beirut.year.slice(316, 317);

The title is from a post called beirut.year.slice(304, 305); that was languishing in my WordPress drafts. I had gotten this far:

I got about two hours of work done this morning before the power went out. It remained out for about an hour and the generator wasn’t working for some reason, so I took a walk with Amy.

I saw this and realized that not only have I become lazy with my updates, but that time is running out (!) and precious memories are on the verge of being lost forever (!). In all seriousness, I am going to make a resolution to make one post per day, be it ridiculous or sublime, for the remaining 50-odd days that we’re here.

I’ve been working a lot, which explains some of my lethargy in the blog. It’s not as if I need to keep some kind of personal record of this…

…especially since I’ve accepted a full-time, salaried position with the company I’ve been contracting with for the past 1.3 years. After freelancing with no health insurance for like 4 years, I figured it was time to get adult…though not so adult that I’ll actually have to change out of my pjs to go to work. The position officially starts June 5 when we are in Austin, TX.

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A few weeks ago we went to Syria for what will probably be the last time in a long while. Amy covered it very well in a post or two on the subject. I have only to add that I really enjoyed each trip that we made to Syria. It’s a wonderful place and I’m very glad to have had it as a counterpoint to Lebanon over the past year (I’m speaking of geography and people and speaking nothing of politics). I remarked somewhat apocalyptically to Amy the other day that I hope these pleasant memories aren’t jogged then jarred two years hence by a news report of “Damascus in flames on the morning after the U.S. Operation Syrian Freedom initiative.”

Wow, real desert.

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Finally, at long last, we have brown-bottle Almazas in our own home. For those of you that don’t know, Almaza (the main–and to my knowledge only–Lebanese brewery) makes two formulas: one comes in a brown bottle and is generally available only in restaurants, and one comes in a green bottle and is available in stores or for export. Some people will tell you there is no difference, but these people know nothing of beer, for the contents of the brown bottle are vastly superior to that of the green. Formerly we had been relegated to drinking the green bottle within the confines of our own home, but no more! Thanks to our friend Bjorn, we now have the brown bottles (and theoretically a phone number to call for delivery). And, after getting the deposit back on the bottles, they are actually marginally cheaper than the greens (688LL vs. 750LL or about 0.04USD).

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I looked up from my work today and saw my ISP was installing internet service for yet another soon-to-be-happy customer.