More of yesterday

Life in Egypt always keeps us on our toes.

Andrew stumbled in the door yesterday shortly after 9:00 PM. Some of his days are soooo long. He sometimes puts in 12 hours on campus, or longer, which, in my opinion, royally stinks since he only comes home to do more homework.

"I just got hit by a car," he announced.

"Like how bad?" I asked.

"Enough to knock me over. I would have fallen completely over but I fell into another guy who fell onto a parked car and caught me."

And because we live in Egypt where road rage, even while walking, is both accepted and necessary to survival, the driver didn't even stop. He slowed down to make sure he hadn't killed anybody and then peeled off. All anyone said to Andrew was,

"No problem."

That is a very common phrase here. And the problem is is that when someone says, "No problem," it usually means that it is a problem.

Oh, did I just hit you with my car? No problem.

Oh, did I just about run over your wife and baby? No problem.

Oh, was I three hours late to pick you up and drive you to your destination? No problem.

I'm almost positive that translates as "No problem...for me."

He's fine, but his right side is a little sore since that is the side that collided with the car. His left side is fine since it was padded by the man who "caught" him. I wonder if that man is sore.

Meh, no problem, right? Of course right.

In happier news, Andrew announced that he met with his adviser and since he took extra classes each semester this year he only has 4 required classes left, so 12 credits. 3 of those credits are thesis writing credits. He could take that many credits in one semester...but we're still going to spread it out over two semesters. Partly because some of the classes aren't offered that first semester and partly because he's still not 100% sure what he wants to write about he will need 2 semesters to write his thesis. Still, that means that he'll only have to take 9 credits each semester until he graduates which sounds like he might have fewer 12+ hour days on campus next year, which will be nice with the new baby coming.

Writing a thesis sounds like it will add extra work...but at least he won't have coursework to do, right?

To celebrate, we decided to watch an episode of House. We've been watching a lot of House recently. The Penrods left their DVDs of the show with the Lewises and we started watching while we were babysitting last week (was it last week?) and borrowed a season from them (thank you both Penrods and Lewises). It's one of my little sister's favorite shows and I know a lot of other people who like it. And now we like it, too. Even Andrew the trypanophobe likes the show.

We had just settled down to watch it when the power went out. We waited for a few minutes for the power to come back on because sometimes it's only out for a few minutes...this outage was apparently going to last longer than that. We got some candles out, disconnected the portable DVD player from the TV, and settled in again to watch the show using battery power.

The power was out for the whole show and while we were getting ready for bed, so more than an hour. I asked Andrew to check outside to see if the neighbouring apartment building had power. Because sometimes they do and we don't and then we know that our boab is being a slacker. If they don't have power we know it's a bigger problem and don't think bad thoughts about our boab who is probably thinking, "So, you don't have power. No problem."

He was working his way back into the black hole that doubles as our kitchen and we were trying to remember which lights had been on and which ones had been off so that we could turn off the ones that had been on so that we weren't blinded by light at 3 AM when the power came back on.

"They don't have power either," he announced.

Just as he said that our house was flooded with light.

"But we do," I said.

"Yeah, we left the kitchen light on. You were right," he answered, "The neighbours have power now, too."

And so, with the power back on, we successfully redarkened our house and went to bed to the sounds of a big truck delivering something (bricks, gravel, sand, who knows?) just outside our bedroom window. Just because it's midnight doesn't mean construction in a residential zone should end.

No problem, right? That's why we live in Egypt.