A friend of mine organizes the 5K run/walk for St. Francis Home (a local retirement home). She does a great job of organizing it! And I have volunteered for several years (mostly helping with the registration desk, but one year pretending to be Vanna White, and standing on the route and making sure that runners took a particular turn they were supposed to take).

This is the finish line. The friend who organizes the event is in the fuchsia fleece jacket.


***
I found this interesting. It is about the Maya nut - a common nut in Central America which is very nutritious and tastes good. Problem? People have gotten separated from their heritage -- the people are starving, not knowing that this nut is edible!

It made me think how far away from our food we are. People don't like to think that that nice slab of beef was Bessy the cow just a few weeks ago! And they don't like to think about natural products having so many bug parts per million...

I grew up on a farm and helped slaughter pigs. I know where the other white meat comes from!

How far people have gotten from their food is almost sad enough to make me just join a commune or something.

In the rain forests of Central America grows the nutrient-rich Maya nut. The marble-sized seed can be prepared to taste like mashed potatoes, chocolate or coffee. To those who stumble upon the nuts on the ground, they're free for the taking.

The problem, however, is that many people living in areas where the Maya nut grows abundantly don't know about it.

....
"People are living right there, in extreme poverty, not even eating more than one meal a day and there's Maya nut lying all around," Vohman said. "They don't eat it because they don't know."

....
With one tree able to produce as much as 400 pounds of food a year, using the Maya nut prevents rain forest clear-cutting to harvest other foods and increases populations' food supplies. Dried, the Maya nut can be stored for up to five years -- a lifeline for regions with frequent drought.

The Maya nut has high levels of nutrients including protein, calcium, fiber, iron and vitamins A, E, C and B.

"For some reason, people have stopped eating this food, which is one of the most nutritious foods you can get," Vohman said.

It is also less susceptible to climate changes than the crops that had been brought in to replace it.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/04/16/cnnheroes.erika.vohman/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

I'm donating the old Dell to charity. I haven't cranked it up in months. I deleted the partition on the hard drive this past weekend, so it's ready to be donated.

The charity is sending someone by this evening to pick it up.

I wanted to find a value for it, so I used this site. I was surprised at the value ($200) still assigned to it. I would have figured it was "parts" after 5 years. And maybe the value IS mostly in the metals inside it.

I was unsure whether the charity would even want it, but they have some even older PCs in a general use pool of PCs, so I guess this one will be newer than some of those.

Well, I guess it had been a long enough of a separation that it was time for us to see each other again. Remember O? He came over today, we made lunch together, then we went to a wine tasting over at Stony Point to support ROSMY.

Spending time with O was strictly a friendly thing -- not dating!

I had a good time. The subject of this post is a quote from him today -- and he's right, we do cook well together. One of the things that he told me as we were talking was that I have strong personality...I have never thought of myself that way, but maybe he's right.

For lunch (I almost went back to my roots and typed "dinner"...), we had pasta with a very good mushroom marinara, a salad and a olive oil, garlic, Romano cheese dip for some bread. We both stank of garlic when we went to the wine tasting, lol! When we got back from the wine tasting, we had some fruit and cheese for dessert.

The wine was good -- although I find some ROSMY gatherings a bit cliquish. But I'm glad I went -- I met a couple of people and generally enjoyed myself.

Pic of O while we were eating. Note the "bib" to keep the marinara off his shirt!


After he left, my sister and niece stopped by. They had been in town because my nephew's girlfriend had been a contestant in the Miss Teen Virginia pageant, which was held at the Shriner's temple in my neighborhood.

The weather turned out great today -- maybe a bit too warm for the runners. The course is only 5K, but it runs along the river and the flood wall and down under the Mayo Bridge, so it's hilly.

I enjoyed the volunteer work more this year because once the registration was done, I could go to the finish line and watch the runners come in. Last year, my job was to stand at the turn going under the Mayo Bridge to make sure the runners didn't run onto the bridge. So last year, it was a bit boring.

When I got home, I noticed I had my first poppy blooms of the year --






The pedals of poppies can be quite beautiful because they are so translucent.

Ever volunteered for something and then sort of wished you didn't have to do it? I'm getting ready to go volunteer (manning the registration desk) for the St. Francis 5K run today. I have a friend whose Mom is a resident at St. Francis, so that's what my tie is.

It's a good cause, for sure, but it's so cloudy and rainy -- perfect sleeping-in whether -- and I have to be there at 7:30 AM!

A friend and I met up at the vigil for Lawrence King over at Diversity Thrift (Gay Community Center) tonight. I'm not usually one for vigils, but I felt almost an obligation to be there.

Mostly we were in GCC's Bingo Hall, so under the harsh glare of the florescents. There were several speakers. One transgender woman spoke of some pretty painful life experiences. She was obviously nervous, so it took a lot of guts for her to speak.

I enjoyed the remarks by other speakers as well. The vigil ended outside with candles.

It was pretty well attended. It was nice to see some ROSMY kids there - as a matter of fact, one of the speakers was a youth from ROSMY.

One of the reasons I don't like vigils is because it's hard for me to connect emotionally to things on a grand scale. I'm pretty much emotionally hardwired for connections on a personal basis. So, although it bothers me to hear about murders of glbt children, I don't think it affects me as deeply emotionally as it affects some people. So, I don't get much out of vigils, but I'm glad I went tonight.

It's nice to see ROSMY get some media coverage in the local newspaper-

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-01-04-0132.html

The local gay teen charity that I've been becoming more involved in (ROSMY) had a nice holiday reception tonight. My friend M went as my "date" for the night. It was hosted at a very nice old (beaux-arts?) house on W. Franklin.

It was nice -- I got to talk to a couple of folks that I already knew and to make a couple of new acquaintances.

At some point in time during the holidays, M and I always seem to take a picture in front of the tree, so here are a couple of them before we went off to the reception, with me playing with effects from Lightroom --





Me --


Vanna provided a very lovely parting gift at the reception -- because I've agreed to join the "Leadership Council" and provide a certain level of donations over the next few years ;)

Tonight, I went to a reception/meeting at the local gay teen support organization -- ROSMY. They have moved into a building very close to my neighborhood.

I didn't stay long (probably a little over an hour), but I did enjoy going. I saw several people that I knew and met a couple more. ROSMY has gotten sort of shaky over the last few years, and it was good for me to see that some people are starting to give thought to ROSMY's future.

The point of the meeting was to show off the presentation that ROSMY staff will be using for community presentations. Funny thing, O was in one of the pictures in the presentation, lol, since he used to volunteer with them. I smiled when I saw the pic.

Lately, I've noticed different types of charities popping up -- where you donate an item instead of money. Here are two.

• Donate (and even place your tree virtually) in a park in Niger --
  http://www.tree-nation.com/
  
  
• Or donate a cow or goat or llama for a family --
  http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.204586/