I do not speak text message.

I received this email from a student this weekend:

thanx..nd da activities r really intresting....gosh i m so thrilld abt dem...sory i m @ home dis weekend ..so cudnt cum on friday nyt... ll cya on sunday:P gudnyt haf a good weekend

Got that? I get a number of emails like this from students. I have deduced that writing like you are sending a text message is taking over. It is like a whole other language. It takes me a few reads to translate because I do not speak text message very well (BTW I write in full English when I text or instant message...I do not even use contractions).

Not much else going on. This weekend I threw a football around with some Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon staff. I have not thrown a football in a long time and thus my shoulder is now kind of sore. I also went to the driving range (I think there is one golf course in the entire country) and wacked some balls. About half of them went a respectable distance while the other half went basically nowhere (I think the tees at times went further). However, I believe I have the potential to be a decent golfer if I practice at it. I also went to a girls only dinner at the home of a Carnegie Mellon colleague. Girls Gone Wild in Qatar...NOT! We just played a little bit of Wii. And it technically was not even girls only since one of them had her one-year-old son was there. And I must say I have a new boyfriend - her son. That boy loved me! I am a child magnet. So that was about it. Better than your typical Doha weekend, but that is about it...