A brief respite in my busy life...

Wow! It's been a LONG couple of weeks. My sincerest apologies to those of you who take the time out of your day to read my thoughts and have been left disappointed in the lack of fresh content on here lately. Between working 40+ hours for my CEO at one company, plus working 40+ hours at my own company which has finally gotten off the ground, AND trying to remodel this condo, time is in extremely short supply.

Let me start with the updates to recent events.

April's Birthday:

Thanks to all of you who made an appearance for April's birthday. It was a great resounding success and she loved the whole night. I can't tell you how many times I got thanked for being the bestest boyfriend, just for calling everyone and saying "y'all come on and let's eat." However, I take my gratitude where I can get it and I wallow in it shamelessly! So thanks for coming. Those who couldn't make it were sorely missed, but there will be many more Scooby events this year I hope, so we'll get together then and catch up.

Now.. to share some photos from the evening:

 

Yes, w'ere just that cute. (and God I look like hell. It was the first week we had opened the new company up and I had just left work. Had I known there were gonna be so many pictures I would have at least done my hair and did a better job shaving!)

 

"The" Bridget Pose... I've become used to this cutesy expression. This girl can pose for a camera in a split second... but almost always looks nice doing it.

Ok... so we KNOW I'm going to post the one where my head is between two gorgeous women and all those boobies... right? Gimme a break! I am most certainly NOT passing up a shot like that. *copies that photo to the directory with all the other shameless booby photos*

You can't see everyone in this shot, but there were about 15 of us for dinner. We pretty much packed out the right side of Chico's.

My sincerest thanks to Nicole for getting the cake handled for me. She did a fantastic job! (PS: Remind me to write you a check to replace that one you lost!)

Yes... I did good!

There are lots more photos to post, but if I put them all in here, the page would never load for those libyan friends who visit, so I've got to cut the photos short somewhere.

The New Office

Yes, I'm tired of working out of my apartment each and every day, so I finally sucked it up and got an office across town. It's nice to be able to get up and leave the house for work in the morning. Being up and out of the house gets me focused and gets my head right a little more so than when I work at home. Anyway, we originally purchased a 2 office suite downtown, but within about 3 days we learned that wasn't going to be enough, so now we have a 4 office suite with plenty of room for my office furniture and conference tables and with enough space for each of the guys to have their own office. Things are going good so far. We're staying busy with projects during the dead periods while we're waiting for our overseas contract to take off again. We tried the whole sit at home and get paid for doing nothing thing for about three days, but that got old quickly. I can't stand NOT to be working. If I'm not going to be busy for one company, then I stay busy working on the other. Besides, I'm paid well, but not well enough to want to drop all my customers and let them go elsewhere.

On the upside, I landed two national contracts today for our new business. I can't release names yet, but I'll do so later when things are more secured. I'd rather have some good repoire behind my belt with the new contracts before I start blurting out crap and then I'll have to eat crow later if something goes wrong with the deal.. but things are lookin up for us. That much is good.

The Condo

Ok.. so can I just say that I have the absolute coolest landlord inthe whole damned world? Attention World: Richard Donaldson Rocks! My landlord knows that I grew up in construction and carpentry, so we worked a deal where he will let me upgrade the condo I live in, since I'm gonna be here a few more years it seems. (I decided not to pursue a house AND a new company in the same year.. too much risk there.)

Anyway, he ok'd me to replace the carpet with hardwood floors, rip down one of the walls, and do just about anything else I desire as long as I do it professionally. The upside for him: he gets about five thousand dollars worth of free labor working on his condos. The upside for us: we get the hottest pad in our area with little to no financial cost to us... just a little sweat and blood. (Hopefully more sweat than blood.)

Africa

It's been asked a dozen times every week for the past few weeks and YES I'm still going back to Africa. I can't go into the details for professional reasons, but let's just say that it takes a LONG time to get a Libyan company to cough up a couple million dollars to get this thing rolling. Pretty much we're ready to go as soon as the check comes into ship the parts, which should be soon now. I don't have a date yet, but I'm personally expecting sometime late summer to be honest. We still have to consider the two to three weeks it's going to take to assemble and ship the thousands of parts from various spots in the US to the port in Charleston, then we have to add the 38 days time it takes for the transatlantic freighter to get from here to London, change cargo, and then get to Tripoli, Libya. So, we're looking at a minimum of 6 weeks from the time we get the check in. Not to mention that my Visa is about to expire again, which means another six week process to get new visas from Libya. Did I mention that international projects are a major pain in the butt? However, I can't complain... I'm getting paid to be here just as well as I'm getting paid to be there.. and the food is definitely better here.

To Libya With Love

Sabah al'kheer my friends in Libya! I miss you guys SOOOOO much. You have no idea how much it pains me to be away for so long, even though I'm glad to be home again. I can't wait to get back over there and jump back into the culture, the food, the customs, (ok.. maybe not the food... but the rest is true enough.) My greetings to all of you, Khadija, Tara, Nadir, Mohamed (Shortround), and the rest of you. Someome go tell Mohamed at the Corinthia that the ornery amreeki (american) is coming back and I want my garlic bread on the menu when I get there!

Ok.. that's about it from me for one evening. I'll leave you with ONE more interesting piece of fun.

Beach Music and Bill Agans

I recorded this the night we went out for April's Birthday party. I actually got 4 videos, but this is the only one I can post until I get my upgrade to director status on YouTube. The other three are a tiny bit too large to be allowed at the moment.

Hope you enjoy

 

Peace!

Tommy

 

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