"Yay! I'm sleeping!"

Improved!

The Road Warrior.

Pinto Bean puts on her determined face in honor of the 40th anniversary of Winston Churchill's death.

Like the venerable J. Peterman Company, we at the Far-Flung Ryan-Silva Media Empire travel the world to get our ideas for exotic wearables that let you show what's special about you: Class. Style. Sophistication.

That's why we designed the Horsehead Brand Toilet Paper Shirt. Inspired* by a roll of Chinese Horsehead Brand toilet paper we found at the UN guesthouse in Jalalabad, we knew that you would want this shirt to express the real you: Soft. Hygenic. Absorbent.

The shirts come in a variety of fashionable styles.

If you've never used Chinese toilet paper, how can we describe to it to you? This thick pink toilet tissue is stretchier than any paper product has a right to be. Just like this shirt. Thick. Pink. Stretchy. (Pink models only.)

The graphic on the front of the shirt, lovingly scanned from the toilet paper wrapper.

The graphic on the back of the shirt.

Order yours today.


*Some would say "stolen," but we would respond that intellectual property belongs to the workers and peasants.

Julie took Isabel to meet her family in Omaha for ten days this month. That left me to my own devices. So I did what any red-blooded American male would do when temporarily relieved of new parental responsibilities: I went to Afghanistan.

To say that this was a short trip would be to give insufficient play to the adverb “insanely.” Consider that I left here on Friday and arrived at my final destination of Jalalabad on the following Monday. On a ten-day trip. So I do not have a lot of photos to share with you. I took a total of four in Afghanistan; one because the security officer at the Jalalabad airstrip wanted to make sure my camera worked. Another turns out to be a photo mostly of power lines. Here are the other two:

A mountain.

An airplane.

Aviation in Afghanistan is great fun, and the Kabul airport feels at this point like an old friend. I flew into and out of Kabul from Dubai on a UN Humanitarian Air Services flight, which is chartered from a company called Phoenix Aviation. This name strikes a discordant note – rising from the ashes of what, exactly? The UNHAS Dubai-Kabul flights are on workmanlike 737s with Russian stewardesses whose demeanor and outfits make you feel like it’s 1976, but in a good way.

UNHAS runs domestic flights, too, and this is how I got to Jalalabad. Jalalabad is not far from Kabul, but there have been some unhappy incidents on the road, so I avoided it. I couldn’t get on the UNHAS flight back, though, which leads me to the Kam Air plane above.

Kam Air is the country’s only private airline, and it runs flights all over the country. The pilot of the Soviet plane pictured above was Russian, and while I talked with him for a while, I didn’t ask him what I really wanted to know – what is it like to be a Russian pilot living in Afghanistan? That guy either has some serious cojones or a screw loose; given that he was the pilot I decided to believe the former.

So how would I rate Kam Air? Suffice it to say that the half-hour flight was worth every one of the eighteen dollars I paid for it. They did beat out United Business Class in one important area: they did not try to show me Catwoman in both directions.

I had a giggle moment on approach to Kabul airport. As we approached the runway, I noticed a piece of landing gear, rudely severed from some unlucky aircraft, on the ground about a football field from the runway. There was no way to tell whether its rightful owner lost it in the air or on the ground, but I hope they leave it there because, to me, the mystery is part of the charm of aviation in Afghanistan.

Isabel once again took her highly-acclaimed scowl on the road last week, this time hitting Omaha, Nebraska to visit Julie's family.

The key to bonding with infants is to share with them what they enjoy the most, Grandma Ryan finds.

Aunt Anne smiles while Isabel screams -- a recurring theme of the trip.

Uncle Jim instinctively checks Isabel for rust and peeling paint.

Aunt Kathy and Uncle Dan enjoy the novel experience of handling a child without worrying about putting it through college.

Isabel and her cousin Bobby present a united front.

Cousin John, used to opening conversations with young women with, "what's your major?", is at a loss in this case.

Puppet regime: hanging with cousin Eileen.

Cousin Danny does his best Dr. Karp impression.

Ryan-Silvas and Reed-Bouleys.

A couple of weeks ago, we got the first few bills from the hospital. One of them included a charge marked "X-ray". Neither of us were aware of Julie having an X-ray, but I figured it was the same charge code in the computer as the use of some other diagnostic equipment, so I didn't think much of it.

The other day we got a copy of Julie's medical records. Apparently they were in such a hurry to perform the c-section, they didn't bother to count the instruments before they started. So they had to x-ray her while she was still under to make sure they didn't leave anything inside. We were both unaware of this, and would have remained so had Julie not requested the records.

But hey, at least they checked.

Julie and Isabel are in Omaha visiting Julie's family until 18 January, so don't expect any new photos until then.

The Bean demonstrates her devastating right hook after a bath.

Catching some z's on Dad's lap.