Several of my former team-members have blogs. They're all pretty great. The Myhre's have just started theirs, and so far are at a ripping pace.
You can find Drs. Scott and Jennifer Myhre's here
Dr. David and Annaliese Pierce here
Dr. Pamela Brown-Peterside here.
Kim Stampalia, my former co-worker with the missionary munchkins, here
I don't reall want to give commentary on their blogs, but it is fascinating what they all choose to write about. Different experiences are written about, for sure.
It’s now nearly evening and I still remember the details of this dream. I was in a house, I think it looked like a Cape Anne, just a little squatter. I am inside, and I’m some kind of special army soldier. My job is to kill these Islamist extremists. They’re sleeping in the house. When I shoot at them as they sleep, I don’t actually shoot them. Instead, I waken them and their families. I can shoot the women and children. But after they fall down, they get up, and become angrier.
I decide to run away from the house because I can’t seem to do anything to the extremists. As I run away from the house I see two large squares of red electric tape framing the house. I now remember that my mission was just to frame the house, I got off track a bit by going in the house. Explosions start to come off the house. But they’re not actually damaging the house, just drawing more angry Islamicists into my area. As I flee the scene. I can’t run fast enough to ease my fear of getting caught. So I jump off a cliff into clear water.
Fortunately, this is water that I can stay under indefinitely, no need for breathing air. I try to stay very still and escape the notice of the Islamicists. Unfortunately for me, the Islamacists have balloon like creatures at their disposal that are capable of biting me to death in a swarm of latex rubber. They first throw at me a swarm of sea snakes, filled with air of course. Fortunately for me these snakes are really slow.. I can definitely outswim them. Unfortunately, they do manage to corral me into a kind of balloon animal labyrinth, where I am surrounded on two sides by these anemone-like snappy creatures.
With the rear blocked by rubber snakes, the sides by rubber anemones, I could only go forward. A balloon man similar in appearance if not size to the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters came around the corner. At this point I had to get proactive and pop the man with my knife. I couldn’t shoot him because I was underwater.
After this act, and a near disaster with the anemones I realized that I could swim up and get out of the anemone maze. As I topped the anemone wall I came upon a bar, a bar where people drink stuff. Seated at the bar were a host of characters all resembling the human cast from Muppet’s Christmas Carol. One of them, a shifty woman jetted off to the surface upon my arrival. I imagine she was headed to the Islamicists to let them know I was still going. But at that point I woke up.
I've been out of football for a couple years. I'm an Auburn fan. My great-grandfather went there, so did my grand-father, along with other near relatives, all on my Dad's side. Living in Glen Burnie MD until middle school. I had a certain pride in my allegiance. Mainly because it felt exotic, and also because when you did find another Auburn fan up north, it was like family.
When I moved to Alabama in middle school, I felt significantly less enthusiastic about Auburn. It was a slow slide, but year after year I found it harder to be excited about a team that everyone was either screamin for or against.
In Uganda my fandom warmed up. Mainly from deprivation and anticipation. I would watch random games months after they occured on dvd's burned for me by family. The Sunday after each game I would eagerly hunch over my laptop on the front porch waiting for the internet to turn on.
Yesterday I got to watch my team roll over WSU in a pub in Philly. I watched the game with about 40 Auburn alumns who make it a point to watch the game together at this pub, every week. It was like my childhood family come back again. War Eagle!