day 6/7, these shoes are made for walkin'

day 6 and all things are go. no shakes, no "sober hangover", no nothing. the only thing different is that sober, i realize why i drank. this city is boring, this job is basically done, my hotel is... adequate. there's absolutely nothing exciting in this area that doesn't start before maybe midnight (the discos), but i have to be up for work around 6AM so that doesn't work out. so i guess i think i'm proving two points: 1) i don't have a problem, no one has to worry about me, and 2) i drink to make things more exciting. if i was in a hip/happening place with things to do, i might drink less because there WOULD be other things to do. thinking back maybe 6 years until last christmas, i can't think of a SINGLE day that i didn't have at least one alcoholic beverage. really. TheEJ noticed my voracious drinking appetite this past christmas and challenged me to a drink-free 24-hours. since then i've had several. this 7-day challenge came up somehow / sometime in edinburgh, and it's gone off without a hitch. no physiological issues, no psychiatric issues, i'm all good. i just do it for the fun. that being said, i probably won't go bawlz-to-the-wall as much. anyways, this is a prelude to my new healthy regime.

i started the non-drinking due to antibiotics, kept going for the test, and for the past week or two i've consistently jogged/walked at least 5 miles every other day. i got new shoes for this as the shoes i had were more for show than cushioning. running on a treadmill and tedious and boring but i put on an episode of "fringe" or "lost" or something on the archos (thanks chad), and time goes by a little easier. well today i went golfing with my caddy. normally he just caddies, but he's an excellent player. last week, i was awful, so he said this week i get a lesson, so he played with me. the guy is insane. he complained he was having a bad day since he hasn't had time to golf in a month,.. he shot a 4 over (his normal is 2 under). muthafucka! i spent more time on the fairways on the holes around me than on my fairways. he taught me some good tips that i'd need to practice more with. in all it was good fun, i just have a massive inferiority complex when people are better than me at something i'm trying, so even though he said i was doing OK or getting better, i felt like an ass when i screwed up and cursed to high-heaven. (walking during golfing + spending most of the time chasing errant balls = ~3.5 miles)

after golf, i grabbed a taxi back to the hotel. i made small talk in arabic which makes them happy (and also lets them know i've been around a while so don't tryto screw the white person by jacking up the fare). he asked what i do and if i was married. i told him i was a mechanical engineer and not married. he then asked me to meet his daughter for a date. she's a waitress at chili's. i politely told him i might stop by sometime. how would that work

AT CHILI'S: hey, um, anyone in here's dad drive a taxi...? yeah, yours? well hi, your dad told me to come meet you, thinks we should go on a date.

ridiculous. then when i got back to the hotel, i was walking to the hotel entrance past one of the many shops in the mall that my hotel is situated above, when a guy runs out and hands me a business card... "Men's FIRST XXL". again, muthafucka... i'm LOSING weight, and this guy gives me a business card for his s hop that specializes in XXL, XXXL, XXXXL, XXXXXL, and XXXXXXL clothing (i'm not shitting you, they write all those out on the advertisement).

back in my hotel room, i tried to distract myself from doing anything else useful to no avail. i started DLing some movies then decided i was going to walk along the corniche (the main road long the med). i put on my "exercise" shoes and grabbed a cab to sidi gaber. i don't know what sidi gaber is, but it's the closest place on the corniche to my hotel, and i knew if i told the cabbie, "corniche", he'd be confused. i popped in my iPod and started head-banging my way down the corniche all the way to caitbay castle at the west end of the bay. i then turned back and stopped off at the cecil hotel where they have a chinese restaurant on the roof. i sat outside and enjoyed a lemonade and water while waiting for my spicy tuna maki (sushi), hot and sour soup, and spicy BBQ beef. it was a good meal since i'd walked so much (the trip up and back was about 6 miles) and hadn't eaten since breakfast (it was now 6PM). i grabbed a cab from that hotel to mine (the cabbie was a bit confused by this), but he might've been confused by anything. he was OLD. and he had something wrong with him, either tourettes or OCD or parkinson's, i don't know, but the whole ride back, he was jumpin', jivin', and wailin' like a boll-weevil. sometimes while he was shimmying, he'd use the steering wheel for leverage, and as you might know, steering wheels aren't stationary, that is, they can rotate, and rotate they did on occasion making us swerve erratically into oncoming traffic in small alleys.

but, i made it home, that was my fun day. i have pictures, not very exciting but some were cute. i'll add them to this post later, but i'm tired now, so come back for the enhanced version in a day or two. later.