FRIDAY FIVE
1. Would you say that you're good at keeping in touch with people?
Not really. I try though. That was actually the reason we created this blog, to make it easier to keep up with our friends and family.

2. Which communication method do you usually prefer/use: e-mail, telephone, snail mail, blog comments, or meeting in person? Why?
I love e-mail. You can do it on your own time. I'm not a big phone talker, unless I'm talking to one of my close friends who live in other towns-Karen, Kristina, and Alison, I will always be happy to talk on the phone with you. Meeting in person is always the preferred method of keeping up, but alas, it's hard to do.

3. Do you have an instant messenger program? How many? Why/why not? How often do you use it?
Nope. I used to instant message Mark at work, but honestly, if I want to talk to some immediately I'll use the phone. B00ut instant messaging can be fun, especially at work.

4. Do most of your close friends live nearby or far away?
Far away, sadly. I miss you guys!!!!

5. Are you an "out of sight, out of mind" person, or do you believe that "distance makes the heart grow fonder"?
Gotta love the choice of cliches. Only a truly shallow person would forget about the people they love just because they're away. However, that said, unfortunately distance poses a real challenge to relationships. You have to really work at keeping up with people's lives. It's the little things that add up to make a life, and if you lose touch with the little things, you feel out of touch with your loved ones. Luckily, with true friends, the people who really know you, when you finally do have a chance to visit, you can typically pick up right where you left off.

Like many who blog, I've created a list of 100 things about my favorite subject, me. It's not easy to come up with that many things about yourself. Try it if you doubt me.

I just took the last pill of my oral typhoid hormone innoculation. This is the "live virus" stuff. It comes with warnings like "Do not chew! Swallow as quickly as possible!" Doesn't exactly give one a warm tummy feeling. In fact, if I start feeling a warm tummy feeling, THAT'S when I'll really start worrying.

Right now I'm listening to Mali Music, an album of music from the country of Mali compiled by and featuring Damon Albarn of Blur (and Gorillaz). Mali is a dream trip of mine, so I'd already listened to some stuff from there before this album ever came out. Malian music has a style unique from other African music, which I've been slowly learning to distinguish. The album is actually a crossover -- most of the tracks were written by Damon Albarn, though definitely in the Malian bent. I'm going to enjoy this.

For the real experience, you can actually listen to Malian radio on the net.

At dinner tonight Marjorie and I were trying to come up with a term for the recent trend in movies, where the whole goal seems to be to make the user uncomfortable, by featuring good actors playing people who are a little bit nuts but still believable, putting them into uncomfortable and awkward situations, and holding the viewers faces in it until they're squirming in their seats. Films like Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl, Happiness, etc...

The best term we could come up with was cinema Solondz.

Later we went and saw a movie that was nothing of the sort. 24 Hour Party People is a dramatization of events surrounding the Manchester music scene in the late 70's through the mid-90's, particularly surrounding the bands Joy Division, New Order, and the Happy Mondays. Not bands I've ever been into, but still. Steve Coogan is superlative in the role as Tony Wilson, a TV variety-show host cum band manager/night club owner. Great nostalgic fun.

I SURRENDER!
I've completed all my "skills assessment" paperwork and was finally ready to send the packet when I discovered a beautiful catch-22. In order to pay the fee to process the paperwork, one needs to have either "a bank check in Australian dollars drawn by bank outside Australia that has bank clearance arrangements with an Australian bank" or "a money order issued by Australia Post" or" a bank check drawn by an Australian bank": or a "personal check drawn on an Australian bank account". So far the only bank I can find in the USA that has any "clearance arrangements with an Australian bank" is Citibank-which won't let you buy a bank check in Australian currency unless you have an account with them (we don't) and all the other options require either living in Australia or finding an Australian bank nearby...which seems to be damned near impossible (unless you live in Singapore, ironically there are several Australian banks there). So... I give up. I'm going to stop trying to muddle through all this paperwork myself and beg Mark to pay for a Migration consultant to help us. Sigh.

I should've enjoyed tonight's Monday Night Football game more -- I'm a big Eagles fan, and I watched the game with two friends who are fans of the Redskins. The Eagles walked all over them. But it's no fun to trash talk opposing fans who are going, "We suck. We just suck."

We're all in a football pool together. Right now, I'm doing marginally better than a person flipping a coin would do, overall.

We left before the big excitement. Apparently the cops in the stands used pepper spray to break up a fight, and the game was suspended for five minutes. Viva America!

It strikes me that I wasted yesterday. No new experiences and basically nothing accomplished besides some little things around the house. I hate when I do that. You only get so many days, you know?

Last night at dinner a friend made a comment on something that struck me as odd, too. Whatever happened to the story about the three guys who locked themselves in the plane bathroom? It was probably nothing, but it was certainly a more serious deal than that Florida nonsense that's been all over the news, Chicken Little style, for the past few days. It almost seems like the former story was squelched. I can find no follow-up articles anywhere. Strange.

Always take the weather with you
It looks like we will not be going camping again this weekend due to a forecast of rain for the next few days. Oh well, maybe we can try again next weekend.

Today I'm trying to finalize all the paperwork to send in my job skills assessment to the Australian teacher assessment people. It's amazing how much information they want. What's even more amazing is that I was able to locate paperwork from the last five years. It's more than helpful that my father is a tax accountant and has a lot of my information on file at his business, thankfully. Otherwise I would have had to call my former employers and beg them to write a letter stating that I worked for them at one time, and I'd rather not. Anyhow, on Monday (hopefully) I'm going to put this stuff in the mail and get the process started, which makes me feel like I have at least a little bit of control over our future, even if I can't make it happen as quickly as I'd like it to.