Not looking good

This will be my last post about the situation in Egypt. I assume you can all read the news to the extent that you're interested. I don't think the Egypt thing is going to happen any time real soon. From the Associated Press:

"CAIRO - Gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn Sunday, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police vanished from the streets of Cairo and other cities.

"The U.S. Embassy in Cairo told its citizens in Egypt to consider leaving the country as soon as possible, and said it had authorized the voluntary departure of dependents and non-emergency employees, a display of Washington's escalating concern about the stability of its closest Arab ally."

Single parenting: the secret to good health

I've lost about six pounds since we got back from the holidays just four weeks ago. I may have stumbled onto a hitherto-unknown key to weight loss. I don't feel like I've been eating less. Maybe I'm too busy to snack, or maybe I'm expending a ton of mental energy trying to stay six steps ahead of whatever the kids have going on.

So, all you women out there, kick your husbands out of the house for a few weeks and watch the pounds melt away!

Still messy

Again, from today's New York Times:

"CAIRO — A day after tens of thousands of people demanding an end to the nearly 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak filled the streets of several Egyptian cities on Tuesday, protesters urged a second day of street demonstrations on Wednesday to maintain the momentum of unusually large and sometimes violent civil unrest that appeared to threaten the stability of one of the United States’ closest Arab allies."

We live in interesting times, don't we?

To prove my point

From the New York Times today:

"CAIRO — Demonstrators marched through the Egyptian capital on Tuesday in an effort by anti-government activists, mobilized on the Internet and energized by events in Tunisia, to mark Police Day, a national holiday, with a “day of revolution.”

"The Associated Press reported thousands of protesters gathered in the capital and that the protests, which began peacefully, turned increasingly violent, with police firing tear gas and water canons."

Yeah, this just kind of reinforces my view that it's not a good time to be running around Egypt with a couple of kids for a week and a half. If things haven't settled down by April, I'm sure the cruise line won't be running tours that go through Cario. We may have to rethink the plan to visit Egypt, even for just a day. Bummer.

I am, apparently, a big fat liar

Think back to last fall when I was proclaiming that our family absolutely, positively would not be going on any more cruises for at least the next thirty or so years. There are lots of good reasons for holding to that position: it's expensive, a cruise isn't the best way to truly experience a place, it gives our children a false expectation of what sort of lifestyle they can expect when they're adults, it promotes unhealthy eating (and plenty of it), and so forth.

Ummmm, well . . . . The kids and I are going on a cruise in April. After you stop laughing at me, you can read the rest of this post to understand my rationale.

The first reason is my current obsession with visiting Egypt. I was obsessed with Norway for a while, and I got that out of my system with my really enjoyable trip there this past summer. As I'd mentioned before, we were looking at taking a trip around Egypt in February or April, but that's more than I'm willing to take on as a single parent. This cruise will be my only shot this year.

Also, Egypt is a bit too unsettled for my taste right now. There is increasing unhappiness with Mubarak's government, and there are tensions between Christians and Muslims. (As I'm writing this posting, I just heard that a suicide bomber killed at least 30 people at the international arrivals area of Moscow's main airport. The world is a difficult place.) A heavily-controlled, one-day tour of some pyramids and some sphinxes seems more manageable with the kids than a week and a half of roaming the Egyptian desert. (Not as satisfying ultimately, but more stable and less stressful.) I know that the day will seem like a cattle call with a bunch of us overweight Americans piling onto tour buses, taking pictures, and buying tacky souvenirs, but that's as much of Egypt as I'm going to get this year. It's better than nothing. But, for the record, I don't plan on this being my last visit to Egypt. We'll go back one of these days, whether in the next couple of years or somewhere further down the line.

The second reason is that by April, I'm sure I'll be ready to give my life savings to someone who will offer to watch my kids in a controlled, safe environment for a week and a half anyway, so I might as well be on a cruise ship en route to Egypt, right? Of all the trips we've taken, the kids talk most about the cruises. This will be on the same cruise line we've used for our other cruises, and they have a really good children's program. Lindsey could spend all day in the kid's club and be perfectly happy. That's worth something. Tanner loves to roam the ship, hang out by the pool, and be a little more independent. A week and a half of not really having to worry about the kids, knowing that they're confined to the ship and that they've got plenty to do, sounds pretty appealing.

(Short side note: On our last cruise one morning, Tanner wanted to go to breakfast before the rest of us were ready. He headed to the dining room without us, asked to be seated, ended up at a table of adults he'd never met, and had a great time talking with them. After the rest of us had worked our way to the dining room for breakfast and were sitting a few tables away from Tanner, one of the adults at Tanner's table stopped by to tell us how impressed she was with our twelve-year-old son, who wasn't at all afraid to sit down with a table full of strangers and carry on a conversation with them.)

Third, this plan is flexible enough to include Stace or not, depending on how she's doing at that point. My assumption is that she'll still be in Utah working on getting better, but if she wants to join us on the cruise, she can.

So, there you have it. We're going on another cruise. But this one is absolutely, positively the last one for thirty years or so. You can take that to the bank.

We went

Yup, we went skiing today. I didn't take any pictures because they would have looked exactly like the pictures I took last time. It was a little colder and a little nastier out there than I expected today, but the kids were good for most of the afternoon.

We put Stace on the plane this morning. So far, both kid are still alive and are showing no signs of malnutrition. We'll see how long that lasts.

What a difference a day makes

Here's our local ski hill today. Looks like we might be going skiing this weekend after all.

The downside of good weather

Every silver lining has a cloud, right? The weather in Switzerland has been amazing since we got back, especially since December was particularly difficult and since I just came from Minnesota. It's been sunny and in the 50s.

As for the downside, though, here's what our local ski hill looks like this afternoon:



Looks like I won't be taking the kids skiing this weekend.

Good luck, Stace!

As most of you know, life is particularly challenging if you happen to be a Stace. She's had her share of struggles for the past dozen or so years, including depression, headaches, fatigue, and, of course, being married to me. Who wouldn't be overwhelmed by all of that?

Anyway, we've decided that it would be best for her to take some time off from the daily stresses of life and to start trying to get some things fixed. She'll be heading to Utah to stay with her family and to spend time visiting with various doctors, therapists, specialists, acupuncturists, astrologers, tribal witch doctors, and other professionals, all while not having to worry about kids, homework, meals, laundry, cleaning, living in a foreign culture, and speaking Swiss German (which even the Swiss themselves have finally started admitting they don't really understand).

The plan is for Stace to come back to Switzerland for at least a visit in March, when our friend Gretchen will be here and Lindsey will have her birthday. We'll see how things are going at that point, but I'm figuring that this is going to take more than a couple of months. In the meantime, the kids and I will have a great time. We've scrapped plans for Egypt right now. That's more than I'm willing to take on as a single parent. I'm thinking Disneyland again, which would be much easier to handle (and about a fourth of the cost of Egypt). We'll see. Things will be fine. The kids and I do well together.

Here's hoping that the time away will get Stace headed in the right direction. I believe it was Mark Twain who said, "Every one of us has challenges in life. Mine happens to be blond."

Don't go to law school

Before I talk about law school, I'll just say that we all survived the holidays, our luggage finally found us in three different deliveries a couple of days after we got back, and school has started again. It's much warmer in Switzerland than in Minnesota. Whew!

The real focus of this posting is to say that as sad as this makes me, my advice to people is, "Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be lawyers." (This is on my mind because I recently read a couple of articles about it.) I've been telling people for a while now that I don't advise kids to go to law school with the way the market is right now. It's just brutal. In my old job, I sometimes hired attorneys as contractors to do projects lasting a few weeks to a few months. I had more good prospects to choose from than I could handle, and almost all of them were recent law school grads who couldn't find jobs. Many of them hoped that a temporary job at West could lead to permanent employment, but I wasn't in a position to permanently hire attorneys at that time. Things have only gotten worse in the past couple of years. The number of law school grads versus the number of available jobs is bleak.

And that doesn't even take into account the staggering student loan debt that most of these kids have after they graduate. Tuition has more than doubled at my law school since I graduated. My student loan debt felt crushing at that time, but that was nothing compared to what law students have now when they graduate. It's kind of a bummer. I hope things turn around eventually for the legal market. In the meantime, I think everyone should study astrophysics.