Set to go...

Good news! We have our Visa's in hand and our flights booked. We are set to head out the morning of February 15^th. The flight will be tiring with flying all day and all night for the most part. We have almost a 6 hour lay over in Toronto so perhaps we might be able to meet up with some relatives in the Toronto area then.

This past week has been a new experience for Laurie and myself. She is now a full time housewife and enjoying the freedom that comes with that. I have one, directed study class that I am working on now that is challenging my discipline of time management. So far the battle is going well. I came across a clever Ukrainian joke this week that I thought I would share...

A Ukrainian man wants a job, but the foreman won't hire him. Until he passes a little math test.

"Here's your first question," the foreman said. "Without Using numbers, represent the number 9."

"Without numbers?" the Ukrainian says, "Dat is easy." And he proceeds to draw three trees.

"What's this?" the boss asks. "Ave you got no brain? Tree and tree and tree make nine," says the Ukrainian.

"Fair enough," says the boss. "Here's your second question. Use the same rules, but this time the number is 99."

The Ukrainian stares into space for a while, then picks up the picture that he has just drawn and makes a smudge on each tree.

"Ere you go." The boss scratches his head and says, "How on earth do you get that to represent 99?"

"Each of da trees is dirty now. So, it's dirty tree, and dirty tree, and dirty tree. Dat is 99."

The boss is getting worried that he's going to actually have to hire this Ukrainian, so he says, "All right, last question. Same rules again, but represent the number 100."

The Ukrainian stares into space some more, then he picks up the picture again and makes a little mark at the base of each tree and says, "Ere you go. One hundred."

The boss looks at the attempt. "You must be nuts if you think that represents a hundred!"

The Ukrainian leans forward and points to the marks at the base of each tree and says, "A little dog came along and pooped by each tree. So now you got dirty tree and a turd, dirty tree and a turd, and dirty tree and a turd, dat make one hundred...so, when do I start?"

If all Ukrainians are this clever I might be in for an interesting time...