If you believe that God has a plan and everything has a purpose and reason, you should be worried. If you worship at the altar of Minerva and are positive that there is a scientific rationale for everything in the universe, you should be equally worried.

What is the issue that appears to be of concern equally to all? Crude Oil. The funny thing about both of these camps is that they both believe that everything on (and in) this tiny planet of ours is here for a reason. Those who subscribe to the idea that an omnipotent deity built the universe to very precise specifications, and that nothing was created just because, must believe that God placed oil beneath the surface for a reason, even if we are not privy to it (and I am confident that it was not—as I'm sure that many Republican Christians would believe—so we, in the 21st century, could "drill, baby, drill"). Likewise, the science community, with its insistence that facts and data can explain anything, even if we don't have the data yet to answer certain questions, have to acknowledge that nature wouldn't spend millions of years patiently creating crude oil for no other reason than just because, even if huge oil-producing companies have them on their payroll.

So, if we can all agree that the crude oil we have become so dependent on was created for a reason (whether God made it or it’s a natural byproduct of the decomposition of organic material), what happens when it's all gone?

We really don't know why there is all this oil pooling just beneath the crust of our planet, do we? So, what if it's the grease in the machine we call Earth? Once we suck the last drop out of the crust, will the planet overheat from the friction and stop spinning? What if it's there to allow the continental plates to move smoothly? Will we have more earthquakes than we already have? What if gravity is a hoax, and it’s really the oily Ectoplasm that keeps us rooted to the Earth? Will we just float away?

The bottom line is that we need to recognize that just because we have found our own use for something doesn't mean that that is the use for it. Regardless on which side of the fence you stand (God v. Science), we can all agree that the crude oil in the ground was put there for a reason, and it seems that we really don't know what that reason was. I only hope for my child's sake, and the sake of her children, that the Earth can function without oil, and we won't come to find out that the crude oil in the soil is in fact the very lifeblood of Mother Earth.

I think the thing I hate most about having my own website(s) is the amount of spam that I get. I have spam guards in place, and they seem utterly useless against the onslaught of spam that I receive as comments on this site.

So, just to make things harder for those who want to post to my site, and for me who wants people to post, I now have it set that I have to moderate all comments.

That sucks!

This email is really just a test.  As I mentioned the other day, I have switched the blog over to Drupal, which I really like. One of the great things is that I can now blog from my email. That means that I don't need to log into Drupal in order to blog. I'm not 100% sure how this will benefit me since ultimately, I need an internet connection to email, which means that I should also have access to Drupal.

Nevertheless, it's quite cool that I can do such things, and hopefully, that means that I will be able to blog more frequently. I know that I have said this before, and perhaps I might mean it this time.

We shall see.

crap [krap] noun: The stuff you wrote in junior and high school that you thought was really good poetry, only to read it years later and see it for what it is.

a good cupcake recipe?

I want to start a non-profit.

Anyone interested in helping?

I was, again, stuck in Florida with a shuttle that wouldn’t launch. So, again, after several days, the Sabra decided to come down and join me. And, again, she proved to be the good-luck charm we needed, and that little Shuttle launched.

Since she was in FL anyway, we decided to take a vacation, and we stayed in Orlando for a week. It was nice; we went to Disney World, which was pretty fun. We only had one day there, so we just went to Magic Kingdom. Then we spent the next morning listing to the benefits of buying a timeshare. We were strong and didn’t buy, but we DID get a free breakfast and 2 one-day passes to both Universal Orlando parks, so I guess we did OK.

I started back at work this morning, and I noticed that even though schools are all officially back in session, the Metro was surprisingly empty. Then I got off the train at Gallery Place/Chinatown to transfer. As I walked down the platform, there was a mass onrush of people walking the opposite direction. Someone had opened the floodgates and people were pouring out and over the walkway. It occurred to me that this is exactly how salmon feel as they fight their way up against the currents of the raging rivers of the Pacific Northwest. Where once I felt like drone in the subway, today, I better appreciated the plight of the salmon. Unfortunately for me, I did not spawn at the end of this river of people; however, fortunately, I did not die as do the fierce salmon who make the difficult trek to perpetuate their species.

I merely went to work.

This is a bit of a catch-up post…

The Sabra is back, living in the same state, and indeed, the same house as yours truly. She received official word that she was laid off a few weeks ago, and after an unfortunate series of events, she finally accepted the severance package her office offered: 2 more paychecks, relocation money, and 10 days’ worth of COBRA while we waited for my insurance to pick her up. I flew up on July 2, and we drove back on the fifth, car loaded with all her worldly possessions.

Now that she is unemployed and almost without a status, we have submitted the paperwork for her Green Card…and what an experience that has been. It was actually easier than we thought to get all the papers together, and I got my bonus at work at just the right time—for it ain’t cheap to get permanent residence status. She also had to get a physical from a US Citizenship and Immigration Services recognized doctor. This physical included a TB test, which, due to her being immunized as a child, she promptly failed. So, she had to go to another place to get a chest x-ray to verify that she is TB free. But, since we live in the District, we had to take an extra step.

I took yesterday off thinking that I would get some well-deserved rest and get some things done around the apartment. Instead, I spent the better part of the morning at DC General Hospital at the TB clinic where the Sabra had to get clearance from the DC Department of Health. It was a bit creepy hanging out with so many consumptives in one room. I will definitely need to get a TB test at my next physical!

With clearance in hand, we returned to the CIS approved clinic and had all the paperwork finalized. We put the papers, applications, and checks (yes, there were 3 of them) in the mail this morning.

Now we wait for the next step in the process, which I believe is the interview…stay tuned!

I bumped into an old friend today. Well, I didn’t really bump into him as much as type his name into Google and found him. I’m not alone, of course. This is how many people reconnect. Since I got an internet connection in the late '90s, I’ve been typing lost friends in to see if I can find them. And I have. I found some folks who I lost touch with when we left school or moved to other countries. I found others I just sort of drifted away from. Sadly, thanks to Facebook, I’ve even found some I would have preferred I hadn’t. It’s a blessing and a curse to find old friends. It makes you think about who you were, who you wanted to be, and who you are.

So, I found an old friend from my High Seas days. I emailed him and asked if he was the same person who I used to work with on Big Blue. He was, and I recognized his sense of humor immediately when he said that he was going to report me as a stalker. I chuckled at this, but then I realized that he is in fact right. I am a stalker. I’ve spent countless hours on the internet typing lost friends’ names into Google and Facebook. I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve sent saying things like “Hi, aren’t you the same John Doe I went to high school with?” or “Jane? Jane Smith? Is that you?” Some are hits, and some aren’t. Each and every hit has added a “friend” on Facebook or a contact on LinkedIn. I have successfully found hundreds of old friends and acquaintances. I’ve even reconnected with some who I didn’t even really know. It’s funny how 19 years later, the mere fact that you shared an 11th grade English class is enough to warrant being friends on Facebook.

To be honest, this is how I got into the whole social networking scene to begin with. There are a group of guys I used to hang out with years ago. They were the first ones that I lost touch with who I desperately wanted to find. I remember being at the computer lab in college and typing their names into long-gone search engines. Finally, about 3 years ago, after typing one of their names into Google, I finally got a hit…on MySpace. Of course, I couldn’t see anything about him, so I had to join. I emailed him, and sure enough, he was the very same person who I used to go to school with. From there, I looked into his friends list and found his cousin. Then, I stumbled onto Facebook and found his brother. Now, we are all friends again (and I even met up with 2 of the 3 of them in February).

Just yesterday, not only did I find my old friend who accused me of being a stalker, but I found another old friend from that same point in life. I was scrolling through the friends list of a mutual friend (who I also found using Google) and there she was…sure, her name had changed, but it was still her. We are now friends on Facebook.

I’ve always considered this “research,” trying to find old friends who slipped away. But I think he was right, and I think I need to accept this about myself. When you have spent almost 20 years typing the same names over and over into Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., you need to recognize and accept that perhaps the desire to reconnect is more of an obsession than mild curiosity about what happened to lost friends.

So, I admit it, I am a stalker of sorts. I’m not proud, nor am I ashamed. It is what it is, and I’m OK with it. I like to think that these people meant something special to me, even if I didn’t recognize it at the time, and there’s a part of me that misses them, misses what I was, what I wanted to be, and by reconnecting with them, I might be able to capture a little piece of that. So, as long as the intent is to find people and say, “how are you after all this time? How’s life treated you? What adventures have you had since the last time we talked?” I think it’s OK to be a bit of a stalker. I’m not out to hurt anyone, and I really am interested in what’s happened to these people.

Yea, so, it's been yonks since I've written anything, so I decided to start writing and see where it takes me. I'm not really sure what I'm planning to write in this post, but we'll see what comes out.

I've been worrying lately that I've completely lost what little shred of talent I have for writing and being creative. I've been saying it for years now that NASA has been making me dumber, and now I'm completely convinced. I've not written anything since last year, and I've had nothing to write about. I've tried; oh, believe me, I've tried. I sit on the Metro and look at the goings-on around me and think, "What is going on here that I can write about?" I thought about blogging about the wedding and preparation and all that, but nothing (not to mention that the Sabra didn't want me to write anything personal on the blog). I just didn't have the ambition.

Now that we're separated, you'd think I've got loads of time to write...but again, what do I write about? I could blog about me trying to find a job in Beantown, but who wants to read that crap?

I finally got around to buying Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, so I decided to start back at the beginning and read straight through. I thought that that would be cool to write about...my feelings after reading each of the books--not my opinions of what's going on or anything like that, but the beauty of reading entertaining books, of the feelings, emotions, and memories that J.K. Rowling is able to evoke from me. But, nope, nada, nothing doing. Oh, that's not to say that I'm not experiencing emotions and feelings and memories from reading the books again, but I'm not writing about them...can't be bothered.

I'm going out tonight...maybe something exciting will occur to me to write about them.

Well, wish me luck!