Emma's Walking

Kara took this video on her Mother's Day camera. She took some steps before leaving for the US but now it looks like she's taking off.

Microblogging

You might have noticed the little box to the left labeled "What am I doing..." It's another Big Brother tool for me to publicize my thoughts. I’m using a tool from Twitter that allows me to Text / SMS a message from my phone and it will make it’s way to my website. The limit / gimmick is your message can only be 140 characters. Not sure why since the limit on an SMS is 160. The term microblogging is starting to be the new buzz word to describe this. MS Word’s spell checker doesn’t recognize it yet but I imagine it will by the next edition. I’m actually pretty intrigued by the idea. I did 4 posts in 24 hours. It allows me to say stuff like “Hey, walking to work is fun and why do people insist on bugging you on an airplane when it’s obvious you just want to read your magazine?” Just whip out the phone, send a text and keep on wondering about the people around me. We’ll see how long it lasts

Faith of a child

 

I was going through some photos when I should have been packing and I came across this shot of Emma. I took it with my camera phone as we waited for our order of Papa John's pizza. I had set her in a grownup size chair with a hole in the back. As I became lost in the blinking lights on my phone she slowly sank into the chair to a point where it looked like her knees were going to meet her mouth.

I pulled her up but instead of fixing the situation I set her back down again to see if there would be the same result. Sure enough there was and I decided to capture it with my phone. What I love about this picture in all its 1.3 mega pixel glory is the innocent look on her face. Knowing this can’t be right but not convinced that her dad would purposefully put her in such an awkward predicament. It’s more of a hey dad it be great if you could help but I don’t want to complain. I picked her up gave her a big kiss and we shared a bottle of water. I hope I don’t overlook to many of these moments with my little angle.

Batching It

Kara and Emma have made the annual expat migration back to the place of distant familiarity. Because of ITS travel restrictions I’m faced with the challenge of living by myself and remembering some of the reasons I decided to get married in the first place. The funny thing about being by yourself is the overly idealistic thought of how productive you will be. The fact is, without my wife here my ability to get through a to do list has suffered quite a bit. I’m hoping this won’t last the entire 7 weeks or else I’ll have lost 20 pounds, lost my job, flunked out of school and be living in a van down by the river.

Here’s my official to do / honey do list:
Fix Kara’s car (she would prefer to not have to use tape to keep the fog light in)
Clean and organize my home office
Move outside plants
Steam Carpets (I don’t know if you can rent one of these in Doha)
Yearly ./ Monthly finance audit
Square away training travel plans

What I did this weekend:
Thursday night
- Fix friends computer
- Downloaded Friday Night Lights
- Worked on travel plans
- Watched pilot episode

Friday
- Went to church
- Had lunch with pastor until 4:00 (We decided God was working on me)
- Watched FNL until 3:00 AM

Saturday
- Got out of Bed at 12:00
- Watched some FNL
- Cleaned Kitchen
- Watched some FNL
- Cooked and stored 2 pounds of hamburger meat. I got creative and put graded cheese into the meat itself.
- Raided my daughter’s stash of corn rice puff disks
- Watched some more FNL
- Prepared for homegroup tomorrow
- Watched some FNL
- Blogged my slothful weekend

So my question is, why does this happen to me? Does it happen to a lot of people? Have a reverted back to being a 3rd grader who needs to sit in the kitchen until his homework is done? I think it is a matter of everyday life and wondering if only I had some time to myself. If only I could do what I want to do. Well it turns out what I want to do is watch 8 hours of Friday Night Lights and eat cereal in my boxing shorts. I hope that after I’ve indulged in the forbidden fruit of FNL to 3:00 AM I’ll understand it wasn’t that big of a deal and get to a little more productive things. But I gots to know, will the Panthers make it to state? I think this is why I like the idea of school so much. I have a defined schedule with set goals and it keeps me honest.

And don’t worry too much honey. I think my sloth stage is over. With 5 empty cereal bowls sitting on my desk I've decided I'm was a little to close to having a hazmat team being called.