By Jove! I'd received reports that this post didn't... well... post. And you all are right. It didn't. Anyway, what I had meant to post was that Tom and I simply rented a vehicle last weekend and moved me into the villa. And they lived happily ever after...
Of course, the very next work day I got my civil ID, which is all we were waiting for to buy a car, but that's just the way the universe works, right? Apparently I haven't learned enough patience yet. :)
So I'm sorta moved in. By sorta moved in, I mean all my stuff is at the villa. With my 2 hours of non-sleep/non-work time on weekdays, I'm not progressing very quickly on the whole unpacking thing. Of course dear Mr. Thomas wants to help, but if I let him, I'd be anothe 6 months figuring out in what hole he cleverly squirreled away my tweezers, so I'm better off taking my time I think.
We also did a bit more household shopping, so we have carpets now. Not the $3000 Persian silk variety, but darn nice ones for a really good price among various other sundry goodies to make life a little more comfortable in Chateau Eisele. I'll be posting some video soon for those of you anxiously awaiting representation of my life's newest incarnation in a somewhat more visually stimulating medium. Booth, I'll dedicate the first "peectures" to you.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Giving Thanks
Oh yeah! I was so wrapped up in sleepiness, I forgot to give you the Thanksgiving day report. Tom and I had a couple of the bachelors from my work over for dinner. You might be surprised at the shocking lack of turkey over here. We did see a lot of live turkeys at the Friday Market, but as I don't relish actually doing the dirty deed of killing one myself and I was too lazy to plan ahead AAAaaaaaaaand we don't have an oven, turkey was right out. So I stuffed some chicken breasts with all manner of goodness (who doesn't like cheese after all) and we served that with some local squash, some saffron rice and large helpings of desert.
Speaking of desert, there were no pies. Nope. Not a one. I couldn't go for the Sara Lee ones because… well that's cheating. And refer to the above paragraph about my stunning lack of a baking utensil and you'll see my predicament. Luckily, Tom was at a bakery while he was hungry a day or so before-hand and he brought home the most astonishing cake. It was several layers of a spice cake with gooey caramely goodness in between them. There was a crispy coconut praline shell around the outside and on top were little baby cream puffs no larger than quails eggs and the whole lot was completely saturated with a creamy caramel sauce. Seriously, no one made it through the tiniest sliver. Gooo oooo oood. Hatfield would have passed out from joy. It completely outshone my dinner, but it was worth it.
Then we finished the evening up with some football (Tom's team lost unfortunately) and some sheesha. Good times were had by all. Missy and Mike from Kwaj even showed up after the boys went home. I was so tired, I snuck out and the bed looked so comfy I just laid down for "just a second" and woke up in the morning still wearing all my clothes. Tom and his friend Mick tackled the nightmare in the kitchen for me even.
So I'm thankful for the following:
My husband is totally cute and he loves me very much.
My kitty will be joining me in the next several months. She also loves me very much.
I have lots of friends who, even though most of them are far away, think of me often and they also love me very much.
My family is counted among the preceding bullet point.
My Dad is going to be around for a while.
I've got a great job.
I make enough money to do what I want to do.
I'm an American.
I have an intensely personal faith.
I know enough to know how good I've got it.
What's not to be thankful for? I hope you all have just as much to celebrate this year!
Speaking of desert, there were no pies. Nope. Not a one. I couldn't go for the Sara Lee ones because… well that's cheating. And refer to the above paragraph about my stunning lack of a baking utensil and you'll see my predicament. Luckily, Tom was at a bakery while he was hungry a day or so before-hand and he brought home the most astonishing cake. It was several layers of a spice cake with gooey caramely goodness in between them. There was a crispy coconut praline shell around the outside and on top were little baby cream puffs no larger than quails eggs and the whole lot was completely saturated with a creamy caramel sauce. Seriously, no one made it through the tiniest sliver. Gooo oooo oood. Hatfield would have passed out from joy. It completely outshone my dinner, but it was worth it.
Then we finished the evening up with some football (Tom's team lost unfortunately) and some sheesha. Good times were had by all. Missy and Mike from Kwaj even showed up after the boys went home. I was so tired, I snuck out and the bed looked so comfy I just laid down for "just a second" and woke up in the morning still wearing all my clothes. Tom and his friend Mick tackled the nightmare in the kitchen for me even.
So I'm thankful for the following:
My husband is totally cute and he loves me very much.
My kitty will be joining me in the next several months. She also loves me very much.
I have lots of friends who, even though most of them are far away, think of me often and they also love me very much.
My family is counted among the preceding bullet point.
My Dad is going to be around for a while.
I've got a great job.
I make enough money to do what I want to do.
I'm an American.
I have an intensely personal faith.
I know enough to know how good I've got it.
What's not to be thankful for? I hope you all have just as much to celebrate this year!
Must… get… more… sleep
It’s an odd thing for me to get up at 3:00 AM. It doesn’t help that this is what time I’m supposed to be getting up. I’m a night owl naturally and so it’s really weird to have to make sure I’m in bed by 7:00 PM in order to not look like a Samsonite outlet store in the mornings, for all the baggage I’m carrying on my face.
Last night we went to dinner with my new friends Mark and Theresa at 6:00 and planned wandering through a shopping district afterward… Well we had a really good time and long story short it was about 10:00 when I realized I was in trouble and we hadn’t even started on the way home yet. So today, when I get off work at 5:00 PM, I think I’ll probably be asleep by 6:04 at the latest.
Last night we went to dinner with my new friends Mark and Theresa at 6:00 and planned wandering through a shopping district afterward… Well we had a really good time and long story short it was about 10:00 when I realized I was in trouble and we hadn’t even started on the way home yet. So today, when I get off work at 5:00 PM, I think I’ll probably be asleep by 6:04 at the latest.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Some progress at last!
I finally got my passport back. It has all kinds of interesting things in it now that the government here is done decorating it. This means that my civil ID can’t be but a week or so away. Once I get that, I can get a car and that’s the last thing preventing me from moving into the villa with my handsome husband. Of course that also means that I will have to start driving to and from work by myself. So far, I’ve pretty much made my friend Jeremy drive every morning in our company vehicle with the occasional turn at the wheel in the wee hours of the morning when there’s no one on the roads anyway. Looks like I’m going to have to step up to the plate a little earlier than I thought.
Speaking of stepping up to the plate, Tom has joined a softball team. Ooh la la, but I love watching him play softball. He was playing softball for the Criminals on Kwaj when I first took notice of him. I like the way he runs. There is something that reminds me of a thoroughbred in how he holds his head and the efficiency of his stride which appeals to me. If all goes well, he should make a team that will go to a tournament in Dubai in April, which will probably be our first trip away from Kuwait. We may take another little hop somewhere else just to make it a nice 2 week getaway as well.
One final note: Stevie Fuchs, if you’re reading this, you should probably stop here. Did you stop? Ok, good.
I’m not sure what possessed me the other day. I must have been sick or delirious with lack of sleep or something. I found some socks that I simply had to have. 3 pairs. One blue, one purple the final… yes… pink. They each have light patches at the toe and heel and cartoon kitties on the leg. Again, I am claiming temporary insanity, but I must admit to a small guilty/gooey feeling when I wear then underneath my Timberlines… Does this make me a bad person? Or worse yet – girly? I mean, Girl Hatfield could pull these off, but me? Good thing they’re covered by the boots is all I can think. Meow.
Speaking of stepping up to the plate, Tom has joined a softball team. Ooh la la, but I love watching him play softball. He was playing softball for the Criminals on Kwaj when I first took notice of him. I like the way he runs. There is something that reminds me of a thoroughbred in how he holds his head and the efficiency of his stride which appeals to me. If all goes well, he should make a team that will go to a tournament in Dubai in April, which will probably be our first trip away from Kuwait. We may take another little hop somewhere else just to make it a nice 2 week getaway as well.
One final note: Stevie Fuchs, if you’re reading this, you should probably stop here. Did you stop? Ok, good.
I’m not sure what possessed me the other day. I must have been sick or delirious with lack of sleep or something. I found some socks that I simply had to have. 3 pairs. One blue, one purple the final… yes… pink. They each have light patches at the toe and heel and cartoon kitties on the leg. Again, I am claiming temporary insanity, but I must admit to a small guilty/gooey feeling when I wear then underneath my Timberlines… Does this make me a bad person? Or worse yet – girly? I mean, Girl Hatfield could pull these off, but me? Good thing they’re covered by the boots is all I can think. Meow.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Not a saint... yet, but I'm working on it. We're in talks with the Vatican.
Yesterday was my mother’s birthday. I am having a hard time calling the states, so I thought I’d publish some loving words about her on my blog to make up for my other failings as a daughter. Let me tell you about her.
My mom is probably one of the most interesting people I know. She’s a strange dichotomy combining elements of the modern cell-phone toting woman with the up-to-her-armpits-in-horse-doo farm-girl with an emotional power house and a vulnerable little girl. I’ve seen her scrounging out weeds in a garden a half hour before she was ready for a formal function. She has 4 kids (or more like 30 if you count all her adoptees - more so if you count her husband and her horses), is going to school to be a nurse, helps take care of grand kids, has an active church schedule and still manages to have time for friends and family.
She’s brilliant, though she probably can’t guess to what extent. She seems delighted with each new discovery and has an insatiable thirst for new knowledge, even if it’s just some obscure factoid she’s never heard before. We used to make fun of her for her “Reader’s Digest” knowledge of just about every subject, but you only have to get trounced by her about twice at Trivial Pursuit to know that the breadth of what she knows couldn’t be condensed into a silly little monthly magazine. She’ll never tell you about that though.
Mom is generous to a fault. I once mentioned in passing that I really liked a hair curler she let me borrow and was thinking of getting one. I was only passing through so I was back on the island a week after I made mention of it. She said that she had felt badly for not giving it to me right away, so she sent it to me along with a care package. These gestures are common place for her.
She is the ultimate mom. She possesses a strange claim on large portions of my heart. I’ve lived away from home for quite a few years now, first when I stayed in Seattle while my family moved to AZ, then they moved back to WA and I moved to Kwajalein and now I’m here. I know for sure that she thinks of me daily, and though she doesn’t want to interfere with my decisions, she pines for me. She misses me with the intensity that the Earth misses the moon, a gentle tugging that let’s me know where “center” is. When I am afraid, or hurt, or alone, it’s her that I wish was there with me. She’s still the one I go to for girl-to-girl advice on most things. She’ll always be the one I try to model myself after.
I hope that if I am blessed with a daughter I can be a mother like she has been to me. I hope I can teach her grace, forgiveness, kindness, honor, purpose, faith and how to be a good mother herself some day, which will be her birthright, handed down from her grandmother.
I love you Mom. Happy Birthday.
My mom is probably one of the most interesting people I know. She’s a strange dichotomy combining elements of the modern cell-phone toting woman with the up-to-her-armpits-in-horse-doo farm-girl with an emotional power house and a vulnerable little girl. I’ve seen her scrounging out weeds in a garden a half hour before she was ready for a formal function. She has 4 kids (or more like 30 if you count all her adoptees - more so if you count her husband and her horses), is going to school to be a nurse, helps take care of grand kids, has an active church schedule and still manages to have time for friends and family.
She’s brilliant, though she probably can’t guess to what extent. She seems delighted with each new discovery and has an insatiable thirst for new knowledge, even if it’s just some obscure factoid she’s never heard before. We used to make fun of her for her “Reader’s Digest” knowledge of just about every subject, but you only have to get trounced by her about twice at Trivial Pursuit to know that the breadth of what she knows couldn’t be condensed into a silly little monthly magazine. She’ll never tell you about that though.
Mom is generous to a fault. I once mentioned in passing that I really liked a hair curler she let me borrow and was thinking of getting one. I was only passing through so I was back on the island a week after I made mention of it. She said that she had felt badly for not giving it to me right away, so she sent it to me along with a care package. These gestures are common place for her.
She is the ultimate mom. She possesses a strange claim on large portions of my heart. I’ve lived away from home for quite a few years now, first when I stayed in Seattle while my family moved to AZ, then they moved back to WA and I moved to Kwajalein and now I’m here. I know for sure that she thinks of me daily, and though she doesn’t want to interfere with my decisions, she pines for me. She misses me with the intensity that the Earth misses the moon, a gentle tugging that let’s me know where “center” is. When I am afraid, or hurt, or alone, it’s her that I wish was there with me. She’s still the one I go to for girl-to-girl advice on most things. She’ll always be the one I try to model myself after.
I hope that if I am blessed with a daughter I can be a mother like she has been to me. I hope I can teach her grace, forgiveness, kindness, honor, purpose, faith and how to be a good mother herself some day, which will be her birthright, handed down from her grandmother.
I love you Mom. Happy Birthday.
Roar of the Lioness
Kuwait is billed as one of the most modern and forward thinking of the countries in the region. In many respects that’s true. They are pretty tolerant of westerners and our wacky ways for the most part. There are a few things that give me pause though. I found this picture that really brought home for me how recently some of these developments for Kuwait have been happening. Apparently, women were not allowed to vote until last years’ election.
How strange for me, a modern American woman, to think that my Kuwaiti counterparts couldn’t vote until last year. We Americans take some things for granted that simply should never be forgotten, like our right to vote. Even though our politicians can run the gambit from noble and good to self-serving villains, at least they’re ours and I have a hand in choosing them, as frightening as that notion might be to some who know me best…
Take a look at this picture that I found from that election. Look at the elation on these women’s’ faces and tell me we don’t take our freedoms a little bit too much for granted. Good job, Kuwait! Good job ladies of Kuwait!
How strange for me, a modern American woman, to think that my Kuwaiti counterparts couldn’t vote until last year. We Americans take some things for granted that simply should never be forgotten, like our right to vote. Even though our politicians can run the gambit from noble and good to self-serving villains, at least they’re ours and I have a hand in choosing them, as frightening as that notion might be to some who know me best…
Take a look at this picture that I found from that election. Look at the elation on these women’s’ faces and tell me we don’t take our freedoms a little bit too much for granted. Good job, Kuwait! Good job ladies of Kuwait!
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Does a bear do number 2 in the woods?
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it still make a sound? If a man makes a mistake and a woman isn’t around to catch him, is he still a dumb a$$? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck… you get the idea. These impenetrable questions probably keep the Dali Lama up at night , but at least we have the answer to one question: Yes, grass is greener on the other side. In fact the existence of grass in the desert at all, unaided by modern human know-how is pretty amazing. I have a couple of pictures I wanted to share with you and this one will be the first of this region. I’m not sure who these pictures belong to, so if anyone knows and has a problem with it, please let me know and they shall be removed forthwith.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
A mind is a terrible thing. Period.
Here's something I'd forgotten about. Apparently technology companies usually send their people to training. ITT has sent me to Exchange class this week. Apparently, my brain is worth investing in. Who knew? The class is going well and I'm surprised at how much I'm picking up and by how much I already know. I love this field. I think I'll stay a geek for a while.
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