Declined, Brother

I've noticed that the blogging world is unusually quiet, which says quite a bit about the lives of the writers who post in it. It's almost the end of September, and everyone is probably very busy with families, jobs, and school. Updating on the internet comes at the end of a long list of things, at this time of year.
Angela and I certainly keep active. We're actually walking a rather fine line of accepting, and declining social invitations, and so far we're batting 1000. (I can't say I actually know what "the best" possible batting average is, but "1000" came very naturally, and everyone knows what I mean.) In the past three days, we have accepted one invitation, and declined another.
On Friday Angela and I were walking back from school, and we said hello to a Lebanese man we had greeted once or twice before. This time, we actually stopped and talked with him for a few moments, and then he said, "You will have dinner with me." (Word for word, marc.) We said we would love to, and agreed to meet at 7 o'clock on Monday, at Comodre- which was last night. It was, really, a wonderful time.
His name was Youssef, and he is in the timber business, mostly ookume trees. When we met was the first time that he was going to eat that day, because of the feast of Ramadan. We talked about Lebanon, ignorant Americans (us), and he asked us questions like, "Why does America view Muslims the way they do." It was a terrific conversation, especially so because we had gone into the situation so conscientious of protecting information about ourselves. Youssef ordered for us, food we never would have known to get by ourselves, and then we went on to have dessert, and tea with him. He payed for everything, we exchanged phone numbers, and he told us to call him if we ever needed anything, or got into any sort of trouble.
This morning, we declined an invitation. Our house-keeper Rose said she had someone who wanted to meet with us in our apartment. When I pressed her, asking, "Who is this person," she smirked at me and said, "A brother from the church."
Thanks, Rose, but I prefer to hang on to my video camera and computer for another week or so.

Finally, I would like to address what an enormously profound day this is for album releases in the United States. The strongest line-up I have ever seen, hands down, and I would have dropped 80 bucks in Best Buy without a second thought. If you pick one of these up, let me know how they are.

Stars- In Our Bedroom After The War
Iron & Wine- The Shepherd's Dog (Great album cover as well. Intriguing.)
Will.i.am.-Songs about Girls (I'm not ashamed of this one. And the kicker is, I am well aware that Mr. Will.i.am. is almost certainly not being clever in the least bit. Doubtless he has filled up an entire CD with, literally, songs about girls. Oh well. I own Elephunk too.)
The Darjeeling Limited Sountrack (If there's one thing Wes Anderson can do besides make movies I love, it's make soundtracks I love.)
Matt Pond P.A.- Last Light (This is last, and also least. I really like Matt Pond, and would buy the CD, but he's out of his leauge today.)

Ok, that's all for now. Angela is going to put up a post with pictures later, so you don't have to visualize what is happening, or envision what we look like. You can just indulge your big fat peepers. Drop us an e-mail, we'd love to here from you-cheers.