Dreaming of work...

Sunday March 20

Church was good this morning – we heard from the two ladies that are going to Africa to do missions that we met at the church up the road a couple weeks ago, remember the 4 hour going away service? I assume you don’t, but if you really care you can read the blog until you find it.

When some of your lunch guests cancel, we figured it would be pretty easy to substitute a few new ones. Doing so changed the entire dynamic of our afternoon – as one of our guests said, we had half of the church nursery at our house. We had a wonderful time serving Stack’ems to seven guests – 3 of them under the age of 5. The pastor of our church and his wife are truly a wonderful couple and we enjoyed visiting with them, as well as two teenagers from the church. The kids – I think they had fun, between exploring our bedroom and flushing a candle down the toilet, how could you not? I think we’ll have the opportunity to return the favor here in a couple weeks… I may even take my own oversize candles.

We finished the day with a phone call to the 806 area code to catch up on all of the big news.

Monday
Late night at work. Sautéed mushrooms and fajitas for dinner – we were pretty proud of the meal we cooked. We’ve watched more episodes of friends since we got here than we ever did back in the states. It kind of reminds me of some of the people I work with…
So I’ve become more of an accountant than I ever intended to be. And I’m becoming more like Bree. When I thought of marriage being a relationship in which you share your dreams, I always thought that meant your aspirations and your goals and the things that seem far off that you might want to accomplish someday. But to Bree, it’s much more literal. When we wake up, she always shares her dreams. My dreams usually aren’t that vivid… but this morning I woke up and could remember a good 30 minutes worth of dreams. One of them involved Bree’s parents shipping us a cookbook that we got for the wedding that was composed of contributions from a lot of people, like a church or community cookbook or something. But in my dream, I was flipping through the book trying to add up all the numbers and see if they matched the total. In my profession we call it footing or casting a document. AAAAAGGGGHHH! How scary. It was a horrible nightmare. I’ve definitely been working too much.


Tuesday
Bree had to work late and was preparing for two more days of late nights, as her team has an Easter deadline and out of the six people on her team, two are going to Greece on Thursday and two are going to Russia on Thursday. Crunch time! But now, she knows to always plan a trip on long weekends so that she won’t get stuck doing extra work while everyone else is out of town.

Wednesday
Big day at work today – I got to go with the boss to a meeting. I had a very important position at the table, at which everyone else probably made six figures. I was the scribe. More work, not much excitement, until…

We have now seen the British Apprentice. Can someone please tell me if NBC literally sold the rights to a guy in London, because it is the EXACT same show. The multibillionaire (career in real estate too I believe) even points and says “You’re fired.” They even have some of the same job tasks.
The key differences?
-they can use the f-word uncensored.
-the guy’s hair isn’t so crazy.
-the interviewees talk funny.
-the boardroom is a much cheaper version, without the mahogany walls.
-there’s no nicknames like “The Donald” – he’s addressed as Sir. No, sir, not as in yes, sir. As in Sir, like Knights of the Roundtable Sir. It seems many people in the boardrooms have multiple titles and initials after their names. I thought maybe they were qualifications and I was just under qualified – still a year away from being a CPA. But, nope, he’s probably doing them a favor by having them call him sir and not Lord or Duke or Knight of Her Majesty or other seemingly crazy, but very true stuff.

I haven’t printed out my application to be on the show yet, since we don’t have a printer at home. But that could work to my advantage, since that way I can print it, complete it, and send it off all at work, where Bree won’t be able to get it and tear it up. The only bad thing is I’d have to find someone to tape the episodes and mail them back to you, since you probably don’t have BBC 4 or even Sky.

Thursday
Have you ever been walking out of a revolving door at the same time someone else was walking in? Did you feel, just for a moment, a personal connection? To think that the two of you, complete strangers, joined together to complete a congruent mission. In a world at war and especially in an impersonal city like London, it’s nice to know that we do still have an opportunity to treat our fellow man with respect.