i hate coffee

jules is a coffee-junkie almost, TheMom drinks coffee, i think i'm pretty much the only person in the civilized world my age who doesn't drink coffee. i know there are more out there, but we are small group. TheMech get cappuccinos from the coffee girl. he gets them with milk and sugar, and they look kinda good, like foamy chocolate milk. the only time i drink coffee is when it is iced and full of chocolatey goodness.

well, today i caved. i ordered a cappuccino myself, the same way, and it's not all that bad. normal coffee still sucks, but this isn't too bad, but i'm retarded. i like to make concoctions, and i have some cranberry juice on my desk... it's, um, tangy to say the least. it's not as good anymore, but i'll drink it. that's the price one pays to be a concoctioneer (now, Rich|, THAT is a made up word).

in other news, yesterday i had to go up the road about 3 hours to another site to check their foundation. TAs often get tossed around in countries like this. instead of mobilizing another TA, with international business travel, putting them up in a hotel, and expenses, they borrow nearby TAs to do simple works like this. it was 3 hours up, 4 hours there, and 3 hours back. normally i'm in the car 2 hours a dat roundtrip. i never thought i'd say it, but i'm tired of sitting. i read a lot of my book, but good lord, i'm gonna get bedsores. anyways, on the way up the road, we drove to pyramid street in downtown cairo to get to the main north-south road, cairo-alexandria desert road. i was reading my book and didn't realize we were heading to pyramid street. the driver asked me if i'd seen the pyramids. i told him, only from afar from the hotel balcony, and he pointed out the driver's side window. HOLY SHITE!!! they are RIGHT there. you're in downtown cairo, and it looks like you can throw a rocks and hit them. there's no embellishment when i say cairo seriously sits in the shadows of the pyramids. it's hard to believe that such an engineering marvel, a wonder of the world, is just background fodder to the locals. they see it every day, and eh... i was in awe. i did my best to take pictures while driving, they aren't the best, but it'll have to do until this weekend. i'm planning on going on a tour of the pyramids booked through the hotel. it leaves at 8:45AM which sucks, because since that's our day off, thursday night usually ends in the wee hours of friday, but i'll have to get up. i WAS going to go by myself with a driver, but apparently that gets really complicated. the driver's can't go in with you because then they are tour guides, but they don't have a license for that or something. then there are people inside who will try to scam you out of money... here, sit on a camel for a picture, then they start taking you somewhere you didn't want to go and charge you money for it (i suppose bailing from a moving camel would be dangerous). so, i'm taking the tourist tour. maybe when jules gets here we can do that on our own. too bad she's seen them all before, so i'm not sure how excited she's going to be seeing them again.

sorry to be terse, but i'm going to go finish my tangy UTI-preventing cappuccino now. more later.