Ex Patria

To the piece of shit in Chisinau

You suck.  You use the goodness of my man to steal his iPod after he's shown HIS KIDS' PIX, for goodness' sake?  How vile do you have to be to do that?

If the gods listen to me, you'll get crotch lice, and painful itchy rashes, and you will not be able to sleep at night, and you will lose all tolerance for alcohol.

You fucking idiot.  You're probably proud you stole my kids' pictures.  Asshole.

To all decent people from Chisinau:  If you see a piece of shit using a silver iPod Nano 2 GB, ask him to see the serial number.  If the number is 7K725CAAVQ5, kick him in the balls and take it from him. Keep the iPod, but kick him, hard.

Thank you.

Putting things into perspective

I know, I've grumbled a lot.  And Doug kept saying, things could be worse.  And I answered, there is always a somewhere where things are worse, but...

Today we got the news that the little son of our landlords is in remission, after 2.5 years of treatment for leukemia in Geneva.  It made us very, very happy, and it put things very much into perspective.  The things that count, they are not bad.  They are wonderful.

We're wishing you more health, much more, Jivan.  You go, little man!

The gods are having fun

Doug and I have made a pact to not let this posting get us down.  You may know, if you have followed this very irregularly updated blog, that the gods seem to have conspired against us.  Things have not been easy, and alas, there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel for us. (Of course, she hastens to add, things could always be worse, so we are not really complaining, just, you know, mentioning. We have a pact.  We try to see things positive. Really.)

We're having snow at the end of April (while the sale for pool memberships is going on), we're having troubles getting our last consumables shipment into the country - or out of the U.S., to be precise.  And speaking of pool memberships - it seems that this year, we are not able to get a reduced membership via the Embassy, so we can't actually go to the pool this summer what with the price being some $1,000 for the season (and the season could be quite short, given the recent weather quirks we had to endure). And Doug still suffers from what I suspect is walking pneumonia.  The antibiotics seem to have helped but he's still coughing, and now he's also getting a cold.

And it snows outside.

Really.  Does anyone else have the impression that we ought to leave here?  Are these all warning signs about bad things to come?

Who knows.  For now, we will settle down in the living room to watch "Batman, the animated series" with coffee, milk, and brownies.  As I've said before, things could be worse.  Of course, they also could be better.

Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead.

Seen from this perspective, it just isn't all that important that my dryer died today.  In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter.  Zen attitude.  You know - be centered and enjoy hanging the wash out in the cold every day.  Find your middle, live in the moment.

Maybe if you're single and live in the tropics.  But not with three little boys in ice and slush and mud.  No.

We are trying to find a repairman for the dryer.  However, seeing as they don't even sell dryers in this country, our chances are, at best, slim.

Only 315 days to go.

(I'm already using way too many italics.  This can't end good.)

[The guy with the dim view was Raymond Chandler, by the way. Bravo, I say.]

Guess what

It's the heating again.

I mean, come on.  What did you expect?  It's still 2007, after all.

I noticed the house getting cooler around 4 pm.  I went outside to restart the heater, again.  For, like, the fourth time today.  However, the little "restart me now or you'll freeze to death" button didn't glow.  Neither did the power button.

Yeah, well.  We are, apparently, the only people in Yerevan with an entire house on a single electrical phase. And this phase decided it just didn't like to do the job of two or three.  Without any breakers out of place, we lack electricity in the upper hallway, bathroom, and master bedroom.  And in the shed outside.  Don't ask me why those four rooms are on one line.  I cannot explain the mysteries of Armenian electrical stringing to you.

It's too late in the day to get an electrician here today.  So the heating guy, who is not an electrician, is re-stringing some lines, to take the power out of the living room, and directing it into the shed outside, in order to get the heater going again.  Is that safe?  I guess not.  It's also still well below freezing in the night.  We still have snow outside.  The question of safety is a relative one.

I guess we won't see any BSG episodes tonight. Frack.