Bits and pieces

So I went back to work at the researcher place, and it is going well, though I can clearly see the cloud hanging over the project, since they didn’t schedule enough time to finish it.  (And by the way, what kind of company sends ALL its IT people to the same weeklong training?  Having a tech-dependent company w/no IT?  Genius.) And school has started again, with raindrops of Dutch presumably contributing to the net linguistic content of my language reservoir, hopefully faster than they evaporate.  The long days are familiar friends, and I sleep without waking until the second or third slap on the snooze bar.

This busyness has a haze of footnotes swirling around it, so if you don’t mind, I will jot them on here and hope they feel satisfied.

I feel like the parent of our water heater.  It is one of those tankless ones that heats the water as you need it, which is a way better method, but I think it is an adolescent.  All of a sudden it’s acting out, like it no longer enjoys the activities (i.e. heating water) that it used to, instead it now barely participates, doing only the bare minimum necessary to avoid punishment.

At least it’s not getting pimples.  I still have a monopoly on those.  Although the current one (okay, two) is probably a result of the kinda dirty water we went kayaking in this weekend.

Kayaking is awesome!  The Ardennes (in Wallonia, southern Belgium) are beautiful!  I love GREEN.  Growing things, the sound of running water, the absence of car racket.  With a couple friends and their dog, Kadee, we paddled 22 kilometers of the Lesse River.  It was relaxed, still water, the only time we got wet was the two little damns to go over, including below a rather epically European castle/manor house.

Awhile back my friend Chandra asked me whether “fly” was used first for the animal or as the verb.  I love shit like that.  I wish I knew!  My guess would be that it was a verb first, and the noun first described any flying beastie, but eventually got slimmed down to just the most common (like how “meat” used to mean any food).  Though people often still refer to gnats and whatnot as flies, in addition to house-flies (or deer flies, horse flies, tsetse flies…)

After some googling, it looks like the verb derives back to an ancestor language (Indo-European) where it meant any rapid movement, not just airborn.  That makes me think the beastie came second, though apparently that meaning dates back to a prehistoric Germanic word.  But since (I think?) the term “Indo-European” precedes “Germanic” then I am going to posit that it was a verb first.

And the opening in your pants came waaaay later.  (That may come from something like a tent flap being used to keep out the bugs, that then got applied to the smaller scale of one’s pants.

And speaking of word oddities:

The Dutch word for “nail” applies to both the vestigial claw on the end of your finger and the thing you hammer into a wall, just as in English.  I find this odd, since I see no obvious connection between the two nouns, beyond that unfortunate occurrence of aiming with a hammer at the latter and hitting the former.

The Dutch term for peanut butter translates as “peanut cheese.”  While my beloved peanut paste is not really a cheese, neither is it a butter.  What do you think, which comes closer?

The Dutch expression for pubic hair translates as “shame hair.”  That’s messed up.  And I bet you can guess what “shame lips” are.  That reminds me of the extensive post on religion and sexual guilt I am deliberating whether or not to post…

I decided not to post my rambling about the degeneration of hip-hop from a forum for social commentary into a platform for short-sighted bragging, and the insane disservice this is to a socially brutalized demographic.  That’s basically it though.  Plus a dig at McDonalds.

Speaking of music, it’s one of the awesome/bizarre things about Europe.  Most famously, this is the only area in the world that thinks techno is a really good idea, even when one is not 14 and screwed up on ecstasy.  You have pasty Belgian “gangsta’s” cruising around with  NN-ss-NN-ss-NN-ss rattling the windows of their wee Euro-cars, though to be honest I find them no more ridiculous than their US counterparts.

But also, the radio here doesn’t forget songs.  Whereas the US pattern is for a song to come out, be tragically overplayed, and then forgotten, those songs hang on here.  While grocery shopping this weekend, the tinny radio played The GooGoo Dolls, Eagle-Eye Cherry, Hootie and the Blowfish, and, much to my utter astonishment, to the degree that I stood next to the chips and just sort of smiled: Snow.  Remember that guy?  Informer?  Aliki boom boom down?  Yeah, that one.  I couldn’t believe I was the only one who stood stupefied.  Agog and aghast.

But man, that Hootie song is actually pretty awesome.  I scavenged it up from the depths of my burned CDs and put it on my ipod.  Let her cry, if it tears fall down like rain, let her sing, if it eases all her pain, let her go, let her walk right out on me, and if the sun comes up tomorrow, let her be.  Sing it, Hootie baby.

A few months ago I bought a wee Venus Flytrap plant, which I fully acknowledge is only still alive due to K’s maintenance.  The other day it flowered.  I am so proud!  It made up for the embarrassment I think we all felt when it’s little claw head clamped down triumphantly…on itself.  It caught it’s own leaf.  I think that is a new definition for embarrassing.

Dude, you’re like a venus fly-trap that can only catch it’s own leaves.

Harsh butt, bro.

You still have Hootie and the Blowfish stuck in your head, don’t you?  You’re welcome.

And it’s Springtime baby!  Luckily the allergies haven’t really been a problem, just occasional sneezes.  The sky is still visible, cerulean blue, as I ride home from the train station at quarter to ten o’clock at night.  The spider’s egg nest on the hinge of the garage door hasn’t hatched yet, though the mother’s body has long since faded to a thin brown scab of carapace.  I’m simultaneously looking forward to it hatching, and very much NOT.  Man, my bike is going to be a festival of little crawlers.

Let ‘em hatch, let the bugs fall down like rain…

Springtime is here, and now I know what I’m going to do with my summer…but that is another post…

Another day in paradise

Yesterday was a good day.

It is Easter vacation for the schools around here, which means no morning traffic, which means K has an extra 20-30 minutes in the morning, which yesterday combined with a scoop of her awesomeness to mean that those last few odd-sized slices of whole grain bread in the bottom of the bag were beautified into French Toast instead of becoming a misproportioned peanut butter and jelly sandwich which requires a kombucha in hand to compensate for the stiff crusts.

Good start.

Then I had a slow morning for a couple hours, got some errands done, then went to work.  Back to work.  Back to the job I contentedly quit a month ago.

See, last Thursday sucked.  I was sitting here, another potential job avenue fading into unlikelihood, and Uncertainty, Insecurity, Intimidation, and Stagnation were lead weights making it hard to keep treading water.  I could feel something in my spirit screaming, while my body felt simultaneously enervated and ready to explode.

Then the temp agency called and said my old job wanted me for a short project.  Seemed like it might be…“lifeline” is not the right word, but maybe a nice buoyant log for my raft.

Since quitting I went back once, to wrap up a project I had started but the client had cancelled halfway through.  The best part of the place bad been the people, and now there was nearly no one there.  Seats that used to hold friends were empty but for the ghosts of a thousands farts, which are not nearly as good of company as their originators.

As I walked out the door that day I realized I would probably never go back.  It was kind of sad, but just like you realize you can’t stay at summer camp when the summer’s over, I was okay with it.

Yesterday I was going back.  Not quite sure how to feel about it.

But I walked in and saw Catherine, my utterly bodacious Kenyan friend.  Turns out the project is only four researchers and a project manager, but the other four are all kick-ass.  Furthermore, it quickly became apparent that the project is actually bona fide interesting.  I would go so far as to call it legitimate research, instead of “research.”  I will be asking questions whose answers I am actually interested to hear, and I go so far as so opine that the work is actually contributing to something worthwhile.

And stepping into the main work room, who did I see but the charismatic Mexican, the delightful Ghanaian, esteemed Americans (2 of them), scholarific Belgian, and the beguiling and sensational individuals whose ancestry I can’t currently remember.

I walked out on light steps, going back to my old friend the train station, though it won’t really be familiar until tonight when it is late, all the commuters and “normal” people already home, just us curious after-hours train riders and the never tiring kebab/falafel vendor.

Then I got home to my fantastilicious K, who had made lasagna, individual little pans so I could have extra cheese in mine.  Fresh veggies.  A deep red blanket spread out on our great balcony (a major selling point for the apartment), the pillows we brought back from the Chichicastenango market in Guatemala, the little end table sitting to one side with two glasses of red Spanish wine, and a benevolent Spring evening sun warming us to pleasantness.

Eat, drink, talk.  Tea and reclining with a book as the sun put the stamp on the day and mailed it to the past.

Oh, and we found Ben & Jerry ice cream this weekend, so I got my chocolate fudge brownie groove on.

La vita é bella, no?

Spring is here!

I caught a cold and am unemployed, so today I’m puttering around the house.  Both our pots are simmering sleepily on the stove (the wok has the night off), the kitchen is scrubbed, and I just vacuumed.  Cleaning under the bed I am amazed at what a hairy mammal I am (our dust bunnies are actually their taxonomic cousins, hair bunnies).

Puttering around being domestic is fun!  Women really had it made until feminism went and screwed it all up for them.

It’s been salaciously good weather lately.  Fondling breezes and licking sunshine, that type of thing.  Flowers showing up like popcorn when you put too many kernels in the pan and walked away.  (Just cooperate and pretend you cook your popcorn on the stove, please.)  Spring is in the air, suckers!  With weather this nice it is actually kind of embarrassing to have a cold.  It seems like a really lame joke, like CEO-at-the-annual-company-conference bad.  Or an anachronism, I’m sitting in commuter traffic in a covered wagon.  The cold dates to a previous era, which most people have moved away from.  Maybe it’s just kind of like wearing…at this point I would put in some laughably obvious fashion mistake of the late 90’s but unfortunately I’m fashion-blind.  Sorry.  Tapered jeans?

But Spring is here with a friendly vengeance and the Belgians are emerging from their brick caves, white legs under dusty shorts, pale collar bones over new summer dresses (which they started selling well before the weather actually warmed up).  Today marked the glorious return to my life of the sound of flip-flops against the bottoms of my feet, and I rousted out my favorite pair of shorts from their hibernation in my backpack up in the attic.

…mmm…  It was nice to see my backpack too…

Here's part of the downtown area of my Belgian stomping grounds.  My grass stains today were acquired on that grass, and my caffeine buzz in that terrace-cafe.

Flip flop flip flop.  Sounds good.

I wore the new Moroccan ones I bought in Fes last summer, and they stained a wide strip across the top of my foot a nice tannery chemical red.  I feel like using it to kick someone who goes on and on about the free market.  Does the free market keep businesses from staining your feet with who-knows-what chemical?  Nope.

K bought a mud facial mask thing in Marrakech too, which actually came from India, and I won’t let her use it.  It is just too easy to imagine it being full of lead, mercury, and…I dunno…pigeon shit (oh wait, that’s the tannery).  Am I being paranoid?  Racist?  Funny how those two go together so often.

But that tannery gunk soaked into my skin reminded me of the children hanging out in the streets around the tannery in Fes…  Please read it without even a trace of levity when I say that I want to work with an NGO to fight birth defects.

But I am getting way off track.  Sorry about that.  I have been utterly mentally constipated lately, hence no blogs, and I feel the need to just put something on here, for crying out loud.  I have tried a few times over the past few weeks and have nonsensical little half-files cluttering up my desktop.  That thing about the weather was the most coherent of the batch, but now I’ve gone and rambled off.

So I’m gonna throw this mess up on blogspot and go read in the sun.  Barefoot.  And that's cool with me.