Oh. Oh! Oh gosh. I was so sure that November had 31 days that I haven’t even prepared a celebratory I DID IT post. But there you go. It was an interesting month, the first half of which I don’t even remember, and I hope that tomorrow brings not only December, but also good news. And maybe this was the least significant of all the promises I’ve made, but I kept this one. Yippee.

The post about bears was by far the most popular this week, which goes to prove my theory that nothing beats bears except more and smaller bears. BEAR BABIES.

Meanwhile, A.’s communication with the bureaucratic minions of Satan (or, Tchort, as he is known in Russia) is going along these lines:
A.: Hi, it’s me again, is my passport ready?
MofS: What? Who are you? What do you want?
A.: My passport. Remember, the one I was supposed to have received by Friday? I’m the guy who’s been coming here every day for two weeks? Who only asked for enough leave at work for you to do things on time and is now supposed to be at the office?
MofS: Uh? Huh? Yeaaah, it’s not ready. Oh wait, no, it is. But it’s not here. It’ll be delivered some time this week. Probably. Or maybe not. Don’t hold your breath. Don’t call us, we’ll call you and all. You know. Bolivar, he’s plenty tired, and he can’t carry double.
A.: But… what?
MofS: Go away now, nothing to see here.
Me: AaaAAaaRRgh!! *head blows up*

And then today of all days I received an ominous phone call that went like this:
Caller: Hello, may I speak to Mr P. please? (that’s A., he’ll be Mr P. to you!)
Me: He’s not here, shall I take a message?
Caller: Ummm, nnnoo, but when will he be back?
Me: I’m not sure, he is on leave now.
Caller: Ooookayy, thanks…
Me: AaaAAaaRRgh!! *head blows up*

Okay, this doesn’t look very ominous written down, but take my word for it, all the time we were speaking (which was a while with all the uncertain and dragging on words) there was an alarm going on in my head like: wee-woo-wee-woo-wee-woo-head-office-wee-woo.

Would have been stupid to just forget two days before the end of the game.

It was raining today. I got stains of dirty water on both my trouser legs, but more on the left one. Do I have an uneven gait? Is my left calf more prominent than the right one? Was there more dirt on the left side of the path to the trolleybus station? It is all a mystery. To think I could have avoided those ugly stains (and laundry later) by not going out. Thirty minutes in it turned out I was in no mood to be hanging out, so I went home, and the same two friends I’d gone out to see came over several hours later to play Alias and drink Cinzano.

See if you can spot several subtle hints in the previous paragraph:
a) I have Alias, come play
b) dear husband, I am drinking away my sorrow, return home quick
c) I hate laundry

This is how true prose is composed. Seriously though, a guy I know once sent me some short stories to read, and when I wrote an unconvincing review, he spluttered angrily about me being very poorly trained as a philologist because I was unable to spot his cunning use of the motif of the color yellow. Or was it red? Anyway, now I know that contrived prose is smart prose. No idea what reminded me of that episode now.

Just wanted to say: I love bears, and they are really important to me. So here are a couple of bear videos:

(this second one is a lot like our kitties)

I’d love to get to play with a bear cub.

Nothing like an old meme to fill an empty space.

1. I once erased my entire Last.fm history for a year because someone had asked me not to advertise the music he’d given me and I didn’t know I could only delete the record for that one song.

2. I do a great many things on an impulse; later, I regret not having thought it through, especially when it comes to purchases.

3. I am almost always translating everything in my head or just speaking to myself in different languages.

4. Our stuffed toys make me feel guilty, but I am too sentimental to give them away.

5. When I’m alone, I’m a slob, but at the same time I clean the house compulsively.

6. Envy is something I detest in myself, but can’t get rid of.

7. I often wish I was born elsewhere. I wish I were musical. I wish I were younger; you get the gist.

8. I am cripplingly shy and compensate for it by being a loud, constantly talking upstart.

9. Memories of several very embarrassing moments will haunt me to the grave. I’d pay dearly to find out whether the other participants of those moments still remember them.

10. I can’t take criticism; I force myself to, and do okay most of the time. But it’s always difficult.

11. I have no will to talk of.

12. I am clever in a shallow way; I don’t think I’m actually very good at anything, but I do a reasonable job of disguising it.

13. Looking over these facts, it seems I do quite a lot of pretending. Yet I think of myself as pretty honest.

14. Sarcasm is my lifeline; this everyone knows I guess.

15. I need symmetry in everything, so I couldn’t have a list of 14 points. 15 is a better number, because it can be divided by five.

Found this website quite accidentally today: All Conferences dot com. The idea is that scholars can find conferences worldwide to submit papers to. That’s intellectual globe-trotting, I guess: just click on the country you’d like to visit and see if there are any conferences on your subject of interest this year. Then mail your proposal and if you’re any good, you’ve got yourself a trip.

Now I wonder if I can come up with a paper on Sport, Race, and Ethnicity. A visit to Barbados could be wonderful at this time of year.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I am thankful for bagels, even though they’re not good for the figure.

My usual day, made into a brief list of dilemmas:
- Get up on time and feel sick or hit snooze and be late to work?
- Splurge on tasty coffee or frugally have icky tea?
- Lunch break or leave early?
- Assignment[1], assignment[2], assignment[3], assignment[4], or procrastination?
- Wallow in self-pity or invite someone over and be bored?
- Have enough hours of sleep or sit late into the night?

A brief list of things that I’d like to buy or get:
- A cool bike
- Some new clothes
- Some great gifts
- A never-ending bag of cat food
- Any cool new gadget
- A vacation

A list of people I’d like to hit or have disappear:
- Everyone boring and annoying
- Everyone involved in keeping A. in Russia
- Everyone involved in cutting my grandparents’ pensions
- Everyone I owe work to

So. I’m home, covered in piles of kittens, quite worried, and the last hour has just run away in an unknown direction. Which is why this is all I’ll say today. Hello So You Think You Can Dance season 2 finale! The time has come for you to nom-nom-nom my brains away!

Update: Oh, Benji! A deserving winner. But I was crying my eyes out after this dance (yeah, I know I said contemporary was not my thing; I’ve changed my mind):

Watch it even if you’re not into dance.

It’s raining in my Gmail inbox, which means it’s most likely raining outside. Through my window I can see workers pouring water off the roof of the building they are constructing. Such is the view from my office window: a construction site. It used to be a sheer wall (which, in fact, was not sheer at all, unfortunately, you could see bugger all through it). Now they’ve made windows in it, and seem close to completion. Perhaps one day I will be able to see people through those windows. Like this, one of my favourite short films:

Work is progressing very slowly, and I am feeling frustrated. This is not a day to give myself any pats on the back. Sadly, as much as I love translating, it does not seem to be my calling today. To top it all off, my tea sits cold and stale-tasting on my desk before I ever finish it. On the other hand, it is lovely to actually have a work desk. There are scissors and pens in a cup right before me. What a sight for the sore eyes of a stationery freak!

I brought some music from home. It brightens my mood somewhat. The current band is called Fitness Forever, which gets me thinking fondly of the days spent at the gym. What if I renew my membership when my worker’s wages come in? (That jolly day may very well be tomorrow.) Some physical activity could be nice in this weather. Naturally, thinking about it is probably as far as I will get.

Update: This is a bit of a pointless post, isn’t it? Just thought I’d update whomever is reading this on the current affairs. Of which there aren’t much. It’s not like anyone’s asking me out to any fun events or anything. I’m just sayin’. I miss everyone. Sigh. (Is it bad taste to end a post on a sigh?) (Do posts show up numerous times on RSS readers when updated?) (I do enjoy parentheses.)

Watching So You Think You Can Dance season 2. It’s great, and I much prefer the new host and the new structure of the show. However, America doesn’t know what it’s doing with its votes half the time, and one more thing: when they are announcing the results, every time a new group of dancers comes up, the host says: ‘Are you ready for the results? Let’s dim the lights’ – which, can’t they teach the lighting crew that ‘Are you ready for your results’ is their cue? Why does she have to say it every time? Anno-YING.

Other than that, I am having quite an enjoyable day, even with some work under my belt. I wish A. was here and that I weren’t stuffing my face with so much chocolate, but for tomorrow at work I have a smart plan all set out, my friend is back from her trip to Malta (why does everyone always leave at the same time?) and as long as everything goes smoothly, this next week may be much easier on me than the last one. We’ll see.