I can’t believe I only discovered this today! That’s what comes from being offline and out of touch for so long, but Justin has a cool blog going on over over here. Miss you man, and liking the site.

My soul is firmly decked out in Kevlar and it’s once more into the fray… or not, since we’re pretty much entrenched here with our kids covered in pox of the chicken variety. We’ve celebrated our first “childhood disease” with our children, though perhaps celebrated is the wrong word, but it is briefer and does sound more fun than saying “marked it in our diaries”. We’ll all get there together, someday, but in the meantime it’s all about the endless movie watching and Popsicle treats to keep our kids happy and in good moods.

When you’re stranded on the distant peninsula that marks the end of nowhere and find yourself unable to move either forwards or backwards, the really crap thing to have happen is to lose your Internet. That’s the long-winded version of explaining why I haven’t blogged for a couple weeks, though the kids sickness contributed a little. We finally got a replacement DSL modem a few days ago and are back  in business, oh yeah!

And, coming up: some of Linda’s recent artwork, since that is one of the purposes of this here blog–to showcase her awesomeness in such mediums.

A few random links and thoughts, so I can close some of these tabs in my browser and get back to doing something, I don’t know, useful?

- Kottke linked to this article about management and commented on it himself. Both are good reads and from personal experience I can say it’s all right on the money (commenting as a lowly private with the luxury of standing outside looking in). It reminded me of this piece I read last year that I found hilarious and so utterly true. It’s all applicable to our lives since each home is like it’s own little branch of the business we’re in. Effective management/leadership is all-important.

- “Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg.” Haruki Murakami is possibly one of my favorite writers of fiction. Wise, funny and sad, his books have been worth the read and the reread in some cases. I can’t really narrow down a favorite, though Dance, Dance, Dance, The Windup Bird Chronicles, Kafka on the Shore, and Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World all vie for first place. I’ll side with the egg in every case too.

- I’m jealous that Jules came up with the Interview of the Month feature on her blog, and now doubly so now that she got Grant who I respect and admire greatly to give an interview. All of Grant’s blogs are worth a daily visit as well.

- I’m listening to way to much Fleet Foxes right now. I can’t even explain why, but I just keep putting them on the loudspeaker. Watching them on SNL probably had something to do with it since they pretty much blew me away. Try Blue Ridge Mountains and see what you think. “Baroque harmonic pop jams” indeed.

- Crazy days here in Chihuahua State, what with protestors blocking all of the main border crossings into Texas. We’re only three hours away from Juarez and have gone up to El Paso every weekend this month for fundraising. Thank God for the small border crossings that go around Juarez. If I never go through that God-forsaken city again it will be too soon.

Right, back to work.

Extreme praise is coming home from a mediocre weekend road trip to find that one of the kids in your home has chickenpox. Then you find that a windstorm took out the power while you were gone and then surged and fried your nice new desktop. Then you find that the internet won’t be back on for a couple of days at the earliest. Yeah, it was one of those kind of weeks.

Well back online now and blogging on Ol’ Faithful, the laptop we’ve had since Canada. The good news is that we got to have some visitors over from Monterrey, and they arrived right in time for Linda’s birthday on Monday. We took a chance on an Italian restaurant that we’d recently discovered, and lo and behold, it was actually very nice as well as reasonably priced. So those were good things.

If you look in the gallery thumbnails to the left you’ll see a few pics from a recent trip to the Nombre de Dios Caves here in Chihuahua city. They were pretty impressive. How is your week going?

And… I’m spent. No really, I tried to find more maple syrup in this city but there isn’t any to be found. I did five days then tapered off on the sixth day with the orange juice and broth as instructed (and several liters of wonderfully fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice, delivered by my fabulous honey) and now I’m back to eating real food again.

I won’t lie to you, it was really a thing for me to give up solid and flavorful sustenance for five days. We’re in a tiny house right now with not a whole lot going on, and you begin to realize how mealtime breaks up the monotony just a little bit three times a day. Still, it was nice to feel cleansed and wholesome, and now that it’s finished I’m moving into a more healthful diet and paying more attention to those things.

Now excuse me, I need to get back to being majorly depressed because my family is currently reuniting in Australia without me. If you have a few spare grand lying around that you don’t have a use for, pass it on and I’ll be eternally grateful.

There wasn’t a whole lot to blog about on day 2, so I’m combining the two days into one post of thoughts.

• If at all possible, and if I ever take this program again, I will do it in the summer. Drinking lemonade all day when it’s hot would be a joy. During the cold winter months when you yearn for hearty soups, stews, bread and butter and actually need the fuel to keep your body warm, it’s much more difficult. Live and learn.

• The second day was probably the worst in terms of hunger pangs and aches and pains. It didn’t help that I went food shopping and walked around the entire Walmart several times to get all of it taken care of. Fortunately Linda was there to keep me strong, and the good news is that I found a nice Pinot Noir in the wine section (I’ve never seen Pinot in Mexico). Since Pinot Noir is my favorite of all wines, I bought it and stowed it for when I complete the program.

• Speaking of completing the program, I’ve already run into a snag. Linda bought me a bottle of maple syrup on her last trip to the US, and it’s already half empty. It’s a small 250ml bottle and it looked like plenty when starting out. Now I see that two tablespoons per cup of lemonade goes through it pretty fast, and I’m not sure what to do. My best option is to turn it into a 7-day program, and then two days of the gradual introduction of orange juice and broth into my diet before starting on solids again. That’s still 9 days and I’ll probably turn out just fine.

• I’ve had to up my intake of lax tea, though I’m not going into the details about that, no siree.

Other thoughts include the fact that I feel fairly energetic and have been able to go about my days with a minimum of fatigue, though I have had to keep a check on my interactions with others. Linda already knows that when I skip a meal or two I get hungry I turn into an insufferable grump, and now that I’m doing it on purpose I have to add to my daily mediation and Word time to keep the balance tipped in the right direction. I’m happy to say it’s working out just fine, honest!

Once more into the breach, dear friends.

A few thoughts after the first day of the Cleanse:

• Not eating makes you really, really  hungry (Captain Obvious, that’s me)
• Sweet and spicy lemonade is surpisingly tasty. I guess already liking things like tamarindo and chili mangoes gave me an edge there.
• Drinking luke-warm saltwater is disgusting

As fate would have it, I had to go to the supermarket not once, but twice on my first day of fasting. Walking past the deli with its beautiful, beautiful rotisserie chickens all laid out just for me, the pizza slices, the bakery section, ramen noodles… OK, now I’m hungry again. No, I resisted and was very proud of myself for doing so. Finding I had to go back to the store a second time later in the afternoon was a genuine d’oh moment, but I got in and out as quickly as possible.

I started to feel the effects of the cleanse by the evening, with back and muscle pain and bad breathe etc. It’s not pretty, but the goal is to get rid of the toxins, and those first few days of achiness is when you’re doing just that, hotbed of toxicity notwithstanding. Another side-effect is that I tossed and turned most of last night, wide awake and alert. This is because normally at the end of the day I’d unwind with a beer or two, and it’s obvious that my body has come to depend on that to help me sleep. To remedy that I’m taking up walking again, since our neighborhood is a surprisingly friendly and quiet place to walk (you see the neighborhood kids walking home every day from school, and house-wives taking their daily power walk all through our streets.)

The day’s final moment of zen was when the couple we’re living with came into our room late last night to announce “Hey! We’re going out to get Icecream and beer. Want some?” They were appropriately mortified when I reminded them that I was fasting for 10 days. They’re good chaps though and I don’t think they’ll do that again (I hope).

Pleased as punch with myself and my first day. The next challenge comes up this afternoon, when I go out to do the weekly food shopping for the home. I’m taking Linda along for support.

Web 2.0 may no longer be the new paradigm but rather the norm, but that doesn’t mean it’s not new to me. Here’s a side-by-side of the Hobbyns logo, which I actually updated last September when I still entertained illusions that I would have Hobbyns.info back up by Christmas. Life always gets in the way of such illusions.

I’m still going to put the logo on a t-shirt someday, if it’s the last thing I do. Thoughts?

After doing some research and talking with some people who have taken the Master Cleanse (also sometimes referred to as the Lemonade Diet) I’ve decided to give it try. I’m not getting any older, and with my love of rich foods and generous amounts of grog, I have come to be what Linda called “a hotbed of toxicity” this evening. Thank goodness for thick skin.

I’ve got my cayenne and maple syrup, limes and sea salt, and I’ll be blogging the experience–riveting, I know. Stay tuned for more sparkling details, but here’s a little taster:

Day 1: Drank the lemonade. Tastes awful

Day 2: Drank some more lemonade, taste hasn’t improved

Day 3: Hungry, so drank some more lemonade

Day 4: Got sick of lemonade and ate a whole turducken

Oops, I already gave away the ending. Think of me while you’re dining on the fat of the land. Daily reports to follow.

After messing with Tumblr some more, I realized that I might as well get this blog going instead. After all I paid for it and have tinkered with it for months. Now to update my blogroll and work on the design a bit.