It's a horror story with killers, no wait! It's a cute story with a lonely penguin. No, it's both. Check out this penguin's great luck at finding a refuge from the killer whales in a boat full of observers. I'm guessing these guys are scientist. I don't know who else in their right mind would be out in those conditions. 

It's a game. What more needs to be said other than I hope Obama is more entertaining than this lame game. 

Weeee! It's all fun and games until you run your brother into a curb. Hope there are no oily spots on the ground.  

I love great (or not so great) horse names. As I've mentioned before (Arrrr) it would be fun to give a race horse an unusual name just to hear the announcer yell it out over the intercom. Well, here's another great one. They must have been Sound of Music fans.

I think I found just the thing to get my kids for Christmas. I just don't know if they'll fully appreciate it. Who could ask for a better gift? It's music and the young folks always seem to love music. Plus as an added bonus it's full of culture and mystery. I wonder if the Sitar is included or if you have to buy your own to play the game?

Doesn't the Sitar sound awesome? It's so relaxing. Why do I feel like I need a hot cup of tea to fully enjoy this? By the way. Is the third guy that just appears at random a ghost or what? He's not there, then he's there, then he leaves again, only to return later. He doesn't do anything but sit there and smile. Can't he even bring a pair of spoons to help with their jam session?

Earlier today I was looking at an image of a strange land feature in Africa on google maps and I remember thinking "The detail in Africa has improved on Google Maps." Then of course I thought of Nairobi, Kenya. We used to live there when I was younger. (I think that was the Jurassic period if I'm not mistaken.) I looked at Nairobi last year some but found the resolution in all but downtown to be lacking. I was happily suprised to see that it had also improved greatly since I last checked it out.

So I can see the town well, and I remembered that we used to live on NGong road, but to my dismay the road was long and extensive. I could still see the flats in my mind and I know we used to walk to downtown Nairobi but still I wasn't sure exactly how far. I decided to punt and ask mom. She would of course remember better than me. I sent her a link to what I thought was the correct area and she gave me just enough advice to point out the location. Her reply:

Wow, that brings back memories! Good ones too. Obviously the build up along that road is majorly different from when we lived there. Lots of those roads didn’t even have official names. I will have to let dad look at this and see if he can pick out the approximate place. I found Uhuru Park, and we were not too far from it. When we walked to town we often walked down Ngong Rd and then cut across Uhuru Park to get to the main down town. It did not take us long to get from our apartment to the park so I’m thinking it was less than a mile but dad has a  lot better memory for that sort of thing. If we walked down the street that came up along side the apartments (and ran into NGong rd) then we walked a good ways, came to a fairly busy road then turned right to walk down town. Going that way , once we turned onto the main road and walked a little ways we went in front of the Pan Africa Hotel.  Then closer in to town, (I think) we went by the Anglican church. I don’t know if those are even still there.

From what I remembered The flats consisted of 3 buildings actual buildings but I always thought of them as 4 since there were 4 stairways. The back of the buildings away from NGong had covered parking. I remember discovering one car there that had an alarm  by accident and after we set it off once or twice, the owner came out and asked us if we were messing with his car. I think we blamed it on a cat. Yes, the cat (who just happend to be walking by) must have been climbing on the car.

Any way, the buildings were set back from the road a bit and had a nice grassy area  with several large trees on the front and side. It was practically a garden and the gardner would mock chase you if thought you were messing with the plants that he took such good care of. In the back of the complex to one side was a servants quarters of some sort. People actually lived in this square compound in one room houses. The rooms couldn't have been any larger than our living room. That's where our friend Joseph lived. He was about my age and me and my two brothers found him to be very entertaining. He asked his mother to teach him English so he could play with us. Little did I know that these poor people in the one room buildings were so much better off than the people in the Kibera slums just a mile south of us.

I shot off another email:

This is my best guess then. 3 buildings (Two gray, one brown roof), with covered parking in the rear only, and a small compound in the back left that the servants lived in. It has the large trees on the side and a grassy area in the front.

The "flats" are in the center of this photo  (Maybe)

So this was my guess. Click the image for the actual google map of the location

Success! That had to be it, and yes mom agrees with me that this had to be the place.

I think you are right! That looks like it. If so we lived in the apartment building that is closer to the front and closer to the corner. I followed that side road and can see that it does ‘t’ into a main road. Following that road there on the right is the roof of a large building set near the road exactly the way the Pan Africa Hotel was/is. It looks very much like you have located it!

Looking again, I think you can even see the bus stop! Also the road curves right after that on the way to town and that seems right.  We had the police compound across the road where we could go to buy a few things like milk etc… I don’t know if that was directly across where the empty looking area is or the place next to it. It did seem like we walked across a fairly open area to get back to the buildings where they had a  small shamba and sold some things. (not a store you could walk into but something set up more like a firecracker stand is. Where there is an attendant who can hand you something from his little store of items).

So that settles that question. Now I'll just have to wait for Google to get street view working for that road. That would be very cool. I'm sure it will be a while before that happens but it will some day I'm sure. I'll have to dredge up some old photos from Africa some time. I do happen to have one on hand. This was in front of a Library The McMillian Memorial Library if I'm not mistaken. I'm the one with #73 on the shirt.

Leah is supposed to pick up some really classy photos of herself today. I wonder how they turned out?

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I don't know what to make of this. It's like Ronald McDonald ate everyone's haloween candy and now he's so hyper it just boggles the mind to see. Weird for sure but then again it is from Japan. Would we really expect less from them. Turn up your speakers cause the audio portion of this video is just as mind blowing as the visual part.

 This video is so pointless it's sure to be Lynsy's favorite video of all times. I know I love it.