Testing, Testing, 1 2 - Is This Thing On?

Mmmm, sand.

It's been a slow couple of days around here, so this probably won't be the most involved blog, but I did want to put to test my new subscription features (and my swanky new banner, that I owe Matt S a huge thanks for - if you're not reading this on my blog in a browser, you're missing out). It would seem I've amassed a small following , so I don't want to disappoint anyone.

Today's a dusty day in the desert, if you couldn't tell from the picture on the left, which is a zoomed in shot of the same  view as the shot below - notice that unlike on clear days, on dusty ones you can't even see the building skylines. Of course, the merciful contrast to the fact that it's dusty out is that it is also much cooler. As I remarked to Jon when we were walking to the shuttles this morning, it was almost (dare I say) pleasant to be out in the shade. It's probably mid-nineties, but without the oppressive swampy humidity that's plagued most days.

An earlier shot of the same view.

Like I said, I haven't been out really exploring or had any new impressive encounters lately. We did travel out to the Marina Mall on Saturday, to see if we could find a PSU for my desktop, but were told we weren't likely to find the part at any retailers around here. So instead we've just ordered it from Amazon - even with international shipping, it was probably cheaper than trying to locate what I needed from a specialty shop anyway. I'm still running fine on my borrowed PSU for the moment, so it wasn't an urgent thing. We didn't pick up much else at Marina besides some kitchen supplies and groceries, at Carrefour (a French hypermarket, the one I mentioned earlier was a sort of Walmart). Carrefour's grocery is a magical place - there's a counter full of fresh local herbs, a counter that is fresh loose spices and nuts, a deli counter, a cheese counter, and most interestingly, a date counter, with all manner of dates - plain, stuffed with nuts, and my new guilty pleasure, candied and coated in chocolate.

Otherwise, my only other trip out so far this week has been today to the smaller grocery to pick up veggies for the stir fry Jon's making for dinner. Everything here is so fresh, and without all the preservatives that we see in the states, that things really don't keep for long, and you're better off picking up ingredients for individual meals when you need them. We also pick up fresh bread pretty regularly, and Spinneys makes delicious soft pretzels.

The only eventful moment today came when we got back from shopping. As we were making our way up to our floor in the elevator, the lift stopped one floor below ours to let on some construction workers, and then once the doors closed, suddenly sounded an alarm and kicked into Fire Service mode and immediately headed for the ground floor. Startled, we wandered off and let security know what had happened, and since they were walking toward the elevators anyway once we got off, I assume they had heard an alarm too. The elevators meanwhile either reset themselves or were manually reset, and security decided to escort us up this time to double check that there were no issues. Thankfully nothing seemed to be on fire and everyone chalked it up to an electrical hiccup - one I hope doesn't decide to repeat itself anytime soon.