And He's Off!

Sent the Bean away today. Watched him till the last minute going through security. Helps that he's so tall. Even from a distance his head is high enough to see. Little bit of a blip in getting him there. Someone misspelled the last name, and so for a while there it appeared as if he didn't have a ticket and might not be able to make it back in time for school to start. But then the extra "i" was discovered through a panicked phone call home to Mom who remembered the error. And so he got off fine. I'm really going to miss him. When we hugged goodbye, he said "See you at Christmas." The expanse of time struck - I'm not going to see him for Halloween (70 days away, btw) or Thanksgiving. I hope he has a great year at school.

Breaking News

It's been far too long since I've posted, but I just learned of some critical breaking news. It's even more important that Russia invading Georgia or the Olympics. Combined.


In The Know: Are We Giving The Robots That Run Our Society Too Much Power?


In The Know: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?


Country Music Stars Challenge Al-Qaeda With Patriotic New Song â??Bomb New Yorkâ??

A Bunch of Pictures.

In no particular order, because I don't have the patience right now to make it orderly, here follows a bunch of long overdue pictures:

Disneyland Rowing Team:

The After-Disneyland-DVD-in-the-Car Zombie:

The Zombie's Mom:
Harry, Hermione and Ron were here. So was I:
This is the place we all were, at different times:
Cartoons come to life:
A stylin' do from the soon to be World Famous Fashion Hair Designer, Nephew Thomas:

The World Famous Fashion Hair Designer on his White Charger, with his mother:
The newest Disneyland Crew Team recruits: (Daniel's not nervous, just uncomfortable.)
See, I told you Daniel was a natural born sailor.
Here we are in the Alps.

At the firestation.

From Christmas:

Funny Quotes

If the world didn't suck, you'd fall off.

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.

Costumers make clothes for imaginary people.

FOURTEEN THINGS THAT IT TOOK OVER 50 YEARS TO LEARN

By Dave Barry

1. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

2. If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be "meetings."

3. There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

4. People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.

5. You should not confuse your career with your life.

6. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.

7. Never lick a steak knife.

8. The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.

9. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

10. You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

11. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.

12. The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.

13. A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person. (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)

14. Your friends love you anyway.

Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

Long Time No See

Well, it's been far too long since I updated this little ol' blog. Much, ever so much has happened. I am back home from Qatar. I am no longer practicing law and there is much rejoicing. I am working at the Hale Theatre. You will kindly notice the "re" spelling; this distinquishes it from the Hale Theater. The "Re" is up in West Valley. So I do have quite a commute. But I love what I do. It's happy. It may be a bit sick, in fact, I know it is, but I'm looking forward to the craziness of Halloween. The commute is something else though. There was a snow storm this moring which more than doubled my time on the road. Took me two hours to get there. But I arrived safely. I must get in bed so that I can get up and get to work on time tomrrow. This is just ridiculous. Pictures of Christmas and California to come. Oh, I think I might throw in some Thanksgiving pics too, since there are some pretty darn cute ones there.

UltiMitt

Check out my brother-in-law's web site for Mitt Romney for President: UltiMitt. If the fancy strikes you, go ahead and join. You can even get your own campaign type team together, if you're into politics. It's a great site.

Accidents Happen, Especially in Doha

As a friend said when he heard of this, I can now go home. I have done everything there is to do in Doha. I got in a car accident. Around 2 o'clock, Tuesday 26 June, 2007.

Not my fault and fortunately the ticket agrees with that fact. I didn't get the ticket. I was rear ended. My car was the bigger of the two and so won the collision. No one was hurt.

I was getting ready to turn right onto a very busy road. Most turns here are right turns. There are islands running down the middle of most roads to prevent cars from travelling in the lane for oncoming traffic. The drivers here are truly that aggressive. I have had cars heading directly for me on roads without barriers down the middle. And most of the intersections are round abouts. So left turns are rare birds. So are turns onto streets or into round abouts where you are not risking your life. And most people here would rather hit you than yield. And don't get me started about the tailgating here ..... grrrrrrr!!

So I'm stopped waiting to turn right, like any normal person. But apparently I was supposed to just head into the traffic like a crazy Arab driver because that's what the person behind me intended to do, even though I was in front of her.



Collision. She got the worst of it. I felt a jolt in my neck, but nothing serious and it took just a second for the truth to register. I pulled a bit forward and to the side in order to get as much out of the flow of traffic as possible.

The lady who hit me was nice. Not upset or angry. She gets on her mobile phone, I get on mine. Call mom. There's a series of calls. I learn that in order to get my car fixed I have to have a police report. I also learn that I should not move my car at all.

This brings up the only rather odd occurrence. (I mean, besides the accident itself, which isn't all that odd here in Qatar - there's tons of accidents. I don't go a day without seeing a new wreck on the side of the road.) At one point, the lady who hit me says that the police say we should both drive to the police station. She's getting in her car and ready to go. And that strikes me as odd because I was told by two friends I'd called that I shouldn't move. So, a moment of brilliance that should have hit me previously finally does, and I say to the lady, "Ok - I'll follow you, but let me take some pictures first." So I run out to get the pictures you see here, and before I'm even done she says that the police are on their way out to see the accident. I don't know what actually happened. I do not speak Arabic. But it is something that makes me go "hmmm."

See, my dad's been rear ended, and he's the one that ended up with the ticket. In the States there would be no question as to who was at fault. (But then no-fault insurance laws could mess things up--but I digress). But here, I'm a second class citizen because I'm not Qatari. And ideas of "due process" are not exactly fair, at least to American sensibilities. So I was glad that I didn't the ticket.



The lady's husband (I assume) came to help her. There were both very nice. No angry words or even angry looks. In the States, I'd expect angry looks and wouldn't be surprised at angry words, even though it was not my fault. But these Qataris were the definition of civil. I assume they were Qatari by their dress - the abaya and thobe with the head scarf and gutra. My spellings of those words is probably wrong.

Had to go to the police station the next day to get the accident report. A bit of a confusion there because I was told to pay a 300 Qatari Riyal fine. But I had not gotten the ticket, so I couldn't figure out what the fine could be for. After a bit of questioning the policemen there it became clear that the fine was for a speeding ticket my father incurred a few days before I even arrived in the country. But I had to pay the fine anyway. Oh, well.

BTW - that way of collecting on speeding tickets is less effective. The reason for imposing tickets and fines for speeding is to not only punish infractions, but to create safer roads. In order to do that, the imposition of the punishment should be close in time to the commission of the infraction. That way the perpetrator knows when, where and what he or she did wrong and has immediate incentive not to repeat the behavior. The way they do it here is by radar and photographs. But they do not inform the driver of the ticket until he or she gets in an accident or wants to leave the country. A speeding driver could incur thousands in fines and never even know it until months or years later when he finally crashes, maybe even killing someone. It does nothing to immediately improve road safety. It it an effective way to get money. I mean, I had to pay my father's fine.

Rex's Guitar Video

A star is born!

This takes a little bit to load. But Rex is goo-ood. And the end is amusing.

More Pics

By the pool. Shortly after a short exchange with a hairy Turk. See previous post.
A desert rose. According to Wikipedia a "[d]esert rose is the colloquial name given to rosette formations of the minerals gypsum and barite with poikilotopic sand inclusions. The 'petals' are crystals flattened on the c crystallographic axis, fanning open along characteristic gypsum cleavage planes. (See also: Crystallography) The rosette crystal habit tends to occur when the crystals form in arid sandy conditions, such as the evaporation of a shallow salt basin. Gypsum roses usually have better defined, sharper edges than barite roses."

Rex, celebrating being on the honor roll, with good ol' American applie pie and vanilla ice cream. With Old Glory. Wow.
Virgin Mega Store. Sanity. Previously I thought these stores too loud for me. But here, with it's huge English language book section, it is practically Mecca to me.
Unfortunately, not an uncommon sight.

The Dragonfly catcher.

Tim Burton would love the curbs here: they're nearly all black and white striped.

Breaking Employment News

Well - I'm once again randomly employed. As a long term substitute teacher. In ESL.

I should just paper this place with my resume and land a real teaching job.