A month and a half?? Man, have I ever neglected this thing. What a horrible...blogger-er. Oh, well...get back on that horse and ride! Whatever.

Call me corny, but Michael Card can put me at ease in a matter of seconds. It doesn't matter what I'm going through at all. There's just something about his voice and the power of his songs that cuts straight to my heart. (The Life is amazing) Michael, if you haven't heard of him, has been around for a LONG time. I grew up in the 80's listening to him and maybe that's part of the reason it's so comforting. Just to know something has been consistant in my life, ya know? The way he works scripture into song inspires me to try and write every time I hear him. Anyway...right now I'm peaceful with Michael singing Gentle Healer in my little apartment. Although, one ting is noticably missing...

My wife. Julie, I miss you, sweetheart. Julie's in Germany for another 2 weeks (it's been a week today!) and I'm slowly going mad. :-) I watched our wedding video again today and man...SHE IS AWESOME. She was so beautiful, so funny, so loving and excited. It still boggles my mind how well it all went. The best wedding ever. :-) So, I miss her like crazy. We talked today for a little while and it was so nice. It's incredible how small our world has become. Here she is, on the other side of the world, 7 hours ahead, and we talk like she's in the other room. Me on my cell in McDonalds no less! How strange. I'm so looking for her to get home. After the whole passport saga (I'll tackle that in a bit) happened, I'm just glad things worked out. She better be able to get back into this country!! If you read this, baby, I love and miss you like crazy. Remember to go to www.picturetrail.com/iamhaack if you need to see us. :-)

Well, I suppose I'd better document the passport debacle. Here it goes: Being the good husband that I am, I figured I'd get my wife's passport updated with her new name. So I sent it in about a month and a half before she left, being told (according to the form) that it'd take about 2-4 weeks. Fast-forward to 10 days before Julie leaves...still no passport. I call the NPIC ($5 a call, btw) to see where it is and the short version is that Julie told them to Fedex it overnight because it still wasn't done. They said it would be at our house by Friday. Saturday rolls around and still no passport. So far we've spent $60 for nothing. So Monday morning (closed on the weekends, of course) I'll call to figure out what to do. In short (again) I had to call them 4 more times in order to find out it had infact been sent and to get a tracking #. Fedex says the # doesn't exist. Great. They say it's apparently lost in the mail. Wonderful. We've spent $80 and have nothing to show for it...and it was supposed to be free!! So Julie decides to go to the agency in Chicago the morning of her trip to get a new passport in person. Luckily we made an automated appt. because the wait was 2 hours when she got there!! So she fills the forms out and as the lady is going through stuff she comes back and says, "Here's your passport right here. It's not done yet, though." WHAT?? We were told it was DONE and SENT. So she makes Julie wait another 4 hoursto finish it. The Climax: When Julie gets her "new" passport, the only difference is that on the back page of her ORIGINAL passport is TYPED "Julie's last name has been oficially changed to Julie Haack and this passport is amended as of June 12th, 2001." UNBELIEVABLE. So I'm writing as many people I can that can help me in any way. We better get our money back. But, thank God she was able to get on that plane and take those kids (exchange program trip) to Germany. Quite the experience.

So that's that. Man, do I need some time with the Lord. Things aren't horrible, I just feel...stagnant? I need a plan and to take action on that plan. It's nice to rest, but in order to rest you need to have been busy at some point. Right now I mostly feel lazy. Well, I guess I've written a good amount. I still have lots on my mind...perhaps I'll write more later. This has been great, though. I needed to write.

I'll leave with this: I can never decide on a biscuit or cornbread at KFC. That's why I get both.