Back off, bitch!
Hello?! What happened to the quasi-family oriented vocabulary? Well, it is still doing quite fine, thank you. Please remove your mind from the gutter. A week ago Tuesday as I was walking to my Russian lesson I came to a bridge. Not a big deal. Other than being less slippery than usual nothing was different. Until I got halfway across. And there she was....the most ugly dog I'd seen that day. Minding her own business, mind you, but still looking rather motley. Anyhow that is what I thought to myself behind some serious shades and a hood to ward off the chill. If you aren't aware of the fact, dogs are empathic and that bitch read my mind. She barked as if to say, "I don't like your attitude, and yes, I do speak English," jumped up and tried for my right arm, missed, and then nipped my leg as I stomped on by. Well, as I am wont to do, I plowed on ahead without a second thought. (For the worried parents among you, the leg wound drew blood, but did not break through my jeans. Now it is fully healed.)
For the erudite amongst all y'all, you are aware that yesterday was a large holiday for women, the world round. Why I've only heard about International Women's Day in relation to Russia (or former portions of the USSR) is beyond me for it appears to be the result of a women's strike in New York City. If your first thought on my title was something to the effect that millions of eligible Kaliningradites were barking at my door yesterday you are sorely mistaken. As a matter of fact, I didn't actually speak a single word to another sentient being all day. However, I have decided not to whet your appetite by describing my activities yesterday until the accompanying pictures are ready. Stay tuned.
Thursday as I headed for the office, my neighbor was coming out to do some shopping. We spoke for a few minutes and she inquired how I found the people. I said they were quite nice and she finished my thought with the definitive reason - the Soviet Union. All of the people are bound together in a union and therefore truly care for each other. Sounds nice, but I'm not exactly sure if all Russians really care for each other.
En route to my lesson on Friday morning, my eyes were peeled for my carnivorous canine. I even rehearsed a 'nice doggy' speech to myself. She opted not to show her face. A strange idea came to me during my half hour hike. The weather was virtually identical to my trek on Tuesday, but distinctly different. If anything there was an even thicker blanket of snow atop the frozen lake, yet the smell of spring was in the air. Back to my crazy thought, wouldn't it be great if smell could be taken along with a photograph? That way when somebody views a picture I took on Tuesday and compares it with a similar shot on Friday they could see something different. Personally, I don't think a digital smellarometer is a good idea, but please feel free to prove me wrong!
At the close of the lesson, my teacher explained that she was meeting her sister to go put flowers on the grave of their three year since deceased mother. I listened and then wished her a Happy Women's Day. Quite a juxtaposition - sniff, sniff, "My mother died three years ago." "Oh, have a great holiday!"
Pretending to be in a different time-zone, I began making some soup after going to a movie Sunday evening. I believe that pot of crud was the epitome of my bad cooking skills. For some inexplicable reason I thought that beets should behave like potatoes. They are roughly the same difficulty to chop, so why not save myself the hassle of shredding them and, corollarily (yeah, I know it ain't a word), turning my kitchen walls red in the process? Beets taste really bad in chunks especially when they are undercooked. Though as the week has progressed they have become less cardboardy. Still, I am looking forward to finishing that pot of barf. With the non-tasty taste still fresh in my mouth I spoke with the girlfriend for some time about her job prospects after graduation.
Change is supposedly good, right? Why must it be so blasted inconvenient? On Sunday about a two-block stretch of two main roads in the center of the city were changed from both being two-way to one-way. As a result, the trolley-bus can no longer make its usual route as the cables are not in the right place. Taken alone, this would not be so bad. However, one of the reasons the road switch occurred was to remove the tramway tracks from the main square and route them around the backside. This means that not only does my trolley-bus not work, neither does my tram. In my opinion this is bad news - especially because I love riding the tramway. Hopefully it will be remedied before the big celebrations this summer. After class finished on Monday evening I waited for the trolley for 45 minutes, hoping that it would come. It never did. Now, there is a bus that I can take, but the trolley deposits me about a ten minute walk closer to home. After freezing forty-five minutes of my life off, I hoofed it back to my flat. Surprisingly it only took about an hour. I don't suppose I'll do that all the time, but when I'm looking to pinch a few pennies (about 35 of them, to be precise), I may get some exercise and listen to the Russian radio. I was flipping through the channels and heard an American voice. It was some sort of program in translation. I never did figure out exactly why it was airing, but learning about information filtration in the field of science was mildly entertaining - for ten minutes or so.
For the erudite amongst all y'all, you are aware that yesterday was a large holiday for women, the world round. Why I've only heard about International Women's Day in relation to Russia (or former portions of the USSR) is beyond me for it appears to be the result of a women's strike in New York City. If your first thought on my title was something to the effect that millions of eligible Kaliningradites were barking at my door yesterday you are sorely mistaken. As a matter of fact, I didn't actually speak a single word to another sentient being all day. However, I have decided not to whet your appetite by describing my activities yesterday until the accompanying pictures are ready. Stay tuned.
Thursday as I headed for the office, my neighbor was coming out to do some shopping. We spoke for a few minutes and she inquired how I found the people. I said they were quite nice and she finished my thought with the definitive reason - the Soviet Union. All of the people are bound together in a union and therefore truly care for each other. Sounds nice, but I'm not exactly sure if all Russians really care for each other.
En route to my lesson on Friday morning, my eyes were peeled for my carnivorous canine. I even rehearsed a 'nice doggy' speech to myself. She opted not to show her face. A strange idea came to me during my half hour hike. The weather was virtually identical to my trek on Tuesday, but distinctly different. If anything there was an even thicker blanket of snow atop the frozen lake, yet the smell of spring was in the air. Back to my crazy thought, wouldn't it be great if smell could be taken along with a photograph? That way when somebody views a picture I took on Tuesday and compares it with a similar shot on Friday they could see something different. Personally, I don't think a digital smellarometer is a good idea, but please feel free to prove me wrong!
At the close of the lesson, my teacher explained that she was meeting her sister to go put flowers on the grave of their three year since deceased mother. I listened and then wished her a Happy Women's Day. Quite a juxtaposition - sniff, sniff, "My mother died three years ago." "Oh, have a great holiday!"
Pretending to be in a different time-zone, I began making some soup after going to a movie Sunday evening. I believe that pot of crud was the epitome of my bad cooking skills. For some inexplicable reason I thought that beets should behave like potatoes. They are roughly the same difficulty to chop, so why not save myself the hassle of shredding them and, corollarily (yeah, I know it ain't a word), turning my kitchen walls red in the process? Beets taste really bad in chunks especially when they are undercooked. Though as the week has progressed they have become less cardboardy. Still, I am looking forward to finishing that pot of barf. With the non-tasty taste still fresh in my mouth I spoke with the girlfriend for some time about her job prospects after graduation.
Change is supposedly good, right? Why must it be so blasted inconvenient? On Sunday about a two-block stretch of two main roads in the center of the city were changed from both being two-way to one-way. As a result, the trolley-bus can no longer make its usual route as the cables are not in the right place. Taken alone, this would not be so bad. However, one of the reasons the road switch occurred was to remove the tramway tracks from the main square and route them around the backside. This means that not only does my trolley-bus not work, neither does my tram. In my opinion this is bad news - especially because I love riding the tramway. Hopefully it will be remedied before the big celebrations this summer. After class finished on Monday evening I waited for the trolley for 45 minutes, hoping that it would come. It never did. Now, there is a bus that I can take, but the trolley deposits me about a ten minute walk closer to home. After freezing forty-five minutes of my life off, I hoofed it back to my flat. Surprisingly it only took about an hour. I don't suppose I'll do that all the time, but when I'm looking to pinch a few pennies (about 35 of them, to be precise), I may get some exercise and listen to the Russian radio. I was flipping through the channels and heard an American voice. It was some sort of program in translation. I never did figure out exactly why it was airing, but learning about information filtration in the field of science was mildly entertaining - for ten minutes or so.
posted by Troy on 23:45
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Might I recommend "Back up, bitch!" as a slightly snappier alternative.
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