the end of Fall & product placement ...

"the things that i used to do... I aint never gonna do them no more..." - G. Love & Special Sauce, "The Things That I Used To Do"

"no i'll never do that again. well, not until the next time..." - The Smiths

i actually wrote this on december 9th, but for some reason the thingy at the top wants to say december 2nd...

i wrote an article about christmas in slovakia for my friend jenie's e-magazine. you can read it here: http://foodlorelibrary.com/feature/ritual/bathtub-carp-and-walnut-tossing-christmas-dinner-adventures-slovakia

her magazine is all about FOOD, so pass along comments to her if you like it :) the magazine isn't online yet, i don't believe.


a few things have happened. well, they're seismic only in relation to ME, but i would imagine those reading this to find it boring.

i guess i'm still in the same position regarding work and a place to live as the last time i wrote. really not much change there. i just keep trying, and eventually something will work out...

i was thinking the other day about my life in slovakia. it seems like so long ago. but a lot has happened to me in the 2 years since i've been back.

on the lighter side, and not getting all maudlin about my life in europe and missing my friends, i was thinking about the plethora of weird product names i came across in my time there. that's a weird thing to be thinking about.

after i first moved there in 1995, i lived in a teacher dorm and became friends with the guys a few floors below me. they also had a washing machine in their apartment, while i had none, so that was a plus. one day, i loaded the washer with my clothes and attempted to put my powdery detergent in. my detergent was called "Tix." ok, no comment. i spilled a handful of detergent onto my pal's bag of detergent, and sheepishly went to tell him after i got the load started. "hey," i said, "i'm sorry, but i got some of my 'Tix' in your 'Colon.'"

there are a lot of soap products in the country called "Colon." for those of us english speakers, that's odd...

there's a great czech maker of jeanswear that's available in central europe called "Kenvelo." really good stuff, and pretty cheap. they have many stores, and they make all kinds of shirts and other stuff, too. they advertise on MTV europe and are fairly popular. but they're mostly known for their blue jeans.

when i was there, i had an idea for an ad (to the tune of 'hello goodbye' by the beatles)
"you wear levis, and not kenvelo..."
"-velo -velo"
"i don't know why you wear levis, not kenvelo..."

funny and ludicrous and not very imaginative, but for some reason this stuck in my head for many, many years. i suppose the lawyers for levis would have cracked down on me, anyway...

when i was in the hospital in prague, czech republic in 1994, my mother bought me a pair of jeans on the street in prague. i did tell her that you never buy stuff on the street in foreign coutries if you don't want to get ripped off. but she said the jeans were pretty cheap... anyway, the jeans were called "Lehi." other LDS can see the humor in that. suffice to say, the button snapped off when i tried them on...

it's getting colder here, but still no snow. and that's all right :) winter isn't officially for a few more weeks.

i sleep on an air matress at my friends' place. i can deal with that. i had a king-sized matress, really huge. a few weeks ago, i would wake up at 3AM with my butt touching the ground and literally swimming in plastic. the matress was pretty thick, so it must have sprung a ginormous leak. for 4 nights in a row this would happen: me swimming in the matress and fumbling for the light, taking 20 minutes just to get out of the bed, what with my disability, sunken into the plastic mould like some giant cut-out figure of a person. i would stumble down the stairs those 4 nights and sleep on the immobile couch.

when i got a little money, i bought my own air matress. AIR MATRESS?!? why didn't i get a cot or a hammock or even a SLEEPING BAG? there's nothing like waking up on a brisk fall morning with your posterior on the ground...

i recently had to do a neuro-psych evaluation at a shwanky clinic about 30 minutes from me. i had to do this evaluation for the division of vocational rehab. they were paying for everything, so what the heck?

the first part consisted of me having to pour my guts out to a dapper and well-meaning psychoanalyst. he basically wanted to know my recent biography, especially the medical stuff. he said, upon conclusion, that he didn't want to make a diagnosis for me at that time. i had hours on hours of testing yet to do. but he said that my memory problems (which are far better than they were when i had the operation), are associated with DEPRESSION. those of you who know me, have i ever seemed depressed? i know that people who are depressed don't KNOW they are. and while my instinct is to vehemently deny his initial response, it has sure got me wondering...

asking any of you who know me that question about being depressed is certainly unfair. i don't need any validation so that i feel more sound. a big part of me found the whole thing to be humorous, and the other half was panicking. it's like when you pick up that big psychological diagnostic book, the DSM-IV. almost everyone who's picked that up thinks they have just about every psychological abnormality that ever existed. i think it's pretty normal to succumb to that. so until i receive the final results from the doctor, i can't really worry about that, and i don't...

if i don't have any communication with you during the christmas season, i wish you good days!