Looking back at January 2010

If January is anything to go by this is going to be a great year. We had a couple of extra jobs done on the second floor one of which was a sun shade on the roof so now we are finally free of workmen. Mum and Dad were not coming back to Luxor until the end of the year but like so many, they are fed up with the UK weather so we have booked them a flight and it is great that they will be here in just over 2 weeks on the 17th.

January Pictures Click on any picture below to see a larger image or CLICK HERE to take the tour.

We haven't had time to clean the upstairs yet as it was a mammoth enough task to move all the AWOL bits up there and an even bigger task getting downstairs back to normal as though we tried to keep up with the dust and dirt created by the builders we just couldn't so everything needed a deep, deep clean. Only in the last few days have we been able to start on the front downstairs but everything is coming along very nicely.

Do see the AWOL web site for the story of setting up the industrial sewing machine which is a whole newsletter on its own. And just to think everything has to be moved again when the AWOL Medical Centre is built.

Electricity has been a problem again this month but for very different reasons to those of last month. This time it was a storm. We had welders on the roof making the frame of our canopy and all around there was lightening and dark clouds but right over us was blue sky. They finished at dusk and less than an hour later we had rain and the entire family huddled on the living room carpet and that is where they stayed all night. It was a wet and windy evening and of course the electric went off for the night and all the next day. When it did come back there wasn't enough power to run more than a light bulb. It was more off than on for the next few days which really held us up as we couldn't even work on the web site as the laptop battery died a long while ago and the new laptop was not set up. The weather was much worse in Aswan, to the south of Luxor, causing many traditional mud brick houses to be destroyed.

It has been a positive and happy month for us but also a somewhat difficult month time-wise as what with setting up the sewing machine, our frequent loss of electricity and changing to our new Windows 7 laptop free time has been at a minimum but don't start me on Windows 7 ... whoops too late ... talk about making things difficult. Windows 7 would not work most of our programs without massive downloads and worst of all does not show Photoshop thumbnails so there are hundreds of files that we have to open to see what they are. This is a massive step backwards and it is not as if Microsoft didn't know Photoshop existed but after several hours we found a work around so now thumbnails show up but again several hours lost. Just transferring files, fonts and programs let alone getting used to the new operating system has also been a great drag on our time but we both feel that it is important that we keep up with progress and actually Windows 7 doesn't seem to have too many gimmicks and there are many helpful features.

Though not strong football supporters we have enjoyed following Egypt's progress in the Africa Cup and it has led to some great yet noisy times at our usual coffee shop with our Egyptian friends. We are off down there soon as tonight at 9 p.m. Egypt are in the semi-final so it should be another interesting evening.

Pauline and Graham XX and our zoo xxxxxx

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