It's my favorite, Best of the BLT...must read edition...the one you can't put down. If it's possible to plagiarize from myself, I'm doing it...and quite possibly but unintentionally...from others as well. Here goes...

I had a friend come visit two weeks before Christmas. He's from New Zealand. I met him on my bucket list trip to Australia while on a rain forest tour. We last met up a year and a half ago while I was vacationing in London. He lived there. He flew to Kosovo from Budapest. He was slowly working his way across Europe heading home to New Zealand for a bit.

He was lucky he hadn't eaten breakfast before his incoming flight. The flight was so turbulent that two of his neighbors filled up their barf bags with their breakfast. He did mention that the return flight to Budapest was very turbulent but nowhere near his flight to Pristina.

His first day, I let him wander so he could get the lay of the land. Pristina has remarkable Christmas decorations at Mother Theresa square. He saw Mother Theresa's Cathedral. That night, I took him to see the Bill Clinton statue. There's a nearby store named "Hillary" that's in visual distance of Bill's statue. FYI, the exterior stone and the interior pews are now complete. I have new pictures of them in my Kosovo photos.

Kosovo isn't really known for tourism. Most of the places were destroyed in the war or are heavily guarded by the UN as they were Serbian and the Kosovars want any reminders of their former oppressors removed. With the help of the boss's wife, I set him up with a driver and he went touristing for a day. He went to some old monasteries and to see the city of Prizren. You can see the Cathedral and the rest of these landmarks starting here and clicking the links to the right.

That night, I took him to the company Christmas party where I got to play photographer. I can only take so much company functions so we bolted as the music got louder.

The following day, we stayed close to home where I took him to a bear sanctuary. This is where old bears that were pretty much jailed as attractions for restaurants and other businesses are now kept in sanctuary living out their lives in luxury. The snow was falling and I didn't want to travel too far so we went to lunch at a Serbian restaurant where we overdosed on pork and down home cuisine. He couldn't believe the volume in a 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) meat platter. I'd dined there the week before as our company threw a Christmas party for our American workers. On both occasions, I took food home and turned it into stir-fry.

We wandered around the city a bit but just wanted to let all of that food digest. I couldn't help but spoil him on some of the sweets sold by a local Turkish bakery.

He stayed for four days and flew out on Monday. The following weekend was Christmas Eve/Day. We had a pseudo-potluck dinner at one of the guy's houses. They pity the bachelor and so we don't really have to bring anything. We held a similar occasion at the same place for Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving, I'd eaten my dinner when the turkey cook flopped a deep-fried drumstick on my plate. After I downed the drumstick, I was fit to be popped. I was prepared when he returned with another turkey leg after I'd had a turkey leg for my dinner. I took it home. We had a white elephant giveaway that got quite competitive where the married couples often conspired to get their presents back if someone 'stole' them. It was fun. The final laugh was when our electrical superintendent (male) got a seductive nightie which was most likely meant for the giver's wife. She was the only one tiny enough to fit in it. Pictures from him modelling his prize should go to the highest bidder. The giver swapped it out for a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Masses around the Christmas/New Year holiday season were depressing. The priest we have reads his homilies that he's downloaded from the internet. He's not the greatest communicator...like forgetting to tell our small congregation that there was no Mass on Sunday before Christmas. If I didn't need the walk (about a mile and a half from my apartment to the Church), I'd have been really upset. I called the priest who said Mass was at 11am at the nearby Cathedral...missed it so I went home to watch it on the internet. We had pretty much empty houses for Christmas through New Year's Masses. We never really had large crowds anyway.

I follow along with the Mass on my smart phone. For Christmas day, I was the only other one beside the priest in attendance. There was a camera man and a reporter as well. Following along on my cell phone, my head was tilted downwards while I read along. That's how my image was shown on local TV...scrunched over from the back side. Perhaps, an Emmy is in order! I had one other local TV appearance. You can email my publicist, aka me, at the email address to the left.

New Years is big in Pristina. They live for their fireworks. The police have kept the fireworks under control for the past couple of years where New Year's Eve celebrations would start many days before and last many days after.

One of our laborers has a wife who's my apartment cleaner. He's my translator for her. He invited me to his party for New Years. It was a dinner. I'd already eaten lasagna for dinner. I made the mistake of cleaning my plate so I was given more food. I didn't clean my plate after they filled it up. We spoke for a while where my friend translated for his family. It couldn't have been much fun for him but it was interesting conversation. I had to go home to call Ma. I went to bed and awoke after the fireworks were over! So much for fireworks bringing in 2018!

I seriously needed sleep so I have no regrets missing the midnight transition into 2018. I was seriously drained.

Last year, when I went scuba diving in Greece, I contracted tinnitus, ringing in the right ear. When I went home in April, I went to some ear doctors who prescribed steroids for my tinnitus. I completed the consumption cycles but so far, there has been some improvement but any ringing is annoying. The doctors said there is so little known about tinnitus. It may stay or go away. They just don't know. Compared to my left ear, the right ear has about a twenty percent hearing loss.

I made three trips home in 2018. Two were planned in April and October. The unplanned trip was for a family matter in June. Email me for details of the unscheduled visit.

The scheduled trips, April and November, are probably the envy of most travelers. The April trip:

Omaha, Las Vegas, Des Moines, Paris, Pristina, Istanbul...which city doesn't belong? Perhaps, it's me. On my last trip home, my planned events kept getting cancelled so I took the matter into my own hands. You'll see. On my first full day in Omaha, I started with the doctors...back to the old 4 F's...not the five...food, family, friends, and fhysicians....no fhun...that comes later. Didn't do much on the fifth F, finances and we inserted fhun into the picture. I flew out early from Omaha to Las Vegas wondering why I left so early. I couldn't check into the hotel until 2pm but they let me check in at noon and kept my luggage while I wandered. I took my selfie on Fremont Street and posted it on Facebook. My favorite place that serves chili dogs along with fried goodness: deep fried Twinkies, Oreos, bananas, and PBJ, was no more. It was a hole in the ground waiting for construction to complete on a new casino. It was strange to see a new hotel on Fremont Street. Most of the new hotels are built on the strip. I tried a roach coach serving BBQ for lunch. Good thing I checked into the hotel as I needed to return and there I stayed. I hooked up with an old college buddy and I introduced him to the Heart Attack Grill where I'd been four years ago.

The next morning, we did a helicopter ride around the Grand Canyon. It was pricy but money was no object on this trip. It was mega-cool. They advertised lunch at the bottom of the canyon. If you call vending machine pastries and canned juice or soda lunch, then it was lunch. I didn't agree on their definition but I didn't come on this tour for the food anyway. There were three segments to the tour and the passengers all got to ride up front where the view was the best. My friend and I took the first of the three. It was hard not getting the reflection of the helicopter in the photo but I got a really cool shot of the Hoover Dam without the reflection. The pilot had a sense of humor evident by the music selection played in our headphones. As we were leaving Las Vegas, Sheryl Crow sang the song of the same name. A couple from Ireland got engaged while we were having breakfast. On the last segment, we got a bit air sick but it was worth it.

That evening, we went to see the musical The Rat Pack Is Back!, a musical dedicated to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.. Both in our fifties, my friend and I felt young in this crowd.

After breakfast the next morning, my friend left and another took his part of the room.

I've considered Las Vegas as a potential spot for retirement, at least from fall to spring. We went wandering around Summerlin with another friend...food for thought...retirement is only a dream now.

The thing I really wanted to do was the next day, a UTV ride around the Mojave Desert. We made the trip to their place, even took their safety course. But their crash helmets weren't big enough to fit my large noggin. They took us to where we would have eaten lunch and bought us lunch...Las Vegas's oldest bar, and stopped by for a few selfies at Las Vegas's answer to Stonehenge. We even got free t-shirts out of it and they even refunded our money in full.

We didn't plan anything for that evening as we figured we'd be exhausted and dirty. We went to Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo Restaurant. I really liked the tequila shrimp and my friend liked the coconut margaritas. If you're on the Strip, and you're close by, stop by the Taco Bell. I promise you, it's the most original of all the Taco Bells in the world.

We went to see Rich Little...he even polished my bald head while doing his Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation complaining that my head was as tough to polish as a bowling ball. Rich pointed out Tony Orlando, of Tony Orlando and Dawn fame. After the show and a photo session with Rich and my friend, another FB post, we went to dinner at the world-famous Robert Irvine's restaurant. Both Rich and Tony were eating in the same restaurant...at different tables two tables away in different directions. This concludes this section of name dropping/celebrity hob-knobbing 101.

I didn't really gamble too much managing to lose six dollars while in Vegas. I spent more in beer money while hanging out in the shade of the hotel pool.

Back home, I took Ma to visit her siblings in Des Moines and finished up my doctor tour.

Next stop was Paris. I'd been there years before so it was just a cool spot to hang out. I did the usual places; Louvre, Seine, Champs de Elysees... The hotel was about a five-minute walk from the Eiffel Tower.Your tour starts here.

Back in Kosovo, I returned to all of my work that wasn't done. Ten days later, I did a whirlwind trip to Istanbul to attend the wedding of some friends. I met the groom while working in Sierra Leone back in 2006. By coincidence, he was working here in Kosovo. Other than Sunday Mass, these two were my only socializing outside of the people at work.

Trust me, I did the whole trip wrong but I didn't find the better way until several days afterwards. It's a safe bet that I won't be returning to Istanbul anytime soon for another wedding. I did run into two others from my Sierra Leone project and I saw one colleague of the wedding couple who goes to the same gym as I.

From the Pristina airport and back, the whole trip took less than 24 hours but the impact was felt for many days to come.

Kosovo acknowledges February 17, 2008 as their day of independence from Serbia. I was in Pristina for the tenth anniversary. We sent our crews home after a half-day of work on this day. We gave the crews the following Monday off for an extended weekend.

Pristina was decked out for the tenth anniversary celebration as well as the ongoing 2018 Winter Olympics. British-Albanian pop sensation, Rita Ora, born in Pristina and migrated to London at the age of one, put on a concert at Mother Theresa Square. The police shut down many streets to support the festivities.

I discussed in my November update that after Kosovo's tenth anniversary celebration, big international companies are moving in for business opportunities competing against established smaller and large businesses.

I made a quick trip home in June on a family matter. I brought my work computer home so I could work on my future Erbil project. So long as that computer kept working, I didn't need to burn up my vacation. In my spare time, I moved my belongings out of my house of the past twenty-two years and into my storage unit of fifteen years. Yes, my former residence has been sold. If you want details, email me.

My third trip home was in October. I had a couple of doctor appointments for another six-month warranty extension. Though it does happen on occasion, we got six inches of the white stuff...snow. It melted the next day. I stayed with my youngest sister. The snowfall took out the nearby transformer...I heard it and saw the spark flash. Power went out for several hours.

Though I'm grateful for the place to stay, it felt strange not living in the home of my past twenty-two years.

The last three days were a return trip to Vegas...just the food and the shows: Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man Group, and Lionel Richie. I did win $2.20 on a slot machine. I put a dollar in and bet forty cents so you see that Vegas isn't going to get rich from me by gambling. Taxis, maybe...but not gambling. We hit the Las Vegas strip during the day for exploring and returned to the strip after resting in our hotel for shows and dinner.

My hero, Jimmy Buffett, was playing in town the day we left. Some friends we hooked up with in Vegas were in town for his concert. We went to his restaurant on the strip the night before and the place was getting primed for his show. The waitress told me they’d rented the pool at the adjacent Flamingo hotel for the pool party.

My biggest constraint in this trip home was my taxes. I had only three days left after this visit before I'd get hammered on my taxes. The only way I made this trip happen was flying into Omaha, Omaha to Vegas, and Vegas to Pristina. I didn't have much luggage...a first...so it made traveling easy.

With my June and October trips to Vegas, I feel like I overdosed on Las Vegas. I'm rethinking my Vegas retirement plan. Perhaps, it's best as a home away from home location. I saw an advertisement for shooting a full machine gun clip for twenty-seven dollars while in Vegas. I had fully booked my vacation but it's on my Vegas to-do list.

November first marked my third anniversary living in Kosovo. That's the longest I've been anywhere since I graduated from high school oh so long ago. I describe Kosovo as the unknown jewel of the job locations of our company. A rather prominent conversation is how this project location ranks with others. It ranks as one of the highest for most of our crew. For me, the only drawback is the winters and lack of airline access. I gave up on snow a long time ago and it's not easy to get here...minor gripes.

For the holidays, I was invited to two Thanksgiving parties. The first party had so many leftovers I took four turkey legs home and made other meals with them with leftovers from the leftovers. The second, I left without leftovers as I still had leftovers from the first party.

I took the unconventional trip to Tunisia for Thanksgiving. Generally, we work on Thanksgiving but the boss gave us a four-day weekend. For the unknowing, I was in Tunisia from 2001 to 2002 building the embassy there. I'd always considered returning to see what it is now.

FYI, Tunisia is considered the starter country for the Arab Spring.

Seems like someone bought up all the undeveloped land around the city and put an empty building on it. They built a freeway to go past it. In other words, it's lost some of the old-world charm. There were far more cars than I remember.

I didn't have much memory of my bearing from when I worked there years ago. If I didn't have a GPS on my cell phone, I'd be stuck at the airport.

We did a bit of sightseeing though I'd seen the highlights. One of the highlights of my trip was having the best lamb I'd had since I left Tunisia. This restaurant was in the Medina which had gold and carpets...not my gig. I visited a local favorite steak house...can't touch the stuff back home or a high-end Ruth's Chris or Fleming's...but it was decent. The steak restaurant approached their business after some international McDonald locations raising their own cattle to their standards.

When I was last in the Tunis Medina, I erroneously found myself in the brothel section of the Medina and was given an enlightening tour by an enterprising young man hoping to score an introductory commission to a client of my choosing. I passed, I was merely looking for the exit. No, we missed this part of the Medina on this trip.

It was nice to be in Tunis and I enjoyed my stay. My time in Tunis was short. I spent most of my time driving my rental car followed by a late night in the hotel gym.

Travel time was long...I think I flew to the North Pole rather than Tunisia. I flew through Istanbul. Pristina is about midway from Istanbul to Tunis. I could have picked a more direct route but flight schedules sucked and I would need to overnight....one or the other.

Like the flights, I picked the hotel out of sentiment as this was the hotel I stayed at when I first came to Tunisia. Unfortunately, this was the opposite end of the city from where I spent the majority of my time.

I passed by the embassy we built years ago. It was pointed out to me in passing or I would have missed it. Driving past it later, old memories were revived.

One interesting quirk about my flights. Flying to Istanbul normally involves one time zone change. Istanbul doesn't change their clocks for daylight savings time. In the summer months, they're an hour ahead of Kosovo. In the winter, the difference is two hours. Flying back to Kosovo, I left Istanbul at eight in the evening and landed at seven-thirty in the evening...that's how you make time. You get the same issue when you fly from Atlanta to our home office in Birmingham. Flight is thirty minutes but you cross a time zone. Going west, you land a half-hour before you took off. This doesn't work with your computer.

Some of the major chains that I noticed that weren't there when I was there included Chili's and KFC. Yes, they had Black Friday signs in the mall.

The Tunis airport could use an upgrade. There was no formal car rental return. Park the car in general parking. Go get someone from the rental car booth and have them check in the car. Ditto for the counter check in. Getting on the plane, in spite of being at the airport two hours before my flight, was tight.

Tunisian currency, the dinar, is not supposed to be taken outside Tunisia. I took my excess currency to the money changers who said I could only exchange it for money initially exchanged at a money exchange business. I use the ATM. I found someone who reluctantly exchanged my Dinar to Euros. I have no doubt, I got low-balled on the exchange but that's normal.

For more of my early impressions of Tunisia, click here, here, and the Tunisian flag at the header.

As the Husker coaching turnstile continues to turn, having another disappointing football season is nothing new. Winning four out of our last six games gives the team momentum and gives me hope for next season. Having no bowl game to watch means I can concentrate on NFL and other sports.

Check out the photos to the right. Both pictures were taken from the same business in Pristina. The upper photo was taken in 2018. The lower photo was taken in 2016. The local folks at the office talk about Black Friday sales like we Americans! Anything for a sale I guess.

For 2018, I don't recall when I ever worked more since I was in Armenia. I worked my then current project and my tentative future project...location Erbil, Iraq. I worked holidays and overtime and my trip home in June.

Currently, I have no travel plans for the holidays though that could change on a whim. Having flown as much as I have this year, I'm content to remain in one spot for a while. A friend may come to visit but you'll find out about that as well as my next destination in a future edition of the BLT. Normally, if I don’t travel on the holidays, I work on my to-do list and work on reducing the glut of recordings on the DVR.

I'm thinking about inviting a few folks over for crockpot turkey and the pseudo-trimmings! You'll read about it here (as well as my next destination...and everything else) in the BLT.

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Kwanza! Happy Chanukah!