I had blueberry pancakes this morning. Not Navy blueberry pancakes either, I'm talking made from scratch with actual berries and everything-they even used real butter and served them with mapleish type syrup-BLUEBERRY PANCAKES!!! There's this place over here called Ricks country cooking, and i've been hearing about it for the past three weeks from everybody. Ok ok, it was a bit expensive, $9 for three six inch cakes and a litre of o.j., but I put some Nina in my discman and savored every expensive bite. They weren't as good as the golden delights my sainted Mums and Pops can produce, but I'd say hands down they come in second.

Also, my agent and I are having issues with my contract. Apparently the landord want's three months rent up front for me to move in. Rent is fairly expensive over here and three months is roughly equivalent to buying a nicely maintained used car. The good news is that I recieve a monthly alotment for the rent, so really I only have to come up with the second and third month in advance and even then there are short term loans I can apply for, the bad part is that for the next year, each month they'll be depositing my alotment and then removing it twice because they forgot that they took it the first time. Suffice it to say taking a loan from your boss/payroll provider/accountant/sole means of financial support is a daunting thing to undertake, and requires a tremendous ammount of trust that no paperwork will get misplaced and nothing will get screwed up.

I graduated today!
I guess all good things must come to an end and so it's time for me to once more join the ranks of productive personell and pull my weight around here. I got to meet my section leader and he seems like a pretty decent sort. I think I'm going to like it out here. Everything is much more high speed low drag and the sense that what we are doing really matters pervades every aspect of life.

My textbooks have arrived! I haven't actually signed up for the classes yet, but since I'm sure they'll approve my chit for school, and since I wasn't sure how long it took to get the books, I send off for them ahead of time.

We spent a lot of time in the sun today working on some training evolutions but had to call it short when people began to show the signs of heat fatigue. I'm not in the greatest shape in the world, but I have managed to run a couple of times per week while out here and I think that helped. As I'm typing this it's 1807 and still 95, but as soon as I'm back at the hotel I want to take a run down along the beach to see if there are any open apartments back up in there.
I think I found the place I want to move into, the problem is that it isn't empty quite yet and won't be for another month or so. That works out ok with the Navy, I don't have to have a permanent home until the begining of August, but I hate to think about waiting that long for the place simply because someone else could still get it before I do and then I'll have two weeks left to start from scratch and find somewhere I love. The place I want is in the same building as my friend from Japan, has two huge bedrooms, a huge kitchen, and two bathrooms, but most importantly of all it comes with a huge private patio overlooking empty sand lots, a whole lot of highrise apartment complexes and about 75 feet of oceanfront. Call me a geek, but I can't wait to do late afternoon homework out there.

In a related story, Grapefruit May Make Women Seem Younger...

Everyone out here speaks english or spanish or some other non-arabic tongue.
I'm trying to learn Arabic and thus far the only people I've found to practice on are the guy's selling five dollar rollexs and nikke shoes.

Still, there's a class that I'm checking into and will probably start attending here in a few weeks that's supposed to teach basic vocabulary and culture. As much as I'm looking forward to that I can't wait to get into my own place.
One more month... one more month... one more month...

I'm going to go horse back riding next weekend!
It would have been in just a couple of days, but my checkin process was set back a bit so I have to come in this Saturday morning to makeup a few classes. That's ok though next week isn't so far away.

Also, I've been running on base here but never off until today. It was really an interesting experience. Halfway home this group of construction workers about ten stories up on this new highrise started hollering and giving us the thumbs up. I looked up to see that they don't use any safety gear here. I thought for sure this one guy would lose his balance and fall off he was waving at us and hollering so hard. It brought to mind something someone told me earlier today, "not everyone here is a F@#%!ng terrorist, most of these people are really quite nice..." at any rate, it made me smile.

So there's this club at my hotel that's so loud you have to yell in the rooms just to have a conversation with someone. By rooms I mean your hotel room, and by club I mean booty shakin, wall pounding, thankfully shuts down at 12:30, do they seriously expect anybody to sleep in these rooms ever, type club.

I guess that's just how they do it over here. I've already requested to change rooms once and that didn't really help the problem although the old wet towel under the door seems to have helped a bit. At any rate I'm only here for another month so it shouldn't be too bad.

Holy crap is it hot here.
We were in the transport on the way to the hotel last night at about 1900 and the outside temp was 105!!! Don't know how accurate that was, but still it's hot out here.
The gym out here is supposed to be pretty nice, but I haven't had a chance to get to it yet. Altogether this is shaping up to be a nice place with the possibility that I'll actually get to rotate out on time.