Ohhhhhhhhshit I've been so busy I haven't had time to wipe my ass (except not really cause that would be gross) and right now I've got a huge fucking job application to fill out and a 90 minute lesson plan to write for the job app and a 15 minute grammar presentation for class tomorrow and a 45 minute lesson plan to do for tomorrow and day after tomorrow I have to present the 90 minute lesson plan at the interview for said job and I was up till 2 and up again at 6 because of the 13 page write-up I had to do for class, and I finished that one at 9:59am and class started at 10.

But.

I just spent ten minutes sitting on a bench on the edge of the scraggy park. Just sitting and eating a pastry, and watching the young punks and the old ladies waiting for the bus. The weather today reminds me of home in early October: the breeze cool, the sky blue, the clouds puffy white and huge, and the air like a fucking diamond. Just so fucking gorgeous you can't even take it. This is why I'm here. This is why I don't have a California soul.

I've actually been thinking a lot about that one; about sinnerman's endless love for Cali, and how and why I know what he means but don't feel the same way. Someday soon I'll write about that. Once I get through this week. Yeah. So back to work.

Aww...Maxwell Murders said he'd miss me this year at TAC. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Right now I'm sitting in an un-air-conditioned internet cafe in Prague, thinking about the kids moving back into the dorms and wandering back onto the smoker's patio. I never thought I'd miss that, and I don't, really...just kind of a lost feeling.

Why won't FUCKING GMAIL work on this computer?

Why do all the Czech boys with mohawks insist on turning them into dreadhawks? Instead of cute sexy mohawk, it looks like a decaying rat stapled to their head.

Why didn't I talk to that one unbelievably dreamy guy sitting across from me on the Metro? Seriously, he looked like a younger, sexier version of Colin Firth in Bridget Jones' Diary. DAMN, he was good lookin.

Why can't I get a job? Oh yeah, cause I haven't gotten off my ass and looked for one yet.

Anyway, peace out.

Bullet Points About Praha

-->I like living where I do. Prague is gorgeous, everyone knows that, but actually they're talking about the city center, which, yeah, architecture, moldings and what not. It's dazzling.
I don't live there, though. I live way the fuck out in Praha 9, in Hloubetin. It's not beautiful at all--graffiti, brick-like buildings from the seventies, basically stereotypical decaying totalitarian regime. But it has this air about it, this chin-thrust-out shabbiness, like "This is us, fuck you if you don't like it." I do like it, though. I aspire to that attitude myself a lot of the time. Plus, it's got all the indie cred of being ghetto, without the violent crime. Which brings me to my next bullet point:

-->Public drunkeness and public urination. Now, I was raised by the Pit, so I'm no stranger to either of these. In fact, I've engaged in them many a time. I was a little surprised, though, the first time I saw a guy taking a piss in the bushes at 4 in the afternoon. And, being a Pit girl, this kind of behaviour just makes me feel more at home.

-->From what I can gather, proper subway etiquette is to be silent and stonefaced the whole time, unless you're with your significant other, in which case you make out, silently but with passion, until you get off. Or until your stop. Heh. Yes, as a matter of fact I am just jealous.

-->Peanut butter and tomato is my new favorite sandwich. It sounds nast, but seriously, it's great. This isn't really about Prague, I know, but I discovered it because of my shopping technique, which is wander the aisles looking for what looks cheap, will stave off scurvy, and doesn't need cooking. I have a kitchen, I just can't get off my ass. In this case, it was tomatoes and peanut butter. Genius.

O dveře!

So my first day of class was Monday, and I was supposed to be there by ten at the latest. It's two Metro stops from my apartment, so I should leave by 9:40.

I wake up all glowy and sleepy, look at my watch, and freak right out. It's 9:53. I tear around the room grabbing clothes and manage to get out the door at 9:58. The door to my apartment, that is. The door to the outside, however, refuses to respond to my frantic pushing. Shit, it must be locked on the inside too--kind of a firetrap. So I turn the key in the lock, push harder. Still no. Front door--same thing. It's fucking 10:00 now, and I'm completely panicked. Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a...

Abruptly, the door of the apartment opens and this ancient Czech lady looks out. I'm trying to explain my predicament in English and German at once, and she's waxing vituperative in Czech, when...holy fuck, Granny's not wearing any pants. Ohh Granny. I back away as she slams the door. I decide to give the bloody exit one more try before I make the ten foot jump from my window, and the sonofabitch comes open just like that. Fuck me, it was pull. Not push. Pull.

And that, folks, is the stupidest I've ever felt. I'm only slightly comforted by the realization that in the US, every single door to the outside opens outwards, away from the house. Because otherwise it's a fire hazard, that's why. Fucking Commies.

Anyway, I made it to class only 15 minutes late, and it didn't matter, it turned out. So life is good. All right, if I want to have money for food, I need to get off the net.

On the Fist of Dominic

So it turns out it was totally a bad idea to begin the last post with "barring any major cock-ups". Because there were at least two. In order from greatest to least: when I got to the airport, I presented my passport and my itinerary from the online travel agent, only to be told that despite the fact that I fucking set it up as an e-ticket the travel agent had, without informing me of this, done a paper ticket (which you have to have in your hot little hand to get on the plane) and UPS-ed it to TAC, where, despite the fact that I left a perfectly valid forwarding address, they decided to bin the tickets without telling anyone. They're BASTARD people, that's what they are. Luckily, my parents were there. I was about to give up and start crying because of the monumental and unsolvable unfairness of fucking grown-ups, when my Dad put on his shining armor and got on the case. At one point he was on both his and my mom's cellphones at once, one in one ear and one in the other. Finally, "Fuck this. These people are turnips." my dad says as he hangs up on the internet travel people. "It's a lawyer saying, hon, you can't get blood out of a turnip," my mom explains. So my dad called up his travel agent and got me a ticket for that evening. I love him so much. So what lessons did we learn from this, kids? 1. Lowe's Travel is BASTARD PEOPLE. Never deal with them. 2. Never rely on TAC not FUCKING THINGS RIGHT UP, because they will. 3. I'm not allowed to complain about my parents ever again.

Cockup number two means that I'm now in Prague with 2 backpacks and 1 t-shirt plus the clothes I stood up in...the rest of my baggage got left in Amsterdam by the kind baggage workers. Oh well, I guess I'll be washing my one pair of underwear in the sink at night for a while.

Anyway, more on how Prague actually is later, this internet session is costing me a fortune. Suffice it to say that miraculously I made it to mass this morning, at St. Jilji. As luck would have it, it was the Polish mass, and at the beginning, the priest said a few sentences in English. In his thick Slavic accent, he welcomed us to the church, "especially on this day, the fist of St. Dominic." Indeed.

So I'm leaving the continent on Friday. Barring any complete cock-ups, I won't see the U.S. again for at least ten months. It still hasn't really sunk in...pretty much I feel like I'm going to lay around at home for a few more weeks and then head back west for another year at college. But we've graduated, we really have...no more crew of lovable misfits, no more wacky hijinks. And as much as our particular college experience sucked in many ways, the fact that it's over is pretty hard to take, for a lot of reasons.

Instead, strange as it seems, I'm going to Prague. I've said those words so many times it's started to sound like a nonsense phrase. Prague. Prog. prog prog prog prog. It sounds naughty, doesn't it? "So then she was all Nooo, but I totally think she's progging him." "Ew, roll down the window, somebody just progged." "Prog for brains!!" Hee. At least I'll still have my sense of humor, when I'm jobless and homeless in a rainy, snowy post-Communist country. Where they speak a language that (a) is unknown to me, (b) is completely unrelated to any language that I do know, and (c) is composed entirely of consonants, most of them unpronouncable by my current set of vocal cords. Ohhhh lord.

It's leaving my friends that really gets me down, though. Not that I'm all that close to them distance-wise right now, but if I was in the states I could and would go visit them over the course of next year, or we'd meet up at weddings, like at Sophie's and at Mike's this summer. Also, no phone contact unless I mortgage a kidney or something. I mean, thank the lord for email, but it's not the same. Sniffle. At least we have our little virtual smoker's patio of blogs going over here...we have to keep that going. Let the Snarkage Be Unbroken.