HB COLD

Today I achieved two things above and beyond the call of duty. Firstly, today I killed the last living mosquito in our home. It had plagued us for many nights. More than once Karoliina awoke to a dastardly bite on the forehead, but no one believed her, "Surely a mosquito cannot live in this cooler climate." Even I had my doubts, until I saw the thing with my own eyes. "It Lives!" This also forced me to reflect on the warmth of the house, perhaps a little too warm. This sole survivor was a deceptive one. Always coming out at night and using the shadows of the room to dodge in and out of my sights. A worthy adversary; my compliments. Finally it pressed close enough where I could reach out into the shadows and ensnare it in a fierce and fast fist. Victory was mine. I just watched "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" and couldn't help myself.

But the second thing I learned tonight was a doozy, and it's what Dustin Hoffman doesn't want you to know. I would even submit that he goes through great legal lengths to keep you in the dark. You, but not me. I know. Karoliina knows. Whoever was watching "Desperate Housewives" tonight in Finland knows. Me tiedämme, Dustin! Dustin Hoffman is currently the pitchman for Kapp Ahl, a Scandinavian clothing company. He runs around in a tuxedo talking to a woman who is not living up to her potential or something like that. And Ben Affleck? He doesn't want you to know that, anywhere not in the States, the Axe: Click commercial stars him and not Nick Lachey!

If I were to read the tea leaves for the coming lunar year, it might go something like this: Thou shalt narrowly avoid unnecessary loss of facial functions. Now I'm sure that tea leaves aren't all that specific nor are they ridiculously worded but that's not the point. The point is today, this morning, just a few minutes ago, I narrowly avoided loss of facial function. I went to the dentist today to have a cavity filled. I had one filled a month ago and the novacane made the left half of my face disappear for the better part of 4 hours. Taking that memory into today's appointment I decided to hold off on the medicine, at least until I couldn't hold off any longer. And so as they perched above me in their white facemasks and my body tensed up they couldn't get their brand new machine to work and we had to reschedule the appointment. And the fact that I don't have a limp wristed lip at the moment is cause for great satisfaction, and a reason for optimism for the next year.

Additionally, speaking of lips, I could very well have a fat one the night of the 27th of October. Reason being, the Kataja basketball team will be playing in my new backyard and I believe I am going to go and give the team a welcome shout or two. And this time on the hostile court of the Helsinki team. I do believe I will use some common sense and basically yell good things for the J-town team rather than my usual insults to the team that they are playing, but you never know and so there is a fat lip watch in effect until the 27th. Doppler radar updates will be regular.

What else? Oh, my fellow classmates and I are about to stage a mutiny in one of our classes, Strategic Management, which should be the culminating class that puts together all we have learned and sends us back into the real world with an updating tool box. But a funny thing happened on the way to higher learning, something got in the way, notably the teacher and his enormous ego and lack of teaching skills. We sat through 15 hours of nothing and have another 30 to go. The classes will resume in one month and from now until then, we are trying to reorganize the class so that we don't have to sit through hell again. Should be interesting, or not, you never know.

I think it's safe to say that, at the moment, we are living on the most protected street in Europe. Helsinki, currently holds the presidency of the EU which revolves on a 6 month basis, and this week the European Asian Summit has brought the leaders from Asia and Europe to the finest hotels of Helsinki, which all happen to be in very close proximity to our flat. Tonight I went to the grocery store and saw 3 motorcades, and the grocery store is about 500 feet away. We were away for the weekend, and that apparently was a wise choice as protests sprung up everywhere.

Crazy ice-cream story. Okay, it's possible that I think that it's a whole lot crazier than it actually is, but you can decide for yourself. There's this Peach & Yogurt Solero popsicle that I like. They sell them individually at the store and I usually buy a couple at a time. Well I opened one last night that had been chopped in half, but the top half was missing. I had real doubts about whether or not I should eat it - you know, the whole Halloween candy thing: If it was unwrapped or looked like someone did something to it, then they probably did and you probably shouldn't eat it (even though in Richardson, TX the possibility of this happening were slim to none, but you never know and so with all the other candy that was collected you wouldn't miss a few things here or there). So with this paranoia firmly in place, I chose to abandon this Solero and open the other one. Well guess what was in the other, separately packed Solero? The missing half of the first one.

I received a couple of still photos from the Lieksa! production that we worked on this summer. Here they are, the last one is of the director, Markku.

I have fans everywhere. That was the discovery I made last night. I was in a bar called "We Got Beef" (even though I can safely assume that not a single person in that bar had ever seen Wendy's "Where's the Beef" commercial) when a young, spiffy, almost yuppie looking guy came up to me and asked if I was Howard Brodsky. Well, I am and so I said as much. Turns out he was a fan of my J-town journal column back in the days when I could bitch publicly to any and all about what was causing me grief at any given moment. Well, that was about as exciting as it got, but still...fans everywhere people, everywhere.

Another interesting place about this bar was that I think I may have been one of the oldest guys there. Not something I enjoyed noticing by the way, but I noticed it nevertheless. What's strange is earlier in the evening we were at another bar where I was easily one of the youngest guys there. And aside from a few pounds here and a few wrinkles there, I couldn't tell the two places apart.