I cannot believe that it is Friday again already and time to contribute to the
Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at
Conversion Diary. I am grateful to Jennifer for coming up with these meme; it is about the only time I truly look back on the near events of my life and take stock.
1. Monday night Donnie and I had dinner with visitors from the Ukraine at my favorite restaurant: Jardines de San Juan where winter never comes and flowers never die. I had met them last month in the Ukraine at their company, and at that time were planning a return visit to ours. Since they had taken me out to a traditional Ukrainian restaurant and showed me the architecture of
St. Sofia's Cathedral, I wanted to do something similar for them here in the USA. Voila! All was possible, thanks to my living in a heritage Mexican town. They loved the authentic Mexican food and the garden atmosphere of the restaurant. One of the two is an architect, and he enjoyed discovered our old mission. It would seem that God's special places are special in more ways than we typically think!
2. I have fallen off the bandwagon with dieting. I had done a good job of losing 30 pounds in 2008, then about ten pounds crept back on after a stay in Lithuania this past winter. (Cold weather = heavy food.) I have managed to keep the weight at the -20 pound level, but recent travels (5 countries and 11 states in 3 months!) has made it impossible to watch my diet. Well, impossible is probably not the right word; inconvenient is more like it. I think dieting and weight maintenance boils down less to willpower than to habit. I have lost my habit of tracking calories and sticking to a daily ceiling. Alixandra, you who managed such a startling maintained weight loss, offered to help! Tell me, what is the secret for maintaining weight loss and even losing more pounds while traveling? Any thoughts, anyone?
3. The frenetic pace of this week matched that of last week, with a quick two-day trip to Arizona. I am starting to weary of my one-night stands with Candlewood Suites in state after state. In spite of its quick in-and-out nature, my trip had value, I believe. I was able to speak to a graduating class of specialists in Arabic language and culture who will, hopefully, one day much sooner than anyone thinks have some positive influence on international events. It was these same kind of specialists, without any knowledge of language and culture who carried at the atrocities at Abu Ghraib a couple of years ago. Now, however, as future specialists in military affairs are also learning language and culture -- and more important, being taught by native speakers from Arabic cultures -- they are building the skills they need to communicate, rather than to interrogate, to create trust rather than fear, and to
use words, not weapons, for winning wars. For me to be even the smallest piece of that, I consider to be a gift from God, especially since not all that long ago I nearly took another job because of being part of an organization that looked at the force of arms rather than the force of words to accomplish its mission, but
God would not let me have that job. Now, I know why, and now I am a grateful.
4. Catechism class last night brought me back to a sense of reality. This year's first-year confirmation kids are very quiet compared to the classes of the past two years. At least, until last night they have been eerily quiet. Last night I brought in left-over Halloween candy. Halloween was a very quiet affair here in our mission town this year, and we had a few pounds of leftovers, pounds that I do not want to put into and onto our bodies; hence, the "gift" to the kids this evening. The loved the candy, and we (the teachers) noticed that as the sugar entered the bloodstreams of our normally quiet kids, they began to respond vociferously and vigorously to the lesson. Who were these kids? They had turned into people we would not recognize. The excitement for one, Luis, got to the point that he began rolling around on the floor. I recognized this symptom of hyperactivity caused by food allergy from Doah's allergic reactions -- Doah would roll around on the floor all the time if no one monitored and controlled his diet. So, lesson learned in all senses of the word -- the kids' activity also increased their interaction with us and the lesson and they did go home, having learned a lot, and we teachers learned not to pump them full of sugar in the future. And I remembered why I rarely allowed my children refined sugar when they were growing up.
5. Cats now are our children. We have three. Murjan (Arabic for coral) is all white with a red ears, bangs, and tail. Oh, and jade-colored eyes. He looks like two shades of coral that one can find in the Red Sea near Aqaba, and he is indeed an immigrant from Jordan. He kept me company while I was living there before Donnie made it over, just me and the cat, and we have had a symbiotic relationship ever since. Intrepid, also a native of Jordan, lost his mother before he could barely toddle. A professor at my university knew that Doctora Beth loved cats and brought over the multi-colored cat with brown-ringed yellow eyes for me to nurse. The rest, as they say, is history. "Treppers" (pictured here), as we nicknamed Intrepid, became Donnie's sidekick. The name came from his kamikaze-like flights through the air, attacking potted plants, of which, of course, we currently have none. Then, there is Simone, our grey-faced, blue-eyed, extremely shy white Himalayan cat, who, with her Persian features, looks like she belongs in the Middle East, too, but we rescued her from under our house here in California and turned her from feral to lovable. I love taming feral cats. No matter how old they are and how ingrained their defensiveness and fear, I have been able to tame them. I think all of God's creatures like to be loved, and there is no stronger force for accomplishing anything or making any change than love.
6. My boss and I are doing a self-study program in Pashto, one of the languages spoken in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Languages intrigue me, so Pashto represents little challenge, especially considering that it is the 20th language I have formally studied, in addition to the 50 or so languages I can understand at levels ranging from just barely to quite well because I have studied some of the common background languages like Latin, Old English, Old German, Common Slavic, and the like and thanks to travel exposure.) For my boss, on the other hand, Pashto represents only his second foreign language. He has spent several hours and completed part of the first unit. I have spent less than two hours and am near the end of the fourth unit. That makes it hard to study together; moreover, I learned a long time ago that it is never a good idea to "show off" in front of one's boss where the boss is attempting to do the same thing. So, I have to learn how to march in place better. His ego is more important than mine. I just have to figure out how to help him without offending him. That's the story of my life. I have to do the same with junior managers who think they know everything about management, but have not developed the most critical skill: humility.
7. After all this, I am very ready for today (just started). It is First Friday! Yes!! I have taken the first six hours of the day off in order to attend First Friday activities at
St. Francis Retreat. Those months when I can do this are just wonderful experiences. And so, I am going to end these 7 quick takes abruptly since I have no idea what lies in wait for me this morning, but I am eager to dash off right now (!) and find out.
May you start your day with as much eager anticipation!
See more 7 Quick Takes Friday contributions at Jennifer Fulwiler's Conversion Diary.
1. This week has been emotionally dominated by a conference where I had to make a presentation, for which I felt unprepared. Each day, as the conference approached, made me more nervous. I was certain my boss had selected the most wrong person to do this particular presentation. Worst, none of the support technology was working. I had to take a tech specialist with me, tie back to tech specialists in our California office, and get some help from the hotel tech specialists. Still, up until a few minutes before the conference, nothing seemed to be working. My topic? The advantages of modern technology! A prayer and a day later, all was over, and the result was unexpected. Everything worked, and the conference was abuzz with the content of the presentation. The person who followed me called it “spectacular.” I know it had nothing to do with me, so I later presented award coins to the tech specialists who provided the support. It was their work that created the fascination.
2. On Saturday, I encountered an unexpected situation where I ended up reluctantly using God’s credit card to pay for Donnie’s new computer. He had a chance to get 25% off on a new laptop, which he desperately needed since his desktop stopped work a couple of weeks ago and his current laptop is ten years old. He was dead in the water when it came to doing his work, which is graphics consulting. It turned out that he was several hundred dollars short, and the only credit card that had that much money available on it was God’s credit card. I was very reluctant to use it. I do not use it for personal needs, but if we did not use it at this point, Donnie would be without work for a while since we could not afford the regular price and the special deal was available only on Saturday. Sighing, I agreed to use God’s credit card, feeling considerably guilty about it and hoping that we, too, might be considered worthy of God’s financial help. I mentally calculated the length of time it would take me to pay off the card, and that did not reassure me at all. Then I went to the post office, and in the mail box was a new credit card from USAA, offered because I had spent eight years in the military years ago. The credit line was the same as on God’s credit card, and I would be able to transfer the balance without any interest for a year on Monday. I have now activated the card, and God has his card back. That is pretty stunning: God rescued His credit card from my illicit use! I know now that I must keep that card clear for God’s purposes—and people in need are sent my way routinely. If I had had any doubt that this particular credit card belongs to Him (I did not), that doubt would have been entirely erased on Saturday.
3. The conference took place in Yorktown, Virginia, and one of my senior managers also attended. His daughter is a sophomore at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. She gave us a tour of the campus and of colonial Williamsburg. It was a very relaxing and educational visit. I had no idea that William and Mary was the second oldest college in the USA, nor that the main building, still standing, had been burned three times as a result of war action in this country. We finished our walk and left town with the smell of honeysuckle still with us.
4. After the conference, the senior manager and I flew to Nashville to visit one of our offices over the state border in Kentucky. We had a lovely dinner in Clarksville, TN, on the Columbia River at a café called The Black Horse, well known for its good beers. More interesting, though, was the drenching thunderstorm that barraged us while we were at a meeting earlier that day. Such storms almost never occur in California. In fact, in 1998, I remember with some mirth the broadcast of the local weatherman who explained thunder and lightning to listeners after a number of frightened people had called in and asked for an explanation of the “electricity in the sky.”
5. As has happened so often in the past, I spent Mother’s day in the air, en route to the technology conference. The kids all called and sent e-cards. The best gift I received, however, was that my Blackberry stopped working at midnight, just hours before I had to leave, so I have been incommunicado with my office all week. I will probably have 4000+ e-mails waiting upon return, but this week has been blessedly quiet, without the normal 700 or so messages per day that I usually get.
6. I have been finding pennies unexpectedly on this trip. The first one appeared under my feet on the plane. I did not notice it getting on the plane, but there it was when I was getting off the plane. The second one I found on the floor of the cupboard of the hotel in which I stayed while at the conference. The third one was in the bin I picked up for running my computer through the security screening at the airport when leaving from the conference. Three pennies does not a trend make, but if I find a fourth, I am definitely going to wonder about the significance of them. 
7. We had quite a scare this week. Our cat, Intrepid, got into the laundry room, which is off limits to the cats, and was happily chomping down on the house warming plant, a black lily, that a friend had given us. Treps is quite a plant devourer, so we do not keep any plants in the house. This one was with us only temporarily until we could find a better home for it and, we thought, securely locked away. Donnie looked up black lilies online and found that they are toxic for cats. Yet, Treps was not showing any side effects. So, he decided to watch him closely over the next 24 hours. I decided to put the matter in God’s hands. Treps was a rescued feral kitten who was starving in Jordan when his mother died and brought to us by one of the professors who found him in his garden, squawking about not wanting to die. We nursed him into good health, and he formed a very strong bond with Donnie. Every night he and Donnie fall asleep together, with Treps sleeping on top of Donnie. He is only four years old—too young to die. We have had too little time with him. The outcome? Treps survived his ingestion of the poisonous plant, thank God! Literally.
