Regularly Scheduled?? Not so much.. apparently.

Man, I'm almost kinda disappointed in myself.  I haven't blogged in days!  Plural!  I didn't have any prewritten blogs to post either, so its just Teh Megan silence, and its so strange and quiet.

Of course the biggest blame is work, but then yesterday I decided to partake on an adventure with Will the Marine (WtM).

Side note, in my life I usually just refer to marines as "the marine", because usually I only have to deal with one marine at a time (and its so much better that way).  Well, recently there's been a slight influx in the amount of marines that I know, guess thats part of being in the military for more than 2 minutes.  So now its more like I should refer to them as "A Marine" vs "the Marine"..  Its even hard to think of Marine like nicknames for them all.  They start getting really long, Puerto Rican Marine (not specific enough), the Bahrain Marine (but there's actually a few of those), Pirate gone Marine (he knows who he is), GTMO Marine (several of those).. It just starts to get tricky.

Back to the story of adventures and lacking of blogs.

Teh Hookah
(personal photo)

So went to the souq yesterday on a mission to buy a hookah.  When teh Sister was here, I discovered a hookah that I loved so much I took a photo of it and told the guy I'd be back... eventually.  2 months passed.  Recently, I've been spending money (wayyyy too much).  I'm blaming all the enablers in my life, who are like, OOOOOOOO thats soooooooo awesome, oh yeah I'm talkin about you Shoulda Been a Cowgirl (see how these nicknames are getting out of control?  I would have called her Cletus, but she'd prob stop reading my blog and being my friend, but she def would have known I was talkin 'bout her).  heheheheehehehe, back to the story.

We went to the souq and WtM was lookin for shoes.  So our mission was set.  Hookah, shoes, check.  First stop, food.  We stopped at the Thai place with the green door, which one day I will post photos of.  This time I made note to remember the way to the place so if I want to take someone else there, its not a problem.  Now if I could just remember how to get to the Indian place that we went to when teh Sister was visiting, I'd be set.

We stopped in several shoe stores to no avail.  You never know what you're gonna get when you walk in some shops a the souq.  Their selections are often wide, but everything is similar.  Oh you want dress shoes?  Well, here we have some black ones, and since the current most awesome Arabic style is extra long square toes, we have about 50 different types of that.  I mean, nothin looks cooler than square toes pointing out of the bottom of your "robe" with your aviators and your shumagh/gutrah (the red and white/plain white cloth arab men wear on their heads).  WtM was lookin for athletic shoes, and the selection of those was limited and ...interesting.  Lots of bright colors (NOT his personality) and interesting designs and even some Nike knockoffs.  It was a fun time for all.  And between shoe stores we went into some trinket shops to see about their selection for hookahs.

One of the stores we went to was the same store that had the original hookah, and this time he wanted 10 more BD for it than he'd told me before when teh Sister was here.  10x$2.68=a lot more money to Teh Megan.  He said he would make "happy price for me" and I said for 38bd I wasn't happy and that I was going to keep looking, but we'd be back.  He muttered as WtM and I walked out of the store, "You no come back."  I was slightly offended, but lets be honest, I've used the I'll be back line before and never returned, so it was a fair play.

.....Which ended up working out to my advantage.  After looking at several shops, I still wasn't seeing anything that rivaled the original hookah.  Nothing was as awesome or beautiful or catchy to me.  So I told Will the Marine we should go back to the other store so I could talk the guy down.  Haggling is accepted and encouraged here, which is kinda cool, even though I'm not too good at it.  When we showed back up, he offered me a "happy price" of 32.5BD.  I wasn't pleased, I argued that we had actually came back, and he had said we wouldn't.  When teh Sister was here, he had offered it to me for 28BD.  I told him that when I had came before I liked it so much I had even taken a photo (see above) and he had offered it to me for 28.  He asked if I wanted to buy anything else, tobacco/coals/other trinkets.  I said no, just the hookah.  He said 32BD.  I said that still wasn't my happy price.  I said 30bd, he agreed and as the transaction was going down I smelled the melon tobacco and was won over, so I threw in the tobacco and the coals for 32BD.  He won, I won, we all won and I got a hookah, THE hookah, so all was well.  It was pretty hot, so Will the Marine and I decided to go have desert at Cafe Lilou (omfg so delicious).  Its one of our favorite places to people watch and the desserts are indescribably delightful.

Milo Milo, Cafe Lilou
(Cafe Lilou FB)

I tried a new dessert yesterday.. The Milo Milo..  I only had one, but.. OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG... sooooooo much tasty fucking goodness!  I did take a photo, but the pics have yet to be uploaded.  Maybe Cafe Lilou will one day get their own post because of the amount of sheer awesome that consumes me when I go there?  Yes, probably.

Will the Marine and I sat there for hours chatting and people watching.  Arabic women are so beautiful and we got to see plenty of square-toe-shoe-robed-men, and I would probably steal a cute little arabic baby if that wasn't illegal because they are so cute with their big brown eyes and thick black hair.  And we even saw a guy with glasses who looked like he was wearing the same glasses the detainees in GTMO wear.  When I announced that to WtM, I tried to say it quietly.  I'm sure a GTMO joke in the middle of arabia wouldn't go over too well, what with my white, femaleness and all....  We finally decided we would leave the Cafe and try to locate another shoe store in the area.  We found a Puma store, but nothing else really and then we stumbled upon some "antique stores"...  Which are similar to the trinket shops.

We walked in to a bookstore type place first where I almost bought some wall art.  Will the Marine said the painting I was looking at was very me, but I was wishy-washy on it, so I left it... for now.  We did find some super old records, to include Bruce Willis's musical debut, a Jackson Five record, a Rowan Atkins record, Otis Redding, several groups I'd not heard of, even one that was autographed.  It was a pretty cool store, but we continued walking around.  We went into another shop that had decoration type stuff.. and vases!!!  SOOO MANY AWESOME VASES!  The best part, they were all at least 50% off, win!

Vase, like face.
(personal photo)

I couldn't resist, I bought an awesome vase, and I can't really even blame WtM because he got a phone call and wasn't even there to enable me.  I was torn between 2, and even considered buying both, but they were pretty heavy and we had to walk back to Teh Kaar (this is my car's actual name, I did not nickname my car, geez).  6BD for this b.e.a.u.t.iful vase.

Tangent: best line to ever come out of Bruce Almighty: B-e-a-u-tiful!  Just sayin.
Best line to come out of conversation yesterday:
WtM: she said she had something to tell me... and it started with an L and ended in E.
Me:  I bet it wasn't "live".
cackles ensued.
WtM: No, it wasn't live.  But I was like, "Well, thats nice."
Me: she just chose the wrong vowel, sometimes its hard.
more cackles.

My other decorum issue is.... Teh Bear.  I sometimes ask myself, well its great that Teh Megan likes this, buttttt, eventually it probably won't just be Teh Megan's opinion.  For a true gauge on Teh Megan taste, ask Teh BFF.  She used to look at me when I'd say I'd like things sometimes and just gaze at me in wonder, Shoulda Been a Cowgirl did the same thing on our souq/mall adventure last week.

Last night when I was sharing my purchases with Teh Bear I asked him if he wanted to see my vase.. And he said, I can see your face.  I was very confused.  I repeated.. "No... do you want to see my VASE, the new one, I bought today?"
tB: ohh your vase (like vah-ze).
tM: no.  my vase (like face/mace/pace/etc).
tB: sure, I'd like to see your vah-ze.
tM: my vase is beautiful!
We often have communication break downs like this, which is a fun time.  We blame it on the fact that I'm a true southerner, and he's a displaced yankee (originally from up north, but parents moved to FL).  Ooooo another really good future blog idea!  Its a good thing I have a list of these ideas!

So Teh Megan has been busy.  But, writing makes me happy so I decided this morning to sit down and just do it.  Yay for enablers and spending monies and blogs about adventures and busyness!

Yay blog!