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With the computer goblins getting my week off to really bad start, I was genuinely hard pressed to come up with five positive things to write about for this week's post. But once I remembered about the first one, it provided just enough inspiration that the others kind of fell into place. That's the power of music and a good story.


1. The power of music and story. My best friend sent me an email with a link to an Il Divo video. Thinking that I'd like to use it for a future Music Monday post, I tabbed over to You Tube and began to search for it there. "Amazing Grace" is such a popular song that finding versions of it by singers from Willie Nelson to Elvis Presley was quite easy to do. But one video in particular caught my attention for a few reasons: (1) I did not recognize the name of the artist, (2) the performance was at Carnegie Hall, so I knew he was not a nobody despite my ignorance, and (3) the video is three times as long as all the others for the same song. Curiosity piqued, I had to check it out. I am soooooooo glad that I did! Not only does Wintley Phipps have an astonishingly powerful voice, but he has the uncanny talent to tell a story in such a powerful way as to captivate an audience with the magic of his words. My only complaint about the video is that he doesn't sing as much as he tells the story behind the song. I do hope you'll take a moment to be spellbound like me!





2. Feline friends. When everything else in the world seems to be going wrong, I can always count on my cats to lift my spirits. They don't have to "do" anything, really -- they just need to "be." Like Maggie stealing my napping spot on the couch for her own nap.


3. Simple meals shared with special people. It's always a pleasure to have the kids over to just hang out with the old folks. On Sunday, we had a girls' day at my house with me, Basma, and Iman. The Amazing Egyptian Dude had things to do at the business and the Awesome Egyptian Dude was meeting up with a friend he hadn't seen in eight years, so we girls just hung around the house, watching movies and playing dominoes. When Magdy came back in the evening, he brought dinner with him -- the most amazingly huge pizza that I have ever seen in my entire life! When he put the box on the dining table, it quickly swallowed up half of it.


In addition the ginormous pizza, he brought a smaller one. Just to give you some perspective on the size here, the smaller pizza, which is a LARGE according to the pizza shop, a Pizza Hut large pan pizza is only half its size! The kids took home half the leftovers and we kept half. We ate pizza for lunch the next day at the office.

4. Tolerable weather. The temperature hasn't climbed much higher than 85 or 86 degrees all week here in the OC, and for that I am genuinely grateful. It has meant that while the power company won't love me, the Amazing Egyptian Dude and our bank account will because the need to use the a/c has significantly diminished.

5. Computer humor. Because even in the middle of a meltdown, crash, crisis, whatever you want to call it, laughter is the best medicine.


A Spanish Teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.

House for instance, is feminine: la casa.
Pencil however, is masculine: el lapiz.

A student asked, "What gender is computer?"

Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups, male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether computer should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.

The men's group decided that computer should definitely be of the feminine gender (la computadora), because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;

2 The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.


The women's group, however, concluded that computer should be Masculine (el computador), because:

1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;

2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;

3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.


The women won.


Happy Friday, everyone! And don't forget tomorrow's Small World Saturday theme is SCHOOL.