hanimorsi.com

...and I have nothing to note to mark the occasion.

Older, yet not wiser.

I like being at at school. Maybe I’ll go back someday.

Click the picture of yours truly in the funny costume above to see a few more from my graduate commencement.

P.S. To the dimwits who kept chanting “MBA, MBA!” near the end of the ceremony: Seriously guys, that was retarded.

After I was done orating my speech, the lady on the two-person selection committee  said she liked it but…

It doesn’t have any quotes. I like quotes. It just shouldn’t be all yours.”

It shouldn’t be “all mine“? That’s a very intelligent way to put it, I would say.

She said that if I revised it they would reconsider it. I never bothered.  I decided to post it here, for shit and giggles. Consider it an open-source speech draft of sorts. There is probably someone out there who has a graduation ceremony and is Googling ideas for a graduation speech right now.

Written in 15 minutes and unedited. Excuse grammar/spelling mistakes.

Members of the faculty, parents, distinguished guests, and fellow graduates:

A little over a month ago, I received an email inviting graduate students expected to graduate in fall 2009 to submit a draft speech for this ceremony. “Up to 500 words…” the email defined the limit of the speech to be. Truth be told, I never was a great fan of speeches, but I was nonetheless thoroughly intrigued by a question: what can I possibly tell my fellow graduate students in 500 words? The answer is: a lot of things! I sat down with an open notebook and picked three things that I deemed worthy of emphasis. I say emphasis because what I am goingto talk to you about are things that you and I probably already know, but perhaps need regular reminders of their importance every now and then. Let this speech be one of those reminders.

I have already wasted about a hundred words of my five hundred, so let me promptly start with the first thing I want to remind you of:

You are now a proud holder of a master’s degree. You have climbed more than a few rungs on the proverbial education ladder, and you are placed even higher on the employment food chain. What we need to remember is that this degree – and today’s celebration of being rightfully awarded this degree – is not merely a rite of passage. It also signifies acquiring a powerful personal enabler. An enabler that gives us an abundance of intellectual tools, the most important of which are those of perpetual self-discovery, the constant pursuit of knowledge and the questioning of popular dogma. Which leads me to the second thing I would like to remind you of…

This enabler that we have acquired means precious little without an important realization on our part, that of the difference between education and enlightenment. Indeed, today we have formally obtained a graduate degree from a world-class university and a powerful intellectual hub in the region. What I see before me is not merely a group of happy graduate students, I see massive potential. Potential that will not be tapped into except by yourself.  Being “well-educated” only means that you have acquired credible, formal training in your discipline of choice. Being enlightened, on the other hand, means that you have further acquired knowledge that allows you to know how and where to make the best use of this education.  The future of humanity does not depend on the educated, it rather hinges on the very small percentage of those educated who are also enlightened. I call on you to always count yourselves among the enlightened and to let your actions and decisions reflect that fact.

The third and final thing I would like to remind you of is the importance of leaving a legacy. We need to remember that acquiring such intellectual enablers is not only a privilege, but also a responsibility. If you go out on campus and ask random students about what their prime goal in life is, you frequently get the answer that goes along the lines of  “I would like to make a difference”. The fact is that very few have a solid plan on how to go about this task. You now have the enabling tools to start exploring what kind of difference you can make, and where. Start looking into it!

So there you have it, three things that I believe to be worthy of constant self-reminders. If I am to put this speech in one sentence, it would be that the difference between education and enlightenment is realizing you have acquired a powerful enabler to leave a lasting legacy.

Congratulations and good luck.

This is one of those posts where I tell you, my real or imaginary reader, a few things about nothing in particular.

So yesterday I loaded up my blog with the intent of writing something about that bike race I organized last December (and last February), or maybe a rant about a rather frustrating experience with an experiment in IT systems outsourcing, or even some more stuff about advocacy and social/environmental entrepreneurship (I just finished my MA in Economics in International Development, so perhaps I m currently more intellectually-conscious than usual?) . All the above listed topics either require brain activity to recall events or think deep thoughts. My feet were cold. I can’t think properly with cold feet. With such a lack of mental willingness to invoke deep thoughts or remember stuff then articulate all that in a blog post, I decided to do something else. I decided to update my blog’s software, and in the course of doing that  I totally screwed it up.

My first thought was: Ugh, not again!

It is said that Murphy’s Law was invented in airports. Well, web software gave us Murphy’s Law 2.0. I’ll spare you the gritty details but what I ended up doing is moving the whole thing to a new host (after 5 years of awesome problem free and money-free hosting) and starting from a fresh installation using a database backup saved from weekly autobackups I had, thankfully, set-up earlier.

I took the unsolicited opportunity to update my blog’s theme. This is the, you know, 2010 look…or something.

Mind you, it’s not that I blog that often anyway. As inconsequential as most personal blogs are, including (and especially) mine, it would suck to have it gone in a minor data disaster like that.

So anyway, I’ve noticed that I get a different song stuck in my head for about a week or so before another one sticks in its place. This week’s song is Pearl Jam’s Garden. Very abstract lyrics. Love it.

Speaking of gardens, riding through the “rock gardens” in a short section of trail that I newly discovered in Wadi Degla last weekend reminded me of how much I miss my (now sold) bike. Can’t wait for that new frame to get here. Which reminds me that I don’t have a fork for that frame yet. Bummer. Eying a “discounted” Magura that would still cost me slightly more than a full suspension service on my car even though it is a 2008 model on closeout price (or so claimed).

(This is one of my many brain dumps, intended to connect the dots between things in my own mind. Today’s brain dump is on environmentalism, economics and ethics)

It might be already obvious: The problem with most environmentalist movements is that the basic premise on which they are built, conservation, does not play nice with the supreme catalyst at the core of modern capitalism: a concept known as creative destruction.

According to Joseph Schumpeter, creative destruction is all about the perpetual replacement of the “old” by the “new”. The fuel that capitalism runs on is consumption, and the driver for consumption is innovation. When the old is torn down and destroyed, it makes the requisite room for the new and improved,  and thus keeping the proverbial fire (of consumption) burning, and consequently the metaphorical wheel (of capitalism) rolling.

The colloquial American saying goes “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Strange saying coming from the land that gave us modern capitalism as we know it. To survive and prosper, the Capitalist needs to fix it, break it, put it back together, improve it, recolor it, re-brand it, repackage it and sell it at a higher price (and offer the old one on special!)

From a purely environmentalist (and arguably, a somewhat socialist) viewpoint, creative destruction is synonymous with waste and wastefulness. It is a seldom disputed fact that innovation is necessary for progress, but the problem with innovation is that it is not benevolent, as it is primarily driven by the quest for capitalist gain. Such a quest for material wealth, in turn, has been historically proven to have an element of boundless greed and general disregard for ethics (and sometimes plain stupidity). Any keen environmentalist will tell you that although innovation is a good thing, you can often have too much of a good thing.  Too much innovation, or rather, deceitful marketing tactics masquerading as innovation, is actually harmful as it drives unnecessary consumption, and too much consumption leads to too much waste (and large credit bubbles that take down the world’s financial markets, as it happens) . All of this creative destruction leaves us with a bunch of “old” stuff that no one loves anymore. Unloved, old stuff get thrown away. Throwing stuff away gives us piles of trash that we have problems getting rid of later, and that often end up poisoning the Earth’s soils, rivers and oceans.

The notion of conservation, on the other hand, is not based on “fixing it”, but rather on reusing and recycling it. It is an ethical concept, as opposed to creative destruction being an economic idea bereft of abstract moral considerations and philosophical value judgments. Innovation is alright as long as it is “carbon neutral”. Carbon neutrality pisses businesses off for the very understandable fact (from a business viewpoint) that is an expense. Expenses erode profits, and the Wheel of Capitalism doesn’t roll as smoothly as desired.

Thus, it doesn’t matter which lens you look through at the issue at hand (environmentalist or capitalist), the fact remains that capitalism and conservation are inherently incompatible, if not polar opposites!

Or are they?

The way I see it, it is not so much an incompatibility of concepts as much as it is a rift in expectations and assumptions that shape how individuals and organizations on the far ends of the environmental awareness spectrum act. Environmentalists expect businesses to have some ecological decency and happily bear the expense of being “carbon neutral” or “green and clean”, oblivious to the fact that the business world does not come with a built-in element of environmental sensitivity, simply because being environmentally sensitive does not, by default, make you any money. Hell, it costs you money!. Organizations built for the purpose of commercial activity do not have a behavioral drive to tailor their commercially-purposed activities to be environmentally sound. Volumes have been written on how this sort of ecological awareness can be introduced to corporate cultures through various means, from arm-twisting legal frameworks to gung-ho citizen arrest style aggressive environmental activism by the likes of Greenpeace and others.

Ethics and capitalism are mutually exclusive. Product life cycles and biological life cycles share nothing but the word “cycle”. Universities have only recently introduced ethics classes to business programs. Environmentally-sound business practices are not inherently incompatible with profitability, it’s just that most businesses today just do not know how to make them efficiently compatible with their core activities. That is, I believe, due to mistaken impressions in the business world about what what being environmentally responsible as a business entails, but also – more importantly – due to the fact that clean technology is expensive because it is new technology. In the long run, clean technology would come into mainstream industrial technology, and businesses would change their traditional practices to be efficient and profitable while observing their environmental impact, and would no longer shun it on account of higher costs. Alas, as a wise economist once quipped: “In the long run, we’re all dead”. So let’s take a look at what could be done in the short run.

The way I see it, environmentalists need to adopt a strategy based on the English proverb that goes “If you can’t beat them, join them!”. I know what you’re thinking now. You probably read the last sentence in the previous paragraph about the futility of long-term activism, and the above quoted proverb and thought: “Hani, are you saying we do away with our quest for a cleaner world and join the greedy capitalist mob in an unwavering march towards ecological demise?! Traitor!”

Cease fire! No, I am not advocating any of that at all. I am not saying that us environmentally-enlightened folks should defect to the dark side and embrace the fruits of ethically-devoid capitalism now with total disregard for what’s going to happen to our environment, which by then would be our legacy to future generations. All I am saying is: businesses are great with marketing. They know how to make a marginally new (or even old) idea look brand new and have you reaching for your credit card for something that you probably don’t need, but merely want. Environmentalists need to learn how to make their ideas and causes as cool as commercial innovators make their products, and that’s for something that all of us actually need: a cleaner world! Environmentalists need to watch entrepreneurs and pick up the skills necessary to market and sell environmental activism and awareness. In other words, environmentalists need to quit being environmentalists and start becoming environmental entrepreneurs.

Environmental activists need to start putting less emphasis on answering the question of “how we can make them care?” (them being environmentally-unaware individuals and organizations) and more on “how can we make environmental sensitivity cool or economically-encouraging?”.

If we build it, they will come.

Yes. Tonight I will set fire to the little black notebook in which I have kept a semi-regular journal over the past five years of my life. I will incinerate half a decade’s worth of mundane, important or note-worthy personal happenings recorded the “old school” way. Ink, pen and paper.

In the grand scheme of things, that really doesn’t matter much. Nonetheless, let me share with you the thought process that led me to making this rather inconsequential decision.

I previously blogged about why I keep a journal. The reasons why you would keep a journal are many. Such reasons are both highly personal and somewhat obvious. I would also say that while those reasons are not mutually-exclusive, those of us who keep a journal have one dominant drive or reason to do so. From journals of artistic inclinations, to a written form of self-reflection, to having a sort of autobiographical breadcrumb trail that provides a lead to the roots of current emotional/psychological states and acts as a witness for self-honesty.

The Rollins Band puts it very succinctly in their song “Such A Drag”:

“...so you open up your journal, and try to open up yourself, to try to find the key that unlocks the door that gets you to the point. The Reference Point. So you can say:”Right there, X marks the spot of my discontent. X marks the spot of my soul starvation.  X marks the spot. The place…where I went so wrong…”

My journaling habits were focused on, or rather driven by, the latter reason. The frequency with which I write in my journal is anything but regular: I’d go for weeks without recording anything. Total radio silence.  Then I’d be going through several ballpoint pens as I religiously (and somewhat furtively, I might confess) add daily entries, or even several times a day. The level of detail also varies. Sometimes I would barely scrap the surface of what I intended to record, but have comfort in knowing that the few lines of chicken scratch script on coffee-stained pages serve the purpose of having the mental bookmarks to that particular incident/thought/observation. I will read the first few words and vivid, life-like images of this situation or a clear recollection of that thought will instantly flood my mind. Other times, I would meticulously record everything I could get on paper before I bore myself to death with detail.

Yesterday I opened my journal and sampled entries dated as early as 2004, to date. Travels, observations, people, thoughts.

There was too much of “me” in there. It scared me a little.

Not because I have anything uber-secret in there. It’s just that I really prefer not to share too much of my thoughts with others, even those close to me. Doing so often does one of two things: 1) Poke holes into your isolated and as such often flawed inner logic and help patch up weaknesses in your personal hypothesis, or 2) morph a completely sensible and logically sound inner monologue into a screaming argument with self.

I choose to forgo #1 in the interest of avoiding #2, most of the time.

Having these thoughts on paper is like having a part of me gain physical independence. That, to me, is a very uncomfortable thought.

Which brings me to thinking about the weird dichotomy in having (some of) these thoughts in the digital form on this blog, forever archived even if I decide to delete it. You can’t get rid of all traces of things you release into the digital ether.  I am being OK with spilling out many thoughts and entries for (potentially) millions to see online, yet uncomfortable with having an analog journal in a notebook I keep in my bag. Oh, such a bizarre mix of vanity-driven personal hypocrisy.

So tonight, as i stare into the flames eating up the little black notebook. I will make my peace with the fact that whatever thoughts I intend to share would go on this blog, and the ones I must guard from unsolicited public scrutiny and judgment will stay locked in my temporal lobe.

(I am only kidding, I am not going to burn my notebook, though I did consider doing so. The idea of a ritual burning of a notebook really appeals to the dramatist in me )

...and provided that you can read and understand colloquial Egyptian Arabic (the Upper-Egyptian dialect, to be more specific), you really should read Gawabat Haragy El Kot (The Letters of Haragy EL Kot) by Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudy.

Take masterful story-telling, super-lucid usage of colloquial language, seldom-matched literary prowess and soak all of that way deep in the cultural nuances and minutiae of the individual mindset and human interactions of  the Egyptian South. What you get is a true literary masterpiece.

The book comes with two CD’s of Abnoudy himself narrating the full text. His vocal narrative does not only complement the text, but even multiplies its literary and intellectual value by an unquantifiable measure. Abnoudy’s narration style is very theatrical while preserving cultural and emotional genuineness.

El-Abnoudy’s magnum opus is Al-Sira Al-Hilaliyya, a multi-volume folklore epic that took him three decades to compile from oral accounts. Yes, he spent 30 years collecting word-of-mouth bits and pieces of stories using an ancient tape recorder.

I think he should be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature for his literary awesomeness and amazing efforts in preserving indigenous oral traditions and cultural heritage.

On second thought, forget the Nobel Prize. They give it out too easy these days.

When it comes to two-wheeled transport (or fun), my preference usually leans towards the human-powered family of machines, preferably the type intended for off-road use. Something about the combination of simplicity, zero-carbon footprint (if you discount the manufacturing process, that is), and the invocation of sweet memories of the of endless summer days of carefree childhood fun every time I mount my bicycle’s saddle makes the no-motor variant of two-wheeled machines particularly dear to my heart.

I often stop to look at beat-up cargo bikes abundant on Cairo streets, examining the rust patterns on the downtube, squinting at the cracks forming at the welds, admiring the the improvised underfoot actuated brake system (read: no brake system), attempting to guess the function of the various obscure non-cycling related objects affixed to the headtube, seatpost and various other parts of the frame, and marveling at the streetwise ingenuity of the jimmy-rigged cargo rack(s) that often carry loads twice the weight of the bike and rider combined. I will regard with equal mental praise (mixed with a dab of envy, to speak honestly)  the shiny new brand-name road bike with carbon fiber everything, go-faster graphics and a price tag that makes small sedans look cheap in (an unfair) comparison. I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of all flavors and subflavors of two-wheeled machines. My friends just think I am weird.

Given such fondness of cycling, I often scour the Internet in an effort to keep myself current on all things bike-related. I get excited about things like carbon drive systems and derailleur-less crancksets and similar inventions with very clever marketers behind them who come up with catchy brand names and all other manner of of marketing hype that practically put us in a state of consumerist hypnosis that make us happy to dispose of our often not-so-disposable chunks of income to have the latest and greatest to (hopefully) make us happier pedal-spinners. Hey, it makes perfect sense from an economic utility point of view (at least that’s the what I tell myself right before I click “confirm order” on yet another expensive bike part).

So, back to the original subject. It’s amazing how much manufacturers are able to differentiate their products in a market where said product is, essentially, rather simple. The basic mechanics of the bicycle have not changed much since the early bikes, but pretty much everything else did. From exotic materials, to shape-shifting frames, to premium precision components. Hell, even the bolts received some tech love.

But there is only so much manufacturers can differentiate on in standard components without overspending on R&D (and who wants to that in these day’s economy?) or creating something proprietary (which, unless it works really well, often pisses off consumers who want the frame/components to play nice with new components they want to buy at a later stage). With the exception of a few innovators, most bike manufacturers will wait until the big component giants come up with the next big thing. While they wait for that next big thing, they do some pretty amazing stuff with frame designs.

Below is a collection of what I believe to be some of the most beautiful bicycles. Having a special liking to off-road family of bicycles (and more specifically to the genus known as “all-mountain” or “trail” bike), I will start with a few trail assault steeds:

The 2010 Specialized S-Works Enduro Carbon

The two-tone carbon frame has a subdued beauty that oozes class (for a $7200 bike, it should!). The lines in the front triangle resemble something out of a Leonardo DaVinci sketchbook. If I had the money to buy this bike, I probably wouldn’t, because I’d spend more time looking at it than riding it.

The Ibis Mojo

The Moji frame has more curves than Scarlett Johansson’s body. In a thread on the  MTBR forums, someone was complaining that the Mojo “doesn’t have bottle cage mounts”. Dude, who cares about water bottles when you have a frame that looks that good (I know: the skinny fast bastards known as competitive cross country racers)

Next we look at two of the most beautiful (in my humble opinion) road racing bike frame designs around:

The BMC Racemaster

Combining aluminum and carbon fiber with a very innovative double bonding process, the Racemaster is a masterpiece of form and function. Look where the top tube joins the seat tube (a grip-like joint slide over the seattube and is then bonded to the seat tube with a special glue) and where the seat stay joins the seat tube. The attention to detail and tastefully applied graphics make a beautiful even prettier. The whole gestalt of this frame is just amazing.

Kestrel 4000 Ltd

Can you say “fighter jet”? Enough said.

Despite my bias towards motorless two-wheeled vehicles, I do like motorcycles as well and hope to one day buy one. However, given my propensity to do stupid things on mountain bikes, I will probably do stupid things much faster and more frequently on a sport bike, so I will only admire sport bikes from a distance. In a city like Cairo, a sport bike is only a catalyst for disaster. Cruisers, on the other hand, with their laid back riding position and chrome-laden exterior, are much more sanity-inspiring.

There are too many beautiful sport and road bikes out there to be able to choose one as an absolute favorite. Nonetheless, in the extremely unlikely hypothetical situation where I am being held at gunpoint and I absolutely have to choose the most beautiful motorcycle on Earth, I’d probably choose the Zündapp KS 750.

“Zün-who?”, you say? Zündapp is (or rather, was) a German motorcycle manufacturer founded in the early 20th century. The true reason the Germans lost World War II is that Zündapp was building the coolest military bikes around (or perhaps the coolest bikes around, period) and giving them by the hundreds to the German army. Nazi soldiers got too busy playing around with these mean machines that they got too distracted from shooting at the Allied soldiers and ultimately lost the war.

I was only kidding, of course. But you probably figured that out already if you successfully completed middle school.

By the way, I do own a piece of the classic German motorcycle awesomeness that is Zündapp. No, it is not the KS750 pictured above. In fact, it is not a motorbike at all, but it’s close enough species of machines. I, my dear reader, am a proud owner of a Zündapp lawn mower.

The above-pictured rare piece of lawnmower history was acquired in a flea market in Cairo for L.E. 300 and takes close to an hour to start, but that does not take away from the fact that this is a classic, a true collector’s item (some would say a “garbage collector’s item”, but I can’t disagree more). This is actually what originally turned me on to the whole Zündapp motorbike thing. Apparently, they had a side business selling lawnmoers before the company went belly up in the 1980s.

The picture below is from one of their catalogs archived by what I assume to be a big fan of everything Zündapp.

Hot bikini model not included.

I am a sucker for designs that cross the vintage with the futuristic. The Zündapp KS750 pulls that off flawlessly. What’s even more inspiring is that it was a military design, and designs for militarry applications usually have no interest whatsoever in form and aesthetics. In the military, function is everything.

On a separate note, if you’re into custom bikes and happen to have $70,000 idly lying around, you might want to checkout the Confederate line of crazy-looking  custom machines.

This bike uses human babies for fuel.

Until I save up enough for a used Harley-Davidson Iron 883, I’ll stick to riding my trail whip and old but iconic classic German sedan.

(Edit: In case you’re wondering what this is about, it was an entry to Specializes 2010 Trail Crew contest.)

...and I just might be one of them.

You see, a few days ago, an email with the subject “Specialized Trail Crew” arrived in my inbox. Usually I would either quickly skim periodical emails of such kind or even skip them altogether, but the subject line had the words “Specialized” and “trail”; words that—to me—invoke visions of endless off-road cycling fun and the activity I look forward to most: mountain biking.

Here is the opening paragraph of this email:

We’re looking for a few good riders. More specifically, we’re looking for a few avid mountain bikers. People who ride a lot, can tell a good story and lead group rides. Riders who respect and are respected by their riding buddies.

I read it and instantly thought ” That describes me!”. Here is why:

1. Passion for the sport: I have been mountain biking for about 4 years now, not a very long time in relative terms. But during those few years I have managed to build a steadily growing community of avid mountain bikers in a country where the sport was virtually unknown, organized the first amateur race in Egypt, and get involved in various cycling advocacy events and initiatives.

2. I am a trusted mountain biking community leader: I organize regular group rides and events, map trails and advocate trail sustainability and provide new riders with information on where to start.

3- Social media savvy: I blog (here, here and here), tweet, facebook, knowledgeable in photography, image and video editing, and other tools. I create niche market brands for adventure sports travel companies.

 4- I love Specialized!: I might be Specialized’s best unpaid sales person this side of the world . Out of the weekly advanced riding group averaging 10 riders, at least 5 own a Specialized. I currently ride a 2008 FSR XC comp.

5- Access to “exotic” locations and trails: Although mountain biking is not as popular in Egypt as it is in the United States or Europe, the country has a multitude of trail networks in its various deserts and the Sinai peninsula waiting to be explored! The sport is readily growing and Egypt has the potential to be a hub of mountain biking enthusiast in this part of the world due to the great riding locations and weather.

Now a little about our home trail and mountain biking in Egypt:

Our home trail is called Wadi Degla. The area is a massive trail network formed by an ancient (millions of years old) water-carved valleys located in the Egypt’s Eastern Desert, on the south eastern fringe of Cairo. The area was declared a national protectorate in the 1990s.

From

From MTB

This amazing trail network makes for a wide spectrum of excellent riding opportunities. From beginner-friendly wide and forgiving jeep trails, to rolling serpentine singletrack heaven on the valley’s southern and northern shoulders, to ultra-technical cliffside goat trails further south. Killer climbs, hair-raising descents..it’s all there!

From MTB

From MTB

From

From MTB

The wadi (wadi is arabic for “valley”) bed…

From MTB

The trails are harsh and very rocky. Some times the fall penalty is just too high to risk a steep technical descent…

From MTB

The desert fauna is elusive to spot, but we are always shutter-happy when we do spot any of the area’s wildlife forms (the Wadi is home to a large variety of desert wildlife, including red fox and Nubian Ibex)

From MTB

Sunset rides are always my favorite. This picture was taken on one of my favorite rides, known as The Balcony (or Ridge), many kilometers of zigzaging technical cliff-side singletrack on a hill overlooking limestone quarries to the north of the valley.

From MTB

Now that I have brought you stories of riders (and Specialized fans!) from distant lands and pristine trails , I very much welcome the opportunity of being part of the Specialized Trail Crew. As mountain biking grows in popularity more outside of the US and Europe, Specialized could sure use more than just a few good riders around the world, Egypt included. Thank you for considering me and happy riding.

...is that now I might have to scrap my plans to build one of those.

At the time of this writing, I have 293 titles on my Kindle, most of which are public domain ebooks downloaded from Project Gutenberg, Amazon’s free kindle book offerings and Manybooks.net.

My Kindle (and the very nice Brookstone Microbeam booklight you see in the picture) was a birthday gift from my ever awesome Sara.