A random update

My wife tells me that I need to blog more, and she's right, so even though I don't have any particular event to blog about, I thought I'd share some things. First, the quote of the day:

"I live in a gated community, I don't have to help!" - Ellie

The context, which makes it even better, is that they were playing with the sofa cushions, building things. Ben was pretending he had been crushed by a house falling, and was underneath a cushion shouting "Help! Help!". Don't ask me where she got it, but she clearly had the attitude down. We'll need to work on that.

For the record, we live in a gated community, but the gate is only closed between midnight and 5 am or so.

In other news, we watched the elections last night. I wasn't expecting Jen to be home, since she had this embassy election event she was supposed to be at, so the kids and I ordered pizza and watched CNN until around 8pm local time, when the first polls closed. They had a great time. Best quote from the evening:

"For my birthday, I want to invite John McCain and Barack Obama." -- Ben

This came right after he asked if they were real, since so many things on TV aren't. I assured him they are real, and as Jen pointed out when she came home they should know that, since she herself has been on TV. In any event, I'll need to get some e-mail addresses for the invitations.

I've been getting myself into trouble, brewing beer and committing to writing a novel during the month of November. The beer has gone well, I have a friend here who I am teaching through practice. She (Amie) is also the person who has gotten me into the novel during November thing, which you may have heard of before, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. You can follow my progress, should you so desire, at the web site. As of this morning I've written 10,423 words, giving me a good cushion as the pace I need to maintain would put me at 8,333 words by the end of the day. It is fun, and hasn't really been negatively impacting my schedule yet. I've even gotten up at 5:30 two mornings so I could get some writing in before the kids get up. Shocking, huh?

Jen is in what I'll call "CODEL Hell" right now. She has a huge group of congressional folks, including staffers and spouses, arriving on Sunday. She's in charge of the visit, and has been having an interesting time getting everything put together. Let's just say that staffers aren't always the easiest folks to work with, and sometimes people fail to see that they are not actually the most important person in the world. So if you get no response from her for a while, now you know why. She's probably passed out on the sofa after a long stressful day at work.

Finally, we have been continuing the struggle with Ellie's school options. Today we had a meeting with one more school, which is lovely, the only problem being that it is almost all taught in English. They do have Spanish instruction, and often speak Spanish on the playground, but no doubt the kids would have more trouble making it to native level speaking there. Not the end of the world, of course. St. George's, the other school we are still in the running for, has no spots open, although we've got some good folks working on that issue for us. Time will tell.

That's all for now. I've been instructed that I need to play "John, Jack and the Bad Guy", a game in which I (the Bad Guy) need to infiltrate a gated community. John and Jack are protecting it, and have the keys to the gates. Should be interesting.