Celebrate, Accelerate!

...a short video shown to a group of world leaders at the Secretary General's reception. The film - Celebrate, Accelerate - marks the progress on the Millennium Development Goals to date and encourage further, faster commitment going forward.

...and we're back

So, after that long break from God-knows-what, we're back to the blogging world... not.

Truth is, I suck at forcing myself to commit to something, especially if it doesn't involve beer and pizza. Blogging here was fun for a moment, until it became another one of those things that 'ugh, maybe I should do it'.

In these last six months a number of interesting things happened, and every time I thought that that was something to blog about... a couple of days go by and I'd just forget about it. This pattern (which to be honest was much more comfortable) kind of grew up on me, and I did my part to adapt :-)

But seeing how life keeps on throwing amusing experiences randomly at us, the urge to record it down somewhere surpassed that old good lazyness... so...

maybe...

maybe...

you'll be seeing more of moi around here.


"The good news is that Jesus is coming back. The bad news is that he's really pissed off"
- Bob Hope

A father and a disabled son who participates as a team in marathons...

For all those of you who ever thought about quitting or said those dreadful words. "I can't do it"...

For all those of you who can't bring themselves to believe in the power of pure love...

For all those of you who are still looking for something inspiring...

(Read this story. Almost at the very end there are two video links worth viewing)

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars — all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much — except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 — only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once."

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnrLv6z-mM

Another video: http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=8cf08faca5dd9ea45513

Some additional information:

Interested readers can find a wealth of material about the Hoyts on the Team Hoyt web site (including a historyof the remarkable father-son team). Since the article referenced above was published, the Hoyts are no longer the lone non-individual team to participate in the Boston Marathon. During the 2006 running of that event — the 25th anniversary of the Hoyts' first Boston Marathon — Dick and Rick were joined by Mark and Amanda Collis, a father-daughter team from Canada.

As the Hoyts told the Boston Herald after that race, similar forms of participation with the disabled (at all levels) seem to be on the increase:

"I do all of the office work, and we get e-mails every day from people like this," said Kathy Boyer, Dick's girlfriend. "It's not just parents pushing their kids. It's someone pushing a friend who has Parkinson's disease, or another situation. Not many are doing it on this level, of course. This takes years and years of preparation."

"I think there's a lot of families getting into it like this now," said Dick. "I'm not just talking about the intensity of marathon running. I've heard from people who just want to even get into this as far as taking their children out for a walk goes. I think all different kinds of people look at this as a great opportunity. We're trying to prove to people with disabilities that they belong out there."

Music using ONLY sounds from Windows XP and 98!

So *this* is why old billy gave as an OS full of errors... he was just waiting for some guy like this one here to come along... :-)

~ Enjoy ~

awareness test

Listen carefully to what you're asked!

Housewifeology...

Well, as some of you may know, may work is more or less similar to that of a housewife... this results in me browsing the net looking for tips and tricks that may facilitate my work.

Such searches often result in stupid links and information... but, by sheer luck, a recent stumble gave me exactly what I was looking for. And here I am sharing this information with you nice folks.

(for those of you wandering, yes, this list was so helpful as it was that I just copied it...)

Practicalities

1. Household Notebook - A step-by-step guide to putting together a housewife's personal planner.

2. organizedhome.com - This site features regular organisational projects for the home.

3. Sort It: Residential Organising - Taking you through each room in the house and organising everything. Then hit the car, get prepared for an emergency and get your recycling up to scratch.

4. FlyLady - The grande dame of getting organised. Full instructions on how to declutter, get into regular cleaning routines and you can sign up to get emails throughout the day reminding you of what you should be doing.

5. LifeOrganizers.com - Organise every aspect of your household, from the electronics to the home improvements. Lots of how-to articles.

6. How to Get Rid of Things - The DIY guide that shows you how to remove things from your life that you don't want. Clutter and mildew don't stand a chance.

Inspiration

7. The New Homemaker - Articles, recipes, blogs and more. By homemakers, for homemakers.

8. MarthaStewart.com - From America's favourite housewife, cooking tips, recipes, home decorating, crafts and plenty of other how-to articles on how to be the perfect housewife. Anthea Turner eat your heart out!

Frugality

9. Living on a Dime - From making your own laundry detergent to how to use up leftovers. Hundreds of money saving ideas.

Domestic science

10. Housewifeology - A study of housewives in their environments.

[why did I copy this instead of just pasting a link? well... most of you won't visit any random link... and besides, it's more handy for me just like this ;-) ]

Enjoy, and hope that this is at least a tiny bit helpful to someone out there.

Popstar (Nickleback - Rockstar spoof...)

...I wanna be a popstar already! :-P

Life - as defined on the "Urban Dictionary"

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death! What's that... a bonus?!? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you go live in an old age home. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, then, when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You drink alcohol, you party, and you get ready for High School. You go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little boy (girl), you go back, you spend your last 9 months floating with luxuries like central heating, spa, room service on tap, then you finish off as an orgasm!

The Devil went down to Georgia

...and then they people to stop fiddling around! Heh... I wish these guys were easily found as car accidents, overdoses or murders... anyway, enjoy the vid!

Ahmed The Terrorist

haven't laughed like this for a long time...

Enjoy ;-)