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... :(

Advice

Here's some classic words of inexperience: "you really think we'll eat that much?" The correct answer is always an emphatic "YES!" I mistakenly answered last night "Fine, just get three chicken thighs then." Me so stupid. No catastophy, but the result was that instead of giant chicken sandwiches with mushrooms onions and green pepper for dinner, we ate giant mushroom-onion-green pepper sandwiches with a little chicken in there somewhere.

Das Comp

Hey anybody ever have this happen? My left laptop mouse button won't work, nor does it work to click on the touch pad. I can scroll on it, but not click. Right click works fine. I thought it must be a software, not a hardware problem since I can scroll but not click. However, when I attach a real mouse to the laptop, everything works fine, which makes me think it's a hardware problem after all.

If I give away the comp for repairs I may lose it for a long time, like even weeks. Any advice?

I can finally stay in Lithuania permanently!

The Tim Robbins Fan Club

Just in case he ever shows up to our meetings,
we have a special dressing room for him to get into his karate kimono
and spike up his hair and put his headband on...

i'm obsessed!

i'm krumas, fyi:

Krumas: if you do that, i could come back with you
liepag: i know
Krumas: if it's just the two of you in a car
liepag: if
Krumas: that would be the most amazing thing in the work
Krumas: work
Krumas: i mean, work
Krumas: fuck
Krumas: W O R L D
liepag: hahahah
liepag: world
liepag: yes

Spring is in the air! Ah, what a beautiful Lithuanian spring...

It may not be just how extremely goodlooking I am after all...

I cleared up the confusion yesterday when I asked a waitress why everybody thinks I'm foreign. She said "Windbreaker jacket on top of a suit." This makes sense because I just recently started wearing it, when my overcoat's arm tore off!

I guess it does look a little silly!

The cat's outta the bag!

I bumped into one of my favorite students yesterday, one of the ones I was really glad chose me as her course paper sponsor. Among other things, she mentioned "Suradau Tavo dienorasti :) "

"...ka...?"

"Nezinau ar taip vadinasi, bet ten kur rasai internete."

I assumed my students found this blog earlier, but this is the first time anyone's said anything to me. Ever since I got statcounter I see that there's about five to ten internet searches each week for my name just from Klaipeda. I only know of a couple people who are either enamored or enraged by me. I guess there's a whole slew of enamored ones though... ;) Who's left but my students? I guess maybe my professors, that'd be a little more embarassing. I don't know who the hell's looking for me in New Jersey.

She's a fourth year, almost out, and decidedly disenchanted by the college, with the exception of me and two other professors, so I hope she listened when I told her not to tell anybody! Davai, shhh :D

How come I never post jokes here? This one's ok.

A plane is on its way to Melbourne when a blonde in economy class gets up and moves to the First Class section and sits down. The flight attendant watches her do this and asks to see her ticket. She then tells the blonde passenger that she paid for 'Economy' and that she will have to go and sit in the back. The blonde replies, 'I'm blonde, I’m beautiful, I'm going to Melbourne and I'm staying right here!' The flight attendant goes into the cockpit and tells the pilot and co-pilot that there is some blonde bimbo sitting in First Class that belongs in Economy and won't move back to her seat.

The co-pilot goes back to the blonde and tries to explain that because she only paid for Economy she is only entitled to an economy place and she will have to leave and return to her original seat. The blonde replies, 'I'm blonde, I'm beautiful, I'm going to Melbourne and I'm staying right here!' Exasperated the co-pilot tells the pilot that it was no use and that he probably should have the police waiting when they land to arrest this blonde woman that won't listen to reason. The pilot says, 'You say she's blonde?' 'I'll handle this, I'm married to a blonde, and I speak blonde!' He goes back to the blonde, whispers in her ear, and she says, "Oh I'm sorry - I had no idea," gets up and moves back to her seat in the economy section. The flight attendant and co-pilot are amazed and asked him what he said to make her move without any fuss.

The pilot replied, "I told her First Class isn't going to Melbourne."

What's better for film making, beer or wine?

What a quandry. I imagine film making to go together with one of these things, I'm not sure why. Maybe cause it's like an art or something, and you know artists. A few weeks ago I tried a liittle wine before getting to know my film making software. That was just very frustrating. Lokys and I made a movie a few years ago on our father's Mac. Man, was that a breeze. You just hook up the camera and you're doing it, and in like an hour you've got something to be proud of. After an hour of doing this on Windows I had an empty bottle of wine and a grudge against Bill Gates. And I was hungry.

I got a new program on the advise of Darius, though, at least to edit my photos, which is very convenient. And I installed some dvd making software that has a movie maker with it. And I had a left over liter of beer from last night, so I decided that this is the time to shine. After breakfast today, I made my first movie, and drank a beer. Two beers. Four if you're French, those pussies. It's a 25 minute mix of home movies, short slide shows, clips of me preparing food, e.g. a giant meatball sandwich, and monologues directed towards the recipient of this April Fool's Day gift, my special lady.

So the answer is beer. Beer is a better catalyst for movie making. Unless the events of the day have just been a coincidence! That'd be a first. I've always wondered what a coincidence would be like...

Stink Bag

I ran out of deodorant a few days and haven't replenished my supply yet! Oh no! I'm at work thinking "Damn what's that fuckin stench, the French? No, it's me! Sacré bleu!!!"

braga larga equals interesting week-bend!

i came to vilnius and met my special lady and baby on friday, and we met up with my buddy aurimas immediately because he had a test the next morning, so he couldn't come to my place to party, which is what was on our agenda. we went to chili pica near the station, and the waitress comes, and i'm like "kalnapilis please!" and she's like, "big or small?" and i'm "big! the biggest!" and she's like "a liter?"

oh o. shit. i didn't think they had liters. i'd just had a couple liters on the bus, and i was in a bit of a hurry to get home, but what could i say now? "sorry, just kidding, i'm not a real man... sorry, i was just kidding about wanting a grand beer, bring me a meek one... i'm a little tea cup, short and stout..." so i ordered a liter.and then so did my special lady. and then so did aurimas. and shrtly we were joined by liepa's boyfriend karolis, who also ordered a liter. after the liter aurimas decided to come party after all :D

friday it was chill, chatting with everybody, and frequent comments from a certain somebody who was nervous about meeting my mother, who was coming home late after a wake in a place far, far away.

saturday she and i and lokys and liepa and karolis went for a walk, and lokys and i went sledding, can i show you the video of that via blogger? it's kinda funny.

the most noteworthy event that evening was that after finally after talking my special lady to hit the sauna with me, we got locked in! called liepa, and she was like "OH MY GOD WE'RE COMING RIGHT NOW!!!" she thought we we're in the actually sauna room, not able to get out the the sauna's anteroom, even though that's as far as any sane person would have brought his cell phone. lokys couldn't fix it from outside. he ran around (naked after the sauna through the snow) the house to give me a screwdriver, but the screw holding the handle in place was stripped, no go. so she and i had to climb out the window and run around through the snow and climb up the balcony, which i was carful to be careful going over, cause it's just above crotch height, but i still managed to slip and drop my 97kg on lefty...

I hope this is just because of how extrememly good looking I am

Lately more strangers have started addressing me in English, like waitresses or people at the gym. I thought, wtf, has my accent gotten worse? So I says to my special lady, I says, "wtf bizzatch, you were sposed ta have a good influence on my goddam language skills!" And my special lady then, she says "Shoot the fook up, ya bloody raising tart, I dinna fookin da yarball!" She's Lithuanian-Scottish, did I mention that?

So then yesterday evening I'm in line at Media (grocery store), and I get up to the register not having said a word, and the cashier's like "Hello," and I just chuckle, and then she's like "Ten seventy-one please," and I'm like, "Atsiprasau, ar galima paklausti kodel visi mano, kad as uzsienietis?!" And then she cracks up out of embarrasment and apologizes and says she can't exactly even put her finger on it.

So I assume it's my better than average looks, my trim beard (i think it might be metrosexual), my wardrobe being mostely foreign, and my plastic rimmed glasses. And then my accent, but that's only after I open my pie hole.

Sms inbox from 2.6.2006 onward…

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

So Cold-Oh My GOD!

It's so friggen cold I can't believe it, here's an sms I wrote somebody this morning:

Oh my God I'm freezing my FUCKIN FACE OFF!! Yeah HABIBI: Fuck! As myliu Tave, davai paglostyk man snuki! Shit salta! I'm gonna kill myself! God as [blah blah blah]

One of those days?

I go upstairs to work with better wireless than we gots on the first floor, and the girl whose office i'm in gets invited to something clandestine... "hey! come on! you gotta come, we're gonna...um..you know...get those books ready for you..." reply: "Uuh, yeah, I know what you mean, I'll be there..."

i don't know why i was kept out of the loop, but so i dip in there to give the girl her office key, and low and behold 20 women boozing and snacking, and i tried to just dip out and let em shoot whatever secret shit they're shooting, but you know this situation...there's no way they're letting their only male colleague go after he's made an appearance...

it was a birthday, and i could accept champagne and refuse brandy only so many times, wtf? so i got half drunk, and than this bitch from the bank calls me for like the tenth time to offer me a presentation about savings options, and finally i'm like alright, i can come to day at five thirty, and she's like how about earlier, and i'm like no way, i've got a job [slurp my brandy], i got work to do.

so then i leave and as soon as i get back to my own desk my reminder goes off on my cell phone, i got to go to university to get my equivalency degree requirements arranged! and i say to my colleague "shit, i'm half drunk and now i gotta go do this?!" and she's like "whatever, just tell them it was somebod's birthday, you're a human being..."

so i go do that, no problem, except i was sweating cause i just marched there, cause i'm a friggen soldier-kabob. but then i'm done in like 7 minutes, so then i actually could have been to the bank much earlier, but i didn't know how to get back in touch with the bitch from the bank, who actually sounds like a perfectly doable young woman (time to get my groove on and hit those low interest rates), so now i came to Kurpiai to kill a half hour on the interest, i mean, internet, before my meeting. wish me luck getting a mortgage or whatever they're gonna give me!

Someone would steal that cart if she could just get her balance!

 

This is the second one: us laughing hysterically!

We only took two photos?

This is us having some beer...

Family Dinner? Too Many Dishes!

Screw making myself family dinners. I was so hungry yesterday, though I'd been eating normally, I figured I'm probably lacking some vitamins or minerals or something, so instead of just making myself a giant sandwish or fried or deep fried meet and potatos, I thought I better go for a more wholesome sort of dinner: porkchops with mushroom/wine/cream sauce, egg noodles, and steamed broccoli. Sounds like a nice family dinner, right? Yeah, well, guess what! Afterwards you gotta clean TWO pans and TWO pots!!! WTF?! And since I always burn everything AND have no dish soap (or body soap, incidentally, or shampoo) that's really really hard! Last time I ever do that. Those dishes are gonna be sitting in my sink for days.

Gedo and Juste's Visit

Fiday, which is what we call Friday in Lithuania, I half jokingly said to Gedas, "Klaipeda part of your plans for the weekend?" And he was like, "that may in deed be a perfectly cromulent suggestion, dude!" And so I was all, "oh wow, that's cool, man, yeah man, hardy har har, this land is my land !" So he and Juste hitchhiked here, which was impressive, because they had a late start. Last time I tried to hitchhike to Klaipeda from Vilnius with such a late start I had to sleep in a dumpster with Rastenis...that idiot! :)

Anywho, they showed up and I shoved a mushroom-pepperoni pizza into the oven, and after we greedily gobbled it down and looked at my more interesting photos and videos I've taken so far over some vodka martinis we jetted to Troba (The Shack) for beers. Photos to come, whenever I figure out how to load them here.

They kicked us outta there at two, and we walked back. I knocked on the door for the company monkey to let us in, and I turned around and saw that Juste was still holding a beer in a glass we'd won by ordering enough beer. "She can't see you bringing that inside! DRINK IT!"

So Juste takes a tiny little sip, and I can already see the woman coming. "Gimme that I'll help you!" I chugged like half a beer in two seconds, but a significant amount spilled itself down my cheeks, and I was still wiping it off my face as the door was opened for us.

The next morning we had to get up at 7 to make the 9:10 bus to Village. That didn't happen, even though my special lady, upon my request, called to wake me up. "Yeah, okay, we're going," I said at 7:30. We were going to visit her and her family, whom I'd never met yet.

She called again at 9:30, "Are you on the bus already, I thought you'd sms me to say so by now."

"Um, well you see, um, what happened was, um uh ah ammmmmmmmmm.."

"ARE YOU STILL IN BED? WTF???"

"Yeah but it's not my fault! You don't understand, we um, there was, ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"

So we tried to make it to the 10:55, which still wasn't easy, cause I'd forgotten to finish making the truffles, so I balled them up in the morning. We got in a taxi. "To the bus station. And that be great if you could get us there in 8 minutes." He says, "no problem." As soon as we pull out we're in a traffic jam. Gedas asks him why he listens to Russian music, and they start debating history, and I keep thinking, "God, how the fuck can they casually chat about the Lublin Agreement when we're about to miss this fucking bus?!" We pulled in and Gedas jokinly said "it's probably the bus that's pulling out," but the cabby thought he was serious so he jets around to where it's pulling out and blocks it! And it was ours! NICE!!

We played Yatzi on the bus, and I won!

Then there was a funny moment. We got off the bus seperately, and I met my special lady. She wanted to hurry up, but I was like, "Wait, I have to ask you something. Remember when you told me about how you get all nervous before meeting people, but it's actually irrational, and that as soon as you actually meet them it disappears? And then I said I better not tell you you're ever going to meet my family or friends, just make it a surprise every time to avoid the anxiety? And you thought that was probably a good idea? Well, let's go over and meet those two chaps over there, then." She said if I do that I again I'll end up with a gray haired special lady by the time she's 25.

We had fun there, especially Gedas and Juste playing with the special baby, and we walked around and had a snowball fight. On the was out her mother was absolutely insistant that we take something to drink on the bus, she just wouldn't take no for an answer. So then we had this conversation:

"So, should we crack open that bottle?"
"I don't know, I don't wanna get drunk."
"Yeah, me neither.
...pause...
"But her mother said we're young men, that we should have some fun."
"Yeah, and that because we're young men, this little bit won't even get us drunk."
...pause...
"That's right, she did say that. And she's a mother. Mother knows best, right?"
"Oh yeah. But hey, she's not even just a mother, she's a grandmother! She's gotta be a genious!"
"Oh, we difinately gotta drink it then!"
"Yeah, open that thing up on the double!"

Then we went to Onyx. They closed early cause nobody was there. These idiots boarded up the main door and didn't post a sign for the side door, so only regulars realized they were open. Then to Memelis, with three highlights:

1. G&J got to hear Saido infamous cursing, e.g. "Pyzdinsim kurva blet i pirma auksta na huj!" which is the needlessly dirtiest way imaginable to say "let's go to the first floor."
2. A girl so drunk she went up on stage to participate in a dance contest including banging of clogs and wearing of a big hat. The music came on, and she drops the clogs on the floor and just looks at them, then she takes off the hat and throws that on the floor too and just looks at it. Everybody laughing his ass off.
3. The last contest we watched, girls doing something like flip cup, but instead of cups they were coasters, and instead of landing right they had to be caught in midair. We're all in the front row, and we keep shouting our own count to the MC, cause many of the calls were controversial, and then we just started shouting "give us free beer! we want free beer!!"

Stopped at the boat, cover charge forget that, so back to my place, for a lengthy heated debate about me requiring American English of my students, which was utterly pointless, it just made everybody feel bad. But then we moved onto other, more fun things and topics. Juste hit the sack, and Gedas and I were about to leave her be, but on the way out I burst out laughing, fell to the floor, dropped everything I was holding, and rolled around on the ground laughing hysterically, uncontrolably for what felt like 20 minutes, but was actually probably just one. That's never happened to me before, it was awesome, I couldn't believe what was happening.

Discovering Nature Only Through Technology

I was 35 minutes early for a meeting today at University. A week ago I probably just would have gone in and read a book (this isn't a person who is likely to be free early than the agreed time). But now that I have a digital camera, I can enjoy myself outdoors again without the company of people and partying. So I took a walk down to the German Graveyard 1939-1945 and took a bunch of photos. You wanna see 'em? Dream on! After I find enough spare time to figure out how to make slideshows and video montages or whatever the monkey they're called for dvds, then I'll try to find the time to figure out how to post some here...:D

My Comedy Rip Offs

Whenever I recall a good joke in the middle of a lecture I try to work it in, but it's never worked as well as today. We were talking about the best literature I've ever read, Franny % Zooey by J. D. Salinger, in which a man pretends that a letter which is very dear to him is actually not memorable. This is odd, isn't it? That's how I always start off, if something's odd, that means we can interpret it. Don't people usually make a big deal about getting letters, not the opposite? And then I remembered a really great comedy bit by Kevin James (Sweat the Small Stuff), and I went on to totally rip it off, the bit about how men get cards but they don't read them, just pretend to be excited about them and then open them and try to decide how long it would take to read them, and when they should stick in a nod...and if you're a man make sure you don't leave a receipt in the car that says "greeting card"..."snickers bar"...she'll be pissed about that!

Sweden Part C

Then Friday was workshop day. We had a couple workshops, the notes of which should be published in the future (I still have to type mine up because they're indecipherable, everybody thought we were only going to present them orally). I'll add them to this post or another post too. It was very interesting, the first one anyway. The working group was half made up of people I'd already talked with quite a bit, including a Hungarian dude with whom I wrote a bi-lateral, a lovely Turk with whom I also wrote one, a passionate Austrian, a talkative Portuguese doctor and a thought Finnish Canadian. The topic was preparing teachers for global classrooms, and it was a fun discussion, I was disappointed we had to cut it off after an hour and a half. The next Workshop was less intersting.

That afternoon was the least interesting ever. The least important speakers always get bumped to Friday afternoon, when nobody feels like listening anymore, which reinforces the lack of enthusiasm. The last guy droned on about like who his wife was or something for like five minutes, at which point I decided to take a bathroom break for about an hour. I went back with five minutes left to make sure I didn't miss anything, and saw that about half the hall had opted likewise.

Sweden 2

Are my new colleagues finding my blog? Statcounter showed somebody from Spain reading...Paco? Erasmus coordinator from Spain? No. Just somebody types this into google: Lokys Stupid Idea.

Anyway the blunders started turning into successes. The next day was speeches at the conferene center, where the hotel was also. It was slightly less interesting than the first day, but during meals and coffee breaks I got more chances to arrange the future of my College. But then after three was big deal making time, each country got a table to set up materials from their institutions, and everybody walked around meeting people. That evening there was a band that played Swedish folk music before and after dinner, which was a herring appetizer (delicious) and a reindeer main course (delicious). The music was okay, I recorded a little of it. I’m not a huge fan of folk music beyond my own folk. I always understood that to be the point of it, not the music itself. That night I joked around with the bartender enough that he hooked us up with free drinks, and then we spiked them with bobeline.

Sweden: a series of successes...no wait, those are called blunders!

So my trip to Sweden began with alot of quality moments, letäs see if i can remember all of them. Hmm. No. Iäm surely forgetting some, cause this wonät make up a series, but letäs see anyway. Upon arrival I put down my stuff at an ATM to take out some swedish crowns. When I was done I noticed a wet spot around my duty free bag. I guess I put it down too hard. Sorry Sarunai, no starka for us. Ö(

Then, possibly because Iäd had to be up since four, or more likely because I couldnät stop day dreaming about my sepcial lady, I was about to get off the shuttle bus without my jacket. Luckily I was traveling with a couple women who helped me out. Then I was about to get off the subway without my suitcase. nice. i had to get up at four though, so thatäs my excuse, plus i couldnät stop daydreaming about my special lady.

Scrumdiddlyumtious

tried to copy teta lijoje's scrumdiddlyumtious recipe for pancakes with cottage cheese filling this morning, and i came really close. it was even more orgasmic than hot sandwiches, since i mixed my special lady's cherry preserves in with the cottage cheese...oh my GOD!

i was so lucky, i expect, because i used a really old fashion cook book from the 50s that my mommy purposefully sought out for me for christmas, or special ordered or something. it's hard to believe that we're all so trendy hash slingers today that all the great stuff from the past is forgotten in the states.

The Battle of Wills has Begun

My special baby sleeps in the same room as my special lady and I. Sometimes she wakes up and starts screaming. Not crying, just screaming. Not upset, just determined to impact her environment (us). She's teething too, but I don't see how getting into bed with us makes the pain go away instantly.

So it's on now. When I was a baby my parents tried the thing where you just let the baby cry out the night, and the baby'll be so exhausted the following evening he'll sleep like a...um...baby. I totally defeated them, I bawled incessantly for three nights in a row until they caved in.

Can I be as stubborn a parent as I was a baby? Can I will myself to sleep with my special baby howling herself silly ten feet from my ears? I'm pretty confident. After a while last night my special lady caved in, though, right as doubts were possibly about to start creeping in my direction.

To make the battle easier, I figure I can make sweet frozen waffles (they're not for sake in Lithuania), to give her something to suck on and numb her teeth at the same time. Or, I can poke out my ear drums. Any advice?

Smores for Lunch

I totally just had eight smores for lunch. There was no marshmellow, though. Colleague's new office party. Anything to keep from eating the shit in the cafeteria.

Finishing All My Work Early

Do you ever come to work and finish everything by 11a.m.? That's awsome. I had to be here at 8a.m. (8:20) to make that happen, but it's cool anyway. Luckily I have to bring one of the things to a meeting at 3; I don't think I could stand a six hour lunch.

Here's the tricks:

1. The person whose phone number you gotta find and call in the morning tells you to call back tomorrow.
2. To fill out the financing request for money next year, just copy last years and change the numbers. I got the idea for that by noticing that the proposal form they sent me was copied from last year's with the year changed, but they skipped a couple spots which tipped me off.

So now I'll catch up on things that I was supposed to do a long time ago and haven't gotten to yet.

NOT ONE ESSAY???

Papers were due in two classes yesterday, and in one class 5/13 students were absent, and of the remaining eight not one had finished his essay. The conversation that follows may be proof of one of my disorders.

Professor: What's going on here, is this a joke?!
Students: No! We had to prepare for English Grammar class!
Professor: What do you like your Grammar teacher better than me?
Students: No.
Professor: Are her classes more fun than mine?
Students: No!
Professor: Does she scent her assignment sheets with perfume?
Students: [LOL] NO!
Professor: Didn't I bake you guys cookies last semester??? Does she bake you things more often?
Students: [LOL] NO!
Professor: Don't you know English Practice is more important than Grammar?
Students: Uh, no, why?
Professor: Didn't you [Student X] just take an ESL test to go work abroad this summer?
Student X: Yes.
Professor: Did it have a bunch of Grammar questions, or was it more like English Practice, you know, talking about cleaning chores and picking vegetables?
Student X: It was all Practice.
So my class is more useful, so there! And you know I take off two points per day (out of ten)! Does she take off more than that?!
Students: If we come unprepared twice we fail the class.
Ahh... So... I have to increase the penalty, right, for you to do the work on time? Alright, I'll see about that...
Students: Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Thanks Rachel

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Moderate
Schizoid Disorder:	Low
Schizotypal Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Disorder:	High
Borderline Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Disorder:	High
Narcissistic Disorder:	Very High
Avoidant Disorder:	Low
Dependent Disorder:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders --

Class Material

Using The Onion and Mises Institute articles as class material is a good way to expose students to everyday language and cuts down on prep time. It's especially good, for instance, to use op/ed pieces.