sauced balls

Well, my dinner party went really well on Friday, except, of course, for the food.

My friend Carol complimented me on the artistic presentation of the salad (chose the salad vegetables more for their colors than their taste compatibility). And the meat balls, and sauce...well...I paid for taking advice from my mom.

First, things didn't taste exactly right because I didn't follow the cooking directions. Second, I learned not to dump the remains of a bottle of cab into spaghetti sauce cooling in the fridge because it doesn't get absorbed right. Third, I made too many meatballs and followed my mom's advice to put them in the sauce directly after frying them, and those little bastards sucked up all the sauce by the time my guests arrived (24 hours after I put them in the sauce). The final dinner was more like "off colored meat balls (from the wine) with a few tomato skins stuck to them" rather than being a sauce with some meat balls. Carol and Camile both said "I've never had sauce with such an...interesting flavor."

I'm going to try my sauce again, but not put meat balls in it. I wonder if I invite Carol and Camile over again, if they will come back.

The good news is I used three of my new pots.

And, we all had a great time. Even poor James, who's only 12. We hit it off after discovering a mutual admiration for Travis Pastrana. I accidentally said the F word a few times around him but Camile said it was okay and he promised not to say it (at least while his mom is around :)

It was a nice break from the emotional slog I've been going through trying to finish my book. Ech. I'm having nightmares about my ex-boyfriends (except for Mayo, whom I'm still friends with and who came by to see my on Friday on his way to Vermont).

I bet you thought this post was going to be about something more interesting, didn't you?

You'll forgive my lethargic writing because you know I wrote 12,000 words last week for my book, and I am currently in Ft. Worth with the flu but having to teach class. I am about to get into bed and take a double dose of nyquil even though it's only 6 PM because I feel like schmata but have to get up at 530 tomorrow morning to be to my class in time. Which I don't feel like teaching. I'd rather lay in bed coughing up a lung which is what I've been doing since Saturday. I think writing about my ex-boyfriends has made me sick. I'm usually impervious to every germ.

My sad little life...

spaghetti!!! meatballs!!!!

I cooked today. First I made home made spaghetti sauce from all the stuff Cam and I got at the farmer's market. Then I made meatballs. The meatballs look a little weird because I didn't get the parsley chopped up enough and the parm cheese I got was slivers instead of being powdery. I'm going to test a meatball in a few hours after they've been in the sauce. I hope they aren't totally gross because I made like 20 of them.

> 70k

In Banff, my editor Tony recommended 70K as the word count for my book. I have been writing madly since 4 pm this afternoon, trying to finish this damn thing. I just hit 72K, and have only one original chapter to complete.

Though, I've decided to add 2 more chapters. I mean, it seems kind of stupid to have a book called my other nine lives with only 8 adventure stories.

What is that - blond math?

rejection part II, and my dad's literary criticism

So the agent who asked to read the first five pages of my other nine lives sent me this yesterday:

Thanks for sending along the opening pages of My Other Nine Lives.  Truth be told, though,  I'm afraid these pages just didn't draw me in as much as I had hoped.  I'm pressed for time these days and, what with my reservations about the project, I suspect I wouldn't be the best fit. Thanks so much for contacting me, though, and for giving me this  opportunity. It's much appreciated, and I'm sorry to be passing. I wish you the very best of luck in your search for representation.

It was a nice rejection. But now I'm thinking I'll have to restructure the prologue of my book. Again.

My dad called after I forwarded the rejection to him. It was kind of funny because he said "Basically, she's telling you that she didn't really care about you, so you have to fix those pages to make people care about you." Literary criticism from my dad. Ha ha! I pointed out to him that he never reads anything I write and he said "I read a few pages of sharkfest". So I'm sending him the full story to read. And, I think he's right.

 Oh well. So far my rejections have come from the top tier agents. And other friends of mine who are published say that it's surprising I've gotten any response. So I'm going to keep hacking away, finish my book this week, and spam more agents with my proposal.

we're not in kansas...anymore

Okay, what the fuck is going on with the airline industry?

On Friday I got up at 4 am to catch a United flight from Columbia, SC, to Dulles, and then on to Denver. I was supposed to get home at 2 in the afternoon. Thought I might go for a bike ride.

Instead, I got sucked into a shit vortex of air travel.

My flight in Columbia was delayed 4 hours for a mechanical problem (the delay was reported as being one hour). And I couldn't leave the gate because they weren't sure when the plane would be fixed. As soon as I found out about the delay I asked the gate agent to book me on a later Dulles flight. While he tried to assure me I was safe to make my connection, I insisted. And, when the delay stretched out to 4 hours and I obviously missed my connection, was glad I had done that.

But. I get to Dulles and I'm checked in on the flight, awaiting a seat assignment. I waited in line for a half hour (behind numb skulls trying to switch their middle seats and other stupidity) only to be told by the gate agent "I did not CALL you for a seat assignment, DID I?" I was like, uh, how should I know? She was like "we are in an OVERSOLD situation and the ONLY people who should be in line are those giving up their seats". Fine. I took a seat and listened to these idiots trying to get the airline to give them ridiculous things (e.g. an upgrade to first class) if they took a later flight.

I found out from the flight attendant that the plane I had missed was also canceled due to mechanical problems and 200, YES, 200 people were rebooked on the flight I was trying to get on. I didn't worry because my rebooking occurred at 730 am and theirs at 1230. Plus, I have flight status on United. I looked at the people around me and thought, sorry suckers.

But then I heard the gate agent say the flight was over booked by 45 seats. Are you god damn KIDDING ME? I went to customer service and tried to get on the next Denver flight (the one I had a seat on was at 250 PM, the next flight leaving at 430) but they refused to rebook me.

Everyone got on the plane but me. The gate agent was ignoring me. My blood was boiling. Finally they started to close the door and I was like "DUDE, where's my seat assignment?" and she says "Oh, hold on a minute". She sends another gate agent on the plane to ask someone to give up their seat for me. OF COURSE no one volunteered. And by then all the overflow passengers from the 250 flight were rebooking on the 430 and I had no chance to get on it.

I was like "I am NOT waiting in that long customer service line AGAIN. Rebook me here." The gate agent tried to put me on a 7 am flight on Saturday. I was like NO, I am going home TODAY. She finally found a flight connecting through Kansas City that left 2 hours later. I also got a $400 travel voucher because United, like every other airline, sucks.

ANNOYED. I went to the smoking lounge (thank you Dulles for not being a pussy like other airports and having a smoking lounge at every gate) where this fucking kid started playing a harmonica to try to impress some girl he met (pick up time in a fucking airport smoking "lounge"? are you fucking kidding me?). I gave him a look like I was going to break the harmonica in two and shove one side up his ass and the other side down his throat and then crush him until they met again, and made a "haaah" breathing noise in his direction. He put the harmonica away and left the smoking lounge. A guy said thank you to me in Spanish.

So I finally got to Kansas City, thinking I was home free, only to find out THAT FUCKING FLIGHT was delayed because there was no running water on the plane (what, we're flying in trailer park trailers now?). They took a vote at the gate and everyone agreed to board the plane without water. I was like dudes, it's an hour and a half flight, don't pee and you won't have to worry that you can't wash your hands.

Finally I got to Denver. It's weird, I don't normally get home sick (ever get home sick) but I was having my upper deck replaced while I was in Aiken and I wanted to see it. Also, my garage got tagged big time (thank you city of Denver for cleaning it off for me) and I was worried about that. Finally, after 167,000 miles on my car the clutch needs to be replaced and I had to take my car in for that.

My luggage made it on the 250 flight I missed so I went to customer service to find out where it was. I was stuck behind some fucknut who kept arguing about his bag being lost even though the customer service guy could do nothing to make it magically appear. That wasted 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Seriously, if the airline tells you your bag is on another flight, you can't get your bag. Suck it up and contemplate going commando so you don't have to worry about your dirty underwear because you don't have your bag.

When I got up there, addled from lack of sleep and airport trauma, I found out my bag was waiting by bag claim 14. I was SO happy. I said to the guy "What was my bag thinking, taking the early flight? That my toothbrush was going to drive him home? The toothbrush can't drive, bitch!" The guy started laughing hysterically so I left in case he was having a nervous breakdown.

I was so glad to get home (even though it was 1030 at night and I had started my day at the airport 16 hours earlier). Had dinner with Cam on Saturday and we were both so jet lagged (or in her case, car lagged) that neither of us could order a glass of wine using real english. Then we went to the farmer's market on Sunday morning and I bought 5 lbs of tomatoes, two of those garlic pod looking things (meta clove?) that have the real garlic inside where you have to cut it out, two onions, and a spaghetti squash. I'm making dinner for Cam and her family on Friday (spaghetti and meat balls). God help them. We can always order pizza as a back up if it sucks.

if it cuts down on those annoying emails...

One some times wonders why I haven't been fired yet.

My latest response to an email to join some new company community.

binders

I may be regressing on the snake thing. Or maybe I'm just getting a little freaked out because, with all the rain we've gotten the past few days I'm worried about snakes getting in the building.

Last night I had a dream that I was at a conference in a house in the woods. People kept handing me large green binders and saying I missed sessions that I was supposed to attend. But every time I tried to find the rooms where the sessions were held I kept ending up in this dining room area that looked almost exactly like the dining room in the house where I was writing when I was up in Banff.

Then the sessions were over so a guy suggested that I do the dishes to make up for missing all of my sessions. I looked in the sink and it was full of wooden blocks in the shape of cubes, triangles, and circles. I was like "I can't put those in the dishwasher" and the guy said "it's fine, they are dishwasher safe, see?" The inside of the dishwasher was full of the blocks. I was like "what are these for?" and he said "You roll out dough and wrap them around the blocks, and it makes a delightful pastry. Didn't you get one? No, I guess not because you missed all of the sessions." He said he was going to find one for me but someone had put them in the refrigerator and they were all deflated and not delightful at all.

Then a guy came running in and said "what are you doing???? your car is leaving to take you to the airport!!!!" I ran up to my room and grabbed my suitcase and tried to pick up my binders but there were too many to carry. I grabbed what I could and ran downstairs but the car had already left. I was like "fucking fuck, I am fucking up EVERYTHING on this trip!"

A guy told me that I could walk through the woods on this overgrown path to get to the airport but to watch out for snakes. I was like great. So I started dragging my suitcase down the path and there were snakes everywhere. The woods were really thick and the branches were hitting my arms and head and they were slimy. I was totally freaking out and mad at myself for being such a wimp in the woods, and I felt like I had been walking for hours and getting no where.

Then I saw a light that I thought was the airport. But I had to cross a huge river to get to it. There were some rickety wooden planks placed on rocks across the river. I lowered myself down the river bank down to the first plank, which was four feet below the bank. I went to grab my suitcase but the plank started breaking. I kept jumping from place to place as the plank got smaller and smaller and then I jumped on the last section and fell in the water.

The water was really cold and black. I was afraid a python would eat me. I couldn't swim because the current was so strong. Suddenly I was washed up on shore near the light and I realized it wasn't the airport, I was back at the house. I started crying because I had lost my suitcase and my binders, and because I had spent so much time walking through the scary woods only to end up back at the same place.

Then I woke up.

Publish Post

machete man

Last night I had a nightmare about the software tool I support. In the dream I had been kidnapped by a
drug cartel in Mexico. I was assigned to an elderly man and woman. They were both really short and
skinny, except for the guy, who had a pot belly, and they looked like migrant farm workers.

They were taking me around to different villages to kill people. I would draw a diagram to show them
what was going on in the village, and then run a report. They would take the report and kill the person
whose name was on it.

The woman would dig a hole and then the man would throw the person to be killed in the hole. Then the
hole was filled with sand so just the person’s head was sticking out. The guy would pull the person’s
eyeballs out with this metal scoop thing, and then the woman would stack sticks around the person’s
head, like building a tee pee. Then they would set the sticks on fire and the person’s head would be
reduced to cinders. The couple would dump sand on top of the cinders, and then a pool of blood would
form on top of the sand so they would know where the body was.

After each killing the guy would stop at one of those white kitchen trucks that sell food on the side
of the road in Mexico. He kept asking if they had salads to go, and then he would ask me what I wanted
to eat. I didn’t want to eat anything because I was so freaked out from the killings. Finally, after 3
killings, I told him I didn’t want a salad, though it was kind of him to ask, and that he and the woman
should get something to eat because I wasn’t going to eat anything.

He said he was asking for the salad for himself because he was old and needed roughage in his diet.
Then he said “you have to eat something, how about something sweet?” He looked around the different
foods hanging off the outside of the white food truck and then he said “look, raisins! Why don’t you
have some raisins?” They were raisins in that red package, I think they’re del monte raisins.

He gave me the box and I was suddenly very hungry, so I put one in my mouth and swallowed it. The
raisin hit me on the hand. I was like what the hell? And then I looked down and saw blood on the right
side of my shirt going from my shoulder to my feet. The man started laughing and said “we got you too,
and you didn’t even notice!” He had a machete in his hand and I realized he had cut the right side of
my neck. I felt my neck and there was a gaping hole. I thought well, I’m going to bleed to death now.

Then I woke up. I had a real pain in my neck from the shit pillows at the Holiday Inn where I’m
staying.

I was wide awake and freaked out from my dream, so I decided to imagine a parade of circus performers.
Focusing on things like that help me fall asleep, and I thought that thinking of a circus would prevent
me from having another nightmare.

But then I had a second dream that I was watching the circus, and then my sister came running by and
said we were supposed to be running the Circus 10K. So I started running with her, and on the side line
at the end of the race I saw my dad standing with my sister’s kid Nat. They waved to us.

At the end of the race we had to go through a haunted house to cross the finish line. We went up a
flight of metal stairs and then kept looking back waiting for my dad. My sister was impatient because
she wanted to finish the race, so she said we should go ahead and go into the house. I said we should
wait for my dad. He was moving really slowly through the crowd and then I couldn’t see him.

Finally he showed up at the top of the stairs, but Nat wasn’t with him. My sister started freaking out
and yelling at my dad “where is Nat????” My dad said she didn’t want to go through the haunted house so
he let her go to the movie theater by herself to watch a new kids’ movie called “hammer man”. Then my
sister started really freaking out and said “you let her go to the movies by herself? She’s only 9!
What if the circus people get her?”

My dad was upset and about to cry so I told my sister to calm down and that we would go find Nat. We
started walking down the stairs but all of the runners from the race, as well as the circus performers,
were trying to come up the stairs. I was getting shoved around and when I looked back I couldn’t see my
sister or my dad. So I started yelling and waving to get their attention and someone shoved me down the
flight of stairs.

I landed on the ground, in a sitting position, and when I looked up there was the fucking guy with the
machete again. He smiled at me and said “you aren’t getting off that easy, you know” and he swung the
machete into the side of my neck again. Asshole.

I woke up at 4 and decided to read the New Yorker instead of going back to sleep.

"thanks...not for me!"

Six hours after submitting my proposal to 6 literary agents, I got my first rejection. It said "thanks...not for me!" I thought the exclamation point was unnecessary but perhaps the agent was trying to emphasize her point.

But the good news is that I've heard back from my editor from Banff, Tony. I'm going to try to meet him up there for a little reunion. Hoping that some of the other writing crew from my program last year can make it too.

In other news I broke down and bought a GPS today for my car. I had to drive 30 miles to Georgia to get it because there aren't any stores around here that carry them. I was talking to the sales lady at OfficeMax and said that I decided to buy the GPS after spending almost two hours trying to find my way to Aiken from Columbia in the dark. She said "Girl, that's impossible! Why were you driving around in the dark?"

Why indeed.

So now I'll know where I'm going. But, I'm not going anywhere because I said in my proposal that my book was done. It's, hee, not done. Back to the grindstone trying to finish this thing off...

master data

I'm working with this fairly obnoxious woman. The rest of my customer set has been great. I hate working with women because I think they act super bitchy to try to prove themselves or something. She's over weight and likes to sit so close to me that I can feel her breathing on me which is so gross. Also, she smells like fried chicken farts.

The other day we were in a meeting, and we were talking about documenting what they call "master data" (the definition of which is not relevant). This woman was nattering on as if she's super smart (though what she says is inconsistent and doesn't make sense) when she suddenly said "masturbater" instead of "master data". There's a kid who's my age that's been in a lot of our meetings and we've been joking around the whole week, and I couldn't look at him because I knew I would start laughing.

Everyone of course pretended they didn't hear the woman say "masturbater" but now people have started saying just "data". I laugh every time I think about it myself...

it only looks like you're lost

Contrary to rumors, I'm still among the living, and have finished my book proposal, which I'm sending out this weekend, thanks to my great editor Matt. I've been traveling and working a lot.

Currently in lovely Aiken, S.C., working at a site next to a silo of nuclear waste. The silo's name is Hector, which is an acronym for something that no one can remember.

I've decided to break down and buy a GPS after getting totally lost driving to the hotel from Columbia (it's about an hour drive) at 11 o'clock last Sunday night. It was so dark I couldn't read any of the street signs and I ended up driving way out of my way. Then I got to Aiken and my mapquest directions were totally wrong. I found the street my hotel purported to be on, but it was a winding road into a forest with a few houses. I called the hotel and told them I was lost. The woman asked for my cross streets but didn't recognize the names of any of them (I was only 3 miles from the hotel at that point).

She kept assuring me that I was going the right way, and that soon I would happen on an Applebee's. I was having my doubts, and she said "You're not lost, it only looks like you're lost". Then I came around a turn, the road opened up to 2 lanes, and there was the Applebee's.

I have a room on the ground floor of a motel. I don't like it because I have to keep my curtains closed and no natural light gets in my room. The woman at the front desk assured me I'd be safe in the room, and I was like why would I worry for my safety? I'm in the middle of the woods.

Besides Hector, there are some other weird things about where I work. They have alarm drills constantly. The one for a nuclear waste spill is reminiscent of the sound track to a 70s sci fi movie. It a series of weird tones like doo doo DOOOOOO doo. Then there's the fire alarm and a safety alarm (meaning someone was injured in the building). The site is huge, and the only way I can ever find my building is by looking for a sign in front of another building that says "Whole Body Counting Facility". What ever that means.

The other day I went to an outbuilding that looked like a rusty trailer. An hour before I got there they had chased a rattle snake out of the conference room. Although I'm doing well with my snake phobia (saw a snake on the trail when hiking with my dad and was fine) I decided not to put my feet under the conference room table because it was dark under there and I couldn't see if anything was hiding in the corners.

Today I might go to a blue grass festival and then work on my book...tired and need a few down days to get ready for next week's fun and adventures.

I'm not blind, I'm blond

For some reason my travel profile has been updated to say I'm blind when making airline reservations, and that I'm handicapped when making hotel reservations.

I discovered the handicapped thing last week when I checked into a hotel in Columbus, Ohio. After a weird whispering session behind the front desk one of the clerks finally asked me what my handicap was. I was like "I don't play golf". Then she said I had somehow gotten booked into a handicapped room (though I didn't want to point this out to her, to get out of the lobby you had to take stairs either up or down, so they're damned lucky I'm not handicapped).

I fixed my profile as soon as I got into my room, but apparently it didn't work. Flying to Seattle today, I was requested to ring my flight attendant button. I was worried because I had had a lot of problems checking in on my flight and figured everything was a result of my company buying me a cheap ass ticket. But when the flight attendant came over to my seat (I was squished between a woman who wanted to sit cross legged in her seat and a morbidly obese woman who ate an entire bag of candy bars on the 2 1/2 hour flight) she said "Oh, you aren't blind". At first I thought she said I wasn't blond, and I was really confused, but then she told me that my ticket has said I was blind. Then I checked into my hotel today in Tacoma and same thing - handicapped room.

I deleted my profile and rebuilt it. Hopefully that will fix the problems.

And then yesterday I was talking to another consultant who congratulated me on getting married. I'm not sure who started the rumor I got married but if I find out who it is I will break his fucking legs. This is the fourth conversation I've had with someone in my company where I've been congratulated for my fake wedding.

Rainy and cold in Tacoma. Wishing I had brought a jacket and umbrella. I knew I should have looked at the weather forecast yesterday. I was just getting over my jet lag when I had to switch to east coast time last week. Now I'm on PST. Next week I'm back on the east coast. Since I've been back I've felt like my life force is draining out of my body to be replaced with concrete.

I need a vacation.

The good news is I'm going to work on my cover letter for my book prop this week, and my editor is going to have my prop reviewed by Monday. If I can find an agent for my book by the end of september I will be very happy.

back

I've been getting some concerned emails since I haven't updated my blog in two weeks. Yikes.

I arrived home last Saturday. My luggage did not. I ended up playing a fun game of tag with the moron who was supposed to deliver it to my house (I finally drove to the airport and as I got there he called and said he was 20 minutes from my house - I sped home only to wait 2 more hours for him to show up). The good news is they only confiscated 4 packs of the Gauloise cigarettes I brought home with me. Which left 10 to smoke. Now I'm back to Marlboro Reds. Wah.

In the week I was home I managed to get all of my windows repainted. I also replaced all of my blinds, which was an ordeal I don't wish to ever repeat. Work is as insane as ever and I didn't do a good job of relaxing and recovering from my jet lag. Today I arrived home after spending 3 days in Columbus with a client (nothing like changing time zones AGAIN 7 days after landing back here) and crashed for 4 hours, which is more consecutive sleep than I've gotten since I've been home.

And the BEST NEWS is I have an editor for my book!!!!! Katie Ives of Alpinist fame (named the best editor on the planet by more than one of my friends) recommended a friend in Boulder. I just sent him my proposal. The book is back on. Working 80 hour weeks? Not on. I am on a mission to get this book done by October and hopefully find a new agent by then, since my old one lost interest in me because I couldn't make the deadlines due to work.

So this entry concludes this blog. I will NOT be going back to the middle east. It was an adventure, but not worth the stress and aggravation. The best part of the whole experience was coming home and finding out people missed me.

time to go

I don't like the day before a big trip, especially if I'm not at work. I have way too much time to pack, repack, change my mind about what books I'm bringing on the plane, worry about what snacks I'm going to eat, worry about my blackberry and MP3 player battery dying, and wonder if it's okay to wear clothes that haven't been washed in 3 weeks for a 28 hour trip.

Disaster was imminent when I realized yesterday that I had accidentally forgotten to remove my crackers from the filing cabinet I've been using at work before I locked it and turned in the keys. I realized right before I was leaving work that my crackers which I had been planning to eat on the plane ride home were in the cabinet and not in R's cabinet (I moved them because he was eating them).

I was stuck in a conundrum. If I asked for the key back they would wonder what I had locked in the cabinet that was so important, and they would send the tea boy to spy on me to make sure I wasn't stealing something. When he saw I was removing my crackers he would automatically assume it was so I could eat them even though we were forbidden to eat anything (some companies cut westerners a break on ramadan - this company is not one of them). As soon as I went back into the conference room where I was working he would tell the whole office I was eating and then people would be rude to me even if I could prove I didn't eat the crackers. So I had to leave them, knowing, since I had dinner at R's, I wouldn't have time to get more (Spinney's sells crackers, sure, but not the right crackers).

Then, today, I had opened a bottle of wine at 5:30 (strictly forbidden to have any alcohol during ramadan, though the shops sell it, you just aren't supposed to let anyone know you have it) to breathe while I finished up my packing. I also had a tea light candle (also forbidden in the hotel) on the desk next to the bottle of wine to make my room not smell like smoke, which seems to be leaking into my room through the air con.

I was opening an apparently highly pressurized box of tea to put into a bag so I could bring it home (best tea, it's arabic, no idea what's in it) when the box exploded and the tea went everywhere. The box also slipped out of my hand knocking over the bottle of wine which also knocked the candle off of my desk. So the wall and the carpet were coated with half a bottle of red wine (wah) and candle wax. I also ruined the ramadam kareem iftare and sohour menu that was nicely printed and sitting like a little tent on my desk.


I've spent the past half hour cleaning the wine off of the wall. I couldn't get it out of the carpet so I trimmed it with my scissors, cutting off the top of the stained parts. It's under the desk so hopefully they won't notice the carpet is a little shorter under there. Not sure what to do about the wax, but maybe they won't notice until I'm gone.

It's definitely time to go.

spaghetti western

R has been asking me for the past two weeks to have dinner at his house and meet his family. I don't know why my customers always want to have me over for dinner. My list of foods I can't eat, or won't eat, would be daunting to anyone. Throw into the mix my lack of social skills in family settings, and my dread of meeting "the wife" who normally suspects I'm having an affair with her (always) unattractive husband.

I figured that was why R's wife wanted to meet me. When we worked together on the weekends she would call every half hour curious as to what we were up to. While I can understand someone doubting that I would want to work on the weekend and must have some other plot in mind, this is Abu Dhabi, and what else is there to do...

And lately, R has been acting a bit strangely towards me. When I came into work sick, and was sweating even though I never sweat and was sitting directly under the air conditioning unit, R suggested I had a fever (I did) and that he could tell me accurately how bad the fever was if I would just let him put his lips on my forehead. I was like, um, thanks, I'll just take a double dose of panadol instead.

Then he told me that he'd finally figured out that enterprise architecture is not sexy, but I make it sexy. I was a bit puzzled by this comment as it was 7 oclock in the morning, I had arrived in the office with unwashed hair (5 days) and wearing the same outfit I had worn the past two days because I didn't have time due to the hours I was working to go to the laundry and collect the rest of my clothes (this is the problem with packing light and bringing only 5 work outfits).

In any case, we finished work yesterday at 1:30, and then went to Spinney's to get some salad and bread for the upcoming dinner at R's house that I had finally agreed to attend. The maid was currently cleaning his place and wouldn't be done until 3, so after 15 minutes of shopping we still had time to kill. As it's ramadan, that time goes by very, very slowly. We drove around to a few hotels looking for a place where we could get an alcoholic drink. Nothing. So R proposed that we get a bottle of wine and drink it somewhere, that somewhere of course being my hotel room although he was too polite to ask.

We grabbed a bottle of wine from the A&E and headed to my hotel. 1 hour until dinner. I was actually looking forward to it because I had requested spaghetti with real tomato sauce since no one here puts tomato sauce on anything (they use ketchup even on pizza) and tomato sauce is a major staple of my non-UAE diet. R's wife had commented that I have a 5 year old's preferences for food. Like I care what anyone thinks as long as I get spaghetti.


We sat in my room sharing a bottle of Trapiche. It turns out R's family owns a bunch of night clubs in Canada and that's where he gets his money (it turns out, just like everyone else here, he's super rich). He wanted to start a consulting company with me. Then he told me that he's an alcoholic (after he chugged two glasses of wine in the time I was pouring us both a bottle of water). Luckily, he said as I was encouraging him to drink an entire bottle of water, alcohol has little effect on him (he's a large man, 6'2" and 250 lbs). Around that time his wife called and said the maid was done and so was dinner. R told her we were at Spinney's still and would head home shortly. As he talked to her he waved for me to chug my glass of wine. When I said I couldn't (hadn't eaten or had anything to drink all day because of ramadan) he called me a pussy so I chugged it and immediately felt dizzy and giggly.


We got in the car and R said "don't tell my wife I was drinking because she'll kill you". Then he started talking about how nice it would be if he was married to me and how we would be like the couples in the 1960s movies. Luckily I was buzzed so I just stared out the window and pretended I was in the car alone.


After an initial half hour of total awkwardness where I tried to act sober and at the same time control my nicotine withdrawal symptoms in the face of a screaming infant and two year old, I got into the swing of things and R's wife started to like me and realize that I wasn't sleeping with her husband. I was so happy when she brought the spaghetti out that she started to like me even more.

By the time my buzz wore off and a few hours had past we were both making fun of R, who decided it was time to play with the kids and ignore us. I did my imitation of him talking to the indians at work (he has a tendency to mimic people's accent without realizing he's doing it) and she told me how he almost drown the second day of their honeymoon because he ate too much and got a cramp while swimming. The story was even funnier as she played out her confronting R's mom to say "sorry your son died while we were on our honeymoon". She was even interested in black holes, or pretended to be interested.


At the end of the evening I told her I was really sorry we hadn't met earlier. They are going to move to Canada in a year or two and I hope she stays in touch with me so we can visit each other someplace where we can have a glass of wine and be normal human beings.

After the almost year I've spent here I think the best people are the Lebanese (at least the ones I've met). They aren't radical or crazy religious. They like to have fun and laugh. They don't take themselves too seriously and even though they can be materialistic they are generous. And even if R said some inappropriate things on occasion, we were a great team and he's probably my most successful mentoring project. And he introduced me to The Big Bang Theory, and gave me a pirated copy of the first three seasons (as well as Buckaroo Banzai and Up In The Air).


Nice kid. I admit I'm going to miss him.

rats it's ramadan

I woke up this morning, scoured the paper, and discovered that those 4 dozen cookies I bought for my team are going to go to waste because it's ramadan. Typical of this place, I searched on line until midnight last night to find out if it was going to be ramadan or not (although they can predict the date scientifically and make it easier for everyone to plan around, they prefer to do it the old fashioned way so you can't plan anything) but apparently the decision wasn't made and broadcast until after I went to bed (and they would have known at 8 pm if it was going to start or not).


No eating, drinking (of anything), gum chewing, smoking, or even taking medications during the daylight hours. Today was a miserable day at the office as I'm fighting a cold still and I was coughing every 5 minutes because my throat is sore and I'm not allowed to drink water. Combine that with the 122 degree heat...it pretty much sucks.


Though ramadan is a holy month, and fasting is supposed to be a sign of dedication to the faith, what it boils down to is:
-eating way too much at iftar and staying up all night
-being super cranky at work from lack of sleep, food, fluid and nicotine
-an increase in traffic accidents
-people buying excess food and presents when the stores are open in the evenings
-a decrease in the economy since people are working less hours

My old hotel at least had an area blocked off for us non believers to smoke or eat during the day away from the eyes of the cops. But the intercon does not have such an area so I've had to make a smoking area in my shower that blocks the smoke from getting into my room proper and out the door where it could be reported and myself arrested. Yeah, I could just not smoke for 14 hours, but, if I could do that, I wouldn't be smoking at all, would I?


Here's a quote that explains why I'll never convert:

"Certainly our message to Egyptians during Ramadan is no excessive food and no excessive partying or staying up way too late, because that's hated by Islam," says Ali Abdel Fattah, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, a political movement that is officially banned in Egypt.

Anyway, I'm on a plane in two more days. So close, and yet such a far time away...

ramadan kareem

Tomorrow we may all wish each other a happy ramadan. But, we won't find out until tonight if ramadan starts tomorrow. That's because a special guy has to see what phase the moon is in a whether the crescent moon has been seen:

You cannot guess the exact days of when Ramadan will start, many times a calendar or website will say it's on some day, but ends up being the day before or the day after. In the end, it all depends on the sighting of the crescent the evening before the supposed day, if it is not sighted, they must wait till the next day to look for the crescent again:

Ramadan will last for 29-30 days, depending on the moon (should be a crescent that looks like a curved strand of hair). Regardless of which day it starts, Ramadan will be considered to have started the night before the actual day, since in Islam, Maghrib (Sunset) marks the beginning of the next day.

You can't precisely calculate the next Ramadan because it all depends on when the crescent is sited. It's roughly 11 days before the previous Ramadan. 


Which is interesting, because it's going to effect working hours, and I don't know if I now have 12 hours left to work on the project or 16 hours. I really hope ramadan doesn't start tomorrow. Two full days in an office full of people who are cranky without fasting being involved, and me not being able to smoke. It could get ugly. Good thing I'm leaving soon.

happy endings

Today we did the final presentation for my project.

People who were involved on the periphery of the project found out we were taping customer testimonials of how the project helped them, and so everyone invited to the meeting insisted on having themselves taped talking about how great the project was. That made the meeting less boring because they were all making fun of each other's videos. It also was a bit comic because the two guys who did the taping were not holding the camera steady so the picture was shaking around (there was no time to clean up the vids). The best one was when the camera man inadvertently zoomed in on the speaker's face, realized what he did and zoomed back out. There's an old sesame street song (for those of you who remember) where these puppets are singing "near, far, neeeeear, faaaaar"). I watched that clip at least 20 times so I wouldn't laugh when it came up in the presentation.

There was also the little matter of this one guy's name which is mentioned in the presentation. His name is Binu Babu (pronounced as spelled). R, who has a lebanese accent, kept saying like that indian guy on the Simpsons because it made me laugh. Then accidentally he said it that way in the presentation. I was sitting right next to him and had to stab my finger with my pen not to laugh. R did a great job even though, an hour before the presentation, he found out his boss had been fired as well as another director in the company.


The bobble headed IT guy who gave me so many problems on the project was super nice to me today because I insisted R put his name in the presentation as the IT support. I guess it's a sign of a successful project that people want their names associated with it.

The "project manager", of course, didn't say anything to me, not even "good job", even after the customer said how pleased he was with the outcome of the project. The only thing she said to me is "I wouldn't have brought so many cakes if I had known only 14 people were coming". Uh. Hm. Whatever. We had more people than planned show up for the meeting, which is rare here. Then she picked up this big cake she had brought and said "I guess this is too small to fit in your hotel refrigerator (duh!) so I'll just take it home with me".

Nice. Get the company to pay for your cake habit.

As for me, I just worked out, room service brought me a pizza and a rose, and I'm going to eat that and then take twice the recommended dose of Nyquil so I will hopefully be feeling a bit more human tomorrow.

Though, I think R is glad I couldn't really talk today.

We climb on...

what, me worry?

The week ended on a positive note, with everything getting finished for the project. I even did a simulation of a business process which is really going to knock the socks off of everyone in the final meeting tomorrow.

I got done in spite of my "team". The two guys who have been supporting me on the project just stopped working on Tuesday and refused to do anything I asked. They did it in a nice way, but it was infuriating and because of the jack ass way my company works, there is nothing I could do about it. They are just damned lucky they left at 3 pm on Thursday. My customer R had agreed we would leave at 3 because I worked so much overtime this week and I had to go into the office yesterday. I was starting to come down with a cold and just wanted a few hours to rest. As my team walked out the door I asked them if they had tested the web site we have to demo on Sunday to make sure it's working. They told me it was.

But, since I've worked here for long enough to know people are full of shit, I decided to test the web site before I left. It wasn't working. R started flipping out. I had to spend 2 hours fixing it. I was furious, but all those guys are rolling off the project and Thursday was their last day so there's nothing I can do.

As it seemed the day couldn't get any more annoying while I was finalizing the web site fixes, Habib called and insisted I go to dinner with him. I refused, saying I had too many errands to run (since I knew I would be working all weekend I had to get everything done Thursday night - groceries, picking up dry cleaning, getting stuff I ordered from the pharmacy). I walked out the door to the office 20 minutes later and there was Habib. He insisted he would drive me around for my errands, and then take me for sushi. It was 130 degrees outside, and no cabs were in sight, so I finally agreed.

I told him where I needed to go and he started programming his GPS. It was taking forever. I was like "dude, I know how to get to all the places I need to go" but he insisted on using the GPS. Then he cranked up the radio and started blasting Hotel California. I had a splitting head ache and I wanted to kick him in the nuts for acting like a college kid.

We finished my errands and I dropped everything off in my room. I was going to ditch Habib but right as we got to the hotel he said "the reason I came to see you is that my son (who's 12) was diagnosed with bone cancer. He has 6 tumors in his legs and the doctors say he can't do any sports or activities because the bones will break. I can't find a good treatment here." I felt bad so I agreed to hang out with him for a bit so he could talk about his son (he's going to take him to Germany for treatment).

But Habib totally took advantage of my good nature. We went to the Yacht club and he drank 3 martinis. Then he man handled all of the cigars before deciding he didn't want one. He treated the staff there so badly and I was so embarrassed that I gave them a $30 tip on top of the tip he left them. He was in a horrible mood, I guess because of his son, although he kept saying it was because I was leaving. He tried to grab my hand at one point and I told him I would punch him in the face if he touched me (can't call the police on him because he has wasta, though normally that's what I would do). He then started making a scene because I said I was tired and didn't want to go to dinner. I was like whatever dude, let's go get sushi. We drove to my sushi place, Sushi Samurai.

While we were in his car he said he was mad that he had planned a trip last weekend to a resort in Egypt and I didn't go. Then he was mad that he was going to a resort in Liwa this weekend and I refused to go (not just because of work but because I have no desire to hang out with him). To piss him off I started smoking in his car. He didn't say anything to me but I think I got my point across to him about how little I care that he's upset.

Once we got to Sushi Samurai Habib admitted he didn't like sushi. He told the waiter to bring him something that was like KFC. I was like dude, why don't you eat something healthy instead of having fried chicken and he went off on another tirade about how he was fat and probably had cancer so who cared if he was eating healthy. He also was upset that I had taken him to a restaurant that didn't serve alcohol.(which I did on purpose).

He told me that while he was in Egypt he and a friend of his had gotten their driver to get them some hashish. Drugs are not treated lightly here, and in most countries there is a potential death sentence if you are caught using drugs. He might have been trying to impress me, but I told him that I couldn't believe he would take such a stupid risk since he has 4 kids. He got mad at me and said he's going back to Egypt next week to smoke more hashish. Seriously, the dude is just crazy.

After dinner I told him to take me back to the hotel so I could get some rest. It was 10 o'clock, I was exhausted, and I had to get up at 6 the next morning for work. He kept driving the wrong way, so I finally started yelling at him. I'm not even sure what I said, but he started crying. I felt bad but I didn't apologize.

I got a text message from him yesterday and today, but just ignored them. I hope I don't have to see him again before I leave. It's sad that he has so much money, and family connections, and is one of the most negative and miserable people I've ever met.

I was talking about that with R on our way into work yesterday. He said that this place is one of the most negative he's ever lived in. It just seems to be the nature of everyone here. If you do a good job they still criticize you. If you piss of the wrong person, for whatever trivial reason, they make it their life mission to destroy you. R said that if the people in the middle east spent even half the time they spend screwing each other over doing something positive there would be a huge difference.

But, things aren't going to change in the foreseeable future. What happens instead is that people like R, who are good people, get sick of this place and leave. He's had a hard life. His family was decimated in the Lebanese war. But he won't even go back to Lebanon now. He's working hard to save up money for his family, and then they are going to Canada.

In any case, I'm out of here next Saturday. And I won't be coming back.

my week, and it's only wednesday

So much for cruising through the last weeks of my project. Highlights of the past few days:

• The server where all of my work is had a patch installed on Sunday. This somehow removed my rights to the server.  All of my work is on the server. It took 2 hours that I didn't have to fix the problem.
• 20 people were fired on Sunday. Chaos in the office.
• Etisalat blocked bb service because RIM wouldn't agree to let them monitor messages. All Sunday I couldn't receive emails on my bb at work which is a major problem as the customer was emailing me stuff to use for a presentation I had to put together but COB sunday. I was at work from 7 am to 9 pm.
  
•  Monday a fired employee took down the wireless network. I didn't have email access again, and couldn't get on the server, which was fixed by then, because I connect through the wireless. Service came back Monday afternoon, but the office was full of people screaming and yelling. Two important meetings I needed to have were postponed because of the security incident. They finally happened at 7 PM. Once again, I didn't get home until almost 10.
• Jakey, my car, was rear ended in Montana. Not sure what's going on with that, too busy and tired to find out.
• The office I was working in smelled horrible. It turns out two birds flew into the air con shaft and died. The tea boy kept coming in and spraying some vile baby powder air freshener in the office. It almost made me vomit.
  
• Tuesday I decided to make some vid clips of my customer to use in the final presentation. The clips were great and everyone was really excited (they don't do stuff like that here, mostly because the locals usually won't let you even photograph them, but, my customer likes me) but I was up until 2 am editing them for the presentation.
• An idiot member of my architecture team imported some faulty code and took down our database. Then the little shit left while I was in a meeting. Of course the IT guys weren't backing our server up. I didn't leave the office until 9 PM fixing the issue. And then the little shit came in at 9 this morning and was mad because I didn't let him fix the problem. Like, if you break my system and think I'm going to wait until your candy ass rolls in here at 9 am, you really know nothing about working for me.
  
• An idiot sales person introduced a technical requirement at a customer meeting that we couldn't do. My customer was freaking out because we had to have the requirement done by today. I probably could figure it out, but not in the amount of time I have left. Allah bless this kid in Singapore who fixed the problem. I seriously wanted to get on a plane, fly there, and hug him.
• I found out the CEO is going to be on vacation during the final presentation for my project. He wants to set up a vid conference on August 16 so I can do the presentation again, from the US. Ech.
• The vids were so successful that more people want to make them. I have no time to film people.
• The air conditioning in the office I work in broke at 2 pm. It was almost 100 degrees in the office by the time I left this evening.

I know. Stop whining. I'm almost home. Thankfully..