brace for impact

as i've been preparing for my 10,000 kilometer trek on thursday, i've begun to remember just how much of a hassle traveling can be sometimes. particularly when going so far. to say nothing of the fact that it is not ameliorated in any way by me not leaving until the 23rd of december.

i do think i've finally got most of the trinkets, etc. that i need in order to make a decent appearance at christmas, though---which is not as easy as you might think. i mean, really, you can't just say "hi from switzerland, here have a hunk of cheese!" no, no, that wouldn't do at all... trust me, there really isn't much of anything in the way of things that i can afford that people might actually want from switzerland. i finally found the few appropriate items that there are, and those are tucked safely into my suitcase.

anyway, back on track. so i was wondering this afternoon, how much of a culture shock am i in for coming back after more than a year? i know i used to live there (for 23 years), but life seemed so different here when i arrived, and now i've sorta gotten used to it. will home seem strange to me now? well, probably, but at least part of that will be due to the fact that my family is certifiably nutz, and they're always strange. but you know what i mean.

man, i'm pretty excited about seeing some of the old friends though. they may be old ones, but they're also good ones. :) have a merry christmas everybody. see you soon...

covers of songs you've never heard of anyway

don't mind the title; it's not supposed to mean anything. just a random phrase that popped into my head and struck me as strangely clever for absolutely no reason at all.

harumph. not much happening. except of course the usual 'stare at the screen and tell yourself over and over that you have to make this code work, and soon, yet you feel zilcho in the motivation department, and still haven't figured out where to start.'

well, that's only partially true---we went ice skating on thursday, which was cool, except that the lady didn't believe that my student id was real and made me pay the full price (only three francs more, but still, it pissed me off). ice skating is fun, even if i'm completely incompetant and falling all over myself and everybody else for the entire time. markus likes to try to start a game of tag, which is kinda mean, since he is actually very very good on skates. eh, it's amusing.

saturday i finally managed to get to the hardware store and buy spackle (to fix the hole in the kitchen wall that's been there since i moved in) and a new floater apparatus for the toilet (which never completely shuts off, and has been running basically 24/7 since i moved in). no, obviously, i don't pay for the water. in fact, it's technically their responsibility to fix both of these things, but they never do, so i got fed up with it and did it myself.

patching the wall was pretty easy, and it looks better than it did, but it's not terribly pretty. probably i will try to clean it up and give it another try sometime if i get bored.

the toilet, on the other hand, was covered with algae on the inside, and was utterly disgusting. so i cleaned it out as best i could (at least it was just the tank, and not the bowl), and then tried to figure out how to get the old floater thingy out. after several minutes of not having any success whatsoever, i discovered an adjustment knob that allows you to regulate the height of the floater (which in this case was just a crappy piece of styrofoam on a stick). a little expirementation, and it actually shuts off now. amazing. and, of course, irritating as all hell, seeing as i've lived with the incessant sound of trickling water for the last 11 months, *and* paid 20 francs for a replacement part that i didn't even need. i should probably be able to return it, but that takes time and effort to get back to the store (which is not on any of the bus lines) and argue with them into taking it back... argh.

then i made a rum cake (yum!) to take to anne-elizabeth's birthday party. getting in the front door was a bit of a trick, since they weren't answering the bell. eventually someone else showed up who also wanted in and had a cell phone to call them with. the party was cool, and despite the fact that there was hardly any overlap in the people that were there this time versus last time, i managed to feel less awkward and actually talk with a fair amount of people, mostly in french. then, towards the end of the evening, i met leah, sylvain's fiancee, who is also american, and has only been here for a month or so. she basically went berserk when she heard my accent, and i spent the rest of the evening being her support group, which was cool, since she's a really neat person with a lot of fun stories to tell. i tried to relate some of the important lessons and lausanne trivia that i've gleaned over the past year, so hopefully she'll have a bit of an easier time because of it. incidentally, she also tried to do thanksgiving, and (even though this seems cruelly heartless) it was somewhat relieving to hear that someone else actually did have a real disaster on their hands; comparatively, i didn't do so bad after all... but it was a great night, and everyone loved the cake (earned me a repeat invitation), and i must have been there talking with people until about 3:30am. which meant the walk home kinda sucked (~45min), but i made it, and then immediately crashed. probably my body isn't meant to stay up late anymore; imust have used up my allotment of all-nighters in college. too bad they were all wasted on homework... sunday i woke up (around noon) with a splitting headache, despite the fact that i didn't drink anything at the party (unless one slice of my cake was a hell of a lot stronger than i thought it was, but i strongly doubt it).

i tried making almond roca, which (despite having done it numerous times before, just a long time ago) was another learning experience. to start with, naturally, i used a saucepan which wasn't quite big enough (take note: butter and sugar boiling over equals horrible awful sticky burnt mess). this was basically the cause of the second problem, which was that i apparently didn't cook it for quite long enough (i discovered on the fly that my candy thermometer maxed out at 100 degrees centigrade), and so it's a little chewier than it should be. but it still tastes good, even if the texture is screwed up. (come on, who doesn't like a mouthful of butter, sugar, and chocolate?)

talked with mom, dad, and carissa on the isight for a while.

i guess that's about it.

oh, but pleeeeeease will somebody leave me a comment and make me feel less pathetic for writing this stuff when it seems like nobody reads it? please? it's pretty much guaranteed to make my day. so, yeah. sorry for being an attention whore. but i need affirmation here. :)

thanksgiving in december

well, if we can have "christmas in july," then why not "thanksgiving in december?" sounds fair to me...

alright, so what the hell am i talking about. i'll try to explain.

a couple months ago, christine (markus's girlfriend, who is austrian, but her mother was american, so she knows about odd little quirky bizarre things like thanksgiving) suggested that we should try to have a thanksgiving dinner, just for fun, and other people agreed that it sounded like an amusing idea. well, what they really meant was that it would be _amusing_ for *them* to *make* _fun_ of... [rolls eyes] i wasn't offended; just a little intrigued. and, of course, if it involves the preparation and consumption of good ole tasty food, regardless of any associated arcane stereotypes, i'm pretty easy to convince.

but, of course, we don't get the extended weekend off of school here to prepare for it, so doing it on a thursday was basically out of the question. after proposing a couple of weekend days, we finally settled on the first sunday in december, which was last sunday (the 5th). even so, a bunch of people bailed on me at the last minute for various reasons, but i had a very nice dinner with jim, markus, norman, and his girlfriend. ironically, christine (the one to blame for the whole mess) was amoung those who couldn't come; something about being on call for the hospital. even enno managed to somehow double book himself, and so i was flying solo in the kitchen, which was a little unnerving, but ended reasonably well.

the day before was another shopping adventure, even crazier this time because i had to somehow locate a whole turkey. i'm now convinced that i got the only one in all of lausanne, since i had to go through like 5 stores to find it. i was pretty worried for a while. so much so, even, that i paid more than $45 to get this 10 pound turkey. not without internal strife, mind you, but i did pay it. :) i'm quite sure that prices in the US are much more reasonable (for just about everything), but while i always knew thanksgiving was a lot of work, i never really appreciated that it was probably also a pretty expensive event. preparing food for about six people, i spent over $150 just in materials. but in any case, by the time the stores closed, i was pretty sure i had everything that i would need.

so later that evening i went to see "the incredibles" with jim and flavius (sic? doesn't really matter, since i usually just call him "other german" anyway. the great part is that he actually answers to this now. [evil grin]). i'm sorry, i'm a sucker for cute & funny kids films; this was awesome, and everybody needs to go see it. probably the coolest film i've seen in a long time. especially the really short clothing designer ("edna mode"), since her accent, excitement, and bouncy overly physical gestures remind me a little bit of what a charicature of my great aunt mary might be like. sadly, she recently passed away, but she was definitely the coolest relative i had. ever since i can remember, i've always been in awe of her. four foot eleven, and capable of absolutely anything. i've got a picture that she sent me from egypt of her riding on a camel (with the pyramids in the background) when she was already like 75 years old. the woman was just amazing. and like you've all heard me say a hundred times, she was also the greatest cook ever, and i feel amazingly fortunate to have learned even the few things that i was able to from her.

yeah, it was a great film; go see it.

okay, then sunday was the main psycho event. i got up, got dressed, went into the kitchen at about 9:30, and seriously didn't really leave until we sat down to eat around 6:00ish. naturally, i was constantly worried that everything was going to be a monumental disaster, but i actually managed it, and nearly everything came out alright (even if somethings weren't quite like i expected or would have wanted them, they were still good). what stressed me the most was that a lot of the things on the menu i had never really made before (certainly not on my own). like, for instance, the turkey and the stuffing. but i just made something up, and it came out great. i couldn't find a meat thermometer, so i left it in a while longer than i was supposed to, just to be sure i didn't kill us all or anything like that. it was a little drier than the perfect turkey, but i've had much worse. the real miracle, though, was the gravy. i had no clue what i was supposed to do, but some higher power took pity on me, and it came out passable from just doing my best and faking it.

then we had sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, extra stuffing, brocolli casserole, and a green salad. and afterwards, the pumpkin pie (from a real pumpkin!) and an apple pie and ice cream, too. most of them thought the pumpkin pie was a little weird (probably the idea more than anything), but they said it tasted good anyway. the apple one, on the other hand, got instantly devoured. apparent pies (as we know them, at least) are not a european thing. i think i mentioned already before how difficult it was to locate a real pie plate. and as far as i can tell, there isn't really a french word for them, either. they have two words, "gateau" and "tarte," which usually refer to cake like substances and very shallow fruit tarts, respectively. but those aren't even consistently used or well-defined. so i have no idea what i should call a pie...

and people stayed around and talked for a while, and i tried to get things cleaned up as best as i could muster, and picked the carcass and put the food away. finally just yesterday (wednesday) i did the last of the dishes from sunday. :) i'm too lazy to dry them, so i would just do as much as would fit in the dish drain, and then wait for them to dry before repeating the process.

i think i can choose to call it a reasonable success, given that the few people who did come not only seemed to enjoy themselves, but actually needled a few of the people that didn't come, and told them what they missed out on. that made me feel a little bit proud of myself. doesn't happen often, but those are good moments. maybe more people will show up next year...

118-year-old paper

well, kindof. :)

i've got official copies of my great grandparents's birth certificates! wooohoo! (naw, can't tell i'm excited, can you?)

actually, it's sorta neat to stop and think about it. clearly, they didn't send me the original, but they still had it. one hundred and eighteen years, several wars, floods and other crises---and these little pieces of paper somehow survived. it just seems somehow amazing to me.

that, and of course, the fact that this means i can get a new passport, has me walking on cloud nine right about now.

i hope everybody else has something to be excited about too.

oh, and if anybody is actually reading this, they should leave a comment once in a while, even if you think you have nothing important to say. otherwise i'll have to just start addressing my posts directly as letters to andy. :)