Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space

So I just spent three and a half hours swilling wine with my colleagues in the department, and it just about rocked my face off. Those of you who know me are now cringing, but no! Apparently, at least white wine doesn't make me puke anymore! Good shit! Anyways, we've had quite a few of these little staff get-togethers in the departmental secretary's office, and usually they're somewhat gruesome...all of us sitting around, sipping wine and thinking about all the other places we'd rather be, and trying not to cross streams with the No Tact Freight Train that is my beloved boss. (beloved, seriously, I love this woman. It's not just the wine talking, I swear. She's awesome, she just doesn't have the tact gene.) But this time, despite the fact that we're all seriously fucking busy with exams and everything, we ended up having a blast. They started telling stories about the wild old days in the department, where departmental parties usually ended up with the (fiftyish) secretary dancing topless on a table. Fucking hilarious, I'm telling you, especially if you know these people. Anyway. It filled me with the Love.

Come to think of it, maybe it was because we're all busy out the ass right now. We were talking about something like that this afternoon; that when you're supposed to be doing something, something that has to get done by a certain time, that's the time that you find the most creative and worthwhile other projects to do. I know it's true for me; the best personal writing I've ever done was mostly done on weekends I had papers due. And it was the same with this thing today: we knew we all had other shit to do, and for some reason it made us able to chill the fuck out, relax, let the walls down a little. Sit around and tell mildly scandalous stories on a fucking gorgeous late spring day, until the lowering sun lights up all the roofs and the gables and the pigeons wheeling.

All these times that live in my memory, all these golden drinking experiences, and as of now one of the best is the time I sat around with two fiftyish Czech women and a 32-year-old Czech man and drank wine all through the afternoon. How the fuck am I going to leave this place? How the hell am I gonna do it?

You can so tell that we're related

An recent email from my mom:

"...your Dad took the girls to see Star Wars, and I went to see a French movie at the same theater. It was ok, I guess, but there was no skin at all! I was very disappointed."

Ok, maybe I am looking forward to going home. Just a little bit.

Insecurity is the certain knowledge that there is a hole in your jeans in a location that is not remotely appropriate, and that this hole is widening at a considerable rate. For added thrills, ponder the fact that it's at least six to eight hours until you can get home and change. And during this time, you'll probably have to hang out with people.

On the other hand, you can comfort yourself with the knowledge that you're in the Czech Republic, where strategically placed holes in clothing are always in fashion. Now pass me my stiletto boots, I've got a party to go to.

Hoooo-oomward...ah fuck this.

So I now have an actual real live plane ticket back to the US. July 1, British Airways. Prague to London, London to New York. Of course, I don't live in New York, so I still need a ticket to the ATL. But that shouldn't be very expensive.

There's only one tiny snag: the Prague to London flight lands at Gatwick, and the London-New York flight takes off from Heathrow. You have to go to baggage, get your shite, get on a shuttle bus, and ride for an hour to an hour-and-a-half across London. The minimum suggested connection time is three hours. And the actual time between when I land and when I'm supposed to take off? Three and a half hours. The three-and-a-half hours of rush hour, to be specific. I'm so not making this flight.

And to add insult to injury? The bus to Heathrow costs fifteen pounds. Fifteen fucking pounds? Do you know how many crowns that is?* JEEZ.

So the bottom line is, I may be spending that Friday night on a bench at Heathrow, or I may be spending it doing Lord-knows-what in New York. May the fates be merciful.

And the second bottom line is, someday I need to learn to read things very carefully before I buy them. Don't hold your breath on that one, though. [Taco knows this all too well. I swear I thought his train ticket had the right date on it.]

*15 GBP=670 CZK, or 18% of my average monthly income.

I'm feeling uncharacteristically full of the charity tonight. For one thing, I had to go have a heart-to-heart with my fire-breathing Boss Lady today, something I'd been dreading and postponing for weeks. I finally went in and did it today, and you know what? She was so nice about it. I take it all back about her; sure, she has a little tendency to hear what she wants to hear rather than what you actually say, most of the time, and her people skills leave a little to be desired...but actually, deep down, she's a kind and understanding person. It's just the everyday outward persona that could use work.

Also, something happened right before the boss talk that made me feel the love for my fellow man: I have this student, a girl about nineteen. She's taller than me, and kind of big, which is tough for a 19-year-old girl anywhere, but especially here in the Czech Republic where every girl is a glossy size 2 and was born with a boyfriend. She's in my writing class, and the essays she writes are beautiful, so well-written and eloquent, despite the grammar mistakes. But from what I read in them, it seems like she feels pretty damn bleak about life. One time I was walking towards the door of the classroom and she was outside talking on her cell phone, and crying. I didn't know what to do...I mean, it's been like eight years since the last time I cried in public, and at that point all I wanted to do was burst into flames and incinerate anyone who so much as asked me if I was ok. And I fucking hated the teachers that tried to get all touchy-feely guidance counselor on us. So I walked by like nothing was happening, and I didn't say anything when she came into class fifteen minutes late. With tears on her cheeks still, poor girl. It made me feel so powerless...I mean, she was speaking Czech on the phone, so I couldn't even tell what kind of shit was going on.

Anyway, so her essays. They're so damn good. And they're in a foreign freaking language. Every time I grade one of them, when I give the little comment next to the check plus she always gets, I have to think of new ways to say 'Your writing is AWESOME, and YOU are awesome for writing it.'

And thus to the point: today after class she comes up to me looking really shy and happy, and hands me something. It's a four-leaf clover. And she gave it to me.

That made my week, y'all.

If you can't say anything catty, get the fuck off the smoker's patio

A conversation from two years ago.

"So I see Blah and Blah finally hooked up."
"What's that, like the eighth person he's gone out with this year?"
"Something like that...she's just another notch on the bedpost."
"Heh. More like another notch on the dashboard."
"Another notch on the brushpile."
"Another notch on Mr. Kelly's desk."

[....]

"Yeah...can't top that one."

Public Service Announcement:

Attempting to self-medicate PMS symptoms by drinking a vat of beer will result in Satan's Own Hangover the next morning.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go put my head down on my desk again.

The Czech team beat the crap out of Belarus, 5:1

Last night I went to the Irish pub with Depressed Michael to watch some hockey, Czech Republic versus Belarus. The Irish pub is about a kilometer down the road from the place we live, and it's become my favorite place to drink. When we walked in last night, the bartender nodded to us and handed us two pints of Budvar before we'd even made it up to the bar. Oh yeah. They know us. So we stood around and watched hockey, random chit-chat, whatever. After a while Martin the bartender got us a place to sit at a table near the TV.

The pub is full tonight, the usual crowd of Czechs, getting bleary-eyed drunk after work. They do this every night, most of them, and so cheerfully, too. Big red-faced men with mustaches, buxom women who can still rock a halter top, slender spike-haired teenagers. Buying each other shots, flirting in a ham-handed way, drinking beer like it's water. This isn't a restaurant, strictly speaking, but like most pubs here it serves classic Czech beer food. Nothing Irish, thank the Lord. There's no menu; you just have to know the things that pubs serve, and ask for something in that category. That category is awesome, by the way. Say, for example, you order a klobasa, the Czech version of a Polish sausage: you get a plate on which is arranged a freshly grilled klobasa, a whole bunch of chopped up tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers, a scoop of mustard, and a scoop of horseradish sauce. And four or five slices of rye bread in a basket on the side. So yummy. I get pizza burn on the roof of my mouth several times a month from those things.

The pub is smallish and pleasantly dim, with heavy wooden tables and benches, and wood panelling on the walls. This is a step above most Czech pubs, which tend towards the flourescent lights and white-washed walls type of interior decorating. Sometimes we hypothesize that the bright lights are a scheme to sell more beer, to put the beer-goggled hooking-up a few more pints down the line.

So that was the evening...we'd planned to go back after the game was over, on the last tram to save walking uphill back to the dorm. Ended up staying on, though, like we always do, until 1 or so. Enough time for four or five beers and a music discussion. Chatted with the ever-present drunk guy who speaks "some" English...there's one in every pub. When we paid up, my bill was about $3.50.

It was a good night. Nothing special, just good.

Huh?

It's fucking snowing. What the hell.

The Use and Abuse of Bullet Points

Last night, circa 1:30am:

• Come home from drinking up with the students.
• Enter apartment, feeling the siren call of the five-pint munchies.
• Dish up a bowl of cold pasta and yummy tomato-basil-pepper sauce.
• Leave the room, locking the door because the Czechs have infected you with their lock-everything-always paranoia.
  
• Go down the hall to the kitchen. Do the microwave thing.
• March back down the hall to room, gingerly holding the VERY HOT ceramic bowl.
• Fumble with keys in the entrance hall of your suite, feeling flesh sizzle from contact with the bowl.
• Does this one even need to be spelled out?
• Ok, ok: drop the motherfucking bowl of hot and tomato-covered fusilli.
• Ceramic pasta bomb! "OW! SHIT! FUCK!"
• Suddenly recall that you're standing directly next to the door to the probably-not-sleeping-anymore Suitemate of Silent Disapproval. The suitemate who always cleans the bathroom, and gets his ass to bed at 9:30.
• shit! fuck! ouch! in a hissing whisper.
• At the top of the hour: "The Dance of the Mildly Inebriated Mop-up Job," the lead single off your triumphant new album, Pratfalls of a Native-Speaker Teacher.

This afternoon, circa 4 pm:

• Sit around in the afternoon sun after hanging up the wet laundry.
  
• Notice the proverbial call of nature.
• Stride purposefully into the entrance hall, on the way to the bathroom.
• "OW! SHIT! FUCK!"
  
• Stand on one foot to gaze at the smallish but pointy shard of ceramic impaled in the ball of your foot.
• Remove the bloody shard. Little bastard.
  
• Hop back into the bedroom, one hand beneath your foot to catch the blood.
• Wow. That is some bright red blood there.
• Grab your washcloth; alternate between clamping it onto the wound and wiping up the drops that have spilled.
• Hey Einstein, your washcloth is yellow. That's gonna looks super when it dries.
  
• The bleeding's basically staunched. Hobble to the bathroom on one foot and a heel.
• Huh. When you put a bloody washcloth under hot water, the blood gives off a really nasty smell.
• Like rust getting cooked, really.
• Wonder to yourself if it's karmic retribution for your many sins against the Suitemate.
• Yeah, probably.
• Oh well.
  

Losing my shit in so many ways

Ok, I have to say: rolling with Taco and Jedno was fucking awesome.

And I really do mean that, despite the fact that the various festivities of the past three weeks have cost me several valuable things. And I'm not even talking about the assorted dents put into my dignity and my immortal soul.

Let's have a look, shall we? Since April 15, I have lost:

The aforementioned cell phone.

A grey wool sweater. I loved that thing, even though there was a big-ass hole in the elbow and several incipient ones under the armpits, making it the epitome of what my mother refers to as "Throw that damn thing away, you look like Please Send to Care." Alas, I foolishly left it hanging from the strap of my backpack, and it fell off during one of our mad dashes to make a train. You win, Berlin Ostbahnhof, you win.

A fucking awesome black cord jacket.Such a good jacket; next to my combat boots it's the item of clothing I've worn most this year. Tragically, it was a casualty of a severely intoxicated Dresden jaunt, somewhere between the Nintendo playing with the hash-smoking bartenders*, and the inebriated trying-to-find-our-hostel. Taco went back to look for it the next day, but no dice. I'll miss it a lot, particularly since it contained, in the left breast pocket:

Every single little plastic card in my possession. You know, the ones with stamped lettering and magnetic strips and all. Those plastic cards. Yeah. What I'm sayin'. Just to savor the exquisite pain a little more, let's enumerate them:

• My debit card.
• My credit card.
• My Czech Republic health insurance card.
• A 10 Euro phone card, which is a minor but annoying loss.
• My key card, which I need to open the front door of my apartment building.
  

So...yeah. I'm kind of not upset about it; it's one of those 'oh SHIT' moments that's of such staggering magnitude that you're like, hey, whatever. What happens, happens. And I did manage to cancel my cards before anything Truly Bad happened to my bank account or my credit rating.**



*The bartenders were smoking the pot! Not us! Just in case you're reading this, Mom! Which I hope you're not!
**I hope. Ixnay on the empted-tay, Fate.

Witches' Night, seven beers down

Jedno: [camera in one hand, full cup of beer in the other] Ok, hold it up so I can get a picture...almost...
Camera: *Splunk!* [falls into beer]
All in unison: Oh FUCK.

Five minutes later; we've moved from the outer darkness to the fireside to do camera first aid.

Jedno: Well maybe we can dry it off some and...hey, where IS it?

We retraced our somewhat staggering steps, and found the camera nestled in the dewy grass. The next morning it smelled like rich malty lawn clippings. Here's hoping it's just the battery...on the other hand, if the memory card is fucked? It just might be for the best. Some SERIOUS shit-talking was recorded on that thing. Beautiful calumny all night long, y'all.