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.

water heaters over here aren't quite like they are in the states. they are either electric or gas and either way they are mounted on the wall of a bathroom. the electric ones look like big eggs up high on the wall. they actually look pretty cool... except when they come crashing down and destroy the bidet by breaking it into a few hundred pieces.

see the carnage...

so i was reading to landon last night before bed. i chose the book, "jack and the beanstalk" thinking it would be a throw-back to my childhood. it is absolutely amazing that i ended up a well-rounded law abiding adult after being exposed to such a felonious tale!

the kid is supposed to sell the cow but trades it for 5 beans... Thou shalt obey thy mother and father. STRIKE ONE
the kid climbs the beanstalk and steals a bag of gold from the giant... Thou shalt not steal. STRIKE TWO
the kid after stealing a bunch more stuff gets caught by the giant, who while in pursuit, falls victim to a dastardly act of premeditated murder! STRIKE THREE

This kid is lucky he lived in a stinkin' fairy tale or else his rear-end would have landed himself in a federal supermax prison where he woudl only see sunlight one hour a day!

and we read this filth to our kids!

Last week... sorry for the delay... we got about 10" of snow over a 2-day period. Now being from Colorado that meant that school was still in. But this ain't Colorado y'all. Nobody here really understands how to drive in snow so all of the taxis weren't out working for nearly 3 days. On the 4th day a buddy of mine and I went out to pick up our new computers and it took 45 minutes to an hour to make a trip that normally takes about 7 minutes. The traffic was near unbearable because of snow alongside the road and scared drivers. It's all over now but Landon had some great times out in the snow building a snowman.
Yvonne and Landon made us all some snow cream... a friend of mine here couldn't believe that we ate snow but I explained to her that it was clean snow (i.e. not yellow) and we added some milk, sugar and vanilla and it was great. Here is a hilarious video of Landon talking about it.



This is one of Landon up on the radiator just amazed with all the snow that had fallen the night before.

Here are some more pics of Landon outside making a snowman. enjoy.

Well it was my turn to get up with the boys this morning and when my half-opened crusty eyelids peered out our family room window i saw white stuff. i figured it was just those little sleep cookies that get caught in the corner of your eyes kinda floating around in the muck after rubbing my eyes... but i was wrong! it was snow!

here are some pics of us enjoying the snow!

how it is snowing @ 34 degrees beats me... but just enjoy the neat-looking weather widget pic.



















































































"what is this white stuff!?!?!"

he was actually having fun... just a weird moment picture.






























i'm melting!

i was having trouble sending this pic to a friend... so i decided to just post it on the blog. we went to washington dc a few years back and a buddy of mine snapped this baby.

the mullet was a real fashion statement in the late 80s/early 90s. it has since gone out of fashion... the way of z. cavaricci, black turtle necks with gold chains and tight-rolled jeans.
may the skullet live on forever!

i went to the local etisalat building (communications company) to setup my DSL. i wasn't terribly shocked to discover that it was going to take 2 weeks for them to make their way out here to actually start it up. well 28 hours later i received a call saying that they were on their way! they sent two guys who each had about 1/2 of a clue... so in the grand design they were supposed to compliment each other. the problem was that these two both had the same half. regardless... i knew what i was doing so i set it all up myself and had it going in just a few minutes. my mom said that the service was obviously better here than it was in egypt... i wish that were the case... i know that i just got lucky... or was it more than luck?

Here are some pics of our new flat! Yay! We have a home again!

You can click on the slideshow to take you to the site where they are stored and see bigger versions :)