Catching Up

It’s been an exhausting week. Don’t get me wrong, it was also a good week. We won again on Monday night in softball and, from what I hear since I was unable to make it, lost our first game last night. Losing wasn’t good. I wish I could have been there, but I wasn’t one of the guys they really needed. But the rest of the week was good.

I’m going to briefly break my two rules of blogging and talk a bit about work and family. For two days this week, I hosted a visitor from Ghana. He was interesting and the experience fun, even though it was exhausting for me (and probably more exhausting for him). He’d never had Mexican food. There are no Mexicans in Ghana, but I learned that there are Chinese restaurants run by Chinese there. So to give him an American experience, we ate in a local Mexican place run by Columbians. He put his palate into my hands. As there is a city in the north of Ghana named Tamale, I thought it was suitable to have one. Obviously the city and the food are not related, but he ate it all. I have never really thought about going to Ghana, but after seeing pictures of red rocks (and with my withdrawal from Utah going on three years), my mouth began to water. Maybe I should visit. Besides, English is the official language and about half the people can actually speak it, which I figure is about par for parts of this country.

As for family, my daughter floored me again last week. We were coming back from the lake and I had NPR on and she was listening. They were reporting on the celebrations following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. “I don’t get it” she shouted from the backseat, “why are they celebrating someone’s death.” I tried to explain that he was a bad guy and killed lots of people and that there is evil in the world, but that she still had a valid question. Death should always be a humbling event because we’re reminded that we’re mortal. Somewhere in the good book it says something like “and a little child shall lead them.”

I fly to Atlanta on Sunday and will be in Georgia and Alabama next week. I’m sweating just thinking about it. Pray that the jet stream drops out of Canada and bring cool air to the Southeast. According to the local cult in Ed Abbey’s neighborhood, if just the square root of one percent of the people on earth meditates, we could have world peace. So maybe if a similar percentage of my blog readers beseech God, the Southeast will experience a short-lived ice age. Since I should be in places where wireless is available and will hopefully have more free time on my hand, I’ll try to post some more of my recollections.