Category: Personal

January 2023 Part One (Jan 6-Jan 9)

For the start of this story, we need to step into the “way back machine” all the way to 2010. Back then, due to circumstances, I had been applying for jobs in Europe. One of the gigs I applied to was teaching English to kids in Hungary. I got the job and the deal was I had a one-year contract with a mutually agreed upon possibility of a 1 year extension.

So in the late summer of 2010, I packed up most of my worldly belongings, shoved them into a storage shed (originally a pay as you go deal and then in my folks’ backyard) and headed off into parts unknown.

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The Coming of the Tree

It started a couple of days ago.

Even though we’re non-religious, Rasa loves the Christmas season. She loves decorating the house and putting up the tree and doing all the stuff associated with the holiday. At least the non-secular version. To be fair, when I was a kid, I really loved going to friends’ houses to help them decorate their trees. It’s a great family thing.

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Palanga Trip 2022

After our recent trip to England, we weren’t sure we’d get another chance to go anywhere this summer. Rasa certainly wanted to maybe take a day trip to the beach, or we could hit the labyrinth park again, or really, just anything to get out of the house. Thing is, with the economy the way it is, not to mention our work schedules, it just didn’t seem likely anything major would happen.

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And so it ends – England 2022 #6

Day 7 – June 30

Thursday was the last day we had anything planned or pre-booked. Today’s adventures were a boat ride to explore the “Jurassic Coast” and then meeting up with Rasa’s colleague Dai and his wife. The boat was leaving from Poole, a little bit further along the coast than Bournemouth (where we had been a few days earlier and where we would be meeting up with Dai) and since it had a precise departure time, so did we.

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Something Fishy – England 2022 #4

Day 5 – June 28

Tuesday, after Legoland, was supposed to be a rest day. In our planning, we knew we’d have been going strong for several days, sleeping in four different places in 5 nights, and so we figured that we’d take it easy before heading off to Peppa Pig world on Wednesday.

Except…

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Questions about History and Culture – England 2022 #2

Day 2 – June 25

Waking up in Nottingham, we had to figure out our plans. Before we had parted the night before, I had declined John’s offer of attending a birthday party for the child of a friend of his so we were definitely Oxford bound, it was just a matter of how and when to best get there. We would spend the next few days staying with my old friend Amy and her husband Clive. I met Amy somewhere around 28-30 years ago when we both worked for the Groundlings in LA. I was a booth jockey and she was a stage manager. Since then, we’d kept in touch over social media, even managing to see each other once or twice since she’d moved to the UK. Now, she had graciously offered us all a piece of futon covered flooring in her craft room and we gladly took her up on the offer.

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And so it begins – England 2022 #1

Prologue

Back in February or March, Rasa was informed of a conference in her field coming up in Manchester, England at the end of June. We talked it over and decided it would be a good idea to go. It would be her first in-person conference as a PhD student (due to the pandemic) and was scheduled to include a number of big names in her field as participants, including her unofficial supervisor (whom she would be able to meet in person for the first time).

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Daddy’s Day 2022

Here in Lithuania, Father’s Day is always on the first Sunday of June, which means it could be anywhere from the 1st-7th. Children’s Day, however, is always on June 1, so there is a chance, although it didn’t happen this year, that they will fall on the same day. But this year, on May 31, Monki was very excited for Children’s Day because, as she rightfully points out she is “a children” and so expects presents and wonderful things on this day.

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Comic Con Baltics 2022

My time working on Comic-Con Baltics 2022 started with working on Comic-Con Baltics 2020, when I interviewed RJ Mitte to announce his attendance. Of course, then COVID hit and everything was postponed.

Then postponed again. And again.

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2021 wrap up

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Seriously? It’s the end of 2021 already? How did that happen? I mean it’s been a helluva year for sure. We’ve seen friends and relatives die, related to COVID and not. We’ve seen new governments take control and, in some cases, make things better and in some cases make things much, much worse (and while I’d like to say this is an objective statement, I, better than anyone else since I repeat it several times every semester, know there is no such thing as objective.)

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How was the Storyworth project for you?

black and red typewriter
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

This is my last entry in this year-long Storyworth project. It’s number 52 and even though I could write more, I think 52 entries is a good number. I wrote my first one back on December 22, 2020 and now it’s December 29, 2021 and since I was late a few times, this seems like a great place to finish up. Continue reading “How was the Storyworth project for you?” →

Do you have a favorite poem? What is it? 

511px-jabberwockyI’m having a hard time starting my answer to this one. Yes, there are a couple of obvious responses, which I’ll get to in a minute, but part of my issue is do I include song lyrics or not? I mean, sure, they qualify as poems, but do I count them amongst my favorites? Do they hold up when you remove them from their accompanying music (no semantic arguments about songs like “Tom’s Diner” because the music is inherent in the presentation)? Continue reading “Do you have a favorite poem? What is it? “ →