Contraband

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:

April 15, 1999

At dusk on Thursday, the call to prayer began. It's wailing chant permeated into my hotel room, declaring the end of the week and the start of another Muslim Sabbath in the Kingdom.

Alone on the bed, I sat tucked into the corner of my dorm-like room, and waited. It felt respectful, although I didn’t know when the prayer would end.

Forty-five minutes passed and that seemed good enough. I went to the window and closed the curtains, and then turned to the desk built into the wall and started my laptop. It whirred as it awakened, starting very slowly. I opened a drawer in the desk and took out a small candle. It wasn’t the correct candle for the prayer, but it didn’t much matter. I was a novice anyway, an aspiring convert to Judaism.

Then I got up and crossed the room, turned off all the lights except a small desk lamp. That and the glow from the computer screen helped me find my way back. Sitting in front of the computer I double-clicked the illicit document.

I started to read softly, not really afraid, but aware that what I was doing was illegal.

“Yeetgadal v' yeetkadash sh'mey rabbah”

(Read the rest of the story by clicking here.)

Wafting in from the Streets of San Francisco

I can hear the theme from The Godfather from a solo saxophone is coming in through the window of my hotel room . It's rare that you can open a window in a hotel, or any window above the 2nd floor.

"Extra" or the "Insider"? I can't decide and I don't know the number for the channels so I scroll forward through the channels until I get one or the other, re-starting the rotation at each commercial interruption.

USA Today and an empty wrapper from peanut M&M's litter the empty side of my king size bed. I'm working my way through a half bottle of Clos du Bois merlot from the mini-bar.

Billy Bush is a douche.

Who is playing that music? Now it's "Memories" from Cats. No. Wait. It's the theme from the Godfather again. Or something like that.

Will Britney Spears get nominated for an Emmy? Stay tuned.

3 Years Later

I met my husband Mark three years ago yesterday - June 7, 2005.

"I can't believe you remembered!"

Outlook remembers for me and reminds every year, 2 days in advance.

"You pushed me up against a dirty bathroom wall at The Phoenix!" He never leaves out "dirty" when he retells it.

"You liked it." That's my part when telling that anecdote.

I gave him his present, wrapped up in plain brown paper.

He laughed at it, like the laughing came from his toes out the top of his head.

"I love it!" He held it up - a DVD - and read out loud the title: "Paging Dr. Finger. It's exactly what I wanted."

I came up behind him as we looked at the cover.

"Do you think that's real?" I asked.

He scrutinized the photo for a moment. "Maybe. But he's a small guy."