goodmorning all you sleepy heads................its 2pm here in lebanon, where are all my early morning readers lol. good day yall

Is this supposed to be like "Where's Waldo"? It's been storming all nite and still off & on this morning here. I hope my office isn't flooded.... Guess we'll see in a little while! it's way time for a pedicure!

Here I am! Did you miss me?

Happy Hump Day !

lol yea or 'where in the world is carmen sandiego' lol

Wow nice camel!

A camel with a mohawk, that's a first for my eyes.

I woke up to the most beautiful letter from my fiance in my inbox. Awwww.....

Rather gray outside and the wind is really high . . . everything on the house seems to be moving when it gusts really high. the temp is supposed to drop too, but i just went out and it is OK so far . . . probably will be bad the moment I head out for an appt later today, hehe!

Working and working . . . gotta get this program coded and tested sooooooooooooon, so i have time next week to do more important things, . Insha'allah.

Do you think this camel thinks he's the coolest of the cool, or does he wish he had a bag to put over his head?

It's raining here AGAIN. I'm going to start growing mold soon if it doesn't dry up. I'm taking my 1/2 day off today. I hate to give up 4 hours of OT but I'm really beat this week already from the stupid cold/infection/meds/typical-this-time-of-year-crud so an afternoon of lolligagging around watching a movie or something sounds pretty appealing.

So this is the first time in 3 days I have seen the sun! Yay! It's going in and out of the clouds.

Happy Wednesday everyone. I am at work. I hate it! I got in a tiff already with one of my co-workers. Oh well. I guess I am in some kinda mood. No work tonight. Only a dentist appointment, well a hygene appointment. I'm tired again. Starting to nod off at my desk. Gonna go try to wake up. Hope you are all well. Have a good day!

He know he STYLIN

goin out with my friend shelley tonite. gonna buy a few more gifts to take home. then we are gonna go smoke some hubley bubley at her place....................mmmmmmm thats on my list of things to buy for myself before i go!! yippy! lol

Just needing to let a little steam off here. It's been 13 days since the interview and 8 days since he turned in all of the additional info that they wanted. They said they would call him in 1-2 weeks. I called DOS. They have no information and they haven't received any request from Casa do run security checks. I emailed Casa. No response. I called Casa. Got a live person but she immediately transferred me to a recording which said to send an email.

What's hubley bubley?

Shisha?

flavored tobacco...some call it sheesha...or argeeli(not sure how to spell that one lol)

yea my friend spent time in egypt and there they call it sheesha...i guess hubley bubley is the english word for it lol

how many posts do u need for the heart?? i am almost at 600 and was just wonderin

i think you have to get to 1000 to reach "platinum", then the heart comes after that.... maybe 1250?

750 to platinum. 1,000 for first heart.


Aah, sheesha. That's funny - I've never heard hubbly bubbly before!

lol i still got a ways to go then ehhh...............

i loveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee double apple!!! my favooooooooooooo!!!!

i really do hate that it gets dark sooooooo early even here!!!! ughhh its 5pm and sooooooooooo dark

so Jenn, what's the DL on the heart situation? I've got almost 1775 posts and no 2nd heart yet.... care to share the breakdown of posts:hearts ratio? choukrane!


me too, jess... love that double apple! there's also a "hookah cafe" in new orleans that i go to and dance at sometimes and they have the most amazing mixes of sheesha there... just divine! I love dancing there b/c I always splurge on a fabulous hookah/sheesha flavor mix. Also, last time I went they had these cool floating lights in the hookah that flickered off & on when you smoke! Kinda like a little liteshow while you smoke

750 to platinum - change member title
1,000 for first heart
2,000 for second heart
and so on...


I can't wait till I get 10,000 posts - that's when I get the BIG heart!

1 heart per 1000 posts

Just another morning at work with our admin sending me those stupid e-mails that say send to so many people or you'll have bad luck and she's so afraid of bad luck she forwards them! Actually one was pretty good so I thought I'd share it. I used to read these and laugh at them, now I read them and relate. Guess that means I'm old. What makes me really happy is knowing that I am spending my life with someone who knows these things about me, and loves me anyway.

I've seen two shows lately that went on and on about how mid-life is a great time for women. Just last week Oprah had a whole show on how great menopause will be . . . Puhleeeeeeeze! I've had a few thoughts of my own and would like to share them with you. Whether you are pushing 40, 50, 60 (or maybe even just pushing your luck), you'll probably relate.

Mid-life is when the growth of hair on our legs slows down. This gives us plenty of time to care for our newly acquired mustache.

In mid-life women no longer have upper arms, we have wing spans. We are no longer women in sleeveless shirts, we are flying squirrels in drag.

Mid-life is when you can stand naked in front of a mirror and you can see your rear without turning around.

Mid-life is when you go for a mammogram and you realize that this is the only time someone will ask you to appear topless.

Mid-life is when you want to grab every firm young lovely in a tube top and scream, "Listen honey, even the Roman empire fell and those will too."

Mid-life brings wisdom to know that life throws us curves and we're sitting on our biggest ones.

Mid-life is when you look at your know-it-all, cell-phone carrying teenager and think: "For this I have stretch marks?"

n mid-life your memory starts to go. In fact the only thing we can retain is water.


Mid-life means that your Body By Jake now includes Legs By Rand McNally -- more red and blue lines than an accurately scaled map of Wisconsin.

Mid-life means that you become more reflective . . . You start pondering the "big" questions. What is life? Why am I here? How much Healthy Choice ice cream can I eat before it's no longer a healthy choice?

But mid-life also brings with it an appreciation for what is important. We realize that breasts sag, hips expand and chins double, but our loved ones make the journey worthwhile. Would any of you trade the knowledge that you have now, for the body you had way back when? Maybe our bodies simply have to expand to hold all the wisdom and love we've acquired. That's my philosophy and I'm sticking to it!

Abdel got hurt at work yesterday. They were cleaning a silo and the lead man forgot to turn off the fan before he stuck the cleaning rod up in it. The fan shot the rod back out and it smacked Abdel in the arm. If it had hit him straight on it would have impaled him. He had x-rays at the emergency room and got some good pain killers, and was back at work today. His arm is swollen pretty big and there was a small spot where it broke the skin on impact, but no broken bones thank goodness. He said his whole body was pretty shaken up though because when the rod hit him it threw him. What was really terrible - they made him pee for a drug test before they even moved him from the spot, and he wasn't even the one that did something wrong, he was just an innocent bystander. He said he felt like they would have told him "wait, you can't die yet, we have to do the drug test first!" He also said that while he was laying there in the pile of sugar in terrible pain all he could think of was watching our cat die Monday night and thinking that now it was his turn. Needless to say last night was lots of holding and I love yous. There's something about a close call with death that makes you really thankful for the one you love.

wowow thats really cool about the lights!! i cant wait to take it back to new york and let everyone try it lol!!!! gonna buy the thingy and stock up on the tobacco since its sooooooooooo much cheaper here!!

Liz, I'm glad Abdel is ok!

I didn't hear it called hubley bubley until I met a woman from lebanon while I was in Cairo for a dance festival . . . she said "let's go down to the Khan to find a place for hubley bubley" . . . I was going "what??" Here's a pic at the El Fishawi in the Khan el Khallili.

One woman is from Morocco and the other from Lebanon.

Back in the days of hippies (OK, and when you go to head shops now, I think) they called them water pipes (smoking the other tobacco).

Water pipe, shisha, hubley bubley, hookah, nargileh . . . lots of smokin' going on around here!!

Liz i am really glad he will be okay!! that is scarey!!!

Hey!!!! I finally went from GOLD to PLATINUM!!!



Sounds like I am spending too much time here again, hehe!!

Change your member title to something awesome and witty!

Liz, I'm sorry to hear abt Abdel's accident but so glad to hear he's ok.... I can't believe he's back at work today. I think I would have had to take a "sanity" day off.

Hey, how do you do that? I have a heart now but don't know how to change it!

Noura, If he goes in and can't work, they'll have to pay him workman's comp, right? If he stays home he isn't as likely to get paid. He works for a contractor and they can be pretty fishy about this stuff. Hopefully they'll let him do some really light work and not actually do much today. Yesterday he didn't work after about 10:30 when it happened but they paid him for the whole day. I've seen immigrants get treated pretty lousy when it comes to workman's comp and from what he told me yesterday his employer is about the same as what I've heard. He also found out he makes way less than most of the guys around him so he was pretty pissed about that since he works a lot harder than most of them. He actually had the guts to ask the big boss about it yesterday but the guy was just silent.

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What a shocking story. I am so glad he is okay.

I've heard "hubbly bubbly" before -- English speakers in the Oman use this term as well. I think it may well be of British origin.... sure sounds like something they'd come up with !

They call it argila or nargila in Palestine and Jordan.... I'm a non-smoker though, so never tried it myself.

Oh my God... what a close call !! Al7amdolillah he was not more seriously injured.

But WTF with the pee test even before giving him emergency medical treatment for his injuries ??? I can't believe they would do such a thing. That really sounds like something OSHA needs to investigate... it would definitely be grounds for a lawsuit if withholding treatment causes further complications.

Glad to know he will be ok. Maybe to leave this job NOW would be a smart idea, even if he doesn't have anything else lined up yet. What would happen if he was seriously hurt ???



-MK

Where is everyone? Come out and play!

Working!!!

Me too! Multi-tasking!

Multi-computer here!!

I was getting a pedicure, but I'm back now... did you miss me?

can you feel your face yet?

I did!

What color did you get?

yes, can you? my toes are feeling rather nice as well!


dang! I can't remember the goofy name (OPI, you know) but it's a lovely burgundy w/ gold flecks in it! schmancy!!

I'm going to have to break down and go get a pedicure one of these days. One of Abdel's friends from ESL class works in the shop at Walmart, and I know he would do a great job, I just have to take the time. As rough as Abdel's work is, he has considered going to school to learn to do nails since many of his Vietnamese friends do it and say it is easy money. We just hate the hours because we would never see each other.

WOM - I agree. I'd love for him to quit this stupid job, but the money is better than most anywhere in Savannah, in spite of the fact that he's making less than a lot of the guys, so he insists on staying. One of the few things I have learned from my past is never to tell a man what to do. I'm not perfect at it still, but in this particular case he just gets mad at me if I try.

As for not being very consistent with OSHA - this part of the country seems to still think that it is above most Federal laws. I was reading a couple of weeks ago about the immigration raids around here and there was a comment that the employers in this state pretty much thought that there was an unspoken agreement between them and immigration that there wouldn't be any questions asked and no raids. Over 136 Mexicans were deported in one recent raid not too far from us, and they just left the wives and kids here. It was horrible to hear about. The women were having to decide to give up their kids to the state or take their American citizen kids to Mexico so they could be with their husbands because they had no way to support their families without their husbands.

What really ticks me off is that it is getting so difficult to get work permits. I have a friend at school who works in the office at her husband's family plumbing company. She filed for work permit renewals for their Mexican employees and they got denied. She said that the amount of proof of hardship the government wanted was insane. They had to show that they couldn't find qualified plumbers for something like a minimum of 90 days and that they had run adds in all newspapers within some insane radius of the area.

Ok, enough of my soapbox. At least Abdel is here legal to work and I have that to be thankful for. I can also be thankful that he is still alive after yesterday. Maybe he'll change his mind soon about this job, who knows.

an idea - maybe abdel can train to be a plumber. they make crazy money.

hmmmm, does this mean he can join the official BC union?? All the plumbers seem to be members.

I am so happy that he is ok. Working in/around silos is one of the most dangerous hazards. I can't tell you how many times I've heard or read about people losing their lives around them. My dad had his shirt sleeve get caught in an auger that was filling a silo and thankfully, he was able to contortion himself to reach the off switch. Otherwise, it would have ripped his arm off in no time at all.

I'm with MK. I'm thinking that OSHA would have a lot to say about this incident. This company may have to change their attitudes toward Federal Regs once OSHA has been notified IMO. The fact that he had to lay there before and wait for a freaking drug test before he could get medical attention has got to be one of the most outrageous things I've ever heard. There are some pretty HEFTY fines that can be implemented to companies that disregard Federal Regs.

I've worked with OSHA Regulations for a loooooooong time and even did some training at NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health). This isn't something to take lightly IMO.

Liz, Here is information about Worker's Rights from the Dept. of Labor/OSHA website that gives different avenues that are available for him. I'm sure he is afraid of losing his job if he makes a complaint but there is discrimination protection with OSHA as well.

i was out but now im back. 2hrs of smokin. by the time we left her house to come back here the guy she bought her pipe from was closed...bummer. i am hopin to get over there to get one soon. we smoked melon flavored. i think ill stick to my apples lol.

Thanks so much. I'll show him this link tonight.

Charles, that's a good idea. He helped me with the plumbing when we redid the bathroom and laundry room and he did pretty good. Heck, I learned what I know helping my dad who was a jack-of-all-trades, from having to do it myself, from books, and of course from the wonderful home improvement shows. Right now the holdup is him not having his drivers license. Once we get past that hurdle he'll have a lot more options.

Jess, I agree - I hate melon flavored anything but green apple is usually awesome. I haven't tried the smoking though, that is just something I've never done. I bet my son would love it though if I brought him one of those pipes next time I'm in Morocco. Actually, my sons want to go with us next time we go.

What's the BC union?