If you didn’t start reading on Day 1, you might want to start from the beginning…

I woke up feeling normal, thank goodness my yuckiness from last night moved on. It sucks to be sick on vacation. Our original plan was to catch an early train north towards the Cinque Terre region but we had to extend our Rome stay by a half day in order to see the Vatican. It was closed on Sat because of a holiday, closed Sunday because it’s Sunday, and so we decided to hit it early Monday before the long lines formed. Then we’d go back to the hotel, check out, and catch a train north.

We arrived and the line was already halfway down the block and it didn’t take long for the sun to kick in with the heat torture. We bought some ice water from a street vendor which, for 1 euro, I thought was a great deal. I took advantage of the down time to read in the guidebook about what we would be seeing inside. I was even was a little frustrated once the line started moving and I had to keep putting down the book to move forward. It was fascinating to read about what I was about to see, the Belvedere Torsa, Laocoon and His Sons, and (of course) the Sistine Chapel. The museum sounded huge…packed with all kinds of art from the past two thousand plus years. And I was about to see it all.

We got inside and soaked up the rich history. I wanted to make sure we saw every inch and spent time on each item but as we walked and as the heat increased, I found myself walking faster and pondering less. Once I had seen the specific items on my list, I wished we could just take a shortcut to the Sistine Chapel.

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If you didn’t start reading on Day 1, you might want to start from the beginning…

We still aren’t used to the time difference. We were awake in the night for several hours again but then fell back asleep and were dog-tired when it was time to get up. It was tough to get rolling but it helped that our luggage was downstairs waiting! So with clean clothes and another yummy breakfast we hit the streets at about 7:30 for another day of walking, sweating, and exploring.

We took the metro back to the Colosseum to explore the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. We spent the morning walking though what is left of the ancient Roman Empire who ruled the earth for 1,000 years. We walked down the street where the war parties would return to parade through the town to the cheers of the Roman citizens with their slaves, stolen gold, and captured exotic beasts (probably on the short list for the Colosseum).

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If you didn’t start reading on Day 1, you might want to start from the beginning…

We both woke up at 3am and couldn’t sleep. I told her about a dream I had about a 2,000 year old love tragedy between a slave and the daughter of a wealthy aristocrat that is resolved by flashbacks that result in a modern romance. She said I should write it. Maybe some day…

We got some early morning time on the Internet, Sandi helped me with the lost luggage and made some calls while I sent useless emails. The official word just that “it’s lost.” US Air has no clue, hopefully I don’t have to write a song about it.

The hotel is nice. It only cost about $75 a night and with breakfast, was a great deal. Once we figured out how to use the metro (the station was only about 4 blocks away), we could get anywhere easily. Our room has AC, thank goodness, so that gives us an escape from the heat. The breakfast is really good, plenty of food. We gorged on it to take advantage of the free food. Chocolate croissants, ham, eggs, fruit, yogurt, cereal…it was great.

The staff helped us get oriented and explained how to use the metro. It was easy once we had the quick rundown. You can buy a one or three day pass from the machines inside (they take cash and have an English option) and then ride it all you want. We could have saved a lot of walking yesterday had we understood it better…but better late then never. I filled my daypack with water, jerky, trail mix, guidebooks, the camera, and the camcorder and we we hit the streets early before it was too hot to be miserable.

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This is day 1 of my recent two week adventure with Aubree on her trip to Europe. I told each of my kids I’d take them on a trip (Curtis was last year to South Africa) and Aubs picked Europe, primarily Italy and Spain.

Things started out a bit rough. Our flight to Philly was delayed and it was only a sprint from one end of the airport to the other that kept us on schedule. My pounding chest reminded me that I’m a 40 year old man, something that I am in constant denial about. It doesn’t even look right on paper. But at least Aubree is young and full of energy. She ran on ahead and managed to convince them to keep the door open a few more minutes. Everyone was already seated and they sealed the door behind us. We were on our way! But…unknown to us…our luggage wasn’t.

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When I was a kid, I loved to play and hated to work. I suppose I never grew up. Or maybe somewhere along the line the meanings and labels I attached to play and work got messed up.

I watch my kids now, particularly my son who gets criticized by his mom and sisters (understandably) because of the time he spends playing computer games (currently Call of Duty 4 and World of Warcraft). I love gaming myself so I’m not so quick to criticize, but I too worry about the impact of him spending so much time on the computer.

Ideally, I prefer a balance for my kids. In addition to playing Ultima on my Atari 800XL, I spent a lot of my childhood playing outside in the wilderness. But my kids are growing up surrounded by highways and houses. They don’t have the miles and miles of open land to explore that I did. And in my small town all my friends were easily reached within a 30 minute. Their friends are separated by miles of heavy traffic. I’m not home during the day to structure their time and drive them around and I don’t have the money to send them to camps and/or enroll them in programs to keep them busy all summer. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave them?

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In 4 days Aubree and I are going to be dropped off in Rome. We have 12 days to find our way to Barcelona in order to catch our ride home. Here are the conditions we are traveling by:

• We will carry moderate sized backpacks with only the essentials.
• Other than the first couple of nights in Rome, we have no reservations for lodging.
• We only speak English (well, Aubree does speak bit of Spanish and I speak Afrikaans…but doubt that is going to help much).
• We have no itinerary on where we are going.
• We have limited funds.
• We want to have fun.
• Neither of us has ever been to Italy, France, or Spain and…
• We don’t know anyone there.

Considering I normally like to have things well planned (I had South Africa planned down almost to the bathroom stops), this is going to be an adventure to say the least. Aubree still isn’t exactly sure what she wants to do, so we are going to wing it I guess. The thought causes my stomach to churn a little…but I suppose one way or another we’ll survive, have fun, and learn a thing or two.

I’m generally skeptical whenever anyone asks for money. Today I came across a charitable organization that, at first, appeared to come from a legitimate organization. They sounded different than the scams I have seen and they caught my interest. They had a nice website and were almost convincing.

I am registered on a website that helps pair up volunteers with charitable organizations needing help (http://www.idealist.org/). I’d like to be able to do some good in the world and this morning I was excited to get the following email which I assumed was from my contact information on the volunteer website.

Dear Warren,

My name is Harvey XXXXXX and I am the HR manager for Glen Hamilton Foundation. I have just found your information at one of the employment portal and I think that you would be interested in two job opportunities at Glen Hamilton Foundation: CSR (20 hours weekly) and Corporate CSR (30 hours weekly). Both positions involve a lot of responsibility, attentiveness and independence, but they are well rewarded. Annual incomes of CSR and Corporate CSR are US $32,400 and US $65,600, respectively.

Warren, if you are self-reliant enough to work at the convenience of your own home or office, and if you are a quick learner and ready to develop your customer service and management skills, please contact me and I will give you a very detailed account of these vacancies.

It sounded interesting to me, the type of thing I’d love to do so I Googled them and came up with nothing, which was a huge red flag. I went to the website in the email (www.ghamiltonhome.org). It looked and sounded great. The type of thing I’d absolutely love to be a part of…but I still wasn’t sold.

I did a whois on the domain name and my enthusiasm melted. The address was registered two weeks ago in China (http://whois.domaintools.com/ghamiltonhome.org). I went back and looked at the website closely. It says their main office is in the Netherlands and they have job openings in New York (but no New York contact information). Then I read some of the job descriptions and it infuriated me.

They are looking for people who will be paid out of commissions from the donations they process (7%). They also talk about how urgent it is to process each donation immediately so that that charity can be performed on time. First it appears they are preying on people’s desire to do good by soliciting donations. And second, they are getting other people to do their dirty work all under the guise of working for a charitable organization.

I have filed a complaint with the BBB, the Attorney General, sent the information to the Seattle Times, and notified idealist.com.

I would love to be wrong here because I would have been eager to help promote a cause like this. But from everything I have found, it’s a total fraud. But more than that, it’s a step up from the typical email frauds we have all grown to know and hate. They’ve built up a website and gone even further to trick people into doing their bidding. And they try and leverage our desire to help and do good in the world to do it. It really pisses me off.

Based on the evidence I’ve gathered…it looks like a total scam and I hate to think of the people they are tricking into giving money and lobbying for them. If I’m wrong about this…somebody let me know and I’ll be one of their biggest advocates.

“Optimism.”

The old priest hesitated. Optimism? He drew back his hood and adjusted his round, thin wired spectacles. The small boy’s eyes were white against his dirty face, looking up and waiting like a starving buzzard for nourishment. The priest leaned against his staff and bent down, his knees cracked and popped. The child, face void of emotion, just watched, and the crowd murmured. Surely the Sage was offended.

Wisdom and innocence locked eyes, and the Priest spoke. “What did you say was your desire?”

“Optimism,” the boy said, the word fell from his lips like a heavy yoke, burdening all whose ears it touched. It caused the priest to wobble and he gripped his staff.

Now he understood. Despite his protests, they had continually begged him to see the child. He is possessed by demons, they cried. You must bless him. He’d refused many times because no child needed his blessing. Now, unfortunately, he understood. He sighed but did not avert his gaze, even as the eyes of the child drained happiness from him like smoke drifting from the alter. So this was the one that would destroy their world. This was the one that would expose the lies.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the child. “But I cannot help you.”

The child blinked, but showed no emotion. No disappointment, no sadness, no longing. “Then I will leave our village forever.”

The Priest slumped against his staff. He old eyes sagged and his warm smile vanished into lethargy. “No, it won’t help. The prophecy is upon us,” he said.

The child turned his head, his eyes begged for tears but instead remained dry and hollow. He looked back to the Priest. “I am sorry,” he said.

The weary priest reached out and embraced him and the boy’s head rested on his shoulder.

“We created you boy, do not be sorry. Your burden is greater than they can ever know,” he whispered.

The boy straightened, knowing the old man was near his limit. Several others nearby had already fallen to their knees. He pointed to them. “That is my burden.”

The boy departed and the Priest fell to the ground breathing heavily, pained in his heart yet thankful for respite. The crowd pointed in condemnation at the departing child, certain now of their erroneous conclusions. “It is our burden,” he tried to tell the boy. But it was too late.

I wasn’t happy when I saw a trailer for this movie last year because it was eerily close to the plot of the book I had started writing several months prior. It’s an independent film and it took months before I was able to finally get it from Blockbuster. I actually requested it because they hadn’t picked it up yet and within a couple weeks it showed up in their database and then in my mailbox.

It had a surreal feeling feeling to me. A drab world. Short camera shots that capture simple everyday events and string them together to paint a depressing meaningless place. Our hero, in an attempt to escape the void, signs up to test an experimental drug and gains special powers.

As his life takes on new meaning and he strives to use his powers for good, we watch his antics play out in the same old boring world the movie opened with. As a result, I found myself laughing without smiling. There is both humor and tragedy buried in every scene that seem to blend like a sweet and sour sauce. The end result is confusingly interesting, thought provoking, and highly entertaining.

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I was taught to obey God and Country, and I did. I followed rules to the T, for the most part (hmmm, to the T ‘for the most part?’). So I wasn’t perfect, but still, I followed rules, I feared rules, I lived by rules.

Back then, I adhered for two main reasons; God and my parents (I didn’t want to disappoint either of them). I didn’t question; I didn’t second guess; I accepted and lived them. I believed God was at the helm and of course, whatever he said I should do…obviously I should do.

Fast forward through me disappointing my parents in the biggest way ever (leaving the church). Now I no longer worry about letting God or my parents down yet for some reason, I still try and adhere to the laws of the land. I don’t speed…well rarely speed (and extreme speeding for me is 8 mph over). In fact, I still live many of the Mormon teachings even though I am no longer active with the church because I believe certain principals make my life better.

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