The Adventures of Flat Stanley

One of the other reasons I have been too busy to blog, I had a higher purpose, an assignment! A very important assignment for a very important person.

The Assignment: As part of their school work, the kids in my niece's class read a funny book called "Flat Stanley" by Jeff Brown. The book is about a young boy named Stanley who is accidentally squished "as flat as a pancake" when a bulletin board falls on him. The story goes on to tell how Stanley discovers some real advantages to being flat. He can slide under doors, go down into sidewalk grates and even fold himself up small enough to fit into an envelope and be mailed to California for an exciting vacation.

For my assignment, I was asked to "host" Flat Stanley in my city and he also came along on all my other travels. He then gets sent back to the class to tell them of the exiciting things he saw or did while he was away. Flat Stanley is now getting ready to report back to the class with a short movie about his adventures:



(Please note that this is pretty much my first venture into the world of multi-media so all you movie critics, go easy! It took eons to produce even this much ... technical difficulties, learning a new software, running out of memory, a non-existent DVD-burner and a movie camera with an obscure format that is not compatible with anything it seems! If I had another 8 or 9 months, I could do something *really* good! But maybe my British colleague has a point when he talks about "polishing a turd".)

The Case of the Imaginary Blankets

So nearly a month has gone by and no posts ... shame on me! There has been a lot happening in the last few weeks, where to find the time?

I moved out of my apartment in International City which went fairly smoothly. About a week before I left, the washing machine handle broke so that will cost me a little over a thousand dirhams to replace. Sucks but oh well. At least I am paying for an actual physical washing machine and not a figment of the slum-lord's wife's imagination.

A snippet of a conversation from the move-out inspection:

SL's Wife: Where are the linens? (since the apartment was partially furnished, there were some things of the land-lord's there, most of which I didn't actually use.)

Me: What linens? (remembering) Oh, the pillows! They are in the closet. (goes to the closet, opens door, points to pillows on upper shelf)

SL's Wife: Where are the blankets?

Me: Blankets? There were no blankets.

SL's Wife: There were blankets, you have taken them!

Me: Uh there were no blankets. Were they on the list? (pulls out file folder with lease with list of all items present at move-in inspection ... signed by SL himself).

SL: (interject quickly) Oh they weren't on the list.

Me: (puts away the file folder) There were no blankets (weren't on the list my ass!)

SL's Wife: (muttering under her breath) You have taken the blankets.