Monday Afternoon Musings

It's been a busy time here at the Rohde household this past week. The big news is that I suddenly have three organizations interested in hiring me. I'm filling out forms now, and next week will be flying out for an interview. All three jobs are very different, but they have one thing in common: they're all in Afghanistan. Yes, Afghanistan. Some time ago, I wrote that I seem to be qualified for only two jobs: either running multi-million-dollar projects in some war-torn country, or wearing a blue vest and saying "Welcome to Wal-Mart". Well, Wal-Mart isn't hiring, so it looks like it's Afghanistan!

For many people, learning that you're going to A'stan would be terrible news, but not for me. There's something about deployments that gets into your blood. It's working in places that most sane people don't want to go, doing things most people don't want to do, but doing a mission that needs to be done. I'm pretty good at it, too. On the flip side, the separation is a strain, but Janis and I know that we can handle it.

Any one of these opportunities will help us achieve another goal, which is to move to San Diego. Janis lived there until my transfer took us away 20 years ago, and I've been hearing about it ever since. Now that we have a young grandson, it's time to go back. Yes, it's expensive and crowded and will someday fall off into the Pacific, but too bad. We gotta go. This tour in A'stan will provide the kick to get us there. As soon as it's confirmed that I'm going, we'll put the house up for sale and start the process.

So now I have to talk with these three organizations and see which ones (a) will actually offer a job that (b) I really want to take. Three interests does not a deployment make.

Speaking of San Diego, Janis is going out there soon to see her friends and family. I get to stay home and be a single Dad to our two dogs for two weeks. If all goes well, maybe Janis will be able to start looking around for a place to live out there.

Meanwhile, here at home, we've had several waves of storms sweep through. Back in May, we had two hailstorms and some hellacious rain. Over the past week, we've had several storms with blasts of wind and more drenching rain. My neighbor had three of his four Bradford pear trees split in half a couple of days ago. I had two big branches from my dogwood break off and land halfway across the yard. Last night, the top 15' of one of my birches was blown off. I spent a couple hours today cleaning that one up. Let's hope that the storms are gone - they're no fun! The good news: my roof survived the hail, and the big trees around the house withstood all the wind.

On a lighter note, we saw a wonderful movie the other night: "The Triplets of Belleville". It's an odd French animated film, very funny, very creative, and beautifully drawn. In fact, the drawing alone is reason to see it. I could look at it frame-by-frame and be perfectly happy.

The movie trailer is on YouTube, of course (actually, the whole movie is), but I recommend that you put it on your Netflix queue and see it on a bigger screen. We loved it and you might, too!