Me & Saddam

Yeah, so I got to hang with Saddam, or 'ol Sadi as he want's me to call him. He's a funny guy always patting his head and rubbing his stomache, he's really talented! After sharing a few bags of Cheetos and Pop Rocks I built up the courage to ask 'ol Sadi about the hidden stashes of gold and wouldn't you know it, he leaned close and whispered, "..."

Yeah, ok, I'm making it up, though I really did edit my picture into the background of this one! So when I come home with a few extra bars of gold in my rucksack, ... just look the other way, mmmkay?

Man, these last few days have been really busy. From the time I sit down at my desk (~0830) until I go home (~2030) I'm working. Researching networks, calling customers, breaking my foot off in people's rump, sending emails, making powerpoint slides, fending off silly questions. To handle the constant flow of stuff to do, I organized a system to track what I do so I don't set down in my rack at the end of the day and wonder what the heck I did to get so tired. What I do is I have my recurring appointments logged in my Outlook calendar and every Sunday I print out a schedule for the next week with some space on the side to list tasks as the arise. This is a pretty useful system and it creates a record of what I did so I'm not left empty handed, although high-visibility tasks don't really get recorded since I tend to focus on getting it done as opposed to recording that I did it. You know, that whole mission thing.

I got a package from my dad a couple days ago and boy was it a hit! In the box was about 7 cans of coffee and about a dozen big bags of peanut M&M's. It was a lot of fun to take those bags of M&M's around to the different shops, knock on the door, poke my head in, toss a bag at the first person to make eye-contact with me and run away. Chalk several happy troops up to Dad! =)


Before I left the States for Germany I had my heart set on getting a "money-green" Chevy Avalanche. Well, when my brother (seen in the reflection on the tailgate above) went and bought a new one and crushed my hopes and dreams *sniff* (the pic above is Rob's truck, he took the pic to show me the sticker he stuck on his bumper that I sent him that says "PASSING IS NOT ALLOWED, AMERICAN CONVOY AHEAD" in both English and Arabic.) Moving on, I've been thinking a lot about coming back to the States when my time in Germany is up and when we do come back we'll have to buy a new (to us anyway) car since the one we have now won't meet American specs. After doing some research I've convinced myself, and I think my sweetie, that the vehicle of choice for our return to America is going to be a Honda Civic Hybrid. I know, I know, it's a foreign car, but all of the hybrids made by American companies are either too expensive or too little and I do want to get a hybrid. It seems that a political figure finally got it right. Hippies like hybrids because they are friendlier to the environment and the rest of us should like them because they help seperate us from our dependance on foreign oil. I think one of the reasons that this hasn't caught on sooner is because hippies and the rest of us are a bit weirded out that we have common ground and don't quite know how to agree on something. Those hippies all smell like patchouli anyway ... and they need a haircut! *mumbles*