The house that got away from me is now mine. It took a awhile to close, but I am now moving in. I have quite a bit of work to do. I am hiring out a bit as well.
We are back from our most recent crazy trip. This time it was Central Asia and the "five stans" - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. We made all of our objectives. And we have now been to 104 countries. Angie has 95 and I have 94 countries. Together it is 104. These five countries were packed into 12 days, 7 flights, 2 high speed trains, 1 cable car ride, 1 horse ride, and lots of hours in car trips. They are all Muslim countries, but they are better characterized as former Soviet countries. Russian langauge is a strong second language in all of these countries. There isn't much English spoken in any of them. Angie being fluent in Russian made all the difference and did intrepreting for me as well as a couple of British backpackers we met in Turkmenistan. Tajikistan is the Country with the distinct langauage being a derivitive of Persian with the others being Turkic. Ethnically, Southern Uzbecs are Tajik. Interesting, the spelling of many...
I am in Atlanta. That I am sure of. I read "Adaptive Leadership" (I read one to two business books a year) on the flight. I also got my car back from the paint shop. It looks good. Next I am getting some treatment for the wheels and the windows tinted. On the flight from Munich to Atlanta today (10 daylight hours) we flew North of Iceland (way North of Great Circle considerations) and across the middle of Greenland because of favorable winds. Amazing. I remembered a story. At a previous employer, I got a phone call from the legal administrative assistant. She said "Your *Technical Journal* arrived in the mail down here by mistake. "I said, "OK." She said, "My boss said he is going to keep it, he wants to bone-up on this stuff." I said, "OK." In my retrospection, It really wasn't OK hijacking my mail. It is kind of a basic thing. I have to check what time my flight is out of ATL tomorrow. I really do enjoy working for a global ...
We had some snow. It wasn't as bad as Florida or the Gulf coast. It is still a novelty when we get snow that lasts for a couple of days or more. I have absolutely no issue driving in it having spent most my life in Upstate NY, but the other drivers are another story. We are prepared here not to have to go out anyhow. I took a couple of pics of where the milk and bread was supposed to be in the grocery store before the storm hit. Just a toilet. However, it is the first one I have put in that works lower that the sewer line. It pumps up. Works good. It was a long time coming with all the other projects I have in flight.
I am having issues with my computer at home. I am reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the system. It is very time consuming to go through and fix these things but what else can you do? I have no net access at home for the next few days. The good thing is that this will give me more confidence of the computer for Bonnie while I am gone so we can email each other easily. McMurdo now has 2 T1 lines this year. That will be a big help compared to how it has been there. There are a lot of folks (with lives off the ice). Bandwidth would be a requirement. I don't expect gobs of bandwidth but hopefully I can buzz through some emails as the opportunity presents itself. It appears I am getting some teeth pulled to go to Antarctica. Today I find out how many. So... I am giving some teeth up to have the opportunity on top of all the other sacrifices. I have never had a tooth pulled up to this point so I am a bit nervous. I hope this will be the last on the list of sacrifices. It is...
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