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I am a tad impatient and can't wait for the fun to start (seriously). However, I’m not having much fun now, this second, this very moment. Fun means working on the apartment and I need to get to the mall to do that. Oh, I can get to the mall by bus, but then getting back with tons of useless junk will be difficult.
I have friends who will drive me there if I'd just call them, but this is a personal quest which may take hours. I need to turn over every label, every price tag. I need to imagine every purchase being useful for exactly 3 years and disposable after that. So, I need a car, MY car, for the adventure. Until it arrives in 2 weeks, I can’t go to the local Home Depot variation for the million household items I could use RIGHT NOW while I’m otherwise unoccupied—waiting before I hurry up in this case. In the interim I’m watching military TV while hand-piecing a quilt I mailed to myself.
The TV programming is dreadful. Think about the intellectual accomplishments of the typical post-adolescent and you have the LCD of family entertainment: Wheel of Fortune, soaps, sports, Roseanne, Fox News, and the original Star Trek. Commercials are all military propaganda. Uplifting. Fortunately we are blessed with losing the satellite signal every 10 minutes or so. Instead I could watch local TV: American shows with Lithuanian voice over. They don’t even mute the English, just yell over it in Lithuanian or Russian (I can’t always tell the difference). One guy does all the voices. It’s priceless and explains a lot of the local alcoholism.
Today I will visit the med unit at the embassy—5 minutes’ walk from our apartment—and be told that I need a vaccination against some kind of encephalitis. They must have extra vaccine that’s about to expire since unemployed spouses are mostly expendable once the employee’s shipment arrives. Our shipment is due in about two weeks (see above) and I wouldn’t be dead before unpacking; ergo there has to be a surplus of meds. After that Mike has promised me a tour of the embassy and to introduce me to his colleagues and to the local hires he supervises. This is especially weird timing since Judith, a great friend who also happens to be the wife of Mike's DOS colleague, is having a BBQ for all of us tonight.
The embassy is the heart of the community and as such, is nearly as important to me as it is to people who work there. It’s where we go in an emergency and where we have many of our community functions. It’s important to know the Marine Guard—they are armed and they are on our side. I can’t meet the people who run these offices by sitting watching Star Trek reruns, and I can’t get into their offices the first time without an escort—there could be trouble if I make a wrong turn while wandering around on my own. So, thanks to the shelf life of surplus meds, I’ll finally meet some of the people who make the embassy work.
Then I must take a detour to the grocery store for dishwasher salt and to check out the sundries aisles for an entrance mat to trap the dirt the dogs love to drag in. The name Lithuania is derived from the local word for rain and with good reason. It’s like Oregon or Washington must be—a little rain all the time, which makes it nice and green. And muddy. I knew I was in trouble when our city tour guide explained that the pediment on the national cathedral featured Noah, et al. (see image above). After that, a nap before our dinner date. Charlotte woke us up at 4 since he walks her before bed didn't squeeze her at the right spot and she didn’t poop on command at 9:30.
The TV programming is dreadful. Think about the intellectual accomplishments of the typical post-adolescent and you have the LCD of family entertainment: Wheel of Fortune, soaps, sports, Roseanne, Fox News, and the original Star Trek. Commercials are all military propaganda. Uplifting. Fortunately we are blessed with losing the satellite signal every 10 minutes or so. Instead I could watch local TV: American shows with Lithuanian voice over. They don’t even mute the English, just yell over it in Lithuanian or Russian (I can’t always tell the difference). One guy does all the voices. It’s priceless and explains a lot of the local alcoholism.
Today I will visit the med unit at the embassy—5 minutes’ walk from our apartment—and be told that I need a vaccination against some kind of encephalitis. They must have extra vaccine that’s about to expire since unemployed spouses are mostly expendable once the employee’s shipment arrives. Our shipment is due in about two weeks (see above) and I wouldn’t be dead before unpacking; ergo there has to be a surplus of meds. After that Mike has promised me a tour of the embassy and to introduce me to his colleagues and to the local hires he supervises. This is especially weird timing since Judith, a great friend who also happens to be the wife of Mike's DOS colleague, is having a BBQ for all of us tonight.
The embassy is the heart of the community and as such, is nearly as important to me as it is to people who work there. It’s where we go in an emergency and where we have many of our community functions. It’s important to know the Marine Guard—they are armed and they are on our side. I can’t meet the people who run these offices by sitting watching Star Trek reruns, and I can’t get into their offices the first time without an escort—there could be trouble if I make a wrong turn while wandering around on my own. So, thanks to the shelf life of surplus meds, I’ll finally meet some of the people who make the embassy work.
Then I must take a detour to the grocery store for dishwasher salt and to check out the sundries aisles for an entrance mat to trap the dirt the dogs love to drag in. The name Lithuania is derived from the local word for rain and with good reason. It’s like Oregon or Washington must be—a little rain all the time, which makes it nice and green. And muddy. I knew I was in trouble when our city tour guide explained that the pediment on the national cathedral featured Noah, et al. (see image above). After that, a nap before our dinner date. Charlotte woke us up at 4 since he walks her before bed didn't squeeze her at the right spot and she didn’t poop on command at 9:30.
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