Well, that is definitely another lesson learned this week!!  I just typed for about 40 minutes on a post only to have it gone when I came back to finish it!!  Now I have to start over and that stinks because it was a really good one!  I’ll never be as witty the second time around!!  Lesson learned:  save, save, save!!

Let’s try this again!  Tomorrow will be 6 weeks for me here!  Time is starting to go pretty fast (thank goodness!) now that I have a routine.  It goes something like this:  get up at 5am, make coffee, drink coffee, make more coffee, drink more coffee, shave, check email from the night when you all are up and I’m sleeping, make more coffee, drink more coffee, put in contacts, shower, dry, dress, pack up and leave for work about 6.  Work 12 hours, pack up and go back to the apartment where I either fix a sad little dinner or go down to the mall.  Then it’s back to the apartment to watch a movie on Netflix or read a book on my iPad, either way I’ll most likely fall asleep in the middle of each.  Wake up with a stiff neck, get up go to bed and repeat the next day!  Last weekend was really exciting, I polished 3 pairs of shoes and my cowboy boots!  Oh, I ran on the Corniche where I only saw 5 people other than myself and a kitten.  By the way, it’s so hot here that even the cats pant! Back to the apartment where I do things like laundry, dishes and read or watch movies.  I did meet a guy at the pool last Saturday.  He is a Brit living in Scottland.  He and his wife just got married in March and guess where…..VEGAS!  They actually had Elvis marry them!  He told me they flew the whole family over to Vegas for the wedding and none of them had ever been there before!  They loved it!  Anyway, he took me to a Thai place for dinner and it was the best meal I’ve had here so far!  The place was a hole-in-the-wall and I would have never found it if not for Tony.  I’m hoping to go there for dinner again this weekend.

This week I became a bit of a celebrity in the office!  I’m betting you want to know how.  I have been parking my car in pretty much the same spot for the past almost 4 weeks now.  So Sunday after work I go out to my car and find a yellow piece of paper under the wiper.  I can only assume it’s one thing – a parking ticket!  I don’t REALLY know if it’s a parking ticket because it’s all in Arabic so other than a few numbers I can’t read any of it.  Monday I take it into work with me to ask one of the Saudis to tell me what it is.  He was like, “wow….where did you get this?!”  Apparently no one I work with has ever seen one much less received one!  Remember my comments about the driving?  Well, the parking is even worse!!  It is not at all uncommon for cars to be “triple parked”.  Cars will be parked IN the traffic lane so that everyone has to pull out to go around the parked car!  I’ve seen cars parked on sidewalks, in yards, diagonal in parallel spots, parallel in diagonal spots, you name it I’ve seen it here!  I’ve got to take pictures of some of these things….it’s crazy!  Anyway, any of you that know me well know that I’m a bit, mmmm, obsessed, with doing things the “right” way.  So now please explain to me why I get a ticket!  I’m parked about as perfectly parallel to the curb as one can possibly be!  I’m completely out of the traffic lane with the perfect amount of space between me and the cars in front and behind.  So do I get a ticket because I’m too perfectly parked??!!  Anyway, the ticket is SAR150, that’s $40!  Now my biggest challenge is trying to figure out how and where to pay it.  $40 is about what it costs in Los Angeles!  This is Saudi Arabia!  There are many people here that don’t make that in a week!  Like the guy that washes my car 3 times a week for SR100/month – that’s $27.00/mo!  Some things just don’t make sense!

Alright, it’s after 11pm here so I’m going to bed.  Will try to write more this weekend.