Richard’s Personal Blog

Having multiple blogs is difficult. Sometimes when writing something on one, I realize that it belongs more on another. Often I end up with lots of partial blog entries written, sometimes on the blogs themselves, on our family wiki, or in a text file sitting on one of my many computers. December (right around the corner) makes things worse as it’s just plain busier, not to mention the then-added pressure of ensuring that the Santa blog gets updated daily.

About a week and a half ago, I started working on a web-based, turn-based game similar to Urban Dead, but with a wider scope, much larger realm, added humor, and less predictability. Kind of an Urban Dead meets Doctor Who in Xanth as told by the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Why I do these things to myself, I am not sure. I’m still in the database schema design phase, one of the very few projects I’ve started at the bottom tier first. A decision made, in this case, by the fact that I’m going to rely heavily on auto-generated code derived from the schema and table contents. If nothing else, it’s a really good development exercise, I might earn at least $5 through donations, and it could someday look interesting on a resume.

I am really looking forward to the sniper rifle and the grenade launcher. *evil snicker*

Don’t drop a cut-open pomegranate on your kitchen floor — it tends to make the entire area look like a CSI crime scene…

Just heard through a third party that all eight (which is weird because I thought there were seven) orphaned children will be adopted. All prospective parents have signed contracts accordingly. It’s apparently the agency’s first 100% success rate for a single trip.

Random notes, for once not entirely related to Anna:

• Removed one of my entries from public view on this blog for a while until I settle things internally.
• The guy living across the street from us should have listened to me a couple months ago when I told him that I had noticed patterns in his grass that indicated a water or sewer line breakage. Sometime during the past couple of days, his house flooded — ruining hardwood floors, carpet, and countless unknown other areas. Hordes of craftsman have been arriving by truck at all hours. If he had proactively acted on my words, he’d've saved many 1000s of dollars in damage. I just hope it wasn’t the sewer that backed up…
• Finally succumbed and joined Netflix this weekend. Due to a poignantly painful (thanks to recent events), unconscious selection of movies in my queue, Evan Almighty showed up at the door yesterday. Good movie; any other week, I would have laughed. This week, I didn’t find it particularly amusing.
• Every random book I’ve picked up to read during the past two weeks has had orphans as major characters.
• Free lunch day today at work. Chinese: good. Not particularly hungry: bad.

Lots of stuff in basically random order as I jot down my thoughts and recollections before I forget them:

• She wants to be a dentist when she grows up.
• One problem employee (and one less-than-cooperative supervisor) at the Southwest ticket counter delayed me from being able to get through security in time to meet Anna at the gate. Man, I was steamed!
• I believe Anna entered the orphanage just over five years ago.
• Anna has two younger sisters, both in Spain. They were adopted about five years ago (apparently, soon after arriving at the orphanage), effectively splitting up the family. She has had no contact with them since; doesn’t help that they now speak only Spanish, she does not. I believe they are now ages five and eight now.
• She left her pink sweater in Southern California. It’s OK; she’d outgrown it anyway.
• The orphanage is located in a suburb about 15 miles outside of Kiev.
• I am fairly certain that Vera, the children’s escort, is a teacher at their school. To be confirmed.
• While Anna has a fun habit of naming off just about every car that drives by, her absolute favorites are Porsches and Hummers. I arranged with two respective local dealerships to let her spend some time in both before she left. The Hummer dealership owner coincidentally also had come from the Ukraine, and he graciously allowed us unfettered access to a brand-new, dark-blue H2 for several hours after we told him Anna’s story. Unbelievably trusting, he just handed me the keys and sent us on our way — no paperwork, no copies of anything, he never even knew my full name!! To Anna’s absolute delight, we drove around for a while, I let her take a brief (albeit scary!) spin behind the wheel in a wide-open dirt parking lot, we stopped off at the Porsche dealership for a quick top-down test drive, took her to dinner at Applebees, and then (20 driving miles later) returned the Hummer. While we were showing her a good time, the Hummer dealership owner went to a local jeweler and bought Anna a pair of real diamond earrings! I fear for their safety in the orphanage, but without knowing her fate her in the US, there was no way I was going to take them away from her, even for her safe-keeping. Amazing guy!
• A fan of Green Day, Pink, Disney, Hilary Duff, the Olsen girls, Shrek, and the Simpsons — among many other US exports.
• She has both ears, her nose (at age 12), and her tongue (at age 11) pierced.
• She has been to Italy and Egypt. Not sure if her travels were school trips, or related to adoption attempts. When we broke out of Sony Playstation II EyeToy game, we were surprised to hear that she’d played it before — in Italy.
• If she could eat strawberry ice cream every day, I think she would! Strawberry milkshakes don’t count.
• Loves jelly beans, but not necessarily Jelly Bellies.
• Not a fan of chocolate anything.
• Wears size 6½ shoes.
• While a habit we would have attempted to curb had she been ours, Anna likes eating packets of sugar and sugar substitutes. Our few restaurant visits would often result in a pile of empty packet wrappings in the corner. Her first night, she added sugar to her Sprite!
• Squirrels fascinated her, even more than most of the critters we saw at the zoo, meerkats the main exception.
• The school at her orphanage is so good that many of the neighborhood children are schooled there as well; two outside students to every orphan. Apparently, that’s unusual.
• She really hates to have her picture taken.
• Anna loves sunflower seeds. Never a day her pocket wasn’t full of them.
• Her two favorite colors: black and pink
• Someday, she wants to get a tattoo.