finished — and so is this sofa
I had an idea for tonight’s final post in Nablopomo 2010, but then forgot it— Oh! The sofa has just creaked. Maybe we’ll have to get a new one, which would be good, because this one is an abomination. We got it for its nice simple shape, gray colour, and small size, especially impressive considering that it is a fold-out, the only possible solution for our guest-room-less home. It was also significantly more affordable than the other options we were considering, which was a key factor as we had something like seven dollars eighty-three cents between us at the time, and a correspondingly cramped furniture budget.
However, we quickly discovered that the sofa fails at several key functions. One, it is unsuitable for sitting on, because the fold-out cushions are not fixed to the back, so as soon as one sits down, they immediately start sliding out and one finds oneself slumped in a starfish position, robbed entirely of self-respect. Two, it is unsuitable for sleeping on, because once you fold out the mattress bit, it turns out to be short, hard, and impossible to put a fitted sheet over, which, hello, does anyone have non-fitted sheets, even? Three, it is by no means complimentary to the room despite its very fitting colour, as it has proven extremely attractive to Lorca as a large and very stable claw sharpening device.
In short, this sofa is mostly good for holding decorative cushions, and we’ve got two chairs for that. Still, we couldn’t justify getting a new sofa less than a year since we bought this one. Until now. The creaking is an ominous sign. I keep using the armrest as a backrest so as to be able to sit on it without gradually migrating to the floor, and that is probably not provided for in the construction. Soon, the armrest will break off, sending me tumbling, maybe injuring me, which will give me the moral grounds to declare the sofa enemy of the state and send it to exile at the curb. We shall then need to go shopping for a better, sturdier, friendlier sofa. Even if all we have at the moment is seven dollars eighty-three cents.
le sigh
If anyone’s still wondering, the cat hasn’t come back yet.
Why would he? There’s plenty of food outside, and it’s only, what, eleven degrees below zero.
Why would he want to come back home when he can spend quality time in a warm, musty basement somewhere, in the company of lovely female cats (with whom, incidentally, he is physiologically incapable of starting a family)?
Why would he miss us, if all we ever did to him was force-cuddle, shower him with toys, and stuff him with the best possible food and countless treats?
Why would he miss his brother? Who wants hours of playtime interspersed with naps curled together on the sofa?
Why, if he came back, we’d think less of him. His brother certainly would, what with all the spoiling and the treats he’s been getting as he has regained his Only Kitty position.
because it’s required of a personal blog
Here are some lesser known and quite uninteresting facts about me:
1. I am gullible like hell, you can tell me anything, and I’ll believe it and be happy about it, which causes friction with A., who is the type of guy to say “Yes, that is great, but in fact—”;
2. I never want to go to bed, nor to get up, and the knowledge that I will not get enough sleep (when it’s very late and there is no way to avoid getting up early) makes me cry;
3. I love receiving letters, but it is often difficult for me to write them. Snail mail thrills me: the delayed satisfaction of not knowing immediately who it is that wrote is exciting;
4. I am a perfectionist in the sense that I need all of anything. If I’m reading a seven-book series and the second book disappoints, I’ll most likely finish the series;
5. I have lately been scared of the dark, and of loud noises, and of bugs, and of thieves, and of heights, and many other things. I wish I weren’t such an anxious person;
6. I like things that are grey or blue, and pretty fonts, and spices, and nice packaging, and checking out new cafes, and shopping for gifts, and puppies, and layers.
There’s plenty more, but I’ve bored myself by now. I’m very easily bored. Also, the hatred of the word “I” repeated many times on a page — we have it, my precioussss.
tis the season ladidah
All of a sudden, it’s winter. It had been seven degrees and wet for many weeks, and I had gotten used to wearing my coat unbuttoned and my scarf in my bag. Yesterday, however, the temperature fell below zero. It snowed all night and all day. When I woke up, the cat was staring transfixed through the window at the snow falling in sheets.
I was glad though, because I got to wear my fabulous new jacket. And finally, the time had come for the mittens A. bought me a while ago. Even putting on winter shoes was sort of exciting. As I was slipping and sliding towards work, I couldn’t shake a feeling of black-and-white snowy routine, as if the previous warm weeks had never happened.
After work, I went over to my friend’s workplace, the home improvement store, to help decorate a Christmas tree. I’d sort of suggested we do one in shiny bolts and door hooks and suchlike, she added some screws and lightbulbs, and we spent two hours tying blue and orange raffia twine to various building supplies and talking about Christmas kitsch. Fun.
Now, I am obsessed with this video:
The animation is extremely season-appropriate, and I adore this style, it makes watercolours look like knitware. The song, it goes without saying, is unsettlingly good.
great news
Not only are naked Pamela and Justin bringing lots of traffic in, someone was actually referred to this blog yesterday from a website called Cheapest Viagra. I’m famous for all the wrong reasons!
it’s thanksgiving
I was going to list a number of things I was thankful for, but I wrote them down in my notebook and then left it at the seminar where I gave the lecture yesterday. So I guess I’m thankful I didn’t leave my wallet there. And I’m also immensely thankful that I’m going to bed now, although my bedroom reeks of paint, but that’s another story.
what i saw today
An old man and woman walking and holding hands. When I asked them for directions, the lady stepped in front of her man in a practised motion of taking charge and explained kindly. She then fell right back into step and into her conversation with him.
A guy on the bus telling the driver that women have trouble letting go of their virginity, but not their money.
An old blue van with a huge yellow smiley face on the front and “E=mc2” in yellow letters on the side. The people inside were laughing, probably happy, safe in their knowledge that E will always equal that, whatever happens.
Twenty minutes’ worth of streets in V. I didn’t recognize (that’s a lot for a small city of 600,000 people). When the bus finally wove out of the dark industrial neighbourhood, a graffiti said: “Welcome to V., such as it is.”
quick one before bed
My greatest achievement today was meeting the main shareholder of a large company and teaching him, at his request, how to fold origami stars.
Tomorrow I’m giving a silly lecture in a resort town two hours’ ride from V., so I have to get up at seven. On Sunday it was 8 (after a 3 a.m. bedtime) to look for the cat, on Monday it was 7.45 to get to work, today it was 8 to meet the cleaning lady at 9. All in all, a rather night-owl-unfriendly week.
kitty’s made a break for it
Our cat Oscar ran away last night. A.’s been out looking for him five times today, and we both went another three times. At this point we’re just hoping he’ll come back and giving many hugs to our remaining cat (who seems unfazed by the events, but we might just not get his signs).
the world is getting old
Something that really shook me just now is that Woody Allen is 75 years old. I mean, the guy was 51 when I was born. He always looks about 45-48 in the movies, I never thought about his real age, and now it just hit me. Really, imdb.com is the scariest website: you watch a great movie, you log on to imdb, you check out the actors—wham, they’ve all aged since the movie was made and are now grey-haired, wrinkly, and playing people’s parents.
Take the cast of Friends, for example, these guys have embodied what being young and starting out on your own was for ten years, and now Matt LeBlanc looks like Joey would if he stood still for a year and his hair got really dusty. And Matthew Perry has a permanently tired face with a gritty quality. Courteney Cox plays the lead in a show about cougars for chrissake! Or Sex and the City—if it started now, who would believe it? They’re all 45 or 50!
And the generation before them, the guys who star in all of my favourite movies? Robin Williams is 59 and has this permanent old man’s stubble. Dustin Hoffman is in the same league as Woody Allen, he’s just two years younger. The boy who killed himself in Dead Poets Society is now going through mid-life crises on House. Julie Andrews—Maria, the fresh-faced nun who falls for the Captain—was born in 1935. Even baby-faced Adam Sandler is forty-four!
I don’t even want to make any conclusions on the end of this post.
plan worked; i am immobile
What do you know, yesterday’s trick really worked! The search queries that brought traffic to the blog today were: “Pamela Anderson naked” and “Justin Bieber naked”. I say, this is SEO at its best, I should probably market this as a “solution”.
Also, I just found myself crying because I really REALLY REALLY didn’t want to do my daily exercises. Sometimes my wussiness surprises even myself. Anyway, these two days have been couch-potato days: no morning walk, no evening exercises. Meh, I just want to sit in bed and not. move. ever.
This post wins the Pointlessness Prize of the year. Just saying.
pamela anderson and justin bieber naked
Whatever I do, this frankly unremarkable post remains the most visited on my blog, and that’s not because it’s too interesting, but thanks to my penchant for silly off-the-wall blog titles. People are just googling ‘hello in Albanian’ and getting here. Why are they doing it? Are they all going to Albania? Are they taking the dated Russian equivalent of LOL-speak, ‘Olbanian’, and the popular mocking recommendation to ‘learn Olbanian’ seriously? Should I replace the contents of that post with valuable clickable banners and monetize? I must come up with a creative way to use a space which is seen by above of seven people daily (gasp!). Or maybe I can give this post an even better title, so that it becomes the attraction. Hmm, let’s see…*
Anyway, most of today was horrid. I overslept by four hours, stumbled on maybe five great ideas when it was too late to act on them, felt like a giant ugly ass, was hungry and cranky most of the time, and so on and so forth. Not to put too fine a point on it, I HATED EVERY MINUTE. But then I got to read for two hours (I’m reading a series I adored as a child, which largely inspired my envy of boys, in the original Polish, and getting a great kick of it). Then I got told I looked great three times in a row (admittedly, by the same excitable person, but nonetheless). And then two separate very cool couples said they wanted to surf our couch this weekend and the next—everyone wants to come see the lovely city of V.! So now I feel better. The (happy) end.
*I feel I might have done this once before, but can’t find that post, so let’s say it never happened.
current blog recommendations
Here are ten blogs which hardly ever get skipped when they come up on my Google Reader:
- A Cup of Jo — it’s usually sweet and full of pretty things.
- Abstract City — gorgeous and funny illustrated stories.
- Bliss — love her I Love Mondays where she lists shopping finds.
- Dooce — snarky, funny, and well-written.
- Gemma Correll — wonderful illustrator, loves coffee and pugs.
- Hark, a Vagrant — sarcastic, highly educated comics.
- Information is Beautiful — infographics are my friends.
- Letters of Note — unique documents of diverse times and events.
- Penelope Bagieu — funny, nicely drawn, helpful for my French.
- Stephen Fry — can’t be a true fan and not read the blog.
Not to mention, of course, the daily comic strips like Questionable Content, Girls With Slingshots, Inkdick, and Indexed, among others.
Check them all out!
a drastic makeover
I’ve decided to make some improvements to this site. Change the tiles, maybe come up with a new header at some point. I’ll start by putting in a crossword puzzle. It’ll change every day, too. No need to thank me.
Err, whoops. It doesn’t seem to work. Well, here’s a link to a crossword page then. Go there yourself every day and get a new crossword. Consider it an extension of my blog. It’s as if there was one embedded just here.
this one’s for the ladies
Warning! This is a silly post! Proceed at your own peril.
We all know that smart and cynical is the new sexy. Not every modern intelligent woman wants Schwartz or Brad Pitt any more—many will much rather have House. The kind of woman that loves with her brain appreciates the brilliance and clever repartee that the likes of Gregory House, MD have to offer, even if they come without a shock of blond hair and piercingly blue eyes. The lineup of unlikely heartthrobs up to now has included, to name a few:
Edmund Blackadder (especially Series 2, I think): cowardly, spiteful, egotistic, and very clever.
Gregory House: brash, egocentric, addicted to drugs, misanthropic, and very clever.
Hank Moody: a failure in many ways, insolent, sex addict, no self-control, and yes, clever.
John James Preston (Mr. Big): conceited, irrational, weak-willed, yet still clever.
Remember, these are not personal favorites, but results of highly scientific research. (My own tastes are only reflected in Blackadder being named first, he he.) These men may not be uniformly handsome, but they are all appealing to the female intelligence. Well, my selfless quest for new knowledge has yielded an addition to the list in the shape of:
Bernard Black. He is an alcoholic, to be sure, those droopy eyelids may not be everyone’s cup of tea, he is disgustingly messy, he hates people, and he smokes like a chimney. But! He owns a bookstore (+212 cool points with a reading woman), and knows his Austen from his Toole. He is charmingly eccentric, and quite witty in the right way. (“I fell, it was not exactly dashing.”) He is grumpy and possessive of his books, and he ruffles his hair when he’s troubled—and so I rest my case and you all must watch the regrettably short Black Books right now.
let’s have a photo friday
My friend works as the marketing director of a chain of home improvement stores. She also possesses an entirely ungrounded faith in my manifold abilities, including a knack for photography. Which means that sometimes I get to do things for her that are usually reserved for the pros, like weddings, family portraits, and other stuff.
Today, for example, we had an extremely fun afternoon styling and photographing goods for a Christmas advertising booklet. We played around with tools, appliances, rolls of wallpaper, and two very suave looking polar bears in impromptu red boas. I even got paid; A.’s going to go wild with that gift card, he practically lives in these stores.
However, I don’t believe I can post these photos online, at least, not until they’ve gone to print. So instead, let me share one from that walk a while ago which I really enjoy for the light in it.
how i got vacation tickets
We’ve been planning to have a winter vacation this year, so when I got a nice fat envelope for a translation—really, I’ve never held such a thick wad of bills before, although don’t be mistaken, it’s because they paid me in twenties—we decided to get the plane tickets right away, to have the largest expense behind us.
Usually, this kind of thing is my responsibility, so I logged on to the online booking page and selected the flight we’d set our hearts on already, one with two very long connections in Vienna, so we’d have the additional treat of spending an afternoon and a night in a magnificent city we’d never seen before. Once the flight was booked, the website gave me a printable receipt, and I immediately wired the money over to the agency. Meanwhile, the e-ticket arrived to my inbox. It said: 9 Jan V. to T. via Kiev, connection 5 hrs; 21 Jan T. to V. via Kiev, connection 7 hrs.
Now, Kiev is a city we have most definitely been to before. In particular, we’ve enjoyed its fabulous airport, reminiscent of the train station in A.’s native provincial town in Russia. We’ve actually missed a flight home from Kiev once and had to take an overnight train because we’d made the mistake of thinking that a cab would get us from the city to the airport in an hour and a half. It is obvious now that a five-hour connection would be just about enough to get down town and back without stopping, and provided there’s no traffic.
Well, there was nothing to do but pick up the phone and call the booking agency. Hello, I said, I have a problem with reservation #xxxxxxx. Yes, the one that says NO CANCELLATIONS NO EXCHANGES NO REFUNDS underneath the four-digit price. Yes, I booked it myself just now. Yes, I’ve already paid for it. Yes, I’d like to cancel that, please. Why yes, I’d love a discount code to the same amount on my next purchase with you! Thank you!—After this highly improbable act of mercy on the part of the clerk, I only had to wait for my code to come in and re-book.
The next day (yesterday), the code was sitting there in my inbox, and I rushed gleefully back to the booking page. This time, I double-checked where I was clicking on, and made sure to get Vienna and the long connection, not the option listed right below it, of a mere 40-minute transfer in Vienna’s unfamiliar airport (we wouldn’t want any discomfort the second time round, right?). The tickets were booked, the price difference paid, the confirmation mailed to me, and happy announcements made to our friends in Destination Country.
Today I decided to tell our friend in Vienna, who was a big part of the reason for this whole NO KIEV WE WANT VIENNA hullabaloo, the times of our arrivals. January 9th is the day we’re flying there. The day we’re flying back, deliberated over for over a week with regard to our lonely cats and our limited leave from work, is January 21st. Except that I’d marked this as the day we fly out, so most of the journey would be on the 22nd. A Saturday. When A. can’t fly because he has severe Judaism. On an unrelated note, I hate religion.
To sum up, this, children, is why I shouldn’t be permitted to do things. Especially things involving money, where a mistake would (and will) cost upwards of $200 to fix. Oh, and that lovely second night in Vienna? Will be all mine to enjoy. Alone.
i’m annoyed
I’m in a crappy mood today. My dreams were tiresome and sticky, and by the time I’d kicked myself out of bed, my mood was settled, and nothing I did made it any better. Some of the things that made me mad and impatient today were:
– work (not enough, too much, uncreative, overwhelming),
– lunch (all wrong, and then I had too many sweets),
– my looks (to be crowned the Queen of Fat soon, stay tuned),
– the cats (destructive, noisy and spoiled),
– our winter vacation (expensive and potentially dangerous),
– me (whiny, neurotic, useless, self-absorbed).
And then we went for dinner and groceries with my parents, and there were Christmas trees in shop windows and a Santa Claus on my father’s Coke bottle. And I realized it will be Christmas very soon. It’s mid-November already, and in my mind, summer has just ended. That did nothing to improve my state. The end.
caution: fragile
A quote from Architectural Digest (October ’02) by Murray Moss on Nymphenburg porcelain*:
“We’ve gotten to the point where we needed objects that you could take and hurl against the wall without destroying them. But things that are fragile, that would make you feel a loss if they broke, these kinds of objects become behavior modifiers—when you handle them, you become a different person. Maybe the purpose of these objects—one of their side benefits—is to civilize us.”
The reason I’m quoting AD is not just because this is a lovely thought, but also because all I’ve done today was read magazines, as I discovered yesterday that my favourite bookshop in Vilnius sells used foreign magazines for about $2, and I couldn’t resist stuffing my bag with those lovely deco-glossies I’d been lusting after but could never justify buying for $20 and more per issue. The bookshop gets even more love from me now.
*Hate the porcelain, love the name Nymphenburg.
11/05/2010
It’s been a very long day and I have the queen of all headaches celebrating Friday with a very loud party somewhere on top of my brain, so this will be a placeholder for today and we shall see if tomorrow will be a better day for blogging. Sorry about that. To compensate, here’s a link to a very interesting 2008 New Yorker article about Pascal Dangin I remembered during a conversation today and dug up.
a strange friend
This guy is a companion of mine in a way. Him and his kin of all shapes have appeared under all of the city’s bridges this summertime, supposedly as a project of art in unexpected places. Stands to reason that they picked these places, too, as V. is a city so very defined by its river and the bridges across it. Each of the bridges has its own character (the White, the Green, the King Mindaugas, the Žvėrynas/Menagerie…), and now each has a silvery shape dangling underneath it: a ball, a spiral, a straight stick, a sort of a cone.
There are three roads to choose from when going from our house to work, one of which leads under this bridge. When cycling, A. and I almost always take this one, and it’s good for walking too, as it goes on right by the river and is open and airy. Without fail, the silver ball is there to greet me every time. A few days ago, taking my camera for a walk after a long hiatus, I spent several minutes playing around with the perspective of the bridge, the ball, and the river reflection. It is, indeed, better with this art than it was without.
a bit of a filler post, but a true story
Dear diary,
I stalked someone a bit today. I was meeting a friend for tea up at the bookstore/cafe next door to work, and there were a few minutes to spare, so I got out my reader. This pleasant-looking lady was nursing her little baby at the next table. After a few minutes, she suddenly addressed me in English, asking which model the reader was. Keen as I am to advertise the things I like, I explained about it (it’s a Digma, the webpage is in Russian, but I can totally vouch for it), and went back to reading.
Later, my friend had arrived and we sat chatting, when I saw the lady get up to leave. For some reason, an image flashed before my eyes of her and me getting to know each other, me getting up the courage to say how I admire her for nursing in public (I’m so for that, and I loved this recent heartfelt post on the subject), and so on, so I just rushed after her and stuck my card in her hand, saying she could ask me if she wanted to follow up on the reader, then grinned stupidly and went back to my table. Looking back, I’ve no idea why I did that, but I’m fairly sure I freaked her out.
And that, dear diary, is how I tried being creepy for the first time in my life. Is this how dorky guys feel when they’re trying to get hot girls to go out with them?
pavadinimas lietuviškai, kad niekas nesuprastų
Life’s been pretty repetitive lately.
On the micro level of a day it seems like it’s always: force myself out of bed entirely too late feeling wretched; walk to work; do a bit of Job #1 and a lot of procrastination; then some Job #2; then either do translations by the dozen (pages), or head directly home and go into vegetable mode reading a couple novels a day (fantasy and easy reading) or watching tv-shows end to end while earning lots and lots of Neopoints playing bouncy ball games; have several gallons of tea; often some odds and ends for Job #1 crammed in between; and finally, go to bed much too late.
On the macro level of a week it’s: Yiddish Sunday, Danish Monday, lately also yoga Thursday (about to start going on Mondays as well), home early Friday, vegging out Saturday, then all over again, interspersed with thoroughly uninspiring days at work and afternoons in noisy coffee-shops with translations, when there are any. These past two weeks there haven’t been any. I’m finding it difficult to fall asleep (this whole conscious breathing affair from yoga comes in handy, though, ommm), and waking up sweaty and harried from all the running about and fatal bureaucratic obstacles going on in my dreams.
What I need is a fantasy vacation. I’m pining for the fjords. Portugal could do me no end of good. Marrakesh would revive me. I would give half my kingdom to see Nepal. What I don’t need is a group of student visitors coming into my office at an ungodly hour tomorrow expecting to be shown around. Night owls vs. early birds will be the theme of my next rant, stay tuned.
to blo or not to blo?
It’s the first day of NaBloPoMo and I’m considering taking a traditional break from writers’ block. This is a filler post, so that I don’t end up losing the game before I even decide to take part.
unexpected ending
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.
tchort tchort tchort
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 uncertainty and dragging on words) there was an alarm going on in my head like: wee-woo-wee-woo-wee-woo-head-office-wee-woo.
almost forgot to post
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 doing 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.
The Obvious 
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