I don't get it

Annapolis: Folly, or folly?

'Cause they can't be freakin' serious. I mean, sure... it's pretty miraculous that some of those Arab nations showed up for the summit, or whatever they're calling it... but other than that, this whole thing is a waste of resources -- money, time and hope.

It's good to hope. It's good to hope for the possibility of "peace in the Middle East." But once your hopes are shot down time and time again, The Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome sneaks in, and it's easy to start looking at the whole situation as fairly hopeless.

So now, even though the Saudis and (gasp!) the Syrians apparently showed up for this event -- the idea that this could signal the start of something real is still pretty far out.

Maybe it would mean more if either of the leaders had any real power, but um, duh, Abbas is so powerless that he's lucky to be alive, and Olmert is pretty much only powerful 'cause he's good at manipulating the media and the minions, despite his history of corruption. And 'cause Sharon's still lying in the hospital somewhere in a coma. But he's sure not powerful enough to institute some of the changes the Palestinians and/or other Arabs would "require" for peace to exist. (Like, well, allowing ourselves to be pushed into the sea...)

I feel like we're acting like bad parents.

Parents encourage good behavior by rewarding it. When a child does something he or she shouldn't do, good parents find a way to signal that the behavior is not acceptable.

So... the Palestinian people, in a fair and monitored election, elected a terrorist group to be their government. They continue to shoot rockets into sovereign Israeli territory. They continue to attempt sending terrorists into Jerusalem. They continue to defend their belief that Israelis don't belong in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), by randomly choosing people to shoot at and sometimes kill.

And we go to a peace summit with them? Huh?

I just don't get it.

On shaky ground

Heh, our company's having some challenges lately, and apparently we're going to lease out some of our space to outside companies. That means there's lots of construction going on.

So today, when the building shook for about half a second, my colleague and I looked at each other, and she asked "was that an earthquake?" My answer was, "or construction."

Sure enough, it turns out it was an earthquake.

I can handle that kind of shaky ground... it's those big ones that scare me.

Korrie, this one's for you

Okay, since Korrie not-so-subtly jabbed me on Facebook to get me to blog, I figured I'd better get at it.

Honestly, I didn't realize it's been nearly six weeks since I wrote here. Ya'll can feel free to remind me (maybe more gently than jabbing?) when it's been a while.

Life's busy-busy-busy.

I'm running at least three days a week, plus working out an additional two or three days when possible.

I'm in class two nights a week.

I'm working a minimum of 45 hours/week, usually 50+.

I'm training a new interviewing manager how to interview -- and since his project runs from midnight-6am, we interview after 10pm.

I'm trying to be a bit more social, so I'm attempting to go out with friends at least one evening a week when possible.

So yeah, I've been busy.

So busy, in fact, that I took vacation days from work in order to try to clean up my house and work on my homework. I haven't completed either list of things to do, but at least I made progress in the right direction.

My boss is generally ticked off at me for not doing my job well enough, as far as he's concerned. He doesn't like the fact that I have principles that I will not compromise. Yet he's still better than the alternative of the new boss he's training for us... because the evil you know is better, and all that jazz.

I haven't been paying too much attention to what's going on in the news, because by the time I get home from work, I'm too exhausted to deal with the stress that comes from knowing what's going on in this crazy world.

I know that there's some summit being planned that will deal with Middle East peace-type issues. I'm sure there are lots of people who believe a summit like this is a step in the direction toward peace -- but I'm pretty positive that the vast majority of those people live outside Israel. Those of us who live here gave up on that a long time ago.

Our stupid fake prime minister (remember, our real one is still in a coma... not that he was all that great, but sheesh, compared to this one he was pretty good) is apparently planning on releasing more prisoners, even though we're still being bombarded by rockets from Gaza, and there are attempted terrorist attacks from the West Bank.

In fact, we're going to a conference to negotiate with someone who says that the Palestinians will refuse to accept Israel as a Jewish state. His reasoning is apparently that since there are no other countries where religious and cultural identities are intertwined, Israel should not have that status.

Um, what about those terrorist Islamic countries wherein they intertwine religion and culture all the time? Like when they force women to travel with a chaperone and cover herself from head to toe, if for some reason, they absolutely must leave their homes.

I guess they don't count.

The other major news topic around here is that the secondary school teachers have been on strike for weeks, and there's no end in sight. This means that all the kids over age 14, if not younger, are hanging out all day with nothing to do. But the teachers in this country get paid for crap, so I don't blame them for taking a stand.

It does seem, however, that if the teachers aren't on strike, the students are. Sometimes it's the government organizations that are on strike. Occasionally it's the parents. Somewhere, someone in this country is on strike at pretty much every tick of the clock.

As you can see, with the status of affairs in my crazy corner of the world, it would take WAY too much energy to keep up with all the insanity.

And now it's time to return to my homework.

Happy, Korrie? :)