doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

hello you interesting men and women of the inter nots. i suppose now is time to tell the story of my life. first i was born. now i am here with you. is happy day.

the egyptian note has been translated by my good friend Mo Hammed, er i mean Mo Saeidi. this is good since i have kept this message for two years without knowing what it said. the note was sent by my brother and sister-in-law, although it was written by a hotel desk clerk named George. Mo wins a jar of cranberry jam. i will post pictures of the jam being made! you will like it Mo. i tried it before, it’s very good.

the winning entry reads: Dear Daniel, Egypt is wonderful. People are so nice. I hope you’ll be able to read this. if not, you can get your money back. With love…. Tamara and Hadi i am glad to finally read this note. i will not have to get my money back.

instead i will make money and create beautiful designs with desktop publishing software. i have been doing that this week. it was a wonderful experience! i spent many hours fiddling with text boxes in quark xpress. i learned many things from the kind people who worked with me. sadly, it is a temporary position. i may not return next week. we shall see if they have enough work to give me.

have you heard that there is a reflection meeting tomorrow in ottawa. this is fascinating and wonderful. our excellent emcees Martin and Jessica will entertain us to no end. this meeting will take place at the Jack FreeCell, er i mean Jack Purcell Centre, right by the elgin street diner. it will take place at 1:30 p.m. be amongst us on this very special day. perhaps on my good friend Martin’s website you may find up to the minute news flash.

have you heard that there is a hallowe’en party tomorrow at the home of my good friend Vafa. come share the company of many goofy persons at this joyous event. it will be made even more joyous by the fact that all will be in costumes of musketeers and lumberjacks and other frightful things. surely on Vafa dot tk you may find updates of a frightful nature.

visit the website of my good friend Arash, because he works at a desk and tells jokes to people who peek inside his cubicle.

visit the website of my good friend Dave also, for he is a man with a cause and many effects.

visit the website of my father. he is strange. i love him anyway.

hey. I’ve been gradually cataloguing more and more interesting search terms (1) (2), and I guess now would be the time for another installment of “Interesting Search Terms People Use To Find My Website. For obvious reasons, lots of people find my site while looking for information on pizza, or doberman pictures (even blue doberman pictures???) Here are some of the more wacky searches…

• project challenge sandwich illinois (ummmmmmm… I wonder whether that project got funding)

• poetry and “bat, cat, mat” (google is not a rhyming dictionary!)
• pics of pizza from all around the world
• the pizza industy (note the typo… yes, I actually wrote ‘industy’ somewhere)
• funny hat (yay!)
• seatbelt education/children
• pizza CHIEF
• snow cat catherine microbiology (someone trying for a googlewhack?)
• FAKE UPC PICS
• toyota sinus car pics (sinus… hmm… that must be next year’s model)
• what a new car (I’m sure I must have called someone a “new car”)
• biology pizza quest (pepperoni… or mystery meat? let’s find out!)
• jokes loblaws
• “all wacked on the scooby snacks” (lol!)
• learn haw to make pizza restaurant (hee haw)
• yummmmm (doberman pizza is the #1 site for this term!)

ok, the first person to translate the following note for me gets a jar of homemade cranberry jam (once I make it):

the leaves are turning beautiful colours and, one by one, falling quietly from their perches. I was walking back from children’s classes at Jay and Diana’s yesterday, looking at all the leaves, appreciating them (and the fact that I could still go out without a jacket). fall is such a beautiful season. everybody has a favourite season; my favourites are fall and winter. I love the colours and the nipping cold winds of fall, and the cool, soft white landscapes of winter. Sure, I enjoy the freedom and glory of summer, but the quiet, introspective intimacy of winter is especially close to my heart. Just don’t ask me to drive in winter. Shovelling walks is fine, but not driving.

Anyway, speaking about woods (as we were), Martin and I joined a woodworking class today at the Wabano Centre. What did we do? This:

We basically made paddles from scratch, according to our teacher’s specifications. next class, we’ll be using wood-burning tools to engrave things into them, and, once that’s done, we’ll stain and varnish them. The class was real fun, and the people taking part in it were great and had excellent senses of humor. The experience helped reawaken the knowledge I already had about woodworking, and it turned out to be easy to pick up the basics. To his credit, Martin also had clear experience in the matter and gave me some good tips. Our teacher, Byron, showed us a paddle he had made last month, which just blew us away with how beautifully shaped and engraved it was. Practice makes perfect, or at least really really good!

Ruhi Book Seven, as part of the unit on the importance of arts in study circles, states that crafts (including things like sewing, weaving, pottery, and, of course, woodworking) are a divine science:

Craftsmanship is a book among the books of divine sciences, and a treasure among the treasures of His heavenly wisdom. This is a knowledge with meaning, for some of the sciences are brought forth by words and come to an end with words.

So there you go - extra motivation, if there wasn’t enough before. No wonder that, later in the same section of the book, we find Bahá’ís are encouraged to learn one of these crafts in addition to their regular trade or profession. It’s Divine Science For Fun And Profit.

For your enjoyment and gratification, here’s another picture of one of the side-effects of starting out in woodworking (don’t knock it though — developing a rewarding hobby is worth a few nicks and gouges early on.)

also known as “getting your fingers
sliced up for fun and profit”

hahahahaha

thanks for the great Thanksgiving dinner yesterday!

thanks for the great Thanksgiving dinner today (my mom’s cooking it - that’s how I know it’s good even though it hasn’t happened yet)

thanks for beautiful music

thanks for fireplaces and good wood

thanks for fathers who are there for you

thanks for mothers who care for you

thanks for brothers and sisters who are cooler than anybody in the whole world

thanks for best friends

thanks for the colours in the leaves

thanks for the memories

thanks for snow and rain

thanks for maple syrup and cranberries

thanks for Bahá’u'lláh

thanks for cognitive behavioural therapy

thanks for two crazy and wonderful years

thanks for learning

thanks for listening

thanks for waking me up

thanks for all the prayers

thanks for showing me my roots

thanks for bringing me back home

thanks for teaching me how to live

you’re money

in case you’re not in the know, Mr. Ali Nakhjavani, a retired member of the Universal House of Justice, and his wife Violette, who was Amatu’l-Bahá Ruhiyyih Khanum’s companion, came to Montreal for a talk with the Bahá’ís there. It was most inspiring and well worth the hour-and-a-half drive over to the Louis-Bourgeois centre. Martin’s put up photos on his website; check them out, they’re pretty good. Plus, upon his request, I wrote up a little summary of the talk, which he appended to the top of the page. If you’re interested in getting an audio copy of the first 90 minutes of the talk, let me know and I can make you a copy.

au cas où vous ne le sauriez pas, M. Ali Nakhjavani, ancien membre de la Maison Universelle de Justice, et sa femme Violette, qui était la compagne d’Amatu’l-Bahá Ruhiyyih Khanum, sont venus à Montréal pour parler avec les bahá’ís. C’était inspirant et ça valait bien l’heure et demie qu’on a pris pour conduire jusqu’au Centre Louis-Bourgeois. Mon ami Martin a mis des photos en ligne; allez les voir, elles sont bonnes! Si vous lisez l’anglais, il y a là un petit compte-rendu de la rencontre que j’ai écrit. Les gens qui produisent l’Arc-en-Ciel, le bulletin des bahá’ís de Montréal, m’ont demandé s’ils pouvaient le publier; alors peut-être qu’ils le traduiront… je garderai l’oeil ouvert :)

Ce soir, je relisais les anciennes entrées de ce journal - certaines datent de presque trois ans, avant que je ne parte en service… ça m’a fait réfléchir au parcours que j’ai pris, un parcours qui m’a amené à travers le Québec pour rencontrer toutes les sortes de gens et vivre toutes les sortes d’expériences. Et finalement, maintenant que je suis de retour à Ottawa, en train de me remettre de mon expérience, je trouve que j’ai quand même fait une bonne job.

À bientôt…

it’s the photos you’ve all been waiting for, from the Black & White Party at Anisa’s last weekend. (At Naysan’s too, but it was Anisa’s idea.) As usual, if there are any photos you’d like to see enlarged, just drop me a line by email, MSN, leave a comment on my blog or use the link in the top left corner of this site — and I’ll gladly provide a link to an enlarged copy of the photo(s) in question.

in case any of you have been pondering the purpose behind the paucity of posts to this page, it’s mainly because I’ve been working! yay! my mom has been forwarding me some of her surplus desktop publishing contracts. it’s nice. It’s familiar work, given that I spent a while working in desktop publishing (some of you may remember a time when I worked at The Fulcrum, the University of Ottawa’s english-language student newspaper, as Graphics Editor). Anyway, it’s nice to be doing SOMETHING like the “trade or profession” that Bahá’u'lláh exhorts us to have.

Oh, yes… for those of you who are waiting for the photos from the recent Black & White party, don’t worry. They’re coming… yes you guessed it… Real Soon Now™.

J’aimerais aussi dire bonjour à mes amis au Québec, dont il y a plusieurs qui n’ont pas eu beaucoup de nouvelles de moi récemment. Je pense à vous souvent et j’essaierai de faire en sorte que ce site web aie aussi du contenu qui vous vise, et ce, de façon régulière! Hmmm peut-être je pourrais commencer maintenant. Je continue de pratiquer mon français chaque semaine: c’est pas difficile vu qu’il y a beaucoup de francophones à Ottawa. Je donne des cours d’introduction aux ordinateurs chez un centre communautaire francophone. C’est du bénévolat, et c’est amusant. Ça me rappelle beaucoup du travail que j’ai fait à Victo avec la SADC… en fait, c’est un organisme connexe qui gère les cours. Entk c’est tout pour l’instant mais svp continuez de visiter pour voir mes pauses-québec ;)

So what’s my final word for the night? I want to play hockey. NHL lockout be damned. I want to play hockey. Observe.