Special Agent Nathan

Last night, I was on the phone with my sister, and I missed a call from my brother.

(Tangent)
This is the popular brother with all the nieces and nephews. He scuba dives, he got certified to sky dive, and he used to work for the Secret Service. Now he works for another government agency.

Anytime he's around, all the kids want to see his gun or his badge, while all I have to offer is my business card or the report I just edited.
(End Tangent)

When I called him back, he said he already got what he needed.

It turns out he is tracking a pedophile who fled authorities in Utah and is currently hiding out in California. They have his cell number, and they are going to find him by getting his location from it, but first he had to find out if it was still active. He wanted someone with a Utah number to call him, pretending to have called a wrong number. Before I called him back, he found someone to do it for him.

I was THIS CLOSE to having a part in a covert op.

THIS. CLOSE.

The Perfect Day

Do you remember My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding?

(Tangent)
I love that movie for many reasons, but one of them is how similar it is to my family and my in-laws. My family is falling out all over the place with too much noise and everyone talking over each other. When we go to my wife's family, it is nice and quiet, and I can actually get a little reading done.
(End Tangent)

Do you remember the scene when she is finally working in the travel agency and happy, peppy music is playing in the background and she's spinning around in her chair, filing documents, making reservations, and using all the military terms for repeating letters (Alpha, Charlie, etc.)?

That is me today. It all started with hearing Good Life by One Republic on the way into work this morning.



All day, I've had a breezy attitude thanks to the vibe of the chorus, and all my appointments have been with students who have been doing what they should and getting good grades because of it.

Now I'm just waiting for the moment when (metaphorically speaking) I get up from my chair and get whiplash because I'm still attached to my headset.

(That was a poor excuse for a segue back to My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding, for the majority of you who probably couldn't read my mind.)

Pockets: A girl's best friend

My daughter has a thing for pockets recently. If we go somewhere, she has to stuff half her bedroom into her pockets.

Well ...

The other day, she wanted to wear the following dress:



Do you notice a problem?

Yep. No pockets.

But that doesn't stop someone like my daughter.

She discovered a handy place to stuff all her junk.

Can you guess where it is?





(scroll down)







That's right. All afternoon my daughter waltzed around the house looking ... mature for her age.

Fortunately, she was oblivious about what she looked like with the extra ... padding.

I can't even do this with my hands.

Unstoppable

You know that movie Unstoppable?



It's about the train that won't stop.

Yeah, it sounded boring to me too.

I heard it was about colliding trains, and I thought, "Great, a two-hour movie about a 5th grade word problem."

At 7:30 a.m., an express train traveling at 60 miles per hour leaves Santa Fe bound for Phoenix, 520 miles away. At the same time, a local train traveling 30 miles an hour carrying 40 passengers leaves Phoenix bound for Santa Fe ...

Well, my wife and I watched it the other night, and I have to admit ...

... 5th grade word problems are more intense than I thought.