so there are times when i just laugh at how words work in Arabic.
for example... in Egypt, trunk of a car is the same word as a bag. so i have actually asked if i could put my bag in the bag when i stopped a taxi.

so today i saw a billboard here in English and it was an advertisement for the billboard advertising company. they have several versions that all push outdoor advertising. one of them shows a woman with a space saucer over her shoulder (it's all in this 50s style art) and it says "there is no escape from outdoor". Of course their point is that everyone is outside a lot so outdoor advertising makes sense. the fact that it should have said outdoors instead of outdoor made me think of the word itself.

outdoor. it the place once you go out the door. people learning English must think that outdoor is such a goofy word.

yesterday i had to go to the police station for nearly two hours to file a formal complaint against the plumber who installed our water heater (yes... you go to the police here for that). well i'll blog that story later. after i got home, i paid my cab driver and hopped out of the taxi. i then proceeded to slam the cab door on my left index finger! it hurt so bad!

*** the story and pics that follow are not for the weak stomached folk ***

well i ran inside and ran it under some cold water which helped little. honesty i think jumping up and down and slamming my foot into the ground repeatedly helped more but the water helped too. i took a bag of peas and for a couple of hours was icing it. yvonne said i had to ice for 15 and then go without ice for 15. i couldn't do that. it was excruciating anytime i didn't have the ice on it. so anyway... to make a long story short... i called a friend and we agreed that the pain was coming from pressure built up behind the nail that couldn't escape... so i went to his house and we took a black and decker drill to my nail and drilled a hole in it to relieve the pressure. the drill was a one speed all or nothin' drill so it was going fast... can you hear the sound in your head? it was awesome! well after we broke through, my finger's cup ranneth over (if run becomes ran then runneth must become ranneth... or is there even a past tense to runneth?) and within two minutes my finger's heartbeat was not nearly as strong.
enjoy the pics below.

as i am using the new version of microsoft office 2008 for mac it has struck me. for the umpteenth time they have ignored arabic script support. the stinkin' text edit ghetto program that comes with the system can do it! i am convinced that somewhere in microsoft's mission statement it says "we will be lame and stupid and do our absolute best to annoy tim semmens as much as possible." they have hit their mark once again. congrats microsoft.