Jedno Pivo Prosim

i have hit a snag

~Today's Nameday-Emanuel~

Enough said. Prayers would be apprecaited.

Holding on by a Thread

~Today's Nameday-Leona~

I will assume most people think this blog is dead. At best it is a comatose corpse of a site that is hanging on by the ventilator that is its address and the various links that people still seem to have to it.

This is not a nod that I will ever revive this site fully again. I will post things that I have worked on from time to time on here. If you don't like Russian lit, go elsewhere. And sorry to disappoint most of you, there is nothing in the making on Dostoyevsky.

But for the time being, lest I haven't spoken to you, here is the brief synopsis of the last few months. (Consider yourselves spared, really.)

Mild winter. Did not go down in a plane accident. Did get hit by a car. Retail for the Christmas season. Got a niece. Adopted another little borther (who is, in fact, older than me.) Russian improves. Czech flounders. Learned a dead language in 10 weeks. Set a microwave on fire. Realized how much I hate talking on the phone. Tried to talk on the phone more. To more people. Miss Cali. Convinced people that I have no time for a relationship. Completely true. Financial fears. Drink most of my calories. Had more days hungover than not. Quit and started smoking again. Became a wiz at microfilm. Become a familiar face to all the bartenders in Hyde Park. Became acquainted with Ukranian liturgy. Not answered enough e-mail. Got sucked into things like facebook and myspace. Found old high school classmates. Overheard the most uncomfortably graffic and embarassing conversation in the women's bathroom.

That's about it.

I Should Have Ordered the Troika

~Today's Nameday-Květoslava~

I have a flight in about 4 hours. In the last 90 minutes we have been dumped with 4, wait make that 5 inches of new snow. It's beautiful. Washington, DC apparently is under weather advisory beginning at 9. What do you think my chances are of getting home tonight?

From the Mouth of Eco

~Today's Nameday-Mikuláš~

Read this:
"Naturally, the Catholicism and Protestantism of the two systems have nothing to do with the cultural and religious positions of their users. One may wonder whether, as time goes by, the use of one system rather than another leads to profound inner changes. Can you use DOS and be a Vande supporter? And more: Would Celine have written using Word, WordPerfect, or Wordstar? Would Descartes have programmed in Pascal?".

The Fighting Slavs

~Today's Nameday-Klement~

I'm packed and ready to go. Happy Thanksgiving folks! Heading down to Notre Dame to see the South Bend Zeps after class today. Indiana here I come

Harry Hounds, etc.

~Today's Nameday-Cecílie~

Sunday night, after a whirlwind weekend of meeting an unexpected out-of-town guest, I sat down to what I thought was going to be night of language study and paper writing. As I was downloading my Czech syllabus, I remembered that this week was the start of "New Language Teaching" classes in my pedagogy class.

To the uninformed, my "Techaing Slavic Language" class (a misnomer if I have ever heard one) involved teaching yourself what was suppose to be a non-Indo-Euopean language to be able to teach a beginner class of it at the end of the quater. The non-Indo-European part apparently was for the guillible (as people, excuse me linguists, are/have taught themselves German). I stupidly shouted out Hungarian when my turn came.

Anyway back to Sunday night. 11:30. Downloading Czech syllabus, I was reminded that I should find my syllabus for pedagogy- a class that for the most part involves very little preparation. And what did I find? My name staring at me to teach at 9:30 the next day. What Hungarian had I learned? Mmmm...I had listened to the pronunciation almost every morning while getting dressed.

Fastfoward 4 hours. No start on any paper. 2 chapters of "Colloquial Hungarian" and an introduction to pronunciation handout were prepared. (The two chapters, just in case someone had the gaul to ask something about the language.) Conclusion: I work well under stress. I have visited Hungary three times and never even learned how to say "Hello," but at the thought of making an ass of myself in front of professor and peers, I have a vocabulary of forty words and can conjugate the verb "to be." That's no easy task in Hungarian...