July 9, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Kiva
Due to a recent glut of loans, there are several that have less than a day to go before they expire! These are all worthy borrowers; they just get lost in the fray:
Parviz Asadov in Tajikistan
Parviz was born in 1976. He is an Internally Displaced Person (IDP) from the Armenian-occupied territory of the Azerbaijan Fuzuli town, now settled in the Fuzuli region in Bala Bahmanli village. He is married and has one child. 3 years ago he started an engine oil sales business. Now he needs a loan of 2,000 AZN to buy spare parts for improving his business.
Only 18 hours left!
Asli Huseynova in Tajikistan
Asli (her husband is pictured) was born in 1950. You can see in the picture Arzuman Huseynov. This family received the first loan in 2007. Now they apply for the second loan of 2000 AZN to buy foodstuffs and home appliances for improving their business. “Thanks Kiva for your help!” Only 16 hours to go, but only $75 left to fund!
Juan Bautista Group in Bolivia
The “Juan Bautista” (”John the Baptist”) group is represented by Carmen. This is a new group that brings together people from the same community who know each other well and trust in each other. In general the members make a living selling birds, shoes, bread, groceries in neighborhood stores, candy, empanadas, and some work in transportation with mototaxis. The business environment for the group members is quite competitive, but with their will to work and their experience they are able to make headway to provide their households with a better quality of life. The loan will be used to acquire materials, spare parts, ingredients and tools that will help the members generate more income to make their family finances stable. Despite being a new group the members have experience with group loans and know how to administer the funds well.
Only 1 day left, and a nice short 7-month loan!
Impacto Group in Bolivia
The Impacto (Impact) Communal Bank is represented by Señora Mariela and is composed of 13 members, the majority of whom are engaged in secretarial work. However, some of the members work at cosmetics catalog sales or selling clothing, or bread to public transport passengers, or they work at manufacturing articles of clothing. Their competence at selling products is high but the members know how to get ahead thanks to their experience and their desire to grow since the well being of their families depends on it. The objective of the loan is to open up independent businesses and for the acquisition of merchandise in order to increase their incomes and be able to provide their families with a better quality of life. Despite the fact that the group members don’t have experience in solidarity groups they are eager to work to get ahead, and they are thankful for being able to have the economic support that Fundación Agrocapital provides them.
Another nice short Bolivian group loan with only 1 day left to go!
If you can’t or don’t want to loan right now, but want to support Kiva, please go ahead and click on the borrowers’ loan pages. This will increase their page ranking on the Kiva website, and they’ll be seen by more people. Thank you!
July 7, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
http://animoto.com/play/18wx07e4FBvLXRZO18B68g
Animoto is a wonderful thing. You put in pictures and music and it makes a shiny, shiny video. It’s not very versatile — for one thing it only lets you have 52 characters per text-box — but it does that one thing very well.
July 2, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
I replaced the toilet seat today! And cleaned the sink! Yaaaay! Replacing a toilet seat is easier than I thought it would be — the screws were concealed behind a little flap thing, and once I found them they came off just fine.
July 2, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged Kiva
Kiva has partnered fairly recently with an MFI in Gaza:
Mohammad Qadomi in Palestine
Mohammad is 27 years old, married, and has two children aged 3 years and 3 months. He is living in the same house as his father, mother and four of his brothers.
Mohammad’s business is the only source of income for the family since his mother is suffering problems with her heart while the cost for such things is very expensive. He started his business four years ago and his mother’s sickness was the main drive for him to work harder, especially since he lives in Qalqilia, which is surrounded by the wall (Israel established this wall for security reasons and a huge amount land was confiscated for it. Qalqilia was much affected since it is a border town and very famous for its agriculture).
This is Mohammad’s first loan with FATEN. He has asked for $1,500 to buy clothes for the summer season. Mohammad’s shop sells clothes for children, not expensive clothes, to suit the economic status of the poor people.
Read the rest of this entry »
July 1, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
It’s raining. Again. It’s been alternating between cloudy, drizzly, cold, damp, and TORRENTIAL THUNDERING DOWNPOURS for the past two weeks. One of my coworkers just got back from a vacation in Portland and Seattle. Where it is sunny and in the low 80s.
Ok Portland, joke’s over, you can have your rain back now!
June 26, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged food
Yesterday, we picked up our third CSA share. I’ve been documenting what we get each week and how we use it on a whiteboard by the fridge. This helps to reduce the chances of mysterious bags of brown goo weeks later when we forgot about that other bag of spinach.
Items with no note text to them means we haven’t eaten any yet.
6/11
Spinach (Asian soup)
Chard (sauteed w/tomatoes; in eggs)
Tatsoi (soup w/noodles)
Collards (dried)
Garlic scapes (stir fry; soup w/noodles; lentil soup) — still have some
Sugar snap peas (OM NOM NOM)
Napa cabbage (snack, dumplings)
Radishes (snack)
Bok choy (stir-fry; other stir-fry)
6/18
Kale (dried)
Napa cabbage
Garlic scapes
Sugar snap peas (stir-fry)
Snow peas (stir-fry)
Lettuce (salad)
Scallions (salad, fried rice)
Chard (steamed w/shu mai)
Book choy (stir-fry)
Beets
Spinach (salad, udon soup) — still have some
6/24
Asian greens; ambiguous what kind (fried rice)
Radishes
Snow peas
Sugar snap peas
Collards
Carrots
Scallions
Spring bulb onions
Chard
Basil, parsley
Moral of the story: we eat a lot of stir-fry. Also, Ben makes *really good* fried rice. And kale and collards dry nicely; I’m going to be sending them to Rosie, and I’ll probably store some for my own use later. They’ll work very well in soups.
Tonight I have planned an early summer roast veggie mix with the onion bulbs, carrots, and beets, seasoned with the herbs and garlic scapes. Some new potatoes would be perfect, but it’s still slightly too early in the season for them. Can you roast radishes? They’re *really pretty* radishes.
June 24, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged GSLIS
One reason I haven’t been posting here much is that I’ve been spending all my free time reading graphic novels, which I’ve documented on my other online journal. You can see the graphic novel entries filtered all into one place here. I welcome more comments and suggestions of things to read :-)
June 17, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
Added to the Delicious Things Total:
– 1 giant pot lentil soup for Friday night
– 1 dozen corn muffins
– 1 pan jam bars
– 1 pan gunky thingamajigs (cookie bars)
– coconut chocolate cookies (dough chilling in refrigerator)
– pumpkin spice cookies (also chilling)
– and 1 pan brownies to be made later
June 16, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
I’m on a baking spree for the Concertino consuite. So far I have:
1 dozen cranberry orange muffins
1 dozen gluten-free cranberry orange muffins
1 dozen pecan spice muffins
3.5 dozen gluten-free vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies*
2 loaves pumpkin bread
1 pan pumpkin chocolate-chip brownies
You, too, want to come to Concertino this weekend. I will feed you.
*and they’re delicious. But a bit oddly-textured. They are being held together by coconut cream and faith.
June 12, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized
This weekend, our synagogue is having their biannual retreat. It should be a lot of fun, and on Sunday I’m teaching people to spin. I went to Home Depot yesterday, confidently expecting to find all the materials I would need to make CD spindles (dowels and rubber grommets). But they only had tiny little assortment packs of grommets, when I need about 20 of them, all the same size. 50 would be nice, since I’m doing this again for the NHC retreat in August and then I’d have all I’d ever need. I looked online, and as far as I can tell, I have to buy several hundred of them, as they’re just not available for retail. Sigh. Ben and I cobbled together a solution for now by hot-gluing the dowels to the CDs, but without the grommet there’s no way to get them perfectly straight, so they’ll be even more disposable-student-spindle than they normally are.
I also note that my spinning workshop is the only thing actually scheduled for 10-11 on Sunday. I hope that at least some people are not planning to attend, because I do not have the materials or teaching skills to teach 50 people at once to spin.
Well, it will be an adventure :-)
Edit: ok, maybe I’ve found something? If I clicked “buy now” on this, what would you say would arrive in the mail and how many of them would there be? The side pannel says “1 x 10mm”, but it can’t mean just one doohicky. It must mean one package. And I’m hoping 10mm is a good enough conversion for 3/8in. $33 isn’t an unreasonable price for a big bag of them if that’s what it is, and then I just wouldn’t have to buy any more ever.
