a quiz (with pictures, er, links!)

So by our calculations, it's about one month until we find out where we'll be posted. Eee.

We gave the Air Force around 25 options, pretty much all of which we'd be quite happy with. Of course, some would make us happier than others. Like the base in northern Italy: Under two hours to Venice? Check. Under half an hour to skiing in the Alps? Check. One-and-a-half hours to Slovenia and under two-and-a-half to Croatia? Check and check. But even if we don't get Italy (which is practically guaranteed to be the case), there's still Turkey, England, and Hawaii.

Oh, and Fairbanks, Little Rock, Wichita, and Biloxi, all somewhat more likely when considering the fact that getting an international posting at all is somewhat unlikely. So here's the quiz:

Where will we be sent?

A) Cambridge, England
B) Tokyo, Japan
C) Guam, uh, Guam
D) Mediterranean Coast, Turkey (or at least super close by)
E) Minot, North Dakota

No whammies, no whammies...

a moving post

Two months. Huh.

My family moved several times when I was in junior high and high school and one thing I remember about the experience is that it would generally take me until about Christmas (assuming it was a summer move) before I would feel comfortable talking freely with my new acquaintances. Until that point I would spend large chunks of my small group conversation time analyzing what I was going to say and by the time I deemed something worth saying the conversation had moved beyond anything that was going to come out my mouth. Though I mostly got over that long ago, the habit seems to pop up on this blog from time to time. So I will blame my lack of posting on that. And on being lazy.

Of interest likely to just a very few, my wife and I recently moved into a house. It's like being transported to the 50s, as I imagine them to have been. Upon driving into our driveway we passed a bunch of children drawing giant chalk figures across the entire length of the cul-de-sac (yes, I was tempted to draw my own versions at night while the neighborhood slept), and before I had even finished backing the U-Haul into the driveway, one neighbor came over with his kids and offered to help us move in. We declined the offer but thanked him, and he responded by telling us he was going to the park with his kids but that we could talk to his wife if we needed help in the meantime ("mean as a rattler" but still somehow liked, he said). Several times since moving in we have heard the ice cream truck go by (I wondered how many pedophiles have tried to find one of those things on ebay), and the other day we came home to find a 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper folded into our screen door, with a child's drawing and a mostly-legible "Welcome" scrawled onto it. It's a suburban utopia.

But. There is a mysterious chocolate lab who, while mostly cute, is made somewhat less so by his massive man marbles and the fact that he has left several incredibly large gifts on our lawn that, as they are watered by the sprinklers, only become more disgusting. I realize many, if not most, would clean the deposits up right away, but I'm too disgusted right now. Maybe this weekend.

Two months of delay and over-analysis, and I give you a story about dog s--t. Sorry.

More to come, hopefully, including a brilliant comparison of California and America as each relates to and is perceived by its neighbors. Also, a plea for the captured Somali pirate to be invited onto a celebrity survival show.