Posts: 4051
From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2009 08:00 AM            

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And a bit like a young Sophia Loren!

Compare to you!

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Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

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From: Bay Area, CA
Registered: May 2009

posted January 06, 2009 04:31 PM            

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LEXX! I LOVE those cat quotes, thank you

You're so lucky to have 3 kitties...I wish I could have a bunch of them to live with me because I just love them
Luckily, my parents have 11 cats and I'm in Florida right now, between travels, so I get to enjoy all these wonderful kitties
I'm going to have to post a bunch of photos of them because they are all completely unique characters

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From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 06, 2009 08:23 PM            

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You are beautiful!
Your ex must have seen that same classic beauty I can see in your pictures!
Glad you loved the cat quotes!
Yes please post your kitty pictures!
I need to get some posted on my blog thread too!
Yes, they are all so unique in their personalities!
I saw your post about your date being 15 years younger.
My husband is 15 years younger than myself.
Enjoy!

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Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

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posted January 09, 2009 08:44 PM            

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MVM, You are so beautiful. Had to laugh at the horns!! I'm usually able to keep mine hidden, LOL!

15 years younger!!!!And so handsome.Must be great to be you.

Since this is your "getting to know you" thread, how about answering some questions?
[I've read you were from Egypt. When I was little I wanted to be an Egyptologist.]

Have you ever been to the pyramids?

Or on the Nile?

Or the Temples of Karnak?

And Egyptian jewlery is so beautiful, do they sell imitations of the ancient stuff at the markets?

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Posts: 3480
From: Bay Area, CA
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posted January 11, 2009 07:32 AM            

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Good girl, thank you

Some answers to your questions:
Yes, I've been to the pyramids. My great-uncle was an architect and built his English wife a villa overlooking them. I spent a lot of time there as a child. My grandmother took me inside the pyramids when I was very little
Silence so loud, it makes you think of death, and the very beginning of life simulteneously.
Haven't been to the Temples of Karnak. It's quite a ways from Cairo. I think it's in Luxor or Aswan, which is quite far. But I do want to go.
Yes, I've been to the Nile. It cuts through Cairo. It's also filthy in that area LOL. Not so much in Aswan though. I was just in Cairo for 9 months, and while I was there I had a place a couple of blocks off the Nile. Nice flat, overlooked the gardens of the British Council. I had a lovely rooftop garden and used to sit up there with my laptop, lol. There was a hammock and I watched the sunrise off the Nile, and heard lions roaring at night...lived right next to a circus
I had a lot of photos from my other trip from Cairo, but they were in my PC, which my ex-husband dropped kinda sorta accidentally-on-purpose (typical passive-aggressive behavior on his part...I lost a lot of files. Oh well. He'll get his, in time, of that I am sure )

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posted January 11, 2009 07:39 AM            

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This is at Fayoom, a quiet resort/farm area about two hours out of Cairo. I went with my father for the day:

This is at the Great Pyramids, at the newly uncovered workers' tombs:

This is at the Red Sea, at a resort about an hour away from Cairo. Amazing thing, Cairo. It's a hell hole, but drive an hour out, and this is what you get:

I always feel like I look like I am peeing in that photo. I'm not! LOL. I'm looking at a crab!

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posted January 11, 2009 07:45 AM            

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Sakkara Step Pyramid, overlooking trees with ripening dates:

Me with my father on the Red Sea. We hadn't seen each other in 23 years until that trip :

This is in Annatter, a farmers town about 2 hours out of Cairo, right on the Nile. We were sitting at a restaurant outdoors and having traditional Egyptian *fresh* farmers food right as the sun was setting:

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From: Still out looking for Schr�dinger's cat.........& LEXIGRAMMING... is my Passion!
Registered: Apr 2009

posted January 11, 2009 03:38 PM            

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Wonderful pictures!
If it is too personal, no need to answer.
However why had it been 23 years since seeing your Dad?
Great picture of you two!

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Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

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posted January 11, 2009 08:17 PM            

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Those photographs are amazing. The 'sea' near me is murky brown

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posted January 11, 2009 08:29 PM            

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MVM:

Those pictures make me ache. Egypt is ssoooo beautiful.Your thread makes me want to run away and have an Egytian adventure (I also happen to find Egyptian men handsome, with their dark looks).

I used to spend hours looking through books on Egypt.
Is there a native costume of Egypt that women wear?

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From: Bay Area, CA
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posted January 14, 2009 08:27 AM            

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Thank you guys

Lexx, well...Many reasons why I didn't see my father for 23 years. I was taken from Cairo at an early age and raised in Kuwait by my mother and grandmother, and then moved to the UK and then the US when she'd remarried.
My mother and father divorced when I was very young.

Partially my mother didn't want to share me with anyone really and had a weird dislike for Egypt, partially it was also due to his being kind of irresponsible.
Partially I was scared to go back to Cairo because I didn't feel Egyptian enough. And yet I never felt 'American' enough either (whatever THAT means LOL). And whenever I tried to contact him, he was not very good about staying in contact. So I wasn't really sure. It was just one of those endless mysteries which only got cleared up about a year ago for me when I decided to live in Egypt for a year.
Seeing my father after 23 years was strange, but we always had a weird element of friendship, being able to laugh together like old friends. It's odd. I don't really look at him as a father figure. More like a flaky friend He's a lovely man, very pure of heart, but also really, really irresponsible I had to make peace with that when I was out in Cairo. We re-established a 'friendship' , and had a lot in common (jewelery, hiking, fishing, love of the sea and ocean, and just the same sense of humor)... and for that I am truly grateful. It feels like my conscience is cleaner in a way now that we aren't estranged, even though we really don't have contact or a conventional father-daughter relationship.

I'm going to try and post some old family pics of my grandmother who was my biggest influence. I think the only reason I am not so messed up in the head (well, not entirely anyway) is because I had a very strong and competent caregiver who was able to stand in for mother and father for me when I was growing up. She was a very solid, remarkable woman

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posted January 14, 2009 08:34 AM            

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Good girl...stay away from Egyptian men LOL. They are a complete nightmare. It's true that they are complete dolls and I have some very good, kind Egyptian male friends who I met while in Cairo. But they can be, at heart, truly sexist pigs with their women. Not their female friends though. Very strange dichotomy, I might add O.o

Traditional Egyptian gear? Hmm. I would say belly-dancing. That is very old school Egyptian stuff. But for a long time Egypt was and is to an extent, westernized. Now the traditional Egyptian clothing is Italian designer fashions
Malls are all the rage. I can understand that a country wants to take on some of the western concepts, but why, of all things, THE MALL? LOL.

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Posts: 6
From: somerset UK
Registered: Jun 2009

posted January 14, 2009 03:52 PM            

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Hey there VirgoMask! Love the photos, by the way, you are a very beautiful and striking lady. As to the homeopathy - you gotta get into this - it is 'energy' medicine and all the philosophy behind it ties in so perfectly with any sort of spiritual development/understanding. It also works - but it does this naturally by bringing the body back into alignment/balance. Look, I could talk about it for hours, suffice to say HI! and if you do want to study have a gander at the School of Homeopathy, Devon, who do a brill correspondance course with tutors in America etc. You will find it deeply rewarding x

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Out of clutter find simplicity.

From dischord find harmony.

In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.

- Albert Einstein

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posted January 14, 2009 07:13 PM            

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I've always wanted to take a belly dancing class. Do you belly dance?

Are both your parents full Egyptian?

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posted January 15, 2009 08:56 AM            

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Mezzoelf1, you are very kind, thank you
I am interested in homeopathic healing, and I'm really thinking of studying it eventually...so thanks for that reference. I'll have to look more into it, and it's good to have a reference of a good place to start, because it seems like the search would be overwhelming !!

Good Girl...any self-respecting Egyptian woman knows how to belly-dance, it's mandatory
Women of all ages, sizes, and class know how to shake their hips, it's really pretty cool when you see an unashamed 75 year-old woman going to town at a family gathering...brilliant!!

My mother is full Egyptian, and my father is Persian(his father) and Turkish (his mother). He was born in Cairo though.

I just wanted to add some photos of my beloved grandmother, my mother's mother. The most amazing woman who I had the honor of being raised by:

EDIT: damn, that's just too big a photo. It's eating my face

She's in the front here, before she took a plane ride that changed her life and wrote a book about it:

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posted January 15, 2009 08:57 AM            

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Delete

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posted January 15, 2009 10:25 AM            

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She's beautiful.

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posted January 15, 2009 12:27 PM              

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You have incredible bone structure.

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posted January 15, 2009 09:35 PM            

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Fist
Thank you.

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posted January 21, 2009 02:08 AM            

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%

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posted January 24, 2009 03:09 AM            

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Love your posts MVM. Love the range and depth of your experience and your insights. Intelligent. Witty. Funny. Articulate. You really have, and bring, a lot of class.

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From: The Asylum, NC
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posted January 24, 2009 09:40 AM            

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WOW, the Red Sea water looks beautiful. It's absolutely pristine!

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posted January 24, 2009 12:45 PM            

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.

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posted March 05, 2009 08:12 PM              

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You're gorgeous, and I have to agree you look a lot like Sophia Loren. Great to hear of all of your travels! I hope you had a wonderful time!

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posted March 07, 2009 03:23 PM            

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Hi

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