Yule Tide Greetings

Though it is cooling off a bit here, I find myself stripping my shirt from a toasted torso when running in the wadi today.

Also, there is officially less than 2 weeks before a quick leap across the Atlantic puddle. It'll be a good skip home, or so I hope.

I had a Dr. Pepper today for the first time in over a year. It gave me a head ache.

The longer I spend with the Katsaros' the more it feels like family. I went to Yannis' soccer game yesterday and sat with the families. During a lull, I terrorized the young ones on the playground as the big bad playground monster, tagging and moving with great tact and rapidity.

I find the cynic in me bobbing for surprise visits more often than I'd care to see his gnarly disgruntled face. Some one please tell him to stop.

It would take great convincing to sway me from a belief that functional family and true social reform (what I refer to as dreams) do not coincide. Perhaps this is youthful ignorance chiming in, but I do not believe it possible.

Recently, my youthful immaturity blinds and exposes my frugalled experiences. In this, there has been a surge of disdain and apprehension for revealing immaturity. My whole life I've maintained the reputation as the one more mature than his peers. That slows as you age, I think. The expectation for maturity flattens out and climbs near a ceiling. Breaking ceilings is not an activity I'm accustomed to, though it is a growing family tradition (apologies, Dad. Terry I hope you are laughing while remembering that ordeal many years ago). Perhaps, I'll continue the tradition.

I burst with tension yearning the simple life.

Independence is my friend, but interdependence is my brother.

Big words (like interdependence) make me want to vomit. I wish I, and others, could write and talk with pictures like cultures of the East.

I am retiring for the night to sip some tea and lounge on the sofa couch.

In the holy, precious name of Jesus Christ our risen Lord, I pray. Amen