All bruisy like...

...Or how I got a bruise on my hand!
One of my favorite movie lines is from the movie Drop Dead Fred. The female lead is wearing a new dress in shades of purple, and her imaginary childhood friend tells her that she looks like a big bruise. lol
Yesterday it was pretty hot. The last two days actually. Temps were high 90's. It wasn't too bad inside the apartment, but Ahmed decided to turn the a/c on in the bedroom before he took a nap to get the room cool. After turning the a/c on, he closed the bedroom door. It's the first time the bedroom door has been closed as there's really no reason to close it, since no one lives here but us.
Anyways, after the a/c had been on for a while, I decided to open up the door and see how cool the room had gotten. The only problem was, I couldn't get the door open. For some reason the handle required the strength of ten men to open. The door handles aren't the typical round ones we are used to in the states but actual handles that you have to twist (turn) downwards. After giving it all my might and not being able to open it, Ahmed got the door open. The room was quite frigid, reminding me of winter in the States. lol
Well, he didn't close the door all the way after that, just left it slightly ajar.
But I noticed shortly afterward that my hand was hurting and when I looked I noticed I had a bruise starting. I couldn't believe I bruised my hand from trying to open a door!!!!! How silly is that?
Anyways, it's all bruisy-like. I'd take a picture to post but I don't think anyone really wants to see. lol

Well, as mentioned, it was pretty hot out the last two days. In addition, the air looked like someone tipped a full ashtray over and let the ashes settle down into the air, kind of like how when you shake a snowglobe and the fake snow floats around. lol
Yeah, it was gross.
I stood outside on the balcony on Sunday for about 10 minutes, just to watch the traffic and people, and after just standing there, when I went inside I noticed that I had sweated. From just standing! It didn't feel that hot when I was outside, but maybe just because it was low humidity. I'm not looking forward to when the humidity gets high, which I'm assured it does. Blech. Though.. maybe we'll be in Kuwait then, so who knows. It gets hotter in Kuwait. Not sure about the humidity. Ahmed told me that it has gotten up to 60 celcius there in Kuwait. That's absolutely crazy. lol
He told me that when his family lived there when he was a child, they would get up at the dawn call to prayer (at that time of the year it was around 5 am or maybe a little earlier), get ready and pack a picnic and go down to the beach. By 7:30 a.m., they would have to go back home because it was too hot! Wow!!!!

When I was out on the balcony, I saw a truck go by, the back of which was crammed full of sheep. Or sheeps as my hubby calls them. :D
It was amusing to see. Stuff like that always just kind of cracks me up. I guess because it's so different to what I'm used to seeing.

We finally took a walk yesterday. Or last night rather. We went out at just after ten and got home sometime around 11:45 or so. We stopped at a furniture store on the way but I don't remember what it was called. They had a few nice things and the prices weren't too high. Not exactly cheap but not overly expensive.
There was a lot of people out still. Not sure if it's because it was too hot during the day or not.
And I forgot that you walk a lot in the street, as opposed to the sidewalks here. For one thing, there aren't always sidewalks available to walk on. Also, sometimes they're just too cracked and broken up as well.
We stopped at Mo'men on the way back, which is a fast food place. We got some food to go, and for some reason they gave us a complimentary ice cream cone on the way out. Maybe if you spend a certain amount they give you one? Anyways, it was soft serve and at first I didn't want to try any, because I'm so picky about food and I haven't had any ice cream in a long while, but I tried it and it was quite yummy. I didn't have the whole thing, I had maybe a third of the ice cream and gave the rest to hubby. Chocolate.... yummm....

Hubby picked up some croissants for me last week. There are many neighborhood bakeries. They sell mostly... bread type items. Not fancy cakes or anything like that. Anyways, the croissants were pretty good, though the flavor was lacking. They were flaky enough, in the right way, but they didn't have any butter taste at all, they just tasted kind of plain. Except for some flavor that I can't place. It had the faintest hint of something like a chocolate taste, but there was no chocolate in it, and I really just couldn't tell what the flavor was. I tried to figure it out as I went through the croissants (I think there were about 5 of them), but I never could figure it. They had a scent as well that I couldn't place, perhaps coming from the flavor I couldn't place. Hmmm...

There was an interesting story about the taxis here in Cairo.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/942/eg4.htm
I really hope they can replace them. That's one thing that I'm sure will make a big difference to the air quality here.
I forgot that when walking on the street here, you inhale so much junk from the cars on the road. Gross.
You would think people would be more concerned about the air quality here, but I don't see it. Maybe it's just a matter of most direct need being met first. The "it's not hurting me now, why should I worry about it when I have a family to feed, etc" type of thinking, since it costs money to make improvements, etc.

Alright, I guess that's enough miscellany for now.
I have some assorted pictures to post, maybe I'll do that tomorrow. Though there's nothing that exciting. Mostly food related.