That's it, I'm moving to London

I just read a story that everyone's favorite LA soccer star is going to practice with my favorite English football team in January.  Yes, Becks is going to workout and practice with Arsenal in January.  MLS is not in season right now.  But Becks still needs to be in shape.  He needs to stay in shape for his next season of MLS and so that he can play for the English national team.

Arsenal is the only "big" team in England that takes crap from English fans for only playing "foreigners."  The team is run by a Frenchman and manned almost entirely by non-English players.  There's only one or two guys who qualify for the English national team on the Arsenal squad and both of them are so young that they play on the Under 21 team, not the main national team. 

But here's Arsenal, going out of their way to let the former English captain train with them so that he will be fit to play for the English national team while his league is on break.  Obviously I don't really care about national teams.  But I want the English fans to quit their complaining about Arsenal.  It's a big deal right now that England is supposedly not turning out young men who can play soccer at the same level as other those from other nations.  The Arsenal manager doesn't restrict himself to just the English talent pool when he's looking for young men who will fit in on his team.  If he needs to get 4 from Africa, 1 from Belarus, 1 from the Czeck Republic, 2 from Spain  and so on, that's what he does.  And when a good player asks, "Hey, do you mind if I run around with your boys to keep in shape while my league is off season?" he throws his hands up in that famous French shrug and says, "Why not?"

So, yeah, I want to move to London just to watch Becks train with Arsenal.  Surely, they need someone to video their training sessions?

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Pack Ratting (again)

Every once in a while I have to go through my Text messages to clean them out.  I'm bad about not deleting them after I read them and then I run out of memory and can't receive more.  I realized that there are a few messages on my phone that I keep.  Either they remind me of a fun time or they have some piece of info that I've never transferred to any other device.  Here's a quick run-down of what messages I've saved and why (newest to oldest):

• 411 will now send you a text message of the number you asked for.  My most recent saved txt is the customer service number for my cable company.  I should transfer this to the address book of my phone, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  ... one day.
• The home address of a friend who recently moved back to town.  I was supposed to go to one of those "come to my house and buy over-priced crap you'll never use" parties at her house a couple of weeks ago.  I backed out at the last minute because I'd been having headaches and her house is over an hour away.  I couldn't face a two hour round trip thinking that my headache may return at any minute.  It's a shame because I did want to see her new place and spend time with her and her kids.  I should save this over on my Yahoo maps account.  ... one day.
  
• The weather report for Dallas, Texas from a couple of months ago.  I saved this just to remind myself that Google can do this - send a message about the weather to my phone.  I hear about these cool services, use them once and then forget about them.  Hopefully, I will remember about "A Google" because I have this message saved ... probably not.
• A message from a friend who is no longer in my congregation - "Still need blinds for the front?"  She and her husband were going to sell and install blinds in my house last year, but complications came up and it never happened.  This is a two-fold reminder:  I still need blinds and I need to call this friend.  She is fun and I feel bad about not keeping in touch with her after the congregation split.
• A scripture my Bookstudy Overseer sent me - Job 14:14, 15 "Our tears are precious to Jah."  This was really the second part of a message that was too long to fit in to one on my phone/service.  Evidently, the first part of the message didn't mean as much to me as this part.  I've thought about this scripture quite a bit over the past few months.
• A Twitter message from an actor on Stargate SG-1.  He's expressing his jealousy that a costar got an iPhone before him.  I'm not sure why I've kept this.  Twitter is a "micro" blogging tool.  You type 140 character posts.  People subscribe to your feed.  They can get that feed on a web page or directly to their phone by txt.  I subscribed to several "famous-y" people when I first discovered it.  This guy is pretty funny, so he's one of the few I've kept up with.  I guess I kept this particular message because it seems to reveal a very witty personality.  I'm a geek.  I'm weird.
• A sound clip that I recorded for myself listing three software packages that we were thinking about investigating at work ... a long time ago.  I never really investigated these packages, but I don't want to lose the names of them.  Where else would I store this kind of random information?
• A very sweet message that Kimi Stewart sent me on the day that I came to interview for my new job to try to pump up my confidence.
• A photo that I took of a boy in my bookstudy.  (At the time, he wasn't in my bookstudy, but now his father is my Bookstudy Overseer.)  He's a little bit younger than I Dunno.  I don't know what it says about me, but I seem to relate to boys his age pretty well.  They tend to think I'm cool until they hit 16 or 17.  Then they realize the truth and want nothing more to do with me.  I took this photo with his own cell phone over a year ago.  We were getting in our cars before going out in service.  I promptly sent the photo to my own phone.  I love the photo.  But since it was taken with his phone and sent to mine through txt, it's not saved on my phone as an image.  It is really funny to see how much he's changed in the past year.
• A German nationalistic chant, in German, from Frau Adorable sent to me during the 2006 World Cup when the German team was winning one of the important games.  It translates to "Germany, Germany over all others!"  Or something like that.  It's so ridiculously out of place on my phone that I had to keep it.  It reminds me of how wonderful it was to discover soccer during the summer of 2006.
  
• Finally, a txt Polyglot sent me with the phone number for a sister that we met at an Assembly.  I've never called her.  I've kept it because I remember really liking her when I met her, like I thought we would be good friends if we saw each other more often.  But she doesn't live too close and she's married.  After a while, I figured that if I called her up she would be, like, "Who?"  The funny thing is, though, she actually said hello to me at our last assembly.  I could tell that she recognized me, but wasn't sure why or from where.  So, perhaps I made a little bit of an impression on her, too.  Still, it would be too odd at this point to call her.  If I really psychoanalyze this, I think it may just serve as a reminder that sometimes I do meet people that I make a connection with.  There are still people out there who are worth trying to get to know.  I just need to follow through on the next one.  Or maybe even on this one, still. 
  

That's a listing of the messages I've saved.  Some are saved because I'm procrastinating moving the info to another location.  Some are there to remind me of fun times.  Some are there to comfort me.  Some are there to remind me that I need to try harder to connect with people, both known and as yet unknown.

What a strange exercise.  What do your txt messages say about you?

Final note: I'm sorry if none of my blog readers are represented in my saved messages - obviously I am not doing a totally hideous job of connecting with you.

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Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

I came home from work on Friday with a killer headache. I took medicine and went to bed. It was about 3:00 in the afternoon. I just stayed in bed through the night. The only problem was that the people directly behind my bedroom were having a party. Not just any party, their kids had friends over.

The kids sounded like they were between 12 - 14. I believe that it was physically impossible for them to speak without screaming. It sounded like there were around 6 of them. They kept up their screaming from around 4:30 - 10:00. The noise really only bothered me when the sleepy med was wearing off around 9:00. But I recognize that they have the right to have friends over and sit outside on their deck. If they had been outside screaming after 11:00, I wouldn't have been so understanding.

Last night I heard voices outside again. This time, they were close enough that I knew before looking that they were on my neighbor's porch. When people sit on her porch, the sound travels up to my bedroom window as if they were sitting on my window sill. I wasn't quite in bed yet. I looked down through my blinds at them to see if I could figure out how long they'd be there.

They were smoking cigars, so I figured they would be outside until the cigars were finished or they got too cold. No big deal. Again, it's totally reasonable for her to have guests outside on her porch on a Saturday night.

Before I moved away from the window, I noticed that body language and general stance made it appear that these were two couples. The guy who looked like he was with my neighbor was very handsome. I thought, "You go girl." Right about that time, either the other girl or the boyfriend asked my neighbor, "Which is the neighbor that you hate? The fat one?"

I was shocked. I think the formerly handsome guy standing on my neighbor's porch even said, "Hey, fat girl!" and looked over towards my house. I stepped away from the window even though I know there was no way he could have seen me.

I have been wracking my brain to figure out why my neighbor hates me. I used to have people over to my house every week. But it was never a ton of people and I know we weren't loud. We would also break up before 11:00. And I haven't done that in a year. Besides, I know for a fact that once people are inside, you can't hear anything that goes on in the other house. There's no way we disturbed her.

When my cousin lived with me I was very particular about both of us parking in the garage so that we wouldn't bother the neighbors. I got up every morning to move his car and back mine out and then put his back in the garage. It was a LOT of trouble. She can't be upset about that.

The only thing I do that is a little weird is that I get my mail when I pull in from work. Our building is right across from the mailboxes, so most people park their cars and then walk back to get their mail. But there is a parking space right in front of the mailbox. So I just pull over, jump out, get the mail and then pull in to my garage. It's a little lazy, but I don't get in anyone's way. My car is in the parking space so traffic can go by me. And I don't block people who are walking up to the mailbox.

I just don't get it. In fact, this is the neighbor that I speak to more than any other in this place. That means that I typically just say hello and wave. But just a couple of weeks ago I ran into her at the mailbox and had a short conversation about her dog. It's a little dog, the kind that I can't stand, but I was pleasant and told her it was cute anyway.


For the life of me, I can't think of why anyone would hate a "fat girl" who never makes a peep and doesn't break any community rules. Could she be annoyed that I've never invited her over? Well, sorry. She's just gonna have to deal with that. Should I ask her what I've done to offend her, explaining that since I was in my bedroom I couldn't help but overhear her and her friends?

What could have been

I had two careers that stalked me through life: acting and oceanography/marine biology.  I decided against pursuing both because my life of faith is more important to me and not particularly conducive to either profession.  I knew that I couldn't pursue acting for many reasons: fame, general sleaziness of the business, but more specifically because most roles would call for me to behave (or endorse behavior) that is in direct opposition to my belief system, particularly the roles of any great substance/critical acclaim.

I chose not to pursue marine biology because I knew that:
1.  I could easily become obsessed with my line of research, to the exclusion of all else.
2.  In order to really do the kind of work I wanted to do, I probably would have spent a generous amount of time either at sea or in a remote location - away from my spiritual family.

What I didn't ever consider was the concept that simply believing in the Bible would not be acceptable within the scientific community.  Whenever I allow myself to think about "what could have been" if I'd pursued marine biology, I see myself working out of The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.  I even considered dropping by there last year when I went to Boston.  This is the place where Bob Ballard works.  Bob Ballard is one of the giants of oceanography.  He found the Titanic.  I generally try to keep up with his work and discoveries.  Woods Hole is kind of the gold standard for me in marine biology.

Naturally, I was really disappointed when I read this story.  Woods Hole fired a man because he believes in creation.  I've gotten used to filtering out all the evolution talk when I watch nature programs or when I visit museums.  But there's no way I could write a professional scientific paper based on the principles of evolution.  I just never imagined that believing in creation would keep me from being able to study it. 

Romans 1:20.

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Upon the 35th Anniversary of My Miserable Existence

I am now just about the age that my mother was when she became pregnant with me, if you count the gestational period of 40 weeks as 10 months rather than 9.  At this point in her life, my mother had been married for 11 years.  She had three children: a 10 year-old, a 9 year-old and the 7 year-old baby.  She was living in her husband's home city, surrounded by his loving (though slightly nosy) family.  She had no idea that yet another child, 4 more cities and 5 more houses were in store for her.

My life is just more of the same, day in, day out.  I don't forsee any significant changes, except for mega-changes that will affect mankind as a whole.

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