we weren’t “coming home” any more… we were “moving”… again.

it was one of those feelings that wasn’t quite right, but wasn’t wrong like I was telling myself it should be. it was, I think, the first time that this place felt like home, really home, not just the place we were living. I have become comfortable used to being here and it’s a strange sensation.

it is definitely going to be a huge change coming back, and not that it is, but it almost feels like a step backwards; moving back into our old place, getting back into our old routine (well, mostly), and returning to the place where we were a year ago.

I’m not saying it’s going to be a bad thing, I’m still more than eagerly awaiting that day we go to Vienna for the last time and get on that plane headed home, but it’s not going to be the big “coming home” that I had imagined, but more like a “moving away” in a sense.

very strange.

Well, it turned out that my credit card was only that, a credit card. I went into another branch and asked for help (more like gestured for it, since I still get very tongue-tied with the language) and she has to go get someone else that can understand me, only to tell me that my credit card is the wrong kind of card.  I needed to get a new ATM card (that I had to wait an hour for at the bank to get) that would enable me to use the calculator device. So I trek back another day to another branch to reapply for a new ATM card that would allow the card to be scanned by the device. Again, it takes another hour wait and another application. A few more days and I finally get the card in the mail. Horray!  I open the envelope only to find out that they sent the new PIN to the post office.  They sent it to the posta in the opposite direction of my work, so it takes me a few days to get down there.  I stand in the wrong line only to get directed to another part of the building.  I finally get my golden ticket and the 4 digit PIN for the new ATM card.  Phew.

So I get home, armed with the new ATM card and PIN, calculator device and about a million other passwords to get into my account via the internet.  I have everything laid out, seriously like 5 papers, a “grid” card, the ATM card, the device, the instructions and the secret decoder pen from Ovaltine. I go to the Tatrabanka website, enter my username and one of the 16-alphanumeric PIN’s.

Error.

Error.

Error.

My original 16 digit PIN to enter the website is now invalid due to inactivity.

So I gave up.  I now just go into the bank whenever I need make a transaction.  Pssh, who needs internet banking anyways!?

we got the info they requested that proves we moved outside the service area (our rental agreement with the address here on it), and emailed it to my mom, and she mailed it off…  a few weeks pass, and we get another bill from them, with the $400 charge still on it. so we call again, ask them what’s up, and they inform us that they have no record of our correspondence. they let us know that we can also take the form in to a T-Mobile store, and they can take care of it there. so my mom takes the form into a store, they fax it off, and tell us everything will be taken care of.

a few weeks pass, and we get another bill… same amount. we call yet again, and they inform us that there is no fax number to send things in, so the store employee who faxed it, must have faxed it into a black hole somewhere…  they also tell us that the only way to send it in is via snail mail. so we mail it in from Slovakia, thinking that the return address might help our situation…  

a few weeks pass… same bill.

we call… again… they now tell us that the form we sent in is not acceptable, that they don’t accept rental agreements as proof of living overseas !!!   ummm…  what?  o_O

we have other proof now, chelsea finally got her ID with the school where she works, and we have other bills, so we’re planning on sending one of those in, but…

today we got a bill.

from T-Mobile, for $400…

…to our address in Slovakia.

that’s just a whole new level of retarded.

here are some videos of the bird…  I apologize for the zoom (and severe camera shake at that zoom level), I was trying to identify it, but like I said, it sings mostly in the evenings, and the light is poor.

after I got my closeup shot, I saw another one in the park during the day, and it sang just long enough for me to locate it in the tree, and I finally got a color view of it’s plumage which is dark black brown with a yellow beak (or at least the underside of the beak, and possibly yellow eyes, but I can’t be certain of that.)

it turns out, that trying to identify a bird with absolutely no ornithological inclinations is pretty much impossible. I’ve been searching Wikipedia (which has the only list of birds in Slovakia that I could find), and have narrowed it down to a few possible culprits (although my search is by no means exhaustive):

• Common Blackbird (this one is the best match so far)
• European Starling
• Common Nightingale (although on further inspection, I’m pretty sure this isn’t it)

anybody else have any ideas?

and chelsea thinks I’m a nutball for posting this, but I think it’s cool. and I like listening to it, I just want to know what it is.

Billa is a grocery store and you see every other person walking down the street holding at least one of these at all times.  One, because people are always at the grocery store.  Two, because you have to buy them when you check out, so no one wants to pay for them.  Three, because these bags are made of titanium and could hold 5 pointy gallons of milk, I have no doubt.  They are worth every penny, er, euro.

fry sauce is a condiment.

and that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Anywho…

There are several mysteries of the Universe that people often attribute to God, and based on your belief system, you may lean more one way or the other.  Some of those beliefs are creation vs. evolution, the creation of the earth and the heavens (I’m talking of outer space, not the other kind of Heaven), what happened before the big bang, and where did life come from…

This is the question that causes me to think a bit.  There are really two parts to this question, and because I’m not religious, I’ll only be referring to the scientific aspects of it.  But what was that magical happenstance that created life in the first place?  I understand that after life started, came evolution, which in my opinion makes perfect sense and easily explains how we got to where we (as life on this planet) are now from where life started.  The question is, where did that first being come from?  There have been scientists that have been trying to figure that out for a while now.  Some theories are pretty good, and some… not so much.–The “not so much” theory was one that, if left alone to it’s own devices, a bit of burlap cloth, some wheat, and a few other ingredients in a container of some sort would grow full grown mice after a few days. Well… duh.  My house grew mice, it doesn’t mean my house created life, just means my house was not as sealed as I had hoped it was.–Some of the better experiments include putting all the basic elements in a container with water, mixing it and zapping it a few times (simulated lightning) and after a while, you end up with amino acids, and other basic building blocks of life.  But not life.  It’s not a huge leap, that given time (lots and lots of time, which we had back then), this could become a simple life form (and on to evolution, and on to us), but there are just too many holes right now.

The other question that really makes me wonder… Is where does that spark start in each of us?  The brain is an electrochemical processing center.  It runs on chemicals and electricity to power you, your thoughts, your dreams, everything about you in a mass of tiny electrical currents in your head.  Tiny little amazing sparks.  The question is, where did that spark come from?

Electricity doesn’t just “happen”.  And each thought in your head must have a beginning, and (and I’m totally making this up, so don’t quote me on this) it makes sense that each individual thought must stem from other thoughts (a spark hits one neuron, which causes that neuron to send out a couple more sparks in different directions, and on and on ad mortem).  But where did that first spark come from?  While my little girl was in the womb, there was a mass of cells that grew and formed different parts of her body, such as her heart, her hands, her feet, and her brain.  Her brain may have had the spark while it was being created, as I’m sure her heart did, because I heard it beating, saw it beating.  But what started it?  What gave her heart and her brain that initial spark of life, of motion, of being?

If it was always there, even before her brain was created, then it must have begun during her zygote stage.  If it didn’t start there, then it must have come from either mine or Chelsea’s cells that we donated to her to give her life.  If it didn’t start there, then we must have always had it in us, in all of us, as life on this planet, since time immemorial (I think I just wanted to use a bunch of big words today).  Which takes us back to the first question in this post.

This little train just led me to a thought that the circle of life is not really a circle in that it comes back to where it started, but more like a wheel rolling around, always moving, so that it never comes back to where it was, but everything is similar to what came before it.

And that’s what I was thinking about as I was rocking the berry to sleep at 4:00 this morning.

The truth ran me over in the parking lot: nothing.

Holy hell, nothing!?! really!?!

I feel like my entire life I have been striving to be happy with what I have now, this moment.  There has always been something that was going to make me happy, when I finally got it.  Something was always standing in my way of real happiness, some struggle or inner unrest that kept me from being at peace.  Now though, now, there is nothing in front of me, nothing but icing on the cake.  I felt like I was moving through the thought of some watered down version of ascension or enlightenment, since this is not what I imagined it would feel like, in the cold, near the dumpster. The idea of ascension, of course, made me think of Stargate SG-1 (hey, I’m deep, what can I say?).  I thought, that was a good show, I miss that show.  Aha! Something I wanted, more episodes of a sci-fi TV show.  Go figure!

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(Ed. note: spaces were added in a few of the longer “words” to preserve site layout.)

1. Heroes
2. Office
3. Chuck
4. Bones
5. Dirty Jobs
6. Mythbusters
7. Modern Marvels
8. Nova
9. Good Eats

9 Favorite Restaurants:

1. Rodizio
2. Blimpie’s
3. Quizno’s
4. Costa Vida
5. Spaghetti Factory
6. Settebello
7. Leger’s
8. Applebee’s
9. TGI Friday

9 Things that happened yesterday:

1. Woke up at 5a to deal with the little one
2. Worked
3. Got a tough portion of a project I was working on done
4. Played Halo (at work)
5. Played Guitar Hero II (at work)
6. Went to lunch with the beautiful baby dahl
7. Passed out candy
8. Played with the baby girl
9. Put the baby girl to sleep

9 things that I am looking forward too:

1. Holding Skye on my shoulders on a beach somewhere
2. Watching Skye play on a beach somewhere
3. Building a sandcastle with Skye on a beach somewhere
4. Finding out what truly makes Skye laugh
5. Using that knowledge everyday
6. Sleep
7. Having enough money for retirement with Chelsea
8. Skye being old enough that she’s not so high maintenance
9. Seeing the end of chain blog tags

9 things on my wish list:

1. Time
2. Sleep
3. Becoming independently wealthy
4. New Computer
5. Outdoor toys (ATVs, Jetskis, camper, etc)
6. The death of Internet Explorer
7. New, larger, nicer house
8. Motorcycle
9. A garage/toolshop

And I pass this tag on to:

1. Nobody

You’re welcome.