Projects for sandstorm weekends

Well, once again it's been a long time since I've posted. Day to day life is pretty boring when you're working...not much to write about when all you do is work, eat, sleep, do chores, and then start all over again.

One of the nice things about my job is that working on the department website and library OPAC is allowing me to expand my web site authoring and graphics skills. I have been a steep CSS learning curve lately, and thanks to a new coworker who has a background in graphic design I finally have enough of an idea of how Photoshop works that I can open it and understand enough about the layout to start learning by trial and error. Besides the web presence revamps at work, which should be online soon, I've used a couple of little side projects as platforms for experimentation. I helped a friend redesign her website for her freelance editing business, and this weekend, I have been working on developing an HCT Library Catalogue Google Gadget:

It probably isn't as good as I think it is, but I am inordinately proud of it all the same :) It can be added to iGoogle pages and embedded in outside web pages, too. Haven't really had a chance to test it in Explorer (I use Firefox at home), so if something looks seriously out of whack to you let me know so I can fix it!

The big news here this week was, of course, the accidentally-severed undersea cable that knocked out Internet access for much of the Middle East. We were not affected; our connection did seem slow that night but thanks to our ISP slow connections are not unusual for us even on good days. The fact that this story is such big news, though, is a testament to how much we now rely on the Internet for work and for recreation. Though some might find it hard to believe, I can live without being logged on in my spare time; all of my work is dependent on online/networked tools, though, and I'd be hard-pressed to find anything to do in the case of a network outage! I suppose I could write out catalogue records for inputting later, but that's about it.

Edmonton has been struggling under extremely low temperatures this week. We have nothing that dramatic here, but we are in the middle of a pretty impressive sandstorm. The howling wind woke both of us up quite early this morning, and visibility is very low. The intire sky is a dull beige-grey...it's like fog, but created by sand instead of moisture! Even the Corniche waters are being whipped up into little baby whitecaps, which is VERY unusual.

Out on the highways, driving in sandstorms is much like driving in a snowstorm: sands blow across the roads and you can get whiteout conditions very easily. So I'm glad we don't have to go anywhere and can stay in today. I am going to attempt a roast beef for dinner (believe it or not I've never actually cooked this myself before) and we have apple cider supplies left over from Christmas. This is the closest we're going to get to a "winter day" in Abu Dhabi so I feel like we should make the most of it!

What's New....

We've been busy digitizing our music CD collection since we bought a 500 GB hard drive. It cost about $300 USD and is more space than we need at the moment. But over time I'm sure that we'll take advantage of the storage capacity. The first bit of news is that there will be a Formula I race here on February 3. It's not an official F1 event but is organized by the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority. However, the cars will be barreling down the Corniche so we'll have front row seats. So we'll try and take some video of it.

A friend lent us his dvds of the Canadian television sitcom called Corner Gas. It's pretty funny and the character of Hank seems like a younger Joe Pecsi. The latest new Canadian sitcom is the CBC produced Little Mosque on the Prairie. At the moment it's blocked in the UAE due to it's "controversial" content. The first episode is at Google Video. It's generated a lot of news in the U.S. as it's the first television comedy about Muslims.

A couple of weeks ago we bought a sofa bed for the spare room. I also put one of our carpets from the Caucuses in there so the room looks a bit more comfortable.

Darcy cooked a delicious picnic dinner that we had on living floor. This was before we moved our two carpets to our guest rooms. We turned out the lights and burned a bunch of candles so it really felt like being in a Bedouin tent in the Arabian desert. Below are some photos of the dinner.

I found an interesting article published in the New Statesman...a special report on the world's top ten dictators. I was a little surprised to find that Dubai's Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum was on the list! You can read their analysis of the "Ceo of Dubai, Inc" on this page

Now that Darcy is working we decided to split doing chores. I now sweep and wash the floors and will also try and cook dinner sometimes. We bought our plane tickets last week. We depart on June 29 and return here August 12. We also booked three nights at Alpine Village in Jasper (our secluded honeymoon site). Unbelievably they only had the one room cabins left for that date. The site just began accepting reservations at the beginning of the month so it's good that we reserved now! That's all for now.....

Macs rule!

That's all I can say.... :)

Our laptop has come with all sorts of crazy software. We are creating comic books and editing videos from our digital cameras and subscribing to podcasts and rss feeds and essentially doing our best to wear out our internet connection and new hardware. I'm sure that this is just new-toy syndrome, and it will settle down with time, but wow is there a lot of stuff to play with here!

We just had a long weekend...the UAE is switching from a Thursday-Friday weekend to a Friday-Saturday one, so during the turnover Michael got three days off. Everyone seemed to expect we would go away for the weekend, but this was really the first chance we had to just hole up at home and relax without having to run errands or go shopping, so that's essentially what we did. Nice to not to *have* to do anything for a change!

Rehearsals for my play are going along well...we only have a few to go before opening night! We are missing one cast member, who seems to have done a back-door exit at the last minute, so that is a bit of a worry (jus a bit!) but otherwise everything is going well. I managed to learn my lines before we started so now it's just a matter of getting comfortable with the flow of doing it "live", and the voice projection issue. The Club has one of those stages where all the sound goes up instead of out, so we have to speak up and speak out!

Other than that not much news, except I tried getting back to the yoga mat after a long haitus only to find out how out of shape all those yoga muscles are. Lots of work to do there I guess!

Connected at last!

Well, we finally moved into the modern age today. Last week we bought our first computer, and today we got our internet connection installed! Finally we will be able to access the internet at home, rather than at work or at the internet cafe. Which means you should see a lot more frequent postings!

Our computer is actually a laptop. We splurged on one of the new Macintoch ones...a MacBook Pro with dual intel processor and lots of neat software. I've been having fun figuring out how to create my own comic books, author my own movies and DVDs, and compose my own music. Michael has been playing chess, and saying he will get to all the other stuff "soon" :)

Other news here...I did get a part in one of the Abu Dhabi Dramatic Society one acts that will be going up in September. My play is called "The Flesh Game", and it's a comedy about woman at a health spa trying to lose weight. I came in with only about 3 weeks to go until opening night, so the learning curve is pretty steep!

We've been watching the news about Ernesto this week and feeling very, very glad we are not in Florida.

Setting up house continues slowly but surely. We finally got some curtains up this week, and I have started to furnish my little sanctuary room in the small third bedroom.