When you have a moving company pack up your belongings, they generally ask you questions like, "Are there any hazardous items in here?"

We figured we had taken out all the bad stuff -- for instance, we poured out the bottle of lamp oil. Likewise for the hot sauce, glue, etc. So nothing to worry about, right? Well... Have you ever seen an electric tennis racket? Battery powered, it's perfect for zapping mosquitoes. And believe me, we have plenty of mosquitoes here; as a result, this is an item that sits around on our living room coffee table. You can see where this is going, right?

So I turned around from weighing a box in one room to see one of the packers, holding the racket by the round end, with a remarkable expression on his face. After we explained what the thing was that had just bitten him, he seemed much more impressed than upset. But Carrie and I still felt kind of bad.

I should be writing lots of stuff here, but things have been busy enough that I haven't had enough time. Here's one fun tidbit, though:

I was looking on TSA's web site -- you know, the overworked, grumpy people who make you take your clothes off in front of hundreds of complete strangers every time you try to get on an airplane... Umm, anyway, I saw this link titled, no kidding, The Screening Experience. So I had to share it.

You know that old rhyme, "For want of a nail, the shoe was lost?" Well, that was how work went one day last week.

We had some engineers in, replacing the control unit for an alarm system. Somehow replacing the control unit broke the sensor on the door, so that had to be replaced. The door in question is a vault door, which had its internal mechanism interfered with by the bolts on the new sensor; so the door stopped working. We fixed that, closed the door, then discovered that messing with the door's mechanism had confused the lock. Whoops; it's not good to be on the outside of a vault when you discover the lock doesn't work. Anyway, we managed to cajole the lock into working, after which we took it apart and fixed it, too.

So yeah, when I went home it was about 1:30am. But I learned lots about alarm systems, vault doors, and locks.

Since I'm catching up on lots of past events, I am compelled to write about the Marine Ball. In case I haven't mentioned it before, having Marines in the Embassy is good for more reasons than I can count. I'm not just talking about security, either.

Once again, the ball was great. Not as good as last year's, mostly because the DJ played lousy music. But the company was great, as was Carrie's outfit. Once again, she made her own dress, out of beautiful silk and in a Chinese style. And once again, she looked outstanding in it. We don't have all the pictures up yet, but here and here are a couple nice ones. Note the lovely Carrie in each.

Did I mention she looked really nice?

It was also most excellent to have our friend Sarah visiting us. She had planned on bring a friend or two along, but it unfortunately didn't work out. We of course showed her around the island(s) for a few days beforehand, and it was generally just nice to have her around.

Umm, there were some other highlights of the night. Let's see... The Marines somehow managed to get a Conga line formed out of a bunch of diplomats. That was pretty impressive.

Did I forget to mention that we're definitely coming back to Montana? We'll be leaving here in early February, but probably won't make it back to Helena until late that month.

And yes, we're both very excited.