Guess Who's Coming to Our Backyard?

It's me again. First off, sorry for the layoff and recent laziness on blogging, people! I offer you excuse # 1, "I'm so busy"; excuse # 2, "I was washing my hair"; and excuse # 3, "I have no valid excuse". Seeing as how Erin is in the states this whole month - I have a goal to blog at least twice so let's kick things off today.

As I said, it's bachelor month for me which I am sure some of you know because you have seen Erin more recently than I have. She comes back June 1st from her A) tech conference, B) Economics Class, C) Fishing Trip, D) Visit to her sister/brother-in-law/our various nieces and nephews trip. I think she's going to come back and need a vacation from that vacation. But of course if I had enough vacation time I would have probably joined her for the last two weeks.

But alas, I stay behind in Doha and work for a living. I find that when we are traveling alone, it gives the other person a pretty good indication of how well we work as a team; perhaps we motivate each other to be productive since by ourselves we tend to become somewhat unproductive hermits. I had to make myself a list to stick to, otherwise I would have lolled about in my pajamas all day on the weekends and ordered pizza for dinner every night during the week. Thank goodness for the grocery spreadsheet. Also thank goodness that work has been busy, I am working overtime without remorse and it's building up to a June 1st move date for our office, which unfortunately is the same night Erin gets back in town.

So, I am busying myself lately with buying artwork, vases, surge protectors, kitchen supplies, you name it for the new office. Not to mention site meetings where I get to say things like, "put that power point at 2.2 meters!" and "we'll need to color match the skirting to the desking." Half the time I am not even sure what I said, but the contractors seem to understand. Part of the problem is that I don't speak english....yes, you read that correctly. What I mean is that I don't speak "The Queen's English" or the english of a Brit or Aussie, meaning when they mention things like the skirting, I think that means all are female workers will have to wear skirts matching their desks, when they are really talking about the baseboards. But us Americans confuse them right back. I had to specially send an email to a New Zealander coworker who overheard the only other Texan in our office referring to a type of food found here in Doha as "like hushpuppies". She thought the Texan was referring to the local food as like "a pair of loafers". She needed two sources and an email from me before I'd convinced her that hushpuppies were nothing more than balled up and fried cornmeal served with fish in the south. Which makes me think mmm, hushpuppies!

Now it's the weekend, and I made a run to the government store-o-spirits as we were low on beer and wine. So as I returned and started putting the wine away I looked out the backyard glass doors for a split second and then had to do a double take. Now, it's not unusual to see birds back there, it's quite the jungle and the birds seem to like it. However, this little guy was a surprise:

I guess he's a cockatiel or parrot or some such, but more like a pet store bird than one you would find grazing the backyard. He was up close to our back door, I guess checking out the reflection and thinking he's found a mate. Anyway, he just walked around the whole time and the cats absolutely loved it (once I pointed it out to them - they're so braindead sometimes) and were looking for a way to get out there and pounce. I wonder if perhaps he wasn't someone's pet who walked/flew off, I have never seen one here before. Eventually, the bird wandered off into the bushes and that was that. So, that's been the highlight of my weekend, the stray bird that came and checked himself out in our glass door. I need to get out more, right?

-S