Naturalize this!

After many false starts, I’ve finally knuckled down and completed my form N-400, application for naturalization. Its sitting here, ready to fire in the mail in the morning, coincidentally 3 days before our 18th aniversary of arriving here in the US.

Let the waiting begin 🙂

Update: Thanks to the wonders of certified mail, I just got an email indicating my application arrived at the processing center in Vermont today, poetically enough the 18th aniversary.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Congratulations to Ed and Shana on their marriage – the wedding was beautiful and the reception was great fun. I put some pictures up on flickr. Obviously worth the trip – but I’m pooped after three out of town weekends (New Jersey for Ed’s bachelor party, North Carolina to hang with Frank, and Connecticut for Ed and Shana’s wedding) in a row. Where did the last month go?

I’m totally ready to set my car (not that I need a car to get to the airport) on fire and not leave town for a little bit.

Playground Sports

I read somewhere an article bemoaning today’s twenty-somethings increasing refusal to act like grown ups. There’s probably something to that- cities around the US have growing numbers of people playing little kid sports like kickball and dodgeball. The beauty of these sports though, is that everyone is on a pretty level playing field – no one played division one kickball in college and want to take out their lack of pro career on the rest of us. These sports are a great way to meet people who aren’t hard-core athletes from all over that you’d probably never have met otherwise.

I’ve captained a kickball team (the Free Ballers) for the summer and fall seasons of the WAKA Minuteman division – our fall season ended last night in a cold and rainy 17-0 pummeling to eject us from the first round of the playoffs, which could be expected based on our 2-4-1 record with a run differential of -23. Now I’ve joined a dodgeball team for the off season, along with some other kickball folks, making us all cross-playground-sport athletes. Like modern day Bo Jacksons, if you will.

Quick trip to North Carolina

Flew down to Raleigh last weekend,
to visit former colleague and current friend Frank. I flew down Friday and back early Sunday morning – both of which seem to be excellent times to travel,
due to mostly empty terminals and short lines.
A good time was had by all – we got caught up, laughed a lot, randomly fell upon an opportunity to attend a Boston College vs University of North Carolina football game, heckled an episode of Made, I got to try delicious Ethiopian food (which still seems like an oxymoron to me after all the images of starving Ethiopians in the 80s) and we saw Jarhead.

Ask Frank about all his innovative household uses for rubber bands 🙂

On the way back I even got to see some of the best sights in DC.