First of June...

First off, Happy Birthday to my beautiful woman! We gonna have crab tonight fo sho. Yummy.

Also, happy start of hurricane season, everyone! The Associated Press says that only a small percentage of people along the Gulf Coast are prepared, so good luck with that. Also, emergency preparedness funding was cut in half this year for New Orleans, so good luck to everyone over there. Granted, that's probably good news for you, Ricardo, since you'll have more disaster stories to cover for the local news. I'm coming to visit in July, so I hope you're ready for me. Even if you're not, I'm still coming.

Also, happy 25th Anniversary to AIDS! 40 million people worldwide are infected now. 1.2 million people are expected to die from AIDS in Saharan Africa each year for the next 20 years. AIDS has become an epidemic in most countries around the world because it will flood across a region long before it is first detected. It spreads extremely quickly across regions because of drug users and prostitutes who unknowingly give it to everyone they know. In each and every country that currently has an AIDS epidemic, it basically started with drug users and prostitutes. Here's the funny part: the US is trying to force the UN to drop a clause in its AIDS agenda talking about giving relief and medication to drug users and prostitutes specifically. Even better, we're trying to force an abstinence-only AIDS agenda around the world since it is better to have AIDS (a surefire death ticket in Africa) than to upset our God by condom use.

But I digress. I promise whenever I rant, I'll try to keep it short. In more personal news, our staging event location is not Washington DC but rather Philadelphia. We're told it has always been Philadelphia and that we never should have thought it was in DC. This is a big disappointment. I don't know anyone in Philly. Part of my family is in DC. Not to mention, taking off from the nation's capital to proudly serve two years in the Peace Corps has a much more glorious feel than being shuffled off from some government annex in Philly.

After downloading 300+ songs off of www.allofmp3.com (10 cents a download, I love Russian websites!) I attempted to put them on my mp3 player only to find out that my computer can't find the correct software to allow a connection. That and it only detects my mp3 player some of the time. This problem is on my priority 'to-do' list before leaving for Mali. Michele wants me to buy an ipod, but I just can't bring myself to buy something new when there still might be ways to fix my current one.

Quote for the day:
“Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”
Muhammad Ali