Picture Time

Some of these are from our October house hunting trip and some from the past weekend. The new house is somewhere behind that TV tower, on the other side of the hill. The boulevard wraps around the Caspian and is a favorite place for people and families to hang out on a nice day, there are some teahouses and amusement park rides for the kids.....lots of places for a person to sit and watch the passing parade. I did see people fishing from the pier that day. I hope it was for recreational purposes only.


This is not a one way street. Some of the one way streets dead end, so you have to back out if you can't find a spot to park. The parking is really tight but this is actually pretty orderly for Baku. I'm glad we have the Land Cruiser, it helps get over those higher curbs. Luckily there is often someone right there to help you back out or stand saving a spot for you.....for a small donation.


Smoggy sunrise over the Caspian. The building crane is the state bird of Baku. There is massive construction going on all over the city....lots of skyscrapers.

But there is also preservation and reclamation of beautiful architecture, like this.


The building below was cocooned in a shroud when we were here in October. Now, its rejuventation is almost complete and it looks like this.


Looking down the pedestrian part of Nizami.


Where stall after stall, they sell these dolls, bagged in plastic as protection from city dirt and grime.


The Boulevard from the Park Inn window.


There are a gazillion stray cats here.


And just like everywhere else, a meal through a window is extremely popular.

A Person's Gotta Eat

Whoever came up with that March wind thing must have been from Baku. Thank God Kenai isn’t a Yorkie or he’d be in Turkey right now without his natural Lassie abilities to find his way home.

That wicked wind started howling in the wee hours of Friday morning and persisted all day. The rickety piece of board that’s filling in for the gate-to-be at the end of the wall blew down again, so the family of dogs living in the house behind that wall can drop by for a visit whenever they want. I suppose I should correct that statement, they don’t actually live IN the house. In fact, I’d be surprised if they’ve ever actually seen the inside of it, let alone spent a night there. It’s a mother and two pups of indeterminate breed. The Mama likes to bark…..a lot....and she doesn't seem all that personable when she sticks her nose around the side of the board to bark at Kenai. And Kenai, despite his mild mannered exterior isn't one to back down from a challenge....at all. He takes all comers. Unfortunately, he has no credit cards or medical insurance....or vet for that matter.

They seem kind of nice and docile here, lazing in the sun but buddy up there wouldn't be happy unless he stirred up some trouble.

They'll be moving when the house is finished and the builder moves out to make way for a tenant….Ali said he heard it was someone from an embassy. Please let them have a cat.

If I look out the windows on the other side of the house, I can see a German Shepherd who’s penned up in what looks to be some kind of concrete and wrought iron guard house all day. John says he’s let out at night. So, I know not to go looking for sugar over there in the evening….just in case the urge to bake something ever comes back. I don’t want to look out of the windows on that side of the house.

I’ve discovered a little corner store tucked away at the end of the street. This is my street...looking west in the opposite direction of the little store.

Some place to go! Down and back in less than 5 minutes, now that’s convenience. There’s a Citimart (aka. grocery store especially for expats) just as you turn off the paved road into our “dwelling area” but the chances of me walking anywhere to pay $9.00 for a dusty bag of Tostitos is slim. I’ll wait till Ali can drive me. I don’t think I’d be comfortable walking alone up the street with something so valuable swinging in a flimsy plastic bag from my arm.

This is the courtyard behind the wall of our house. The houses with the mud gray color are still under construction. It's just like Katy out here with all the new homes going up. These ones go WAY up.

Today we went back to Ramstore. Now this Ramstore is nothing like the brand new, modern, flagship Ramstore located in Moscow that I discovered online. If I think back to 30 years ago and place myself in small town in Maine, I could probably come up with an approximation of my Ramstore. I love its old fashioned funkiness and its candy lady who makes Turkish Delight from a carousel near the bakery…..just like we have sushi makers in Kroger. I first went to Ramstore on Monday to buy a few groceries…..first order of business in a new city, locate food sources. Ali was with me and served as interpreter at the bakery….if he hadn’t been there I would have come home with one kilo of what I had chosen to buy since I could hold up my index finger and say “kilo.” A quarter kilo is as yet beyond my limited, inadequate, non-existent Azeri language skills.

The bakery counter at the back of the store was piled high with little pastries that looked so good I was glad my Weight Watchers Points Finder and bathroom scale are still sitting on the dock in Houston. Yes, I brought a few home. It’s honestly remarkable how much retail space is dedicated to sweets in every food shop I’ve been to in Baku. Meat departments are teeny tiny but the bon bons are everywhere! I actually bought meat. I bought…..cow. Given the choice was “sheep or cow”……I think I did the right thing. My freezer now contains one half kilo of ground cow and one half kilo of stewing cow. And in my wallet I have a Ramstore card….so I can get points and the “endirim.” My first word in Azeri from back in October, it means “discount.” Tomorrow night we are going to have spaghetti with cow sauce for supper.

After the Ramstore shopping was done, we headed next door to McDonalds where we got sundaes and cappacinos at McDrav…….or the drive-thru. I still had a few things remaining on my list…..a dish drainer, a waste basket, and a pizza pan. We drove to a store that was supposed to have “everything for the house”……kind of like Walmart…..except unlike Walmart there was no parking lot and the entrance was down a flight of stairs off the street. Also unlike Walmart you aren’t allowed to go poking around the stacks for the things that you need. An official stack poker, who knows what they’re doing, will come along and assist you with your purchases….a personal shopper of sorts. I found out all of this after being abandoned by John and Ali who’d gone off somewhere to find a hole in the wall money dispenser…..because we’d need cash to pay for the things on my list. With my list in hand I was browsing the shelves and got a little too close. Luckily some young kid, who worked there, must have been paying attention in English class because he was able to tell me, in a most apologetic way, that handling the merchandise unsupervised wasn’t the way it was done….which really is kind of funny since I saw people at Ramstore pick up the pastries in their hands, take a little sniff and put them back. Even, Ali did that the first time we went to the grocery together and I asked him what was in those little pastries up on top of the counter. 

I learned another important fact of living in Baku today. Parking on the sidewalk is definitely doable, but sometimes it can be tough to get your door open to get back in the car when there is so much pedestrian traffic getting in the way. One good thing, though, is you don't have that should I or shouldn't I dilemma about returning the cart to the cart corral.

"Welcome to Baku, Lassie"

It took us seven months to get here but now it’s done. I’ve unpacked our six suitcases and figured out how the shower works in my bathroom. That’s pretty settled, I think. Having stayed in so many different hotels over the past five years had to give me an edge in conquering the shower in less than a day.

John got back to Houston from Baku on the 22^nd and since I hadn’t seen him for almost two months, I was nice and in a good mood for as many days. Then the very ugly nasty bitch in me reared her ugly head and generally freaked out over every thing…..big or little. I guess I had some issues to work out before I got here and it feels good to have all that done and over. No one died and the bruises are healing okay. Since we’ve moved umpteen times in the past, I believe John recognizes the pattern of behavior, gives me some room, and puts all sharp objects out of sight. But anyway…….

That’s done and I’m here in Baku, happily being a vegetable. I don’t think I have ever been so exhausted in my life…..could I really be getting too old for this? Our flight from Houston left at 4 PM on Saturday. This time we had a window and an aisle seat, so I got my window and a place to rest my head, and John got his aisle and a place to stretch his long legs. The not-so-good-this-is-really -their last chance- travel agent had us booked in two seats in the center section of the Air Bus 340-600 and I wasn’t about to sit squished in a middle seat for the 10 hours it was going to take to get to Frankfurt nd the four additional ones to Baku…..again. I had bugged John to confirm where our seats were for about a week to no avail, so I managed to find out by calling Lufthansa directly. I was told we were sitting in the same row but on opposite sides of the aisle. Um….okay….but not. I changed them to seats A & C. I found out later that it was John who had also called Lufthansa, a few hours before I had, and secured us those across the aisle seats. 

For some reason the trip didn’t seem as long as it did in October, when we came over here to check the place out. Neither one of us slept much. I read my book, drank a fair bit of free wine, and thought about Kenai down in the hold….no doubt all stretched out in his first class crate having a nice snooze. I can’t believe what a gem he was at Bush. I was on the check in line while John put the crate together in front of the Lufthansa counter. He had Kenai on his leash and that dog was totally unconcerned with all of the people milling about and seemed completely nonplussed about the fact that he was going in to that crate when the last clip was clipped closed. When we put him in the crate….which is big enough for him to stand, turn around and lay full out in….. he had the good manners not to whine in front of all the other passengers who were going to be squished into restrictive seats and pay a whole lot more for the privilege. Once he was crated, and our luggage checked in, we had to wheel him down to the end of the terminal where they security screen oversize bags, which includes live animals. I wish I had a picture of Kenai getting his TSA pat down…seriously. It was too cute. I don’t think he thought so but it was cute nonetheless.

We waved goodbye to him at the conveyor belt and the TSA guy walked back with him to make sure he got to the right place. That was one of the hardest parts, letting him go like that. It was going to be such a long trip and he’d only flown once before and not nearly that far. No drugs or nothing…..not even free wine.

The best kinds of trips are uneventful and so Houston to Baku with the 5 hour stop in Frankfurt was the best kind of trip. I love Lufthansa. Getting through immigration in Baku was pretty smooth, just long..... there was a gal arriving for an embassy job, or something, who thought that since the embassy was picking up the tab for her visa that it should have been prepaid. At least that's what I gathered from six places back in the line up. It seemed like the immigration guys had no idea what the hell she was talking about. It took them quite a while to sort it all out and I dozed off in the queue, mesmerized by the sight of my luggage going round and round and round on the baggage carousel, so I have no idea how it was all resolved in the end. But I was just about ready to cough up the money for her. The visa fee for Americans is $135, Brits $100, and everyone else (including us Canadians) $65US. Between us John and I only came up with $58 bucks…..we had enough manat to cover my visa but all of the signs said US dollars. Surely, they’d take manat since it is the local currency, and they did (grudgingly) but at par with the US dollar…..and the manat is worth more.

With visa in hand, it was off to find out where to collect Kenai. I had envisioned him sitting, in his blue Cadillac of crates somewhere on the tarmac but he was parked right next to the baggage carousel keeping watch over our six pieces of luggage….one of which contained a ten pound bag of IAMS Active Maturity and a large box of Milk Bones. John went off to find a couple of carts and I began to retrieve our bags. A man in a uniform came over and I thought he might be the customs inspector to check out the dog’s Health and Vaccination Certificates but he wasn’t. He looked into the crate and when I told him that Kenai was with me, he told me that he was looking for another dog who was supposed to be on the flight going out and couldn’t be found. Uh oh!

Importing Kenai turned out to be a breeze. I had been so worried that we hadn’t done something right or had forgotten something but everything went amazingly easy. I offered his documents and Kenai was waved through with a “Welcome to Baku, Lassie.”

Ali, and his brother Mahmoot, were waiting to pick us up, and we were off to the big yellow house another 40 minutes away. I couldn’t wait to see the place now that it was finished and furnished. "IKEA on steroids," is what Jill said when I showed her the pictures John sent in December. It looks better in person, a lot better….and not so small. I think the size of the rooms dwarfs the furniture a bit.....but it’s definitely normal sized and so is the fridge, thank God. It’s surprisingly quite normal, it’s tall and thin but it’s certainly big enough. So is this blog. I’ll save the room by room for later…HA! For the past few days I’ve been discovering the quirks that John hadn’t noticed in the 2 months he was in here before me, including the fact that the gas to the stove isn’t hooked up. He forgot to order the cable TV, so I can get some shows in English via the BBC and wouldn't you know it, ESPN. There's also the little matter of some deadbolts on the doors that don’t open from the inside. I'll save that one for later.

Sally Moves On

If scroll down to my previous post you'll notice the great big typo I made when I entered the date. Yep! It's right there is black and white. August 30, 2006. Has to be some kind of typo. No way has it been that long! No way. Okay....maybe it's been almost that long. But anyway...I'll not let the past get in the way of the future, what’s done is done and what isn’t done, isn’t done and never will be.

I've been gone a long time and where I went there is no place to drive BUT I'm not allowed to drive anyway. And, no....it doesn’t have anything to do with that speeding ticket I got just outside Dallas in December. The company said so. Hmmm….not the “company” company, the company where John works. At the beginning of the week Sally, and company, took up residence in Azerbaijan and I promise myself that I will diligently and faithfully write something every day (or a reasonable facsimile thereof)….

There won’t be a timeline exactly. I never drove too many places in a perfectly straight line but I promise to proof read so things at least make sense. Pinky swear.

So, here we go….and to think after last summer driving all over California with one in a rental car….all Sal wanted for Christmas was GPS. There aren’t all that many places to go to from here by car but there is a McDonald’s Drive Thru (or McDrav as it’s known in these parts)

.....and I don’t know how to get to it from here, in the big yellow house. No need to scratch that Garmin off the list just yet.

Okay, that will do for a transition from the old life to the new.

Welcome to Sally of Azerbaijan!

I remain, your servant….etc. etc. etc.

Remember Me?

Gasp!! It’s been more than two months! I really didn’t abandon the place, really I didn’t. But good grief! By the looks of things in here I should have sent the advance team in to get rid of the cobwebs and make sure there are no spiders hanging around under the dustcovers.

I guess I should start with the Class A, best darn excuses for not blogging all summer. Well, first of all spell check doesn’t like the word blog or blogging. So NOT blogging is a good way to avoid those aggravating red squiggly lines under your words. Another good reason is to have so many ideas of things to write about that it all becomes too overwhelming and going back down to the beach for the afternoon seems to lessen that stress of figuring all that out. Beyond that, I think that the sheer overwhelming technical aspects of it all scare me to death……all those tags and links and blog rolls and stuff. And darn it there is one of those red squiggly lines again.

My friends have been encouraging. Just get in there and write something…forget the technical things. “Stick your toe in. No great white shark is going to come along and make a canape out of it.” So here I come again (heh!) But I’ll be counting all my fingers and toes when I get out of the pool.

To clear up the terrible clog of things I wanted to write about….here are the past two months in the Readers’ Digest version.

Flew to Denmark. Drove to Stockholm. Met some nice Australian folks in Copenhagen. Flights were not too bad considering. New camera worked great. Landed Halifax on 07/06. Welcome home! Son still not working. Cut him off. Daughter working. Makes her feet hurt. Get out teeny tiny violins.

Daughter’s boyfriend’s mother gets stuck in Lebanon. Takes ten days to get evacuated via cruise ship. Daughter’s boyfriend broke up with daughter last week. But that’s okay. Daughter has new car and a new apartment.....lucky kid. Poor son, still not working and still cut off. Had lots of fun buying things for daughter’s apartment…..just because……shopping is fun?

*Takes a breath here*

Husband’s parents celebrate 50th anniversary. Have big party. Put up lots of lovely decorations. Son showed up in some sort of unusual get up. Hmmm. That’s all I better say about that. A good time was had by all. Hallelujah! Almost had to sit through another family portrait session. Got out of Dodge in the nick of time. Back to Texas. Sure is hot! House shopping. Husband went to India. He brought back lovely bling and pashminas. Spell check doesn’t like bling…….but Sally likes bling very much! How much house do two people need? Decisions. Decisions.

And that’s all that’s been going on around here. The slate is clean. I can start all over nice and fresh because there is so much coming in the next few months.

I’ll be hauling a load of unused furniture to Halifax next month for that aforementioned apartment and daughter’s 21st birthday. (I’m such a good mom.) Next week I’m going to sit down and make this all nice and up to date on the technical side. Add links and all those good things. I’m glad I finally ventured back in and found that the place is still just the way I left it.
Come to think of it. Maybe it would be a shame to mess it up again…

I tossed the vacation photos in a pile here.

But I’ll hang these few on the walls for the time being.

Part of a castle.

Part of A Carnival Ride

Party Animals

Boats in Digby

Annapolis Valley

Peggy’s Cove

Only the most photographed lighthouse in the world, so what’s another shot of it? 

Too bad it didn’t move or something.

Oh, right I almost forgot. I’m supposed to put this one up or else…..

One of these days I’m going to tell that dog to bite me.

Road Buzz

In order to get all of his stuff into his smaller suitcase, we had to deflate the soccer ball a little. I insisted that the bag be zipped and locked before I agreed to even put it in the car. For some reason he hasn't figured out, after all these years and trips together, that I can't kick the ball and pass transport trucks at the same time. Getting the ball away from him long enough to make it transportable wasn't easy. I think he remembers that day a long time ago when he went to sleep and woke up missing a pair of balls. Those were his favourite ones, too.

Of course, it was all my fault and am not, now, to be completely trusted.

In addition to one partially inflated soccer ball, he packed one forty pound bag of IAMS Weight-Loss, Chicken and Rice Formula, two large bags of Marrow Bones, and four pounds of hamburger. (Eeewww! I might need to get that out of the car soon!) When I asked him why he felt he needed to carry so much food when the exact same thing was available in Canada, he muttered something about not being keen on a remake of "The Incredible Journey" or "Homeward Bound." I am so very glad I never screened "Lassie Come Home" for him. I thought it might actually hit too close to home and give him nightmares. He twitches enough in his sleep chasing those imaginary rabbits!

All this packing took place on Sunday night. On Monday "Killer" and I embarked (arrf! arrf!) on our less than incredible journey, a 2700 mile trek from Houston, Texas to Halifax, Nova Scotia. His real name isn't "Killer", it's Kenai......pronounced Keen-eye. "Killer" is a persona he adopts when we take these little trips alone together.....or when the pizza man comes to the door. He makes sure nothing happens to me, and that no one steals my camera or my laptop from the car when I run into McDonald's to use the restroom. To morph from Kenai into "Killer" isn't all that hard, really. We lay off the brushing and grooming for a week and then remove the cute little red hankerchief from around his neck. We replace it with a thick leather collar studded with half inch spikes. You can't see them in the photo because of all that fur but trust me he has spikes!


So far we've been driving four days. Our first night was in Little Rock....*waves to Jill and Norbert, the cat.* (I hope the garage wasn't too hot for ya' Norbie!) On the second night we made Knoxville. Should I have known that we were not in a very good hotel when Mr. Bang This Empty Bowl Across the Kitchen Floor Because You're Too Slow Fillin' It refused to eat his food there? Gini took one look at the place and concurred. *waves to Gini* The hotel she found us was much more to his taste. He ate five pounds of food for breakfast in that room before we left on Wednesday! He even folded his napkin correctly.

We made it to Harrisburg in time to catch the beginning of the hockey game from Raleigh. "Killer" got a little bored with the game after the second period but found ways to amuse himself in the room while I read the message boards and kept one eye on the TV. He played......"Look Mom! I Can Turn Your Sheltie into a Boxer"


He looks more like Mother Teresa to me.

I ignored him and gave him my camera to play with for a while. He took a bunch of pics and proved that it isn't all that hard to amuse yourself when alone in a hotel room.









Eventually, all that picture taking took its toll.


He's asleep right now, just like I should be. That road buzz feeling just left me about an hour ago and I am beginning to get a little tired. Tomorrow will be a short day....only 450 miles, a border crossing (No officer, I don't have anything to declare. Why is my car sitting so low in the rear? Oh, that.....I'm hauling the decorations for a 50th wedding anniversary party.....and thirty-four pounds of dog food. Would you like to see his health certificate? Isn't that a pretty frame? We call him "Killer")

I get to see my kids (who are no longer kids) for the first time in 6 months and they'll get to see their dog again. And that is going to be a big surprise!


**Note to Self** Next time keep both eyes on the hockey game and forget about what your silly dog is doing.

Technorati tags: Shelties, Road Trips, Pet Travel, Clay Aiken

Brad and Angelina

Brad and Angelina stopped by for the first time about six weeks ago. I had a hunch they were looking for a nice, quiet, safe and private place to prepare for the latest addition to their family. At first I wasn’t sure if I really wanted them setting up house on my baker’s rack. Likewise, I could tell they weren’t too sure about me either. They came and went several times during the next few days. Angelina would settle herself in between the resin lighthouses on the second shelf and sit for a few hours. Brad would pace back and forth on the railing…….he kept a watchful eye on the goings on in my living room ……not too sure if we were to be trusted or not it, seemed.



There certainly was enough noise passing through the screen door to frighten them off for good, but when I saw Brad carrying bits of straw in his beak I began to think that maybe they did plan to take up residence after all. Over the course of that first weekend, six weeks ago, they built a nest on the top shelf of the baker’s rack. It’s a nice shady spot, under cover and partially hidden from outside view by a big pine tree. I thought for sure that the barking of Killer *g* or the crowd noise from hockey games on the TV would scare them off. I left the screen door open so they’d get a taste of what daily life was really like at Casa Sally.

Every once in a while I like to use the balcony to sit out…… to read a book or the paper. When my mother calls, I take the phone out there and park myself in a deck chair. I guess my idea of living dangerously is having the neighbors know all of my business. The prospect of being balcony-less for the gestation and nurturing period of baby birds wasn’t all that appealing and I KNEW that once that nest was out there, I wouldn’t have the heart to go out there and risk disturbing it. I was half tempted to start using the balcony even more……kind of stake it out and let them know it was MY territory and that they were welcome to join me, but they weren’t going to run me off either. Mother nature seemed to take of my little dilemma when they both disappeared and I didn’t see beak nor feather for almost a month. I maintained my usual balcony routine, forgot about staking my claim and went on with my indoor existence.



They came back about two weeks ago. Angelina sits on her nest all day and all night with occasional relief from Brad. It’s funny how things are in nature. Angie sits low in the nest, looks very comfy and happy to be there. She fluffs out her feathers and seems to be very Zen about the whole thing. When Brad takes over, the shift change is obvious. He is the epitome of a nervous father. He sits higher in the nest and he watches the clock on the mantle above the fireplace. It looks like his biggest fear isn’t so much outside intruders, as it is being caught in the middle of a hatching and not knowing what to do……I definitely get a “I’ll sit here as long as you get your tail feathers back here pronto.” vibe from Brad. "No, stopping by your sister's for a worm.....not even an itsy bitsy inch worm."



One would naturally assume that a pair of fine feathered doves like Brad and Angelina must have several homes. That month they were gone…..could have been an extended honeymoon or maybe they were trying on other neighborhoods for size. I guess the fact that they’ve chosen to share the birth of their babies with me, exclusively, makes me feel kind of proud. So far I haven’t noticed any circling vultures but there is a large contingent of pidgeonazzi hanging around on nearby roof tops waiting for their first shot at the newborns. Killer’s job is to take care of any cats, so it's a good thing I’m not expecting any.

In lieu of the use of my balcony for the next couple of months (I’m not going to be here anyway…..but they don’t know that yet), I’ve worked out a little deal with the pair. I can use the new camera I got this week to snap the first shots of the babies. Peeper Magazine has offered me $400.00 for them. Trouble is, if they aren’t born by tomorrow morning, I’m going to be out of luck……..

I wonder if I set out some leftover Taco Bell would Brad bring it to Angie and help move things along a bit. In the meantime, I’d better go figure out a way to introduce the new Nikon to John. It wouldn’t do to have John and the D50 to get off on the wrong foot….’specially since I didn’t buy the Canon point and shoot I had planned to, but got the dSLR instead. So he isn’t exactly expecting it…….and when he sees the size of the case he has to tote around Denmark for me……he’s going to have a bird!

Gosh, maybe if Brad went out and got himself a new Nikon camera on their Visa card, Angie would have a bird, too. Come on , Ange......I'm leaving in the morning!

Technorati tags: Brad and Angelina, Doves, Baby Birds