hope all is well on your end. how’s the missus? job? avocations? i just got (temporarily) transferred (for the second time) into Land tenuring. so i almost put my rem degree to use. i get to contractually rent out BC crown land to business/people. not as thrilling as it sounds, but its fun and interesting.

take care!

dw

all well in the winter wonderland, still some fresh snow coming here now and then! how are things at your end?
m.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-poison-tree/

and, for a horrid non-sequitir, i was also able to recite the first 20 lines of the Prologue of the |Canterbury Tales in the original middle (old?) english. i can now only manage the first 10 lines…

hope all is well!

mr. witt

to wit (pun intended): congratulations on your nuptials! bloody hell, you got married – and i got an email waaaay back in May! which i never responded to – how did this happen??? obviously, despite my horrid tendencies to not communicate, my best wishes to you and your not-so-new-anymore bride!

NOT by way of excuses, but the reality is that i have evolved beyond (ok, given up on) email, except for work. it is thunderbird’s fault, actually. i got a new laptop i guess about 2 years ago, and decided to finally move beyond Eudora (god i miss you, Eudora!). and i loved firefox (well, i loved firefox 3 – the latest updates are buggy and freeze-prone. not to mention memory pigs! but i digress.) … loved firefox, so i decided to try thunderbird. well, it SUCKS. mainly in the issue it has with dealing with the server – in eudora it was very easy to set prefs to leave messages on the server for X days. thunderbird constantly deleted server-saved messages, such that tish and i were deleting each others messages. this is not what happened to your wedding announcement (which riddles me with guilt to realize i did not respond to – guilt which, very sadly, leads me to delay and delay and delay in response yet further). anyways, i uninstalled thunderbird and gave up on email. tish is in charge of email, and checks it regularly. she forwards my emails to my work address (see previous post). so if you want to be sure of getting me, use darren.witt@gov.bc.ca. (shd DID, by the way, forward your email to my work. but the danger of work is that once emails leave the first screen, i rarely see them. sigh.)

long winded way of saying that I SUCK. many apologies, Poudyal-ji. you deserve better.

i am going to have to figure out something, though. this is the era of communication, and i am being left behind. our website? dead. email? abandoned. facebook. never tried it, don’t want to.

twitter? maybe i can follow you on that. have to check into it. hopefully its not as onerous as facebook seemed to me. can i follow you without going through the rigamarole of setting up an account?

now, if you decide to set up an account on BGG (board game geek – i am totally one!), then you may bump into me once-in-a-while.

i too miss our REM potlucks greatly – thought of them recently when i got that REM survey (did you get it?) asking about socializing/networking events. sadly, being in Smithers is somewhat distancing from reality. i miss the REM group in general, and some of them (you included!) in particular (ok, Julie as well – lord, i miss that voice!). i don’t hear from anyone any more – actually, i keep in contact with you most of all, if you can believe it! one of my fondest memories of grad school is that evening when you taught me “Mahesh’s beans” with …. oh, no, forgot her name… MEG. Meg watching Buffy on the telly. that was a great evening in the kitchen with Mahesh.

so, i have rambled enough. my family is now home (all doing well, though Laurel at 4.5 yrs is quite “spirited”; ben is a budding paleontologist fascinated by the Burgess Shale fossils), and i have to go track down my mother by phone – apparently she has been incommunicado for a few days and people are starting to worry! not me, though – she doesn’t like people that much, and “goes to ground” a couple times a year when she is sick of people!

so very sorry about the ignoring-the-wedding invite incident. it did not reflect a lack of interest or caring for my long-distance friend Mahesh. just an inherent lameness of character on my part!

take care Mahesh and family, and rest assured that your iprocrastinate feed is at the top of my reader!

Darren

Mahesh’s Ginger and Garlic Beans!
1. 3 cans of beans (kidney) – wash in cold h2o
2. preheat a pan. mince a head of garlic and about half as much ginger. add enough oil to just cover the mash. fry the mash until it si just turning brown at edges only.
3. add ¼ teaspoon of turmeric and 2/3 to 1 teaspoon of cumin.
4. add the beans, mix. add salt. lower heat and cook for about 6 minutes, covered. stir occasionally.
5. boil some water
6. after 6 mins, add enough water to almost cover beans. increase heat to medium. cover and cook down.
7. beans are done when nice and pastey. probably necessary to add water one more time and cook down again.
8. yum!