Being Vested and Qatarded

There are 2 things that I would like to share with you all. The first thing is that I had some good news about my retirement plan for A&M. After 5 years in the system you are considered vested which means that if you choose to remove the money that you have put into retirement you get to keep the matching funds. If you leave before hand you lose all matching funds. This can be a large amount of money lost especially if you only plan on staying 3 years like I do. Then I found out this key piece of information, my time in Texas working as a graduate student counts toward my 5 years. I’m not going to lose the money! This will be about $7,000 in matching funds that will go toward my retirement. How cool is that!

The other thing I wanted to share with all of you a new term. It is Qatarded. Pronounced cu-tard-ed is usually used to describe something in Qatar that is done is a stupid or backward manner. For example, “the road construction here is Qatarded.” It can also be used in a question, for example, “is the process to buy a car here Qatarded?” (The answer is yes to that question.)

Other fun news is that in 10 days I will be in the Frankfurt Airport waiting for Mom and Vickie to magically appear from their loooooong flight. I will be bored to tears after spending 3.5 hours sitting in the airport not being able to read German. I really should pick up some German. I did learn in July that you can go a long ways in Germany with the following 3 words: bitte (please), danke (thanks), and Visa (Hand over your credit card so I can charge a lot in euros). It is amazing that with just those 3 words you can go all over Germany.
Ramadan is over half finished now. It is an adjustment but things aren’t as bad as people say they were going to be. I would like to have water at my desk though.

Hope all is well with you.

Contract

Well, today I signed my new contract today. This means that I am employed through June of 2010. My new contract goes into effect December 1 and will last through June 30, 2008. If you listen really carefully right now you can hear my parents celebrating and singing "Yes! She's employed!"

Actually, what it really means is that I now have the money, or will soon, to pay for the plane tickets and hotel reservations that I've already booked. Just in case you are wondering I leave Doha for Berlin on December 5, to Alaska on December 14, 2008, and then I return to Doha from the 1-3 of January. On the way back I overnight in Frankfurt so I get to break-up the 4000 hours of flying, coach. I know the amount of sympathy I will get from this statement is, well, nothing, but I have crossed the Atlantic Ocean 3 times but never in coach. I've always had business class. If only there was a conference in Anchorage that would be worth my boss sending me there.

Hope all is well with you.

Ramadan

Welcome to the world of Ramadan! The month of Ramadan started last night at sundown and will continue until the next new moon. All Muslims are fasting during daylight hours, which means from about 4am to 6 pm. What does this mean for me? Well let me tell you.

No restaurants are open during the day for the month, not bad except that means you have to bring lunch or eat at the cafeteria, I don't mind it so much though. I heard that grocery stores aren't open until sun down too, but I have not confirmed that. The other things are not being able to eat or drink in the car, in my office (I have windows), and having students that are especially whiny. One thing that many people have told us is that we should drive in the last hour of daylight. That is when people are rushing to other people's homes to be able to break the fast so the driving is awful. There are more accidents during Ramadan than any other month. So, I am currently sitting at work, waiting for the sun to set so I can go to the knitting group.

I am hungry too. I've been fasting since lunch.

Thank you God for AC!

So I get the opportunity (must think positive) to take Organic Chemistry, yes again, this semester. Yes, I did have to take it to graduate undergrad but I don't remember anything and since I am teaching the lab this semester I thought it was good. However, the AC wasn't working in the classroom this morning. It was 29C in there, which is almost 85F. It was very hot, enough that I was sweating by the end of class. It took me forever to cool down afterward. The good news was the class was at 8am, not 2pm. That room gets hot anyway, ouch!

Yesterday I bought my plane ticket to fly from Frankfurt to Anchorage over Christmas. I still need to get a ticket to fly from Doha to Frankfurt but I am getting there. I am excited about going home but not about sitting on a plane that long. (Since I am paying for it I am flying coach.) Mom already asked me what I wanted for Christmas, isn't that a bit early?

Classes started this week. I am teaching 2 sections of organic chemistry lab and creating the homework for the organic lecture course. Should be a learning experience for me but I'm not thrilled with going to organic lecture again. I slept through most of the classes the first time I took it so hopefully I can stay awake this time.

Hope all of you are doing well!

There is a Cold Stone in the desert.

I tried something new today. Cold Stone opened in one of the malls today and a coworker and I went to go try it. Not bad, the workers are funny. However, they don’t have Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and their cookie dough is made from very granulated sugar. The ice cream artist did put caramel on top of the ice cream as well though, so that was good.

Larry the Lizard

My parents taught me a lot of things when I was a kid. One thing that they failed to teach me was how to catch a lizard. I know we don’t have a lot of lizards in Alaska but still. Learning how to catch a lizard would have been pretty helpful. Before I learn how to do that, let me tell you the story of Larry.

Larry is a little gecko-type lizard that is white and green and may be poisonous. This type of lizard will come into homes to find food, shelter, TV, DVDs, and other forms of entertainment. The other weekend Larry came in my house. I saw him, thought about how to catch him, and then lost him. Since I didn’t see him I figured he went back to his lizard family and I was lizard free. I was wrong; Larry was looking for a home. On Sunday night I was making pink lemonade from knitting and the proceeded to spill an entire pitcher of the sticky stuff down the back of my fridge and onto my floor. I grabbed a bucket and started to dump water on the floor so I could mop it. I dumped some soapy water and saw something wiggling at the other end of the kitchen. IT WAS LARRY!! Trying to drown him, I don’t like freeloaders, I dumped more water on the floor and Larry swam over to and then crawled underneath the stove. So I pushed bucket after bucket of warm, ok hot, water underneath the stove. No Larry.

Well, I figured the floor wasn’t sticky anymore so I went to bed. I got up late the next morning to find out 2 things. The first thing is that the floor was still sticky and something gross and sticky had pooled and dried underneath the front right corner of the fridge. I was late so I figured I would clean it up after work. I got off late from work and didn’t have time to clean it up before people came for knitting. Knitting was fine and then cleaning up I saw something in the goo, IT WAS LARRY!! Not knowing how to clean up a dead lizard I went to bed to deal with it tomorrow. The next night after work I decided, with some advice from some friends, that I should try to scrape Larry of the goo. Well, the goo was too sticky so I figured I would dissolve the goo with water and then sweep dead Larry into the dust pan to through him out. Pretty smart says I. So, I got some soapy Clorox water and poured it on the mess. That wasn’t working so I took a bucket of water, 2 cups of Clorox, and poured it on the mess. That was when I figured out something. LARRY WASN”T DEAD!!! So, I did what any Alaskan would do, I called a friend.

My friend from IT who lives just a little bit down the road was home so I called her and asked her to come catch Larry. Which she did do and I was very grateful. So, that is the story of Larry. Larry is outside, I think, and maybe even alive after being stuck to the floor and drowned in Clorox water.

Next time, I try straight Clorox.

Comments

Mom has commented a few times about how hard it is to leave comments on my blog, so I have chagned the settings. It is now open to all comments but I will be monitoring them to see which ones get posted. This monitoring will allow me to block comments that aren't in English or other such stuff.

Hope all are doing well.