What made you smile today?

Nebber mind the editing, I just wanted to get the sequence of posts right ;-)

I'm here - the two of us managed to take two suitcases, three backpacks and four bags - and yet I still managed to forget both my discman and my MP3player! Idjut

The city's really beautiful, of course - it's such luxury to have breakfast in the sun with, metaphorically speaking, one eye on Castle Hill and the other on St Stephens Basilique. (OK, you cant actually get a view of both from any one terrace, but you know what I mean ... you turn your head, something really pretty. It's a real city, too, with that haze of city sound - I like that.)

I went to work (future work) on Thursday, met most of the people - most of 'em seem perfectly nice and easy-going. I really like the boss, there's just a natural self-evidence, openness and confidence about the whole thing - thats pretty cool, reassuring. No sign of corporate stress or fakity yet.

I'm with my father, which is cool in terms of distractment too - keeps me from fretting or feeling all too disanchored. Though its also weird cause now we're doing a bit of the tourist stuff (its his first time here), and theres really almost no talk of you know - that/how I'm going to actually settle here, that I've just migrated - its more like we're on a holiday together. (He's not the most other-focused person in the world). (OK, in fact he's positively driving me crazy by now. But it's still also cool to have him around - always an interesting conversation. OK, so sometimes the interesting conversations drive me to despair - small talk hello! Can we please have some small talk now, please please please ...? No? Ok... ;-))

Anyway, he's leaving tomorrow and then I have another day and a half on my own here before starting work. And even tho current company is a bit much, of course I'm a bit worried about being left alone altogeher - I like being by myself, but tend to veer towards self-isolation, which is not such a good thing. But lessee.

Anyway - thats the status report so far! ;-)

That all sounds promising! (So, SO identify with the dad part -- maybe that explains the simpatico factor, we have dads who are spiritual twins...)

I've never been to Budapest, E.G. has wanted to take me there for a long time, he was there maybe 15 years ago and totally fell in love with the place.

Oh, I got another WMYST moment too, before I forget. Just a little one. In Freedom Square, by the (ugly) Soviet 1945 monument and (heavily barricaded) American embassy, there's a playground and a clever entrepreneur built a cafe with sunbasking terrace in a circle around the discrete entry/exit to the parking garage underneath. Its always a holiday/summer sound of playing kids, lazying couples, and working folks stopping for a coffee there - a pleasant oasis. And, one of these past days, when we again walked up there, there was this guy, this tracksuited Hungarian kind of a ruffneck guy, with this little dog. And the little dog, he played soccer! No kidding. Being thrown the ball, he again and again took it with his paw and then with his nose nuzzled it one way, then another, nudging it forward in smooth, quick movements, dribbling it across the field like a canine Pele. Whatsmore, when coming upon the guy, the little dog would place his paw on the ball, possessively, then with a neat kick pass it through the guys' legs, run around and go on with it. Owww! He played that guy! For serious.

So you're in Budapest now, eh nimh? I'm smiling because I always learn something from your posts.





Imre Nagy

Swimpy,
The Dumb American

Smiling at the 'sighting' of Swimpy. Just seeing your screen name makes me warm with affection!!
Great pics. I hope you enjoy Budapest Nihm

Hi, Sweet Lou.

I looked out my window (at my Dad's) into his not-very-managed new garden cos he's not the gardener... and my mum was sat in the middle of it.... digging a trench.... ummm ok

Actually she's made it into a bonfire - but it was pretty funny!!

And a HI to you sweet Sue


(I like your sig line Bekeboo)

This is just the second time I enter into this here cafe, and the girl behind the bar hands me the internet ticket, and when I stand up again and turn towards the bar, asks: a tea? Earl Grey? With milk?

I must have died and gone to heaven.

Osso Buco
Osso Buco, who is house sitting for Dys and Diane while they are in Europe, came for lunch at my house today. I was heating butter in a pan to make grilled cheese sandwiches for us when she arrived. I let her in and we went out in the back yard. I forgot about the butter heating in the pan until the smoke alarm went off. It took two hours to get all the smoke out of the house. Osso Buco has asthma so we spent most of the visit, including lunch, out doors to escape the smoke.

Poor woman, next time she must bring a gas mask.

BBB

as the lawyer, judge, advocate or the prisoner? :wink:

nimh, You got her phone number, didn't you?

what made me smile...my group got 13/15 for a project, MUCH better than our last result of 10.5/15... *stupid flanders* <homer simpson voice>

This delightful short story, or rather, recollection ... of an old Hungarian emigre, former envoy to Sweden and Norway, who with his old writer friends, fourty years on, decides to stage one last, traditional, Hungarian ritual pigsticking event - even if East Anglian reality has to be tweaked a bit to make it possible.

Very nicely written ... very cute.

Julian Schöpflin: The Great Literary Pigsticking Event

Lawyer, as it happens.

"Griffin" came into my shop today, except that, of course, that is not his real name.
"Hi, John. remember me. I'm ______ and I worked for you in 1990."
Yall (alas too few of you and only for a brief period) met Griffin when I introduced him as a character in a communal creative writing site that we had on A2K a year or so ago. The idea was that someone would start a story, introduce a bit of a plot and a character and the next participant would build on it. It was quite amusing and the story line that I started (under the title A Pompous Bunch of Asses) involved filling up a cross-country bus with characters. It bombed but I was really proud of my character, Griffin. Based in part on the now 35 year old standing at my counter for the first time since 1991 when he graduated from UVA.
I wrote of Griffin that he was so gregarious. He could walk into a room of 100 strangers and within an hour or two he had met everybody in the place, everybody remembered him afterwards and everybody liked Griffin. ___ was and and is the same. He spent about 30 minutes talking to me, my employees, my customers and everybody liked ____.
The trick I think is the ability to listen.
Anyway, I left Griffin the fictional character sitting in the back of a Greyhound bus, hoping that someone cool and his age would get on and maybe they would get high together.
____ graduated from UVA, got his MFA from one of the U-Mass places, has a studio in NYC and does a lot of contract work for the New York Times. And he was a Fulbright Scholar studying Arabic calligraphy in Damascus, Syria for two years.
It made me smile that while Griffinn, the fictional character, is still on the ghost bus, 20 years old and peering down the aisle looking for a kindred spirit, the real person on which he is based has moved on and has had a remarkable life. -rjb-

hamburger will be 75 tomorrow.

Happy birthday Dad !!!

Well not exactly smile, it was more like a grimace

By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Thursday, May 5, 2005, at 7:17 AM PT

"But Iraq has—have got people there that are willing to kill, and they're hard-nosed killers. And we will work with the Iraqis to secure their future." —Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005

This morning I was hanging out in the critical care unit of the vet(erinary) hospital, getting some bit of paperwork taken care of, when a doc came in to check on a patient -- a little Dachsund that can't have weighed more than twelve pounds.

The little girl was treated last night for a spinal injury that had left her hindquarters paralyzed. There not being anything else to do, I sat on the floor while Dr. Murphy checked the dog out. Pretty soon a crowd gathered (pretty slow day). The dog was pretty excited by the attention -- especially since she'd just had her bladder rather painfully expressed (upper motor neuron bladder signs are an absolute bitch). She panted at the people, tried to pull herself up on her front legs, but the back ones just didn't work.

And then her tail started to wag. She was wagging her tail. And she pulled her right leg into her body ever so slightly.

It's easy to forget why I'm studying this garbage sometimes, trudging from lecture to lecture and exam to exam, racking up enormous debt, but there it was. There's no guarantee that Tara's going to walk again, but the tail wag and the leg pull were very good signs.

Good stuff.







Oh, sozobe -- I figure you'll drop by this thread at some point. I ran across Scanner Dan the other day. Do you know if he ever manages to make it to crime scenes on the bus, or is he just forever chasing them? (He must make it sometimes, I think...)

You ran into Scanner Dan!

He makes it sometimes. Most of the time, even. Every one that I've seen, he's been there. (A total of three or something, but still.)

Why am I speaking in present tense? Been a good 8 years since I've seen him.

I just told E.G. and he said "he's still alive?" Something else to smile about (even if he freaked me out as a freshman -- a specialty of his, freaking out frosh girls.)