I tried to start a cycling club with some friends of mine. I figured it's a good way get myself in shape and with the good weather we've been having lately everyone would want to join me for a ride every once in a while. So far, I've organized 2 rides and not a single person has showed up. It's a little disheartening but I'm not going to give up on the idea.

Yesterday was my second weekly ride. I went to the meeting spot on the Iron Horse trail and waited for about 15 minutes after the proposed meeting time. My friends are Egyptian and Egyptians are know for always being late. After 15 minutes of waiting, I gave up and headed off on my own. I rode along the trail through San Ramon, into Danville and over to Alamo. I then turned around and headed back stopping for a drink along the way and looking at a few bike shops. I left the trail and took a different route home and stopped again to get a haircut since I was in desperate need of one. Although it was an extremely hot day, it was very enjoyable. It would have probably been much more fun if at least one person had joined me.

If this doesn't work out and no one joins me for my weekly rides, I will either just go it alone or find a group to join. There are tons of people riding along the trail every weekend and even more people riding along Danville Blvd. I was kind of hoping my friends would be as into the idea as I am. I was thinking of cool names for our cycling club and maybe printing up t-shirts for us to wear when we ride. I know it's pretty cheesy but it's all in good fun.

Today, I decided to put down a deposit on a new bike. It's a pretty awesome deal. The bike normally costs $2200 but I'm getting it for $1300 because it's on closeout. I'm also getting 25% off any accessories that I buy.  It's a Specialized Tarmac Elite. It's a full carbon road bike and should be a blast to ride. The deposit is refundable in case I decide not to get it. I figured I better put down the deposit just in case since it was such a good deal and it was the last one in my size.

        

I hate flying. It's not because I'm afraid of flying. It's because of all the inconvenience and the way that airports and airlines treat travelers.

Baggage
I try to travel as light as possible but I also like to be prepared for any situation. This ends up creating a problem in that I don't want to check my bag and I want to maximize the amount of stuff I take with me. What I end up doing is using those space saver bags that you see in the commercials. I bought mine from target and not from some infomercial but it's the same concept. You pack all of your stuff into the bag and then squeeze out all the air. By doing this, I can usually pack about 40% more stuff than I would without using it. If your anything like me when it comes to packing, this is a good thing. I can easily fit a weeks worth of clothing and a couple of shoes into my carry on. My carry on ends up weighing about 40% more than it normally would but that's why it has wheels.

If for some reason, I have to check a bag, I'm in a bit of trouble. The majority of airlines charge a pretty hefty fee for checking a bag. It's usually between $15-30 if it's under 50lbs. If it's over 50lbs., I've seen prices from $50-75. It's pretty outrageous when you think this used to be free. Do airlines really think that people are going to go on vacation and not bring anything with them? We should make some of those airline executives and force them to fly to their next vacation with nothing but a small carry on.

Hurry Up and Wait
The airlines "advise" you to arrive at the airport 1-2 hours prior to the departure of your flight. This has always been a point of contention with me. I usually check in online and avoid checking in bags and therefore I'm able to skip the check in counter and head directly toward security. But for most people, the check in counter is a necessary evil. You hurry to the airport and wait in line. You get through the first line only to be rushed over to another line and then to another line and another line till you finally arrive at the gate and sit and wait for 45 minutes for them to call your row or zone to board. Once you are allowed to board, you wait in line as you walk along the gate into the airplane and then wait in line on the airplane as everyone ahead of you finds their seats and stows their carry on in the overhead compartment. The whole process drives me nuts.

Security
I understand that the security lines are all for my protection and that they just want to keep all the passengers safe but I think at this point, security has gone too far. You can't bring liquids on the plane because some fool tried to make a bomb from mixing liquids on a plane. Too bad he didn't test it out before trying it on a plane. The items that he had wouldn't have caused an explosion. If he had, he would have learned that you can only do that in the movies. The guy would have been better served to use Mentos and Diet Coke. That was several years ago and we are subjected to this restriction to this day.

Passengers must remove their shoes and have them x-rayed because another idiot thought he could smuggle a bomb in his shoe. This one is a bit more understandable but in my opinion, it's an over reaction to one incident. If we used the same philosophy in other areas, nothing would get done. Someone has a car accident, we should ban all cars. Someone catches a cold, we should all lock ourselves in plastic bubbles. Life is full of risks and that's the way I like it. Somethings are just out of our control and we just accept it and live our lives.

They all bark out instructions to you and make you move as fast as you possible can. I take off my shoes. I take off my belt. I empty my pockets. I have to remove my laptop from it's bag to get x-rayed (I thought the point of an x-ray machine was to be able to see through things like a backpack). I walk through a metal detector. I get racially profiled by the TSA representative and get asked to step over to the side so they can pat me down. Once I finally get through, I have to grab all of my stuff hoping that no one walks off with my bag or even worse my laptop. I have to put my shoes back on while holding up my pants because I was forced to take off my belt. It's all part of paranoia that has taken over.

Boarding the Plane
I finally get to the gate, which for me always seems to be the furthest gate and I sit and wait. Once I finally get called to board the plane, we are all herded like cattle through a long walkway toward a single door to the plane. We all know from the flight attendant's safety presentation that there are several doors to the plane but for some reason we can only use one door to get on and off the plane. I remember when I was very young, that they used to have stairs that they rolled up to the door of the plane and they could get more than one so there was choices as to which exit or entrance you could use. Nowadays, we are all so old and lazy that we can't possible use stairs. We have to have nice slowly slopping runways. There are usually 8 doors on the planes that I usually fly on, 2 in the front, 2 in the back, and 4 over the wings. I know they are "emergency exits" but what is to stop them from being used to enter and exit the plane when it isn't an emergency. Shouldn't they at least be tested to make sure they open? Wouldn't that be a big story if a plane needed to be evacuated and the emergency doors wouldn't open because no one ever bothered to check to make sure it would open? Just using one more door would make entering and exiting the plane twice as fast. Would it really be that difficult to do?

Seat Assignments
When I buy my plane tickets, I usually select a seat at the time of purchase. Apparently when you do this, it isn't actually assigning a seat to you. It's more of a request for a seat. Sometimes you get the seat you requested and sometimes you don't. If you purchase your tickets from some source other than the airline like Orbitz, Expedia, or Travelocity, the odds of you getting the seat you requested dropped dramatically. On the last flight that I took, I requested a window seat in the exit row for both of legs of my flight. I ended up with neither a window or exit row seat.

I was flying from Raleigh, NC back home. There is no direct flight from Raleigh to the SF Bay Area so the first leg of the flight was from Raleigh to Phoenix. It was about a 5 hour flight. I checked in online and printed my boarding pass. I checked my seat assignment and notice that I was not given the seat I requested. If I wanted to choose a new seat, I would have to pay $15 for each flight. I choose to be extorted. I go through the usual hassle to get on the plane and find that I am stuck in a middle seat in the very last row. In the same row across the aisle is a couple with 2 screaming children. Behind me is the bathrooms and the seats don't recline. Then the other people sitting in my row arrive. They are 2 very large men. And when I say "large" I really mean "fat". They both sit with their legs spread out invading my space. I have to sit like a girl wearing a mini skirt that is trying not to show her Golden Palace of the Himalayas for the duration of the flight. Both of these guys hogged the air rests. I was left to sit with my arms cross for most of the flight. The guy on my left wasn't too annoying. The guy on my right was huge and a pain in the butt. I could tell he was from Texas judging from his accent. He was doing something really gross with his arm. Apparently he had some sort of pimples on his arm and he proceeded to pop them during the flight. I tried not to look so that I could avoid vomiting. He also had a pack of chewing tobacco that smelled so bad that it almost made me vomit as well. The smell of the tobacco in combination with the toilet right behind me made for a scent that you would experience no where else. Feces and tobacco, what a combination! If it weren't for the air vent overhead, I would have probably blown chunks. The roughness of the flight didn't help either.

Not only was the guy invading my space, grossing me out with his pimple popping and tobacco chewing but once I got my laptop out  he stared at it the entire time. I started downloading my photos from the trip to my laptop when I decided that I didn't want this guy looking at my personal photos and decided to watch a movie instead. He ended up watching the movie with me. I was tempted to ask him if he wanted me to share the headphone so he could enjoy the movie more.

The flight attendants were down right mean. I always try to be very polite with people that are providing a service for me. That includes the lady that cuts my hair to the guy that takes my order at McDonald's. I always remember to say please and thank you. The flight attendants on this flight didn't deserver that courtesy. When it came time to ask me if I wanted a drink, she just stared at me with a sour face. She didn't say a word. I said "Coke, please." She handed me a cup and can of soda that had already been opened and half emptied. I said "Thank you" and she proceeded to ignore me. I vow never to fly US Airways again. I think it's worth paying a little bit more to get a good seat and fly with courteous people.

The Bathroom
Sitting next to the bathroom could be a good thing if you happen to have a weak bladder. I made sure to empty my bladder before getting on the plane. Apparently I am the only one that does this as there was a constant line for the toilet. I was almost tempted to go to the bathroom just so I could get away from the guys next to me. I can't imagine what I would do if I were to fly to Egypt. 16 hours on a plane would drive me absolutely insane.

        

I thought this was kinda funny.

        

My wife's car is old and it's a Chevy. My car is old but it's a Honda and will probably out live me. The water pump on my wife's car started leaking (actually it was more like it was vommitting) so I had it replaced at a cost of $400. And that was pretty cheap compared to the last time it needed service. About a year earlier, we took it to the Chevy dealership for a leak in a 4 inch hose that connects the radiator to the engine block. The part costs about $15 but they charge $160/hr for labor at the stealership dealership and they have a minimum of 1 1/2 hours of labor costs. It ended up costing me about $300. I was pissed. So to get a little more to the point, it was time to get my wife a new car.

Anyone who knows me knows that I take a long time to make a decision. I would rather miss out on an opportunity then rush into something and end up regretting it. The bigger the decision, the more time I will take. (You don't want to know how long it took my wife and I to find our house.) Considering that a car is the second largest purchase that I will make, I wanted to be very sure about it before I made a decision. I do so much research that I usually end up knowing more about the cars than the person trying to sell it to me.

My wife is a vegetarian librarian from UC Berkeley. No joke. So getting a big V8 powered SUV isn't an option not that I was thinking about getting one anyway. Initially, we were looking to get a hybrid and were deciding between the Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius. We started looking for a car last summer when gas prices were $4.50/gallon. At that time, the Prius was selling like crazy with a huge markup. The Civic was already a lot cheaper and you could negotiate the price so we concentrated more on the Civic. I managed to get a quote from a salesman at Gilroy Honda for about $50 below invoice. It seemed like a great deal considering a used Civic Hybrid with 10,000 miles on it was selling for just about the same amount. I think the guy who quoted me that amount realized that he could sell the car for a lot more to someone else and instead of keeping his word, he decided to completely ignore me. I would call him and he would give a bunch of BS and say he would call me back and then never call. Eventually I gave up on him. The guy was a jerk.

I've always liked the Mini Cooper. It's a small, fun car and at the same time, it gets pretty good gas mileage. If you read my blog regularly you might remember the used car salesman that tried to sell us a Mini Cooper. That Mini was pretty nice. If it weren't for the jerk off salesman, I just might have bought it. It was a good thing that I didn't though. They were asking $24,800 and they gave me a bunch of crap and didn't really budge on the price much at all. It was a 2006 Mini Cooper S with 24,000 miles on it. It was the older body style with the older supercharged engine. After that, we were kinda soured on the idea of buying a car and put it off for a few months.



When we started thinking about it again, we looked at the Fit and the new Honda Insight Hybrid. The Fit was not bad but didn't have nearly the power that I would have liked. We didn't even try the Insight since the salesman told us that it was going to be even more underpowered than the Fit. Besides that, the Insight was just plain ugly.

We went over to the Mini dealer to see if a new Mini would be a good option. The big problem with a new Mini is the cost of the options. The base car might be pretty well priced but once you add the options, the car's price jumps through the roof. The ones that we looked at were all over $26,000 and none of them had all the options that we wanted (Actually, I was the one that wanted all the options). To add to that, the dealership was still marking the cars up by $2000. The salesman that showed us the cars wasn't pushy at all. He did scare the crap out of us when we went over to their secondary lot to look at the available cars. The guy drove like a mad man. The one good thing about our visit is that we both decided that we liked the Mini even though the size might be a problem later down the road but we left the dealership feeling somewhat confused.

I could tell my wife was getting kind of excited about the idea of getting a Mini. I knew that she liked it which made me want to get it for her even more. When I would talk to her, she would tell me that she was leaning toward the new Prius mainly because it was the more practial choice. The Mini was the more emotional choice. It was pretty clear when I could tell that she was getting excited when I mentioned buying a Mini. I started doing a lot more research on the Mini. I configured a new on on the Mini web site trying to see what combination of options would make it reasonably priced without making me feel like I got the stripped down version. It didn't really work. I convinced myself that navigation wasn't worth the cost. I would rarely use it and in a year or two, the software would be out of date and the user interface would start looking old. Even without the fancy $2000 Navigation system, the car was still right around the $30,000 mark. I couldn't pay that much money for a big go kart. Off to the used car market I went.

There were some requirements that had to be met. My wife wanted it to be Laser blue because it's cute. She wanted white stripes and a white roof. It had to be automatic because I wasn't about to teach her to drive a stick and she would have hated driving the stick in traffic on her daily commute if she got a stick. She didn't want leather (vegetarian's can't eat meat or sit on leather apparently) but she didn't have a whole lot of requirements as far as options. I'm the techno-nerd type and I really wanted all the cool options. My requirements were a bit different. The Mini has a cool dual sunroof. None of the new ones that we looked at when we were at the dealership had the sunroof. To me, the sunroof was a must have. I wanted automatic climate control. It had to have the iPod connector and bluetooth and I really wanted it to have the comfort access system and some upgraded wheels. If we were going to get a new car, this wouldn't be much of a problem. We could either try to find one that met all of our needs on the lot or we could special order one. But since we were looking at used cars, we were subject to what was on the market.

If I was going to buy a used car, I didn't want to buy someone else's problems. The car had to be fairly new and still under factory warranty. I kept searching and searching. It was really hard to find an automatic.Probably 80% of the Minis I saw were manuals. After weeks or looking on craigslist and Autotrader and Cars.com and Yahoo Autos and AOL autos and every other used car website imaginable, I found one that met just about everyone one of our needs. It was a 2008 Laser Blue, Automatic, Mini Cooper S with the Sport Package, Convenience Package, Permium Package, Cold Weather Package, Park Distance Control, Blue trimmed interior, Chrome Line Trim, and Chrome Mirror Caps. In those packages it had basically every option with the exception of navigation. The only problems it had was that it had a black roof and black stripes and the seats were cloth with patches of blue leather. It had 8000 miles on it so it was still under factory warranty for 42000 miles or 3 years and scheduled maintenance is included. The price was pretty good too. They were asking $24,000. I configured a new car with all the same options and it came close to $32,000. I contacted them about the car and managed to get them to drop the price by $500. There was nothing even close to that price with those options available in our area. I found a few Minis for $26,000 but they didn't have nearly as many options and they didn't meet a lot of our requirements. After talking it over with my wife, we decided to go for it. It was during Holy Week that I called the salesman and told him we were going to buy the car.



We did all the paperwork by mail and I bought a plane ticket on Southwest for $49 to Burbank. The salesman said he would pick me up from the airport when I arrived. I figured with the $49 plane ticket plus $10 in fees and a $25 tank of gas which already came with the car, it cost me $85 to get it from L.A. instead of locally. It only took me 4 1/2 hours to drive it back and that was with a stop at In N' Out to pee and eat. The car made it easily on one tank of gas. The drive home was probably the most fun I have ever had driving up highway 5. I connected my iPhone to iPod connector and was jamming to tunes the whole way. The thing handles amazingly well and even though it's a really small and light car, it feels really solid. I love the thick steering wheel and how it feels in my hands. The comfort access system is very cool. I never have to take the key out of my pocket. I just walk up to the car and press a button and the doors unlock. It has options that I wouldn't have even though of getting like the heated seats and back up sensors. The heated seats will come in handy on a cold day but I have to admit that back up sensors are pretty useless on a car that small.



When I think about the other Mini that I almost bought, I am so glad that I passed it up. I ended up getting a much better car at a much better price. It has every option I could have wanted and some that I never thought I would want. I like the car so much that I told me wife that if she doesn't like it, we'll get her a Prius and I'll take the Mini. She ended up liking it too and a Prius isn't even a thought now. I'm tempted to get another one for myself. Whenever we go out, it's a given that we are taking the Mini instead of my Honda.

        

At the end of April, I went to Cancun. I had been to Puerto Vallarta before and I had a great time there. I knew that Cancun was going to be different but I wasn't expecting it to be as different as it turned out to be.

My wife and I went there to meet her sister and her husband. They were celebrating her husband's birthday along with a couple of his friends. They wanted to stay at a resort that didn't have any kids and I can't really argue with their logic. The problem is that they ended up choosing a resort that was a little too adult. There was a warning that the beach there was topless which isn't really that big a deal but they didn't have to be so raunchy. They had all kinds of games and contests that were all sexually oriented. I didn't think that was really necessary.

The topless pool wasn't horrible but was still kinda hard to deal with. I figured there might be a few ladies that took off their tops but I was surprised to find that just about every woman there took off their tops. There were some hot women but there was alot more "not so hot" women. One of the first things that I did when I got there was to find the Best Day Tours stand to work out our return transportation to the airport. I only had 15 minutes before they were set to close up for the day. In doing so, I walked by one of the pools to find a 350lbs woman oiling up her boobs. She had to lift it up with one hand and oil it up with the other. I almost puked from the sight of it. Eventually, I became numb to the boobies flopping around till we went and took a seat at the pool the next day. There weren't many seats available so we ended up sitting along side this older couple. This lady that looked like she was old enough to be my mother started having a converstation with us. She also was topless and I found it really difficult to talk to her with her saggy boobs hanging down to her waste. Later that day after the older couple next to us left, I saw what was probably the funniest thing of the whole trip. There was this one lady that was obviously from Texas. She wore a Texas flag bikini bottom and a Texas flag hat. She had bleach blonde hair that was clearly fake. We all know that everything in bigger in Texas and this woman was no exception. she was probably around 225lbs and about 50 of those were in her boobs. Over her nipples, she wore stars to go with the Texas theme. I did manage to get a picture of her when she took a photo with a parrot on the beach. I would post it but it isn't quite PG13 material.

The beach was much better. At least there was enough room around that I didn't have to see boobies and booties everytime I turned my head. The biggest problem was the weather. It was warm and sunny most of the time with a few clouds here and there but there was a lot of wind. The water wasn't very warm but considering that it was only late April, it was decent. On our last day there, I was wading out into the water on the beach about waste deep when a couple came in the water next to me. The obviously had a little too much to drink. The lady started yelling to me, "Shark! Shark!" and I just smiled and blew her off. Then she yelled "Jellyfish!" I totally ignored her. Then the guy with her yelled, "Look! Titties!". I said "Titties? Where?". The lady with her obviously fake boobs, pointed at her chest and shook them back and forth and said "Right here!". I replied, "All I see is silicone." They both laughed and went about their business and soon after walked back to the beach.

If you removed the raunchiness from the resort, it still wasn't that nice. It was an all inclusive place so all of our meals were included. They had one restaurant that was a buffet. The food wasn't awful but it was very bland. The other restaurants required you to make a reservation. At the last all inclusive resort I stayed at, we could walk into any restaurant, at any time and eat. I found this reservation situation to be rather odd. The resort was fairly small and the design was a poor attempt at being modern. I would have preferred to come to the Carribean to be in a Carribean atmosphere. Our room wasn't much better either. It had an Adam and Eve theme with a big red apple and sexy red mood lighting. We didn't have an ocean view room (when I booked the room, an ocean view was $50 extra per night and my sister in law didn't get an ocean view room either and we wanted our rooms to be close to eachother). Instead when we opened the window, we had a beautiful view of the main road and all the traffic. Needless to say, if I ever go to Cancun again, I won't be staying there. In retrospect, I would have stayed at the Dreams resort which is a bigger and better version of the Dreams resort that I stayed at in Puerto Vallarta.

Cancun, in and of itself, was very different compared to Puerto Vallarta. Cancun was much more of a partying, resort town. The hotel district seems to have been tailor made for American tourists. There was nothing but hotels, shopping, bars and night clubs. Everyone there spoke English. There was little to no Mexican culture there at all. In Puerto Vallarta, you got the feeling that this was a small port town. It was much more laid back which is closer to my style.

We were scheduled to go on 2 activities. My wife and I wanted to see the Aztec ruins but when they told us that it was a 3 hour drive there and 3 hours back, we decided against it. Besides that, none of the rest of our group wanted to do that. We came there to be together. The 2 activites that we decided on were snorkeling which they called "Finding Nemo" (clearly a copyright violation) and a boat cruise around the lagoon and dinner which they called the "Booze Cruise". I didn't really want to go on the Booze Cruise and neither did my wife but we didn't want to seperate from the rest of our group and decided to come along. It turned out to be really stupid. We road around in this stupid boat at night and weren't really able to see any of the scenery and everyone was smoking which I can't stand. My wife and I really needed to go to the bathroom so we were both very anxious to get off the boat. Eventually we docked and were taken on a bus to the restaurant/bar at whcih we were supposed to have dinner. The place was loud and obnoxious. There wasn't enough seats for everyone and the food was even more bland then the buffet at the resort. The best thing at that dinner was the fries and chicken fingers. Yes, that's right. I went all the way to Mexico to eat fries and chicken fingers. As everyone was partying at the restaurant, my wife, her sister and I went into the nearby shopping area. I felt like I was in Vegas but on a smaller scale.

On one of our days there, we adventured into downtown. We went to the market where my wife spent nearly all of our cash buying gifts for everyone back home. For some reason she feels the need to get gifts for every single person she knows whenever we take a vacation. She is much more thoughful than I am. This was the most culture that I experienced in Cancun. I got a great picture of my wife when a young girl came up to her trying to sell her a bracelet for a dollar. The look on her face and the girls face is priceless.



Later, we walked around downtown trying to find some authentic Mexican food to eat. As we were walked my sister in law posed next to a sign and I took a picture of it. It kind of goes along with the theme of the trip.



Just like in Market and everywhere else, everyone at the restaurant spoke English. The restaurant was pretty typical of any taqueria that I would find at home. Either we have very authentic Mexican food here at home or that wasn't a very authentic Mexican restaurant. I think the latter is more likely the case.

On our last day there, we were supposed to do the "Finding Nemo" snorkeling tour. I was all excited for it. I had my camera and the waterproof case that I had borrowed from a friend. We went over to the desk where we bought the activities and he told us that it was most likely going to be cancelled because fo the high winds. I was pissed off. At least we got refunded and the refund was in US dollars cash. It turns out it was a good thing because I had brought the wrong battery charger for my camera and would have been pissed off when the battery died in the middle of snorkeling.

My wife, her sister and I decided that we had enough of sitting around on the beach so we ended up going back to downtown by bus this time. We sort of got lost trying to find our way from the bus stop to the market. I wouldn't be an adventure if we didn't get lost in a foreign country. (We weren't really lost but I thought it spiced up the story a bit. We just on the wrong side of the street.) My wife subsequently spent the cash that we got in refund of our snorkeling trip that didn't happen. On our return trip, a taxi driver tried to get us to ride with him instead of taking the bus. He wanted $10 US and I said "No way!". The bus is 75 cents per person and there was only 3 of us. I kept telling him $5 and eventually got him to go down to $6. Instead of trying to find the bus, we agreed to $6. I ended up giving him $8 just because he wasn't pushy like all the rest of the taxi drivers.

Our flight over there wasn't so bad. We left from Oakland, switched plans in Salt Lake City and then to Cancun. Our return flight wasn't as efficient. We went from Cancun to Atlanta to Salt Lake City to Oakland. At least I got to rack up some frequent flyer miles, which I am sure will be worthless. It literally took an entire day to get back home. Our travel time was over 11 hours.

All things considered it was pretty fun. I am sure that if it were just my wife and I, it would have been different. We would have not gone on the Booze Cruise and would have definitely gone to see the Aztec ruins. We would not have stayed at that resort (I think I'm a hotel snob) and we would have gone at a time when the water was warmer and the wild was calmer. Despite all that, I had a good time. I'm not sure if I would go back to Cancun. I think there are other places that I would want to visit before going back there.

        

PCAL at it's finest!

All videos created by Andrew Ishak:

        

I've missed a ton of great things to blog about so I'm going to go back a bit and write about a few of the things that I missed.

A couple of weeks ago was Holy Week at my church. I look forward to it every year. Great Friday is easily the best day of the year for me. Christmas, my birthday, 4th of July, are all behind Great Friday as far as I am concerned.

Before I get to the main reason for this blog post, I need to give you a bit of background. I am Coptic Orthodox and attend a Coptic Orthodox church (kind of obvious, but I just wanted to be clear). The Coptic church consists of 95% Egyptians. For mostof the Egyptians there, English is there second language. In the readings for Great Friday, there is a crap load of old English which is hard for me to read and English is my first language. Now when you send an Egyptian who has only been speaking English for a year or so and have him read the old English, you are asking for trouble.

In this particular case, the reading was from one of the expositions which explains and summarizes the 4 gospels that are read previously. The expositions are not in old English but they are written by someone who seems to want to show off their vocabulary by using the biggest words they possibly can. The reading in question refers to when Jesus was carrying his cross to Gologotha to be crucified and some of the women watching in the crowd were crying over him. The exposition writer uses the word "lamented" which means to mourn for. The word "lamented" is already hard enough for a native English speaker to understand, let alone read before a large crowd of people. When the Arabic speaking Egyptian comes to read it he says "and they LAMINATED Jesus...."  I think I was the only one that caught that he said laminated. I bit my tongue and managed to keep myself for bursting out laughing.

And to think that after all these years, I thought Jesus was just beaten, whipped, ridiculed and crucified on Great Friday and made the ultimate sacrifice for me, he actually did something more. He was laminated for our sakes as well.

        

It's been a long time since I last posted anything on my blog and a lot has happened since the last posting. There was Holy Week and Easter, I went to Cancun and came back without swine flu, I lost 26 lbs, and I bought a car for my wife. Expect some more posts coming very soon.

        

Last night, I got home and I checked the mail. As usual there was nothing interesting in there, just bills and junk mail. I opened up the PG&E bill and thankfully it was under $100 and paid it through online bill pay. After I paid it, I tore up the bill. I tore it in half once, then stacked it and tore it again, then again and the fourth time, I couldn't do it. It was just too thick at that point to tear. It reminded me of how I've seen people rip through a telephone book consisting of thousands of pages and it made me feel pretty pathetic. The bill I was trying to tear up was probably less than 50 sheets at the point of the fourth tear attempt.

Then I remembered, that we just got a new phone book a couple of days ago. My wife and I find phone books to be useless in this day and age so it went straight to the recycling bin. I figured it was a good time to try ripping through a phone book. I went over to the recycling and dug it out. It was still int he plastic bag that the use to protect it from rain when they deliver it. I sat on the couch and started trying to rip it. I was getting no where at first. My wife came by and asked me what the heck I was doing. I told her "I'm gonna rip this phone book in half." She replied, "You went and got that out of the recycling to see if you and rip it in half?" as if she thought it was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. And a moment later, I got it to start tearing. My wife's eyes opened wide with amazement as I started to say "I got it! I got it". The next thing you know, I was standing in the living room with two pieces of the phone book., one in each hand I had ripped it down the length of the book. I had my wife take a picture of me with the ripped phone book.



I tried to make a mean face in the last picture and I just came off looking stupid.

        

My nephew is a funny little character. One Sunday a few weeks ago, he was in desperate need of a haircut. I took a picture of him with his hair fixed and another after I messed up his hair using my phone. He has since had his hair cut.