Reinforcement

So last night I was on my way to Inge's place to help her make jam, these awesome Danish spherical pancake thingies, and some Christmas decorations. While enroute I get a call from Erin Clair (our Australian visitor) and Pedro, who I left in the apartment to their own devices. Apparently not a good idea.

They were attempting to plug in Erin Maree's (roommate) computer into the wall socket through an adaptor, it sparked, they laughed, they tried again, and then the power in the whole apartment went out.

Ooops.

Usually, something like this could be fixed with a simple flipping of the circuit breaker. Oh no, not here! It seems sometimes as though Slovak craftsmen purposefully do shotty work so that one problem because exacerbated by ever increasing elements! For example, the electricity isn't isolated into areas. Are these people crazy?!?!?!?! Erin and Pedro are lucky they didn't DIE or catch on FIRE!

Anyway, they call me to alert me of the predicament (at this point it was 7:15pm) and then proceed to call our landlord. What does the landlord say? ..."Oh, nothing can be done until tomorrow".

Excuse me?

(be forewarned, this may sound a bit harsh, but was written in the heat of the moment. i am normally extremely diplomatic, and when stressed, keep it to myself)

You mean, not only do we have to put our apartment into further risk of going up in flames by lighting several candles, but all of the food in our fridge and freezer will most likely go bad because you can't be bothered to call one of the maintenance people to come look at it? I am pretty sure our main contractor lives down the street from us! It would take him 2 minutes to come over, fiddle around, fix the SHOWER that we have been asking them to fix for 2 MONTHS (it floods the bathroom constantly) and then take his FREAKING MIRRORS out of our KITCHEN where he had them delivered and back to his HOUSE where they BELONG. I am particularly annoyed because I recently bought amazing cheeses and salamis from northern Italy. I will be rather perturbed if my enjoying them is thwarted because of someone's incompetence. On top of that, there are no windows in our shower room. DARK. The one thing that keeps us from becoming dangerous to ourselves and others is that we have a gas stove. The thing is that this would never happen in the US. Usually contractors are smart enough to isolate electrical feeds, and then maintenance in apartment complexes is 24 hours for emergencies. To me this qualifies as an emergency. This just reinforces that I need to live in a place where people care about the quality of their work because their very job depends on it.

So, now our wall socket looks something like this:



In addition, Erin Maree's universal adaptor is now melted. Seriously. The metal prong is deformed. This was serious business.

All I know is that the power better be back on by the time I get home.

No one is invincible

As seen on ShoeboxBlog:

"Man vs. Wild host Bear Grylls seriously injured his shoulder on an Antarctic expedition over the weekend. A spokesperson for the Discovery Channel said that it’s miraculous that Bear Grylls wasn’t killed years ago."

I really do like their humor. Matt and I used to watch "Man vs. Wild" all the time. We both think Bear is ridiculously hott. That's two t's on purpose. You should see him in action. I am especially fond of his show in the Sahara. We were always fascinated about the fact that he didn't get frostbite, die of heat exhaustion, impale himself on something, or wasn't fatally attacked by the native fauna.

HEAL WELL BEAR!

Finish Line...

I've crossed it.

If you go to THIS WEBSITE you will see the electronic version of my labor. It isn't perfect, but such is life when you only have so much control.

Finally, a sense of accomplishment.



I had another accomplishment recently as well. I was asked to do all of the invoicing for 2009 (yeah, I know) but the database had been created more than 5 years ago on another computer system in Slovak, and therefore could not be opened on my computer because it caused Access to stall and eventually die. Therefore, I had to do it on my boss's computer....which happens to be set in the Slovak language. She also asked me to figure out how to change the currency field to have EUR instead of SKK. This may seem simple, but we're talking about a Slovak (and outdated) version of Access that was created as a "Switchboard". Element OVERLOAD.

However.


I FIGURED IT OUT! IN SLOVAK! And finished ALL of the invoices for 123 Members. I really do come from the techonological generation. Hence: I rule. :) (celebratory dance inserted here)

Oh look!

I was doing some research on the Ohio Wine Producers Association and Markko Vineyard (the two organisations that I will be doing some work for after getting back State-side) and found this great website that does reviews of wineries all over the US and Ontario! If you have a passion for wine, you and the creators of the website certainly have that in common. They've reviewed several wineries that I have been to in Ohio and New York, so its interesting to see how their opinions compare to mine! Just makes me that much more excited to get back home and dive into it.

Being French = Love of Drama

Yesterday we continued our tradition of "French Class" by meeting at Anna's flat, eating delicious salad, chevre stuffed roasted tomatoes, various stinky cheeses (YUM) and watching a French movie (with English subtitles...we're not that advanced yet)

The selection of the week?

Arsène Lupin!



This is Robin Hood, James Bond and the Count of Monte Cristo all in one! Genius! It is based on a character novel, and I recommend it to everyone who loves a little action in their life. (Bonus: recognizable women! Kristen Scott Thomas speaks French! Who knew?!?!)


Also, I will be making "stuffed tomatoes" (En Francais: les tomates farcies, v Slovák: plnená paradajková...I think) upon my return to the US. Get ready.