July 21, 2003
Some stains are instant, some take a long time
The kind I was doing took a long time. Dispite having been laid off last week, John still has some work for me before I go home. I spent 11 hours today north of Hixon staining a three story deck. It was big. The square footage of this deck exceeds the square footage of the house of my current residence.
Interestingly enough, the homeowner is originally Iranian, and we chatted for a bit about recent developments in regional politics. He is understandably thrilled at the removal of Saddam, and expressed great hope at the recent developments in his native country (read Andrew Sullivan for continuing coverage). He is a lead engineer of some sort at the concrete plant I can see across the valley from my house. It was kind of neat to meet a person born in the middle east who has made it so well here.
Rye-Dawg. Cool post. I'm interested in hearing more about what the Iranian had to say.
but dude...that title is creepy....
Yeah, it was supposed to be creepy. I was and still am really tired.
I'd better keep the name private for ethical reasons, but he's been in the US for 32 years - this time. He was here for 6 or 8 a few years before he settled here permanently. That would set his coming to the US for good some 6 or 7 years before the 1979 revolution which resulted in Iran's current Islamofascist dictatorship. He's UCLA educated, and has lived in Chattanooga for 20 years. His primarly language is Persian, his English is fairly heavily accented and occasionally vocabulary takes a minute, and he says that he knows only a smattering of Arabic. I did not inquire as to his religious beliefs.
Basically, you now know what I know. We chatted for about 15 minutes while John and I were busting out the deck, and there didn't seem time for more. The one comment he made is that he thinks the casulty rate is becoming high enough to warrant a general US withdrawl, but that's about it: strongly in favor of US intervention, but a bit worried about continued presence. He also said he wants to back to Iran someday - I got the impression just to visit, but I could be wrong - and is thus very excited about the current developments.
Posted by: ryan at July 22, 2003 12:16 AM