Back in Beirut. New hotel, same view. The rebuilding frenzy has increased since October. Everyone is focused on rebuilding the city. There are pockets of history still left in Beirut. Below are the remains of an old Greek or Roman facade.
Posts
At last Sunday is here! I leave in a few hours for Lebanon and once I get on the flight from LAX to Frankfurt I have 12 hours where no phone can ring, no e-mails can arrive, and I can stop obsessing about statisitics. I do have my newly purchased book for the flight "Statistics for Dummies" and it will either be a good read or a sure way to put me to sleep on the plane. I'm also hoping for some good movies to keep me occupied. I have a 10 hour layover in Frankfurt before going on to Beirut. There is only one flight a day to most cities in the Middle East and you're either in danger of missing the connection or in danger of falling asleep at the airport and then still missing the connection. I'm mostly packed, all homework is done and now it's time to make the condo look good for buyers. Hopefully it will sell while I'm gone.
Another Friday night, another 5 hours of statistics! I can't wait to have a life back again. The last 4 days were work intense and now I'm ready to go to the Middle East because my job is easier when I'm out of the country. The mothballs only deter cats for so long because I came home to a new kill. Oh well. There's nothing I can do about it right now. For those of you that know Emil Kremzier, he's back in the hospital again due to low blood pressure. Audrey requests prayers and good thoughts for his recovery.
I've added a link to Aljazeera's website. While this may not convince anyone of my safety overseas, it does provide an insight into what is going on in the world from an Arab perspective. Aljazeera is not the network of Al Queda, but more close to an Arab CNN or BBC. As my upcoming trip involves Lebanon and Kuwait, I am watching the Amir situation since that impacts government offices and business, and all things Lebanon since you never know when the borders may close.
As every online student has learned, when the class fails you and the text fails you, turn to Wikipedia for the explanation. So today, after 51 hours of math lab, I had to realize that I had no idea what the term "student test" meant. Well it turns out that it's the t-test but more important than that, it was developed by a statistician for the Guiness Brewery in the early 1900's! Guiness didn't want the public to know that they were doing statistical studies of their beer, beer drinkers, and beer consumption so the original t-test formula was published under the name of "student," the pen name for the the inventor. Wow, who knew that this class would have a deeper connection to the world? In other news, now that my world revolves around Kuwait, the new Amir is already abdicating before taking the oath of office. That's probably a good thing since he's only 4 years younger than the previous Amir, and in ill health as well. The previous Amir...
I never made it to the movies but I did make it through the math lab! 18 hours of study and I finally polished off the last equation late this afternoon. All that work for a mere 3 points of of 100! I am now 6 weeks down and only 4 to go in Statistics. I celebrated by buying a plane ticket to Zurich. It seemed logical after 18 hours of math. I'll be there the second weekend in March just to check it out. I'm now on the countdown to the Middle East. T minus 6 days and counting.
9 hours later and I'm still only 50% of the way through the statistics lab. I started this morning at 9:00 am when it was beautiful sunny out and then it was 6:00 pm and dark. Ugh! I expect to spend another 8 hours in the math lab again tomorrow. Hopefully I can polish off those last 8 formulas and focus on the actual class assignments. If I manage to do this I'm going to reward myself with a bad movie that requires no thought and go see Underworld. I thought that would happen today but no such luck.
I don't know how it happened but I ended up with an A in beginning statistics! I have mixed feelings about it because I was resigned to the B and now I have to put in the extra effort again into advanced statistics just to maintain the A count. At least I am officially past the halfway mark in this class! In 4 weeks and 4 days I will have a life again!
The truck runs and I haven't had any little mouse pieces to clean up in 10 days. That part of the universe is well again. The neighbors from hell decided to deposit in my yard one pair of black lace panties, a pair of kid's socks and sweatshirt, and one broken bottle of purple drink that was sprayed all over their garage. That's why the world provides us with gloves. The neighbors are getting kicked out and leave in 2 weeks so I expect the trash and litter will only escalate over that time. Oh well, we won, they lost. I can deal. Sheri's math gods may have blessed me after all. As I start advanced statistics it looks like we have a laid back Hawaiian instructor who has already given us a big gift by cancelling the first week's assignment! Go Aloha instructor!
There are those moments in life where you just have to admit that you've done something dumb. Your first instinct is to look around and hope no one noticed. Sadly, sometimes you have an audience and the whole charade is over. Such was my fate today when Homer came over to assist me with the truck battery. For some unexplained reason when he hooked up the charger, the headlights came on. Huh. I wonder how that happened? Homer knew. He just looked at me and asked, "you didn't leave the lights on did you?" Now in my defense, for the last 10 years I have driven cars that have the lights either make noise or go off on their own if I fail to turn them off. I've forgotten that manual switches exist anymore. I climbed into the truck and sure enough, there was the light switch and it had been left in the "on" position. Guilty as charged. It must have been a rainy day because I know I would have noticed lights on if it was dark in the garage when I came home. Two ...
Match Point
The weekend box office choices were limited so out of the lesser of all evils, Match Point was chosen for this week’s movie night. I have to preface this by stating that I am not a Woody Allen fan and generally am bored by his movies. But there have been so many rave reviews that I went with an open mind to see this film. Match Point follows down on his luck former tennis star Chris, as he aspires to become more and does so by marrying into a wealthy family. The central theme of the movie what choices will a person make in order to protect and maintain a lifestyle. The theme for the audience is how well are we willing to accept the choices that the central character makes? For Match Point to succeed the moviegoer must make that choice and in this matter, the movie is a success. People did make their choice and desire for a specific outcome. The end may or may not have matched the audience desire but the entire theater left talking about the final act of the movie. That’s not to say ...
We had an open house on Sunday. 4 people came to look at the place but no buyers. It was disappointing but somewhere out there, a buyer awaits and we will find each other. The Kuwait trip has been delayed 2 weeks and I'm pretty happy about that! Now I can start the advanced statistics class while I'm home and get my homework taken care of before I have to travel. The only bad part is now it's a 20 day trip instead of 16 but that's the way it goes sometimes. I've gone 6 days now without a dead mouse at the door. LJ told me to put out mothballs under the mat since cats dislike the smell. They've been out for 2 days now so hopefully this trend will continue.
Another Friday Firkin was upon us! This time we even had the company of newbies! The 10th tap was Russian Imperial Stout and the firkin was a type of brown ale. Since it wasn't the most tasty beer, there were plenty of free samples to go around. Ms. Kitty turned down the free beer in order to pay for a beer that was more to her taste. We overate and probably underdrank since the firking wasn't up to it's full potential.
There were no elements of the wild kingdom on my doorstep this morning. I am so shell-shocked by it all that a red leaf was there and I jumped! Another person looked at the condo today but no offer. Now it's just getting to be a hassle to have to randomly leave the house once or twice a day. This part of selling is no fun. I did relax on the math. I only spent 90 minutes in class tonight. Last night I dreamed of calculating statistics over and over. I even knew that I was dreaming but I couldn't wake up and get away from that nightmare!
I've been obsessed with the online math lab. The statistics class is so intense that I have spent over 24 hours in the past week just in the lab. Tonight I finally made it through all the required elements of this class. What a relief! Now I can relax a bit but since I have to start the advanced class in less than two weeks, I'll have to start the process all over again. Today - one mouse head with whiskers. Two realtors, one with a customer no offers. I learned that my condo is the second least expensive in my area of Carlsbad. I'm the third cheapest in all of Carlsbad. Now that the truly low end condos have sold, there's hope for me yet! The surf has been so high that the Tamarack Surf parking lot keeps getting flooded and covered in sand. I better watch my off-roading in the parking lot. 1/4 of the lot was closed today. Reminder for all of you that go to these things - the Carlsbad Firkin is this Friday and we're on! For everyone else, that simply means a be...
Today I mailed out New Year's cards. I skipped the Christmas card routine this year and then had to mail off a few cards to people who probably think I've fallen off the planet. Since it rained all day, I stayed mellow and fought my way through another round of statistical exercises. I then decided to start on next week's assignment only to find that all the formulas had already left my brain. The neighbor whose has the hunting cat is screaming mad because we asked her to keep the cat inside. Just another reason why I want to sell. At least today was gut free.
2006 is here at last! I should be doing the happy dance of joy but I just cleaned up yet another set of rodent guts from my front doorstep. I think that's 5 or 6 now in the last two weeks. While that's 5 less gophers or mice on the property, I am not looking forward to the pile-up after I've been gone for a few weeks. There's always something going on. I can't even imagine someone coming to look at the condo while I'm gone. I'd be too worried about guts on the doorstep! Other than that - Happy New Year!