You would have thought that I had enough of the Middle East with already having visited Qatar twice over the last year. Nope, the first two trips weren't enough so I recently made my third venture across the Atlantic to the sands of Cairo, Egypt. Despite my playful reluctance to place my body in a plane and propel myself across the seas again, I was eager to visit a city that I had only seen through television and history books. The trip itself was for business and trust me, three days of pure recruiting can take it's toll. Luckily for us, we had a colleague that was joining us who had lived in Cairo for a period of time and was able to facilitate our tourist-like behavior as we visited historical landmarks like the pyramids.

As far back as I can remember, I don't recall anyone orchestrating a surprise birthday party for me. Heck, I can't even remember the last time I actually went out on my birthday. Sure, I'd go out for other people's birthday, but I always stayed under the radar when it came to my own. Well, that all changed about a week ago. A number of my friends secretly devised a master plan and succeeded in pulling a fast one on me despite my belief that I knew about it the whole time. Normally, I would be posting this as a story in my "yet to be developed" story section of the site, but until then, this blog will have to suffice.

It seems as though the themes this year are weddings and departures. Several of my friends have walked down the isle and another two have decided to depart this fine city of Pittsburgh for warmer, but hemispherically different locations. With Tim in Ghana, it was time for yet another going away party last Friday. One of our good friends, Craig, decided it was time for him to head west to Sunnyvale, California. As a point of reference, he is the graphically decorated and sophistically stylish man on the right in the picture to your left. I sure hope that our Steel City evangelist, Sienna Miller, had nothing to do with his decision to join the "govinator" in California.

Pop the cork on the bottle of Korbel champagne, raise your glasses in the air, and drink up because we are not only celebrating the new year, but also a brand new version of the website. That's right, the site is back in full force unleashing all types of new features for your eyes to browse. Packed full of aesthetically pleasing graphics and a fair share of Web 2.0 functionality, I hope you have Javascript turned on because you are going to need it. You might be wondering where we've been for a little over a year.

Wow, I bet the title of this blog is probably the last thing you'd expect from me. What can I say, I'm not much of an active traveler, but get my fair share of USAir miles every once in a while, usually in mass amounts. Where am I this time? Qatar, specifically, Doha.