Another birthday cake.  Suzanne spoiling me at her place!

So, the students have stopped coming (until next week when they return for exams), and the work day is shorter, and life is, well, pretty damned easy right now — except for those days when it hit 123 F outside, now that’s just miserable.  I have time to do whatever it is I need to do.

So far I’ve:

• Booked summer vacation rooms and train tickets
• Planned and mapped out Christmas vacation plans
• Read two books, started another
• Finished up a Teach UAE article a week before deadline
• Tooled around with my fun writing — should really get serious about doing something more organized with it, but then again would that keep it in the ‘fun’ category?
• Started working out again — Thank God!  My inner thighs truly hate me right now.  Best part is I cool off in the Rotana pool afterward, so there’s a treat to look forward to when I’m sweating my bottom off.
• Caught up with friends and did a lot of eating and beverage sipping.
• Finished up a few t.v. series and finally started watching Mad Men — the chauvinism is a hard pill to swallow at first, but I guess like the women way back then I’m learning to take it, but only because it’s on the small screen and not my real life. And damn! My lungs and liver are shot just watching these people smoke/drink their way through the day.
• Yelled OMG at the last few episodes of Game of Thrones.  Can you believe there is only one more episode left?  At first it felt like this season was dragging, now it’s ending too quickly.  Go Danerys! Boo on fire psycho and her stupid low-life chosen king.  And, poor Jon Snow knows too much now (and wishes he didn’t).

And yeah that’s pretty much my life right now.  Did I mention how much I’m loving this?  Don’t worry I won’t be bragging about playing this much forever (but I’ve got a few good months ahead of me).  Teaching is hard here too, and I don’t yet understand why we’re here until July 9, but I’ll take it (although if my employers are reading:  we could end the school year in June — just a suggestion).

There’s plenty more planned to keep me busy until I take off for Prague on July 10th — and eventually home with my family on July 30th.

 Toodle loo until next time when I tell you all about my night (this weekend)  in a palace (er, 7 star hotel).  I can’t get over how excited I am about this.

p.s. for the record I’m not losing any weight like I had planned.  arrghhh.

p.s.s. I was going to include a bunch of fun pool pics of my friends but then realized I hadn’t asked them first, so this time around you’re stuck with just photos of me.  I’ll try to spruce it up with more fun pics next time around.