Join me as I travel halfway across the globe!  I’m beginning a 10 day tour of Egypt (as group leader) with 18 ducklings in tow, including my parents who’ve never been in the 15 years I’ve been going back and forth.

I kind of had to redefine the “12th” today – since i ended the day in Cairo, I decided to start at 4 pm in Houston, which is midnight in Cairo and, hence, the beginning of the day.

4 PM Houston / Midnight Cairo: Outbound

Yeh, this one was also my photo of the day for yesterday,  It’s not like I have a whole lot of choices here, kids. This is my mom, engaged in reading something as we wait for pushback from Houston.

5:33 PM Houston/1:33 AM Cairo: Happy Hour

Why do I love thee, Air France?  Let me count the free bottles of wine ways.

6:15 am Paris / 7:15 am Cairo: Predawn over the Irish Sea

8:57 am Paris/9:57 am Cairo: Architecture at Paris/Charles de Gaulle

No offense to the French, but for a nation that prides itself on its culinary output, the restaurants at the airport suck.  Not much else to do but wander around and take photos of the architecture in Terminal 2F.

11:02 Paris / 12:02 Cairo: Goods news/bad news

Good news/bad news: the good news is that three of my group were coming from Detroit and their flight was delayed.  It turns out that the aircraft that they were arriving on was the one that was to take us to Cairo, so they wouldn’t miss the connection(not that anyone told them – they ran from the moment they got off the plane). The bad news, of course, is that this put us into Cairo an hour late, which is not the best news after an overnight flight.

11:15 am Paris / 12:15 pm Cairo: universal symbols.

The way I read this, this seat is reserved for morbidly obese women who can cross their legs, and for the terminally constipated.

1:08 pm Paris/ 2:08 pm Cairo

More architecture.  I was trying to keep myself awake.

2:28 pm Paris / 3:28 pm Cairo: Taxiing out

The plane had one of those cameras so you could watch where you were going.  Neat.

Also, for the record, the seat on the Air France A330 may have been the least comfortable airline seat I’ve ever sat in.

5:36 pm Cairo: Snow in Greece?  That’s Unpossible!

6:22 pm Cairo: Sunset over the Aegean

8:29 pm: We’re here!

And so, after 23 hours of travel, we arrive in Cairo—missing two people, who are stuck in New York and will arrive tomorrow.  Insha’allah.

How was your 12th?

And so, there I was: checking out from Target.

Target, if you haven’t had the experience, has a large and beautiful array of products in travel size–including products that have figured out that carry on size is 3 oz, not 2.  In other words, the perfect size for a two week trip to Egypt. Need a travel size Dove beauty bar for men?  They got it.  Need travel size K-Y jelly?  They got that, too.  (Really.)

So, I had my stuff in travel size, I had my new sunglasses and my TSA approved lock and three packs of bandanas (because everyone always asks if they can have the one I use as a sweat rag) and I checked out.

And as I finished my transaction and was grabbing my bag to leave, the cashier announces, “Honey, you got coupons.”

“I do?” I asked.
“Uh huh.  You got one here for luggage and one for swimsuits.”

Now, here is where I should have just said, “Thanks,” taken the coupons and walked away, depositing them in the trash with my old sunglasses (the arm had fallen off as I put them on in the morning.  I’d already decided to buy new ones, but that just sort of hastened the process).  But I didn’t.

“I don’t need luggage,” I said, not adding, I have a full set of luggage.  The next luggage I buy will be top of the line, and it’s certainly not going to come from Target.

“Are you sure?  Honey, they got some pretty bags back there.  Have you seen them?”
“I have,” I said, realizing my mistake.
“What about bathing suits?” she asks, holding the coupon out for me to take.
“That’s for women’s bathing suits.”
“Ain’t you got a woman you want to buy a bathing suit for?”
“… I really don’t.”
“Wouldn’t you like to buy one for your mother?”

Interjection: In all the time that I have known my mother, she has never–ever–owned a bathing suit.  Ever.  It’s a visual that … {shudders}

“I think … I’m good.  Thanks!” I said, and danced away, far, far later than I should have done, as the cashier looked at me like I was crazy.

She’s probably right, too.

Ray is off to his first day of work at his new job.  {waits for applause.}

As you will recall, Spouse got laid off a while back.  We don’t like to talk about it, or, at least, I don’t.  It was reminiscent of an old episode of Friends (I guess they’re all old now, aren’t they?) wherein Tom Selleck was commenting that when people asked him about his divorce, questions would be posed with the “I’m concerned” head tilt, which was met with the “I’m OK” head bob.

This comes to mind because I lost count of the number of times I had this conversation at work:
Concerned person {tilts head to the right}: “How’s Ray?”
Me {bobbing head}: “He’s OK.”

To be perfectly fair, we never did go through the massive rage phase that I was expecting.  Instead, he signed up for extra classes at the local community college, bought the P90x DVDs and started working through the program, and generally settled down for a role as stay at home Dad to Mocha.

As you’ve surmised from the title, it was this last one that started to concern me after a while.

It became clear that Mocha was growing quite attached to Daddy (Ray insists on referring to me as “Daddy # 2,” which is both cumbersome and seems to confuse her.  Mocha understands perfectly well who I’m referring to when I ask her to “go get Daddy.”).  Once upon a time when I came home from work, Mocha would meet me at the door, tail wagging, and sometimes trying to do that jumping thing that she only does when she’s really excited.  But lately?  She barely acknowledges my presence when I come home.  “Oh, it’s you,” she seems to say, rolling over and going back to sleep on the couch.

Ray, of course, denied that her behavior was favoring him (don’t they always?), right up until the other night when she refused to sit next to me on the sofa and ran around to the other side in the hope of sitting next to Ray.  Only when it became clear that there was no room on that side did she deign to sit next to me, but I got the butt end.

“Um,” he said, “So, maybe she IS getting a little too attached.”

Ray was offered a three to four week contract at a company that does pretty much exactly what he used to do at Hell Dell, but has already been told that there’s a significant chance that he’ll be brought on permanently.

He called today, having survived his very first commute downtown (how kyoot–call me when you’ve been doing it for ten years, honey!) to report that he has a stunning view of the capitol building from the office where he works.  I’m quite content with the red clay tiles of the school of architecture next door–and, just between you and me, I really don’t look out my window that much. But don’t tell my boss–I’ve been demanding a window of equal or larger size in my office in the new building we’ll be moving into in three years.  (However, I may need to be more specific: I’ve been told that I’ll have a floor to ceiling glass wall … it just may not actually be to the outside of the building, however.)

And so, for the time being at least, we’re back to a dual income.  And, just to prove that the universe is righting itself … Mocha met me at the door, tail awagging this evening.

It’s the small things.

It’s been a while.

As I may have suggested from time to time, my stress level for the past several weeks has been extremely high.  Part of this has to do with my inability to say the word “no,” particularly when coupled with a project I am asked to run (and that’s asked-asked, not asked in a “you will do this” way) that’s outside of my comfort zone, and part of it has to do with the routine kicking into high gear that happens this time every semester.

And part of it has to do with the title phrase.

We’re all scrambling a bit–the office that I work for is funded off of a major grant that comes up for renewal every four years.  I say “renewal,” but it’s actually “re-application,” because you have to prepare a full application and go back into the pool with everyone else.  It can be stressful, especially when, as in this cycle, everything is being held up because the Congressional approval that is needed to launch the application process is delayed because Congress is thinking about other things.  Normally we get the announcement in September for a late October deadline.  This time, it was February, and the application is due next Friday.

A colleague, who I do like generally, has this tendency to ask questions in a frantic manner, and can only ask them when she’s thinking about them.  This means that she’ll call up several times in a morning and basically ask me how I justify my existence at this university, one aspect at a time.  At the best of times, I can barely humor this.  When I am stressed out, like, say, I was last week, it makes me want to reach through the phone and throttle her, so I go to plan B and don’t answer the phone.

I am not the go-to person.  When I explain this, I invariably get an obsequious, “Yes, but you’re so knowledgeable and it’s so much easier to ask you.”
“Easier for you,” I finally snapped on Thursday morning when asked a question so ridiculous that I could barely retain my own incredulosness.  The phone kind of stopped ringing after that … for at least an hour.

On Thursday, I am leaving for Egypt with a group of 18 people in tow, who include my parents.  We had an orientation three weekends ago at which, for the first time in history, every single person who is going was in attendance.  Easy-peasy, I thought, because it can be hard to try to explain the importance of appropriate dress to people who aren’t there.

Apparently not.

On Saturday night, I got an e-mail from someone who, in sentences that apparently reproduce her confusion verbatim, asked me if she is supposed to check in with Delta or Air France at the airport.  A fair question…and one that I spent some significant time at the orientation discussing.  In addition, I actually stapled a sheet to the itineraries with explicit instructions answering that very question.  So, in other words, she has the documentation … it’s just easier to shoot me an e-mail and ask than it is to go look for it.

I also got a second message from someone who informed me that “sleeves are a fall thing” (this in response to my directive that sleeveless attire is inappropriate) and asking if she can get away with wearing a T-shirt.  Again, you might think this is a reasonable question, were it not for the fact that I not only spent lengthy time discussing this, but actually had visual illustrations demonstrating what one should and shouldn’t wear.

It’s just … y’know, easier to ask me than look at your notes.

I shouldn’t be a grump, I know — and I should be happy that she asked me in advance, rather than doing what one of my undergrads did in 2006 and inform me at 9 pm the night before we were supposed to go to the old city that she had nothing with sleeves and “assumed that would be OK.”  (That evening ended with us parading into store after store while she rejected garments that she didn’t like, and was concluded after I threatened to purchase the next item that I found with sleeves and staple it to her body.  And no, for the record, staples were not involved in the outcome, but I was pretty serious at that point.)

So, on behalf of everyone who is considered an expert on topics, please do us a favor: if you know that you’ve got the info somewhere, or that someone else is the appropriate person to ask … every once in a while, maybe considering looking for it or asking someone else for a change.

Please?

So … today was a bit crazy.

I’ve been a great big ball of stress the past week or so.  Saturday, I did the orientation for the trip to Egypt I’m leading.  Maybe I should have thought through that, “Oh, I can do this all myself” thing a little more fully.

Tomorrow, I’m off to the Rio Grande Valley.  Back late Thursday night, doing a high school visit on Friday morning first thing, departmental reception on Sunday.  Class presentations on Monday morning.  Colleague from out of town coming Monday afternoon for workshop all day Tuesday.  Next Saturday is the big university open house.  The following Wednesday, I have a dentist appointment in the early morning, an appointment in the evening, and the following day at 1:30 in the afternoon I get on a plane to fly to Cairo.

It’s probably no big surprise that I’m a little stressed.  Ironically, when I started having problems sleeping last week, it took me a little time to figure out why.

Today, I had a to-do list several miles long.  However, the best parts came in the late afternoon.

I’ve worked with one of the people in the Valley before, and she’s … crazy.  Last time we were there, she announced over lunch that she carries a gun in her truck everywhere she goes.

“OK … “
”Yeah, you know,” she said, “They’ll come over from over there in the middle of the night and they’ll steal your kidneys.”

Come again?

In some lengthy detail, she described the organ harvesters of Mexico, who are, apparently, wont to jump the Rio Grande, stop American cars traversing US 84 between Laredo and the lower valley, and steal the internal organs of their occupants.

“You’re all young and fit,” she observed, barely breaking from her fast chewing.  “They’d take yours in a heartbeat.  That’s why I carry.”

She’s been sending messages to me of a variety that I barely understood.  There was a long, rambling one that involved lunch time, and when we wanted to schedule it (usually we take our cue from our hosts, not the other way around), and then a very, very long explanation of how the place where our session will be is staffed and whether we wanted … well, let’s just say that three people read the message, and none of them understood it.

In the meantime, as I’m trying to put things together to leave, remember what I need to do now so that I’m set for next week, and putting in the request for the cash advance for the trip to Egypt so that it’ll be ready in time for me to jump through hoops at my bank, the shelf on my bookcase just randomly decided to collapse downward.  Again.

That may have been the point where I decided that I was done working and gathered my things up to leave.  If my bookcase falls over between now and Friday, so be it.

And I’m kind of hoping that I still have all my kidneys then, too.  Good golly…