dubai at night

doha reunion tonight with all the powerful ladies. been desperately trying to finish uploading my pictures from the trip to share with them, but so busy! still trying....

travels

please click to enlarge!

qatari backlog

it became impossible for me to keep up with posting my journal from qatar while i was there. increasingly i found myself falling asleep with the computer keyboard still in my hands--blog post drafts and messages to jade reading, "today i adkljaewpo3LKJD".

and unfortunately, the same goes for writing new journal entries. people are still asking about my trip, which remains one of the most fascinating travels i've taken, so i will post the rest. perhaps that will trigger some memories and i'll tell you more stories....

so where did we leave off?

....all is orderly. there is no chaos.

until we come to the site. we enter the palace grounds where the 'tent' is under construction. but to call it a tent is misleading. i am jaded with events. i have seen so much. i have been wowed by decor. but not like this. it is a new world of opulence. it is incredible. rows and rows of strings of strings of salmon colored beads hang down. hang fifty feet in rows. at their tips, teardrop crystals prism balls larger than golf balls sway, clink and rainbow in the breeze. everything is oversized. royal.

a filmy layer of dust coats every car in the land. there is a huge traffic jam getting to the hotel today due to the holiday. we just sit back dazed and unaffected, taking all in. having traveled in turkey, there are many aspects of this country that feel familiar. some architecture, some language, some customs. but i imagine arriving through katleen and brigitte's (who i referred to the job) fresh eyes and wish i were traveling with them. they arrive today.

happy birthday big sis!

today my big sis amy is, god, i don't know how old, but she sure doesn't look a day over thirty!
here we are in rhonert park, i think. which should make her about 9 or 10 years old in the red hoodie. of course, abbie in the center with the ever-identifiable dark hair....

quote of the day, or 'how my work day is different than yours'

me, while completing an internet order: "how many cicadas do i order?"

boss: "depends on how much they cost. i don't want to spend more than 50 bucks on bugs!"

an i love new york moment followed directly by an i love google, you tube and the internet moment

yesterday i climbed down the steps of the subway platform, stiffly, limbs frozen and cold. i heard a familiar song playing. is that the instrumental beverly hills theme? i thought, suddenly smiling. sounded funny though.

is that....?
yes, it was being played on the accordion.

even better, when i came around the corner, the accordion player was wearing a cardboard robot helmet complete with antennae. brilliant.


now for the i love the internet portion. i went to you tube to double check that it indeed was from beverly hills cop. and on a whim i typed in 'robot accordion beverly hills cop'.

and lo and behold, there he was!!!! so i can share this moment fully with you even without the time to write this well. you tube will do it for me! behold: i heart new york.



later...

okay, so apparently i'm behind the times. i mentioned this dude to jade and he was like, 'the guy who wears the boba fett mask?'. um. oh yeah. so i guess i missed that reference. and i'm sorry i can't even spell boba fett. that's someone from star wars, right?

irritating random fact about me #654

photo still courtesy of a movie i have no business watching....
apparently my imagination hasn't progressed beyond the age of 6, when your parents have to ban you from watching scooby doo because you're having nightmares about masked crooks. oh, but that couldn't have been me because i wasn't allowed to watch cartoons anyway. maybe that's my problem. didn't get the scary stuff out of the way at an early age. as a result, i can't even watch a parady of a horror movie without being plagued by night terrors.

this is something i am very aware of. i have really scary dreams on my own, without the help of hollywood effects, thank you. it started with the re-occuring nightmare from age 5-18 featuring a kidnapper chopping me up into tidy chunks and feeding my parts into a blender. i could feel it all. it continued on to seeing my death 99 different ways from the golden gate bridge.

i know to stay away from the gore and spooky stuff. every now and then i can't resist, and the nightmares are worth it: lost, the blair witch project. both terrifying and nightmare inducing. both worth it.

zombieland: not worth it.

every now and then, usually when i have a new boyfriend, i push myself beyond my known comfort levels, just wanting to be easy-going, figuring at 34 years old i can handle some fake blood. especially when it's over the top and mocking. this is untrue and unwise.

case in point: last night we made our second attempt at watching the aforementioned 'zombieland'. we'd first tried it on christmas eve. i'd come straight from a 100 hour work week, followed by 24 hours of traveling from the middle east, directly into the kitchen to bake christmas gifts, pack and be at the airport at 5am the next day.

within 30 seconds of gut munching i vetoed. 'nope, this is not what i want to watch on christmas!'
blame it on christmas. but it was true! it was super depressing and i was a wreck already.
so last night we tried again. i made it about 4 minutes in. my fork full of rice and tofu hovered somewhere between the bowl and my contorted face. i literally couldn't find a window of time long enough to chew a bite without simultaneously watching zombies chewing on bloody flesh.
jade graciously turned it off in favor of family guy. much more appetizing. (hah!)

and sure enough, four minutes of zombieland brought the most heinous night of dreams. when jade finally woke me up at 6, i was grateful, having been finally confronting the ghosts that inhabited the place i was housesitting, busted in on nightly by some freaky looking red-eyed ladies...

so, i'm sorry, but that's enough horror and gore for 2010 already! can somebody cue up an episode of barney for me?

sunday snow day

there's nothing like a lovely snow flurry hanging around long enough to stick to the cars to make you feel okay about staying in all day and .....i almost said, "doing nothing", when in fact, i've been cleaning and re-organizing my apartment since i woke up at 4:30am. that's right, 4:30 AM. don't ask. something about the boyfriend ailing from a saturday artists football game leaving him unable to sleep any longer. and suddenly we were up cleaning.

this is how i'm 'lazy'.

quote of the day

jade: how do you get up so early, dad?

jade's dad: i have to get out of that thing after a few hours. people die in there!