Here’s an update on the garden, if you’re into that sort of thing. I had thought that it hadn’t grown that much in a week, but when I looked back at the old picture – I could see the growth.

Grow Garden Grow!

I was a little too happy to find this tomato.

This little cucumber must have been growing for days, but I didn’t see him because he was hiding under a leaf. He’s about two or so inches long.

My blackberry bushes have flowered and are now starting to produce berries. They are all green berries at the moment, but they’ll turn red and then black soon. I can’t wait. I love blackberries.

My little kitty, Morgan, is always hungry.  She climbs the screen on the door when she’s starving.

Another self portrait. I think I look better in black and white.

I’ve been going through all of my Chinese videos and pictures, trying to find some interesting things to blog about. I’m mad at myself for not taking more videos, and better pictures while I was there, but oh well, I’ll just have to deal with what I have. The next time I go somewhere, even if it is to a Braves game, I’m going to use my camera a lot more.

The video I picked out for today isn’t amazing or anything. It’s just the students at the primary school running their daily laps with my strange voice over, but I thought someone out there would enjoy it. I’m talking so slow in the video because I had just finished teaching. Talking slow is basically a requirement for teaching English in China, especially if your students don’t understand most of what you say. It took me awhile to teach myself to talk like that. I sound very robotic. Every time I hear it, it makes me laugh. As the video progresses, my speed picks up. It’s only in the very beginning that you can tell.

The students both at my school and the primary school did exercises just about everyday, unless it was raining excessively hard or something. I’ve got a video of my students exercising somewhere. I’ll try getting that up soon, but for now you can see a picture of them – here. Enjoy!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os4vzKHBM-4[/youtube]

Here are six more postcards that I received through Postcrossing this past week. As soon as I save up some money and some vacation time, I’m going to have to start traveling again. Maybe to help me decide where to go first, I’ll put all of the postcards I’ve received in a big basket, close my eyes, and pluck one out. That would make traveling pretty interesting. Hrm, I can so see that being a premise of a Discovery or Travel Channel show. I’d watch it. 🙂

I felt pretty special to get this one from Hong Kong. There are only 68 users there, and I’m sure they are all not active. I loved the architecture of the buildings in China, especially in Hong Kong.

If someone could please translate this for me, I would greatly appreciate it. I was only able to recognize a few of the characters.

I really want to visit Germany at least once before I die. My ancestors came over on a boat in 1854.

I’m convinced that all Germans write their 1’s like little upside down V’s. How wicked. Not wicked in a bad way, wicked in an interesting way.

This is the first panoramic postcard that I’ve received. I really like the colors in it.

If I ever need to be inspired one day, I’ll just pull this postcard out and give it a read.

This is the first postcard that I’ve received from Lithuania. Seems like an interesting place.

It sure took a lot of stamps to send the postcard to me. I wonder how hard it would be to learn Lithuanian. It doesn’t look particularly easy.

Never been to New Hampshire, but I would like to travel north one day – only in the summer though. I can’t stand cold weather. I’d rather be hot and melting than cold and frozen.

I sent Audrey a postcard, and she was nice enough to send me one in return. I find it funny that the Post Office let it be sent with the 26 cent stamp, instead of the new 27 cent one.

This one is from Wisconsin, another state I’ve never been able to visit . . . yet.

My first postcard was from a 9 year old boy in Finland. It’s nice to see young people participating in Postcrossing.

I thought I would go ahead and put up some of the pictures of the garden that Phil helped me put together. Well, help is an understatement. He practically broke his back getting the soil prepared for my baby plants. Gardening is hard work, that’s for sure. It took us the better part of two days to get the garden up and running.

Phil keeps reminding me that this whole garden idea was supposed to be a few plants on his patio, not a freaking farm. My response to him is that he shouldn’t have encouraged me as I held three greenhouses capable of holding 216 seeds(and then some) in Lowe’s one Saturday afternoon. 🙂 Everything I do, starts small and then grows into something completely uncontrollable. I know this, and so should he. It’s all a part of being Gabe and in some cases, knowing Gabe.

Phil dug and that entire plot of land and then decided that a tiller would be a good idea. We rented ours from Home Depot for four hours and it ended up costing something like $40.00. Not too bad really. And had the tiller died, I would have only had to pay $3.00. Also, not too bad.

I don’t work him hard to kill him. I work him hard to make him strong! You should have seen him working that tiller. It shook him like he was a rag doll. His muscles hurt for a week.

Ah, everything is planted. Well, the plants that would fit that is. When I took this picture, there were probably another 100 plants sitting behind me. Yes, 100.

A few weeks later . . . I was afraid that my plants might not do very well in the clay, but I think they’ve done okay. I’m sure next years crop will do even better.

This is where some of the extra plants went, but I still have some more, about another 30 or so. If you live near me and you want some tomato plants, contact me and they are all yours.

Morgan Rose Ireland Yvette DeWitter. I love my kitty! She won’t eat dry food anymore. I’ve now got to shell out the money for gourmet wet food. She’s 15 years old, she deserves it.

This is Dopple, one of Morgan’s boyfriends. She has two more that visit her pretty regularly. Dopple is an enormously fat cat that reminds me of Garfield. He’s very adorable and loves to get his belly rubbed. I just hate that he constantly tries to steal Morgan’s food.

Me. I think I look a lot like my father in this picture.

I’ve been meaning to put this up forever, but finally managed to allot myself some time last night in order to get it uploaded to youtube. It is not a fantastic video or anything, but I thought that the lotus candle was really cool. I wish we had candles like this here. (Perhaps we do, but I’ve never seen one.) They would make birthdays even more exciting.

First, the story. Then the video clip.

When I went to the cake store to buy Phil and Maya’s birthday cake, I ran into Mr. Zhou, the Foreign Affairs Director. He didn’t waste half a second to offer to purchase the cake for me when he found it why I was buying it. He pulled out several crumbled bills out of his pocket and handed it to the lady at the cash register. Talk about perfect timing. He saved me about 100 yuan. Actually, it was probably less than that, but I can’t remember exactly.

I thought that I would have to call to have the cake made in advance, like we do in here, but all I had to was point at a picture and wait 15 minutes. They already had the cake made, all they had to do was decorate it. I got to look through the window and watch as they made it, which was pretty cool. The woman who made the cake did it very quickly, like she had done a half a billion before this one. If I have to decorate a cake all fancy, it takes me hours, not minutes.

When she was all done, she handed me the cake in a box, a few plates, some folding forks, and a bag with a candle in it. And off to the party I went. It was probably one of the easiest most painless things I had ever done in China.

Of the 11 laowais living in Fuyang during my 5 months stint, we celebrated at least 9 birthdays. Toward late December, I didn’t want anymore cake. I think everyone was starting to get sick of cake. I still think it is amazing that we had a birthday to celebrate almost every two weeks.

I’ve got more stories to tell about the candle, but I will save that for a later post this week. Until then, enjoy my retarded little video. If you can see any of the room, it is our living room. Pretty big huh?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAxThxm-oOs[/youtube]

Just in case you wanted to know, there is a new pano listed in the photo section.  Click on the photo tab at the top of this page, then panoramas, and in the list of panos, you will see Goodale Park.  Enjoy.

So, the other day, I’m sitting in front of the computer, and Phil and I are talking about the amount of traffic my little blog has been receiving lately. We were comparing the statistical data from ShinyStat and the data that Anhost/Midphase collects. The two have never really been the same, and it has never really made that much sense to me until recently.

I was looking through some of the searches that ShinyStat said were used, found a particular funny one, and decided to plug it into Google to see A) where on the list my blog popped up and B) what else was associated with it. I’ll never really know why, but the phrase that the person used was “Bring Satan into my computer”. I thought all computers were inherently evil, but apparently this particular person wasn’t satisfied with the amount of evil their computer was producing, and wanted the real thing. Perhaps they were a Satanist or something. If they really were trying to summon Satan into their computer, I would like to know how exactly they planned on doing it. Did they have to sacrifice an animal or draw intricate pentagrams on the floor? Sounds like the beginnings of a really bad horror film to me, but I would probably watch it. Heh.

Anyway, so when I plugged “Bring Satan into my computer”, I discovered that my blog was at the very top of the list. At least now I know if anyone wants to read about possessed technology and evil cats, loving referred to as Satan, they will probably fall across my story. I doubt, however, that they will find what it is they are looking for. If you follow that link, you will notice little question marks everywhere. Phil said he will get around to fixing it soon, but as you learned when you read my second to last post, Brain Cell Bob, soon is a very relative term. 🙂

I also discovered that the link that Google was showing me was for my old blog on Blogspot, and not this one. Phil looked at me and asked, “Do you still have the code for ShinyStat on Blogspot?”

“No, I don’t think so,” I replied. I quickly signed into to my old account and went to look. Yep, it was still there, and suddenly, my high traffic(well, high to me, anyway) numbers started making sense. Not only was ShinyStat tracking visitors to my new blog, but it was also collecting all of the information from my old one, too. I took off the code, and well, you can see what happened for yourself. I’m rather sad now.  And here I thought my blog was getting more popular . . .

I’m a thief. I so stole this off of Flickr. I don’t know why, but I really, really like this photo. The colors are great and there is something about that door in the background that is intriguing. And I just love how one of the ears on the dog is up, and the other is down. Even the chairs are nicely arranged. I wish I could take such an awesome photograph.

Once upon a time, I owned an Apple II C computer. It was what I used to write all of my poems and stories on before I upgraded and got a Compaq laptop, which was handed down to me from my Dad. It was a big upgrade, I know. Phil was shocked to learn that in 1997 I was still using the Apple. I mean, it worked. I didn’t see the point in replacing it until it blew up. My Apple II C never really blew up, though, in fact, it is still working just like it was 11 years ago, but only because Phil did something I didn’t think anyone could do.

Back in 1997, I had been working on a story called “Home”, a sequel to a story I had written called “Next”, when I went to save my data on my new floppy disk. There were steps you had to follow in order to save properly. I can’t remember exactly how it went, it’s been a while, but it went something like this. You had to insert a certain disk, click a button, take out that disk, insert another one, format it, and then save. My Apple was nice, it always asked me if I was sure I wanted to format the disk I had chosen. I didn’t have any reason to believe the disk I had just inserted into the floppy disk was any other than the one I wanted, so I clicked yes. I heard the awful format sound my Apple made, and when I looked down, I saw that the disk I wanted formated was not the one in the disk drive.

What I wish my Apple had asked me was, “Are you nuts? You want me to format this disk? This disk is the one disk you have to have in order to even operate me! Please, I don’t want to see you cry. Don’t hit yes!”

I had formated my start-up disk. And indeed, it was the one disk I needed to do just about everything on my computer. In less than thirty seconds, my Apple II C computer was nothing more than a paper weight. I think I cried for a good two hours, for all of my creative genius had just become non-accessible. All of my stories. All of my poems. Gone. I was devastated.

For years, I asked people if they knew how to get my Apple back up and running, but no one had a single clue. I looked everywhere for another start-up disk, but no one had one of those either, and at this point in the game, no one was even using the type of floppy I would need. I eventually gave up and said goodbye to my creative writing.

Then one day, I met Phil, my computer buddy. Early in our friendship, I mentioned to him what had happened to my computer and asked if he knew of anything to retrieve my stories. He told me that it wouldn’t be a problem, and that he would get around to it one day. I was stoked. Someone had given me hope.

SIX YEARS LATER

Well, I guess anything is better late than ever.

One night, Phil and I had a fight over something stupid, but it made me mad enough to go home and not talk to him for a few days. One morning, still bleary eyed, I opened my IBM laptop to check my email and found this message waiting from Phil : “Hopefully your still not too mad. Anyway, I’ve been working on something for ya, and I think it’s something you’ll enjoy. There’s more to come.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. In a picture file, at the bottom of my screen, all I could see was a black screen with funky green everywhere. I didn’t have my glasses on at the time. I pulled the computer closer to my face and then I realized what it was. It was a screen shot of my Apple II C, and that funky green was the text of a story I had thought I had lost forever. To say that I was happy, would be an understatement. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t cry.

Below is one of the stories that Phil was able to recover. Some how or another, he was able to convert it to a text file. I don’t know how he did it, I am just extremely glad that he did. Brain Cell Bob is still in the exact format that it was before. My spelling and grammar are completely atrocious, but I thought you might like to step into the mind of a 15 year old.

Looking back, my creative genius wasn’t as creative as I thought, but it is good to have it back. I didn’t remember writing half of the crap that he recovered. I found some fan fiction that I wrote when I was addicted to The X-Files. Man, that stuff is hilarious. All I know, is that I was a huge dork when I was 15, and if anything, I am a bigger one now. Enjoy!

Brain Cell Bob

By: Gabrielle Cook

2/04/97

Hi. My name is Bob aslo known as Brain Cell Bob. Well,

I know that you are thinking, “Why is a brain cell writing

in the first place?” I’ll answer that by saying I have no

idea.Remember I am just a brain cell and the only thing I

know how to opperate is the brain. Doesn’t the word brain

in brain cell give it away? Thought so. Alright lets move

on.

First things first. I am only a brain cell. I did

have 1,000,000,000,000 brothers and sisters but they all had

tragic deaths in which I would rather not talk about. I

will mention my fondest brother named George and sister

named Geraldine. The were the last to die after a major

high that the hostess recived in her early years. They were

strong willed brain cells in which I will never forget.

My loving parents, who were the first to die, were

named Fred and Ferline II. Because of their age they could

not take all the childs play times and parties. Before they

died on that December morn they had introduced me to my

furture wife named Zelda, the Princess of Heavna. She was

aspretty as a angel. My parents had found her lost and

astray in the National Brain Cell Park where all brain cells

go to find a new home. She was gladly accepted in to our

humble home.

At the time I was about 16 in human years and 4 in

brain cell years. (About the year thing. Don’t try to

figure it out. It is almost next to impossible. The year

16 has nothing to do with age. That is how us brain cells

have learned to figure our own own age compared to the

humans. We do age faster than you may think.) Zelda and I

began dating but did not marry till many years after that

because of so many deaths in the family. Zelda was a young

girl who was about 12 in human years when I met her. My

life revolved around Zelda so when are age came to marry, I

asked for her hand. Of course she replied yes. We were

married on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in June.

Now before I get to ahead and have to jump all the way

back here I’ll start now. I was born on November 2nd, 1981

which is known for Spirit Day. Brain cells, if you did not

know, are quite smart from day one. That was the day that

my parents gave me two names. The first one was a Brain

cell name in the Brain Cell lanuage known as Bruca Bru. My

name was Lankca Stru. It was translated in human english as

Bob. For the fun of it I’ll tell you my brother and

sister’s names. My brother’s name was Rutzca Nizzru and my

sister’s was Starca Merru.

In my young childhood years I learned that the hostess

was a wild one. (I think it was her older brothers that

influenced it though.) Because of this roughness that the

young child had, I lost several brothers and sisters. By

the time the child was 5 I had already lost close to almost

half of my family including my parents. I then began to

write poetry and short stories. Of course always through

the child.

I gave my hostess a name in the Bruca Bru and it was

Lilaca Chizu. Which translated, is little child which

refers to “now young child, will be young woman, then thy

shalt be pure woman.” You may think that it is down right

stupid, but in our lanuage it is a honor.

My School years were long and stressfull. Zelda helped

me through them because she was very gifted in those areas.

I had a hard time with math and occasional social studies

but managed to get through it all. Of course came peer

pressure which included smoking ciggerets to only what you

can amagine. There again I lost several brain cells in my

family. I was a weird brain cell and wanted to try

everything at least once or in some case never. Throught

all these peer pressures I learned right from wrong so that

I would live my entire life that was planned for me.

The year I turned 18 in human years was the year I

married Zelda. A female brain cell carries several brain

cells at once. Ranging from one to two billion. These

brain cells are not used to inhance the smartness of the

child but instead they are used to add company. After nine

long months Zelda gave birth to a half a million baby brain

cells. To the first girl we named her Georgia and to our

frirst son, Bob the second. All the children were given

Bruca Bru names but for the first time they did not end in

ca and u. Georgia’s name was Rosz Quilm and Bob II was Izzy

Bimja.

I opened a new school in the Right Secter which is on

the bottom part of the brain which is very active. That is

the school where all my children attened. Since I founded

the school I was able to name it. I named it M.F. Luder

roughly translated in to your human lanuage as “Once born

always a learner.” Written in many brain cell books it is

known that aprocemently 2,000 baby brian cells will live.

The other will die before there first birthday. This

happens because rough activity or harsh things cause them to

die. All the brain cells that have died are burried in the

Brain Cell Cementary in the left top secter because of it’s

forlorness.

Many years passed and the year my children was coming

of age, so was I. My memory began to fail and my writing

drizzeled. More of my family died and Zelda became ill.

She was put to bed and remained there for many years to

come. Many of my children left and moved on leaving through

the cliff. See the brian cells that don’t die, who were not

put there from the beging move on to better things. The way

they do that is by jumping. They just sorta fly off to the

next brain who they come incontact with.

On a day, all most very similar to are wedding day,

Zelda went into a comma, a few hours later, she left us and

went to her Heaven, Heavena. I weaped at her bed side for

the remainder of the day and then built a church in her

honor. It was named The Church of Princess Zelda, A True

beauty. I put up several pictures of her life from our

marriage to her death. She may not have ruled the hostess

body but she was my queen and will always be.

I recieved letters over the years from my children.

They told me of who they married and how many children they

had. I was now offically a Grandpa. One of my younger

daughters, who was known by Bobet, ruled in a hostess body

and had close to two million children. My two oldest

children, Georgia and Bob II, decided to stay and live with

me since the brain cell population was beging to die off. I

needed the company.

Even more years past and it ended up just being me,

Gerogia and Bob II. They never did marry nor do I think

they wanted to. They were to lazy too anyways. It was the

year turned 67 in human years when the now adult had a

severly major high. My only two children could not take it

anymore and they died that night. I guess my body had

become used to it and; did not bother me. I buried their

remaines in the alter of their mother’s church. I lit

candles in their owner as well as in Zelda’s.

After their death, the Brain Cell world, in which I was

brought up in, slowly turned cold and silent. Once in a

blue moon a stranger would enter my door to take a look.

But once they saw how large the cementary was they would

leave. Soon there after no one came and my life became more

dull. I always had candles lit in the church to be able to

feel all of my family’s prence.

My old age brought sickness and that was when I

recived my first cold. I wanted sometimes to leave and hunt

down my children and my grandchildren, the Grandchildren I

will never see. I then decided to write my life story down

and this is what you are reading. With all the quietness it

was written quite quickly. I knew my death was approaching

and I knew I had lived a much longer life than any brain

cell had ever had before. Who had operated so many tasks

with only one me and even kept sucessfull in keeping me

alive.

When the day came which was Febuary 14th, Valentines

Day, I knew it was time. That is why this ending is written

in such a knewly stated fashion. As though it is happening

write now. As I closed my eyes for the last time I knew my

life had been a most memberable one. And in my mind those

candles I lit will remain burning till the end of time no

matter what happens to the hostess that I lived with. I can

now join my wife and children in my wife’s heaven,

heavena.

Bob’s Note

This goes to all the one brain cell brains that are

just like me. I begg of you to take care of your host or

hostess till the day that you die. You may think you are

just a brain cell but in truth you are more than the

honorable lanuage the Braca Bru could translate. So I will

leave you with these words and take with you them were ever

you may travel to ever you shall and meet. Diwn Ligh Tusm

Rilsha. Live a long life.

Brain Cell Bob 😉

Postcrossing is making me obsessive-compulsive about my mailbox. Seriously.

When I first looked at this, I was like, “Did someone just send me a picture of naked people?” Then I looked at it a little closer and figured out it was Adam and Eve and that they had just watched their underpants. I found it pretty funny. I’m confused why Adam is wearing shoes though. I didn’t think they had that type of attire in the Garden of Eden.

The kitty Keller is speaking of was temporarily possessed this past Saturday. She was panting like a dog and looked very, very evil. I knew something was very wrong when she let me pour several water cans over her and she didn’t move. She seems to be better now, but she would have been a perfect fit for the resurrected cat in in Pet Sematary.

This is one of the most unusual cards I’ve received thus far. I had no idea this was a Salvador Dali painting. I’m telling you, I learn something everyday.

My mother and I both got a card from Germany on the same day. I noticed that both senders wrote their 1’s exactly the same. I’ve never seen anyone write a 1 like that before. It looks like an upside down V. I wonder if all Germans write their 1’s like that.

New Zealand. Phil really wants to visit this country. Neil and Kaliah, two people who taught with me in Fuyang lived in New Zealand for a spell. They showed me pictures of the view from their house. Man, was it beautiful. It didn’t seem real.

I found it odd that the stamps weren’t canceled out like ours. Does this mean I can take the stamp off and put it on another postcard if I happen to be in New Zealand? If you are from New Zealand, and you are reading this, please comment.