Random short video from the Bechtel winter party in Oman

I know that no one gives a(n) (explicative) about Oman but

My family is OK. The cyclone hit them on Tuesday night and continued through Wednesday. Their home had mostly water damage, only, but they spent most of the night holed up in a small bathroom--the driest room in the house. According to Mary, my sisters were great-- the whole thing was "an adventure in their eyes." I'm so proud of them! They're in a hotel now as the house has no water or power, but will eventually be habitable again.

Several of our friends in Muscat live near or more or less in wadis (dry river beds), and they really did loose everything--their entire homes/neighborhoods were flooded.

Dad arrived back in Muscat from Sohar on Thursday morning. Normally I'm not pro huge cars and 4 wheel drives, but in this case they proved to be essential.

There were a few shots of Muscat post-typhoon on the weather channel yesterday evening.

Flooding, mostly. The news is mostly about what the typhoon will do to oil production. Oman isn't a huge producer of oil compared with some of its neighbors, but it does produce some.

I'm making a kind of kibbeh for dinner this evening--one that doesn't need to be put in a pastry crust or fried--instead, it will be baked and then have a topping of some sort, I haven't decided what. Mincing the lamb meat last night proved more than my food processor could handle, so I ended up cutting it and then pounding it with my potato masher while Mark and I hung out and watched basketball.

Lester has a feather stuck in his nose. I'd thought he was finished molting, but he had several new pin feathers this week, so he's been taking a lot of showers. Warm water helps soften the waxy stuff around the new feathers so it comes off easier during preening. And Lester enjoys bathing even when he's not molting.

I'm tutoring and working on a web page for someone today. On Tuesday I go back to teaching ESOL in the morning. I'll be glad to teach again, not so glad to get up at 6:30.

Commentary

Yesterday, a guy yelled"hey mamasita" at me as I was coming home from the market. A drunk guy hanging out on the bluffs above the beach giggled at me as I walked by, both coming at going. I rarely receive this kind of commentary here in Carlsbad. Usually it's just random people saying "hello." Last year around Halloween, people threw eggs at me, and also people like to yell the color of my t-shirt at me: "go greeeeen!" or "go bluuuuue!" I might have blogged about this before, but once someone yelled "slut!" at me from their pick up truck as I ran by. But they were stopped at a stop light. So I stopped, looked at them, and yelled, "Bitch tools!"

No news from Dad or Mary about Oman, the typhoon, and how they're doing. The Cyclone has passed over Muscat at this point. My family lives within a mile of the beach so it's quite possible that there's been some flooding.

Typhoon Gonu Update

Well, Mary wrote to say that as of very early this morning, the eye of the typhoon was about to pass over Muscat, and that the water is rising pretty rapidly, but thus far the first floor isn't flooded--they've just been doing a lot of mopping. Parts of Muscat tend to flood fairly easily because most of the roads anywhere are built on dry wadis, so they become natural channels for the water with any little bit of rain.

Dad's up in Sohar helping everyone in the job site evacuate. I'm sure that's fun.

I suspect that my sisters might even be having a good time--there are several other families that live in the same compound, so I'm sure that the kids are hanging out together during the day. I probably would have enjoyed it when I was 9ish, regardless of whether or not the situation were actually dangerous.

Tropical Cyclone Gonu--a category 5--hit the coast of Oman yesterday. This is the strongest storm to hit Oman since 1977. The storm will have lost some momentum by the time it reaches Muscat, but everyone is nervous.

Last of the famous

I watched "America's Next Top Model" last week and that show about the Pussycat Dolls, who, I'll admit, I'd never even heard of until seeing the promotions for the show, although I did hear the "don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me" (which I often mis-speak as "don't you wish your boyfriend was hot like me") song in Oman on New Years Eve at a bar full of equal parts rich British girls and their pretty boy boyfriends from Dubai spending a fashionable holiday in quaint, nearby Muscat, men in various forms of Islamic dress, prostitutes, and engineers (both men and women) from India. The dance floor was crowded and the grope-factor was high, so I stayed away. My kind hosts bought me a monstrously expensive scotch, which I didn't really drink because everyone else was super blasted, and I designated myself the designated driver.