May 31, 2005
Last post of the month, tomorrow's June and 6 more shopping months til christmas for y'all that believe in that shee-it. I'm off the wagin for the evening, having some technical difficulties dealing with f..king being alone. Yeah I'm bitter so f..king what at least I'm spelling the eff-word with euphimisms or some literary shit so you won't get off-ended. Or something.

Man, f..k this alone bullthis all to hell and heck and beyond and back, it sucks the chrome off my old trailer hitch. Yall want to criticize then first put your ass and everything else in my shoes and try to deal with life without your girls next to you. I will go to hell for saying it out loud or whatever but I miss Masha more than anybody, and really anybody else don't really matter compared to her. Goddamn I'm sick of this it sucks and I hate putting up with it.

Sitting and standing and drinking wine and looking at my beautiful daughter's pictures and my daughters beautiful pictures and it makes me sad not to have those sweet eyes looking at her daddy with love in them. She already loves me I can tell but fuck who knows what will be left when too months are up without seeing her and me. Shit, it's getting harder to type with the wine pissing on my fingres.I'm glad we got to talk again. I needed to vent. Yall' are good audiences and listeners. Or some shit. Rob you can weigh in with a quit yer fuckin whining asshole coment or something. But it ain't changing a thing, the shitty ass empty feeling is still there. How the fuck I ever delt with this without alcohol is beyond me. Alcoholics across the world unite. Or some shit.

It hurts it hurts it hurts and not much can change that but I'm taking some steps. You ain't going ta like them but I will already.

Your Dirty Words Come Out Clean
My Aching Head

May 28, 2005
Hey-dy hi-dy ho there...'tis the below-mentioned Sat'dy which finds my asscheekies esconced in my "GT-12 Novy Stil Ukraina" office chair and me wondering who the hell yanked my pillow and blanket offa me. In my right hand is clutched my coffee cup, full of the finest chest hair growth-inducing brew the former co-worker of a room fulla' Navy boys can concoct...y'all taught me well. Just popped over to Rob's joint and realized that I've got the coolest friends on the planet!!! Not just because he made me the Slightly Rough Blog Of The Month for May, but cuz he understands exactly why I love living over here, and he never forgets the important stuff.

I was a good boy last evening, went home and terrorized my arms and abs in the weightroom, then tripped over to a new outdoor cafe right across the river from my apartment. Best damn grilled chicken wings I've ever stuffed in my gob, things were like mannah from heaven. Or some other metaphor for "holy shit gimme another order right here right now!" Coolest of all was the vibe, much the same as Rob described in his entry yesterday...sitting outside, drinking a beer or several, watching people do their thing (I now feel much better about my "White Boy's Overbite" version of dancing), enjoying the evening air, watching the sun edge toward the horizon, ogling the waitress.

A-haaaa...where I was going yesterday, in three words: degenerate boob freak.

Dang, now I'm all amped up and ready to...do something. Drastic. Or just meaningful. Aw shit, folks, he's off on one-a his tangents again...a boy cries alone in the dark of his dreams after the third bell rings in his wish that the ballerina on the stage were his, while a pack of cigarettes and a finger sketch in the frost on the window call out hello......hold it, now hit it...I am Jack's raging hormonal angst...two peas in a pod...shit from shinola...Chief Martin in da hayouse...frantic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tic-tock...I'm doing the best I ever did, now go away...why have you forsaken me???

Guess this is what you get when you make the coffee too damn strong.

Some Folks You Just Cain't Reach!
Boss

PS: Tonight I hoists a N^o 4 just for you, Brothah Rob.

May 27, 2005
'Tis Friday and that is a good thing. I have to work tomorrow, but today still feels like a breath of freedom-tinted air. I won't be going out to play pool until an unholy hour, nor do I plan to otherwise drink much beer, if at all. What I will do is go home and hit the weights, then perhaps go for a walk and ogle some honeys.

mantra \' man-trah \ n : a mystical formula of invocation or incantation (as in Hinduism)

obscene \' ahb-seen \ : abhorrent to morality or virtue specif : designed to incite to lust or depravity

I must have been going somewhere with that, but damn if I can remember where. Sounds like a good excuse to bug out, so y'all have a...

Happy Weekend,
SOS

May 26, 2005
I am Jack's bundle of raw nerve endings. Got back into my workout routine last week, which I've managed to stick with so far only at the cost of...a shitload of pain. While I'm not a subscriber to that "no pain no gain" nonsense and am certainly not out to kill myself or prove anything, the sad and simple fact is it's been a looooong time since I was last doing this seriously, and now I'm paying for it. The plus side, and it's a biggun', is that the shoulder I tore up 3 years ago (and the main reason I quit lifting for so long) isn't bothering me at all. Big thanks to Andrei, my Moscow physical therapist who was the only one to not only FINALLY give me some relief from the pain, but fixed the damn thing altogether. At any rate, pain or no pain, I'm back on my way to being in shape.

Of course, that also comes at the expense of giving up beer to a very large extent - I've committed to only having it on the weekends. Not that I'm a lush or anything (least I don't think I is), but the taste of beer became a habit and a pretty hardwired association with many different foods. I'm keeping the faith so far, though I must say homemade chicken stir-fry and fried rice just doesn't taste the same with sparkling water instead of a couple bottles of Tsing-Tao.

Helluva week, not that this differs from most other weeks around here. Busting ass and getting a lot of things done at work as usual, followed by the daily hour-n-a-half nap back to Chelyabinsk, then straight to the weight room once I get home. Still finding that dinner alone doth suck tailpipe, especially since I'm no longer drowning my sorrow in alcohol.

Hmmmm...maybe I'm more of a lush than I thought.

Hey Rob, I'm pretty sure you're right - I can't think of any Army or Air Force musicals either. I tried to argue Kelly's Heroes into the musicals category, but had a hard time making a case just because they play Burning Bridges every time Oddball says "negative vibes, man!". You miiiiiiiight take a leap of logic and call Hair an "Army" musical on the basis that Treat Williams' character (Berger) stands in for John Savage's (Claude) and goes to Viet Nam and dies in the end, but the only time the Army is actually shown is Berger in a line of troops marching toward a transport plane at the very end. Not to mention the generation of ex-hippies who would shit their pants at the idea of "their" movie being labeled an Army musical. I thought I had a case for calling Apocalypse Now one, for the scene where the surfer dude is water skiing behind the patrol boat to the tune of Satisfaction, until I remembered the patrol boat and its entire crew are Navy, so Rob and his brothas take the cake for inspiring the most musicals.

And dude - I think I deserve a door prize for not making any smartass comments about Navy and musicals. Respect.

BTW, anybody got Kelly's Heroes on DVD or know how/where to get their meathooks on it? You can call that an itty-bitty hint for Big Daddy's next present. You can also call it whatever occasion you want, including "just for shits and grins."

Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller

May 23, 2005
Sweat thee not, dear readers, I ain't been avoiding any of ya's, just been a victim of shitty technology. Comms at work were assed-out all last week, and my landlord "forgot" to pay the phone bill for my apartment so no internet there. Guess 'twould help if I joined the 21^st century (or whatever the hell the millenium fruits and nuts call it) and got broadband instead of dialup. Anyway, all that creative explanation and bullshit aside, I'm more or less back in the saddle.

Which means right about squat, since other than the past weekend, I gots hardly a thing to report other than days filled working my ass off and eveningseses spent alone hitting the weights while listening to the most antisocial music I own, cooking and eating dinner, also alone, then hitting the sack. Alone. Repetition is the mother of insanity. Or something.

But yeah, did manage to have a good enough weekend for some filler here...shot pool on Friday with some friends, walked around nighttime Chelyabinsk sniffing the clean night air (which, strangely enough for being so damn land-locked, got me all reminiscent about dawn-patrol surfing when I lived in Florida), then went home and stayed up 'til some unholy hour of the morning drinking (more) beer and putting my vacation photos into an album. Woke up early Sat'dy morning and did a shitload of housework and errands, then went for a walk in the park in the afternoon with a buddy and ogled scantily-clad high school graduates.

I love this country. Really I do.

Yesterday was pretty tame...worked out again and went for a run again, then spent a while organizing my cd collection. Thanks to having to stuff everything somewhere during my move from Moscow, I've got disks shoved hither and yon and beyond, with damn near no order whatsoever. Imagine the horror of finding your Godsmack cd sandwiched between your wife's Cher's Greatest Hits and your kid's Soundtrack From The Little Choo-Choo That Could...christ above it just gives me the shivers - they could have my tattoos removed for that kinda shit! Anyway, everything is alphabetized between three categories: Hardcore, Not-So-Hardcore, and Everything Else, so hopefully no more cross-contamination in Big Daddy's music collection.

Yesterday was Masha's 2^nd birthday and I....didn't do a damn thing but call and sing Doe a Deer over the phone with her. I tried to teach her the Happy Birthday song, but she was pretty insistent on sticking with our current Sound of Music repertoire. Gotta' work on that. On the plus side, I managed not to get dee-pressed over missing her birthday, especially knowing that luckily she's too young to really understand what the hell we're on about anyway.

Ho-kay, dat's it, homeys. Not sure when I'll post again, really trying to maintain my workout schedule in the evenings. I'm in the process of doing the photos, but will have to trip to an internet cafe to upload them. Be patient, as always.

I'll Be Watching You, Fokker!
Stephen "The Interrogator" Himmel

PS: Personal apology to Marica, Ken, Mikey, Chris and Susan, I wrote all of you replies to various emails, but they all got bounced due to the system outage(s). I'll try to re-send later.

May 12, 2005
Back "home" in Chelyabinsk again, so let me start by telling you about the rest of our vacation. We got up on Thursday the 5^th intending to eat breakfast then head on up to San Francisco. Instead, we decided to do some more shopping in Monterey - Vika needed some new shirts, I needed (and still do) a watch, and of course we couldn't pass by the Gymboree store without spending another fortune on our little monster. After our shopping, we decided to go have lunch at The Fishwife, which Vika liked as much as I always have. Only then did we finally start heading up to San Fran, to which we went by way of Highway 17, a very scenic road that runs up and over the mountains between Santa Cruz and Cupertino. We got checked into our hotel in San Francisco, then went out walking around Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square, took a bunch of pictures, bought some (more!) souvenirs, then had dinner at a seafood joint on the Wharf.

On Friday we took a bus tour of the city, which turned out to be a pretty good way to "squeeze" San Francisco into one day. The tour covered all the hilites - Caito Tower, Lombard Street, Chinatown, San Francisco's municipal administration and courthouse area, Twin Peaks, Golden Gate Park, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge. After the bus tour, we had more seafood for lunch (always gotta get my fix when I'm in the States), then took a boat tour that went out from the Wharf to just past the Golden Gate Bridge, then back around the side of Alcatraz nearest Sausalito and Angel Island, then back to the Wharf. Very windy day, so we also saw a ton of wind- and kite-surfers. Pretty cool.

Saturday saw us getting up at 4:00am (egads!) to drive to the airport for our flight back to Moscow. Everything went entirely smoothly, though we ended up with only 25 minutes at JFK to transition from our SF flight to our Moscow-bound one, rather hair-raising even if we did make it just fine. I also broke my Moscow Sheremetevo-II airport Passport Control and luggage record...made it through the border guards in 5 (FIVE!) minutes, got our bags in just another 10, and were met by the driver with no delay right after that. All of which got me more quickly back to Masha.

Speaking of my favorite person on the planet, I have quite a few new pictures of her to post. In all, I shot close to 300 photos over vacation, 30-40 of which were taken of her in the last 3 days. I bought a new Nikon D70 digital SLR, and of course I had to test it out on my perfect little subject. We took her out with us on Monday for Moscow's Victory Day celebration and got some great shots of her with WWII vets, as well as some funny candids when we went to Uncle Kolya's for dinner then took her to a playground afterward. It'll take me a few days to process everything, but I'll try to get it all up within the next week, keeping in mind that I have to traipse to an internet cafe to upload all those files.

Today was my first day back at work, and I had quite a pleasantly smooth transition from vacation mode, nothing overly taxing. 'Twas very hard to say goodbye to my girls yesterday, though, knowing I won't see them again for two solid months. Buuuut...duty calls and Masha needs to get some beach time and so do both moms and all that. I can't wait to see Masha with a suntan, little cutie.

So that's all I have for now, especially if you want me to get those photos done. Probably be a busy rest of the week for me, plus I have to work on Saturday, so not sure when I'll post again. As usual, y'all take care and such.

Back In The Saddle Again
Mr. Autry

May 4, 2005

...whales that is, as well as humpbacks and Risso's dolphins and great brown albatross's and the floating remains of a giant squid. That's what we saw on our whale-watching trip yesterday, what an incredible experience! Ever thought you'd get to see killer whales outside of Sea World? Me neither, not to mention any of the other critters.

Great trip on a boat owned by the former head of Hopkins Marine Station, a group that runs constant marine research on the Monterey Bay. These guys really have their act together, very well presented trip filled with non-sensationalized facts about every animal we saw. We took off from the dock around 9am and headed out toward the open water. About 30 minutes into the ride, I spotted the first whale, a lone humpack whom we shadowed for about an hour while he came up for air roughly every 5 minutes. Never got too close, so the captain decided to continue on.

We rode out for another 45 minutes, almost to the other side of Monterey Bay to Santa Cruz, and came upon a research dinghy shadowing a pod of 10 orcas, with a group of 5 humpbacks nearby. I was hoping for some good ol' Discovery Channel mauling, but no, turns out they were "playing" with each other, alternately rushing each other or popping fins on the surface of the water. There was one adult male killer who was positively HUGE, I mean much bigger than Shamu. His dorsal fin stood taller than me, and he gave us plenty of opportunity to see it as he patrolled the perimeter of "his" pod.

We got plenty of closeup views of the humpbacks as well, at one point within about 20 yards of them. Unfortunately, my #$%$#! camera battery had died earlier right when we got to the whole group, so the only photos I have are my memories. No matter what, I feel really priveleged to have seen these animals, what an experience!

After our trip, we went over to have dinner at our friends' Chuck's and Teri's place, had a great time with them and the kids. Hopefully it won't be another 13 years before we get to see each other again!

Okay, that's my report, time to eat breakfast and go out for some more fun...taking Vika shopping for a birthday present, and she decided she wants some new cosmetics. Ain't I a great hubby?

Thar She Blows!
Cap'n Ahab

May 2, 2005
SSSSSssssshhhhhhh....be vewwy vewwy quiet, Vika's upstairs sleeping and I, being the jet-lagged soul I am, slipped downstairs from our room at the B&B to diddle around on the 'net. Mostly wanted to post a quick entry to say this trip is already proving to be just what Mama and Papa needed, some time to rejuvenate and get back to being the red-hot couple we are at heart. Having a blast, met up with our friends Chuck and Terri and their children (ohmygod those kids are gorgeous!) yesterday and had lunch then walked around a bit at a block party on Cannery Row (pics later). Vika and I had dinner last night at a really nice seafood restaurant on Monterey's Fisherman's Wharf, then strolled around a bit before coming home to collapse in the bed.

The weather is Monterey's usual glory, a bit foggy in the morning but burning off already. Temps laughable compared to the cold I've gotten used to in Russia, though I see quite a few other folks besides me running around in short sleeves. Just as I expected, my perception of what is "cold" has quite altered...

Going down to Pinnacles National Monument today for a nice, long hike. Should be a blast, I remember really enjoying it the last time I was here. Again, I'll post pics later.

Better run, they're about to serve breakfast and I'm staaaaaavin! Y'all take care, enjoy your work and play and I'll certainly do the same.

No Dust Here
Tom Joad

April 28, 2005
This will be a quick entry. I'm done packing for my trip, had a good dinner, and am now behind a couple bottles of pretty good red. Yes, I'm sure I surprise the g-strings offa alla youse. Anyway, also been listening to some o my hardcore shit...House of Pain, Limp Bizkit (okay, so it's a guilty pleasure), some old Metallica, System of a Down, 311, etc. At any rate, I'm all full of piss and vinegar on the eve of my vacation and you gets to listen to me talk whatever shit comes to my mind...

Which is about next to friggin nothing, other than that I'm shittin my drawers in anticipation of seeing my girls, then taking my main girl off to the US to Monterey, the center of my romantic nature for the past 17 years (holy shit, has it been that long???!!!). This is one overdue trip for Mama and Papa, and trust me, Daddy gonna use it to the fullest extent. Any of y'all who been there know 'zackly what I means.

I'll let your alleged minds ponder that one on yer own...

So yeah, I'm all aggro and pumped and primed and...as we used to say in the Air Force, all thrust and very little vector.

311 be talking to me now, gots my number...

With the words slaying me slow
The verbs, they just don't flow
Confusing use of time

Partial stoning of the heart
Waiting for something to start
Confusing use of time

But the trying again
Makes me think it's all gonna end
Confusing use of time

But every time I turn the volume down
All I hear is the deafening sound
Of your hearts pound

But the trying again
Makes me think it's all gonna end
Confusing use of time...

Today the longest day
Hearing repeating things you say
Confusing use of time

Can you hear the void I describe?
What can I say vacancy sounds like?
Confusing use of time...

Now da Bizkit be talkin to Big Daddy...you know what time it is baby...back up, tell me watchoo gonna do now...keep rollin rollin rollin rollin...

That's what we gonna do, and what I's gonna do rat now, so y'all keep your cool, and as my Uncle Georgia Jim usta say...maintain yer brain! I'm rollin...

Rainstorm, Take Me Away From The Norm
Your Energy

April 26, 2005
Okay, so here's the deal: I made some pretty serious errors in judgement here by posting information about the project I work on, to an extent of detail that has no business going beyond my office door. The big boss on my project pointed this out to me on Monday, and like any rational worker bee who values his job, coming up on the big guy's radar for anything other than "what a fabulous job you're doing Mr. Johnson" was way not cool. Soooo, once I cleaned up from crapping my pants, I took the quickest and easiest way out and just deleted all the archives. No worries, I still have em all on my home computer for "posterity" (mostly for Masha to read someday in case she wonders just what kind of nitwit her father was).

Now to be completely fair and objective, nearly all of the things I wrote were borne of my enthusiasm for the project and my particular job therein. I've said this numerous times here before - even at it's most hair-tearing, what I do is still very interesting and challenging to me, so I went a bit overboard and tried to convey that enthusiasm by writing about it here. I realize this does not justify what I wrote, and I hope like hell I didn't cause anybody or anything (the Project) harm. Anyway, all systems are go again, except the archives. I don't think I'm going to restore the old ones (I really did delete every html file in there), but I'll probably start 'clean' from here on out with em. I've been wanting to do some file housekeeping for a while anyway, so call this was a fortuitous excuse.

In other earth-shattering news, I got all my household crap on Saturday and spent the entire weekend unpacking it. Now my house feels like a home, got all my glass doodads and rugs and other shit perched about the place. Best of all, I put all Masha's toys and books and stuffed animals in her room, so now I can go in there and sit down and pretend things are normal.

Damn, where did that morbid tidbit come from? Anybody got any hemlock?

Just kidding, things are swimming. Three mo days til Mama and Papa hit Monterey, can I get a yippy-kaye-yay?! Actually hard to believe, both of us have been busting ass and slogging through this separation for so long, seemed like we never would make it to our vacation. Happy times ahead...

Okay, stick a fork in me cuz I'm done, it's late and I'm sleepy as the dickens.

Apropos Of Nothing At All,
I Am

April 22, 2005
Please observe a moment of silence for me in my period of mourning. The guy came by in Moscow yesterday and took my pool table away. Club Johnson has officially ceased to exist. Sure was great while it lasted. Add "room for a pool table" to my criteria for the house I will someday purchase.

Getting my household goods delivered tomorrow, 'twill be nice to have my own pillows and blankets and all my kitchen stuff. Best of all - I'll have my weight set and bicycle out here, be good to get off my ass and back into a workout routine. Of course, I have to unpack 51 boxes to get to it all, but what the hey, I'll just put on some music, pop a few beers, and call it a cheap weekend's entertainment. Certainly cheaper and easier on my body than playing pool until 5am.

Thanks to Rob for helping me confirm something I always suspected about myself - I'm bit of a hedonist. Check it out...

I don't really think I'm a diehard hedonist, if for no other reason than that I could never put my daughter second to anything, least of all pursuit of my own pleasure. I'm also pretty aggressive about saving money for retirement and other long-term financial goals, which doesn't exactly align with a "live for the day" philosophy. On the other hand, I don't expect to live much past age 65, which although it doesn't stop me from planning for a future beyond that age, still causes me to make more than a few decisions with immediate gratification in mind. Hmmmm...Middle-Of-The-Road Hedonist, perhaps?

Anyway, try it out yourself. The questions are definitely not fluff, so be careful to think deliberately before you answer each one.

I'm outta here, it's weekend time for Big Daddy. Y'all have a safe one yerselves. One more week 'til my vacation, way cool.

Rack Em,
Stephen Marconi

April 20, 2005
Please disregard the drunken blathering I posted here last night, I've deleted it.

All Is Well,
Farmer Boy

April 18, 2005
What a week it's been getting moved out of my Moscow apartment! I spent Tuesday evening and all of Wednesday staging everything for the packers. They came on Thursday to pack everything and take it away for shipment to Chelyabinsk, and Vika and I have spent just about all our time since then cleaning up the dribs and drabs inevitably left over after any move. We also threw away and/or donated a dumpster full of stuff, not to mention all the crap we're stashing at Mom's apartment. Thank goodness she lives next door, as we made upwards of 25 treks back and forth getting everything over to her place. To say I'm tired would be a gross understatement.

So this is it, I'm on my way to Chelyabinsk today to begin my permanent assignment. No more back-and-forth, plus I start getting paid my location uplifts. On the negative side, no more getting to see my family ever other weekend, since they're not coming out until mid-July. Oh well, I just have to get through the month and a half after Vika and I return from our Monterey trip. And to be honest, it may be a good thing that I won't have any "distractions" out there, since May and June are the busiest months for the industrial-scale construction business.

Couple other things to mention...Vika and I snuck out on Thursday and had dinner at Uncle Kolya's, and I got my veal brains fix, as well as all my other favs from that place. Friday was cool as well, I attended an invitation-only party at the Albion Pub, in celebration of its 2-years in business. My friend Chris is an owner/operator, so it was great to see him getting some well-deserved kudoes. He's definitely got a winner there, the Albion is where all my drinking buddies hang out. I'm gonna miss em all, but hopefully we'll cross paths often enough.

That's all I've got, sorry - just too tired to be creative. I'll have plenty of time on my hands in the evenings out there, so I should be able to post a bit more again. I also owe some more recent baby pics to the site, I'll try to get them up as well. Y'all stay safe and sane, and take care of yourselves.

Donkey Lips and Rice With Puss Custard and Scab Salad!
JJ

PS: It's an inside joke.

April 9, 2005
In the office on a Saturday, but no complaints since I took yesterday off to get my toofus fixed. The lady did a bang-up job, I had a bit less than half the tooth left, and she put a filling in there that looks just like a real tooth. On the negative side, she had to dig out a bit more root that was left way the hell down in the canal. That was some painful shit, lemme tell ya, and there are now a couple of indentations in the chair that correspond to the size/shape of Stephen's desperately clutching fingers. But I'm all better, chawin and gnawin back to normal.

Aaaaaand...in the "Stephen gambles with his testicles cuz if his wife reads this he gonna lose one" department, got an interesting chain email from a friend this morning...

DO NOT DELETE THIS EMAIL - YOU COULD LOSE A FORTUNE!

Anaesthetize your wife, put her in a large carton, (don't forget some ventilation holes), and send it to the person who is at the top of your list. Soon, your name will be at the top of the list, and you will receive 823,542 women through the mail.

Statistically, among those women, will be at least:

0.5 Miss Worlds
2.5 Models
463 Wild nymphos
3,234 Good-looking nymphos
20,198 Who enjoy multiple orgasms
40,198 Bi-sexual women

In total, that is 64,294 women who are simply hornier, less inhibited, and altogether tastier than the grumpy old hag you mailed off. And, best of all, your original package is guaranteed not to be one of those that come back to you.

DO NOT BREAK THIS CHAIN LETTER.

One fellow for example who sent the letter to only 5 instead of 9 of his friends got his original broad back, still wearing the old dressing gown he sent her off in, with the same old migraine attack, and the same old accusatorial expression on her face. On the same day, the international supermodel he'd been living with since he sent his old bag away moved out to live with his best friend (to whom he had not sent the chain letter).

While I've been getting this letter ready to send, the guy that is in 6th place above me has already received 837 women and is lying in the hospital suffering from exhaustion. Outside his ward are 452 more packages.

YOU MUST BELIEVE THIS E-MAIL!

Yeah, but are any of em willing to live in Chelyabinsk?

Hope I Get One Of The Bisexual Chicks!
Stephen "Ron Jeremy Jr." Jo-honson

April 6, 2005
I swear, my life really is one constant adventure. True, I get bogged down fairly often in less exciting escapades like cleaning up baby puke, blood-letting arguments with my wife, cussing out Moscow drivers when they almost mow me down on the sidewalk, and dodging 1.2-ton piles of snow cascading off the tops of city roofs during the spring melts. But on Monday, I got to enjoy a quest of an entirely different nature, something I've never personally experienced before, something the idea of which has stricken phantom fear into my heart on more than one winter occasion...(cue Twilight Zone theme song)...the dreaded flight diversion!!!

I'm trying to squeeze a bit more mileage out of that than it's really worth. Seriously, we took off from Moscow as normal and were about 20 minutes out of Chelyabinsk when the pilot announced that due to a heavy snowstorm and 300 meters of visibility in Chelyabinsk, we were diverting to Magnitogorsk, a medium-sized industrial city in southern Russia at the foot of the Ural Mountains. We landed there around 8:30pm, no problem, then milled about in the terminal while the flight crew got a final weather decision from the regional Air Traffic Control authorities. That decision came around 10:00pm, and it was "flight cancelled until 7:00am tomorrow."

So we got lucky and ended up getting rooms at a local ski resort. Gee, what a hardship. Yes, I am being sarcastic. They fed us quite handsomely ("they" being a couple of incredibly beautiful and well-built Russian gals), poured a bit of vodka down our throats, then put us to bed in clean, well-appointed private rooms. The next morning, they fed us breakfast (same "they" as the dinner crew, heh heh...), then we hired a driver to take us all the way to Chelyabinsk, a 5-¹/2 hour drive. I got to my apartment around 1:00pm, and my boss said "don't bother" when I called to see if he wanted me to continue out to the site, so I went and...

...HAD A ROOT CANAL DONE!!! (Marathon Man, anyone?). I nit you shot, I've had a broken tooth since early January that got to hurting me badly enough that I finally got off my ass and went to the dentist yesterday. Never really had (took) the time before, but the pain had become unbearable, so off I went. I'm peachy today, except for this big-ass hole where half my tooth used to be. I'm sure I could come up with some pithily-amusing anecdote about how difficult it is to keep from trying to poke my tongue in there or how the tooth edge is rubbing a blister, but that kinda shit just shouldn't be inspiring. So I won't.

As a semi-relevant aside, Russian dentistry does not deserve the bad reputation it has. I got great care from a rather compassionate doctor, at least in the sense that she didn't laugh at me for cringing and whimpering when she hit me with the novocaine. Or for doing the same when she was digging out the nerve.

Anyway, I'm back at work, busting ass and taking names and loving life. I'll be out here until next Tuesday, then it's back to clear the hell outta' Moscow for good. At least until the end of this project, that is.

Oh Shit - Where'd That Mountain Come From?!
Pilot, Aeroflot Flight 793, Monday

April 1, 2005
Even though it's not until tomorrow, I gotta do this a day early cuz I'm flying back to Moscow in a bit and don't have a computer there anymore...

Yep, happy birthday to a person who is truly a lady in every possible sense of the word, and one of the most gentle, kind, understanding, and attentive people I've ever known in my life. She's also one of the most beautiful women I've ever known. I remember the very first time I ever met her...

Jason and I had flown up to Louisiana from Florida for the summer school break. Daddy told us about this "really gorgeous, tall blonde" he was dating and that she was coming over for dinner. Now Jason and I were used to seeing scads of hotties around our pops all the time, so our reaction was pretty much on the "yawn-yeah-whatever" side. But then the door opened. And in walks a blonde. Tall. Hair damn near to her waist. Stunningly beautiful with an hourglass figure. A very loud "thump" as two pre-teen jaws drop to the floor. Then this incredibly gorgeous specimen of feminine perfection smiles the most kissable-looking lips on the planet (JJ you lucky bastard!) and says, "Hi, you two are definitely Jim's boys, you're just as good-looking as he is. I may have to give you both a big, fat kiss!" Man, I spent the rest of that evening just freakin dying for that to come true!

And it's gotten only better from there. Susan is where I got my taste in furniture and interior decorating - straight lines, no fluffy crap, and a fair balance of wood (and no, giving a shit about stuff like that doesn't make me a fag). She made sure I got started in college instead of pissing away my life working for minimum wage. She has stuck by my dad through thick and some pretty thin dadgum thin, and loved him unquestionably the entire time (Did I mention JJ you lucky bastard! already?). Most importantly to me, she's been a person I could talk to at quite a few times I needed that very badly, and she has always listened without judgement.

So Suzie-Q, you sweet, gorgeous, incredible lady, know that I consider you every bit as much a "real" mom as possible, and I love you very much and hope you have a wonderful birthday.

Sapped Up Again, Dangit!
Your Son

Pssst...make JJ take you to Ruffino's!