Yesterday we waited for a brief break in the snowstorm and took grandma back to her home. She and grandpa seemed very happy to be reunited, even though everyone else thinks this is a pretty bad idea. The roads were treacherous and the weather was very cold, and only the main streets in Bucharest get plowed as nearly as I can tell. Brr.
Tania has really outdone herself in the kitchen the past couple of days. She made us delicious chiftelute (meatballs) for dinner, which I will secretly tell the entire world are better even than Ioana's meatballs. Then my plan to make cookies got put on hold because Tania made papanosh -- home-made donuts! These are basically like sassy donuts except that they have some sweet cheese in the batter, which makes them super-moist. So delicious! I think I honestly ate like six of them over the course of the day yesterday, and then got a big bellyache, but it was so worth it.
And then it was an evening of World of Warcraft (super fun!) and football. Watching the game turned into an enormous project. I could only find one American sports bar in Bucharest, but when we called them they said they only show the European league American football games. European league? Where do you get off calling yourself an American sports bar? Because, quick geography lesson, America is not in Europe. There was actually sort of a big deal about this a couple hundred years ago. Maybe you should read up on it.
Gagi and I spent the evening scouring the Internets trying to find some way to get the game. Eventually, after about two hours of trying by each of us, we found a website streaming the Swedish broadcast of the game. Gagi helped me hook up the laptop to the TV and it was game on! I missed the first 5 minutes or so, but got to see the rest. The streaming feed worked nearly flawlessly (a couple of hitches in the stream, but nothing terrible), and had the added bonus of being totally free. Woohoo!
Unfortunately my Bears did not put forth equal effort. It was actually a great game, at least in the second half. After falling way behind, the Bears ended up putting in their third-string QB, a guy who has barely played professional football at all, who led them on a Cinderella-story comeback that came within yards of pulling out the game. Alas, an interception in the final minute of the game on their own 12 as they were driving to score spelled the end of the Bears' Super Bowl hopes. I was so bummed. So now I have to root for the freaking AFC in the big game. Yuck. But thanks to Gagi and Io for helping me figure out a way to see the game, and then sitting and watching it with me even though both of them had very little understanding of the rules.
Gagi got so hooked that I woke up this morning to find him reviewing Youtube videos of football. He's printed out all the rules in Romanian and bound them into a booklet, and has spent the morning looking at websites explaining the different defensive lineups and offensive plays. The guy probably knows more about football than I do at this point. He also discovered that Romania has its own five-team American football league, believe it or not. Bucharest has two teams, which is two more than my home-town of Los Angeles -- which, geography lesson #2, is actually in America -- has. WTF.
Today begins a new week, blanketed in snow. Io is heading off to the hospital for some pregnancy stuff and then work (pretty convenient to have both of those things in the same place!), and I have no plans until I go pick her up at the end of her shift tonight, other than my continuing scientific investigation of the effects of not showering.
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