But I'll give it a shot. At least for a while.

I've never before considered posting a blog, as it seemed something reserved for people with way too much free time. I tried keeping a simple web page once, but never updated it. So why would I think that updating a blog would be any easier?

Some friends of ours recently left town, moved back to potato country (from, I suppose, oil country ... mmmmm ... potato salad). They promised to keep in touch via blog. I should probably link to it once I figure out some of the technical details of this new venture. Anyway, it seemed a painless way to communicate and keep track of thoughts, ideas, rants, etc.

But first, some ground rules:

1. No postings (from me, anyway) about my place of employment. I love my job. Period. There are plenty of other blogs out there written by people who have extremely low levels of job satisfaction. They steal office supplies and don't flush.
2. No adult-oriented material. There's just too much of that out there already, and it's free. Or so I'm told.
3. Everything else is fair game.

Hopefully I'll fill this site up with all kinds of fascinating things, like pictures of the kids and journals of travel related observations.

For example, here's one. Last night my son Adrian (3) and I were looking through an almanac at flags of the world. He was curious about South Africa, because I had been recently and it's one country (other than "ours" and "Turkey") that he actually knows. He pointed to the Swiss flag and called it "the boo-boo one". I guess it looks like the international symbol for first aid.

See, that wasn't so hard. And we get stuff like that from our kids every day! Priceless.