Purines

Deuce, you'll appreciate this. Sometime last night I noticed some swelling and pain in my big toe. It kept me up a little last night, but nothing sever, it's happened before. Well... Today I've self diagnosed myself on webMD as having gout. It's almost cut & dry... the symptoms, the causes... It's caused by too much uric acid in the blood, which in turn is caused by too much beer, meat, fish, and even soft drinks in your diet. All of these are staples in my diet. I've read that 6 in a 1000 men are effected... I almost feel special. But of course if it's true and I do have gout, what does that mean? Reading about it they talk about medication, blah blah blah... why do you need full-time medication for something that "flares up" every 2 years or so?? Hmmm... but wait, I guess it could lead to other issues around too much uric acid in the blood. In order to reduce it you need to reduce the beer & meat in your diet. F that, maybe I need medication.

So, I'm taking the afternoon off to rest my foot as being cramped in my Ermenegildo Zegna's all morning didn't bode well for the toe. Hopefully clears up tonight, then I'll get it checked out eventually...

coinkydink

Hmpf. Today I had to go to the Australian Embassy in Cairo. The address is:
12th floor, World Trade Center
1191 El Nil Corniche.

Anyone else think that is too close for comfort, keeping in mind the rest of the world's dates are notated ddmmyy instead of north america's mmddyy?

jinx

I almost want to wait until I'm actually out of Egypt, and possibly even until I've set foot in Australia to say anything for risk of jinxing this, but what the hell...

The Australian work visa is approved. My official last day on the project in Egypt is 11-Sep, flying to Calgary on the 12th. I'll have a couple of weeks to relax (aka golf, eat breakfast at Nellies, sitting on patios, mall-rat it up, etc etc) before flying to Brisbane around the 27th of September.

So that's good news. I won't get my hopes up too high until I'm 2000 feet above the pyramids and climbing.

Oh ya, and let's also hope the airline industry doesn't grind to a halt due to a certain anniversary of a certain event that occurred in 2001.

Bar Names Sue - Fernie

The Bar Named Sue is open in Fernie?? How come I wasn't informed earlier?? tisk tisk friends.

Rough around the edges

I feel like I should be a bouncer in an soviet era underground czech illegal western music dance club with this:

You're supposed to take pics like this of your kids...
After:
Aftermath:

White people like Facebook.

I like this so much I'll provide the link! You know it means that much to me. That's 3 links, you should be able to click on one of them. Oops, four!

T v P

Mmm hmmm.

June Wedding in Cairo

Here's a picture from my friend Andre and his new wife Nancy's wedding on June 12. From L to R: Nancy, Andre, Ryan, Frederieke, Alisha and James. No word on why Andre and I are apparently laughing our asses off.