Date Night... With Me, Myself, and I

Wednesday - July 28, 2004

Another hump day as July rapidly draws to a close. The gathering of information for the measles partnership update is getting to get pretty routine. Our CDC folks who are assigned to the east and central blocks send me updates without even being asked first. It’s very nice. I managed to get some scattered country reports independent of the subregional reports, which was nice. Especially for the West Block, where Dr. Fall once again sent me his update about 15 minutes AFTER I’d already sent out the full update. What that forced me to do was give an oral report on the phone and then send a hard copy to Andy Gay at UNF, who was doing the minutes this week. Still, the call went well, and this was a quiet week. Not much happened except DR Congo was forced to postpone both of their campaign phases by a month thanks to delivery problems of cold chain equipment (measles vaccine has to be kept cold or it ruins, which is a real problem when your nation is at the equator!).

Otherwise, we sent out some money to Ethiopia and I mostly laid low. Once the call was over, the day was nearly done anyway. My poor mom got sideswiped in her parking lot at her apartment, so now she has a scrape to be fixed. It sounds like only a buff/paint job, but she can’t really afford it right now. Hopefully, if the body of the car was not punctured, she can wait until money is less tight. Richard and I found out that I can easily get email to him at work from both the hotmail and WHO accounts. My question is why can’t I get my CDC email to arrive in his mailbox, and vice versa? Neither one of us can email the other at work when we’re in Atlanta. Totally bizarre, especially when I’m told by my IT people and he’s told by school IT people that there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to email one another.

After work, I went to the gym and had another workout. I’m hoping that I’ve lost weight here. I think I have, but I can’t be sure. I know I can’t totally lose my entire belly at once, although that would be nice. It’s just hard to notice incremental change. After the gym, I went to eat at that St. Elmo’s place that we went to last Thursday. I ate alone, but that was fine. Between dinner and desert, I called Richard and chatted a few minutes with him. His final exam for his summer class is tomorrow, and he’s got a lot to do for it. I hope he does well, and doesn’t stay up all night studying. I think he will do fine on the exam, though. He seems to have really enjoyed this class. He’s all set for the fall and spring semesters too as far as student loans and having the classes he needs.

After dinner, I went to see Passion of the Christ again. It was questionable whether Trent would show up, and he didn’t. He messaged me about 10 minutes before the movie started to say the dinner wasn’t over, he hated the Marines, and he was very sorry. It’s just a movie, so I wasn’t phased. These things happen, and I knew it was going to be iffy that he could come. You'd have thought he was breaking a hot date or something :) The movie was every bit as powerful as I remembered it in the US. I was able to catch some things I missed the first time, which was cool. Still cried at the same parts. The movie is very meaningful if you are a Christian already. I don’t see it as a recruiting tool at all. It’s completely missing the back story and what happens after resurrection. If you know that back story coming in, it’s great. I think others would just be confused and horrified at the graphic violence.

Eddie picked me up and took me home around 11pm. In all, dinner, dessert, two beers, a movie ticket, popcorn, and soda cost me the equivalent of $20 US. Not bad!