OCTONETR 10
Dan sweats a lot and that's his hat after kind of a long day, after it dried.
The local hills are steep and rolling, and here's Dan zooming down one and trying to maintain speed to get up the next, and then not doing it. Most of the riding is more mellow than this, but there's a lot of this, too.
He's not time-trialing, he's just trying to keep his momemtum from the downhill into the climb. He doesn't always look like this.
He went as far as he could, then stopped where it was really steep, and fell over.
He gets pooped on top of the hills. We all do, but Dan doesn't hide it. I've seen him flat-out on his back, resting. A good role model for me!
Dan's oldest daughter, 15, plays varsity waterpolo. this isn't her, but Dan takes a lot of waterpolo pictures (digital, alas, but these would be impossible with film), and here's one he sent to the other day. I don't know who it is. I know one of the teams. The water and drops and swoosh and all that look pretty good, though, don't they?
Especially after all my grainy black and whites. The shadow of the drop of water under her left eye is pretty neat. The center of it was thin, letting a lot of light through and casting barely a shadow in the middle of the shadow from the thicker outer part of the drop. See how that could be? I could have it all wrong. If you KNOW a better explanation, tell me, OK?
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I was doing some research for a thing and came upon this:
http://www.thebikecomesfirst.com/ugandan-women-race-with-pots-on-their-heads-to-highlight-their-struggles-video/
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Since the commies stopped running Mongolia in the early '90s, capitalism has of course taken over and led to too many goats and not enough grass and a degraded environment. Speaking of hats, as I was at the beginning, here's a slightly only slightly actually to me not only slightly disturbing picture that, oh well, it's everywhere. There are bigger things to worry about, to even care about, that I know. This is just one of those, "But still...." things:
I'm talking about the Nike logo. Small thing, powerful thing. Kudos on the Kaepernick thing, and the hat above didn't come from high up at Nike. It was a freebie from a tourist, but still. Is this "judgmental"? OK, sure. But STILL. I know it's wrong to be bummed, but I can't help it. Bigger fish to fry, onto more things.
What I LIKE here is the Muk-Ider and Khuren, and that they were both named.
Well, here's the story. You might as well read it:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/mongolian-herders-fighting-save-life-steppes-181010074904898.html
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There was a Bob Dylan lyric that applies a lot to everything:
Seems like every time you turn around there's another hard luck story that you're gonna hear.
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Here's some happie news for friends of the healthy, sudsy scrub-a-dub:
You should all know that Laurence Olivier was born, presumably, although you never can tell with actors, Laurence. No doubt he was "Larry" in his youth, if he was actually born Laurence. Then he was Laurence again, and when he got to be an English institution he became a "Sir," like Elton John and Paul McCartney still are. But then, later on, the queen or somebody said he was "Lord," which is a notch above "Sir." Then just now, we're taking it up a notch still yet by naming a soap after him. I've wanted a pungent licorice (note American spelling here, English on the label) for a while, and Portand soapmaker Megan made this kind of to spec. I wanted some charcoal in it, too, because isn't that supposed to suck out all the toxins that cause body odor? She puts it in her other soaps, so I said sure please put in this, too. The "liquorice" is anise oil--a longtime licorice substitute because licorice is just a dry root and you can't squeeze oil out it, whereas anise is a juice plant that yields the oil. So, the name is kind of a lie, but we're coming clean right here.
The ingredients:
It's a 5oz bar. In the world of bar soaps, that's huge.
Since this is our first batch and we have just 16 of them to sell, we're not thumping it on the regular site. Only loyal BLAHG readers will know of it.
$Eight per bar, one per person until they're sold out >BUY IT HERE<. Then we'll get more by mid-NOVENETR.