Rumors

So Amanda ran into one of our neighbors yesterday and it appears that the consensous is that we must be building a house. Huh? I guess the girl pieced together that 1. we would only be renting for a few months. 2. We had a kid. And 3. We're old. So apparently that means we're building a house.

I guess we make those types of leaps all the time using what we know.

I suppose I'm just let down that she doesn't think we're superheroes.

Last King of Scotland

Looking for something else, I discovered that Giles Foden's novel The Last King of Scotland is due out as a movie soon. Such a great book. If the movie is done well (like The Constant Gardener or Hotel Rwanda) it should be well worth the ticket price. But it could be difficult to show Idi Amin's sense of humor without making him less than the monster he really was.

It stars the guy who played Mr. Tumnus in Narnia, Forest Whitaker and Gillian Anderson - that X-Files girl. It's just a shame they couldn't get Rachel Weisz...

Watch the promo and tell me what you think.

Obligatory 9-11 Posting

It was tragic. Lots if of people died. Lots of people survive without those loved ones who died.

But it didn't really have an impact on my life in any way beyond the superficial. I've never been to New York or the Pentagon so the new highschool in Heyworth seems more out of place than the construction site in New York. I knew no firefighters or office workers or Penagon officials or ambulance drivers. I didn't watch the 9-11 telathon.

This may sound insensitive but this is how my life has been impacted: I take off my shoes at airports. Honestly, that's about it.

Maybe it's about proximity. When I hear "New York" I have about as much personal connection to it as many people do when they hear "Africa". I get sad when I hear about college kids getting jailed for doing nothing more than forgetting their IDs. I dream about starving families living within sight of the Intercontinental Hotel. That's where my heart aches. But New York is fiction to me.

Veggie Tales on TV

It was only a matter of time before Veggie Tales sold out to corporate America. That time was at 9:00am this morning on NBC. I sit here watching "Asparagus of La Mancha" as part of the new "Veggie Tales on TV". They make a point of saying that this is different from the DVDs. So far nothing "Christian" but also nothing the least bit offensive.

I reserve passing judgement...for now.

Doppelganger

Last night I was watching National Treasure there was my brother Pete acting as FBI sidekick #1. I was reminded that we all have a doppelganger somewhere in the world. The eyebrows were a bit too thick and he stood up straighter but it was almost Pete. Sort of a Hoolywood transformation of Pete, like when Hulk Hogan suddenly became Hollywood Hogan.

In college I found mine, or at least others found me as him. I was traveling to speech tournaments throughout the midwest when, gradually, people started complimenting me. At first it was nice, especially since by then I had decided to coast through the sunset of my scholarship years and simply be happy to be traveling and not care about actually doing well, but soon it became disturbing. People would come up to me and start into the middle of some previously begun conversation. They would make inside jokes that I didn't understand or reference some tournament I had never been to. It wasn't until they started congratulating me for a speech I never gave, in an event that I didn't compete in that I realized what had happened. And also someone asked why I had changed into my casual clothes right before awards (Note: those were my competition clothes.)

His name was Jeff Archibald and he was a much better speaker than I was, dressed better, and was much more popular than I was. He was also about five inches shorter than me. I think he might have been from one of the Kentucky schools or maybe Middle Tennessee State. But he could have been my movie double if he had a step to stand on. Assumming that some movie, of course, called for a better looking, more talented version of me with a slight southern twang in his voice.

I'm also playing with the idea that we all have not one, but several. I think it might be continental. Or racial. I have an Indian friend who looks like a Bollywood version of Dustin Hoffman. I once met a Congalese version of Jason Rennert. My father once made a breakfast appearance as a Singaporean businessman. And I know I've seen others.

We all have one. He might not sound like you or act like you but he looks like you...from a distance...when you squint...in the right light...with different hair...and clothes...and maybe glasses.

Talismen

We went to Uncle George's funeral today.

In his hands were a deck of cards. Next to him was his yellow thermal coffee mug from Hucks. Those were the things I associated with him most. There were photos of him and his haulin' truck, a framed "Dad" written in Susan B. Anthony dollars and lots of funeral flowers - some of which were sent by people who really couldn't afford to.

I think I'd like my funeral to be held in a bookstore. Maybe in the travel section. Or in the "Recommended by Our Staff" area. Or in "Favorites."

And for that truly overdramatic element play the Beatles "Yesterday".

Tennis

So much of the great times in my life have involved tennis. I really can't remember much of my grandpa Tony without thinking of him on a court. Even when there weren't toys when we visited relatives, we wouldn't be bored as long as there was a court near by.

I can't remember the names of most of my gradeschool teachers but I can remember most of the names of my tennis rackets. Jack Kramer, the Weed, the Urge. (I always tried to avoid the Everett.) Trying Gretch's "composite" or Dad's new aluminum one. The old rackets with the screw on braces that were supposed to prevent them from warping. The new Prince just lacks the character of the old wooden ones

As a family, the sport was one of those things that connected us. Even when Ben and then Pete were too tall for me to really play basketball against them, we could get out on the courts and play. Ben's spins confused me for years.

In gradeschool, I first really felt independent biking off to BHS for lessons during the summer. In highschool, Scott Noth and I would play a couple of sets before walking to Hucks for a Big Gulp and wasting a dollar in quarters playing Bad Dudes. Then there was the summer when Aaron Bird and I played tennis or racquetball almost everyday.

Finally I'm healthy enough to play again. Just getting out and hitting with Barry at the Carmen courts the other day was great.

Travel log

In the last six weeks I have been to:
Atlanta
Colorado Springs
Chicago
St. Louis
Dallas
Charleston
Indianapolis
Mineapolis
Singapore
Hong Kong

Amanda, @ and I will move to Charleston this weekend where I'll finally finish that thesis. Hopefully by Christmas I'll have that degree in hand along with tickets for a January or February-departing ticket for Asia.

No offence to you all but I'm just eager to get back to that elsewhere where I belong.

Moving back for school

So Amanda and I will be house hunting...again. We thought we had a place lined up in Mattoon but that fell though. Tomorrow we'll go down and look for a couple of days and see if we can't find a place that will rent to us through the end of the year. Hopefully I will have finished my degree by then and we can move on to Asia.

Speaking of...

Our ten-day trip there was great. We got a chance to see where we'd likely go to language school and even a couple of possible places where I might work. It was hot but not Turkana hot. The food is good and there are enough of the conviences we've come to depend on to make the move a realistic possibility. I will have to dress nicer but on the up side, Amanda is in favor of us getting a motorcycle if we move. The problem might be finding a helmet big enough for this noggin.

Off to Mattoon/Charleston tomorrow and Texas on Friday.

My father, my son

One of the things I frequently say about my son is that he has never met a stranger. He, like most kids, just shines when he's around new people. Peakapoo, waving, smiling, raspberries blown to stewardesses or Singapore security.

Like his curly hair, tendancies to pick up colds and inability to stand still in airports, I wonder how much of this is from me. And yet I see it even more so in my father.

Dad will talk to anybody. I learned about how to catch crawdads in the Current river because of overhearing him talk to...anyone. It's a very Donald Miller sort of thing. Why thinkwe can only learn from books or in classrooms? It used to bother me but I've learned that the worst people will do is pretend to read or ignore you. I wonder what Dad learned in his years of simply talking to people he didn't yet know.

So much can be picked up by zooming in on someone who might just know something you don't. We found a hotel room here simply because Amanda noticed a westerner reading Blue Like Jazz. The city was booked but we followed this expat to where she was staying and it was amazing! We could see Malaysia from the rooftop pool. We walked the beach and at Jacob's Cafe. We slept. It was great.

Now I'm off to see if I can find a particular stranger on this plane who is going to the same place we are and might know the friends we're staying with. Lisa? Are you out there???

Back to school

After some paperwork, persuasion and a lot of prayer, I managed to get the OK to finish one of my degrees. This means Amanda, @ and I will be moving to Mattoon for a short while at least.

We leave for Asia tomorrow morning to scout for jobs (for after the schooling).

Keeps us in your thoughts.

All until July...probably

Leaving tomorrow for Colorado, then on to Asia until mid July.

Some things:

I love eating with chopsticks. I own four sets of them from Pier One and keep a disposable pair in my backpack. Anything involving rice is fair game.

My wife has me eating and enjoying food I would, as a kid, have tried to hide under a napkin or tried swallowing whole with a gulp of milk.

I am seriously considering moving to a place where I won't need to own socks.

I sometimes don't want to sleep for fear of dreaming of Africa too loudly.

I have officially started wearing my American (read: fat) wedding band.

I drink hot tea (not coffee) every morning from one of two cups, both have roosters on them.

I am a charter member of an organization I have never participated in or can even pronounce the name of correctly when I say it quickly. Illinois Philological Association.

I used to tell lies. Now I tell stories.

I have never lived in the same house longer than seven years.

My wife looks great in button down dress shirts.

I watch the same movie more than once only when I have to.

What's on my bookshelf is more important to me than what is in the fridge.

I don't have any of my t-shirts from college. I still have a tie or two from highschool.

I am over a hundred pounds lighter than Shaq. My junior high free throw percentage is slightly better than his is currently.

I do not remember my highschool locker combination but I do remember my phone number from when I was six.

When I think of childhood, I think of the farm and the hours I spent in the pasture and barn thinking of brilliant things I would one day do but haven't (mostly because only superheroes can do them) .

My son is charismatic and caring. Only sometimes is he trouble.

I spend a lot of my day thinking.

A slight twist???

Amanda, @ and I were planning on moving from Indy sometime near the end of August but may not need to if the friends who were going to use the house choose to take a Residency during the fall semester. As much as I would love to be closer to our Illinois friends, it would be nice to stay put until we permanently move overseas.

We leave Saturday for what will be something like a 20,000 mile trip. In the course of 3 weeks we will go to Colorado and Asia.

Mmmm...frequent flier miles.

Toddler CSI

Odd event this morning. Walked into @'s room after hearing the normal sounds of him talking to his stuffed animals, shaking the rails of his crib and greeting the day. When the lights came up, Amanda and I noticed blood on his face. Not graphic, "jump into the car, we're going to the emergency room" amounts of blood but any amount on a 20 month old is too much.

As Amanda begins cleaning the otherwise contented baby we begin looking for clues. Blood on his face, head and hands. We look to see the cause (his nose) and check him for other wounds (none). I begin to examine the splatter pattern on the bed, taking note of the small amount located in one corner, the dried fingerprints nearby. No signs of foul play, no signs of undue trauma. Time of accident - recent. Cause of accident...hey it's a bloody nose. No big deal.

Given his cold and prior iron problems, we decided on a quick trip to the doctor. No problem. He's fine.

Ah, the joys of fatherhood.

The buzz...

For the last few weeks things have been relatively slow around the ol' hoosier homestead with only the scattered obligation. Amanda, @ and I have fallen into basic routines of trips the gym, the odd trip into the city, a treat before bedtime. It really felt nice just to be static.

But now the chaos begins.

In mid June we have a week long speaking gig here followed the next day by a trip to Colorado Springs for basically the same thing. The real fun starts a few days after that near the first of July when we fly to Asia to look at a possible new home. After ten days there we'll fly home only to begin relocating somewhere new (our house will be passed off to some friends in September). We're thinking Springfield or Charleston areas. And somewhere in here we'll be making trips to Texas and southern Illinois.

Oh yeah, and I'll be trying to finish up some grad school things before we make any permanent moves overseas too. (I figure I hold the family tennis title, I can't be left behind Gretch in the "smarter than thou" event.)

All this means we'll likely be Stateside through the end of the year, depending...

Travel Question

Amanda, @ and I are doing a lot of traveling this summer and wondered if anyone has a preferred way to book flights online. Suggestions for the BEST site for the CHEAPEST prices???

Thanks in advance.

Cincinnati Question

My older brother and his family will be relocating to Cincinnati this summer and I told him I'd see if anyone could help with this:

Suggestions for a good church in the Cinci area? They have three kids and would probably be looking one with a MOPs or MOP-like program as well as the usual prerequesites of community, activism and, oh yeah, Christian stuff.

I'll pass on suggestions.

Our Oil Solution

I've held back on this hoping that I could somehow profit from the idea but now I feel I owe it to America to offer my solution to America's dependence on foreign oil.

We need to buy more, not less, oil from the Middle East. I mean really buy...a lot...right now. As the great global consumer of things we really don't need American's need to start all but bathing in the stuff.

Run up your credit cards. Fill every bucket, pot and pan in your house with petrol. I mean Mickey Mouse when it rains kind of containers. Think of new and ingenious ways to use crude. Strip the paint off your walls with it. Barbecue with it - not as charcoal starter but as a replacement FOR charcoal. Kill off unwanted dandelions. Make your own fireworks. Be creative. Embrace America's natural giftedness in finding ways to waste fuel and light things on fire.

So drive to your mailbox. Take trips just to watch your odometer spin. Hit the road whenever you want to listen to the radio. Drive back and forth over the central and eastern time lines just to see if you can somehow disrupt the space-time contineum. Try and outrun the sunset - or if you're from Indiana, the approaching stormfront. Drive to California and try to catch a glimpse of TomKitty. Consume, consume, consume!!!

The quicker we use the world's oil, the better. Since this is all non renewable, the world will run out of it eventually. Let's just hurry up the process. When the Shieks and oil barons run out of the stuff, so does their power. What's Dubai without oil? A desert with a bunch of shopping malls and a palm shaped subdivision. Sand and camels. Oh and the foundation of human civilization - but let's face it, that's not really important.

And when there's no oil left? The world will have to start looking at ethanol. It goes without saying that the Middle East will never be able to produce enough corn to contend with our farmers. Europe? To borrow a term from an animated hero of mine, those "cheese eating surrender monkeys" would never dig up their wineries (or "whineries" in the case of their international involvement) to have them replaced with corn. And America knows all about producing too much of the stuff.

After all, this is is the home of 4H. We have towns with names like Farmer City and Heyworth and Ethanolia...good, American, farm towns. We have corn festivals and put things like "Soybean Capital of the World" on signs welcoming people to our cities.

So it would come full circle back to the American farmer. He feeds the world now. One day he will fuel the world. But only if we help waste oil.

Goodbye do-overs

Every few days I catch myself reflecting over our last few weeks in Africa. Recently I've been drawn to something a bit less geographically defined.

Are there people in your life you would like to say goodbye to again...differently? Maybe you simply didn't get a chance to say goodbye because you missed crossing paths one last time. Maybe you saw the person but you were too busy to give them the attention they rightly deserved. Perhaps you were in a bad mood because you hadn't slept in days and their country had invited you to leave. Maybe someone else was there so you couldn't be as open with that person as you would have liked. Maybe you didn't understand how valuable that person was until later.

And now I wouldn't know what to say if I could do it over.

Ahead of the curve?

Since moving to Indy, my wife and I have been internet nomads. We go next door to use the wireless at PCCC - often resorting to borrowing one of the neighbors' waves when our first choice thwarts our attempts; we go to the public library; I've even wandered throughout the backyard hoping that some signal would come floating by so we could connect without leaving the general vicinity. Because we have our own cell phones and don't plan on staying in one place very long, we've been reluctant to get DSL or dial-up access in our home.

The problem with this nomadic lifestyle is that we are rarely able to look at the internet at the same time. If we're at the library together, Amanda or I need to be watching "@". Sure, we could take him next door but do you know how many places there are to hide in a building that seats 1200 on a Sunday?

So after much stalling, we broke down and decided to get an aircard that would allow us to use the internet from our laptops anywhere. Verizon had a nicely priced plan and since we were already customers, we decided to byte the bullet. After a day of frustration spent calling tech support with both Dell and Verizon, it became clear that it wasn't going to work.

In our attempt to get newest, most cutting-edge computer we could - knowing that in three years even that would be obsolete - we actually bought a computer that uses a newbe "express card" drive. They don't even make aircards for it yet.

Thankfully, Dell reassured us that someone, somewhere, would be coming out with one...sometime.

Note: This seems eerily similar to the time Dad purchased a Texas Instruments 99 4a computer for the family just before the computer division of that company went bankrupt. Gosh I miss Munchman.