Welcome to October 2005! Home of $3 gasoline, our Birthday, and a U2 concert in Dallas.

Tonight I had the joy of reading 150 pages of a 430 page RFP. Ever feel like the person writing a spec might have missed a couple MAJOR points? I'm imagining a world designed by these guys as cars without wheels, houses without doors, and blue prints that include "not drawn to scale" on them.



Doug

Gulp! Only 1 day left and we're not packed. Not only that, but our kids aren't packed and I'm starting to really worry.

Yikes.

Lisa broke out the German vocab flash cards again. This isn't the first time...and it won't be the last.

We actually met 9 years ago (August 1996) in German class. So far meeting my wife is the only good thing I got out of German class...maybe this trip will make 2 things. It's hard to imagine, but this December we'll have been married for 4 years.

Today our new camera bag came in the mail. Holy huge freakin' camera bag Batman! This thing is big enough to carry a few regular lenses (all of the ones I own), a couple large lenses, a couple bodies, a ton of accessories, and it has a place for a laptop. It'll probably weigh 50 lbs fully loaded...pray that the doctors performing my corrective spinal surgery have steady hands...*crack*

I'm suprised Lisa hasn't exploded yet. We don't know where we're staying for 2 nights in our trip :-) Lenny is working on it though...so far he's come through amazingly well for us and I'm sure we'll have a great place to stay. Hopefully when we get back we have great stories and pictures from our trip...especially about the couple of nights we had to live in the streets of Munich.

One week away from our trip to Germany! I know we're going to have a great time. I'm still a little worried about the details and I'm very anxious about leaving the kids behind. I know this is the best time for us to go though.

We'll spend 2 days in Munich, take a day trip to Neuschwanstein castle (if the area isn't devistated by flood) on day 3, fly from Munich to Cologne and spend 2 days there. Then, our friend Jens will pick us up and drive us to Frankfurt, where we'll stay 3 days until we rent a car and drive back to Munich.

Last night, in preparation, (Nerd Alert!) I got out my German flash cards from high school and college. I saw just how much I've forgotten and am astounded at how much German I actually learned in college! A good number of my flash cards are German on both sides! I knew a word so well, that I was able to describe it another way in German. I can't say I'd be able to do that now. We'll be relying a lot on the German's excellent educational practices, which require that all students take English from the 4th grade through college. I'll stick to simple questions, ordering my meals and greetings while we're there, I think.

$2.57 per gallon? Are you kidding me? If they can turn urine into a AA battery, they ought to be able to do something for our cars!!

I've just seen the most horrifying thing since I became a mother. I was driving on Virginia right by where Kristen and Emily live and a fire truck and three police cars blocked the right lane. Of course traffic was slow as we all merged and passed by the scene. When I looked at what had happened, my heart just sank. There was a mini van at a subdivision exit with a child's bike stuck underneath the front end. I'd seen the children walking along the sidewalk on their way home from their first week of school. This poor kid didn't make it home today. I shudder to think of the phone call his mother got. I wonder if she was at home waiting for him to arrive safely or if she was 20 miles away in an office building. There was an ambulance still at the scene and I hope that means that the child was inside getting a bandaid put on his scraped knee before his mother came to drive him home, but I'm more worried that the ambulance with the child had already gone to a hospital.

As a mother, I just can't fathom what this family is going through this afternoon. I'm just trying to keep myself from imagining one of our children in that situation. What a nightmare! I also feel for the driver of that van. It's one of those events that he will relive for the rest of his life.

Doug's been out of town all this week and it's kind of had me down in the dumps. People often call their spouse their "better half." It's obvious to me now that he's at least my motivating half. I've just kind of been going through the motions this week, waiting for the days to pass so I can get to Thursday when he comes home.

I miss him. The kids miss him. Come home soon, Doug.