HB COLD

To further elaborate on the slush. The weather got much warmer these past few days, which is good for the fingers, toes, and ears, but very bad for the bicycling around. The nice layer of snow that was padding the ice is all gone and the texture of the ice dictates where the tires of the bike will go, not me. So when riding along, all of a sudden my front tire goes one way and the back goes the other, then both in the same - wrong direction - then eventually back to normal, until the next batch of ice comes and they come quite often.

So the trick is to go slowly, but forcefully and always keep your butt on the seat. Also, never ride in the middle of the lane, that's where the mess is, and at night, pray.

Now, after two days of warmth, most of the ice is melted and riding is fun again. This won't last long, so i should probably stop talking about it.

The warmth has coincided with the delivery of our stuff. Mostly intact, save the teapot which is utterly unrecognizable. I've been unpacking the past two days and have hardly made a dent. The bed is built and K and I are back to sleeping 4 feet off the ground rather than 4 inches off the ground. It's funny, but in Brooklyn the height of the bed made sense because of our lack of space, here it seems a bit absurd, and felt so last night. But waking up this morning was just perfect.

I'm going to a basketball game tonight. It should be pretty fun. The ride home will not be, but that's the trade off.

I'm meeting K for lunch pretty soon, so I'll wrap up. By the way, I've got a whole bunch of back notes to put into this thing, but I am waiting for the home station to be in operation before I dive into that mess.

Lunch at the school cafeteria is fairly yucky, but i don't snack much anymore so i eat the hell out of it. it's kind of like when your out in the country all day, breathing all the fresh air and whatever is on your plate tastes great and really hits the spot. i guess it feels like that, because it is like that.

hb a little less cold these days.

Second dinner with Nikke, this time it was just the two of us, K has some lecture that she needs to go to, so it's a date and neither one of us speaks the other's language. Nevertheless, nothing knocks down language barriers better than chicken parm and Sony Playstation 2. Couldn't speak at all, but stick to dudes with full bellies in front of one of those things and magic happens.

He's about to go to bed. It's 8:30, and strangely enough only an hour or so before my bedtime. With the amount of fresh air and exercise I'm getting here, K and I are asleep before 10 on almost a nightly basis. So he's 10 and goes to bed at 8:30 and we're closing in on 30 and can only manage a measly 2 more hours, go figure.

Speaking of exercise I have a basketball game on Thursday. I'm curious to see the talent level on the court. Whether it's street ball or euro ball. I suppose I shouldn't get too physical or try too hard, considering I have the badmitton match the next day. No excuses, must win.

So I'm through now and I've got to go home, through the slush.

hb

So we're babysitting tonight and we just had dinner, mushroom, chicken curry. It was pretty good. Of course I'd rather be at home getting ready to sleep in our bed for the first time in three months, almost to the day. It was such a joyous occasion when I took out our blanket, sure it was flat as a pancake, but who the hell cares. It's big enough to fit me, K and 3 Timo's, which is a far cry from the blanket we've been using, which was big enough for one of us, which of course lead to many mornings of, "you took all the blanket," "no, you did" both of which are quite true. I had a sweatshirt next to me so that when it was k's turn to have the blanket I could use the sweater as a blanket. It's all over with now, thanks to two smelly Finns who carried our stuff through the ice covered street, up the stairs and into our apartment. They were really nice, but they sure smelled like crap. I was tempted to open a window, but it's too cold to even think of doing that.

I guess Howie alway hot, is getting his just desserts.

Ok, I had some wine so the formatting of this is rather off, apologies. I also wrote something right before we had dinner, but this damn computer that I'm using is way too sensitive and since I can't read Finnish yet, it was erased.

Our stuff came in the nick of time. My toes were getting really cold and I was hesitant to buy a new pair of boots, since I had a pair in the shipment. Let me tell you, I cheered out loud when I slid these puppies on for the first time and my toes were happy and warm. And my scarf also came today. I feel like I just won the lottery.

I'm playing badmitton on Friday with one of K's colleagues. Apparently the pressure is on. I must crush him. I'm glad I got a practice day in before I play him, because: a. he's a shrimp and b. it is necessary for me to open up a can on him. Sure, I'll pretend to just be there for the exercise and smile and do all the right things, but I must Pete Sampras his little booty and then talk shit with K afterwards.

And I will be speedo shopping tomorrow. The pool is amazing. It's split into 3 different pools. The pee pool, for the kiddos. The diving pool with 2 high dives and the laps pool. I' m ready to do it and since everyone else is wearing the smallest little things, I hope not to stand out too much. K wants to get me a speedo with flowers on it, which I refused, but it could be fun.

So, more later and soon I'll be able to pictures on this thing, I hope. I promise several of the speedo, and maybe one with me in it - from very far away.

love,
hb

A new day is here, our furniture is due to arrive in a few hours! But, of course, something has come up which will not allow us to enjoy it for a couple of more days. We are babysitting tonight and tomorrow for our friends here, Tapsa and Pirjo. They are both leaving town on projects and their 10 year old Nikke needs some company. This is a fair trade-off since they are our drivers when we need them and have given us support since our arrival, but the timing is crappy.

It snowed all weekend long and has finally stopped. There is about 6-8 inches left on the ground and I don't think it's going anywhere for a while. This seems slightly early to me, it still being October and all, but what are you gonna do? Another element of the winter that smacked us in the face yesterday was daylight savings, it's getting dark here around 4:30-5pm and that's only going to get earlier, but with our house in order it shouldn't be too bad.

Today the cross-country skiers were out, I guess it was the retiree club, because there was not a single person out on skies younger than 60, or so it seemed.

I had a funny conversation with a couple of winos on Saturday. I had just picked up a bottle of wine - nice selection and cheap prices (a good combination) - and these two guys were standing next to my bike. For a moment I thought my bike was as good a gone, but these guys were quite friendly. They spoke to me in Finnish, I told them I don't speak it, and said I speak English. They asked me where I was from, I said New York & Texas and they stopped and asked if they could say something to me without me getting angry. I replied of course and they said, "F-ck the Bush." It made me laugh and we talked for a while. Then they said they were off for some winter sport, which consisted of drink Wild Turkey from the bottle with no gloves or hat on. Interesting game.

Sunday I had driving lessons, with a stick-shift. I know I should have learned this long ago, but we never had one in the fam. So learning this combined with driving in a snow storm led to some shaky nerves, but all went well.

One thing that pissed me off was the news coverage of the World Series, or lack thereof. It received almost no mentions in World Sport. The only thing they talk about is the Rugby World Championship and Soccer, it's driving me crazy. The damn BBC has the same stories running all the time, but it's in English so I watch, ugh.

The best show, in Finnish, on TV is their version of American Idol, simply called Idols. It's the same format, but is much more enjoyable to watch. There are some real country folk singing up there and they are awful. It's especially funny when they sing a song in English and their accents come out in full force.

So I've only got a few more minutes and I have a whole weekend of news and sports to catch up on. More later.

Talk about dedication. I just biked through more snow than I can talk about. At least 8 inches since last night and it's still coming down non-stop.

I'm not on a reservation computer right now, so I will have to keep it brief.

I will be sending pictures of this blizzard. It is very similar to the one that we experienced in Brooklyn that shut down the whole city for a day, but not here. Everyone is carrying on like business as usual, including me and K. She has a class in a few hours and will have to ride to the college. I think we'll be taking cabs soon enough.

A big line is forming behind me so I will have to leave now, but I shall return. I think I'll join the postal service when I get back, because through snow or more snow or even more, I won't be stopped.

hbcold, really cold.

Grocery shopping is a pain in the ass. I thought is was difficult in Brooklyn where I had to go to at least 3 different stores to get all the ingredients, but here it is another animal all together. I think all the ingredients are in the store, but finding out what the package says, and how many pounds 250 grams makes or what the hell a deci-liter is makes shopping and cooking that much more challenging. I think I need to have a conversion chart sewed into all my clothes for easy access.