Enjoy!

So, where to begin? I've joined Facebook, which is something I was always hesitant about. A lot of things that are awesome about it, e.g. finding out whatever happened to old friends/acquaintances, are the things that are kind of depressing about it. I'm looking forward to see where it goes. Anyway, feel free to comment on anything here.

Today's post is going to be mostly pictures, as I am not feeling that clever/interesting.



It is a little known fact that if you are born in Texas, as Henry was, you are immediately issued a cowboy hat. Furthermore, if you are not photographed in the cowboy hat by your first birthday, you have to never again claim Texas as a homeland. The greatest shame is if you lose the hat; then you have to go live in a state with income tax.

Quick side comment: In Texas, at least when I lived there, the roads were awful, arguably because the government didn't take in enough funding to fix the roads due to the lack of state-wide income tax. However, in Pennsylvania, the roads have always been terrible, because the money taken in by state-wide income tax is burned away on everything other than actually accomplishing useful tasks. Based on this, what do the you thing the odds are of the new national stimulus package actually working?



MMMMM. Psghetti.



This building is on the edge of a park near our villa in Doha, Qatar. It is really creepy and ramshackle. In fact, it is the kind of place that the non-union Arabic equivalent of the Scooby gang would pull out a guy who had been trying to scare people away from the park for the big reveal:
"Look, it's Mr. Al-Manaker-Namaan!"
"Yes, and I would have got away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids, inshallah."



Nicole has gotten into knitting in a big way. The jacket that Henry is wearing in the preceding image is from her Fall line of active wear for tots on the go. Actually, the sweater is the first thing Nicole every made that wasn't a scarf, and came out beautifully.

This sign was placed at a round-about to encourage people to obey traffic lights. Note that rather than using the standard octagonal stop sign, they used a blood splatter, perhaps for dramatic effect. One has to wonder whether, in a culture where road signs, traffic laws, and common sense are all routinely ignored on the highway, one additional sign is really going to make a greater difference than say an actual enforcement effort. That said, the Qatar government is doing the best they can; the city of Doha has gone from Butler size to Pittsburgh size in 36 months and has double digit population increase every month, so a few traffic hiccups are to be expected.



The above is a picture of my favorite sign in Doha. "My Englishing places firstly!" You know, if you have a Chinese character tattoo, this may be what your skin says to people who can actually read the language.

Last thing: this YouTube video has cracked both Nicole and I up, and almost nothing hits both our funny, so check this out.