A lot has happened in the year since I last even visited my own website. After losing our last, best dog in October 2009, we inherited a five year-old Boxer a few months later and—soon after in a fit of misguided mourning—we impulse-purchased a white "Mastiff-mix" puppy of indeterminate origin that is white, but likely lacking any Mastiff genes having had those crowded out by her Spaniel / Pit (?) parents. She's a bitch from the wrong side of the Hopkinsville, Kentucky tracks as it were, and she's keeping our lives interesting with displays of opportune puppy chewing (wife's shoes, Boxer's collar, socks, underwear) and she's hobbled by congenitally-bad knee caps that we can only hope will miraculously heal thyselves. Anna Belle and her Boxer sister Chelsea are pretty good dogs, but the emotional attachment thing is probably going to take a few more years to even approach the feelings we had for our late Mastiff-Rottweiler mix Miette. Those are the breaks, girls.

Mr. Barber is a Hoosier by birth, but a Wildcat fan by the Grace of God. He spent his undergraduate years at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, followed by a year in Tianjin, China studying Mandarin Chinese. At the close of his year abroad Barber also traveled for several weeks in western China, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, where he studied how not to piss off the local people (Uighurs, Pathans, Afghani warlords, Tamil Tigers). It was in Pakistan that Mr. Barber first developed the "Dysentery Diet," a sensible alternative to expensive diet programs that force you to buy proprietary food stuffs and enormous oversized clothing for their bogus TV commercials. You can learn more about the "Dysentery Diet" by flying to Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and drinking a couple of tasty and refreshing "Mango Milkshakes". Also, you can read another traveler's account of a trip remarkably similar to Mr. Barber's jaunt down the Karakorum Highway here.