BIBLIOGRIND
The Life of a Wordsmith — Read … Live … Write
Archive for December, 2009
December 25, 2009 at 5:55 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
I wrapped 24 gifts for 12 people, and 13 of us took 2.5 hrs to open 100+ presents. This happened on Xmas Eve, following a dinner of two 6-pound standing rib roasts, 12 baked potatoes, 2 bottles of red French wine, and 1 bowl of white cheesy sauce to go over the 3 pounds of steamed broccoli & cauliflower.
Great family fun, good meal, choice presents (Santa brought me 2 pairs of jeans that fit my 35-inch waist; 2 knit pullovers; and an assortment of travel bits.
How was yer’all’s Xmas??
December 23, 2009 at 1:44 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
Hip, hip, hurray! My bag is at ATL airport … soon to be reunited with me. 
)
December 21, 2009 at 6:26 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Last of the Christmas shopping done today. But with a wildly unpredictable outcome for the 1st half of the present: my luggage has been lost by CSA and/or Delta airlines. I’m into day 3 of the missing bag, and while I have enough clothes to make it through WHATEVER, the gifts I’ve brought from Prague for the family are MIA.
I passed the PUBLIX food store and suddenly I remembered another thing that I missed about the USA: deli counter chicken tenders, those delicious breaded-and-fried white meat planks of pure taste explosion. Had to stop for a dozen for the whole family. Side dish? :: 3-alarm olive mix.
Besides the inevitable incredible indelible inedible ineluctable incomprehensible inimitable indecisions life lobs our way (like a Sunday afternoon’s badminton shot), I’m off to look for a painter’s cap.
Looks like I’ll help my brother roll on some “ceiling white” in his kitchen later today.
December 17, 2009 at 11:50 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Tomorrow is the day.
Flight scheduled. Clothes packed. Money crotched.
I want the big family thing go’in on; I want Southern ribs; I want Jack Daniels; I want a Chicago hotdog; I want kalochkies; I want Bears football; I want a white Christmas; I want a warm golf day; I want to fit into the 34s Levi’s; I want to mistakenly speak Czech to Americans; I want Americans to speak proper English; I want to play tennis; I want to pick off cracklin turkey skin with Julie; I want to laugh my head off with Jennifer & Matt; I want to watch Dad fall asleep in the easy chair; I want see Mom smile when she sees my eyes as I bite into her rollotten (sic); I want Les to laugh like the big jolley boy he is; I want the “kids” to gather together and be terribly cool; I want to take pictures; I want to feed the dogs tabel scraps; I want to sit at a bar in three states; I want to see an aligator; I want to win money off Mike playing pool; I want to play Ben in chess; I want Andrea to show me her newest model pose that says “pay me $10,000 a day to do this”; I want to write emails to my friend Asia while she’s in Poland; I want to shoot a hole-in-one; I want to ski down a Utah shoot with powder breaking at my hips; I want to drink champagne to that powder run with my bro at the end of the day; I want Mikayla to read Shakespeare; I want Meg to read Shakespeare; I want to play Guitar Hero with Dylan; I want to fix Morrocan chicken for 13 people; I want to pee on a tree; I want to read a book; I want to write something good – at least one beautiful sentence each day that I’m there; I want to play poker; I want to sing Christmas carols even though I’m not religious; I want to play pool; I want to get a full workout every other day; I want to weigh the same on the last day as I did on the first day (note: must step on scale); I want to have a campfire and roast potatoes; I want to walk in the pine forests. I don’t want to teach English for a couple weeks.
But I won’t be too picky.
December 15, 2009 at 5:29 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Prof. Kriz gave me a Christmas gift … actually a few of them. He was very appreciative of our lessons, because on his recent visit to the USA, in New York City, he told me that he was able to understand everyone he came into contact with, including taxi drivers, merchants, museum people, restaurant staff, etc. Besides English, he’s fluent in German, and has a great command of Russian.
The bottle of beer is a big ‘ole jug of Svijany “kvasnicak” brewed since 1564. I’ve had this beer before, but not from such a decorative bottle. The brew has a nice kick at 6% alcohol, so I guess I’ll pass up driving the tram the next time an operator asks me if I want to take over. The Prof. urged me to take it to America if I could somehow pack it, but this isn’t going to happen. No. 1: it’s too heavy to pack and Air France would probably break it. No. 2: taking it on board won’t work, cuz of the liquid violations.
I guess I’ll have to drink it here. Sorry Americka!
The apple in the picture is a shooting star apple. A Czech apple orchard near Liberec in north Bohemia, the professor’s hometown, creates just a few hundred of these special apples each year for the Christmas season. Prof. Kriz implores them to sell him a couple dozen as gifts to VIP clients and … ehem … his favorite English teacher. The orchard creates these apples using a not-so-sinister process: A sticker is attached to a not-quite-ripe apple and this blocks the pigment from rising through. Thus the emblem.
The fruit is quite firm, too, so I’m going to eat that up in … about the next ten minutes. Yumm-yumm slurp-slurp!!
December 13, 2009 at 9:24 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
While Matt & Julie have lots of good music in the catalogue, I thought I might bring to Atlanta a few “pure” party discs from my collection of 12,000 songs (who ever knew a 1,200-album collection could be so easy to transport??). Some of these are thematic:
Manic Mania
Songs to Calm You (ha!)
RockYourNutsOff!
MellowTunes
AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!
CryForMeBaby (to be played after too many drinks)
Wake UP!!
Um… would you like to dance??
So there it is … er, they are. Rock on, people. Music is a needed ingredient to The Life Fully Lived.
December 10, 2009 at 9:58 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
Kilos. Of the good stuff.
Here’s the deal:
People have been telling me I’m on the thin side, lately. Skinny. You could use a few pounds. Man, you’re thin.
Well, I don’t feel “skinny”, per se. I mean, I fit well into my jeans. I look pretty good with all the working out I do. 
) I ain’t no Charles Atlas, but I can rip crunch reps without raising my heart rate much. But skinny?
One of my private students has a bathroom scale. So I thought, Why not? I hadn’t weighed myself in over a year.
With my clothes on, but without shoes, I weighed in at 74.4 kilos. That’s 164 lbs. I haven’t been 164 lbs since the eight grade. No wonder a lot of my clothes can fall down from my hips without a belt to cinch ‘em.
But here’s the thing: I eat well, don’t pig out; I drink wine & beer but not like a fish; I snack and munch chocolate and even have a slice of pizza a few times a week. So where’re all the calories going? I guess I can answer this:
I work out 4-5 times per week, about 45 mins, lots of pushes & crunches and cardio-rich leg work. And I walk a lot, going from class to class each day. Sometimes I’m on 13 different trams, buses and subway cars; and I need to walk to each of those, using many stairs, 3-story tall escalators (which I walk up & down, never standing there like a fucking invalid), and practically march through town.
So that’s my diet & excercise program. I don’t think I’ll be buying any diet books the rest of my life.
But … Skinny!?? ))
December 6, 2009 at 2:48 pm · Filed under The Prague Blog
La Bohéme. Thirteenth row. Prague’s old opera house, a stately house from the 1800s. The music was lovely, the singers captivating, and my date enjoyed her first glimpse of opera … and saw one of its finest. It was fun playing dress up, too. Champagne at half time (can you call opera intermissions “half time” or is that too Chicago?), a nice coffee at the famous Hotel Europa’s kavarna (art deco interior), where a pianist played Joplin ragtime.
December 4, 2009 at 6:31 am · Filed under The Prague Blog
I went to the orthopedist on Thursday and, after a three minute examination where the doctor bent my leg at the knee and twisted and pulled, she was satisfied that there was no ligament damage. Confirming what the doctor last week had deterimined, the ortho suggested that if I’m still experiencing pain after a few weeks, I can have arthroscopic surgery to do … whatever it is they do for/to a meniscus lesion.
While the pain has subsided almost to not being there, since the injury 4 mos ago, I’m thinking to pass up such a great chance for a knee operation and deal with the injury as I do most things: ignore it and work through the pain until it goes away. And since I’m walking, hiking, climbing stairs, and working out pretty normally on it, what the hell do I want someone cutting, scraping, sanding, or chiseling between my knee for?
I don’t.
