So the slow....

Yesterday it was 108. Pruff.

And I think to myself...what a wonderful world!

Perhaps it is because I've been away from my family for six months...but I weep easy these days. I was just looking over some old pictures of our family and did the afore mentioned.

When I see my children, and how they grow, I weep at G-d's crazy grace.
When I smell the summer heat, I've learned to settle down thank Him for life.
When I notice the birds (they ever faithful)I weep for joy at the expanse of His Earth.
When I look at my wife I know in the closest way His Great Faithfulness.

I'm just a little cell, but what an honor I have to be able take part in the great stream of life.

Attention: The future is here now.

Does anybody remember a really sweet (at least it was really sweet when I was 14) movie called The Net? Well, it's about how technology, more speciffically, the interNET is so intertwined that somebodies (Saundra Bullock's) identity could be entirely erased....or something. Anyway, in the begining of the movie it shows the heroine ordering a pizza on the internet.

Ah-hem.

Emily and I order TWO pizzas on the internet last night. It was amazing. As soon as I sent it in, it told me that some girl named Casandra had started hand tossing our pizza.

So, in case you were wondering when it would get here, Emily and I just ushered in the future.

In reference to the previous...

Thank you for the encouragments. Im glad that I am real.

When I was young, I used to be terrified that I was a robot from space, and that some preset date, I would "switch over" from being Nathanael Ben David to killer robot boy from space and...yes...slay my family. Eh-hem...as severely disturbing as this probably is...I think it was from watching Star Trek so much...

Don't worry mom and dad, even though my young brain was tormented by this paranoia...I think the "benefits" watching star trek as a young child has given me far outweighs the "issues"

And that preset date is far expired so nobody needs to worry.

Boy, I'm glad I turned out real, even if its depressing sometimes.

A bit of moody.

Have I mentioned before that I probably have a "seasonal mood structure"? I think it MIGHT run in the family...but there it is... with a cyclical precision that I have yet to chart, I get...moody.

The last couple of days have been such. I think I might be justified in feeling this way a little bit. It has been 6 months since I lived with my family, and 2.5 to go. I woke up alone last night and stared at my uniforms in my closet, at the rank insignia on my sleeves, wondering what I was doing so far away from my beloved family. It's obvious on a logical (yet bizarrely illogical) level what I am doing, taking care of my family the best way I know how. This time is almost over, but that doesn't change the mood.

I just plain miss my family. I get to see Emily for nice four day weekend this weekend. But even this strikes me as somewhat insane...how much effort (baby sitters, plane tickets, hotels, waivers for staying out of my dorm etc etc) it takes just to see my own wife for a couple of days. It can just be very...strange. I sometimes start to get sick to my stomach like I'm stuck in a terrible dream.

And the happy ending. I'm not "in the depths of despair" for certain, that would be just plain pagan of me...

For crying out loud, try your best not to take love and comfort for granted.

Daily

Its a good morning. I have been without a room mate for a week now...it's been a blessing not having a stinky-rap music lovin-messyface person living with me...I suppose there is no way to make it the next few months this way...but its been nice.

Last night I finally rigged a blanket to cover the entire window making my room a virtual-night in the middle of day...because that's when I am supposed to sleep...in the middle of the day.

I was able to write a couple letters I've been putting off. Of course, there a few more that I might be able to write...if a certain sister, who is younger than me, and with child, would resume her writing to her poor/cut-off brother.

And, so far, as I said, it's a nice day...getting hot, but with a steady breeze. Please G-d, poor your blessings on my air conditioner and give it "extra cooling power"...in your Wisdom of course. Amen.

Thrill us.

Michael Jackson died.

CNN and FOX news have been blasting this to the exclusion of all other news. As if nothing else in the world was happening, or everything that is usually reported was just filling time until something important happened...like the death of the King of Pop. Never mine the revolution in Iran, or the pending war with youngest-brat-child North Korea.

At first I was disgusted at the amount of emotion Michael Jackson death was causing people who didn't even know him. But then I remembered that I was saddened (granted, not to tears) by the death of Paul Newman. I tried to justify it, "Paul Newman stood for something, he was a Man." But that's an equal argument to any that could be offered up for reasons why the death of Mr. Jackson should cause such a commotion.

So are we that sad that somebody died? Not really, you see, Michael Jackson died, but so did 25,000 (source: UN World Food Programme) people from hunger alone. That happens everyday, and we don't feel sad everyday. So it can't be we are sad that somebody died, maybe we just are sad that we don't have the comfort of knowing that, if we wanted, we can wonder what exactly Michael Jackson is doing...right now!

I think it's actually part of the discovery that something is not right. Death of loved ones is crushing, but we all know it's coming. Death of stars and world leaders is unerving, everyone dies...and we don't like that. And we are right not to like it...nobody is supposed to die. That's not the way it was supposed to happen. But we like comfort, and it's comforting to have celebrities, perhaps, it is also comforting to get upset when they die.

Michael Jackson died.
So did 25,000 mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters.

Oh yeh, and Farrah Fawcett did too.