Australia? Not so fast Bucko!

Let's start our day with sports (trying to shake up the blog a bit). The American Football Draft began on Thursday evening in the States. I will watch it this afternoon. Now the hardest trick that us American Ex-pats try and learn is how to avoid the news from our limited entertainment. I am curious as to who my beloved Dallas Cowboys picked, and I can't wait to find the online recap and the criticism of what Jerry Jones did (odds are he traded up or down-no way he could just draft...lol)....So for now, I hunker down and avoid the football news. The same of course is true (even more so) for American Idol and Survivor. American Idol is on here Thursday night with the results show Friday night. So from when I get off of work on Thursday, until I get to watch the show (I usually record it) I have to be careful on the Internet and with American emailers and phone calls. Of course all my carefulness goes out the window if my DVR *(TIVO) screws up...last week I failed to record Survivor. Then I spent lots of time online trying to figure out what I missed...lol. I now am double taping the shows that I really care about - just to be sure. One more sports note, Albert Pujols as of Wednesday night still no homers, in fact he was in the midst of a long hitless streak since my last blog. Nick wrote me to say he "was overjoyed". LOL, NIck, Albert may never get another hit...but, he got all the money and Karma can't change that!
I am watching an old American WWII movie (The Bridge at Remagen) on my MGM channel as I blog. It is funny watching English shows with Arabic subtitles, and sad when the Germans speak on screen, and the English subtitles are overlaid with Arabic ones and you can't read any of it...lol....these poor souls...
As you can gather from my posting, I am not (nor is my buddy Muzzy) traveling to Australia for business this weekend. All that's left is to send multiple apologies to the people that we were planning on visiting. I probably should do the prudent thing and not say anything else (for now). I am going to began to keep a notebook of all the things I wanted to blog about here that I could not because of self censorship to protect friends or myself. The Government of the UAE has deported and or jailed more than one blogger....And I can imagine losing this gig if I posted some things. So, maybe someday I can tell the tale of almost going to Australia on business.

Speaking of Australian Beef Ranches, we are very nervous about the case of "Mad Cow" that has been discovered in the US. The government here is very quick to ban beef from countries that have disease outbreaks. American beef was banned for almost 5 years after the Mad Cow outbreak in dairy cattle just after the turn of the century. South African Beef is currently banned (Hoof and Mouth) as is British Beef (BSE). Since about 25% of our sales is American beef products, we are nervously watching the news.
I have began to live a very routine life over here. Now that Bob and Nick have left, pretty much outside of work events are limited to dinner or lunch with Hayley or a date (not sharing yet, but it is looking up). If I am not doing either of those, Friday (my Sunday) now consist of breakfast at the Subway shop(egg and cheese on Sesame bread-yummy!), back to the apartment to blog, watch my taped shows and/or lounge at the pool. Then back to work on Saturday. It's boring, but it is a temporary routine, as the calendar continues to turn its pages as the months go by. I was really looking forward to my trip to Australia to break that routine. I now probably won't leave the UAE until late July to travel to Lebanon for Elie's wedding.
Today's excitement is going to be going to the barber, lol...it may be thinning out, but still needs an occasional shaping (I wonder how my comb over will look)...I apologize for the typo's, my browser no longer lets me go back into a posting to correct typo's. Life is just plain tough. lol...I look forward to seeing you soon, and I appreciate that you take time to check up on me. I would love to hear from you...

All my best....

(I figured out how to post pictures..above Shams and I)
This could lead to big blog improvements...lol!