The very end of Mom’s dog story:

Remember the little poodle that Lee and I rescued? Well, the lady whose daughter adopted her stopped by the store when your dad was here, and, unfortunately I was not.

She brought pictures of a happy, healthy little dog. Apparently the little dog was epileptic, which was probably the reason someone abandoned her. But Jennifer (the daughter) teaches at a Veterinary School and Maya (puppy's new name) had brain surgery and is cured. What a wonderful story. That little dog certainly went to the right people!

And what were the odds that Lee would spot her, I would pull over, we'd chase her and catch her? Then that a customer would see her whose daughter adopted her and was capable of having her cured. What a string of circumstances.

tttttttttt

I got my diary reviewed by iron reviews. I’m not going to say it didn’t hurt. (fine then, you can read the review here .) But, once I got over the whimpering, I figured out that the criticisms don’t really bother me.

Except for being called boring. That bothers me a lot. I don’t really know how to fix it, either. I mean, I don’t try to be boring. Being interesting is pretty much my intent. Although her complaint seemed to be more that boring people should not apply for reviews, so I guess I can fix that.

I’m not going to get into a play by play defense of this journal, because that would be boring and meta in an undesirable way, but I’ll explain this much, in case these things have been irritating everybody all along:

1) I love this design. I didn't realize other people might hate it, but I love it.

2) It is not my fault that Jen doesn’t know that Central Asia used to be part of the USSR.

3) I don’t have a cast list because when I lived in Tashkent because a cast list would have immediately clued people in to my real identity, and possibly the real identities of my friends, which is an unfair thing to do to people who don’t even know their lives are being dissected on the world wide web. I may do one now, since my friends in Ashgabat are less recognizable. Or I may not. I’ve never minded reading a journal where I don’t know who the people are.

4) I have my older entries as one long page as a service to people with slow internet connections. When I was on a 2400 baud modem there was nothing I hated more than several short pages instead of one long one.

Okay, enough of that. I realize it’s not exactly interesting to other people.

I went to Dashowuz, in the Aral Sea region, today. I’ll write a long entry about that tonight. With pictures.

PS - added a couple of new pictures to the gallery

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USAID is one of many donors for the project I work for. The views expressed herein are the author’s own views and do not necessarily reflect those of the author’s employer or especially those of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government. And I mean it. I probably give the US government heart attacks.