The Villa

The Villa story

Now back to the couple from Egypt (you remember them), they called on Tuesday night before we were to leave for the states on Thursday night to tell us that there was a villa available in the compound (think gated community) where they live. Were we interested in looking; we were there in about 30 minutes. Nice place, good area, close to school, good neighbors, etc., pretty close to what we have been looking for to get away from the apartment. All that being said, we had a very short time in which to decide if we wanted to move. We spend most of the next day getting paperwork done, signing a lease, taking care of the banking arrangements so that we had it tied up on January 1st. It all came together before we left so that we could move when we got back from Christmas on January 20th. There was a minor (well it got bigger) problem in that we moved most of our excess money to the states the afternoon before we looked at the villa so we had to figure out how to cover the January 1st rent payment, but no problem, what could go wrong from 6,000 miles away. Well, as luck or fate would have it, a couple of things did go wrong, money didn’t make it to where it needed to be on time, the 1st month rent check didn’t clear even with my Qatar branch manager saying it would be no problem, etc. Before it was over, I called the compound manager, from the states, told him what was happening and how did he want to handle it. I took him the cash when I got back to Qatar, cash always seems to be in style.

With this taken care of, we were off to the states to see our first “Grandbaby”. Based on our past history, this was going to be an easy trip. Wrong as usual. We were to leave at 3:45AM, had a friend take us to the airport so we could leave our car at the apartment in covered parking. At 1:00 AM he drops us off and we go to check in and nothing is moving. Dubai is fogged in and flights are delayed or canceled. We got canceled. Rescheduled our flight for the next afternoon with different connections. We go home, grab a nap then go to breakfast at Ric’s Country Kitchen and guess who we see, the same friend that saw us leave, being a fine person; he took us again to the airport. We got out of Doha at 5:40 PM with a 6 hour layover in Dubai; I was able to convince the airline that we should wait in the business class lounge because of the time and the canceled flight. We got out on time to London where we changed to an Atlanta flight. It was overbooked so I asked Delta to upgrade us to First class and let someone else sit in the back. My request, my sad tale of woe and my Santa hat must have done the trick because that nine hour flight was the only way to fly and we finally got to Tennessee about 18 hours late.