No time for blogging really since Kili (which I promise to blog about when I get back home next week - long story short I summitted solo after a very sketchy night).

I have however kind of been managing the blog that the team here in Uganda is using to cover our trip, which you can find here, complete with pictures.

More soon.

Apparently people do actually check my blog from time to time, because a few of you, my precious internet stalkers, have recently gone so far as to point out my lack of bloggery lately.

Apparently being in the US is not conducive to my motivations to write.

Let's see. Its mid June now. What's new...

Dave and I are pretty much all settled in the new place. I was worn down into picking up a HD flat screen and watching the US Open in high def in my own living room was a whole new addiction. So anyway, all settled in means of course that...

Its time to go to Africa again. I leave on Friday. Here's a random string-of-consciousness list of the things I can remember at the moment that need to happen before I leave:

- Do my taxes. This one pretty much has to happen as I'll be in Africa well past my 90 day auto-extension for being out of the country on 4/15.
- Get my passport back from the Ghana consulate along with my visa for said country.
- Get a hotel in Joburg for Fri/Sat nights. This one is kind of important. Rental car too.
- Get malaria medication. This one I'm toying with not doing.
- Balance out all the finances since the move in.
- More address changes.
- My driver's license expires while I'm out of the country (on my 30th birthday, actually) but there's pretty much nothing I can do about that. I finally have to go back to renew it this time. Which means I need to...
- Change my return flight home from NYC to CA in August. Surfing with the bro's is pretty much shot so I'll probably be doing the trip on my own, unless I can find someone cool enough to go.
- Send support letters for my missions week with the youth group in Uganda.
- Book my Kili plans for the week before that. Figure out how I'm getting from Nairobi to Kili and then from there to Entebbe.
- Find a replacement power cord for the video camera.
- Back up the laptop.
- Find a sublettor for my room (please God please make this happen).
- Continue to juggle the work that now fully 3 senior partners are throwing at me like I'm some Business Development slot machine that they can pull the handle on and win every time. I don't mind doing a fair share of work but people are starting to get insane, and nobody will take no for an answer. I AM LEAVING FOR AFRICA.
- Somehow catch up on about a week's worth of planning for my project that I was supposed to have done before leaving, but didn't because of the last item.
- Get Netflix and the cell phone put on hold whilst I'm gone.
- Fill my prescription for the anti-inflammatories for my foot since I won't be able to rehab it in Africa. Somehow it needs to be fixed before climbing Kili. They've given me a really stylish flat-soled orthopedic shoe I have to wear for the next week or so.
- Get the super to come change the lights in our stupid-high ceiling and replace the gate in the backyard (the one going to the basketball court).
- Tell my bank I'll be leaving them if they try to get me with withdrawl charges this time in Africa.
- DO ALL MY EXPENSE RECEIPTS. I'm like a few months and few thousand dollars behind on these freaking things and I need to send them in. Maybe I'll do this one tonight before leaving the office. I'd feel really good to have that one done.
- Pay the gas bill.

As you can see, blogging, personal emails, or really any personal life at all doesn't really make the list right now. It hasn't been all work, however. We did have, in the last month or so:

- The youth group's Father's Day year-end picnic yesterday. There was much razzle dazzle and nobody sliced my face open with a hubcap, so that was nice. It also ended with the tradition throwing of water on people, but Erin started it this time with Gatorade, taking it up a notch.
- Jen's B-day party the night before. Crappy weather but fun hanging with folk.
- Dinner courtesy of Trisha, who won some silent auction, at Django, with her and Holly and various other friends.
- Taught the last two lessons of the year with youth group on Others First.
- Had our housewarming party, which was off the hook. George knows how to get people grooving.
- Finally took the free tango lessons in Chelsea Market.
- Hosted the Arndt's son-in-law when he got sent back from customs in Cape Town w/o getting to leave the airport b/c he didn't have enough pages in his passport. That same weekend was paintball for Libby's birthday and breaking into the HighLine with Aron.
- Lunch with Dave's dad to talk over my schooling options for next year. There's really nothing in the city that matches what I want to do. Its either Boston or LA which is kind of like deciding whether you'd rather have your hands cut off or your feet removed.
- Lots of 8 mile runs up the West Side Highway, my new favorite place to run. Hence the busted foot.
- Caught a show with Mo and Jason and Julie and Amanda and her new BF. Show was some guy Mo knows from college, he was pretty good, and it was good to see everyone.
- Was in Chicago for a week for training, I think I forgot to blog about that. Training was good, made some new friends. Took it a lot easier than we used to at training, for the most part.

I think that's about it. I leave for Lusaka, Zambia (via DC and Johannesburg) on Friday afternoon. Next blog most likely from there.

Well, yeah. I've been back for what, about a month now, and no blogging. Eh.

I've been busy mostly and then also not very much at other times. Here's the short recap:

Week 1 - spent some time back in CA with the folks. Flew out to NY and started the apartment search with Dave. Found / settled on a place.

Week 2 - worked out all the details on the place. Went to the office, got some training done. Stayed at Dave's family's place until the moving started at the end of that week.

Week 3 - continued the moving in / unpacking process. Had the super over a lot to fix up a bunch of stuff but the good news is that they're pretty darn responsive, which is rad. Celebrated Dave's 30th in a few various scenarios (Jen's apartment, Lugers, a bar on the east side, etc.).

Week 4 - went to Chicago for training all week. Started running again (first time since Africa). Had good karma in O'Hare for the first time in my life and caught a standby seat on the earlier flight coming home.

Week 5 - not sure what I did last week really besides finish the unpacking / cleaning finally, find out that I'm probably headed back to Africa for work for the summer, run some more, and then hurt my stupid foot so that now I'm probably out for a week or so. Then we came up to Jen's dad's lakehouse just south of the NY border, which is where I am sleeplessly typing from at the moment.

I'm getting settled back into the pace of things here and the culture shock isn't so bad as it initially was but its still noticeable. I'm actually kind of looking forward of going back to the simplicity of Africa for a bit, where you order whatever it is that they happen to have for dinner that night, rather than having to decide from the endless options, and the specials. Etc.

I still need to do my taxes, fight my parking ticket, pay my bills, change my address for everything, clean up my work email and wipe out one of the full drives on the laptop and then back it up, and a host of other administratia, plus Dave and I are having our housewarming party next weekend. So it should be a busy while before I take off again, from the looks of it. Good news is that this latest bit of work back in the dark continent should afford me the chance to climb Kili this August, and perhaps meet up with the youth group in Uganda for their missions trip there after that. Still have to hammer all of that down - another item on the to-do list.

Right now, however, I'm tired, so I think I'll stare at the ceiling for a while. Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't love the movie Juno?

Bonus story time this week! Why? Because I'm not going to jail, which is as good a reason as any to celebrate (really this is me just putting off retroblogging for another day). Read on.

So its the day before I'm due to fly to South Africa for the first time. Its a warm Saturday in August, and I say goodbye to the folks and drive off with my brother Jonny on our way to San Francisco. I was flying out of SFO for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that Peter, Jonny, and I were headed to the Rock The Bells concert at McCovey Cove to see Rage Against the Machine back together for one of their 4 reunion shows. Which, of course, was one of the best nights of my life. But this story isn't about that night, its about what happened the afternoon before that night.

Jonny and I stopped to shop for a suit for him on our way down to Peter's place outside of SF. Its weird for me, knowing as much as I do about those suits, being able to tell where the fabric came from and what country the factory that put it together was in, and the name and phone number of the rep at RL who sold it to Macy's, and the crusty old buyer who was responsible for getting it to that store, at that price point, on that day. Etc. etc. etc.. So there I was musing through all of that while Jonny paid for the suit we picked out, when my phone rings.

Its dad. He says the mail came, and there's something for me in it. He says its from New Orleans and it looks official, and he asks if I want him to open it. He opens it and says the first two words that were printed in large block across the top of the page:

ARREST WARRANT

Something about not having appeared for a court date that I knew I had never gotten notice about. Apparently I'm a wanted man in New Orleans, LA, and I'm supposed to get on a plane leaving the states for a few months the next morning. Whoops. Cue a few frantic phone calls.

Here's the funny thing, though. That letter arrived one year to-the-day that I had first flown down to NOLA with the youth group for our first missions trip there - gutting houses in the horribly wet and hot and oppressive August air there. Whilst there, we had been out to dinner one evening in the French Quarter. After dinner I went to get the van I was driving to pick up my crew. I pull up to one of the one-way cross streets and the guy on the cross street flashses his lights, and sits there. He has the right of way but I figure he's telling me to go ahead, cause he's not moving. So I go, and about halfway through the intersection is when I hear the sickening thud of his bumper into the side of my rental van.

That was not a pleasant evening. The cop chick who wrote up the incident was very sympathetic to the fact that I was livid about being the victim of blatant insurance fraud, but there was nothing she could do.

The church we were working with down there, however, had a guy who was in charge of our work who said that he knew a judge and would get it "taken care of." Since I never saw anything in the mail, and nobody ever returned my follow-up calls, I assumed it had been taken care of. The legal system down there still appeared to be in relative shambles, anyway - we had one run-in with Military Police in a humvee rather than normal cops, at one point (another story for another time).

So yeah. There I am a year later on my way down to SF trying to get a hold of the youth leaders, who, providentially, were headed down to NOLA again for our second trip down there, one year later, to-the-day. I didn't get a hold of them, but my voicemails must have gotten through, because Russ, one of the other youth leaders, who happens to be a lawyer, went to court and got me sorted out. Apparently Dave had to go with him, because later that day when Dave got back to the work site, he wasn't wearing his boots and he stepped on a nail and had to go to the hospital. Dave still blames me, indirectly, for that nail incident, which is guilt I can live with if it gets me out of jail.

So anyway there was some back and forth with paperwork and emails in the months since I've left the states, and then the other day dad emails me a scan of a fax they got at home, which isn't very clear, but is clear enough to see that I got a dismissal from a court case of some sort in NOLA. So, assuming I'm not wanted for something else down there, I think I'm in the clear.

So that means I'm still a wanted man only in Virginia, and perhaps Florida, to my knowledge. And those are stories for another time, as well.