Feel free to hate us now. We just got tickets to see U2 in Phoenix in April. We're going to make a trip of it and celebrate our second anniversary, which is only a few days later. If you want to hate us further, know that we got FLOOR SEATS, meaning that we actually don't have a seat per se, but instead we get to stand up in the area in front of/around the stage and dance with the other crazy people. Paying more money to be further away from the stage but have an actual seat would have been a total waste of money, because the idea that I would actually sit down during this show is laughable. Everyone knows you have to stand up when Bono enters the room. I can't wait for April.

My husband is currently sitting on our couch playing Halo 2. Actually, the more accurate statement would be that he's been sitting on our couch playing Halo 2 every spare waking moment for the last three days. I am agape at the endless capacity of men to do something so pointless for such a long stretch of time. Dan tells me that this activity is justified because a group of guys from our church are getting together this weekend to play each other in Halo 2 and "I need to defend my honor, because they threatened to snipe me."

There you have it, people. Our honor comes down to how much butt we can kick in Halo 2.

OK, folks. To make up for my total lack of posting this week due to the fact that I've been getting home after 9 p.m. for the last three nights, I pose a question with which you may entertain yourselves and one another until I am coherent enough to post some photos and stories from the last couple of weeks. Here goes:

What is the worst haircut you ever got?

For the record, the worst haircut I ever had happened during an ill-advised period during college when I decided it would be a good idea to grow my hair out, resulting in what I thought at the time was a semi-short, layered, flippy-in-the-back kind of Meg Ryan thing and what in retrospect I have realized looked very much like a free-range mullet you might see in any Wal-mart in the Deep South. A note to the people who knew me then: WHY didn't you just do me a favor and cut my hair off in my sleep?

Dan says that the worst hair-related decision he ever made was the time he shaved his head. In case I don't have it in writing anywhere else, let me say in this forum that he is officially forbidden from ever doing that again.

So ... what's the worst thing you ever paid someone to do to your hair?

I need some help, bloggers. I am completely out of ideas for things to take to lunch. I realized a long time ago that if I'm going to eat healthy things on my daily commute to the land of no restaurants but McDonald's I have to shop beforehand. But I have run out of good ideas. This week, I did a bad job of pre-shopping and ended up eating fast food three days in a row. Yuck. So, lunch packers, what do you take to work? I need things that are relatively easy to prepare. Any suggestions?

I am a big fan of the Super Bowl, for the simple reason that it means that football season is over, and I can have my husband back on weekends. Prior to being married, I never really understood having Super Bowl parties, because I had no emotion in any direction about football, but now it seems like a good idea to celebrate the end of the season. So, we went with great enthusiasm last Sunday to the home of our friends Sam and Shanelle with a bunch of people from our church. Shanelle, being the domestic goddess that she is, made a TON of really good food, and we pretty much sat around and ate ourselves into oblivion while halfway watching the game and commercials and spending more time watching Sam and Shannelle's daughter, Annabelle, and our friends Patrick and Jasmine's daughter, Kristen, playing with each other. Both of the girls are, I think, between two and three years old, and they are both very into Disney princesses and My Little Pony. Both girls had brought out their My Little Pony collections for the party, and as a result, the best line of the whole party was spoken by little Kristen, who apparently has recently learned to use her posessive pronouns.
When Kristen got to the party, Dan was helping her take off her pink jacket, and saw that she was holding a My Little Pony. Dan, being the type of person who makes a major effort to have conversations with little kids (I just get freaked out and stop trying) asked her:
"Kristen, is that a My Little Pony?"
To which Kristen responded by giving him the Look of Death and saying with as much acidity as a three-year-old can muster:
"No. It's MY Little Pony."

This is a photo of Annabelle, on the left, and Kristen, on the right, "helping" Shanelle clean up and cook in the kitchen. You can tell how helpful I was with all of that by the fact that I was standing around taking pictures. But notice that while Kristen is assisting with the chores, she is not putting down her pink purse with the tail of a My Little Pony hanging out.

Purse snatchers, beware.

This is a long-overdue posting of a photo I took of the Wachdorf family. This is not the whole family, since Dan's grandmother, who lives with his mom and dad, is not in the photo, but it's pretty complete. In the back we have Dan's dad, Arthur, Dan the Great, and Chris Gilbert, the boyfriend of Dan's sister Dinah, who is standing in front of him in the blue shirt. Then, there is Hannah, Dan's youngest sister, and Dan's mom, Lorrae. Last but CERTAINLY not least, we have Maggie, the family's dog. Maggie is probably the most revered member of the family, and is certainly the most highly entertaining, even though she doesn't like me very much. We think she has somehow made the connection that I have something to do with the fact that Dan isn't around the house much anymore, and this does not make her happy, because she LOVES Dan. But she has started to accept me more, so that's good. Aren't they a good-looking bunch?

Here, as a bonus, we have a photo of Dan reading airplane magazines with Sammy, one of three triplets in a family that the Wachdorfs know in San Antonio. When Dan and I were dating, the triplets were really little, but now they are three years old, and watching them is better than watching TV. When we last went to visit in San Antonio, Dan and Sammy enjoyed a little reading session so they would not be behind on the latest advances in the field of radio controlled airplanes. Photos like this make me know that Dan is going to be a good daddy one day. That is, if I can convince him to act like an adult instead of one of the kids.

Here's a piece of trivia about our marriage: Dan is physically incapable of keeping secrets from me. I am amazed that he even managed to keep secret his plans for proposing to me a few years ago. To this day, I am convinced that the only reason he was succesful at that was because we didn't live in the same state at the time. But before then and ever since then, Dan has never failed to break down and tell me about every great gift he has ever gotten for me. It's like he gets so excited that he has a good gift that he just can't contain himself. Never was this more clear than this week. Dan and I celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday because he is leaving for a business trip on Monday. So about a week ago, Dan starts dropping hints about this "really great Valentine's Day gift" that I'll never guess. The way Dan undoes himself in these situations is that he truthfully answers questions I ask him in my efforts to find out his secret. So, needless to say, by Thursday night, I had gotten it out of him. But finding out early did nothing to diminish my absolute joy at finding out that Dan got me tickets to see Alison Krauss and Union Station in a few weeks. I had no idea they were even coming to Albuquerque. So, to Dan's credit, he did do a REALLY good job of Valentine's this year, even if he can't keep his mouth shut.

A note from Dan: Haley can't keep a secret either. She told me what she got me that same day.

Yeah, that was because I didn't want him to feel bad.

When Dan and I were dating, there was a loooooong period of time when we saw each other once a week at most. Between when we got engaged and when we got married (you know, that whole 4.5 months) we managed to be in the same state about three times, one of which was the visit when we planned all the major aspects of our wedding, and once when we took care of details, like getting our marriage license. Back then, it was bearable, because we were enduring the separation for a greater end, so that we could get married and be together always.
Right now, I am sittng in my couch writing for the blog at 9 p.m. on a Friday night, because Dan has been in San Diego on business for a week, and althought he was supposed to be home two hours ago, his flight has gotten all messed up, and right now he's in Phoenix. At best, he'll be back at midnight. At worst, sometime tomorrow.
It's an interesting fact of marriage that this kind of distance bothers me much more than it did when we were dating, and when we were dating, I thought I would die if the distance continued. I thought that being married and being together so much more than we were dating would mean that whenever we had to be apart, it wouldn't bother me so much. But it's not true. I've spent this whole week alone, and I'll admit that the first night or two was nice. I caught up on some reading, made some phone calls to friends I had been meaning to make, and went to bed early. What I haven't done is see Dan or talk to Dan very much except for those awful five minute conversations you have when you're apart. It's surprising. When we were dating, we talked on the phone a lot, and it seemed like a good enough way to stay close at the time. But now, it's not enough. I am not a needy person. I have lived alone. I don't need 15 people around me to feel OK. I would often rather stay home and watch TV than go out and party. And yet, after a week without Dan, I have realized that I am getting weird. Turned into myself. Lonely.
Dan will be home some time in the next 24 hours, and everything will be fine. But I've discovered something this week: the longer I'm married, and the more the relationship between my husband and I grows, the more I see that we're truly not meant to be alone.
I'm glad I'm not.

I just learned on TV that Disney is releasing the two-disc special DVD of Bambi "from the vault." This is probably a silly question, but who is going to be buying two discs worth of Bambi, the world's most traumatic movie made for children? Was anyone else as upset by this movie as I was when I was little? I mean, Bambi's mom gets KILLED within the first 20 minutes! You would think that Disney would be doing its utmost to forget that anyone with their company ever thought this was a good premise for a children's movie. I'd keep that WELL within "the vault." But, I suppose this is why I am never going to be the head of a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Incedentally, this movie, as well as Old Yeller, which they played for us in my SECOND GRADE CLASSROOM are the reasons why I am highly suspicious of any movie involving a cute, lovable animal as one of the main characters. Because inevitably, the animal is going to get the raw end of the deal.

Sometimes you can see interesting things just driving home from work. First off, the other day, I saw Harrison Ford when I was sitting in traffic at a stop light. OK, it probably was not Harrison Ford. But it looked eerily like him. I was looking in my rear-view mirror, and behind me, idly playing with the air conditioner vents in his car, was this guy who looked EXACTLY like a Regarding Henry era Harrison Ford, but with glasses. It took me a minute to realize that the likelihood that Harrison Ford was sitting in a Ford Taurus in Albuquerque was extremely low, but even then, I kept looking just to make sure it wasn't him. In Albuquerque, that's as close to a celebrity encounter as you're going to get.
Then, I was driving past the golf course near our house, and I saw three high school girls each carrying one of those huge golf bags. I knew they were in high school because of the high level of glossed lips, flippy hair, hip hugger pants, and dangly earrings. Needless to say, the image was hihgly incongruous with the term "gold course." Then, I noticed that there were high school girls ALL OVER the golf course. There were probably 25 of them, in small groups, interspersed with the typical middle aged guys one normally associates with golf courses. Ever since then I've been wondering if it was Take Your Daughter to Golf Day, or if this is some kind of marketing ploy on the part of the golf course. "Look! Golf is, like, hip!" I can't think of any other explanations. Any ideas out there?

I just talked to Aaron! For those of you who don't know, Aaron is my Marine baby brother who is in 29 Palms California right now getting ready to go to Iraq. He's got some down time before his unit goes on two-day leave. He's going to Las Vegas, and he gets to see his wife, Kelly, who has flown out there to see him. It's a great unexpected blessing, because they didn't think they'd get to see each other again until he comes back from his seven-month deployment. Once he gets back from leave, his group is on standby to leave for deployment, which means they could leave any time in the next few weeks. Pray.

My family has also gotten two letters from my other Marine baby brother, Ryan, who is in basic training in Parris Island, South Carolina. Ryan does not write the long descriptive letters that Aaron wrote to us from basic training (not so much Ryan's style) but he is doing well. He's been made a squad leader, which is more work for him because if his group doesn't perform well, he pays. But he seems to be doing well. He says hello to everyone and said he is very thankful for all the mail he has received from family and friends. Mail, it seems, is the highlight of a recruit's life in basic training.

That's all for now.

It's not really that late, only 10:30, but I'm aggravated that I am awake even though Dan is snoring blissfully in our bedroom. On a happy note, Dan has indeed come back from his many world travels, and I am so happy. But back to whining. I am desperately tired and I cannot go to sleep. I have a hard time winding down at the end of weeks like the one I've just had. It's been very full and very stressful and even though it's over now and no new deadlines are coming my way until Monday, I just can't let it go. I am re-running conversations I had this week in my mind, mentally reciting every word I have written for tomorrow's paper, and feeling my shoulders get more and more tense instead of relaxing into the sleep that I need so much right now. It's amazing that your mind is capable of keeping your body awake even when all you need physically is to sleep. I'm sure this serves many purposes, such as keeping us from falling asleep at dangerous times, but sometimes I wish there was an 'overide' button on the system. For now, it seems that David Letterman and I will be spending the evening together. I am optimistic that this will put me to sleep.

Aaron leaves for Iraq at 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. His unit will be in the air traveling for 25 hours. Please pray for their safety.

"For He will give his angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their hands lest you strike your foot against a stone." Psalm 91