Bargain Pasta Sauce

Started off the day late and waited for my acupuncturist to show up. Asked him to reduce the amount of needles in my ears, responsible for reducing my appetite.

Drove off to the Wathiq roundabout, it was fortunate that the traffic was light. Ordered a bunch of meat from the butcher and bought a popular mechanics magazine featuring a new cruise liner for 3000ID while I waited. And the spent the rest of my money on other groceries. The bargain of the day was a large jar of pasta sauce for less than 2 dollars.

On my way back I took the opportunity to pass by my uncle G. We had a pleasant chat that lead to the possibilities of new opportunities for my future and that would involve picking up a couple new skills to add to my big bag of half competent skills.


Upon returning home, I got Nahida to cook me up some of that bargain pasta. It might have lacked a bit of salt, the taste was rather faint, but maybe that's because all my taste buds are dead. It was a good wholesome meal nevertheless.

After my late lunch, I sat at my computer to check up and tune up my internet game called utopia that involves running a province's military, spell casting and thieves within a kingdom among other kingdoms.

Now to start my assignment, I immediately decided that it was best to start searching for think tanks instead of newspapers as they would bring me closer to the big picture faster than news agencies.

So I type in a news search for Iraq and think tank, and make note of the think tanks mentioned in the articles. I then went through the sites of each individual think tank which took much longer than I expected. And the final results were few but at first glance seem very good.

After exhausting the first list of think tanks I went through, I checked out the name of one think tank that was in my head... Carnegie something. After spending sometime familiarizing myself with the site, what did I find? Nothing less than a long list of think tanks! It's going to take me ages to go through and assess them all.

Intermittently I chatted with some friends among them Zed. My best friend from my days in high school in Baghdad, he's Bulgarian and is a computer wizard. Now participating in the administration of the Bulgaria's internet infrastructure. He gave me a quick call through Voice over IP; it was good to hear his voice.

At around 6:30 am I played a little bridge, played my first hand very impressively, seems that beginner's luck is strong within me. Then I began to muck up, and it became time to go fill up the car as I promised my dad I will.

I began to fall asleep at the wheel during the queue, which wasn't so bad. After an hour or so I got back home just as my dad was leaving the house to take a taxi. He put on a big smile for me, obviously the sign of relief that he won't have to take a taxi.

And finally at around 8:30 am it was time for me to go to sleep only to be woken a few hours later. Will I ever get enough sleep at this rate, I wonder.