Me (whining): Why do I have to gain 35% of my entire weight for a little baby that is only 6 or 7 pounds?
John: You're the whole support system. Think of how much we weigh, and compare that to how much our whole apartment weighs!

Hmph. I wish we were camping. I wish we were Bedou, who used to fit everything they owned on the back of a camel -- though then we'd have to weigh the camel.

Another:
Me (whining again): have you ever even seen a belly this big?
John: It's kind of torpedo-shaped.

And this just in:
This country is a sea of immigrant communities. So we should ask: is there as much pressure to keep up with the Joneses when your neighbours are, in fact, the al Husseinis, the Singhs, the Masterovs and the Huangs?
--"Living in the Laps of Luxury," July 11, 2008, www.thenational.ae/article/20080710/REVIEW/702885906/1008

New developments in our Abu Dhabi life: We bought a USB modem and signed up for the Etisalat 3G mobile internet, so now we are almost as connected to our far-away lives as our here-and-now ones. Tomorrow we are renting a car and going to Dubai, to have brunch with SAIS alums, and then up to Sharjah to meet a friend of a friend.

Also, by the grace of god, neither Leonard Lake nor the Creekhouse burned up in the Mendocino fires, though the Jack Smith fire was only one ridge away.