Duchess

Dale and I took the plunge and added to our family this week. Her name is Duchess, and she's a sweet black tabby, provided by Katie! (Katie has 3 more lovely kittens, for anyone interested!) She's just over 1 pound, but she's already making an impact on our lives. For example, she curled up against my side last night and almost pushed me right off the bed! And even though she's just over a pound, Shadow is in terror - convinced that she will kill him. In fact, today she had a run-in with Pipsqueak and she stood her ground and he slank off!

Duke Orientation and Cats at Dinner

Well, I had my first day of Orientation at Duke today. It was a great experience! Everyone was really nice and of course the Divinity school building is great. I met up with a guy married to a friend of mine from NCC and he gave me a professor recommendation for my Hebrew class, so that was certainly a positive interaction! I also met a very nice lady who lives down the street from me - helpful for when I might need to carpool. It was an interesting mix of informational lectures and inspirational messages. We also had communion. We didn't do anything in the Duke Chapel - we were in the Goodson Chapel which adjoins Duke Chapel. I'll be able to register tomorrow which I'm looking forward to! The parking pass situation is a little complicated right now, but fortunately my class starts at 1:30 on the days it meets, which means if I leave early enough, I'll have plenty of time to navigate the Duke bus system to get from my assigned parking to the Divinity School. (Translation - my lot is WAY far away). In short, it was a uniformly positive and pleasing experience. I'm looking forward to starting class.

And then tonight at dinner our cats joined us! Sometimes Pip will hop up on the chair and sit at it watching us eat. We allow this because he's just on the chair and he doesn't try to eat our food. Sometimes we give him a tiny scrap, but we put it on the floor. Tonight Dale was eating potato chips, however. This is the only food that Shadow will fight Pip to eat. Shadow will passively watch Pip eat any of his food except potato chips! So tonight, just after Pip hopped up, Shadow jumped into the seat next to Dale. We had our whole family at the table. :)

book review

I just finished reading a Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It is a well written book that describes the fictional lives of 2 women through the last 30 years of Afghanistan history. The story is compelling and does a great job of bringing you into what life has been like for women as regimes have come and gone and the country has been torn apart by war. I expected it to be a really difficult read, and it doesn't shrink from describing the atrocities of the Taliban, but it also isn't gross or too explicit - the squeamish of stomach can read it without fear.
But having read an interview of the author in O magazine, when he mentions that most of the horror stories are real, it is heart breaking to read the book. That's the most powerful aspect of the book: you know that although the book is fiction, it corresponds more closely to reality than say, James Frey's fictitious memoir A Million Little Pieces. In other words, women probably suffered exactly what he described and worse during the Taliban.
A good read for sure. It will draw you in, it will not repulse you, but it will convict you to care for our sisters in Afghanistan.

Vegas!

It was a fabulous trip! Not to bore everyone with drawn out details, Dale and I are just going to set down the Top Ten and the Bottom Five of our trip.

Bayless in Vegas Top Ten
10. Flamingo Habitat at Flamingo Casino
9. King Tut Museum at Luxor
8. Treasure Island Ship Battle
7. Eiffel Tower at Paris
6. Hugo's Cellar (sea bass that actually melted in my mouth!)
5. Guggenheim Museum at the Venetian
4. Stratosphere Top of the World Restaurant (food and view, spectacular)
3. Penn & Teller Show
2. Tripling our gambling money at the roulette wheel in Planet Hollywood
1. Bellagio Fountains

Bayless in Vegas Bottom Five
5. Waiting on and then getting passed by public buses
4. Huge crowds on sidewalks at night
3. Pushy Timeshare people everywhere
2. Siegfried and Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat
1. Flight cancellation causing us to arrive in Vegas 5 hours later than expected