Christmas in New York!!

As many of you have probably picked up from our GOOGLE TALK statuses, we are going to New York for Christmas!

You see, Katherine's work is flying her to San Francisco for some meeting for two days, and the main guy there says he's fully booked until 21-23 December, and wanted to know if that would work for us. HECK YES! A free flight for Kat to the USA over Christmas, and free accommodation for the both of us while we're in SF? Essentially half-price to USA for Christmas? Who wouldn't want that!

News justin...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. JONES!

Our very dear and old (in more than one sense of the word) friend, Justin, has just hit another milestone! Our GOOGLE SMS service isn't working at the moment (stupid VODACOM) so we aren't getting our IMPORTANT DATES SMS reminders so we are a bit behind on important events, but we'll get around to having you guys over for a nice dinner and maybe a boardgame or something, to celebrate the coming of another year, and the going of more of your life :)

God bless old friend!

Senseless tragedy

Today a good friend of ours sent out an sms around midday that told us his sister-in-law had passed away.

The shock of this sudden loss, and the painful reality that it was a close friend's family, was made so much more unbearable owing to the nature of her passing - an attempted hijacking.

Usually we'd feel horrible and sad simply because it's a friend's tragedy, but for some reason we feel even more gutted than we would normally be - not sure if we've grown more compassionate over life, or because we know the bereaved personally. Whatever the circumstances for our pain, I felt the need to share.

The loss that has occurred wasn't only senseless, but far more tragic because Bianca wasn't a threat to anyone. That two would-be thieves made a decision today to do something this heinous and become murderers just completely shakes my understanding of humanity. The gravity of the events today are even more overwhelming when I consider that these two people loaded a firearm and went out to steal, and to kill. What other reason would someone have for having a loaded weapon?

Reports are disjointed at the moment, but some articles say Bianca was just shot. Plain and simple. How can someone fathom such a thing?

To the family - especially Careen, Cliff, and Bianca's brother and parents - our deepest condolences. We may never fully comprehend your pain but we feel the loss as if she were our sister too. To Hylton, we will always be here for you during this time, and well after the shock and anguish has passed. We know it's hit you hard and we have been praying for you and the rest of the families.

I want to see justice, but I also need to remember vengeance will come under God's authority. Right now we must simply thank God for bringing Bianca into everyone's lives, and pray that the Lord Almighty will be our comfort and our strength. For the Waburtons and Bianca's family, we will keep you in our prayers.

This is completely shocking and I've felt so numb - I don't know of anyone who hasn't been affected by this. This is absolutely senseless and right now is a tragedy beyond compare.

Pizza and boardgames

Thursday night is FUN night at the Johnstons!

We hosted Ryan Reeves Campus Crusader and the Botha's for make-yer-own pizza and boardgame night, and fun was clearly had by all. We didn't end up playing a single boardgame, but instead a boatload of cardgames (admittedly it's a pretty small boat).

Bronwyn McPherson (as in person) arrived with none other than Magnus Pimpus at the latter stages of the evening.

High fives for Bang! victorious sheriff (il sceriffo), Badbreath BrYan and his thar deputies Oldman Botha, and Righteous Reeves McGee.

Mom's blowout fracture

Yes, unfortunately it's official, my mom has to go under the knife again for yet another operation, and this just ten days before her 69th birthday (sorry mom, is that inappropriate?).

That fall she had a week ago has resulted in a blowout fracture to her eye socket / cheek area and she now has to undergo a bone graft and some other surgery to repair the damage and restore feeling to her face.

It's all becoming a bit much for me to handle, because I hate to see my mom in any discomfort, and I really think something needs to change for her lifestyle - she can't keep falling and breaking things - life is better than that! She deserves so much more!

Please keep her in your prayers (if you're the praying type) and I'll keep you posted on the progress and surgery etc.

Greg and Bronwyn - 2 years!

Life seems to pass us by very quickly nowadays. Our best man, Greg Landwehr, and his equally wonderful and lovely wife, Bronwyn, have been living together now for two years, and praise God they've been happily married for every single day of those two years!

Congrats guys and here's wishing you both a whole lot more of happiness and God's blessings, as well as copious amounts of little Landwehrlings clawing at your ankles :)

... speaking of which ... when are the kids coming along? :)

Buy hospital stocks NOW!

Yes, all three of our avid readers, our fourth reader has landed herself up in hospital again. This time, I received an early morning call from one of our tenants (Charles) advising me that my mom had taken a fall and hit her head and there was quite a lot of bleeding.



After getting ourselves together, Kat and I headed over there to take my mom to the doctor.



Long story short, there was a blood-riddled sexagenarian, blood-soaked floors (you should see the photographs), suspected fractured skull, and a lot of driving around.



The latest is, X-rays and CAT scans have warranted the facial reconstruction surgeon to book my mom in for an overnight stay (I'd suspect this is to monitor her and possibly to avoid any Natasha Richardson'esque subdural haemotoma'esque tragedies, although I'd expect a neurosurgeon to make that call).



At any rate, things will need to be changed for my mom, because there's been an awful lot (and I do mean, awful) of injuries recently and this cannot continue. I'd even quip about the gravity of my mom's tumble, but that irony would fall on deaf ears. The key here is that my mom needs to strike balance in her life to avoid similar tumbles in the future.



Humour aside (if you didn't read between the lines quickly go back and read that last paragraph again), please keep my mom in prayer because she's obviously not doing so well at the moment ...

Circus Circus - not just a clever name!

Kat and I indulged in a little lunch at the recently opened Circus Circus in the Pavilion the day before she went off to Uganda. Some may say this story isn't current enough to be relevant, but we both agree the story has to be told. The world has to know. People must be warned.

For our meal, we ordered the Mezze platter (an assortment of Mediterranean goodies and dips) to share. The waitress asked us whether we wanted beef or chicken, but she seemed to forget to ask whether we wanted tasty or disgusting, and defaulted to the latter.

It was a mishmash of calamari, chicken strips, grilled halloumi cheese, mushrooms, and other stuff I can't even recall. The dips were tzasiki (the best of the lot), some pink "thousand islands" and something else just as forgettable. At any rate, the meal was painful to digest, painful to consume, and in fact was so bland that Kat ordered a toasted cheese/tomato sandwich at over R20 (at that sort of price you know it will be good).

Well, you're obviously an uninformed patron if you think a R20+ toasted cheese & tomato sandwich from Circus Circus is going to be anything more than greasy, sloppy, and poorly presented. The picture doesn't do justice (or is that injustice) enough to the oddly slapped together slices of bread with a bit of cheese and traces of tomato. What's most intriguing is that the outside of the "toast" was greased up for God only knows what nefarious purpose.

In the end we spent (sorry, wasted) over R100 on the most miserable assortment of "Mediterranean delightfuls" this side of the equator, and for good measure we threw away a bit more for a toasted sandwich my chronically-drooling dog could have prepared with slightly more skill and less sloppiness.

Circus Circus... It really is!

Johnston Memorial Hospital

This weekend has included me working most of Saturday helping out my mom-in-law with a Masters tutorial, Kat getting a haircut, pedicure, and a nice warm bath. We also spent time online with Simon and Oltman trying out our XBOX LIVE memberships to get some more Left4Dead going on (Simon returned to UK and bought himself an XBOX).
One really significant (and slightly morbidly amusing) period was spent visiting my mom and the equally handicapped Max (see picture). I can't really describe the visit as anything more than a hospital visit. My mom is still suffering from a potentially broken hand, and my puppy Max has broken his hind leg. If I were a stock trader, I'd invest in hospital shares (if you can) because the Johnstons (mostly my mom and I) keep them in business!

Hooray! It's a commentary fiesta!!

No comment.

No comment.

No comment.

That's what some of you have been complaining about with this blog - that you can't comment. Well, to open it up to the masses and to show the world that Brat and Kat aren't just exclusive friends that only care about people with registered friendship memberships (yes, you all do know that you've signed up for the annual friendship membership, don't you?), we've (well, that's me more than Kat) opened up the comment section so you can post a comment just by typing in some little security comment. I think I may have disabled anonymous commenting before because we had some guy called Jimmy (ala the Killer Prawns variety) claiming to want to fix our disastrous meal experience at "his" franchise. Whatever. You can all comment to your hearts' content now (that includes Jennifer Kruger... woohoo - you've got your name on the internet and it's on GOOGLE now).

That's a commendable performance, don't you think?? (get it? commendable... commentable...)

Home!

Yay I'm home, I love being back in the land of plenty where there are endless food options, my lovely bed, transportation, internet and of course, Bryan!

I totally pigged out on dairy loaded food almost as soon as I touched down in Jhb - started with an iced coffee, then cheese and crackers at home, lazagne and salad (with dad's salad dressing..yum!), mugg and bean club sandwich the following day and then ended the reign of dairy with a large American iced coffee...then I felt horribly ill and had to forgo the dairy again :(
It was great though :) !!!!

Back at work and struggling with all the same work issues as before, but thanks to everyone who followed my trip and sent comments and encouragement and prayers!

update on day 6

Okay for all of you stressing away...I'm absolutely fine...we bypassed all the bad stuff by hiring a plane to fly us from Mbarara to Entebbe airport for a vast sum of money! But we were strongly advised to avoid Kampala and seeing as you have to go through there to get to the airport it was a choice of stay in Uganda in the south until the unrest died down but with no guarantee this would happen or fly out today.

So we make the safe option and are in a hotel near the airport and travelling to the airport tomorrow morning at 5am!!! for our normal flights.

So I have seen none of the action apart from the newspaper and the American team that just landed for the week basically did a U-turn and flew out tonight so we are gonna follow their example just to be safe.

But totally fine - thanks everyone for prayers and concerns! xoxo

Uganda - Day 6 and all chaos breaks out!!

So there I was this morning up early, showered and ready for the 5 hour trip back to Kampala with my suitcase packed and ready. Riots broke out yesterday in Kampala so I was watching the news this morning to see what was happening but the news was pretty useless. We stopped at the office to join their study meeting and then got in the car to drive the long 5 hour trip to Kampala. Half way there we heard that the road to Entebbe has been closed, 5 buses have been burned and it was too dangerous to continue. So we literally did a U-turn and have come all the way back to Mbarara.

We have spent the last hour drawing massive amounts of money from our personal banks to charter a flight into Entebbe airport so that we can bypass the closed roads and shooting police and rioters so we can get on that flight home tomorrow morning.

I am assured that riots like this haven't happened in the past 5 years so it's just one of those freaks things. The lady collecting wads of cash for our flight to Kampala seems pretty unreliable so lets hope this isn't an indication of the pilot's skills!!!

I hope you are all praying that we make it home safely cos it has been an adventure so far and who knows what could happen next..Pray for peace in Uganda please, I'm quite keen to get home to my hubby :)

Bryan nobody reads our blog on weekdays :(

So nobody has commented on the great Uganda trip since Sunday - it's very disappointing - if you are reading at least drop me and email or a comment so I know my friends and family are still alive!

Uganda - Day 5

I didn’t sleep well again – think am missing Bryan next to me and it is getting hotter and my stomach has not been handling all the fried food. It was quite cool tho last night cos we got fish and chips and coleslaw last night but the batter on the fish is so greasy and weird…keep asking for grilled fillet but I don’t think anybody understands.

Not much happening today, but a good surprise was that we got picked up from University Inn so we didn’t have to trek up the road. We got dropped off at the hospital to visit the study blood draw clinic and see how they do things there. Was quite impressed by their laptop/printer/label printer setup where they were printing out necessary forms and labels in real-time as patients arrives and they also were updating their database with information. I got some ideas about how I can improve my own scheduling database and it was really great to see how efficient and organized they were.

I brought a jersey with me in case of rain but I suspect today is just gonna be super hot…I was very relieved to have brought a tuna snack pack with me so I had some lunch and I also dug into the chocolate bar I brought with – didn’t think I could handle any more Ugandian food at this point. Poor Huub only managed to get a cake to eat for lunch because we are sitting waiting for cars to take us on home visits. For those of you who have been on mission to Moz, these are not the usual home visits, they are surprise visits to check patients are taking their medication and count the pills they have left J

So right now the Research Assistants are drawing straws for who gets to take me or Huub and then we are going out to the homes.

Okay have just come back from the house visits – it was pretty cool. We went to an old 75 year old lady who could hardly see and she had been taking her meds a bit wrong because she couldn’t see the bottles which was not good. She looked okay though and apparently only doesn’t take her meds when she doesn’t have food because they make her feel sick on an empty stomach. The next lady we visited way out in the bushes (the 4x4s shock absorbers were gone so it was a bumpy ride on dirt roads but fun) had 5 kids they were sooo excited to see the 4x4 and were very cute. This lady is quite young and she and her husband are on treatment and she was taking her meds almost exactly at the same time each day. They have bottles that electronically record each time they are opened so we could see she was opening the bottle of meds same time each day. She ran out to give us a bunch of bananas just as we were leaving. On the way back the 4x4 either got nails in the front tires or stones cos we heard them chinking all the way back. Thankfully you can withdraw Ugandan shillings from ATMs here if you also have a Visa card so I got enough money to pay the hotel. 200 000 shillings = R792.44 today!

It’s pretty hot and I’m all sweaty but yay nearly home, have enjoyed the visit though. Tonight we are going Lord's Bar...sounds like some dodgy dive but luckily we are going with a local!

Msungu = white person