the coriolis effect

the employer, through the beginning of november. I love working in dupont, its even better than polish windows. too bad I'm inside all day:/

I could have vomited in Barnes and Nobles.
When I was working at burn-me-books, I thought YA fiction was coming to an end because the 5 (five) separate mk and ashley olson series were displacing the much loved but little selling newbery medal books of old. But now, nestled alongside Jerry Spinelli and Wilson Rawls was this:
Gossip Girl.
"Sex and the City for the younger set."
It's billed thusly on the first page: "Ever wonder what the life of the chosen ones is really like?...We have unlimited access to money and booze and whatever else we want, and our parents are rarely home, so we have tons of privacy. We're smart, we've inherited classic good looks, we wear fantastic clothes, and we know how to party. Our s*** still stinks, but you can't smell it because the bathroom is sprayed hourly by the maid with a refreshing scent made exclusively for us by French perfumers....Even with a hangover, Fifth Avenue always looks so beautiful in the morning with the sunlight glimmering on the heads of the sexy St. Judes School boys."
I don't care how much of it is true, I just miss the days when Nancy Drew was the paragon of teen perfection. This??? There wasn't a hint of parody in it. Blech. (If only my calling was in YA fiction).

I miss a lot of things I have no business missing. Thank goodness for ice cream trucks! and

blue skies.

something for happiness. that, and a read through buenos aires housing lists.

Just saw Funny Ha-Ha. It was excruciatingly painful, at this juncture. Don't know if other people identified as much as us though; the only thing I overheard someone say was, "She called him a dork but she has a hole in her shirt?"
Also, I nearly cried in the local public library, fond though I was of it as a kid. Then I checked out "A History of the Freemasons" basically because it was the only largish book with a leather cover.

Navigating out of JFK airport, through Manhattan to the turnpike was a terrifying experience. Poland doesn't have highways, really, and I'd forgotten why I definitely don't like driving cars, and don't particularly relish being in them either.

Catching Maurice William's "Stay" on the radio the next day recaptured a vague glimmer of affection for american culture, but only briefly.

I miss Polish windows. Truly. They are bidirectional and amazing. Also, flowers in every yard, against the stuccoish houses. Simple straight roads with pretty scenery, living out of a suitcase, black current juice, Radio Z, and zubrowka with apple juice.

Clara Barton rest stop on the Turnpike: multiculturalism, a return to, was a bit jarring but also an answer to what sometimes hovers under the seeming straightforwardness of life in Lublin/Podkarpackie regions.
Some people don't like Jews, my host sister told me, but they've never done anything to me- I don't know any.

If psychiatrists say its ok for the children, then maybe homosexuals can have families, one student conceded. But until then....its unnatural, interjected another.

Are you hindu? a woman ran into hiking asked me (she was also trying to set me up with her teacher colleague...long story.). No, irish? I answered. according to dahm she then said- thats surprising, irish girls aren't pretty. (!).

Would the Shire be the same though, if gnomes and dwarves and men lived there?

(As for the teachers- the second night in the shelters, a guy sat down w. me and dahm, told dahm first that I was pretty, and only second asked if I was his girlfriend. when told no, he asked me, via dahm, for a beer the following night. no sooner had we gotten to the next shelter the next day, however, when we learned that both lights and hot water cut out at 10. having no particular inclination for a beer with a guy with whom I didn't have one of 9ish languages in common with, I just went to bed. in the dark, dahm belatedly informed me that he'd told the guy in the bathroom that I'd meet him in the kitchen. uh, no.
the next day Piotr ran into the guy in the bathroom, and learned that mr. history teacher had actually gone down to the kitchen, in the dark, and waited for me. she's afraid of the dark? piotr offered as consolation.
not an indictment of polish men in general, but this guy was in co-charge of a bevy of high schoolers on a field trip. just a tad sketch...)

photos are up, in their entirety. also, krakow is wonderful. except for all the tourists.

I was never a mountain goat in a previous life.
5 days in the Tatras, 3 days of real hiking, back in Krakow with Dahm although Piotr and Marta are keeping on keeping on up in the mountains. We reached 9 peaks over 2000 meters, and a couple others just shy. The weather was stunning, the views lovely- when I dared look up:)
I learned I like ascents, and am decently fast, if only in an attempt to outrun any encroaching sense of vertigo. Descents however- its patently unfair that all the time estimations give less time for stumbling downwards, and the point system doesn't award anything for each 100 meter descent, like they do for ascents. I sort of hate them.
Our last peak was Giewont, the most popular and famous peak in Poland. Not terribly high, it attracts all sorts of daytrippers (hordes of them were heading for it this morning). Dahm and I were within striking distance this morning, but the last bit up and down features chains and nearly vertical rock slippery from years of scrambling feet. No idea how some of the people we saw made it to the huge metal cross bolted on top. A bit ironic that the "easiest" peak has been made treacherous by the sheer number of people beating any sense of traction out of the rock. But hey, the ascent from the front face of Giewont, one shelter poster warned, is the death of most people who try to climb it.
But yes, Tatry- great company, a challenge, something wonderful about staring at a towering mountain at 9 am, and finding ourselves at the top by noon....