tired and stressed

hey guys. The internet at home is kaput again until November, so contact is sporatic. I apologize. The canadian roomate to be bailed on us, so we're engaged in a frantic search for a new roommate for Nov-Jan. which is turning into a pain in the ass, and I'm really afraid of getting stuck with a FREAK! I wish I could afford to have the apartment to myself, but that's not an option in the slightest.

It was a gorgeous day yesterday, which helped my mood. In walking between various archives and home I think I logged about 4 miles, in the sun. It was lovely. Until I clocked in the shoulder by an old man with a complex who just decided to assault me on the street, even though I was no where near him. Asshole.

THe good news is I have a plane ticket to come home in December. I get into the DC on December 17th, so all you people who live up there can start the bidding war for who wants to pick me up at Dulles and put me up for a day or 2 before I find my way down to Danville via Charlottesville. Of course with the exchange rate what it is, and the fact that my money goes through several currency changes before it gets to my credit card, I'll probably end up paying $100 more than the original price, which wasn't cheap to start with.

I gotta go. Off to the library.

poka

Harold and Maude

Happy Birthday John!

Last night I went to the theater with my Russian friend Ira. She belongs to a theater club and is able to get tickets on the cheap. We went to this very small theater, not far from me - at a place called the Hermitage garden, and the theater is called Sphera. It was supposed to be a different play, but practically the whole cast was sick, so they switched it up at the last minute and we ended up seeing "Harold and Maude."

Now, I've never seen the film in the states, so I actually lacked the frame of reference, which was nice, because it was very witty and fresh in Russian. The stage was very small, and the seats were on all sides, so the cast was sometimes interacting with the audience. And the woman who played Maude was great! A bonafide really old Russian woman who was hilarious. It was a fun evening, even though the wind and the rain made the walk home and adventure.

So, I've finally gotten some culture here, yea me.

I didn't go on the hike because of the weather, an upset stomach and a sleeping through of my alarm. I'm really bummed now, because I've been restless and twitchy all weekend, and the roomie is stressed with writing a paper, so I've kind of been tiptoeing around there, so as not to disturb her. And our internet is busted again, and that's annoying too. I'm just in a mood, and an all day hike would have been great.......

Did meet another American graduate student, who will be here all year, and she's outrageously funny and cool (in that nerdy academic sort of way - we think the archives are EXCITING!). So that's good news. She has girlfriend potential.

Anyhoose, my time at the internet cafe is counting down, and I'm off to get myself a Russian haircut. Wish me luck!

no hike :-(

So various factors, including crappy weather have conspired so that I am not going on the hike. I am very sad.

my brother's cousin's father's former roommate.....

The academic world is really small I am coming to realize.

Random British guy from Manchester knows German woman I met at a conference in Wales in 2003.

I live in the former apartment of the ex-girlfriend of a Berkeley grad who also happens to be friends with a Cville-friend and her bf from Harvard. We still get the girl's mail!

Met Russian graduate student who studies in Germany. She knows my advisor at UVa because they met in Ekaterinburg. She is dating a German grad student who will be living with a Finnish grad student who was interested in our apartment.

Now know German graduate student who did her undergrad in Tubingen Germany, where dear Laura lived for two years. I think they lived in the same dormitory building.

Its a small world.

Bonus points if you can name the movie which inspired the subject line.

And just in case they're reading.....

I think Vladimir Putin is a really great guy. An astute leader who will lead the Russian people back to greatness. And Lukashchenko in Belarus can't be that bad either....and Brezhnev and Stalin and all those guys. They're great.

And GWB too, he's a freakin' genius!

A multi-topic blog!

Ah! There is so much to say, where to start....



I've had a very American past few days. Its kindof strange, really.

Last night my roomie and I went out with this guy Chris, from the UK who is a Soviet scholar like us, but is leaving today. We were going to bid him farewell at a cafe which celebrates the KGB, but my roomie had a hunkering for good ole' American food. (ALL she ever talks about is milkshakes!) So off we went to.....
TGI Fridays.

Yes, I'm serious. I had a less-than-spectacular cheeseburger, but DAMN the nachos and the milkshake were good! There were also really really really annoying American teenagers there. Ick. There we discussed my Putin-absentee ballot conspiracy theory, noting that yesterday in the Moscow Times (english language paper) there was an article entitled "Putin says a defeat for Bush is a victory for Terrorism". In the sense that Putin (POO-tin) (or Vlad, if you're in the inner circle) will no longer be able to wage a war against the Chechens. Helloooooo - there is a reason they hate the RUssians. I'm not saying they're right for doing what they do, but Russia isn't helping.

ANYWAY....I digress.....
This morning I went to do my civic duty and vote. One can vote at the Embassy, but since you have to strip down to your skivvies just to get in, they offer other locations. Today's location was....
The Hard Rock Cafe

I am also not kidding.
Adjacent to the very small area where we could uncomfortably fill out our Federal Emergency Write-In Ballot there was the American Women's Auxillery Bazaar. They were selling CHRISTMAS PILLOWS and QUILTS!!!! It was hilarious. All these diplomat women running around being domestic in the middle of Moscow. I wish I had had my camera with me. They were wearing decorate earrings with American flags and everything. They guy that explained to us how to fill out our ballots looks sooooo familiar. He is also from Arlington. $10 says he went to AU at some point. He's my age. But I didn't ask.

But I have to say that they better count my damn absentee ballot. Our tax dollars are Fed-Exing it to the states for me!

The archives are wearing me out.

I had other things to say....
so this British guy - good thing he left today (and is getting married) because I would otherwise totally fall in love with him! The personal pickings here are slim. Where are my dorky-yet-funny academics?

Its a raw fall day here. I need to take my camera with me and capture some of life during this particular moment of autumn in Moscow.

later!

Vote!

Well, no particularly exciting stories today. I sat in the archives and read about the attempt to save a 17th century church from demolition (unsuccessful).

This weekend I met with a Russian acquaintance, a girl I interned with many years ago. That's a long explanation for some other time. She's rather cloying, and I think really only wants to speak English and makes fun of my Russian (which is better than her English) so I didn't really have fun. But anyway......

This week, I get to trek to one of several locations around Moscow where the U.S. Embassy is making available Federal Write-in Ballots for the election because.....surprise surprise, my absentee ballot hasn't arrived yet. And someone can go stick their tongue out at the woman in the Charlottesville Voter Registration office and say "desi told you so" because damnit, she didn't believe me that mail is not as reliable as one might think here. She didn't even know that the Russians HAVE A DIFFERENT ALPHABET! In fact the FSB probably knows I'm voting for Kerry and intercepted my ballot because we all know who PUTIN wants to win - Bushy Jr. So my vote will still count for the Presidential election - but to my Cville friends - VOTE AL WEED for Congress!!!!!! No more Virgil Goode, please!

So that's what I have to say today. Go vote!

quick online poll

How many people, when they view the blog, see the star in the upper left hand corner of the webpage?

Just curious. I don't see it at home, but I"m at an internet cafe right now and its showing up. The darn star was the reason why I chose this template.

Private Soap

So I was at the Moscow Regional Archive today, plodding along through the enormous finding aids for the Moscow Soviet (I know this means nothing to most of you people, that's fine, its just detail!), when got up to go to the bathroom.

The women's restroom there is in pretty good condition, but you have to supply your own TP. That's really not a surprise for this part of the world. Well, when I went to wash my hands, there was also a woman there doing the same. I saw that there was a bar of soap in the tray. "Whoo hoo! Soap!" Good day. So I use some. This action resulted in the following exchange:

Woman: "You need to ask for permission."
Me: "For what?"
(I also need to apply for formal permission to plug in my stupid laptop to their stupid electricity, so I was confused for a minute)
Me: "For the soap?"
Woman: "Yes"
Me: "I'm sorry, I thought it was communal soap, I didn't know"
Woman: "No its not. You need to ask permission. Don't apologize, just ask permission"

Duly noted

Sorry!!!!

Okay, the cranky blog was not directed at all you friends who do read it. Sorry, poor outlet for frustration relative to some people in the states who have recently blown me off. :-) Out of sight, out of mind!?

Thanks for reading though!
Next story will probably involve my opinions about Russian personal hygiene.

Kholodno! Kholodno!

Yeah, so I've been slacking on the blog these days, but its not like you're reading it anyway! And I work too, you know, so I can't commit all my time to wandering around Russia waiting for funny things to happen to me.

A friend of mine was in town this weekend, for a business trip, and I tried to do some tour guide entertaining. I wanted to go out of town, to this place called Rostov Veliky, one of Russia's oldest cities with a beautiful view, but it wasn't in the cards. I"ll make it in a few weeks, so its not my loss.

During the week, I am in the archives. Right now I am working in 3 archives at once, because they all have crazy schedules, so you have to put several together to feel productive. My least favorite is definitely the archive of the former Communist party. I think the archivists are perhaps mad, that the Soviet Union collapsed on them, and so they yell at researchers to make themselves feel better. At least, though, they seem to yell at people indiscriminantly - old, young, Russian, foreign, men, women. Our fates as researchers and future academics depends almost entirely on "crazy Misha" a somewhat deranged archivist who controls our access to finding aids. He brings us finding aids for what HE thinks will be useful for our projects, NOT what we ask for. It is my mission in life now, to convince him to give me the finding aid for the Central's Committee's "upravlenie delami" if it is the last thing I do.

But I've met some German and Russian graduate students along the way, and in addition to my roomate, who is working at different archives, I will soon have a posse of freakish Russianists to surround me. Which is good, because no one else seems to get it.

Russia is strange that way. The friend who is visiting keeps asking me to "explain" certain things about this place, why certain things happen, etc., and the truth is, is that rarely does logic play a role in life here. I can't offer explainations most of the time, I can only shrug my shoulders and say "byvaet" which is the Russian equivalent of "shit happens". If you want logic and order in your world, this is not the place for you. Go to Germany.

I do have a funny story with which to regale you, my readers.
Saturday morning, I went out for my run, which happens about 3 times a week. It was cold, 40 degrees or so, and raining, at 9 am. I was in shorts, because my tights were stinky and dirty. I was fine with this. Yes, the legs were a bright red from the cold, but it was invigorating, and well, I'm a sweat-er, I warm up quickly. So I'm running through a small park in the middle of a wide street, and there is a totally old and hunched over old lady sitting on the bench. She really has seen better days, and its truly a sad sight, often. I was listening to music, but I could still hear my surroundings. As I run past her, she waves her cane at me and screams "kholodno! kholodno!" the literal translation of which is "cold! cold!" in reference to my scandalously exposed legs. If I get pneumonia, this would be why, according to the old lady sitting on the bench on Strasnoi boulevard.

When I got home and told my roommate, all we could do was laugh. Kholodno! kholodno!

Aack!

Its happening! Tonight! A freeze! It will get down to -1 (Celcius folks, this is the rest of the world) If you were here, you could hear me whimpering.

BUT! In response to this development, I have good news to report.
First of all, I have a roommate now, and she's awesome. In fact, we're frightenly identical. But this is unimportant at the moment, but her presence is crucial to the event.

Since she arrived on Thursday, we have spent our time together in the apartment huddled in the living room with the space heater. All other rooms were so frigid they were uninhabitable. Its a good thing we get along so far! Thanks to the space heater, the living room was in fact a sauna.

On Sunday morning, she was working at her computer, also listening to music. I was reading. Suddenly, she turns to me, and asks, "what's that noise?" It sounded like water running through pipes in the walls. I assumed it was related to the renovations going on upstairs. But wait! I put my ear to the radiator by the window. No, it was in fact our radiators filling with water, water that would soon heat up and bring life to Tverskaia dom 6. We did a little jig, a dance of joy if you will. Soon it will be SO hot in the apartment that we will have to open the windows in the middle of winter and SO dry that we will get bloody noses, but for now, the apartment is fit for human occupation.

To celebrate, we went to see the Bourne Supremacy, in Russian. A significant part of it was filmed in Moscow, which is why I wanted all you people in Cville to go see it with me, but nooooooo. Then you could have had an idea of where I live, and what it is like.

The best thing about the theater....everybody's seat was a BEAN BAG! Yes, a theater full of bean bags. It was awesome. Of course the people next to us were making out, which was less than awesome, but what can ya do?

No heat yet in the archives yet, I am sad to report.

Desi's least favorite question to be asked in Russia

What is, are you married? And as soon as I say, no, I get "how old are you"?

This of course, is a fairly common question, but is not necessarily normal or polite. In fact I've been bombarded by questions lately, by former co-workers, old ladies in the Metro, etc.

I have one Russian acquaintance, a Russian girl, who drives me up a wall. I interned with her 7 years ago, and to her I am the American girl to be friends with and to laugh at her Russian and ask her all the time "Why". I kind of wish I could lose her. Are you married yet? Why? Do you have a boyfriend? Why? Who was the guy who answered your phone yesterday? (my landlord, who is 60+) Are you living with a man? Why?

The grandmother who interrogated me in the Metro today had asked me the time, and when I stumbled over it a little, she asked me if I was from Belorus. Belorus! I said, nooooo, I from America. Turns out this 80 year old lady spoke English. And German. According to my roommate, who studies such things, she could have either been a tour guide of sorts, or perhaps a spy. :-) Or a linguist I suppose.

Thankfully, my friends who are remotely sensibly, IF they ask me about my marital status, congratulate me on my restraint, and say that I shouldn't ever bother, really!