Christmas Dish Miracles (made by me)

Top of the list: Eggnog! Homemade is way better than store bought, especially since there isn't any in Lithuania. Compared to this, the other miracles are merely hocus pocus.

In fact, why don't I skip writing about the other things? I mean, the cod was awesome, but not compared to the eggnog. Nothing is awesome compared to my homemade eggnog, not even white russians or margharitas or Fry's dad's special eggnog. The eggnog was fantastic. I was afraid it would suck, like homemade whisky sours, which made it even more awesomer when it didn't.

Hint: 28 servings might be too much for 5 people or even 7. You'd think 5 people could kill a gallon easy, delicious as it is, but not after a long, long day and a long, long dinner of 12 dishes. You'll just want to go papa.

They gotta learn politeness

I have a second job at the moment teaching advanced English to a few groups of professionals. So in class this morning, I ask each student as I go through role call "What's new? Anything interesting happen this morning?" Each student talks a bit, it's like a warm up activity. One student went on for about 15 minutes about a chat he had with his CEO about why it's vital for them to have alternate energy sources. We got through all the students, and I asked if they had any question. The point is, I choose a question for role call that I'll have an answer for myself. They have to learn to be polite and ask the same question back, like: How you doing? Good, how you doing? Finally one does, and I say:

Something certainly did! I got in a cab to come to work, and the driver didn't know wher Soc. Mokslo Kolegija is, so I just to him to go down Minijos gatve. He was trying to figure out where it was, but I just told him I'd explain it along the way. Then I'm thinking, when we get there I'll point out the college next door, so he knows where it is for future reference. That'll be my good deed of the day, or whatever, and then I screamed at the top of my lungs "ATSARGIAI!!!" And then BAM (I punch my right hand into my left palm) we hit this lady in the middle of the street. She rolls up agains the windshield, then off the hood onto the street. We both just sit there silently for what seemed like about 30 seconds, then he got out to help her up. I could tell before he even got out that she wasn't dead, she was already moving around on the ground. What was I supposed to do at that point? Get out and help? Get out and run away? I didn't know. I was in a state of shock. When she stood up I could see something sticking out of the top of her purse, a large bottle of vodka. A cop stopped on the other side of the street and came over. They put her in the back of the cab. Finally I got over it and got out, told the cop the driver wasn't at fault, gave him my phone number, and just walked away.

Student goes, "That was your cab?! Traffic's backed up for miles!"

Another student goes, "So...you had an intersting morning?"

"Labas...WTF?!?! WTF!!!"

That's what my special lady said when I came home yesterday...

It was a normal day at the office, I intended to stay til 6:30. Two of the things I had to do stat were create two literature tests for my students to take today and tomorrow, and correct their last batch of esseys. After I explained what the test would be on (everything--ten time periods with an author from each, and even the best student in the group goes to her friend, "palauk, kas tas Whitman'as?"), they were very nervous. They don't understand the bell curve concept, which i use as a flexible guideline with my small groups here. They actually believe it's possible for everyone to fail, and no amount of explaining calms them down. So I made an offer to let them take the test after winter break instead, and they pounced on it.

Those two stat jobs put off, I was in a good mood...jolly, if you will. I started talking to a colleague about Christmas, and Christmas trees. She explained how easy and cheap it is to get a tree, and I was feeling so jolly I decided to do it, unbenounced to my family. Getting a tree hadn't been a priority, since we're not celebrating in Klaipeda. So it'll be a jolly surprise.

My buddy Egle's in Klaipeda for the week, so I asked her for a lift to a place near home where I'd ask my special lady's brother, whom I hadn't ever met before, to meet me to help with the tree... "Tell you brother to meet me at Maxima, I won't say why..." Luckily, I didn't have to go through with that bizarre request, cause Egle wasn't busy and offered to help with her car.

They sell trees at the kebab place right near College, but I need to get a stand first. How can I buy a tree when I don't have a stand? So we go to Acropolis. They didn't have trees in the parking lot, which is where they're supposed to be. Turns out they only have them in Maxima, but they only have imported ones, which are expensive. Information told us that only the Old Market has cheap Lugan trees, and the Kebab place. Well, as least I'll get the stand here. There was one type of good stand, but there was no price tag. How much does it cost? Noone will tell you. Apparently, Christmas time is Bitch time in Klaipeda. Normally the employees there are at my beck and call, I've always been pleased with the service there. Not now. "Can you help me find out how much this costs?"

"No, we can't do that," or "No! Can't you see I'm busy?" or "You'll find out at the register."

I go ask at information, and the employee making copies goes, "What, should I put everything I'm doing aside just cause you need help!?"

"YES! Of course you should! Jesus, don't you know who I am? I'm the customer! I'm the client, I need help, who cares about copies when there's a customer in need?! Everyone's always been helpful before, what, Christmas time rolls around, and Maxima doesn't give a shit about its customers all of a sudden?"

He led me to a scanner for customer use that's conveniently located on the back of a pillar, facing away from the middle of the store. The only way you could happen upon it is if you're looking for discount yarmulkes in that little nook corner of the store. I bought the stand. On the way back to the car Egle goes, "don't you need ornaments too?" Oops.

We have to drive all the way back to the Kebab place, cause the Old Market seems to be closed. I get a good tree, with a pedagogue discount. For ornaments we went to another Maxima, on the other side of town a farther than where I live. As we drive in, Egle goes "Jop tvai mat... Jop tvai mat!!!" (Terrible Russian curse words) The parking lot's full of Christmas trees. Whatever, we loaded up on ornaments and skedaddled back home. We got the tree out slowly, since it was a big fudaker and it was jammed in there all the way up to the windshield. My special lady hears us coming and opens the door and says,

"Labas"--massive intake of breath--"WHAT THE FUCK!? WHAT THE FUCK!!!"

And my special baby's jaw drops, eyes wide, and she starts screaming "KAS ČIA!? KAS ČIA?! KAS ČIA!? KAS ČIA?! KAS ČIA!?" (What's this!?) Good thing I got the plastic ornaments, since her understanding of "Let's decorate the tree" is pretty similar to her understanding of "Let's bounce these orbs on the floor!"

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Portugal

Do help the old couple who don't speak English or German get to their terminal with you; it'll make you feel good, especially when you find out they're Lithuanian!

Don't expect many people to speak even basic English.

Do bring sandwich stuffs, since the closest pizzaria is on the other side of the mountain.

Don't buy the wifi service for 20 euros/day, you won't use enough of it to be worth it, especially since it doesn't work in the fucking rooms, you have to sit in the lobby or bar.

Don't order the sausage and cheese platter, unless you like things that smell and taste like vomit.

Do be honest with the waiter when he asks you if you like it; an assertive "no!" will win you a free seafood salad that they were probably going to throw away. It'll be very good, actually, what you (I) should have ordered in the first place.

Don't be a pussy, bitch about the flash being broken on the disposable camera you got at the hotel until you get all the way up to the manager; he'll give you your money back, let you keep the camera, and state that he's canceling the hotel's agreement with kodak!

Do respect the fact that you're in a great wine making country: buy dėž for your golf flask! (photo to come)

Don't hesitate to return the dėž after it gives you a pounding headache!

Do ask for pedagogue discounts; I got up to 20% off from street vendors.

Don't go looking for Zemarin (locally made clothing, always my gift of choice) on foot and after six; you won't find it and your legs will hurt for days.

Do have cocktails before the Oceanarium; it'll be much more intersting if you're going alone.

Don't have cocktails before the National Confectionary; you'll accidentally spend 30 euros on sweets for your colleagues.

Another Coincidence?

Man, this is so interesting, I can't believe it!!! 73% of my yahoo folders start with non-unique starting letters:

1. Family
2. Funny
   
3. Internet Orders
4. ISC Courses
   
5. Valdas
6. Vault
   
7. Wedding
8. Work

the gayest gay cartoons you could watch growing up, so gay that watching his cartoons will make you a gay automatic mop, a power one:

conan the barbarian!!

Many bloggers or one mastermind?

When a normal person comes across dozens of very similar webpages through the course of his life, he'll probably think it's a coincidence. When a suspicious person comes across dozens of very similar webpages through the course of his life, he'll probably think people just get ideas from each other all the time. When a paranoid person person comes across dozens of very similar webpages through the course of his life, he'll probably think think people are ripping off one creative person's style. When I come across dozens of very similar webpages through the course of my life, I think there's one evil mastermind behind the internet, and he's making all the webpages. There's only about authors on the internet: my blog and the blogs of my personal aquaintances, the onion, and that's it. Everything else is designed by two guys: one evil idiot that makes all the stupid pages, and one evil genius who makes all the good pages.

Good Letter!

Thanks Rachel...

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Denmark

Don't leave the door ajar when you leave your hotel room.

Do take your key out of your hotel room door (from the outside) before going to sleep.

Don't expect to use your credit card anywhere; 90% of places (including grocery stores) only accept Danish cards.

Do eat pizza every day; it's almost as good as American pizza!!! They got real pepperoni! And they squirt on this garlic oil that d e l i c i o u s! Ask them to put the hot peppers under the cheese, then they won't get stuck between your teeth.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was yesterday, but I'm celebrating it tomorrow. But really, I spend a few minutes everyday thing about what a wonderful concept Thanksgiving celebrates: capitalism and the production & consumption it allows me.

Coincidence?

This morning I didn't have work till later than usual, so during breakfast I watched a little Robin Williams Live on Broadway, including the part about the "side effects" that are so tremendous that they're "effects, really." Then just now I read this paragraphy in a NYT article about meds for kids and their side effects:

"Last year, the Food and Drug Administration required drug makers to warn on their labels that antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts and behavior in some children. Anticonvulsant drugs carry warnings about liver and pancreas damage and fatal skin rashes. The side effects of antipsychotic medicines can include rapid weight gain, diabetes, irreversible tics and, in elderly patients with dementia, sudden death. When drugs are combined, these risks compound."

Suicidal thoughts? Liver and pancreas damage and fatal skin rashes? Rapid weight gain, diabetes, irreversible tics? Sudden death!? WHAT! Sudden death!? Warning: may cause sudden death; if death occurs, consult your doctor. Yeah, those sound like some bearable side effects!

i'm unhinged?

Is that the right word? I can't focus, but I'm not tired, I feel hectic. I feel like I got 20 tasks in front of me but they're all running around and I keep grabbing at their coat tails, but I can't make any significant progress. The only complete thing I successfully did today besides classes was return library books (a week late).

Quote of the Month

"Send him an email that says our internet isn't working, that's why we didn't call him."

My crazy experiences going to the bathroom in the woods...

Dude, I'm not gonna write about that! You gotta call me on skype if you wanna hear about those types of lucky streak!

My Brilliant Plan

I figured, on day light savings day, why hit the time-hour button on my alarm clock 23 times, when I can just hit the alarm-hour button once and get the result: waking up on time. It worked for a couple weeks, but then I got tired of remembering that it's an hour earlier every time I look at the clock. So I caved in and hit the button 23 times. Mission accomplished? No. I mean, that's all I did, until the next morning, when I work up an hour late for work. Haven't had one of those days in a while...

Euro-English? I'm going to call it Eurglish.

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a de terent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

An Error, A Catastrophe, A Duping of Which I was the Butt, and A Slice of Bacon

Saturday evening I didn't have any mixer, and I thought, "maybe plain gin would be good." Nope.

Sunday morning my special lady made soup, which was a bit of an event, since I usually do all the cooking. The plan was to eat it for lunch after we went to market. When we came back, I put it back on the burner to warm up...and we didn't come back to the kitchen till it was burning. Luckily, it was only a little smoky, and my special lady decided it was still edible, no big deal. As she stand stirring it, I put away everything we bought at market, and the last thing is two kg (2.2 lb.) of bananas, about eight bananas. The normal place we keep bananas was taken, so I hung the bag on the door of a cabinet. At the last second I realized it wasn't going to hold, and I opened the door to catch the bananas before they fell. But I swung it open too fast and inadvertently propelling the bananas directly into the big pot of boiling soup, upending the whole thing in a deafening cacophony! Nobody died, no one was even burned, somehow, and miraculously we were able to scrape up two bowls of soup of the stovetop...but I had to clean up the mess, much of which coated the sides of the counted adjacent to the oven, that's no easy reach! Also, I’m changing my title on my business cards to read “World’s Greatest Idiot.”

In my long tradition of weaseling myself into discounted public transportation, I tried something for just the second time this morning. Instead of punching my ticket on the bus, I just held it in my hand, ready to punch it if a controller come on the bus. See, in Vilnius the tickets get stamped with the time, and they're not valid unless stamped a minute or two before the inspection, but in Klaipeda, it's just a hole-punch configuration. So I'm doin it, I'm getting away with it, then at one of the stops I hear, "Tickets! Control! Tickets!" I stick my ticket in, slam the puncher, take it out and return to being non-chalant, no one the wiser, very proud of myself in deed. Until the laughter begins, and it turns out that it wasn't a controller at all, just some brat kids. Duping my way into a free bus ride got me duped myself. Was that even a sentence? Whether it was a joke, or a way to score tickets from outgoing passengers, I don't know. I just know that I'm going to try that myself, by golly!

I just ate a delicious slice of smoked bacon, removed from the top of and as an appetizer to my left over meatloaf lunch.

My Uncle Bob's Letter to the Paper

My Uncle Bob is the quintessential young single uncle, the one who's young enough to still be a rascal when you're old enough to just be starting to be a rascal. Like asking questions about girls that were embarrasing but also enlightening. Also, I got him to take me to Terminator 2 in Minneapolis when my father wouldn't let me see it at home. He taught me to shave using a blade, since my father hasn't shaved since the 70s.

Here's an article he wrote about Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the Iraq war.

"Boo-yao" or "Fuck-it-it's-money": Unsure in a Public Institution

I got a raise this week, after two years and two months at work. It was a not bad raise, I think, slightly over 10%. However, it was disclosed to me in a peculiar manner: "The opportunity has arisen to raise your salary." What does that mean? I took it to mean that the ministry diverted more funds for salaries, that I wasn't being rewarded for well evaluated achievements. The most important thing at work is money, but the reason it's important is not just that it buys my caviar and sports cars; it's supposed to represnt my value as an employee, which is a significant part of me as a person, since half my life is work. I was disappointed.

My career advisor claims that I'm wrong. She says that statement really was a formal way of saying "Thank God we can finally pay you what you deserve, we've wanted to, but didn't have the opportunity till now." Maybe she's right.

Two days later, after working in the same field as I for just two months at another institution, my special lady also got a raise, congradulations, bigger than mine, double congradulations (I still make more money than she does, "thank God" says my male hormones). She hasn't gotten an explanation for it yet, so we'll see how that goes.

Güten Morgan, Ah Ha Ha!

This morning is my last non hectic morning for four months, because tomorrow I begin my second job, 8 a.m. sharp at a very out of the way place unreachable by public transport. So, my special lady and I decided to go to work together. That was after she woke up with some kind of virus and I made my oatmeal with too little milk, so it was all dry. :(

We went to the day care drop off together, and were met with the next piece of bad news: since miss special baby got better and started attending again on november third, we get refunded for the 10 days she missed next month, not this month. :(

We catch a micro bus. It's a small bus that's faster than a regular bus and runs the same route, and it's about 50% more expensive in Klaipeda. Though the fasterness is questionable during rush hour. You stop the bus to get in by waving to him, and you stop it to get out by telling the driver where to stop. About half way to work I remember that I forgot to bring Billy Budd the movie, based on the book by Herman Melville. My students are preped for watching it, so I can't not show it to them today, especially since I'm not prepared for any other material today. So ends the romantic ride to work together: "Stop at the traffic light please!" But he can's stop before it, cause it's a right turn only lane and we have to go straight... :(

When we ride together, I hold the tickets, because my special lady gets off earlier than I. In my haste I forgot I had them and took them with me, so she had to buy a second ticket, lest the ticket-comptoller board the bus and check everyone. :(

I take another micro back, and as I'm walking to our place I slip on the ice and fall on my ass...fuck! :(

I get the movie and go back to the bus stop, and now sleet is coming down from the sky into my eyes and ears. (I would have been at work before it began if I hadn't forgotten the movie) :(

I get on the bus and the only free seats are at the back. I wonder why several people are standing rather than sitting down there. I sit down and find out: the plastic seats with no coverings are very cold, so cold that they freeze my genitals. I remain seated, figuring the seat will warm up after a few minutes. When it didn't after fifteen minutes I had to switch to a now vacant covered seat. :(

In my new warm seat I began day dreaming about something, probably some paranoid delusion. I was dreaming so deeply that I forgot I was on a normal bus, not a micro bus, and when I saw my work place nearing, I shouted, "Stop at the crosswalk please!" Everybody looked at me and giggled, which was embarrasing, but not that bad. Then the bus driver gets on the intercom, though, and says, "Would the ugly dunce in seat 8A please shut up?" I looked down at my seat and saw that it was 8A...The look of indignation on my face confirmed what all the other passangers suspected, that I was in deed the dunce the driver refered to. As their giggles turned to snickers and obsenities, with pointing, my indignation turned to fury. I ran up to the front of the bus and decked the driver in the back of the head and yanked up the hand break. I kicked the door open and ran out. My knuckles were bloody, maybe broken. :(

I ran to the crosswalk and crossed it, while the bus had just begun moving, there was plenty of time to cross the street. But I slipped on the ice again! I fell flat on my ass, and I didn't manage to get up in time, so the angry driver ran me over, and I died. :(

Luckily, I'd picked up a free guy at breakfast by grinding my own flaxseed, so I was able to start again at the crosswalk. After that I walked to work with no further anxiety. :)

Lunch Box Bummer

I opens up my lunch box, and what do I finds? The lids come off my plastic tight-sealing food container! All the salad dressing is leaked out! Fortunately, I'd been brilliant enough to put it in a plastic bag, not directly into my briefcase, so it wasn't a cataclysmic misfortune, but merely a bummer.

Tragedy doesn't turn in Catastrophe

...cause making onion rings isn't that hard. I still have a ways to go to perfect my product. My alliteration is tip top, though.

So I come back from the bathroom, and there's so much toilet paper hanging out of my pants it's ridiculous, it's just unimaginable, and I walk into class, and all my students start laughing at me, plus a bunch of important people I respect and don't really belong there, I don't know why they're there. My special lady's there too, and she points out to me why everybody's laughing. I look down and see the toilet paper. I can't believe it. There's literally hundres of sheets worth of toilet paper sticking out of my pants in all directions. I'm a laughing stock. Thinking fast, I start tearing it out of my pants and throwing it at everybody, like confetti, or streamers. With a big-ass smile on my face, like it's all a joke I intended from the moment I left for the bathroom, I cover the whole crowd with confetti/streamers until they're all cheering me on, laughing with me instead of at me.

The moral of the story is, when life gives you toilet paper, throw it at people you love or respect.

Tragedy Strikes

The awesomest non-human, non-electronic thing in my life is no more. There was a restaurant, and I won't say a hero-restaurant, cause what's a hero? There was a restaurant, Chili Kaimas, that was the only provider in all of Lithuania for an excellent appetizer, Onion Rings. They were really really good, so much so that they completely earned their name, Vyrų Džiaugsmas (Men's Joy). They were so good, I used to go there just to order some Onion Rings, eat them with a beer, and leave...by myself! (I never eat in restaurants by myself.)

Saturday night we went there, a bunch of us, in Vilnius, and they had new menus, and after just a few seconds my special lady goes "Arai...[there's no more Onion Rings on the menu...]" But I was just like, "Well I'm ordering them anyway!" So I ordered them, and nothing else, cause my special lady and I were gonna share her delicious dish, Kedainiu Blynai with Mushroom Sauce. Sorry, I can't find a satisfacory link to describe Kedainiu Blynai. They're sort of like American-Lithuanian potato pancakes with South-Slavic kibinas filling. Anyway, the waiter's like OK but then he comes back and he's like Sorry, they are no more, so them I'm like, "Then instead, bring me a big knife so I might slit my throat!" I declined another appetizer in its place, explaining that I'm in a delicate state of mourning.

I wrote complaints on three different pages of the complaint book, in three different languages, and I've repeated this process at another location, and I requested that the waiter/ress each time convey my dismay to all who will listen...I can only pray that I get through to them.

Left Home Fries, Right Cheeseburgers

Your wish is my command: the photo! These cheeseburgers are well over a half pound each and barely fit on half a loaf of fresh bread. Cheese goes on them, of course, and on each is sliced one medium tomato, half a green pepper, half a medium onion, several lettuce leaves, and a few tablespoons each of Hellman's mayonaise and homemade bbq sauce.

My new favorite spice is...

Tarragon!

Life's a bitch but then you have dinner and you're like, oh man, this is awesome. And then you have desert and you're like, oh man, this is so awesome, I'm going to bed! And then you go to bed and when you wake up you're like, wow, I'm not even tired, I'm gonna sleep 8 hours every night, but then, at two p.m., you're like oh man, I'm so tired, I wish I could go home right now, how the hell did I make it to five p.m. with no problem all the time till yesterday, and how the hell am I gonna make it to 7:30 p.m. when I start my second job, and when the fuck am I gonna write my goddam master's paper, I wish I was dead.

But there is one thing I do know: a special request was made for cheeseburgers tonight, and I'm going to fulfill it, with homemade BBQ sauce. After that I bet everything will be awesome again.

My favorite spam title is this:

"Make your fat friends envy you!"

Where do countries get their names?

Did you know there's a country called Reunion? Look at number 44! HA!

I'm definately gonna limit my kids to 8 hours of TV per day...it'd be less, but it's hard to make them watch less than I do...just kidding...

TV Really Might Cause Autism
A Slate exclusive: findings from a new Cornell study.
By Gregg Easterbrook
Posted Monday, Oct. 16, 2006, at 6:52 AM ET

Last month, I speculated in Slate that the mounting incidence of childhood autism may be related to increased television viewing among the very young. The autism rise began around 1980, about the same time cable television and VCRs became common, allowing children to watch television aimed at them any time. Since the brain is organizing during the first years of life and since human beings evolved responding to three-dimensional stimuli, I wondered if exposing toddlers to lots of colorful two-dimensional stimulation could be harmful to brain development. This was sheer speculation, since I knew of no researchers pursuing the question.

Read the rest here...

All right, pie, I'm just going to do this:[chomps air].&if you get eaten,it's your own fault! [walks towards pie,chomping air&hits head on oven vent]!

Yesterday I had to stay home with a special baby while a special lady did a business day-trip. Besides sleeping one off, I watched a couple dozen simpsons episodes...good Sunday, right? Yeah, but you get cabin fever by the end. I was all cranky and crazy. Good Orange Braised Pork Chops, but by the end I was thinking to myself, I wish I was a bigger orange fan. That thought came to me again today with the first bite of my orange braised pork chop sandwiches I ate for lunch, and I expect it again tomorrow night, when I use the remaining left over's to make orange braised pork friend rice. I call it that cause it's so good that I consider it my friend, or maybe it was a typo, I can't remember, cause I have this condition, I can't make new memories.

A Fiasco Every Morning

Yesterday I didn't eat breakfast because I had a blood test in the morning. I wanted to buy somethingt o eat on the way to work after that, cause waiting for lunch sucks, especially since lunch sucks anyway. So I walked to this kebab trunk I never tried before, with a quick stop at the old ATM. Oops. It's not my ATM anymore, it's another banks. Well, Kebabs are already not cheap, so there's no way I'm tackin a 2 buck surcharge on there. I'll just go to my regular Kebab stand with and ATM nearby.

So I get in the micro, and I'm getting hungrier and hungrier, then I get out ar this mall, Mega Plaza, to use their ATM. They're closed! WTF?! How can a mall be closed till 10a.m.? Does nobody shop in the morning? So I go to the Kebob stand and ask if they take credit card, but alas, no. So I gotta walk about a mile there and back to the next closest ATM to get this damn Kebab. If I hadn't seen the meat on the skewer I wouldn't have come back, but oh baby, that was mouth watering, plus there was a sign for free hot peppers.

That was yesterday's fiasco, here's todays: The internet hasn't been working at work, so I keep having to go to resteraunts with free wireless to work. I usually do that at the end of work, but today internet was vital to me in the morning, so I stopped at Chili Kaimas before work. I get up to the door and see they're only open at ten. WTF! Doesn't anybody eat breakfast?! So I march down to Pipita, by the station...open at ten. Fuck! WTF!! I spent a good 45 minutes walking around on the way to work looking for internet, no luck. I also happen to know that the internet cafe doesn't open till ten or eleven so even that's out.

Then when I got to work it turns out yesterday afternoon when I was at Chili Kaimas working someone finally fixed the internet already.

Yeah Boots

I've been wearing the same boots for 9 years, how do you like that? The only work I've had done on them is new soles ($20) and just this month I had some of the leather patched up (15 LTL). How awesome is that!

The Greatest Show On Earth

Just kidding, the circus I went to as a lad was the greatest show on Earth. This pan-slavic show was ok at best, but I guess my special toddler doesn't know the difference. The clown was much more bedraggled than funny, bedraggled not in the funny way, and he appeared to be drunk. My special lady commented that "the lion has a tortured look about him," and the lion tamer seemed to enjoy poking the lion and tigers. I kept shouting to them, "Kill your master! Eat him!" But they didn't listen. I read someplace about how most people going to a circus secretly hope there'll be some kind of accident. Well, I kept nothing a secret: "Kill your master! Eat him!"

The neat things were the snake lady, who didn't have any snakes, but her snake poses were neat. The best thing was the girl on the clothes ropes, know what I mean? Like sliding up and down them and wrapping herself up in them. Nobody got shot out of a canon. There wasn't much juggling, but this guy did do this neat thing with two red and white canisters, he was on his back with his legs up in the air and he kept the canisters twirling in the air with his feet.

Make sure you ask for discounts, we got them at the ticket booth.

Brownies

Holy shit, I gotta give a shout out o Donata Ruskyte. She was part of my crew on the Finland trip, and I blabbed enough about food prep that I got my colleagues intrests up and invited them over for chicken fingers and freedom fries a couple weeks after we got back. They brought desert, including Donata's brownies. Let me tell you something: holy shit! After two years in Lithuania with no brownies, I suppose I'm already conditioned against them, so it may not be surprising that I was blown away by them, but let me explain something: holy shit!!! they were so amazing, I can't even believe it! I'm gonna quit going to work and just make brownies all day. And sell them? No! I'm just gonna eat them all day and all night!!! Goodbye life! Nothing matters anymore besides brownies...

Poor Man's Kugelis: Kugelis!

After six people canceled on dinner Saturday, we had some extra potatos. Luckily they weren't cooked yet, so we turned them (the left over ones) into kugelis instead of a million french fries. The BBQ Ribs were done, luckily though, I'd say, since who can complain about extra ribs??? We're still eating them!!!

p.s. Before someone emails me to say "dude lol you're stupid, that's a cake!" lemme just clear that up for you: I used a cake pan to cook it, which I highly recommend, but it's still kugelis.

p.p.s. Before someone's Tete emails him to point out that he's not wearing a shirt in this picture, lemme just clear that up for you: I noticed that already, but I decided not to crop myself out so that everyone could see my beard

Not a bedtime story?

You may think you can read babies anything before bed, that they don't understand anything more complicated than I Am A Bunny anyway, so what's the difference? Well, I don't know if the uneasy sleep last night was because of nightmares, but I think I'll refrain in the future from reading The Fall of the House of Usher as a bedtime story.

Rich Man's Kugelis

Saturday this damn stove top unflamed itself and the thing went off and i turned it back on but didn't know how long it was on and the rice burned so bad it ruined everthing, i couldn't eat even it it, it was disgusting.

Sunday I made rich man's kugelis: lasagna. Holy shit it was amazing. When she was like Wow this is good I was like WTF are you talking about, just good?! p.s. you can use lithuanian style cottage cheese instead of ricotta, it costs five times less.

First Article: "The Moral Hazard Myth"

In this here post entiteled The Other Side of the Idiot, Sarunas recommended a couple articles about why health care should be universal. Here's my responses to the first one:

1. Dental care isn’t free in Lithuania (thank God: I’d never go to a free dentist). My special lady and I went to the dentist this summer instead of on vacation, the cost being about 750 litai, including two check ups, two cavities, and post-partum periodontal disease. At that price, we went to the best dentist in Vilnius and feel much better now. Was it worth the price, worth scrapping our vacation plans? No doubt.

2. Two idiotic examples. Obviously, nobody who can be golfing wastes time at the hospital. I said people go because they’re bored, not that they go unnecessarily when they have better things to do. Also they go over and over again to various doctors trying to get an excused absence from work; then the government health insurance is supposed to pay them 80% if their wages for their sick leave after the first few days. And Steve? What a fuckin moron. That 750 litai I mentioned made me think twice, but anybody worth the air he breathes will do whatever it takes to pay for critical medical care.

3. “Do you think that people whose genes predispose them to depression or cancer, or whose poverty complicates asthma or diabetes, or who get hit by a drunk driver, or who have to keep their mouths closed because their teeth are rotting ought to bear a greater share of the costs of their health care than those of us who are lucky enough to escape such misfortunes?” Of course I do, because the alternative is slavery. Forcing healthy people to pay the bills of sick people is slavery. Penalizing people who avoid those problems by making them pay for people who didn’t is not only ludicrous, it’s perverse. As sad as it may be that your genes are crappy, forcing other to pay for it is not just sad, it's simply wrong.

Top Five Moments at the Urologist

1. Woman walks into the wrong waiting area full of 50-75 year old men (and me), sees the sign that says Urologist, and runs back out wide eyed and open mouthed.

2. Sitting there talking to the doctorbefore the exam, thinking, "I could just get up and leave. What's he gonna do?"

3. Hearing the guy before me through the door going "Oh! Oh! Oooooh!" (he had something acorn sized in a jar when he came out: if I find out it came out of his penis I'll kill myself)

4. Cracking up laughing while the doctor explained the digital exam, and again during the exam.

5. After he...was done...the doctor says, "My wife's a dentist. I always tell her her job's worse than mine, since she has such bad odors coming out of her patiest mouths..."

The only thing useful for you to know...

...about my business trip to Finland last week is this: you can have up to three mistakes on your plane ticket and it's still valid. Colleagues who didn't know me yet bought me my ticket, since their college financed the trip, and somehow I got a ticket for "Arnas." I thought I wasn't going anywhere, once I saw that, but it turned out to be no problem.

The bizarre thing is that this isn't the first time I've been mistaken for an Arnas. It's bizarre because I've met dozens of Arases and Arunases in my life, but never an Arnas. The first time somebody called me that, I was like, "wow, that's some speech impediment you got there," and she was like, "oh, oops, I thought that was your name, sorry; it's a real name, much more common." Well, I've yet to meet one.

UPDATE: Back to work for just an hour before somebody came in and called me Arnas...wft?!

The other side of the idiot coin.

Recently we had a chat about how health care professions in free health care systems are low quality. Now I'd like to present a summary of my morning which will shed some light on the other half of the problem.

I got to the polyclinic, registered to get my health history sheets, which I have to get every time to go get in line for the doctor. No appointments more specific than for a certain day, you just go into a hallway full of people waiting for the same doctor and ask who's last in line. There's only two people in front of me, thank God. Or so I thought. No, these two people literally took two hours. And they weren't doing anything impressive in there either, cause this is just a family practice doctor: all she's got is a stethoscope and tongue depressors. You can't even pee in a cup for her without going up to the 7th floor.

So you know what these two patients before me we doing? Evidence #1. Chatting. Somebody else in line got so pissed she yanked the door open to see what they were doing, and announced to everybody that they're both reclined in their chairs laughing about something.

Evidence #2. Each time I've been in line to get my sheets, there's somebody complaining about how he's been all over the place talking to lots of people and they keep telling him to go someplace else.

Evidence #3. The nurse came out at one point and called somebody's last name, and I asked, "Excuse me, I'm next, can't I come in yet?" She said, "What are you, sick or something?" "YES I'm sick, I'm cronically sick, that's why I'm here! My lungs are shot from coughing!" She says, "Well, why didn't you say something?!"

Why didn't I say something? I'll tell you why: I thought everybody in line is sick or something, that's why they're here, so why should I bitch? Then these three pieces of evidence clicked into place: these people are mostely idiots who don't need to be here. They're here cause it's free. They're here cause they're bored and they wanna chat, or they're stupid and are waiting in the wrong place (but they won't accept that fact without talking to the doctor for a while), or hypocondriacs that go to the doctor everyday. All three of these catagories of people would be eliminated from cluttering the system up if going to the doctor cost $100/hour. My ten minute visit would have been $15 and change, which I would have gladly paid to not have to wait through the two idiots in front of me, since they certainly wouldn't have paid such prices to shoot the shit.

When I left there were 9 people in line behind me. There's no way they all got through before lunch, meaning some even got to sit there for an hour waiting for the doctor to eat. The doctor doesn't make time for anybody, though, because in her line of work, time does not equal money.

p.s. I had to pee in a cup before registering to see a urologist next week. First, the toilet doesn't even have a flusher, and the water's turned off, so you can't wash your hands in the sink that's missing a handle, and forget about soap. Second, I can't register for next week yet, since they don't start making the week's schedule until the week begins. This counts as a good polyclinic in free health care system.

I wonder if this happens to everybody...

I take off my bookself Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. I go sit down to read it. I don't know that much about it except that it's well known and sounds interesting. Also it's one of the books my folks shipped to me from the states, so I figure it's probably a good one. I open it up to find that in fact it's not the novel at all: it's Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: A Casebook. "This casebook contains materials relevant to a deeper understanding of the origins and reception of this controversial text," which I haven't even read yet!

Are you searching for information about royal kings, or Kings, the drinking game, aka Circle of Death?

Either way, this blog isn't probably the best resource for this search...

Lithuanian are Gentlemen II

Eina žmogelis gatve.
Priėjo bomželis ir prašo 20 ct. Tas žmogelis ir sako:
-Žinai, aš tau duosiu 10 eurų... Bet tu nueisi ir nusipirksi alaus...
-Ką jūs, pone, jau seniai negėriau alaus.
-Tai nusipirksi moterį.
-Ką jūs, jau seniai nesimylėjau...
-Tai nusipirk bilietą į krepšinį/futbolą.
-Ne...jau nebežinau kaip jis žaidžiamas...
-Žinai ką, einam pas mane. Mano žmona paruoš vakarienę: lašiša,
baltas vynas ir t.t.
-Oi ne, pone, aš toks nešvarus...
-Ne, ne, aš noriu žmonai parodyti, kaip atrodo vyras, kuris negeria
alaus, neperka moterų ir neina į sporto varžybas…

You Get What You Pay For

Saturday night my eye swelled up so much I thought it was gonna fall out. It wasn't better in the morning, so we went to the medic. There's a little building next to my polyclinic that's open nights and weekends when the polyclinic is closed. These nurses looked at my eye and recommended something, and laughed at my special lady for not knowing that "it's an antibiotic, it's been around for a while now!" We went to the pharmacy across the street with the prescription and they told us "you're not going to able to find this anywhere, it's been off the market for a while now. You might be able to get it made in the pharmacy lab upstairs." No thanks. So we asked for an alternative, and we got one. Also, the nurses had told me to squirt camomile tea into the eye through a turkey baster. The pharmacist told me not to do that, that would irritate the eye, just use a cold compress. Turns out that's what everybody I talked to afterwards does. The drops the pharmacist gave us worked great, it was almost all better in 12 hours, but I stopped using it anyway after my special lady read me the side effect, including glaucoma and nerve damage.

The moral of the story is, you get what you pay for directly. Does your universal health care suck? Mine does. I supposedly pay for it through my taxes. That is, I pay for it if I need it, and if I don't, I pay for somebody elses. But when you go to doctors who don't have any financial incentive to stay up to date even with what drugs are on the market, don't be disappointed with shitty results, cause that's what you'll get half the time. The other half if good, but is half your medical care being good enough? Every person I've talked to has complained about the system here, and many have had to complain formally.

How about letting me keep my taxes and choose my doctor with money instead of being assigned one by my address? Maybe then the fucking morons would be out of a job soon enough and not writing people expired perscriptions. The one redeeming quality of the system here is that the unemployed aren't eligible for free healthcare; at least I'm not paying for total freeloaders.

Let's Do Lunch

A rushed lunch today in the caf before class, just soup. Chatted with my colleague about nothing in particular. Then in a rush to finish my soup, I poured some of her bottled water into it so I could guzzle it down. Little did I know the water was carbonated and lemon flavored, that mixed real well with my creamed cabbage soup, forcing me to vomit violently. All over the place. Just kidding, but it was gross.

WWWW, Cause Now it's Wider

Sean: "I started a blog in honor of my new commitment to not have any idea who is trying to be in contact with me."

Trains, Locomotives, and Railroad Tracks

Lately we been riding the train from Klaipeda to Vilnius, cause during summer they have youth discounts bring the cost down to just 19.20 each, less than 40% of bus costs. Plus a certain special baby I know behaves much better in a train compartment than on a bus. Here's a weird thing about trains in Lithuania (and Russia, maybe all of Europe, I don't freakin' know): no bar car, no food car. What's the deal with that?! It's a five hour "express train" (two and a half hour car ride), don't they realize they could make alot of money selling drinks and sandwiches at double prices?

Drinking alcohol is in fact forbidden on the train, but I assume that's just byobb. What they do do is walk down the train twice per trip selling soft drinks and crackers. Though you may not byob, you may byo sandwiches. But my pocket knife wasn't where it was supposed to be (in my pocket), so I went to the personel compartment to ask about using a knife. I brought the buns and cheese with me (the ham was presliced ham), cause I figured maybe if I ask really nicely they'll cut them for me, cause how the hell could they hand out knives to the passengers? Well, they did; they gave me a big old knife to take back to the compartment. So that was good, anyway, and as long as you manage to byob on the qt, the train saves you coinage on your clownage!

The Most Important Information About Lithuania

Take This Test to find out how much you know about Lithuania.

The scores out of fifteen so far are:

Special Lady: 15!
This guy: 12
Gedas: 8
Darius: 8
Peanut: 6 ("not bad for a swamp yankee!")

Lithuanians are Gentlemen!

Ji man pranese, kad mums truksta pinigu, ir kad as daugiau nebegalesiu gerti alaus.
Po to syki as ja pagavau mokant 65 litus uz makijaza ir paklausiau, kodel as turiu atsisakyti kazko, o ji ne.
Ji pasake, kad jai reikia makijazo, kad ji man butu grazi.
As jai pasakiau, kad tam buvo alus.
.... Man atrodo, kad ji nebegris .....

What an Ingrate!

Over the past year Rastenis has summoned me to help him with various things, each time promising a bottle of vodka as payment. It's taken him a ridiculously long time to square up. When he finally did last week, he showed up with three bottle of black pepper vodka, which is undrinkable. He can't even drink it himself, but he can use it show his gratitude for services rendered. I've never used this word before in real life, but Rasteni, you're an ingrate!

Low and Behold

Hey--rah!
Hey--rah!

Old photos remind me of old things.
New photos remind me of recent things.
Photos of Cedric remind me of Barf.

Hey--rah!
Hey--rah!

Šaltibrščiai is good soup.
Mushrooms are good fungi.
The best fat is ham fat.

Hey--rah!
Hey--rah!

I have so many mugs.
They all remind me of something.
But mostely I don't have to wash them often.

Hey--rah!
Hey--rah!

Oh man! I have to go to work tomorrow!

That's what I said last night after 32 days of vacation. It was plenty of fun, but I did nothing of consequence. My special lady and I were going to travel somewhere in Europe, but instead we went to the dentist at the same cost. Went up to Aukštaitija to visit some gims, who turned out to have prepared a banquest for us, like 40 people showed up, then boat rides and šašlykai and swimming and whiskey. Badminton. Some other grill sessions. Broadway. Jack Daniels and Red Bull makes a good cocktail. Yeah man.

Anything manlier and funner than destruction?

Maybe construction.* There's something very fun and manly about putting things together. Today I bought a bookcase and sand box. The bookcase was predrilled with good instructions, so that was easy, but fun anyway, cause it looks very nice. The sand box was neither predrilled nor with good instructions. And when I asked my uncle to borrow his electric drill he misheard me, he thought I asked for an electric boom box, so I start screwing the thing together by hand. Then he asks me why I don't use an electric one. He gives me a 60 year old drill (no exageration there) with one direction and one speed, so if you make a mistake you have to unscrew it by hand, and if you drill too fast you'll shred the drill bit. Also, if you let up on the trigger, it takes so much fiddling to get it turning again, I just never let go for like 45 minutes, doing everything else with one hand, and my uncle's and special lady's help. To get to the end, though, with so many pitfalls, made it even more fun to fill it with sand, which I brought over in a wheel barrow wearing my wife beater, which made my special lady say I'd make a nice lookin farmer.

Also a good thing to construct is a Burrito. Today with left over chicken I made bbq bacon chicken burritos. We were out of mayonaise, so instead I used gravy! How do you like that?! Gravy!!! It was awesome!!! Gravy and bbq sauce from the states (thanks Tete!)!! Yeah!!

* It took me a while to think of a good antonym for destruction. I was like "Building? Making? Creating? Hmm..."

Oopsies!

When there's two left turn lanes, how can oncoming traffic have a green light simultaneously?! That never happens! Except for today, when I honked at a guy who I thought was making a right-turn-on-red, but no; turned out he had the right of way in a very fucked up intersection.

I felt bad until I remembered that earlier today somebody honked at me inappropratly: there was a right-turn-on-red sign, and the idiot honked at me for stopping insteading of turning right away, even though there was someone in the cross walk and oncoming traffic. So it's okay I guess as long as there's a bigger idiot than me out there.

Incidentally, I don't like the word for "to honk" in lithuanian: pipsinti. A very wuss word. Very diminutive. Very childish. As if honking is the automotive equivalent of a sniffle instead of a roar.

In the end, any negative feeling disappeared when we got home and I pushed my copilot into the kiddy pool! :D

cockeyed

that's awesome when a certain special baby breaks your glasses, and after wearing them crooked for a few weeks you realize, looking at yourself in the mirror, your eyes are starting to be become lopsided on your face to adjust.

A serious talk...

My special lady and I had a talk tonight about what kind of children we want. She summed up the decisions with three main criteria:

1. Gražūs
2. Protingi
3. Nehomoseksualūs

p.s. she told me not to write any more p.s.s about how gay she is.

This is a soul mate.

In six months and one day I taught my special lady to play buck euchre, gin, crazy eights, backgammon, chess, and finally cribbage (some of the game's links have messed up rules that I never heard of, e.g. buck euchre, but I like putting links into my blog entries). This, I figure, is definately a great life companion, what?

p.s. she keeps winning at crazy eights, which means she's gay, plus she just realized i convinced her to deal for the third time, which was awesome, until she noticed, and now that's gay that i have to deal...

p.s. then i went to the men's room and she tried to fool me by dealing herself all the eights, but she's too gay to do it fast enough, so i caught her red handed!

Buy Lithuanian! (Just kidding)

We went to get a bike for my special lady with a seat for the special baby a few days ago, and we were glad to find bikes made in Lithuania. The main reason we bought it was because the price was right, but it was nice also because it felt patriotic. The alternatives we made by Sie Germans (Nazi occupiers of parts of Lithuanian from 1941-1944) or the Red Chinese.

I haven’t bought a bicycle for ten years, since my Trek Antelope (differenct color) is one diesel bike; the only money I’ve had to spend on it in ten years is a new seat and new tires, and the occasional new inner tube. So I was less than thorough in the pre-buy examination of the Panevėžys made Twin Stinger. The two problems I would have noticed aren’t big though: a front wheel without a quick release, and no bolts on the frame for attaching water bottles or other accessories. The one big problem is THE FUCKIN PEDDLE FALLS OFF! THE GODDAM PEDDLE FALLS OFF!!! No matter how tight you crank on the nut, it falls off the bolt and takes the peddle with it every couple kilometers.

i'm typing with one hand, but not for the reason you're thinking of, pervert

it's hot hot hot in this equatorial country i'm living in, oh no wait, i'm on the baltic coast, barely 500 miles from the arctic circle, and it's 36° (96.8° Fahrenheit). they say it drops at night, but i don't feel any difference. both my special lady and i have been unable to sleep for more than a couple hours a night for three nights now, even after i drank some night-time tea last night. so why am i typing with one hand? cause the other ones fanning me with a folded cell phone bill and anonymous questionaire. several people i know, including myself, have even caught colds from spending so much time in front of fans to combat the heat. and as you all know, since this heat only tends to be around for two weeks a year, nobody, especially national colleges, invests in air conditioners.

I thought I would lay off the search string results for a while, but this one I can't pass up...

I'm the number one hit for as noriu tave ispisti in english

Well Buddy, just so you know, it's "I want to know you gently in the biblical sense."

Nothin beats getting mentioned in the Onion!

Here's the top news story involving Lithuania!!!

How relaxed was my bike ride to work?

60 year old men were passing me left and right. It's a hot day, though, and I didn't wanna sweat up my clothes before nine.

Recent searches that braught people here:

From Brazil: tim robbins fan club

From the U.S.: pantsed caught on tape

From Lithuania: nude beach gay smiltyne

I didn't notice anything gay at the nude beach this weekend, I think that's a long way off for conservative Lithuanians. I was even surprised by the hetero action I noticed going on behind some scant bushes.

Two days and it's spoiled?

I made this potato salad saturday for a picnic Sunday and it was great. Then I took some to work on Monday and it was rancid. WTF? how can it spoil so fast? Can pickles make that happen? I wasn't too excited about putting the pickles in anyway, I just wanted to follow the recipe the first time making it. I made up for it by multiplying the bacon proportion by five.

The Biggest Idiot

So I got a flat tire on my bike yesterday, not that big a deal, just a three mile walk to Acropolis to get a new inner tube. But my buddy was like you idiot, why don't you get on a bus, like the 8 right there, it's empty there at its origin. So I go there and get on the 15 which will get me even closer, and it's got a big empty spot for baby carriages and the driver's only casually snide. Nice. For about 90 seconds before we turn the wrong way; apparently this bus goes out of town. Nice. So I get off and get on a 6 and the bus driver's an asshole, he's like "What, a bike on a bus?! You degenerate!" And some other passangers called me a gypsy. I get off at home and walk my bike in and take off the back wheel and carry it to the store, which is a half hour but I enjoy the walk in my black tank top and paint splattered work pants. I figured, my hands are gonna be filthy, why wear decent clothes? So I get there and get my new inner tube and notice that the nut fell off my wheel's bolt. I don't say anything though cause I feel like an idiot and don't want to admit it. I successfully switch the tube and blow it up in a couple minutes and go grocery shopping. I have to wait a good five minutes while a girl helps some Russian hag test out her water boiler before she can give me some batteries. "I need some AAA batteries."
"We don't have any AAA batteries, only AA."
"Yes you do, I can see them!"
"No we don't!!"
"I can see them, they're tight there."
"Where, here?!"
"Yes, exactly three inches above your hand."
"Oh. Well, I didn't know that."
"Yeah, see right here in the big letters where it says 'AAA?' Now, how about some non-rechargable ones?"
"Oh they're hanging over there on the wall."
"Well, fuck a duck."
So I get those and get the hell outta there, get my dry cleaning with my dirty dirty hands (it's bagged, so that's ok. I walk out passed the bike store, still not daring to admit my idiocy, hoping to find it on the way home. Yeah right. I walk home, no luck, it's not in the kitchen, time to turn around and go back.

I call my special lady to whine about my bad luck, and ask her how to say nut, that is, "What's the thing called that screws onto the end of a bolt?" She says, "in slang at least it's a 'kalpacokas.'" So I repeat it with her ten times so I don't sound stupid. I go in there and tell the guy that on my way here the first time I lost my kalpacokas, and show him the bolt. He looks at me like I'm a fuckin idiot, which I feel is more than I deserve for the nut falling off. They don't have them there, but he tels me where to try the next day.

On the way home I call my special lady again, and tell her I have to go to the specialty bike parts shop, and say I hope I don't have to buy the bolt too, maybe they only sell it as a set, and that could cost alot, like a hundred lits. She says, "there's no way a new inner tube costs that much!"
"What innertube?
"You said you lost the cap to your inner tube."
"What are you talking about? I said the part that screws onto the bolt."
"Oh, I thought you meant the cap to the inner tube."
"I said 'bolt' five times. Wait...does kalpacokas mean the cap on the inner tube?!"
"Yes."
"So I just went into the bike shop, held the bolt out to show the shopkeeper, and told him 'I lost the cap off my innertube?! That's why he looked at me like a fuckin moron!" I was so sad I could have cried.

Plus this morning I couldn't even find the bolt, so I can't get a new nut today.

The View out my office window, upon request...it's actually four times wider than this, but when I shoot the whole panorama I lose all the lighting...

even here the lighting doesn't do the scene justice!

Awesome Weather is Awesome

Been riding my bike to work/university/libraries five days running in the best weather ever--it's amazing!

Wrong Field?

As you may know, I'm studying for a master's degree in Educational Management. Today we had to present our informational projects and take a test for Educational Politics class. Mine was a pamphlet about my International Office (which I'll use for work too). I went last, because I was late (moving a file for printing: how can a two page document not fit on a floppy disk?!), but this didn't prepare me extra, really, because there was only one comment given by the professor to almost ever student: "don't read me what you wrote, tell me why you wrote it!" I couldn't believe my colleagues kept making the same mistake. Anyway, I made sure to do it right, plus explain which things I purposely left out, and the response was "Excellent, if this was Marketing I'd give you a ten without even taking the test! But it's Politics, so you gotta take it..."

Class on Sunday

Sometimes if you're a correspondence student (not sure if that's the proper term, actually) and you only have class for two or three two-or-three week periods per year, you have to have class all day Saturday and half a day Sunday. Luckily church doesn't start till six p.s. here.

The professor today is my master's paper advisor/sponsor/councelor, and during the break a couple other students and I had coffee with her and she mentions, "Yeah Aras has a great topic for his master's discertation, of which I have yet to see page one...you think that might happen any time soon, or what's the deal with that?"

"Ah...yeah...maybe this summer I'll get something done on that...I hope..."

The upside is you go to Chili Kaimas in the nice weather for free wireless, and the cute waitress remembers you obviously because you're so ridiculously good looking, and just starts greeting you with "Laba diena, Kalnapilio dideli? ;)"

Also, when you sit outside, you can smell, just for a moment once in a while before it passes, delicious Popeye's Fried Chicken...oh man, that's one thing I miss about the states is the quality (fast) food...in Klaipeda it's Kebabs and that's it, and the Kebabs fuckin suck except for one or arguably two places. I mean there's a McDonald's but no self respecting American expat could go there except totally wasted (I haven't even been there after almost two years here).

Phone and SMS PMS

first of all, i added a word to my phone's dictionary, so in between switching from "case" to "care" it scrolls through "BARF!"

Student: ok. it's bad for them than:)

Me, the Professor: it's bad for them "then" :)

Student: I'm LITHUANIAN!:)

Gedas: Piss baby piss!

Sarunas: Holy aras, im still drunk from last night i think. Whats the point, my friend? What is the point?! Aaaarrggghhh!

I dreamt about what I should post today, but then I forgot, so I'll just post a dream...

I'm a micro bus driver and my copilot is a robot. We're taking this micro bus full of people to someplace that's off limits (behind an Institution), across a plank bridge which is too small for the bus, I have to drive on the curb, and people have to jump off the side. I drive up the steps to the security guard, and he goes, "You deliverin' the biobenzadrine tanks?"

I says, "Yeah, that's it." So I turn the micro bus around to walk it down the other, steeper steps, and realize when I was coming up the steps after the bridge the back of the micro popped off its hindges! I lost my passangers, and they're cought in there, cause it's like a horse cargo car, actually. So my robot and I go back to find them, but it's really hard cause there's alot of horse cargo car-like cars stuck at the buttom of the steps, but they all seem to be empty.

Then we hear screams from the swamp that the bridge passed over, and realize that when the cargo car popped off its hindges it must have fallen into the swamp! I can't see where the screams are coming from, though, the sounds origin illudes me, the swamp is murkey like Yoda's swamp. With all their screaming the guard realizes something's amiss here, and sounds the alarm.

"Fuck those guys, we got any way outta here?!" I say to my mute robot copilot. He lifts up a dirty, rusty old Jet ski from behind the old horse cargo car-like cars. "Wow, does it work?!" He pulls the rip cord, and on the third try the motor revs up and he drops it in the water and jumps in the drivers seat, and I grab on to the waterskiing handles. He takes off and right before the slack is up a guard jumps out from behind a pillar and shoots my robot in the back-AMBUSH! I let go the waterskiing handles and dive under water to start a new life...under the sea.

Six Day Diet Recap

Here's the diet:
Day One: cheated by not starting the diet till dinner instead of at breakfast.
Day Two: no cheating except for adding corn to the plain rice, and I had to heat up the leftovers by deliciously frying them because I have no microwave, that's no my fault...
Day Three: chicken day isn't hard to beat; I did use mustard on the chicken which I think is okay because mustard doesn't contain any fat or sugar or anything else besides mustard seed; I did however bake the breasts instead of boiling them, cause I learned from How to be a Man that only weirdos boil meat. After a couple bottles of wine I decided I should eat my chicken with BBQ sauce...
Day Four: the chicken wasn't fully cooked, so that was sort of gross. I had to heat it up somehow for dinner (still don't have a microwave), so I fried it in soy sauce and viniger. If I'd added sugar it would have been Sticky Chicken from Moody's Diner, which is delicious, but it was okay without the sugar too.
Day Five: this is the end, my friends. I ate apples all day, and would have kept going, but I came to Vilnius, and I'm not gonna eat apples all weekend when I'm with my family.

Result: lost a little weight. Don't know how much cause I don't have a scale, but on Friday I was pissed at myself all day for forgetting to wear a belt on the day I'm going to Vilnius, only to discover upon lifting up my sweater that I was wearing a belt, but on the normal hole it is now too big! Another result is a stomach virus from the uncooked chicken, possibly. 40 hours after eating it I vomited violently for hours through the night. You ever seen bile? That's some messed up bodily fluid, let me tell you...

UPDATE!
Sms from Lokys: thanks a lot for the stomach virus you ass. Tonight the whole night through my date I felt nauseous and I wanted to shit my pants. This phone doesn't have shit? What the shit! Anyway back to the matter at hand thatnks alot. Next tuime you decide to eat raw chicken feel free to stay in jjahseea. P.S. I'm not actually mad at you so don't get the wrong idea, but shit man, what the shit!?

Paranoia

Yesterday I left work an hour early to make it home before the electrician came over, cause you gotta keep your eye on those guys, you know. Turns out he'll have to come back today while I'm not there, since he conveniently forgot a plug replacement. After he left I went to Akropolis, and when I got back the receptionist at my building gave me a finger nail clippers and said "The electrician left these, he said he took them from your room by accident." Yeah, sure buddy. Nice ploy. Tryin to gain my trust, so you can come back today and bamboozle me?! Well, jokes on you, cause I hid all my dirty magazines and took all my change with me to work!

New Diet

Some of my summer clothes are a little tight (and my special lady has started rubbing my belly and asking when I'm due), so I decided to give this new stupid diet a try my colleague told me about--lose 7 kilos in 6 days: 2 days of only rice, 2 days of only boiled chicken breasts, and 2 days of only apples. The foods may be seasoned and eaten ad nauseum, just without anything else for the whole 6 days. After one rice meal, I got just one question: can the rice be pork fried? Or shrimp fried? Does that count as rice? I knew it would be murderously bland, so I added corn, thinking what's the big deal, corn can't hurt...well, it doesn't help much either.

Party Crashin'

This weekend was Erasmus Days, a day and night in Palanga. I wasn't involved, because my institution hasn't accepted any students yet, we've only sent them. So, I wasn't invited, but it was Lokys and Liepa's birthday, and I had presents for them from Turkey, so how could I not go anyway?

Saturday morning I went tot he bus station, micro to Palanga, then a bus to Šventąją, after a 45 minute wait. Luckily during that 45 minutes there was some dance performances by first traditional groups, then by the future sluts of lithuania, 12-14 year old girls shakin their TNA and air humping in skimpy costumes on stage. p.s. that's the first time i ever used the term TNA.

Then I finally got out there and went to registration to meet Liepa, but decided to skip registering when I didn't see anybody I knew (plus the yellow T-shirts were...not appealing). So we went to wake up Lokys and Dan Fowler who was visiting them from France on his way back to the states. Liepa got her Salve Chalva or whatever it's called, and Lokys got his Turkish playing cards and peanuts...and to celebrate we all had a shot of Austrian moonshine.

After lunch got beers and taught a bunch of Erasmus students to play Kings, which was a huge success. For the first minute nobody was even listening to me, but lokys bringing a 10 gallon iron kettle to the table got their attention, and everybody got into the game enthusiastically, and we played all the way to the second to last card before somebody got the last king. Photos to come if I ever get a flickher site going.

Bussed it to Palanga and 400 buzzed foreigners are instructed to form ranks, six to a row. That took about a half hour, at which point we decided to march on the other side of the street, so we had to form ranks over again (nobody thought to do about faces and march across in formation). We marched with a band and cop car leading the way to Wild Nights Club where we drank cheese and ate wine, or the other way around I guess, then Fowler and I waited so long in line at the open bar we just had to walk about with eight liters of beer, then some weak dinner and playing setback for the first time in over a year and a half for me. Then the best (worst) part, Lokys and Liepa get me on stage (with no effort, really) to all sing Krambambolis, and get cut off after the second verse, I can only hope my respectable colleague had left by then. I even considered dedicating the sone to her, till I got on stage and realized I am retarded!!!

Got to wake up Fowler and carry Liepa out around one. You know in the movies when soldiers carry a comrade over one shoulder for like all the way from Vietnam to Sri Lanka? Well, those guys are in better shape than I, apparently. None of had been able to locate the key, but I had left one of the windows unlocked, so we went through the window. Liepa went straight to bed, and Fowler and I talked about God knows what, alls I know is I got a photo of him trying to get rid of the hiccups upsidedown I something about salad tossing...

Then Lokys comes in right after Fowler fell asleep and I'm like "Oh, so you did have the key!" He's like, "No, it was in the door. What, you went through the fucking window?!" And he had the lucky lady with him I'd left him with at the club, so we took a drink and headed to the beach to ditch a lame party after five minutes. Then I went to sleep at 6 to let them put the moves on each other or whatever...the morning at 9 was awesome, just kidding.

Good Party!

A Leisurely Walk Home Friday

Friday was such nice weather I decided to walk home, about five miles. After a couple the sun was beating down on my shoulders and I thought "why don't I get a nice frosty one?" So I grabbed one and continued my commute, and right past Trys Mylimos I see a group of tourists approaching. One middle aged man points to me and says "There's another thing I'll never get used to about Europe: Public Drinking!"

First Cash Bribe Attempt

Last year I had a student offer me "anything" , to get a better grade, but the other day I got my first cash bribe attempt. When I told her she'd failed, she was like, "Oh come on! What do you want from me?!"
"I want to you to Learn something."
"Oh, I learned it good enough, what do you really want? Money? How much?"
"I don't want your money or anything else besides you learning something!"
"How much?"
"Shakespeare, Swift..."
"NO! How much money?!"
"Get the hell outta here."

Balls

Today in class we held a mock auction, and one of the girls brought a koosh ball. Remember those things? They were awesome!

After writing this post I realized it's really boring, you probably should skip it

Coincidence?

Yesterday at the shop I seen a guy get shortchanged, a 10 for a 20, and then during dinner I unintentionally watched that Seinfeld where George get's shortchanged a 10 for a 20. So I'm sitting there thinking, "Wow, that's a big coincidence." And then Elaine and Rava have that conversation about whether or not there are big and small coincidences.

How can you not love sausages?

Yesterday was the worst day of my life, just like every other day I have to get up at 5 a.m. That is until I made dinner: pork sausages with spicy merlot tomato sauce on spaghetti with some grated Tilžės cheese, and chocolate ice cream for dessert. My plan originally was to crash immediately after that, but I felt so good that instead I cleaned my whole place and started working on a DVD for my grandparents. Thank you, sausage.

[this blog] is the best? oh yeah!

this blog is the #1 blog in klaipeda! yeah baby!

Turkey In Depth

I've been prompted by endless readers (one) to explain a bit more about my trip to Turkey. My primary reason for going was to attend Eracon 2006, a conference for all Erasmus Coordinators. In case anybody doesn't know, Erasmus is the student exchange program in Europe--if you do a semester or year abroad, it's probably through Erasmus. The conference was about changes in the program's third cycle, 2007-2013. Things like much longer staff exchanges (six weeks instead of one week) and increased funding for research exchange periods are things we need to start planning for now.

Another topic was the experiances of various institutions, on topics like Ideas for motivation and recognition in order to increase participation in teacher exchange, Before and after being an Erasmus student, West-East Mobility: Problems and Possible Solutions. The point was to learn how other institutions have solved the problems we're facing. As a reletively inexperianced international office, my colleague and I try to model our methods on those of more experianced/successful international offices where possible.

The last reason, less important for many participants, still important for us is networking. There were two sessions of the GO-Exchange Educational Fair, where each participating institutions set up a table with material on their institution, and either my colleague or I went around to each asking if they do pedagogy or health, and if they do can we organize student or staff exchanges, or some other kind of cooperation.

So that was the first half of my trip to Turkey. The second half was guest lecturing at Anadolu University: Amazing. The university has 1,100,000 students and an international airport with 22 aircraft. Personally interesting/convenient is that they have school and preschool facilities. Much of this was meeting people, since I wrote an agreement with these folks at Sweden conference, but it's always better to develop more personal relationship before sending them your students. I did lecture some American literature, though: A Perfect Day for Bananafish, by J. D. Salinger. It was interesting as always, and as always the students had ideas I hadn't heard before. The only problem was that we didn't have copies of the story for everybody, so we had to make copies. I'd sent the story by email a week earlier, but it wasn't clear that everyone needed a copy. That took an hour, since there were over a hundred students, it was my first lecutre given by microphone. And because the students were seniors, they'll be graduated before they could do an Erasmus exchange with us. All I could really talk about with them was literature, but they're not fans of English or American literature...so I was mostely looking over my shoulder wishing they would get back with the copies. Plus this wasn't even supposed to be a literature lecture, but rather an English traslation class, so the students had no patience for this (whenever several guest lecures are schedules for one week there are mix ups). And my colleague was no help! :p

As far as Turkey goes, I could spend a few years there. The mountains are gorgeous, as well as the rest of nature (pictures to come when I start a photo website). There's supposed to be a site for all the pictures of all the participants, but it's not up yet. The people are more friendly, generous, and helpful than any other nationality I've met. The coordinators of the university program drove us there from the conference (4 hours) and to the airport in Istambul afterwards (5 hours) instead of putting us on a bus or train. We got out of the car to take pictures of a wedding, and they invited us inside to meet the bride. My colleague asked some guy for a light, and after lighting my colleague's cigarette the stranger gave him his lighter. Another thing I learned in Sweden is that women's right aren't visibly different there that anywhere else in Europe. You see women disagreeing loudly with their husbands, and the husbands listening, which is something I didn't expect. Lots and lots of people, at least in Lithuania and the States, have gross misconceptions about Turkish people. They're extraordinarily nice!

Dos and Don'ts of a Trip to Turkey

1. Do make sure to check inside each suit jacket when packing to make sure the suit pants are in there on the same hanger.
2. Don't put a bottle of crazy glue in one of your shirt pockets you pack.
3. Do check on the exchange rate before leaving, so you don't accidentally take a thousand dollars out of the first ATM.
4. Don't forget your bathing suit, they're kinda expensive here, I think, but I never buy bathing suits, so I guess I wouldn't know...100 lits, is that expensive?
5. Do BYOB! The best drink they have here is "raki," which is a distinct flashback to somebody drinking NyQuil in the highschool bathroom.
6. Don't drink the water.
7. Do, when you get bored of the Turkish music after fifteen minutes, order a johnny walker and sip it with a beer chaser, that'll liven things up again.
8. Don't be afraid to dance like a Turkish man...it's surprisingly similar to the way my old man dances, and I've only seen that once.
9. Do check out the "surprise" on the final night, it'll be a belly dancer.
10. Don't leave your plane tickets and all your litai in the desk at the first hotel.
11. Do kiss the coordinator who gets them back for you.
12. Don't be surprised to spend half your time eating and gaining 18 kilos in 7 days (that's an estimate).
13. Do try the baklava, and bring your mother in law back a kilogram.
14. Don't forget to make cocktails for the road, since it's an 18 hour vagabondage home.
    

Murphy's Law

35€ for a tıe, food on it at the first meal. luckily, in a block to that murphey bastard, i got a name tag to hang on my neck that covers it!

Mulholland Drive

Has anybody seen this movie and checked Lynch's10CluestoUnlocktheThriller? My only disappointment was that none of the clues explain a way to get back the two hours of my life I wasted. I wanted to quit with ten minutes left, that's how bad it was, better to waste an hour and fifty minutes than two hours, I always says. My special lady insisted we see how it ends, maybe something will make sense out of this tragic dump, but no, the last ten minutes just made it worse and worse, and then boom, no conclusion, it's just over. I thought the days of "And then she woke up and it was all a dream" were over.

On IMDb I tried to find out the is the meaning of this, and a helpful user explained that "The actual truth is what you determine it to be." Well then, I determine this movie to be a piece of shit.

A Tip

When you're burning a dvd with your laptop, don't put it into you laptop sack and go to work; it aborts the burning.

The five litas DVD bin at your local car wash

This weekend I picked up copies of Human Nature and The Clan of the Cave Bear for five lits each. I couldn't believe finding the second one, Mr. Dyer showed us that in local history, and I thought of it recently, but I figured I'd be the most out of the way movie in the future of this planet. It wasn't even great, but I got it so my special lady would know what it means when I punch my fist into my palm and twist...

Strikes and Gutters

The weekend was a roller coaster of good times and bad and Lokio and Liepa's Piletybės Party and Gedo Birthday. The gutters include:

• Marčius jumping on the table and kicking the candle with all his might, resulting in hot wax on my and special lady's jeans, and her face, which I didn't realize in the dark, very lucky for Marčius
• Somebody stealing from my room
• Bronius committing an act so atrocious I won't mention it
  

The strikes include:

• Being the last family member awake at the Party, at something like one a.m., even though it wasn't my party; the party went on for hours after that
• A very funny bit by Aidas after he came into the sauna and accused a foreign girl of looking at him and particular parts of him like a piece of meat
• Aidas, Lokys and me pounding a bottle of Bobelinė, then singing every Lugan song we could remember
• Before leaving for Trakai, where Gedas had rented a cripsona on the Isle of Santarini, he helped me fill out my income tax return and my belly with goat meat, which ought to get me back a pleasant little sum, 1/3 of my university tuition from last year (next year it should be at least four times bigger, holy shit that'll be a party!)
• Hilarious moments of Lokys and Marčius going into the water after frisbees and soccer balls, respectively, competing with Gandžius, the dog named ganja
• Gedas laughed out loud for a long time at the gift we gave him, a hilarious t-shirt we made at Kodak
• A fun sauna with Vantos, something like a broom made of twigs with their leaves still on dipped in hot or cold water and used to beat people in the sauna...it's like a massage
• That was followed by running out of the sauna house, down the dock and jumping into freezing cold water...that's the best!
• Singing lots of Lugan songs again, some of which only Lokys and Liepa and I knew
• Donkus competing with Gandžius for who could fetch quicker; Donkus won somehow, shame on you Gandžiau
• Me making a 3 liter white russian
• Finally learning how to play Tūkstantis (A Thousand), which is a card game similar to Five
• Hundred and Set Back; the endless rules to this game reek of being modified liberally by drunks players
• Yummy Šašlikai (Shish kebobs without the vegetables)
• Alias, a board game like Password, at which my special lady and I did exceedingly well
• For the bus ride home I bought a bag of chips and won a free bag of chips
• Last night I had an awesome dream about some kind of battle, me shooting people in the forest, there were at least thirty of them and they were shooting at me too but they didn't him me, I downed at least a third of them, maybe more, and then I was out of bullets, but so were they, but I still had two steak knives and they didn't, so I ran out to take them all on!
• Liepa and I had this ridiculous conversation, but you had to be there
  

An interesting batch from Statcounter

This week's results are more varried than usual, here's some of the searches:

vebra flower (canada)
they got these big chewy pretzels
sirvydas vebra
a hole bunch of pictures of best friends
the best tattoos
tattoos on vagina
lokys liepa (2 times)
liepa vebra
meet hottie simona (Peru)
there was one from spain a couple weeks ago: lokys stupid

my siblings and i seem to be a popular search topic...

The most exciting thing...

It's really exciting to skip lunch in favor of eating meatloaf sandwiches on the bus to Vilnius after work. I made enough for six hearty men, but just for two people, so I could use mad left overs to make these babies. It's gonna be a hungry wait, but the pay off is gonna be so worth it, I'm gonna be moaning in that bus, everybody's gonna hear me going "mmm...[chewing sounds]...mmm...oh baby...mmm..."

Then when I get to Vilnius it's Šašlikai Time, in honor of Lokys and Liepa's Citizenship Party. So today is a day of gluttony, but the rest of the weekend won't be, I don't think, cause it's Gedo Birthday, and we'll be on some kind of fantasy island plantation where we have to forage for food, or maybe they leave some hidden packages of food in hard to reach places or something, I don't know all the rules yet.

Confession: Pride

So I've been reading more of Mere Christianity, and I just read the chapter on Pride. Here's the gist of it: "Pleasure in being praised is not Pride...The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased [someone]; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.'" (C. S. Lewis 1952)

There's much more, if you disagree the quotation you should really read the whole chapter, it's as well written as the rest of the book (Liepa explained to me that link I gave two weeks ago ins't the whole book, incidentally). Anyway, I figured I'm probably GUILTY of this baby, BIG TIME, as you may have guesed from the title of this blog. So I figured I'd keep count. I estimated a count of 20 Pride sins per day, but it's 4:30, I've been up since 5:50 a.m., and it's only been 4:

1. an sms from my special lady about what a great dream she had about me made me think "what a fine person I must be for that to have happened!"
2. an email from a colleague made me think "what a fine person I must be for him to be so excited to have a meeting with me!"
3. my students told me a grammatical explaination I gave was the same as in text books, and I thought "what a brilliant professor I am to make up off the top of my head the same things experts come up with for books!"
4. and I'm not sure if this counts, but the repair guy called up to tell me my lap top was fixed, and I thought, "that's the most exciting thing that's ever happened to anybody, because my excitement matters more than anybody elses!"

So is that alot? I feel like that's not that much, at least it's less than I expected. And this experament comes at a funny moment, cause on Easter my special lady asked me at church if I was going to confession, and I told her I can't imagine what I'd say, besides regularly forgetting to go to church.

How can I hate coffee?

I had a cold two weeks ago, and when I have a cold I dislike certain flavors, e.g. coffee and beer. I know other people like that too. But I got better and I still can't drink coffee. Monday I thought my old coffee at home was stale. Tuesday I thought my old coffee at work was stale. But now I went to the cafeteria and bought a couple cups (Lithuanian size) to fill my normal sized mug, and I can't drink that either! WTF?! I'm very tired, I've been at work since seven this morning, and I still have some complicated documents to draft. I'm fucked unless I gulp down this coffee. And my life is going to taste disgusting if I don't get back to loving the taste of coffee, cause that's my main source of fuel.

Here's an interesting story from the Tete's blog

Trust and Wealth Management Marketing: If things are so bad, then why are they so good?

Lokio SMSes

Are you sure you tried to download them all? Cock Sucker!!! Also neither cock nor sucker are the first words to come up?!? Cock Sucker!!!!!

Also did you slip work for snoring or did you just poor at work?

[Leaving work early for a booty call]'s the way to be, or else take a long lunch and go for the nooner.

I remember the first time i heard about nooners, married with children. Same for you?
(The answer was yes of course)

A Quick Recap

Went to Vilnius Friday before Easter, still wan't feeling well so I stayed in to be ready to meat my special lady and try to find a ham with Lokys and deliver a package to somebody. Met them Saturday and went on the Ham-Hunt with Lokys. Problem was, neither of us ever baught a ham, and we didn't even know if it's supposed to be raw or cured or smoked. No Luck at the Turgus. So we head to Maxima, and they got nothin the size of a ham ever, but I'm like "Yo! I need a giant ham, dude!" ("Gal turite milžiniško kumpio? Su kaulu?") And she indicates a 1KG slab of ham, but I'm like no: GIANT like 10KG and she's like Oh My God No and I'm like Oh Yeah Baby, You Bet Your Pantaloons Yeah Habibi! And she goes in the back and raps with the butcher and he's like awe yeah kid, we got that shit! They wrap up an 8 KG hunk of meat so big the walls of the shopping basket are buldging out. Lokys was like I wonder what Liepa'll say and I said "she'll say 'Oh My God.'" That is what she said.

We made some margučiai, mine sucked though. I kept thinking I'll make a better one tomorrow, but then I decided to just make a better one next year.

So we decided to go to noon mass so we could party Saturday night, even though we wouldn't be able to eat until 2 after church. Lokys and I and my special lady went (incidentally she finally saw The Big Lebowski Saturday and learned the etymology) to church and it was pretty good, it reminded me from stuff from Mere Christianity, which I mentioned a post or two ago, so we had stuff to talk about on the way home. Then home, and the HAM wasn't ready till FIVE, but when we ate it it was the best thing ever! The fat was the first fat I've had in my life that I could just eat plain, is was scrumptious. I don't even remember what else we had, the HAM was so good!

After that I can tell you this: telecommuting is not as easy as everyone thinks. It's hard to explain things, cause you gotta do it by email or sms unless you're so lucky that everyone you work with has skype. One of my colleagues does, thank God, but she wasn't at her computer for most of the day, and I'm a big enough idiot to leave my phone's sound off so I find 8 missed calls from her so then I do have to call her. And also if you're like me your colleagues can't scan things and email them to you, they can only fax them, so you still have to get dressed to drive to a fax machine place, unless you're super lucky and have a beautiful friend who can receive it someplace for you and scan and email it to you, I got lucky there, thank God!

Good work accomplished for the college Friday, I'm going to Germany after Turkey now if May, Hooray! For Free!

Had an anniversary dinner Saturday with the special lady, which was a surprise to her. She thought we were picking up Gedas and Juste for a dinner at home, but in fact we dropped off the special baby and went to dinner just the two of us at the best place I know and a walk in the park after. Thanks Gedai ir Juste!

The ride back to KL was a breeze, slept the whole fuckin way yeah bitch, yeah!!!

A new member in my Favorite Authors Group

Once Peanut complained to me about reading that "no book could ever make you laugh out loud." This was probably seven or eight years ago, and ever since then I remember his staunch resolution whenever a book makes me laugh out loud. This happened several times last night while reading Book II of C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. This guy is one funny SOB. I can't give you any quotes, because it's always after a long set up in the context of the book.

I'm not wont to review a book I'm less than half way through, but yesterday was the worst day of my life until I picked it up, and then it turned into the best. Hugely uplifting. My mother is the best book recommender/lender ever, except for when my father is. The link in the first paragraph gives you the entire book, incidentally. It's not really stealing since Lewis's dead.

When did I become so unhealthy?

Last time I was feeling under the weather and drinking mad tea and vitamin C, one of my colleagues was like, "when are you not sick?!" Do I really get sick that often? I only remember once this year before today, during flu week, when everybody was sick. And this time it's because of a certain special baby coughing and sneezing and spitting (yeah, she spits) her baby cold germs everywhere. Christ, how bout covering your mouth once in a while? I though I would make it through the day showing students movies in English and testing their recollection, but, alas, I'm already making a mess spilling things and knocking things over...so it's home to make chicken soup.

Speaking of which, when are they gonna get some goddam campbell's fricken soup in this country? I'm so sick I have to go home from work, my colleagues are like "get outta here with that thing!" and I have to stop at market to buy a chicken back and carrots and shit and boil soup for a an hour or two before i start healthifying myself...

I'm so ronery, I am so ronery...

I gave away my laptop last night to be repaired. They're gonna call me today to either tell me to come get it or bring in the box for it to be shipped for repairs...luckily I'm sick so I just went to bed right away, cause if I had to sit around my room by myself without crappy backgammon, crappy hearts, and snood, I don't know how many times I'd kill myself.

Oh and I miss my special lady too ;)

UPDATE!
I got the call...I'm on my way to bring them the box...rooks rike I am so ronery for some serious time to come... :(