῶν γεγραμμένων ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν. 13 καὶ ἔδωκεν ἡ θάλασσα τοὺς νεκροὺς τοὺς ἐν αὐτῇ, καὶ ὁ θάνατος καὶ ὁ ᾅδης ἔδωκαν τοὺς νεκροὺς τοὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐκρίθησαν ἕκαστος κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτῶν.

My Translation: 12 And I perceived the dead ones, the great ones and the least ones, standing in the presence of the throne seat, and books were opened and another book was opened, which is of life, and the dead ones were judged out of the writings in the books, against their labors. 13 And the sea granted the dead ones in itself, and death and Hades granted the dead ones in them, and they were judged each against their labors.

KJV: 12 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. 13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

My translations are purposefully stretched and should not be viewed as more accurate than the KJV translation unless I say so in the post. I'm trying to show the range lying between the original Greek text and the English.

All Done

The last one. 25 scriptures from the New Testament; I hope it was as much fun for you guys as it was for me. I'll probably take a short break before I go back and look at the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) scriptures (plus, as I do not know Hebrew, I need to find someone willing to do some translations and spend some time talking about the implications of words in the various verses with me).

Anyways, appropriately enough, we're at the end of John's visions. Big battles have been fought between the Dragon and the Lamb, plagues have killed many people, and angels have flown all over the place yelling stuff. It's been a pretty crazy ride.

Now we near the end of the vision. This part is relatively straightforward; well, at least as straightforward as Revelation ever gets.

The Context of the Scripture Mastery Verses

An angel from heaven with a big chain is able to tie up the dragon, said to represent Satan by John, ties him up and tosses him into an abyss (which is then locked and sealed) so that for a thousand years he will not deceive the nations. John then says that after those thousand years he'll be released for a brief period of time.

Then he sees the righteous who have been made judges, including those beheaded for not worshipping the beast. They're raised to life and rule during the thousand years.

After this, John draws heavily upon the imagery of Ezekiel 38 and 39 (where Gog and Magog appear to be code names for specific countries, unlike in the Revelation, where they appear to simply represent the human nations of the earth) to present a final conflict of the world. The wicked are destroyed by fire, and the dragon is thrown into a lake of fire forever.

Then John sees a large white throne with a figure on it, and heaven and earth run away from this person. Then we get the verses in quesiton: the dead are raised and are judged before the throne from "the books" and "another book, the book of life". The ocean gives up her dead, death and the underworld give up their dead, and then death and the underworld are thrown into the lake of fire (the ocean isn't; it would put out the lake I suppose?). Finally everyone whose name isn't in the book of life is also thrown into the lake of fire, ending the chapter.

The rest of the book describes the glory and grandeur of the Kingdom of God, described as a new heaven and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem.

Exciting stuff, I guess, though it's still rather odd to me now to read it all.

Scholars don't really have much to add to these verses except to note that there are multiple books mentioned. Possibly John is describing a book of life and a book of death; everyone's name is written in one of the two books. But it's impossible to tell for sure from the text.

The Mormon Applications - Records and Works

So let's move on instead to the general Mormon approach. There's a number of things we should discuss from this verse.

First, let's look at what Mormons think about those books. Mormons think that the books opened are the records of the Church, recording such things as baptisms, endowments, sealings, and so on. For this reason, Latter-day Saints have tried to keep good records of their rituals and history. Some Mormons even go so far as to say that these records will include our own diaries and journal and stress the importance of such personal record-keeping. In 1842, Joseph Smith wrote in a general letter,

"You will discover in this quotation that the books were opened; and another book was opened, which was the book of life; but the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works; consequently, the books spoken of must be the books which contained the record of their works, and refer to the records which are kept on the earth. And the book which was the book of life is the record which is kept in heaven; the principle agreeing precisely with the doctrine which is commanded you in the revelation contained in the letter which I wrote to you previous to my leaving my place—that in all your recordings it may be recorded in heaven." (D&C 128:7)

Now I personally don't have much to add to this, except to say that I don't think Joseph's logical extension that the books must hold works is sound, since it is specifically stated that those who are NOT found in the book of life are tossed into the fire. The simple presence of a name is enough to save that individual from the fire. So it seems that the presence of the name in the book occurs because of their works, for good presumably.

This leads to the second point, however, which I imagine is far more important for CES teachers: the judgement occurs because of "works". So it's just another repeat of what has come up many times before: salvation through faith or salvation through works? Mormons feel that sola fide Christians do not pay enough attention to verses like Revelation 20:12-13. Of course, the reverse is also true where Mormons do not pay enough attention to verses by individuals like Paul and Pseudo-Paul that indicate the supremacy of faith over obedience to the Jewish Torah.

I Don't Get the Obsession With Proving Works Righteousness

Where do I fall on this issues? I think that Matthew, James, and the author of the Revelation, all Jewish Christians, are very clearly of the opinion that salvation in the kingdom of God and from God's wrath is dependant upon the way that you live, probably including adherence to the Jewish Torah. I also think that Paul's theology is about a new covenant established through Jesus and that the Jewish Torah has been superceded and is unnecessary. I don't try and resolve the conflict because I see no need to. These are very different works written by very different people.

However, now that we're at the end of the series, the fact that the very last scripture mastery and the very first one, along with a number of verses in between, can all be put to use teaching how God's judgement will be about works (and, by it's absence, not by faith) makes me mad. It makes me mad not because those scriptures are being used incorrectly, but because those scriptures are being used as representative of the entire collection of the Christian New Testament. They are not. There is not some underlying agreement between all of the authors. There is no secret to resolving how Paul and James look at things. But to give the false impression that the main message of the Christian New Testament is one of works salvation is not only wrong, but it is dishonest. And that is why the selection of this scripture bothers me so much.

We had only one slot left. We could have spent it on countless other things (in fact, my next post will be my own suggestions for 25 scripture mastery selections that I think would be infinitely better than the current list). Instead, the final selection is about works righteousness. It is yet another opportunity for CES teachers to slam the beliefs of evangelical Christians. I don't care if the Mormons are right about salvation or if the evangelicals are right. Frankly, I like both approaches. The love inherent in the idea of grace salvation inspires me, but my own personal sense of justice falls on a works righteousness scale. My own personal theology pretty much consists of living a good life and if there is a god in the next world then he'll honor that good life or he's a jerk who isn't worth believing in anyways. So I guess I'm a salvation by works guy, technically. But it bothers me that alternative theologies are dismissed through this excessive proof-texting.

Why Do I Think This Is Part of Scripture Mastery?

I think this scripture was chosen for two reasons. First, it might be a good opportunity to encourage students to keep their own records (such as journal- writing) which is a good habit to keep. But secondly, it is probably because they want to get the idea of salvation by works presented one last time before the end of the year. While this scripture, in its context, certainly supports this idea, the context of the entire collection of the Christian New Testament does not, as it is a variegated collection of many different beliefs and approaches to God and to Jesus. Ending on this note, with a silent, and false, assumption of the New Testament's solidarity with itself in support of LDS doctrine, is a disappointing end to a list that held good promise. Perhaps in the future, as CES chooses new scriptures they'll encourage LDS youth to memorize, they might select scriptures that do more than just entrench particular LDS beleifs but instead choose scriptures that can actually be used by students to help them get through that insanely stressful time of high school. You know, something useful.

See other posts in my Scripture Mastery New Testament Series

Tom Doggett

Tom Doggett

I'm a programmer, Ancient Greek reader, feminist, spouse and partner, and a dad.

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Phonics explained

In 2012 the government introduced an annual phonics check for all children in England in year 1, which supports the synthetic phonics method of teaching reading in schools.

You may feel unsure about how to approach helping children learn to read using phonics. In this post we’ll be explaining briefly what phonics is, along with some information on the phonics screening check. We hope you find it helpful!

You’ll find lots more information on phonics at

So what is phonics?

Synthetic phonics is a method used in schools as a way of teaching children how to read.

Children are taught to read letters, or groups of letters, by saying the sound(s) they represent. Children can then start to read words by blending the sounds together from left to right to make a word.

There’s a really useful video on the Oxford Owl website, where phonics expert Ruth Miskin explains what phonics is, along with some top tips on getting started with phonics.

You can listen to the correct way to say the sounds in the Phonics Made Easy section of the Oxford Owl website, as well as how to blend the sounds into words.

The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check

The Year 1 Phonics Screening Check is taken individually by all children in England in Year 1 (children age 5-6) in June. It is a short, light-touch assessment used by teachers to ensure that children are making sufficient progress in their phonics skills and are on track to become fluent readers who can enjoy reading for pleasure and for learning.

The handy Phonics Screening Check FAQ guide on the Oxford Owl website, from phonics advisor Laura Sharp, provides lots of information on the check. The most important thing to remember is that it is a check, not a test, and is designed to identify whether a child needs any additional support so that they don’t fall behind.

Phonics support at home

There is a wealth of free support and advice on phonics on the Phonics Made Easy section of the Oxford Owl website.

We also produce a range of useful resources for parents wishing to support their child’s phonics learning at home, based on how children learn at school.

my phonics kit in action

For some fun phonics practice at home, My Phonics Kit is specially developed for 6 year olds. It contains 3 full-colour phonics workbooks, a CD-ROM with interactive eBooks and activities, reward chart, stickers, and leaflet for parents with information about the phonics screening check and features the much-loved Read with Biff, Chip and Kipper characters.

We’ve had lots of great feedback on the kit from parents; here are just a few from Mama Syder, Read it Daddy, and Mad House Family Reviews

 my phonics kit

Complementing My Phonics Kit are My Phonics Flashcards. Young children learn best when they are having fun, and these playing cards help practise phonics skills by reading words and playing games.

my phonics flashcards

We also publish a unique Oxford Phonics Spelling Dictionary, where words are ordered by initial phonic sound, with subsections to show how the same sounds appear in the middle or at the end of a word. This makes it easy to explain how ‘sun’ and ‘Cinderella’ both start with the ‘s’ sound, and how ‘dance’ has the same ‘s’ sound at the end.

 my phonics dictionary

And don’t forget, you’ll find lots more information on phonics at

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Whether a natural catastrophe strikes an entire community or a fire destroys a single home, the consequences for the survivors can be traumatic, including severe financial losses from uninsured property, the destruction of vital documents and temporary disruptions in the ability to work or conduct essential transactions. Here are some tips from the Consumer Affairs Department of the FDIC.

What about you?
Are your most important possessions insured and are your financial documents protected from ruin? If you had only a few moments to evacuate your home and could not return for several days or even weeks, would you have access to cash, banking services and the personal identification you need to conduct your day-to-day financial life?

Anticipate What Could Go Wrong
Think about the most likely hazards and plan accordingly. Some communities are more likely to be affected by a flood or an earthquake, and preparing for each situation would be different. Your state or local office of emergency management may be especially helpful. Find out if your city or county offers a service that will send you a text message or an e-mail warning at the first sign of an imminent storm or other hazard that might require you to evacuate. Also see what tips and recommendations they may have on preparing for a disaster.

Periodically review all your insurance coverage. Find out what is and is not covered by your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance and car insurance policies.

Keep records of your personal property and the estimated value; check with your insurance agent to make sure you have adequate insurance coverage. Consider taking a video or photos of your property and store in a safe place. This documentation will come in handy if you need to file a claim. For additional guidance on how to create a home inventory, see suggestions from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Take advantage of direct deposit. Having your paycheck or other payments automatically sent to your account will ensure that you can access the funds quickly, without the risk of having a check lost, delayed or stolen.

Consider establishing computer or smart phone access to your banking account. These services can enable you to manage your finances online from anywhere, without writing checks. (Peoples Bank has a mobile device version of the bank’s website. Check it out from your smart phone.)

Build or maintain an emergency savings fund. Because a disaster may affect your ability to earn income, savings can help you through any difficult financial period without requiring a loan or borrowing from retirement savings. Experts say emergency savings should equal at least three to six months of living expenses. Remember, there is no safer place for your funds than in an FDIC-insured institution. Check out the FDIC article on how Banks Are Required to Prepare for Disasters.

Want to read the entire FDIC article and learn more?


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Biking against hunger

By Benjamin Rasmus, a member of the Rotary Club of Seattle-International District, Washington, USA, and program director for Rotary First Harvest

Hunger exists across America.

Roughly 50 million Americans face hunger everyday.Simultaneously, there is incredible food waste — 130 billion pounds of edible food is wasted every year. Often highly nutritious produce is tossed because of cosmetic imperfections or market variations. Many Americans mistakenly believe food insecurity is a problem confined to developing countries. However, hunger is a serious issue facing families from Seattle, Washington, to Washington D.C., and everywhere in-between.

Heather Hoffman and I are biking across America this summer to raise awareness about these contradictory issues (so far we have biked about 500 of 3,750 miles). Along our route, Heather and I will visit Rotary clubs, farmers, food banks and gleaning projects (in which edible, fresh produce missed during harvest or rejected for aesthetic reasons is salvaged — or “gleaned” — to feed the hungry).

I work as the program director at Rotary First Harvest, a non-profit volunteer group supported by Seattle area Rotary clubs. This collaborative effort partners with growers, truckers and local food banks to provide families in need with fresh, unharvested produce that would otherwise go to waste. Since its founding in 1983, Rotary First Harvest has distributed more than 183 million pounds of produce to people in need. Of this produce, an increasingly amount is gleaned and may otherwise have gone to waste if not for the hard work of thousands of dedicated volunteers.

In the Pacific Northwest and beyond, we have seen an increasing amount of interest and support from a broad spectrum of community members and volunteers who want to fight hunger and reduce food waste. During this endeavor, Bike Against Hunger, we will visit organizations and meet individuals who are making a difference in this often overlooked public health issue.

For example, great enthusiasm exists on college campuses, like Campus Kitchen and Food Recovery Network, to take leftover food from college campuses and divert it to hunger relief projects or emergency feeding programs. Rotary First Harvest’s Harvest Against Hunger project hires recent college graduates for placements as AmeriCorps VISTA members in communities across Washington State to start or sustain local produce-recovery projects. The faith-based community works to engage congregations in gleaning projects like Fields of Grace and the Society of Saint Andrews. Featured stops along the route will always have the common theme of hunger relief, fresh and local produce, Rotary International and AmeriCorps.

We plan to complete our 3,750-mile route in about 10 weeks and are averaging about 70-miles per cycling day (with built-in rest days). We departed Seattle on 18 June and stopped for the Pacific Northwest Gleaners Summit in Portland on 21 June. Other major stops along the route include Denver, Colorado, 23-24 July; Omaha, Nebraska, 1 August; Iowa City, Iowa, 6 August; Chicago, 9-13 August; Cleveland, Ohio, 16 August; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 19 August; arriving in Washington D.C. 26 or 27 August.

3 thoughts on “Biking against hunger

  1. Pingback: Today’s Links | Rotary International District 3040

  2. Pingback: Biking against hunger | Warsaw Rotary , Club 3393, District 6540

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Getting Sex Back

In this post, I am going to tell you how I got my sex life back after surgically-induced menopause. I’ll start by saying that if you are a member of my family, you may want to stop reading.  I’m not planning to be too graphic, but I will definitely be writing more about my sex life than anyone who ever eats at a dinner table with us will feel comfortable knowing about.  But other readers – you may want to pay attention. If someone had shown me this post two years ago, I would’ve been so relieved to have it!  I hope you feel the same.

So yeah, my husband and I are having sex again, and it’s really really good.  By “again,” I mean pretty much weekly for the first time since we were married almost six years ago.  By “good,” I mean I can have multiple orgasms, and I’m 100% sure he’s enjoying himself, too. I think about sex now while we’re not having sex, and I look forward to it again after many years of not caring about it at all.

Let me go back before the hysterectomy/BSO just a bit.  Our sex life declined only months after our wedding for a variety of reasons.  We moved, had trouble settling in, my husband was unemployed, we had no money, and we fought a lot. Soon after we resolved all of that, I became pregnant, and I think we were both freaked out by the idea of having sex with our baby “in there,” so there was very little sex after the first trimester. In the third year, I suffered from debilitating postpartum depression and anxiety, and when I recovered, I essentially suffered from PTSD.  It took me nearly a year of therapy to realize that I was terrified of having sex: sex could lead to pregnancy, and pregnancy could lead to the dark abyss of PPD/A, and there was no way I was going back there. Also, I had begun to experience pain during intercourse after my pregnancy (three gynecologists were unable to diagnose it). Even though the pain was only during intercourse, I became turned off to the the idea of sexual activity of any kind. The cocktail of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications I was taking didn’t help my waning libido.

For a while, we just took care of our kid; eventually we moved again, and I think we became kind of used to not having sex.  It was only six months after we moved that I was diagnosed with DCIS, and within a month, I had a bilateral mastectomy with DIEP reconstruction – it was about three months until my body felt normal again and we tried to have sex.  It was clearly nothing worth reporting about; I was ok with my new body, but that same post-pregnancy pain was still there.  Then I had the hysterectomy and BSO.  As if things could get any worse – they just went downhill from there. I lost all of my libido. Before the hyst/BSO, at least I still was still turned on by Don Draper – not Jon Hamm – just Don Draper, but by this time, even the Mad Man himself couldn’t excite me. And when my husband and I did try to have sex, it was a complete disaster.

We clearly had problems with our sex life before the hysterectomy/BSO, but I believe that the steps we took to fix the problems are those that could help anyone suffering from mental blocks, pain during intercourse, and lack of libido — all effects of surgically-induced menopause — regardless of what your sex life was like before the surgery.

So, how did we fix the problems?  Well, I can tell you easily what he did – he was patient and understanding. He didn’t pressure me. At a certain point, on the advice of my therapist, I told him that sex was off the table until I could figure out what was going on with my body and my head. That way I didn’t have to feel guilty that he had an expectation of sex and I wasn’t fulfilling it. He gave me all the time I needed. Years. And here’s what I did with that time.

Internal Hormone Therapy: I started at my gynecologist’s office. I had convinced myself that all of the issues around sex were caused by the hysterectomy/BSO – both mentally and physically.  My gyn suggested two things: vaginal estrogen and a sex therapist. Despite a diagnosis of DCIS, I had already been on an oral estrogen because of my depression and mood swings, but my mother had suggested that I ask for vaginal estrogen to help with dryness (which results in pain with intercourse).  My understanding is that vaginal estrogen can be safe for women who have BRCA mutation or have had breast cancer (those who are usually told not to take oral or transdermal estrogen) because it’s basically local – it doesn’t go into your whole system.  So my doctor prescribed Vagifem.  The Vagifem creates lubrication and it does help with libido (I have no idea how it does that, but I could tell within the first two weeks of using it that I some “special feelings” down there).  But it did not help with the undiagnosed post-pregnancy pain, and it didn’t help with my new fear – the vaginal cuff.  I was terrified that my husband’s penis would rip through this wall; it was a block that I was having difficulty getting over.  Nevertheless – the sex therapist – I rejected this advice. Why?  Well, I have been in therapy pretty consistently for about 20 years, so I suspected this was something I could figure out eventually on my own and with my current therapist.  I also really really really wanted to continue to blame the whole thing on lack of hormones because of the BSO – I didn’t want to admit that we’d had some problems with sex before the surgery.  I wasted over a year going down denial river.  Then….

Myofascial Release and Pelvic Floor Therapy: In January, I began to have spasms in my abdomen that I knew was from the muscle that had been cut during the flap procedure for my mastectomy (two years earlier). I went to see my plastic surgeon, and he prescribed physical therapy.  I sought out a family friend who is a physical therapist, and she introduced me to a progressive treatment she is now doing – myofascial release (yes, the website is credibly cheesy looking).  As she performed MFR on various parts of my body to release pain, and as it began working, I told her about the pain I had during intercourse. She explained that she could also do MFR internally – through my vagina. She also taught me how to do it to myself in between sessions using dilators and other therapy tools.  After about five months of MFR on my entire body and only about two months of pelvic floor therapy, I was able to have intercourse with no pain for the first time in more than five years.  But I still  wasn’t enjoying sex (having orgasms); my libido was still low, I still had a fear of the vaginal cuff (regardless of countless affirmations by medical professionals that the cuff was indeed healed and the chances of it tearing were practically nil), and so I knew I still had mental blocks that I needed to work out.

Mental Health: Although my PTSD is a moot point now (I can’t get pregnant, so there’s no worry there), I was still having problems in my head that weren’t allowing me to enjoy sex, even though I’d received treatment for the physical pain. I won’t get into a lot of the details about all of the particular issues, but this is just to say that therapy did help me, even though it wasn’t specifically a sex therapist I turned to. The way my therapist helped me the most was that he suggested scheduling sex. After not having regular sex for nearly five years, working a more-than full-time job, keeping a household, raising a preschooler, going through a cancer scare and a year of surgeries, the death of my mother-in-law – it’s really easy to make an excuse for why “not tonight, honey.” My therapist suggested that sex on our calendar would help us stop making excuses. It might not seem like the most romantic of solutions, but we had to start somewhere.

Scheduling Sex: We decided to schedule sex on Sunday nights and do our best to keep to the schedule regardless of how tired we are or even if we aren’t in the mood. Sex is a good way to start the week – connected and happy. For the last two months or so, we have more or less kept to the schedule. This has had several positive effects. After going years without regular sex, it’s helped me to see the value of sex as a regular part of our relationship, even if it’s not spontaneous (and now that it’s better, it has become, on occasion, spontaneous, too). It’s helped me to get over my fear of the vaginal cuff tearing. And of course, I think it’s helping both of our moods a lot.  But having sex on the schedule can make it seem like just another task we do every week, like Thursday night garbage and Saturday morning laundry.  So we’ve had to spice it up.

Discussion of my “new” sexual needs: Over the last few years, after two breast surgeries and a hysterectomy/BSO, my body is different both inside and outside.  So it makes sense that the sexual activities I enjoyed before I gave birth four years ago no longer help me achieve orgasm; it took me a while to realize that I have new needs.  I know I was in denial about this – mostly because it meant admitting that I am a menopausal woman, which is something that has been incredibly hard for me to come to terms with as someone who is not yet 40 (at least, not for another year and 8 days); it’s something that makes me angry and sad every day. While this isn’t the case for all  women, for me, being menopausal means that having an orgasm isn’t easy anymore, and that my husband and I both have to work harder for me to enjoy sex. So, importantly, I had to be open with my husband about my new needs. As I sort of expected, he has been very willing to respond to my new needs.  The results – not only can I achieve multiple orgasms now, but I think about sex and look forward to sex.  Sunday is definitely fun day.

I know this is lengthy and detailed, but ever since I had the hyst/BSO, I have looked for advice like this – for someone to tell me how to reclaim my sexual identity after all of my biologically female parts are now gone.  I hope this helps someone else do just that.


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This Week at State: April 21, 2017

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Did you miss key foreign policy developments this week? We’ve got you covered. Each week DipNote will recap the latest U.S. Department of State highlights spanning a wide range of global issues, events, and… more

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Traders Dump Bank Options

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Bank stocks were in focus ahead of the election amid expectations a Mitt Romney administration would attempt to overturn the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law passed in 2010, potentially easing the way for banks to boost revenues squeezed by stricter regulations.

That led to some bullish options trading in the sector Thursday, Friday and Monday. But with a victory by Mr. Obama, traders Wednesday looked to minimize losses from bets on the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLF).

Recently, XLF sank by 2.9% to $15.69, heading for its biggest one-day move in percentage and dollar terms in more than five months. J.P. Morgan Chase fell 4.3% to $40.98, and Bank of America dropped 5.9% to $9.35. Those banks, the two largest lenders in the U.S. by assets, are among the exchange-traded fund’s largest holdings.

Within the first half-hour of trading Wednesday, investors sold about 70,000 weekly $16 “call” options, which convey the right to buy shares of the ETF at that price by the end of the week. That was nearly two-thirds of all such positions put in place over the prior six days.

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Economists React: China’s Mission Impossible?

With China’s legislature meeting in Beijing, officials are setting out their goals for the year and offering a rare degree of press access in a flurry of news briefings.

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Attention so far has focused on the premier’s targets for gross domestic product, jobs and inflation. Markets initially rallied when the GDP growth target was left unchanged at “about 7.5%” for the year. But experts soon began to debate whether that pace is achievable and what the premier really means by that little word “about.”

Economists weigh in (slightly edited for style):

–Premier Li sets himself a mission impossible… The new government promises to speed up reform, manage debt risks, fight pollution, and yet maintain 7.5% economic growth all at the same time. This is going to be nothing if not challenging. Maybe mindful of a potential miss, policymakers seem to give themselves a small degree of flexibility by using new phrases like “a reasonable range for the growth rate” and “the growth target is flexible…” The Chinese government really needs a lot more flexibility this year… It seems to us a mission impossible to achieve each and every task outlined in the premier’s speech without compromising on the growth target. – Wei Yao, Société Générale

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B&F Encyclopedia of Jewish Genealogy
 > Iran
 > Beit Hatfutsot - The Jewish Community in Shiraz

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Resource:The Jewish Community in Shiraz
Please share your experience with this resource in the comments below. In particular, share your tips on how to best use this resource, what you found useful, and your success stories if you were able to use this resource to help you in your genealogical research.

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Daily Archives: November 10, 2008

Lazin’ on a sunny afternoon

… with some Internet tidbits.

  • Realist is back with a new blog.  Check out his first post, on Georgia’s SEC defensive stats.
  • Alcohol, SEC football and firearms – kids, if we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a thousand times, the most inevitable words in a story like this are “alcohol was believed to have been a factor in the killings”.  Sigh.  (h/t EDSBS)
  • You think Les Miles wishes he’d have pulled this redshirt off a week sooner?
  • Texas A&M’s season really stinks. (h/t The Wizard of Odds)
  • Auburn’s players still remember Georgia’s dance moves from last year’s game.

Filed under College Football, Crime and Punishment, SEC Football, Stats Geek!, The Blogosphere

Requiem for a heavyweight

Sometimes stats do tell a convincing story.

… But with Vanderbilt and Kentucky still ahead, the Vols (3-7, 1-5 Southeastern Conference) could still reach a new low. They’re one loss away from piling up the most losses in the program’s more than 100-year history. Before this season, Tennessee had lost seven games only once, in 1977.

Aside from tying Tennessee’s record for losses, this team holds several other distinctions.

It’s the first in program history to lose to a Mountain West opponent. And averaging just 16 points per game, it’s become the least productive since the 1964 squad, which averaged eight a per game.

The Vols have 47 bowl appearances, the second most in NCAA history. But for the second time in four years, they won’t be making a postseason appearance.

Tennessee also hasn’t finished dead last in the SEC since 1954, a season when the Vols went 1-5 in the conference. Unless they can find a way to win in their last two games, that’s exactly where they’ll be.

That’s epic bad.  Nobody in his or her right mind saw anything close to this coming before the season started.

My only question is whether it’s karma.

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Filed under The Glass is Half Fulmer

Talk about the passion.

You know, it’s really getting tiresome hearing Pete Carroll whine about how the BCS done him wrong.  He’s in a conference where his team is clearly the dominant kid on the block year after year, he doesn’t have to face the risk that schools in the Big XII and SEC do in having to win a championship game even if the best teams survive a grueling regular season, and it’s still not enough.  He wants a playoff so that Southern Cal can have a mulligan when it plays its one game a year where it fails to show up against a lesser opponent and loses.

That ought to bring the edge back to the Southern Cal program.  Hell, Pete will probably figure that a two-loss USC is still good enough for an eight team tourney.

And this again brings us back to what’s bad about a college football playoff with more than just a very few teams in it.  I don’t always agree with HeismanPundit, but he’s dead on when he posts this:

–Ya know, I’m getting tired of the endless clamor for a playoff, especially from coaches, pundits and President-elects who have no problem with making college football more like the NFL.  Does anyone really think that going to an 8-team playoff would make everyone happy?  It’s a fantasy.  There would still be teams left out and still be coaches and fans bellyaching about how unfair it was.  And all we would have to show for it would be a regular season that would no longer be the most meaningful in sports.  Furthermore, it would tilt the power in college football away from parity and back to the elite teams, who have the depth and talent to gut their way through an extended season.  That means teams like USC and Oklahoma could lose two games with regularity and still win titles.  Is that what you want?

Not me.

… I think that people who want a playoff don’t really understand college football in the first place.  The sport is all about passion and the arguments that arise from that passion…

Think about that when you watch this clip of the last few seconds of the Penn State-Iowa game.

Does anyone really want to argue that this game would have had as much impact on the fans and the players in the context of an extended playoff?

I like to think that I really could live with a four team playoff – and I could, if that were locked in stone – but isn’t it likely that four won’t be enough to satisfy everyone?  Is it worth giving up the last six seconds of Iowa-Penn State to make Pete Carroll happy every year?

Filed under BCS/Playoffs, The Blogosphere

Defensive about the defense

I understand where Richt is coming from when he has this to say:

“People don’t get it. People think they know, but they don’t. I’d love to say that if people really knew football, they’d know we’d been blitzing, they’d know we’d been playing zone, playing cover one, playing robber, fire zone. If they really knew football, they wouldn’t be saying the things they say, but they don’t.”

He’s right about that.  Besides, his team is in line for another ten-plus win season and a top ten finish.  That’s not exactly chopped liver – most folks who were fans of the program in the mid-90’s would have willingly sacrificed an appendage for those kinds of consistent results.

Buuuuut… it’s hard to deny that some of the frustration is deserved.  Read the player quotes after the UK game.  There are a ton of comments about poor communication and bad execution.  Ten games into the season, should that still be happening?  And given that it is, why is it happening?  And why are the coaches still seemingly trying to figure out why it’s happening?

So, when Richt goes on to say that “…We’ll always go back and look at things we’ve got to do better, whether it’s a coaching decision or player execution. That’s just how we handle it…”, that’s great as far as it goes.  But looking at a problem and doing something effective to correct it aren’t the same things, sad to say.

I think it’s fair to say at this point that this team will go as far in ’08 as the offense can take it.  Whatever is wrong on the defensive side of the ball seems to be so deeply ingrained that it’s very unlikely that it can be stopped and turned around in three games (although there will be some time to prepare for the bowl game).

Which leads me to the one intruiging quote from the teleconference:

“It’s the same basic defensive scheme we’ve had since we got here. It’s not like there’s some kind of philosophical issue. The philosophy of our defense hasn’t changed hardly at all in eight years. But we haven’t been in this spot in the past.”  [Emphasis added.]

What spot is that?  I will say it’s good that Richt thinks he’s at a point where there’s a big enough problem that it needs special consideration from the coaching staff, but I suspect for a lot of people the question in the back of their minds right now is what took you so long?

I also suspect that this is going to make for more of an interesting off season than we may have expected, even if much of it is kept out of the media.

UPDATE: Maybe this is what Richt means by “this spot”.

… Kentucky, Florida and LSU each tallied 38 or more points in the last three weeks.

You have to go back more than a century to find the last time that happened against Georgia. All the way back to 1900 in losses to Clemson, 39-5, North Carolina, 55-0, and Auburn, 44-0.

You can talk about youth.  You can talk about injuries.  You can talk about the schedule.  But you have to figure that over the course of a century, none of those factors are exactly new to this year.  In other words, that’s a pretty shocking stat.  Put it this way:  even Kevin Ramsey never managed that hat trick.

Now loyalty to staff and staff stability are commendable things in a football program.  But Mark Richt isn’t a stupid man.  I have to believe that he knows what happens to a head coach at Georgia whose teams can’t play defense.

Filed under Georgia Football

My Mumme Poll ballot, Week 11

Remember, you slackards, there was no Sunday night game this week, so we’uns are back on the regular schedule and your ballots are due by tonight.

Anyway, here’s mine:

  • Alabama
  • Florida
  • Southern California
  • Texas
  • Texas Tech

  • Georgia
  • Missouri
  • Ohio State
  • Oklahoma
  • Oklahoma State
  • Penn State
  • Utah

  • This may have been the easiest ballot of the season to assemble.  Penn State’s loss to Iowa made the top five selections a relative breeze.
  • I only struggled with number twelve.  I’ll question every week whether enough of Georgia shows up to win, but in the end, the record with that schedule was sufficient to claim the slot.
  • I’ve got no idea what I’ll do if Oklahoma beats Texas Tech.
  • Again, it’s very nice not to have to agonize over parsing which school is #2 and which school is #3.
  • And once again, no ACC (North Carolina’s getting some national respect, but it’s got that loss to Virginia) and no Big East (ugh).  They’re not worthy!

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Filed under Mumme Poll


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Daily Archives: May 6, 2011

Lede of the day

This has absolutely nothing to do with college football – at least I fervently hope it doesn’t – but I can’t let an opener like this pass without mention.

Floridians are going to have to start pulling up their pants and stop having sex with animals soon.

I don’t know about you, but my mental picture of the dude with the goat includes a mullet and a ratty looking Gators shirt.

Filed under Crime and Punishment

‘What else can I say?’

There’s so much assholery in the story of Ryan Mallett’s move from Michigan to Arkansas that you have to categorize it.

First, there’s Lloyd Carr’s.

At the Capital One Bowl, we were trying to smooth things out, and we talked to Coach Carr,Jim Mallett, Ryan’s dad, said. “I asked him, ‘Coach, next to my dad, you’re the classiest person I’ve ever been around. What would you do if Ryan was your son? He said, ‘If I was in that situation, with a different offense, he needs to leave.’

Nothing like stabbing the new guy in the back – before he’s even on the clock as the new head coach.  Not even a “lemme see what I can find out about him first”.

And Carr’s the classy one.

The punchline is that RichRod goes and vindicates Carr’s assholery by being a bigger asshole.

… And when Rodriguez knew Mallett was considering it, he didn’t even ask him to meet, the Malletts said. Instead, it was Ryan who set it up.

Ryan’s the one who called (Rich Rod),” Jim Mallett continued. “He said, “Can I talk about the offense?’ And then he told me, ‘Daddy, (Rodriguez) never looked me in the eye.’ He never visited with the family, he didn’t talk to us. I never met the man. But hey, it wasn’t a fit. Let’s move on.

Way to man up there, Rich.  At this point, if I’m Mallett, I’d be wondering if I could trust any coach.  Enter Bobby Petrino.

Bobby Petrino was the polar opposite of Lloyd Carr, who is the warmest, sweetest man,” Debbie Mallett said. “Petrino was all business. That was a turn-off for me. I was used to Coach Carr. I knew Ryan wanted to be there, but I was opposed to Coach Petrino. So, I said, “Get me Brian Brohm’s parents’ phone number (because he played for Petrino at Louisville). So, I explained who I was and said, ‘If you had to do it over again, would you want your son to play for Bobby Petrino?’ (Brohn’s parent) said, ‘Hell, yeah. If you got soft ears, you’ll hear some ugly words. But we were actually pissed he wasn’t staying Atlanta (so Brohn could play for him).’ I said, ‘What else can I say?’ After the season, I wrote (Petrino) a note and said, ‘If any parent wants my phone number, feel free to give it to them.’

In other words, sure, he’s an asshole, but at least he’s an asshole who can develop a pocket passer.  Competent asshole, ftw!

Filed under College Football

Burn down the plantation.

Tell me this wouldn’t be fun to watch.

And before you say the NFL would never draft a player straight out of high school, you can’t see a team like the Patriots taking a late round flyer on an A.J. Green?  Or Al Davis doing something crazy? I sure could.

More realistically, what about college sophomores who would have proven themselves?  That’s a no-brainer.

Filed under College Football, It's Just Bidness

He tasks me.

Reading this latest set of quotes from Jim Delany,

… Delany has few worries about negotiating bigger paydays in the future because it appears that new money for college sports won’t dry up any time soon.

Besides ABC, CBS and ESPN, more bidders such as Fox and NBC Comcast are hot for the good-quality yet relatively-lower-cost programming that sports provide.

“That’s the competition for college football today,’’ Delany said. “It has grown in popularity over the past 15 years, in particular the regular-season games. They all matter nationally.’’

Having games that matter for four full months through the season is a function of the Bowl Championship Series being in place, said Delany, a longtime proponent of that system.

“The BCS is successful and controversial,’’ he said. “We couldn’t have envisioned it would have this much impact on the regular season.’’

The BCS isn’t the sole reason football TV rights fees are climbing. Delany said increased competition and technology are key factors, too.

“I will tell you, though, that we have a wonderful postseason tournament in basketball, but we have a regular season which is modest,’’ he said. “In college football, we have 13 or 14 weekends that are pretty compelling.’’

… I’m starting to get this whole Wrath of Khan vibe from him and Orrin Hatch.

Filed under BCS/Playoffs, Political Wankery

Hope floats at fullback.

One more quote from Richt about the Figgins move:

… Another thing it does is it allows us to hide some of our intentions as far as how we line up in any given personnel group. Bruce has taken to it well, and I think it is going to expand his playing time.

G-Day was a pretty vanilla experience for stategery, but I saw a little of what Richt refers to there, including one play where Figgins emerged from the backfield with the right side of the defense cleaned out entirely and nobody within ten yards of him (Murray went left on the play and completed a pass to Orson Charles).

Me, I’m thinking wheel route.  Coach, do unto others as others have done unto you.

Filed under Georgia Football, Strategery And Mechanics

That Orrin Hatch is so cute.

Mommy, that man just said a new word:

“My understanding is they are going to go forward and this is the first step. Look, 87% of the BCS money goes to the privileged conferences. That amounts to billions of dollars. Only about 12% goes to the non-privileged conferences. It is very unfair and violative of the anti-trust laws. You saw what happened out of the Fiesta Bowl. Some of these people treat the BCS as their own theifdom where they can rip all the money out of it that they want to and it’s billions of dollars.  [Emphasis added.] I think the Justice Department is totally responsible in going into this and looking at it, and I don’t see how they can’t conclude anything but that this is violative of the antitrust laws. We do need to go to a playoff system that really would work like all the other sports that we have, and frankly, by doing that, it would be more fair and more balanced. The unprivileged conferences would be treated more fairly and in the end I think we would have a better system.”

Nice Fiesta Bowl touch there, Senator.  If playoffs are a cure for self-serving behavior, maybe we ought to put Congress in one.

A couple of things to unpack from that paragraph.  First of all, billions of dollars?  Billions with a “b”?  Either Orrin can’t add, or, more ominously, he’s thinking about this.  My money’s on the latter.

Second – again – it’s all about the money.  Fairness?  Hatch does not think that word means what the fans think it means.  I’m not seeing even lip service given to “settling things on the field”.  Hatch could care less what a playoff looks like, as long as the SEC starts taking financial care of the WAC.

UPDATE:  By the way, contra Hatch, a DOJ conclusion that an antitrust law violation exists isn’t any more dispositive than Mark Shurtleff’s conclusion.  They’re prosecutors who will still need to get the courts to agree with them.  And if you’re looking for a few reasons why that may not be as much of a slam dunk as Hatch suggests, here are some.

Filed under BCS/Playoffs, Political Wankery

Those budget cuts must be a bear.

What, the Department of Justice can’t afford overnight delivery?

I bet Bill Hancock uses Fed Ex to send his important letters.

Filed under BCS/Playoffs, Political Wankery


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Saif and Kareena bring home baby boy Taimur Ali Khan Pataudi

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On December 20, Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan welcomed their baby boy at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. Both mother and baby are healthy and are back home. The happy parents have named their angel Taimur Ali Khan Pataudi.

Saif said in a statement earlier: “To have a child now completes us. There is something about a baby that is kind of half mine and half of hers, so, it’s a nice feeling.”

Saif Ali Khan is said to be taking a paternity leave till January next year which is when he will be working on his next movie Chef. While Kareena said she hopes to be back doing films soon.

From everyone at BollySpice we send all our love for the parents and their beautiful baby boy.

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