Long Time Gone

It's been six months since my last blog post. Since then, I've finished my assignment in Russia, and we're back in the U.S. for a year while I study Farsi (Persian) for my next assignment in Dubai starting next summer.

I hadn't been gaming much. The last month in Moscow I was traveling on my farewell tour, incluging one last trip to Chechnya and the North Caucasus where I said farewell to a few of the best people I've ever known. In true Russian fashion, we had to have one last toast, which actually meant about 12 shots apiece. It was a long night and a rough flight back to Moscow the next day.

We left Moscow July 18 and came back to spend a few days with the in-laws in New Jersey and then off to Florida for three weeks to see my family and get some R&R that we all needed. We needed it even more after we were rear-ended in our new, gently used car that we had just bought about two hours into the drive to Florida. Fortunately it only scuffed up the bumper cover, but it scared us pretty good. A kid behind us dropped his toll money and bent down to pick it while trying to merge onto the Jersey Turnpike. He was pretty shaken up about it. Then we spent about an hour on the shoulder of the road waiting for the trooper to write the report. We were delayed long enough to hit Baltimore and Washington in time for rush hour, so in all we spent about 10 hours on the road before we stopped for the night. Mercifully, the rest of the trip was uneventful, other than the cat jumping into my lap at one point.

In September, we started our "unique arrangement" where I am staying in Washington during week and Mrs. Murid and the little Murids are staying in New Jersey with her parents, and then I commute on the weekends. It's raised a lot of eyebrows, but it seems to be working. I get plenty of study time (and at my age, I need all the study time I can get plus I can get in some gaming since I don't have to share the TV), Mrs. M gets to be a stay-at-home mom, and the children go to a good school and get to know their extended family.

So far, it's working about as well as we had hoped, other than my 360 came up with the RROD a week before Christmas. It went back to MS on December 19 and of course they have no idea when they might get it back to me but they've elevated it to a supervisor, not that I'm expecting anything . I'm not sure I want it after reading the rants from others on 2O2P and elsewhere about replacement boxes that self-destruct within a month. If nothing else, I hope they return to the box I sent them because there wasn't a mark on it. I even hand carried it on the flight back from Moscow. So much for all my gaming plans for a while. I'm stuck staring at the cases for Halo, CoD4, and the unopened Bioshock that I've had for about two months now.

So for now, it's sit and wait and watch the NFL and maybe catch up on my blogging.