today i love

[slum_goddess]

if things go right (and they never do) tomorrow afternoon my place will be graced by the presence of Rock Freebase.

that is all.

[DudeAsInCool]

when is A3's new album coming out, and do you have any cuts posted at rimone.org???

[slum_goddess]

supposed to come out in may. i've got the entire album behind a pw/protected partition of my mp3s, all apart from the KKK thing which i'm on. i'd love to spread the love around but i just can't.

[method77]

I love the spanish girls that just walked in the shop

[slum_goddess]

things went right. i am graced by Rock's presence at this very moment. i think i'll wash his feet w/my hair or whatever, lol. (kidding!)

[slum_goddess]

today i love everyone and everything. i'm savouring the feeling cause i know it won't last (he left late last night and then came the barrage of txts and phonecalls).

i'm still a happy kitty, for the nonce. (and nothing seriously 'happened'). :)

[KiwiCoromandel]

i love new zealand railways... :happy:

[Warflower]

That I mailed my taxes today and getting BACK this year...big. It's such a great feeling. We're going to take a cruise with 30 other people from our neighborhood in August and I'm thinking of bringing the kids too :happy:

Last time we went on a cruise...our bar tab was 650.00 for FOUR DAYS...o boy. :mellow: I figure I'll SAVE us money if we bring the kiddies...loll

[DudeAsInCool]

..that I'm going to Indian Wells, Ca to watch some world-class tennis :)

http://www.iwtg.net/

http://www.pacificlifeopen.com/1/home/

[DudeAsInCool]

..that I'm going to Indian Wells, Ca to watch some world-class tennis :)

http://www.iwtg.net/

http://www.pacificlifeopen.com/1/home/

Had fun at the match. Saw Roddick beat Richard Gasquet from France. I was for Gasquet, who certainly looks like he has the best backhand in tennis. But Roddick's serve was on tonight--one clocked at 146 mph

[Warflower]

Had fun at the match. Saw Roddick beat Richard Gasquet from France. I was for Gasquet, who certainly looks like he has the best backhand in tennis. But Roddick's serve was on tonight--one clocked at 146 mph

146?!! Are you kidding??!!! Is that really possible?

[Warflower]

That they just passed legislation that if someone hits anyone older than 70 years old it's automatically a felony.

[DudeAsInCool]

nope

Here is a video of a 19 year old Gasquet beating Federer

[Warflower]

nice - I played tennis in college...I think I was pretty darn good too...I loved it. That and racquetball.

Edited March 16, 2007 by Warflower

[Warflower]

Today I LOVE LOVE LOVE that my son Conor did great on his report card. He received a Mathematics award (only 2 given out in the grade) in school and he's on Honor Roll. I'm so proud of him.

Here he is with his cuz...lol

[DudeAsInCool]

[method77]

I second that

[slum_goddess]

congratulations Conor! (so cute!)

today i love that i'm not bummed out anymore...well, about as bummed as usual (that's my 'normal', lol). but damn, it feels good to be all happy sappy crappy again. :)

[Warflower]

congratulations Conor! (so cute!)

Thank you SG!

From the NY Times: (By the way, out family bought a cow...lol)

You, Too, Can Be a Banker to the Poor

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

KABUL, Afghanistan

For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.

That’s what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through www.kiva.org, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.

So on my arrival here in Afghanistan, I visited my new business partners to see how they were doing.

On a muddy street in Kabul, Abdul Satar, a bushy-bearded man of 64, was sitting in the window of his bakery selling loaves for 12 cents each. He was astonished when I introduced myself as his banker, but he allowed me to analyze his business plan by sampling his bread: It was delicious.

Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and “Emily’s family” in Santa Barbara, Calif.

With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. “If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,” he said.

Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn’t know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.

The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.

“Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,” Ms. Sadat said. “You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it’s good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.”

Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.

In poor countries, commercial money lenders routinely charge interest rates of several hundred percent per year. Thus people tend to borrow for health emergencies rather than to finance a new business. And partly because poor people tend to have no access to banks, they also often can’t save money securely.

Microfinance institutions typically focusing on lending to women, to give them more status and more opportunities. Ms. Sadat’s group does lend mostly to women, but it’s been difficult to connect some female borrowers with donors on Kiva — because many Afghans would be horrified at the thought of taking a woman’s photograph, let alone posting on the Internet.

My other partner in Kabul is Abdul Saboor, who runs a small TV repair business. He used the loan to open a second shop, employing two people, and to increase his inventory of spare parts. “I used to have to go to the market every day to buy parts,” he said, adding that it was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. “Now I go once every two weeks.”

Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is www.globalgiving.com, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.

A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.

“I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn’t business or where it wasn’t efficient,” Mr. Flannery said. He added: “This doesn’t have to be charity. You can partner with someone who’s halfway around the world.”

[Potato]

Congrats to the little Conor dude! :)

Today I love chicken broth. mmmmmmm.........................

[slum_goddess]

today i love that early this morning, Chris bopped in off the last coach from London at 2AM. i'm going through some shit over here and the minute he heard, he came over.

and he brought refreshments! hahahaha

[Warflower]

today i love that early this morning, Chris bopped in off the last coach from London at 2AM. i'm going through some shit over here and the minute he heard, he came over.

and he brought refreshments! hahahaha

What kinda shit? You need Lou's number?

Glad you have Chris.

[Warflower]

That I'm caught up on all my bills. That I finally got a cell phone

[slum_goddess]

What kinda shit? You need Lou's number?

Glad you have Chris.

me too but it's sexless; i wish i had Mark (Rock); we'lll see, i shall see them playing next week at the historic 100 club in london and the night before at Dirty South (supposed to stay in hotel w/him cos Chris willl be i Scotland that night and doesn't want us together when he's not there),

[slum_goddess]

What kinda shit? You need Lou's number?

who's Lou? i can't imagine scoring c and mdma over the ATlantic, actually