The Boy Who Waited

Tonight I went to the Grandview Theater to watch Doctor Who. This is no big deal, except that I went by myself. To a theater. By myself.

I wanted to watch the show and had no one to go with, so I had to decide between sitting and home feeling sorry for myself or going alone.

One time I went to Iraq by myself. That was a much bigger deal and sometimes I forget that, if I can do that, I can probably do most things that confront me.

The flip side of that, though, is that I was once confronted by Iraq and all that goes with that - language, culture, finding community, worshiping Jesus. Today I'm confronted by things that feel stupid. Like whether or not to go to a theater.

What I'm saying simply is that most things I do seem dull and I don't want to do dull.

I feel like I'm waiting. Between adventures in the past and adventures in the future.

I know it doesn't make sense. What I've written is vague and shallow feeling. It feels like that to me, too.

I hate to use television as metaphor (or maybe I love it), but I feel like a former companion of the Doctor. In this metaphor, the Doctor = adventure = God. I feel like I have been left behind and the adventures now continue with other people. I hate that most of all.

I'm done thinking about it for now.

The Late Great Johnny Castle

LOS ANGELES (UPI)—The U.S. cable television network Encore said Tuesday it plans to celebrate the career of the late Patrick Swayze by screening several of his films.

In keeping with the wishes of his family, there will be no corner seating.

I can't take credit for the above, but I wish I could. It's from woot.com (woot,woot!)

ABC Family will show Dirty Dancing tonight @ 8 pm for anyone who needs to get their fix. According to the promo, there will be new scenes.

To a movie from 1987.

Angie and I will be watching unless I can't pull her away from Cops.

Saturday Morning Tidbits

I say tidbits like I have multiple items on offer.

That's not really true.It's not true yet, anyway.

I am sitting at work bored. It's a slow morning building up to what looks to be a rather busy afternoon and evening. Until the excitement starts, I should be working on renaming and moving faxes out of the general inbox.

That's as much fun as it sounds, so I am looking for distractions.

If you have any, send them my way.

Here are the sites I normally use to cure my boredom. I hope you like.

Plime: Plime is a forum in which people post links of interest. I like it because it's often updated and I find the links to be of interest most of the time.

ColumbusUnderground: This is how I keep up on the happenings in the 614. This is also where some poster named Hassan made promises of a Kurdish bakery in Columbus and then disappeared into the night.

I don't hold that against the site.

Blip: Twitter-like music site. One can follow others and listen to the songs they like.

I also read the news and whatnot, but you're on your own for that.

Bad Start

From Food Fight (with editing by me)

1:30 am - I was awakened by Nila's wailing as Angie came into the bedroom and told me it was my turn to try and get Nila to sleep. I went into Nila's room and spent the next hour trying to work my magic.

I'm not really sure what was wrong, though. She has a cold and has had a cold for the past few days, so maybe that played some part. I told her it was time to sleep and she put herself back down and closed her eyes. I thought she was asleep and I tried to leave the room only to hear her yelling for mommy once I got into the hallway.

We did that twice. The last time, I waited an extra long time before I snuck back out. It stuck that time and she was asleep at least until I left for work.

4:30 am - After getting a couple of additional hours of sleep, my phone rang. At first, I just assumed it was my alarm, but I saw a number on the screen. I answered it.

It was a tech from California.

"Is this the Command Center?" he asked.

"No," I said. This is the sleeping center, buenos tardes.

I gave him the correct number and went back to sleep.

I have had to give my phone number to a few techs for various reasons, but this is the first time one of them has called me when I'm not on duty.

A sign of things to come.

6:30 am - I woke up 30 minutes later than I should have. I should say, I got out of bed. I'm still working on waking up.

6:50 am - After a quick shower and dressing, I tried to throw together a quick lunch and something for breakfast. I put my oatmeal and milk in a plastic bowl - I can cook it at work - and made a nice salad for lunch.

Then I dumped that salad all over the kitchen floor.

7:05 am - Lunchless, I arrived at work only 5 minutes late. Not too shabby.

What is shabby is the milk that leaked from my bag leaving a trail from my car, through the parking garage, across the bridge, up the elevator and down the hall.

I put the oatmeal in the microwave anyway. I haven't gone back for it yet.

7:30 am - I am writing this post. Next, I'm going to go get my oatmeal. Wish me luck.

Here's to a better Sunday than I've had so far!

White Space

I've spent an hour trying to fix the layout of this blog, so that an ad appears in the white space at the top right.

I can't seem to make it work and I don't know that there's anything I can do to fix it. We may have to live with the white box.

I hope this doesn't cause anyone - besides me - any great distress.

I am at work this morning and nothing is happening. Seriously nothing.

We've had a few pone calls, but mostly silence.

I'm bored.

I Yearbooked Myself

Yearbook Yourself is back with some pretty awesome new pictures.

Farm Town

I don't know how many times I've played Bejeweled on Facebook today.

If you forced me to guess I'd say 297 and I'd wonder why you cared enough to force a number out of me.

Seriously, you should have something else to worry about.

One might ask why I spend so much time playing games whilst at work. The answer is fairly simple: it's better than sitting at my desk twiddling my thumbs between phone calls.

Angie often asks why I don't do something more productive. I explain that I can't focus on any one thing too deeply as I'm drawn away to the phone at least once every 5 minutes or so on average.

Some of the calls are complex, some are simple, but all require my attention to be drawn from something else. It means I spend a lot of time on meaningless tasks - if tasks isn't too strong a word for Bejeweled.

But today I may have sunk to a new low - one I'm less than comfortable with. I started playing FarmTown. Now I'm waiting for my virtual grapes and potatoes to ripen so I can harvest them and buy a virtual fence or hay bale or pile of wood.

Ugh.

Uncanny

When I saw this picture of Obama, I could think of only one thing.

Our friend from Skookum:

Angie's Contest

Angie has entered a contest. See her post here and wish her luck.

Trying Not to Complain

Angie and I keep saying that 2009 will be our best year yet. So far, that's true in many respects.

However, I look forward to the promises God has made us and I long to be there now. I struggle with the everyday things that aren't prefect.

That's one of the reasons I haven't felt like writing. All the words that want to tumble out are complaints, and I don't want fill pages with those words.

My future is brighter than my now and my now is brighter than my past. I try to keep that in mind.

13Months

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the blog's lack of direction and purpose.

I can't go on forever aimlessly. I need a framework around which to work.

Since the blog was started to track thirteen months of an experience - Iraq - then I will go back to the original intent.

Over the next 13 months I will work towards two goals (I have more than two, but I'll focus on two here).

I am going to do two things between now and March 2010 about which I will commit to writing here.

Expect an announcement this week.

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on your inauguration.

I got my new power cord yesterday, so we both had a pretty good day.

I am trying to be positive about your presidency. It's not really related to you. I had a dream during the election circus in which I was stuck at a 7-11 without a ride home. You gave me a ride. You were very pleasant.

I've never had a dream about a president or even a candidate before and it made me feel good about you. Like maybe it was a good omen.

But that only lasted until I turned on the tv. Maybe I have a contrary nature, but I can't believe that, if the media tells me you're the nation's savior, it's true. Your supporters are kind of nuts. Today, Oprah called you the Light of the New Age, or something crazy like that.

That woman has lost her mind.

The day before the inauguration, she interviewed Ashton Kutcher. No one understands the magnitude of swearing in the first black president like Ashton Kutcher.

And the Ashton Kutchers make me nervous. They're telling me that now is a time to come together and forget about party affiliation or ideological differences. Why couldn't we do that when you didn't agree with the president?

They're telling me that now is the time for us to serve our country. It's funny to me because Bush said the same thing after 9/11. If we had truly done it then, we wouldn't be in the position we're in now.

I think the difference is that you use the rhetoric of hope and change rather than Bush's focus on security and war. I get that.

I want to wish you good luck with your presidency and I promise to do my best not to judge you by the giant cloud of morons that have made you their messiah. I just ask you not to fall for your own myth.

Best Regards,

rdmeeker

Maizebread

My favorite comic strikes again

Angie is Famous

If you live in the central Ohio area and you watch Fox 28 news, then you were treated to Angie on the news.

She was interviewed for her work on the Crimestoppers website.

There's a serial rapist in Columbus and it's driven the site's traffic way up. The site was down today, so they did a story and featured Angie.

Yay, Angie.

I tried to find video of it online, but I can't. Angie did a great job.

Also, check out the website. She did a great job with that, too.

**Update**

Angie is also famous on ABC 6. As of 11:15 pm, she was the featured story on the website, too.

See her here.

Dancer in the Dark

Have you ever seen that movie with Bjork, Dancer in the Dark?

I saw it a few years ago, but I had forgotten about it completely. It's really pretty good. It's on right now and, though I should be sleeping, I can't stop watching it.

Nothing to Say

Hey

I don't really have anything to say. I just wanted to check in and let you know that I'm doing pretty good. Angie is good, too.

How're you doing?