My Dog Has No Nose

The last couple of days have been deadly hot. It was nearly a hundred yesterday, with enough humidity that today we're getting crashing thunderstorms. It's times like this that Romania's otherwise-charming superstitious nature becomes less an endearing cultural quirk and more a motive to murder people. Romanians believe that moving air of any kind (what they call "curent") will make you sick. So that means no air conditioning and no fans. If I even bring out a table fan in the living room, Gagi retreats to the bedroom. When I tried to put a fan on Gabe, Tania freaked out and said it could paralyze him. What?!

Gabriel's midnight ride.

(Sarah Palin will tell you all about it)

So tensions were high here for a couple of days, but with today's thunderstorms things have cooled down some, both literally and figuratively.

Otherwise, things in the bloc are moving along like they usually do, but more and more things keep happening for the last time. We had our final ESL class as co-professors. Our students did very well on their final exam, and brought me some lovely parting gifts. I made them metric chip cookies.

U-S-A! U-S-A!

We went out on an exciting adventure the other day to pick up some last few souvenirs and get Gabe out of the stifling heat of the bloc and into the sweltering stench of the outdoors. One thing about Bucharest you won't hear about in tourism books: when it gets really hot and muggy, the city stinks. The stray dogs stink, their poop stinks, the city's makeshift open garbage pits stink. But today's rain should get rid of a lot of that gross crap and deposit it safely in our water table.

Gabriel had a big day today: his first unassisted rollover, from belly to back. Good job Gabe! Next stop: the presidency. My lawyer friends and everyone who watches Fox News are now going, "Um, point of procedure, foreign-born citizens aren't constitutionally eligible to be president." That would be a good point, lawyers and Fox News viewers, except that I was talking about PRESIDENT OF THE EARTH. Anyway, good job Gabriel! (The photo at left is unrelated, lest you think he was cheating. The roll was performed on an empty bed with full scientific controls.)

And now we come to a bold new frontier for this blog, even bolder than predicting the unification of all world governments under my son's steely boot-heel: I am going to try to post a couple of movies of Gabriel. Save them to your hard drive, they will be really valuable someday.

First up, Smile For Dad, shot by me in the Real Hipermart:

I think you can really see my film degree showing there. Notice the rank amateurishness of this next video, shot by Ioana during bathtime:

Did you notice how the focus drifted in and out? Christ. What can you do? Let's leave the movie-making to the experts, honey. Anyway, I wasn't sure whether this sort of thing is supposed to be submitted for an Oscar or an Emmy, so I just sent it in for both, and since I was going to the post office anyway I sent one to the Nobel Committee just for kicks. It's a lot cheaper to mail stuff to Sweden from here than the U.S.

Moment of Zen:

"SWEET JESUS I'M BEING DEVOURED BY A LION!"