Walking the Wall

My dad and brother have been working to get better access to talking to my brother in Mongolia. Since he’s moved out of the capital of Ulaanbataar, calling him has been impossible. So we’ve moved to the internet and set up webcams. Last night (or early morning for him) we did the first successful run and all three of us were up and talking and viewing each others webcams simultaneously–very cool!

However, that morning I was still in bed and checking my email on my iPod Touch and trying out a little online tool called JiveTalk that lets me access Instant Messenging on my Touch. Well, I noticed my brother was online (he’s 12 hours ahead of us so meeting up at the same time can be dicey) and I dove out of bed and ran for the Webcam thinking we’d give it a go. Halfway to the office, I realized what I looked like and that people–my sister-in-law!–would be seeing me. I had to detour to the bathroom and try for a quick clean up. All that and it was a false alarm. Later that night when we did make it work, it was an unexpected connection again and I didn’t look much better by 8:30pm and had to sit through the whole thing seeing myself and groaning inside–vanity, oh, vanity! Still, I have to say my brother looked worse being 8:30am in Mongolia and his hair was sticking everywhere. My sister-in-law looked great, though, and it was wonderful to see my nephews on the camera. I don’t think they quite knew what was going on, but maybe next time when we’ve all had a chance to figure it out better. Anyway, the lesson learned is that I’m apparently now going to always have to look fantastic, just in case!