+4

=7
93 more to go and a full 28 days to do it. this one should be no problem. i think i will throw in a day of squash every week and not count the runs I do in the desert.I have no realistic idea as to how far those are. Which means i really have 20 days left if i dont take any days off. awe christ that means i need to run at least 5 miles every day.
tomorrow will be a fun one. it is getting hotter every day. today it is 90 F right now outside and I just got back in. it is just after 9 pm it never cools down here.

day 1

just three short miles this afternoon.(5K) I actually have a bit of a cold and wanted to get started as I have taken my vitals. weight is at 189 lbs. or 86 kilos. resting pulse is 72 beats per minute. body feels fine (the usual aches and pains) see how this bit of fun goes.

responsible

I am making you responsible for the life of those three fish that are now down on the right side of this page. they need fed. just put your mouse over the pond and click and they get food. they will follow your cursor around waiting to be fed but please don't tease them. it is not nice. if they die it will be your fault, and I will be depressed.

challenge

two out of three of my challenges were completed last month. I failed at the push up challenge. it is much tougher to do them than I expected. my next month challenge will be to run for 100 miles in the next 30 days. I start tomorrow. I will go for a quick 6 miles to start and see how I feel the following day. probably I should look into a training program but those just end up taking the fun out of it. The one challenge I did not complete was the one where I had a training routine from another source. I will just go at this 100 miles by my own way. Other than that I have put in for my flight back to the US and I am counting the days until I get to stop working. If there was something here that I actually enjoyed I would consider returning, but every aspect of the life here is about half as fun as it could be. Ah well. just a few months more. then i can go back to enjoying life. I will keep the running log up to date. I am fairly sure I can do this.

how

I went to the mall yesterday to pick up a few things that i wanted and as I entered the mall a family came in at the same time, you know father in jeans and a t shirt, children dressed like average kids and mom looking like casper the black ghost. I have wondered about this for awhile and I finally got the answer. As I entered there was a bit of a clusterfuck in the entry and one of the daughters of the family in front of me got turned around. She regained her composure (she was about 5) and walked off following the draped black form that walked away. The only issue was it was not her mom. her mother had gone the other direction with her siblings and father. I watched in amazement as the kid got further and further from her family until it dawned on her that her siblings were not there. she looked around and then ran to her father who was across the mall. Her parents had noticed that she was gone so it wasn't like they were bad parents but it stuck me that this sort of thing must happen all the time here. After all there are no visual clues to go on when every woman is covered in her entirety. I wonder how many children get lost like this, how many husbands walk up to the wrong wife at a supermarket how many miscommunications are caused by this coverage?

darwin

so i get the whole darwin evolution thing. what i have been pondering recently is sex. how does that work. if at first it was all asexual reproduction and then some mutant came along without the capability to reproduce asexually and needed a partner then ...
or if it had both capabilities where did its partner come from and what are the odds of finding them? and what evolutionary benefit is sex. seems like it is easier and better to just clone oneself. Don't get me wrong here, I love sex. It is great fun. If I didn't know better I would say it is divine. I am just having a hard time seeing how needing a partner to continue the species is a benefit. I understand the genetic mixing and improving the stock of a group through breeding, but where does it all start? What is the lowest order of living thing that sexually reproduces? And what is the lowest order that does it for fun? I would research this topic more completely myself but alas all searches for sex are blocked in KSA. An unfortunate fact of life.

on you marks, get set, no.

I realize that there is the old saying about right hands knowing what the left hand is doing, but today the university made it abundantly clear that they have developed this to an entirely new level. There were as always a slew of emails sent out and there was one that had dire warning about turning in some of the grades that the teachers have been holding onto. We have had theses particular grades for more than two months at this point, so presumably they are not actually that important for any real reason.The email said if these grades were not submitted within the next two days there would be some kind of portal opening causing a doomsday scenario ending all life. This is just my paraphrasing of the email but you get the gist. The very next email sent not more than 20 minutes later from another department was about how the website which the teachers use to submit the grades was having work done and thus can not be accessed for a few days. Pure joy. Things like this make me so happy I can barely contain myself. I dont think it could be planned any better. I have actually watched TV shows where the comedic timing was less well developed. I am hoping for the next email to be about how no teachers completed the absolute necessary tasks and how we all have to do some sort of penance.

better

My foot has healed well enough for me to go out and run again. There has been a dust-storm in the city for the last few days and running was made difficult because of this. On a related note the gym where i play squash is being renovated. I think that aside from myself and the other teachers that use it to play I have seen a total of about 10 other people there. Mind you this is the main gym for a university of thousands of students. In any western nation it would be full of students. Here no one goes and yet they throw money into it. I am certainly not complaining as it will benefit me, but it does seem strange that the monetary resources are not utilized in a more generally productive way. The gym will be closed for about 4 days and then partially reopened as parts are finished. Until then I will be out in the dust running from boredom, wasting time and watching the world pass by.

human

I have been thinking lately about what it is that makes us different from animals. I know that in a technical sense we are animals but somehow we are different. I have been trying to place it but it seems that everything we can do other species have also mastered. Tools? Lots of animals use them. Caring for the sick or injured? Again it is done in the wilds. Communication? I have read reports that it is done by a multitude of animals. So what is it that makes me, me? Is it my ability to just ask that question? That seems like a funny trick. If you are able to ponder your nature and place in the scheme of it all than you may not have a place. Whereas if you never question your nature then you are assured to spend your life in harmony and concert with nature. Being able to contemplate this idea moves one further from being part of it. I am not sure what else there is that makes us human, maybe the ability to remember and hate. I know other animals love or at least mate for life and seem dedicated to their companions but I dont know any animal species that hate for beliefs. Cats and dogs may not get along but it isnt because dogs have their own dogma that rubs cats the wrong way. Humans can hate based on beliefs. Sad when I think about it. We are outside the order and are able to hate. Kind of makes you proud to be human.

fool me once

Another week has passed without any major incident here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I had the opportunity to go to a US Embassy party last night and I actually had a reasonable amount of fun. The party had a theme that was something along the lines of Hollywood. So many people can dressed in costume. There were Audrey Hepburn and Pee-Wee costumes that were really good and I could appreciate the effort that went into them. Then there were others that were shall we say less than stellar. I took it upon myself to guess wrong what every person was wearing if they had a costume on. The Avatar girls I guessed were John Goodman from Monsters Inc. The Guy from True Grit became Brokeback Mountain. The guy in what appeared to be his after gym outfit was Christian Bale from the Fighter. I personally found these hysterical. These people would actually take the time to explain that they were not who I believed. I would agree and then talk about how i really like the part in the movie where the character I had assigned them did something. When they would point out yet again that they were not dressed as that character I would tell them they certainly were. Why else would we be discussing the movie. It was circular and great. I dont know if they ever caught on that I was just kidding or not. I myself went in no costume at all. Just a button down shirt, tie and pants. When the topic inevitably came round to,"and what are you supposed to be?" I would chuckle, smile and say that is a really funny question. It was good to have drinks, conversations, and music. The best part of the evening had to be when I finally got home, putting my head on my pillow and feeling the world spin. I miss that. It is like I am the center of the universe and everything is in orbit around my perception.