Today, I talked to my brother, Aaron, on the phone for the last time before he goes to Iraq. I probably won't get to talk to him again for a long, long time, so it was a tough conversation even though I just saw him a week ago and we talked a lot during that trip. I thought that would make it easier. Aaron's group leaves for six weeks of training in California at 4 a.m. Saturday morning. This is a photo of Aaron. The shorter, less muscular person in the lavender scarf is me.

With this entry, I am marking the start of a new category on the blog called "Supporting my troops." A few days after Aaron leaves, my other brother Ryan will leave for Marine Basic Training in Parris Island. I'm planning to post updates here as my family gets letters and phone calls from them. We would all appreciate your prayers.

I am having trouble making this into a pretty link, but if you copy and paste this address into your browser, it should take you to a hilarious column I read today.

http://www.herald-mail.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=101478&format=html

I think this makes me laugh so much because I could see it happening where I work.

Today, I had one of the more surreal experiences of my life. One of my jobs with the newspaper is to write about the school system where I work. This means that I spend a lot of time in schools, doing interviews, taking photos, and just generally hanging around until someone asks me to leave. One of the schools was kind enough to ask me to speak at their Career Day since the students see me a lot and might want to know what it is that I do. This is what the nice school counselor told me. I kind of wanted to ask if he was kidding, but I refrained. I also kind of agreed to be the "keynote speaker" (Their words, NOT mine!) which meant that I talked to the entire student body of about 300 students to kick off their day of hearing from a wide variety of professionals, all of whom would have been immenently more qualified to be the keynote speaker than I am. Nevertheless, this morning at 9 a.m., I drove up to the school after a car ride rehearsing my speech and drinking LOTS of coffee, to see this sign.

And I almost drove up onto the curb. On the one hand, the sign cracks me up, because it sounds like Haley Wachdorf and The Career Day Presenters are some kind of lounge act coming to perform big band hits for the student body. "We'll be here all week. Try the veal!" On the other hand, my 25th birthday is looming up in a couple of days, and for some reason, seeing my name on the sign as some kind of role model, i.e. Legitimate Adult, really freaked me out. Who am I to tell these kids anything? I still remember being in sixth grade. It was sobering. The surprising thing was that the students actually seemed interested in what I had to say, and it wasn't nearly the train wreck that I had envisioned, once I got over wanting to throw up from fear.
For your purposes, you should try to imagine me trying to inspire 300 students to greater heights of academic achievement. Don't you just wish there was a video? We could sell it in the comedy section of our local video stores. Alas. At least I can say I have had my 15 minutes of fame. And it was more than enough for me.

Today is my birthday, but I got started celebrating a little early. Last night, Dan and I went to the home of our dear friends Sam and Shanelle, where we were treated to one of Shanelle's gourmet meals. The woman made appetizers, salads, an entree, a side and rolls just for us. And she has two kids under the age of three who she put to bed before we got there! As if all that weren't enough, Shanelle made this two-layer chocolate with butter cream filling cake with pink roses on it just for me! Admire it:

Here is a photo of Wonder Woman Shanelle.

And this is me trying to cut the cake without making its layers collapse. Sam, Shanelle's husband, who is pictured here, and Dan, my husband, who is taking the photo, were no help at all.

We now have the remains of the cake in our kitchen, and Dan and I are taking turns eating it straight out of the Tupperware container we brought it home in. Some of us (I'm not naming names) are not even using a fork. But it's OK, because it's my birthday. Right?

It is with great relief that I have realized that the fast food-industry is not stalking me. But here, in case you were wondering, is how I came to believe that I was being targeted: Last week, I went to Wendy's. I try not to do the fast food thing too much, but when you live the life of a 100-mile a day commuter, Wendy's is sometimes your healthiest option in that they will actually sell you a salad. So I end up there on days when I run out of time to pack a lunch or leave it sitting on my kitchen table, where it is so very useful. So I was at the Wendy's drive through window, picking up my salad. When the girl at the window gave it to me, she looked me right in the eye, and said "See you tomorrow." My car was already moving past the window, so I didn't have time to say "What?" But I spent the rest of my drive home wondering if I have come to be such a fixture at the Wendy's drive-through window that they truly believe they see me there every single day. Should I say something? Do they think I'm someone else? Am I going to Wendy's in my sleep and ordering huge quantities of French fries while unconscious? I was really quite disturbed about the whole thing.

But today, I worked up the nerve to go back to Wendy's. This time, I went inside to order because I needed to get cash out of the ATM, and while I was standing in line waiting to order, the cashier gave the man in front of me his food, smiled at him, and said "See you tomorrow." You could tell he was a little freaked out, but I was having the very reassuring epiphany that "See you tomorrow" must be Wendy's new little catch phrase. Kind of like "Have a nice day," but more intrusive. I still don't like it, but at least now I know they don't actually think I come in there every day.

See you tomorrow indeed.

My good college friend Chuck recently sent me one of his genius mix tapes. Actually, now they're mix CDs, but they're still awesome. On this tape is a song by a weird little band called "Mountain Goats." Based on the song on this compilation, they sound like two guys with guitars, but I could be wrong about that. Anyway, the song is absolutely hilarious, and I thought y'all might enjoy the words. Imagine these lyrics sung in the most wild-eyed, border-line insane, sarcastic way possible, backed by two frantically strummed guitars, and you have the basic idea. Also, since I was confused on this point, apparently, Heaven 17 was some kind of synthesizer-based funk band of the 1980s.

Cubs in Five
By Mountain Goats

They're gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon
And the Canterbury Tales will shoot right up to the top of the best-seller list
And stay there, for 27 weeks.

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucks will make it all the way to January
And I will love you again.
I will love you like I used to.

The stars are gonna spell out the answers to tomorrow's crossword puzzle
And the Phillips Corporation will admit that they made an awful mistake
And Bill Gates will single-handedly spearhead the Heaven 17 Revival.

And the Chicago Cubs will beat every team in the league
And the Tampa Bay Bucks will take it all the way to the top
And I will love you again
I will love you like I used to.

Chuck tells me he put this song on the CD because of the part about the Canterbury Tales shooting to the top of the best seller list. I know it will never happen, but it really would make me happy.

I've said before that one of the things that I miss about living in the South is that so many of my friends are there, and although I can always pick up the phone and talk to them, it's not the same as being able to see them. Dan, my wonderful husband, knows this, and I think that's why he did a very special thing for me for my birthday. Over the almost two years since we moved to Albuquerque, I have managed to see each of my good friends when we've taken trips home or at events like weddings, but the one person I have not seen in almost two years is my friend, Liz. Liz was the maid of honor in our wedding. In fact, it was because of helping Liz move to College Station, Texas right after she and I graduated from college that I met Dan. But since April 2003, Liz and I have both moved, started new jobs, (she lives in Nashville now) and just generally been very, very busy. We talked about ways to get together several times, but it never worked out. Dan and I traveled a lot around the holidays to be at some important family events, but I told Dan that the very next thing I wanted to do was have Liz visit us in Albuquerque.
On my birthday, Dan gave me a few presents, but then started acting all weird and saying that another present of mine would be coming "on Friday." He made up some elaborate story about something he tried to get for me being on backorder, but I had my suspicions. My birthday was on Sunday, and by Thursday, I had relentlessly questioned Dan enough that he broke down and told me that Liz was coming in on a Friday night flight to spend the weekend with me. There should be video of the happy dance that was done in our kitchen, but since there isn't, suffice it to say that I was ecstatic. I went and got Liz from the airport on Friday night, and from then on, I think I got a total of 12 hours of sleep split between two nights, and I talked so much that I was going hoarse by the end of the weekend. It was just the most perfect birthday gift. So, here's to reuniting with old friends, and to Dan, the hands-down Greatest Husband Ever.

This story has a happy ending.

Sometime last summer, Dan got interested in radio controlled airplanes. When I say he got interested, I mean he became completely obsessed. Suddenly, we had bookmarks in our Web browser leading to RCA sites, magazine subscriptions to RCA publications, the whole nine yards. Except, of course, the airplane. That was a matter of much discussion. I was fine with the idea when I thought a radio controlled airplane was about the size of a toy truck. Something manageable, that would fit easily under a bed. It wasn't until we were lying in bed one night talking that Dan let slip the fact that RCA's have, on average, a SIX FOOT WING SPAN. Folks, we live in an apartment. An apartment where, like most people in apartments, we have no garage. An apartment where about every two months I try to re-evaluate what we can possibly throw away to give us more space for all of our constantly-accumulating things. So when Dan told me that he thought we could just keep the plane in the guest room, I laughed out loud. WHERE in the guest room did he think we were going to put this thing? On the ceiling? Yes, it turns out. Dan thought it would be possible to just hang the thing from the ceiling. To make a long story short, we hit what I believe is called an impasse. I was not interested in having guests smacking their heads on a large toy suspended from the guest room ceiling, and Dan was convinced that it would work. Or, at least, that's what Dan thought the situation was. In fact, it had occurred to me that Christmas was coming up awfully soon. So, I saved months worth of the reimbursement checks I got for mileage at work and bought Dan an airplane. We did a massive closet reorganization, and now the Arrow hangs from a hook in our biggest closet, where I have to say it fits better than I imagined it would. The photo up top was taken when Dan was building his plane, which meant our kitchen was covered in tiny parts and power tools for hours at a time. Now he's learning to fly it from the people at the hobby store, and he's happier than any kid you've ever seen riding their first bike. Let this be a lesson to the single women out there: No matter how old they get, men NEVER get tired of their toys. They just call them hobbies.