A momentous, momentous day has arrived. Yesterday I submitted my resignation from my current job, and today I formally accepted the offer with the consulting firm I've been considering. I have to say, it feels GREAT... I'll start on 20 August, just in time to get staffed and settled in on a case before Ramadan starts at the beginning of September. (Hopefully not a case in Saudi given that Ramadan there - to put it nicely - would BLOW.)
My last day at the old job is 14 August, so I'm already scheming about what I can do with 6 days of free time... I'm flirting with the idea of America but it's a long schlep to make if I want to start fresh at the new job, and if E is free I think the lure of this trip to Eritrea we've been talking about for ages might prove too tempting to deny. Anyone else have suggestions and/or want to travel with me???
Beirut last weekend was also a long time coming, and also GREAT. Much like Carrie looking at the perfect apartment mysteriously vacated by divorcees in the SATC movie, I found myself wondering: if you live here - in a city this beautiful, this vibrant, this blessed by nature and history - what is there to fight about?! (And then, like Carrie discovering the small closet, I remembered: Israel.) It definitely lived up to the hype and I can't wait to go back and see more of Lebanon. It was also great to see Bubba in the latest installment of the "Travels Around the Middle East with My Freshman-Year Floormates (And Other Things That Would Have Seemed Unlikely in 1999)" world tour.
What is not GREAT is my hangover right now. The crew from Kabul flew into town last night for a couple days of R&R in Dubai, so we hosted an epic dinner party for them which produced several interesting developments, including -
(1) Me & E finding out that our friend Farhad is a member of Afghanistan's former royal family
(2) Me & E learning that - unbeknownst to us! - Farhad had hired armed guards to follow us around the entire time we were in Kabul (in Farhad's words, "I can't believe you're shocked! Did you think it was just COINCIDENCE that you didn't get kidnapped?!")
Off to get my highlights done - let the last month of "work" begin!
