Tomorrow Gabriel will be one month old. And what a month it's been. I think I've slept about six hours during that month, for one thing.
Life is continuing to adapt to the rule of the Mad King, though. We've got our baby-plus-ESL routine pretty well down at this point, with lots of "Baby needs burping! Tag me out!" action. If anything, I think he adds an extra attraction for some of our students. We should start charging more.
We took Baron Bigeyes von Chickenlegs out on an exciting adventure yesterday, out to see Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa Negru in their natural habitat, their house in Rahova. I still love that house. It's barely a house at all, really, just two rooms and an entry area, plus a set of large outbuildings. Half the purpose of the buildings is just to enclose the family plot, which is the main point of the place. The grapevines are bare at this point, and because Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa are each about five feet tall, it's strung with deadly wires at neck-level. The house and the outbuildings are filled with all sorts of old junk -- three rotary telephones, a vacuum-tube radio, a 1970's rack stereo system, etc. -- that are pretty fun to look through. Everyone got some major family time and Gabriel time in:
We picked some herbs in Great-Grandma Negru's garden
Ioana covering AC/DC's Highway to Hell with Gabriel covering the role of guitar
Tania told me she planted the tree we're standing next to as a seed, ten years ago. She grew it in a pot in her condo in the bloc, and when it was too big moved it out and replanted it at the Negru place. Now it's got to be close to 20 feet high.
Note deadly neck wires.
All in all, a very successful visit that was enjoyed by everyone, including Gabriel. We spent many hours out in the yard chatting with each other and enjoying the sunshine. We got some herbs and eight farm-fresh eggs from their chickens, and dropped off empty plastic bottles and other supplies they needed. Great-grandma and great-grandpa were very happy to see us. We're going to try and go more often, even though moving Gabriel is a logistical challenge on par with launching the space shuttle.
Yesterday was Palm Sunday on the Romanian Orthodox calendar, same as the western Christian one. Instead of palms, though, Romanians carry willow branches. Apparently they still call it Palm Sunday, though. Don't ask me. The churches were packed. I've written before that Romania is a deeply religious country -- much more so than most places in the U.S., and Bucharest is way more religious than American big cities. The local church in Titan (Io's neighborhood) is always packed full for services, with a large overflow crowd standing in the churchyard listening to stereo speakers mounted on the church. I don't mean just for the big weekend services, I mean every day. You go by there at 6pm on a Wednesday and it will be SRO in the church and crowds outside, even if it's minus 100 meters Celsius out. For Palm Sunday, the church was packed, the front and rear yards were packed, and there were lines of people wrapped around the property fence waiting to get in. Craziness. I should have taken a picture, but we were driving by and I didn't get the camera on in time. So: kitties for everyone!
Today is the first day that coming to Romania really hurts. While I've been here, the Bears reached the NFC Championship and the Super Bowl was played, but I managed to see both of them on live TV. Two movies I was looking forward to came out (Battle of Los Angeles and Atlas Shrugged Part I), which I couldn't see, but both of them were apparently disastrously awful so in those cases coming to Romania saved me $30. Or negative $1,170 when you figure in the airfare.
Yesterday (which is today in the metric system) was the premiere of A Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of my second-favorite novel of all time, after Atlas Shrugged Part II: Shrug Harder. Savvy readers of One Man's Search for Dracula may have recognized quotes from the book as three of the post titles, including today's, which puts author George Martin in the same room as Shakespeare and the Beatles.
I've been following the development of the show on the web, and it looks amazing. I'll pick it up on DVD when it comes out, and if I'm lucky someone in LA is DVRing it for me so I can catch up with it in July. But I sure wish I could be watching it now.
"Tolkein made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him."
-- George Martin
"Death is so terribly final."
-- Tyrion Lannister
Moment of Zen:
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