The Dead Sea for a backyard

October means work break for me. A plan to head down Khao Yai National Park is in conflict with a friend's timetable. I am forced to socialize elsewhere. These are what I saw and did at Camp Facebook:

1. "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is little like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian." -Dennis Wholey

2. A few acquaintances want to troop down some videoke bar, but have no idea which bar. I suggested Bangkok Hilton. The staff there tolerates the indignity of my off-keyness.

3. “Cases of involuntary disappearances are usually filed under kidnapping, murder .... Our laws should recognize this distinction from other offenses,” emphasizes Miriam Santiago, a Philippine senator. She eats death threats for breakfast. I like her. Minus her breakfast.

4. It's raining men hallelujah! Seriously I hope the floods in the northeast stay there.

5. Yeah, yeah, I'm so getting it..., my reaction to "Getting your PhD? ..." from the NCA. What was flitting through Strategic Communications Laboratories last night for?

6. A cousin's daughter announced that she hates it when she wants to see someone so badly and she can't. I was her age when I was stifling my own emotions unsuccessfully. Being Facebookless 17 years ago, my pathetic blab got published instead in a national women's magazine. I now consider that piece one utter embarrassment.

7. Poor D is desperate for a nanny. I want to lend her my son's, but it will only complicate things. I was in the hospital when D was born. Time flies. Now she's a medical doctor and a mom herself.

8. A former classmate, now a mom of 3 in Texas broods over that fungus-infected tree knocked down by a storm. Part of her honeymoon was a tour of the Anne Frank house.

9. "Aweright, aweright paradise here we come!" my liveliest shout-out so far.

10. chattered I, "eyeing The Shadow of Sirius by Library of Congress Poet Laureate, W.S. Merwin. 'oracular, unpunctuated... empathic collection.' That's rather my pull."

11. Another former classmate and psychological sparring partner dropped by from Australia, "somewhere the Perseids are falling toward us already at a speed that would burn us alive if we could believe it...."

12. I thanked him for the warm-up, "research, geared up for the raw, the skeletal, the quantitative has deprived me of poetry in awhile." I need a qualitative chock.

13. Hi Heart, how's life with the Dead Sea for a backyard?

Megan and Janet host Thursday 13