Picking up the pieces of the past week, festooning the fragments of the last few days about the place, collecting the crumbs left in the crevices of your mind – whatever you want to call it, Friday Fragments here we come!

This afternoon on Twitter @Doc_Samantha linked to the following pieces from guardian.co.uk on Somalia:

Mogadishu: the children caught between fighting and famine
Drought crisis in Somalia – in pictures

One of the pictures at the second link is captioned “A MSF (Doctors Without Borders) feeding centre in Dadaab refugee camp, Kenya, near the Somali border”

I’ve had a link to MSF tucked away down in the footer of my blog (and in the sidebar of my old site) for some time now and I’ve made once off donations to them a few times but I’ve been meaning for a while to set up a monthly donation and Sam’s links prompted me to finally get around to actually doing it. There are ALWAYS people somewhere in the world in desperate need of help and an organisation like MSF is best able to provide that help when they have income streams they can rely on so regular donations are a wonderful way to support their work.

MSF operates independently of any political, military, or religious agendas. Medical teams conduct evaluations on the ground to determine a population’s medical needs before opening programs. The key to MSF’s ability to act independently in response to a crisis is its independent funding. Ninety percent of MSF’s overall funding comes from private sources, not governments. In 2008, MSF had 3.7 million individual donors and private funders worldwide.

Last night I had a dream which culminated in me trying to use apple slinkies as boot laces in a pair of purple Docs. At which point the sheer absurdity of it all woke me up.

I have NO IDEA where that came from but now I kind of want a pair of purple Docs.

I finished watching Game of Thrones just recently and have launched straight into devouring the books (which I had not previously read), I’m part way through the second one now. It’s not a good idea to complacently watch something like that show on one’s laptop while there are kids in the house. At one point I realised that the exposition scene that was on, and to which I was not paying all that much attention, and which was being watched by David (14 yrs) over my shoulder because he had come into the room to ask me a question…was set in a brothel. A very busy brothel. Oops. Oh well, cue useful discussion about stuff!

I’m just glad it was David and not Tom (9yrs).

I’ve found my way on to Google Plus (you can find me here), it looks pretty good but I won’t be moving in there properly just yet. My home base is Twitter (@mimbles) and until I can publish to Google Plus from my Twitter client the way I can for Facebook I’m not likely to remember to put stuff on my G+ stream. (Surely I’m not the only person fed up with typing Google Plus every time?)

I’m going out tonight to meet up with a friend who is back briefly from Holland for a visit, sadly she’s not feeling too well so the hoped for karaoke has had to be shelved, but a few drinks and some good conversation will be very welcome.

The rest of the weekend promises to involve lots more decluttering in the hope that we can start the school term next week with the house more or less under control.

What are you doing with your weekend? I hope it’s a fabulous one!

Don’t forget to pop on over to Mrs 4444’s place and check out all the other Friday Fragmenters!