Bummer

Getting in to my work, covered
in oil - there goes one shirt.

 I was initially planning on being back in the U.S. for the past and upcoming two weeks. However, KSA decided not to lift the ban on direct travel from the U.S. to the Magic Kingdom. (They require a 14 day quarantine in a non-banned country prior to entry which tosses a monkey-wrench into the works.) I did find out a couple things after it was too late to get the time off and arrange travel. First is that there was another guy who works in my same department but in Riyadh who spent two 'fun-filled' weeks in Bahrain w/o losing his PTO and on Uncle Ray's dime. Wish I'd known that option was available sooner. The second is that apparently (unbeknownst to almost everyone on the compound - at least I haven't found one person who will admit to it) there is a 'letter' whereby one may fly direct from Dulles to Riyadh - but your name must be on the letter. Funny how only a couple people got back here that way. I guess RHIP is in full effect. To top it off now there is some finger-pointing and run-around on how to get put on that letter. Sheesh! Unfortunately, these things meant that I had to miss surprising my daughter at her MBA graduation this past Saturday. (Congratulations, honor well earned!) It would also have been nice to get out on the motorcycle even if it was a little cool in Michigan lately.

Anyway, I was going to try to put my 'holiday' time on hold by working this last week but someone here got their nose out of joint and put a stop to that. So, I ended up with a 'staycation' instead. Of course that gave me a lot of time to delve into my genealogy project that I started a number of decades ago. At this point I have over 17,000 individuals listed in my database of which I am related to just under 7,000 of them; that includes spouses. I've discovered two direct ancestors (one on my paternal side and one on my maternal side) who arrived in the New World aboard the Mayflower, one of which should be an easy path to prove for membership in TMS; at least seven direct ancestors (split fairly evenly) who were on the winning side of the Revolutionary War, I already am a member of the SAR through one and have a supplemental app approval to his son-in-law; at least two (one on my paternal side and one on my maternal side) on the winning side of the Civil War; and a few in other conflicts. I've also discovered a few other famous relatives, some direct ancestors, who were famous in their own right; among these is the astronaut Christa McAuliffe who was a distant cousin. Of course the only people who were really interested in all these details are long dead and I know I'm boring on this topic so I'll put it aside and hope that some generations down the road some of my descendants and relatives find the research I've put together interesting and useful. (If you want to make my day just ask me about my family tree - but please, at least pretend to be actually interested.)

I've been putting in time on my planning for the little hill climb now scheduled for early July. I will be flying to Moshi, Tanzania for a nine day hike up and down Mt. Kilimanjaro. It should be interesting to say the least. I've started to step-up (pun intended) my daily work out of at least four miles daily walk to include a mile at 15% grade on the treadmill - I can do 3 mph fairly easily so I'll have to bump that rate up a bit over the next few days. I'm going to add in some weight training just for fun, lol. So far I'm down below 100 kilos which is a very good thing (at least according to my doctor.) If any of you reading this wants to come along let me know, there is still room in the group.

So, it's back to work tomorrow, no one has mentioned the hours, since they changed over Ramadan, hopefully it goes back to what it was before. We shall see.