Yet another weekend

I'm starting to realize that it just continues on this way, forever, until death or retirement: wake up and go to work for 5 days, then the weekend. Wake up and go to work for 5 days, then the weekend. Wake up and go to work for 5 days...

This weekend, I started strong and ended weak. Thursday night I came home after work to meet the cockroach-killing crew who thoroughly doused the apartment in toxic goo. I once again feel safe eating food here. Frankly, I'd rather have cancer than cockroaches.

Then, Thursday night, I made a valiant effort to catch a taxi to town to meet up with one of several groups of friends doing one of several fun exciting things. One group was at Cactus Jack's getting free margaritas and champagne (Thursday is ladies night) and the other group was having an at-home dinner & drinks gathering at somebody's house. Unfortunately, after 30 minutes standing on the highway in a dust squall, I gave up on that idea. Two people did pull over in passenger cars to offer me "private taxi" portage, but I didn't really feel like Thursday was the day to be raped and murdered. Maybe next weekend.

So, I trucked it down to the gas station to pick up some good gossip magazines and caramel milk snack (I'm not exactly what this product is, as the entire label is printed in arabic, but I am aware that the ingredients contain dairy and caramel products, and it is DELICIOUS), and went home for a nice relaxing evening and finished my book, "The Plot Against America" by Philip Roth.

Then on Friday, I woke up early and caught a taxi (easy! fast! What a difference 12 hours makes.) down to More cafe in Garhoud for a little brekkie. Read the newspaper, had a watermelon juice and a spanish omelette, and then caught a cab to Wafi city to do a little shopping and check out the new arabian-souk style shopping wing. But, before I even got started at Wafi, I got a call from my friend Maureen inviting me out to the spa. So, of course, I went to the spa - we got pedicures and manicures and a 1-hour foot massage at this place called Mary Foot Spa (if I'm remembering correctly.) It was suuuuper awesome. I'll definitely go back.

After that we went back to Maureen's place for a couple of gin & tonics and a grilled burger with her husband, which was thoroughly awesome, and then I had to jet to meet up with this other friend at a spanish tapas bar back at Wafi City called Seville's. Had some yummy fried mushrooms, cheesecake, flan, patatas bravas, toast and pina colada on a rooftop outdoor terrace/bar with live music. That was pretty sweet as well, although by the end of the night I was feeling pretty fat and sassy. I'm going to have to hit the gym all week to make up for it.

I only got about 5 hours of sleep because I had to wake up early Saturday to let the internet guys in to install my internet. Which they did, successfully, in about 10 minutes. By comparison, I can't understand why the hell it takes Comcast an hour, or sometimes two hours, to install internet and/or cable tv in Portland. I didn't even have to run any discs or install any software or do anything here - they just showed up, plugged in the equipment, changed a couple settings on my computer, and away they went, leaving me in the wakeful bliss of sudden connectivity. Nobody had to run down to their truck 3 times to get more cable, the guy didn't need to call dispatch and wait on hold for them to give him a network key or something, no - nothing. So easy. Comcast - call Etisalat corporate headquarters in the UAE and ask them to FedEX you a clue.

That aside - I didn't get much sleep and felt kind of icky and sick all day so I didn't really get out of bed until about 3:30pm. The afternoon consisted of catching up on e-mail, taking a hot bath and streaming Marketplace from npr.org . Turns out the sub-prime mortgage crisis hasn't gone away since the last time I listened to Marketplace. And tomorrow it's back to work - AND tomorrow I get my shipment of household goods delivered. I'm curious to see whether anything is broken, whether anything was confiscated by customs, (like, the bible) and whether any of the boxes contain cockroaches which will rush out and instantly be killed by the toxic goo.