HOMEPAGE
Tuesday's blog
Boy, how things pile up on the desk when you are away for a while. Lots of things to talk about today… lots and lots. So, let us get organized and get down to business…
Paul
Now, I don’t know how many of you have been following Paul’s adventures as of late- this is the guy whose blog I mentioned here a while ago (See: http://www.livejournal.com/users/djdirect/). I met him in Lithuania when both of us were in transit and I found him to be a more than amusing fellow to spend an evening bellowing at. He himself being rather good at that activity as well, he almost getting us tossed from the hostel by yelling his opinion of our host’s niece’s sexuality at the top of his lungs at three o’clock in the morning or so. Who knows what demons lay in the heart of these Brits anyway? But nevertheless, for some great reason I can not figure out, fate has put us together enough so as to inspire a request for and invitation to Pinsk to hang out. Now, as of the moment I am writing this, I have not the foggiest idea if the guy is going to show or not. Why do I say this? Well, have you been reading what is going on with this guy?
Now, when we first heard from him, Tatyana’s first thought after glancing at his writing was to try and hook the guy up with a dinner date here. Her thinking was that he seemed to be in need of some simple friendship and that his life was probably not all that bad as he was insinuating. Well, I’ll be struck by lightening if the guy didn’t beat us to the punch, apparently hooking himself a rather nice Russian friend all by himself with nothing more than his good looks and British Passport! So now this sort of changes the picture if you ask me. Not that the invitation is not yet extended, but I simply don’t see how I am in the business of procuring woman for British travelers. And worse, my own guilt insofar as concerns similar activities of making private things public, I am not sure I can put a friend of ours in the line of fire…. And this is addition to his most absolutely probably not being interested in such things any more after having struck gold in Russia!
So who the hell knows? Not me anyway. I will keep you all informed of the deal…
Bruce
However, whether or not Sir Paul has the mood and wherewithal to stop by, we are also expecting an appearance this summer but the great Bruce, my partner and friend from my Polish imprisonment. Bruce seems however to be treating his visit with some sense of trepidation. What I mean by this is that he is dragging his feet more than a little as to the time of his arrival. Now, I know that this from him is nothing more than extended good graces (and probably some common sense on his part) and I don’t wish to make this sound like this is all that big of a deal, but his desire to stick his schedule is making our ability to make him comfortable a little harder than it has to be. The big problem is in where to keep him. Now our apartment, as I am sure I have said in the past, currently sleeps five of us in the two available rooms we have. I am used to this as is the kid and Tanya and Tanya’s folks, but who in the hell could invite a guest to sleep on the floor amidst five snoring asthmatic people who as sure as not have been eating enough cabbage and potatoes to add some extra spice to the air? Catch my drift? No, this solution simply will not do. Now, we have the summer house out in the village, and this is a great place to be. I love it. But there is almost no furniture out there as of yet, a wood stove, a well in place of any sort of plumbing and a toilet out in the yard. And though everyone likes roughing it now and again, this simply could not be the place to leave a guy regardless of predilections to planting.
No, the solution to the problem is to find the guy an apartment here and this is where his scheduling has got us. You see, these things are pretty hard to come by, not so cheap for us as you might think the sorts of numbers apartments cost here would indicate and, as we had already started to find a place for Paul’s potential visit, discouraging to potential rentors who like to have concrete answers to specific questions. As in:
Them “Do you want the apartment or not?”
Us “Well, we did, but now we are not sure if or when our friends are coming.”
Them “So, do you want the apartment or not?”
Us “We just don’t know; maybe yes and maybe no.”
Them “Ah, I understand. You have scheduling problems, right?”
Us “Yes, that’s right. You are so nice to understand.”
Them Of course we understand. But, do you want the apartment or not?” and so on…
What to do? What to do?
The problems with getting the court papers
Now Bruce is also involved with this debacle of mine about gathering those elusive court papers from February 10th. He is, and others are as well. I really don’t know what I am supposed to do simply to be informed as to the nature of Poland’s current screwing. I mean, they are going to all of this trouble to destroy my life with lies and threats and other such garbage, the least you would think they would do would be to care if I was actually in pain from what they were doing. Makes for better torture that way. But they don’t seem to give a flying hoot whether or not I have heard about their latest wastes of my time. Funny how this is. I mean, was all of this premeditated torture simply for their own amusements? Perhaps they are enjoying the suspense of waiting for the latest blogs…
I have at least one letter on their desk requesting the papers and two more on the way. Or, in other words, I am still trying.
To tell you the truth though, I am not so hopeful. The reason I say this is that I made a request of the American Embassy just about a week ago to send me some papers I need and they have not as of yet even responded with an e-mail either. This is the sort of thing I remember from them the last time I tried to deal with my own country. I had tried to get straight answers out of a Mr. Chris Reynolds five consecutive days in a row. I then had to finally call the guy on the phone only to be handed yet another line about how they were all celebrating thanksgiving from somewhere like the previous Monday and therefore were far too busy to even type a few words into the computer. Makes you feel all patriotic doesn’t it? Hopefully we will have the report on the desk soon.
Money
I am thinking that blog is going on longer than attention spans would like, so I am thinking of grinding it to a halt before I go into the current money situation which is, I am sorry to say, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak. Precarious… frightening… impossible… such are the normal adjectives expressed daily by my fellow Belarusian. I am trying not to allow myself the indulgence into the wallow pit of self pity that has shortened the life spans of so many here. I know there is logic and reason and a better way to live if only someone would ever listen, but this is simply not the way of our ever-so-well put together world, right? And so, every day is mission impossible for yours truly. How indeed to find some money in a place that makes only $75 a month? It is in fact a great joke after all and one played, just as the game against myself was played by the polkas, seemingly just for the amusement of those who need not worry about such things. The Roman Coliseum was another such venture: Human life thrown about and dismissed into oblivion simply to satisfy the bloodlust of the onlookers. That was justified simply by the popularity I guess, or at least that is how it was presented in that really popular Russell Crow movie. But what do you do when you find you are actually the gladiator yourself and those people who hold the keys to your prison have nothing better to do than to figure out ways not ever feel the need to think about what they are doing. My feeling of course is that in reality, we are all just waiting for the blade to drop and that this game of island survivor we all play now is just practice for the tortures of an over populated and over polluted world. Poison the land. Poison the water. Poison the air. Poison the mind. Poison the soul… just keep smiling. Just keep hope. Just keep on going, and paying and praying…
Too much poetry you say? Perhaps… Perhaps you are right. I have got to keep it together. After all we are expecting guests and that means that it is time to beat the rugs and sweep the floors. Yes, yes, yes, there is indeed far, far too much to do to sit and think about such trivialities as the end of life. I am sure those that are in charge know what they are doing. Right? Right?
I will see what I can do to start these things as being a bit more frequent. For those of you who do actually read me, I would like to apologize for the diminished flow. For those of you who have made contributions to myself and/or the bike club; thank you, thank you, thank you…
More soon…
The bike school
Current projects
Send help!!!
Tuesday's blog
Boy, how things pile up on the desk when you are away for a while. Lots of things to talk about today… lots and lots. So, let us get organized and get down to business…
Paul
Now, I don’t know how many of you have been following Paul’s adventures as of late- this is the guy whose blog I mentioned here a while ago (See: http://www.livejournal.com/users/djdirect/). I met him in Lithuania when both of us were in transit and I found him to be a more than amusing fellow to spend an evening bellowing at. He himself being rather good at that activity as well, he almost getting us tossed from the hostel by yelling his opinion of our host’s niece’s sexuality at the top of his lungs at three o’clock in the morning or so. Who knows what demons lay in the heart of these Brits anyway? But nevertheless, for some great reason I can not figure out, fate has put us together enough so as to inspire a request for and invitation to Pinsk to hang out. Now, as of the moment I am writing this, I have not the foggiest idea if the guy is going to show or not. Why do I say this? Well, have you been reading what is going on with this guy?
Now, when we first heard from him, Tatyana’s first thought after glancing at his writing was to try and hook the guy up with a dinner date here. Her thinking was that he seemed to be in need of some simple friendship and that his life was probably not all that bad as he was insinuating. Well, I’ll be struck by lightening if the guy didn’t beat us to the punch, apparently hooking himself a rather nice Russian friend all by himself with nothing more than his good looks and British Passport! So now this sort of changes the picture if you ask me. Not that the invitation is not yet extended, but I simply don’t see how I am in the business of procuring woman for British travelers. And worse, my own guilt insofar as concerns similar activities of making private things public, I am not sure I can put a friend of ours in the line of fire…. And this is addition to his most absolutely probably not being interested in such things any more after having struck gold in Russia!
So who the hell knows? Not me anyway. I will keep you all informed of the deal…
Bruce
However, whether or not Sir Paul has the mood and wherewithal to stop by, we are also expecting an appearance this summer but the great Bruce, my partner and friend from my Polish imprisonment. Bruce seems however to be treating his visit with some sense of trepidation. What I mean by this is that he is dragging his feet more than a little as to the time of his arrival. Now, I know that this from him is nothing more than extended good graces (and probably some common sense on his part) and I don’t wish to make this sound like this is all that big of a deal, but his desire to stick his schedule is making our ability to make him comfortable a little harder than it has to be. The big problem is in where to keep him. Now our apartment, as I am sure I have said in the past, currently sleeps five of us in the two available rooms we have. I am used to this as is the kid and Tanya and Tanya’s folks, but who in the hell could invite a guest to sleep on the floor amidst five snoring asthmatic people who as sure as not have been eating enough cabbage and potatoes to add some extra spice to the air? Catch my drift? No, this solution simply will not do. Now, we have the summer house out in the village, and this is a great place to be. I love it. But there is almost no furniture out there as of yet, a wood stove, a well in place of any sort of plumbing and a toilet out in the yard. And though everyone likes roughing it now and again, this simply could not be the place to leave a guy regardless of predilections to planting.
No, the solution to the problem is to find the guy an apartment here and this is where his scheduling has got us. You see, these things are pretty hard to come by, not so cheap for us as you might think the sorts of numbers apartments cost here would indicate and, as we had already started to find a place for Paul’s potential visit, discouraging to potential rentors who like to have concrete answers to specific questions. As in:
Them “Do you want the apartment or not?”
Us “Well, we did, but now we are not sure if or when our friends are coming.”
Them “So, do you want the apartment or not?”
Us “We just don’t know; maybe yes and maybe no.”
Them “Ah, I understand. You have scheduling problems, right?”
Us “Yes, that’s right. You are so nice to understand.”
Them Of course we understand. But, do you want the apartment or not?” and so on…
What to do? What to do?
The problems with getting the court papers
Now Bruce is also involved with this debacle of mine about gathering those elusive court papers from February 10th. He is, and others are as well. I really don’t know what I am supposed to do simply to be informed as to the nature of Poland’s current screwing. I mean, they are going to all of this trouble to destroy my life with lies and threats and other such garbage, the least you would think they would do would be to care if I was actually in pain from what they were doing. Makes for better torture that way. But they don’t seem to give a flying hoot whether or not I have heard about their latest wastes of my time. Funny how this is. I mean, was all of this premeditated torture simply for their own amusements? Perhaps they are enjoying the suspense of waiting for the latest blogs…
I have at least one letter on their desk requesting the papers and two more on the way. Or, in other words, I am still trying.
To tell you the truth though, I am not so hopeful. The reason I say this is that I made a request of the American Embassy just about a week ago to send me some papers I need and they have not as of yet even responded with an e-mail either. This is the sort of thing I remember from them the last time I tried to deal with my own country. I had tried to get straight answers out of a Mr. Chris Reynolds five consecutive days in a row. I then had to finally call the guy on the phone only to be handed yet another line about how they were all celebrating thanksgiving from somewhere like the previous Monday and therefore were far too busy to even type a few words into the computer. Makes you feel all patriotic doesn’t it? Hopefully we will have the report on the desk soon.
Money
I am thinking that blog is going on longer than attention spans would like, so I am thinking of grinding it to a halt before I go into the current money situation which is, I am sorry to say, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak, bleak. Precarious… frightening… impossible… such are the normal adjectives expressed daily by my fellow Belarusian. I am trying not to allow myself the indulgence into the wallow pit of self pity that has shortened the life spans of so many here. I know there is logic and reason and a better way to live if only someone would ever listen, but this is simply not the way of our ever-so-well put together world, right? And so, every day is mission impossible for yours truly. How indeed to find some money in a place that makes only $75 a month? It is in fact a great joke after all and one played, just as the game against myself was played by the polkas, seemingly just for the amusement of those who need not worry about such things. The Roman Coliseum was another such venture: Human life thrown about and dismissed into oblivion simply to satisfy the bloodlust of the onlookers. That was justified simply by the popularity I guess, or at least that is how it was presented in that really popular Russell Crow movie. But what do you do when you find you are actually the gladiator yourself and those people who hold the keys to your prison have nothing better to do than to figure out ways not ever feel the need to think about what they are doing. My feeling of course is that in reality, we are all just waiting for the blade to drop and that this game of island survivor we all play now is just practice for the tortures of an over populated and over polluted world. Poison the land. Poison the water. Poison the air. Poison the mind. Poison the soul… just keep smiling. Just keep hope. Just keep on going, and paying and praying…
Too much poetry you say? Perhaps… Perhaps you are right. I have got to keep it together. After all we are expecting guests and that means that it is time to beat the rugs and sweep the floors. Yes, yes, yes, there is indeed far, far too much to do to sit and think about such trivialities as the end of life. I am sure those that are in charge know what they are doing. Right? Right?
I will see what I can do to start these things as being a bit more frequent. For those of you who do actually read me, I would like to apologize for the diminished flow. For those of you who have made contributions to myself and/or the bike club; thank you, thank you, thank you…
More soon…
The bike school
Current projects
Send help!!!
posted by BEING HAD at
8:58 AM
