This thing is extremely hard to keep up!

It seems all be Hungry for math a few months longer than originally planned... Somewhat out of the blue, A Multinational Oil Company phoned me up a couple months back and inquired if I was still looking for work. I passed the interviews, pushed my paperwork, and two months later I have a job! I'll be starting in two weeks. Not totally sure what my job description entails, but I am looking forward to the change in pace.

In other news, this time next week I'll be on my second Whirlwind US Wedding Tour, this time to Salem, Oregon. College friends + tasty coffee = bitchin weekend, or at least I hope.

Today I rode the bus next to a man with a plastic crate full of five fat, sleepy puppies. They were yawning and crawling on each other. Occasionally one would poke its itty bitty nose over the edge of the crate and their owner would sooth its nose and send it back to sleep.

It was really, really hard for me to not take one to class with me.

Yesterday I got a bit peeved while running behind an older fellow who was clearly not paying any attention to the other traffic on the sidewalk. He was maybe fifty or sixty, a bit portly, dressed in brown cords, a green plaid shirt and a bright red sweater vest which, combined with his shock of slate grey hair, made me think he was an eccentric English gentleman or a distracted professor type. I forgave him when I passed and saw that he was trying to read Harry Potter while he walked.

In other news, I have a paid acting job! It's only four days of shooting for a video, but I'm looking forward to hob-knobbing with some of Budapest's eclectic expatriate set. One of the fellows is an Aussie with brown, papery skin around his eyes from too much time in the sun. His face is a bit small for his body, his facial hair looks a bit like pubes growing back in after they've been shaved, and his skin is orange. I just wanted to share that with someone.

I never know what to write on this blog! It's so public! This rules out my personal life, and also probably talking about mys students, although they do crack me up and make up the bulk of my human interactions. I also spend a lot of time thinking about Hungarian, which is probably interesting to two other people who don't read this blog, and about where I'm going with my life, which changes every moment.

... I think that leaves the weather. It is great right now! Hungary is a different country when it's sunny and 70 degrees. More later.

The weather is a wicked tease. It's much sunnier, at least -- I realized that the sun has started rising at 4:00 instead of 7:00, which makes the trip to work much more pleasant.

I had an emergency repair situation in the apartment today! Our door handle has been loose for a week or two and when I came home this evening, it finally gave up the ghost and fell off. This was a problem because it meant that I couldn't open the door. But, instead of panicking, I got comfortable and then reached for our handy-dandy Ikea tool kit. I examined the door, realized that a screw was loose, put the right head on the screwdriver and fixed it! McGyver would have been proud.

I like things like that, when you pause and look at an inanimate object and get a sense of how the parts fit together. It's like zen meditation.

Today's Culinary Success: Refried Beans

- 1 can kidney beans
- 70-80 grams salami (or to taste)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1/2 red onion, chopped
- three or four cloves garlic
- Cayenne pepper, nutmeg, cumin, salt, black pepper
- Olive oil
- brown bread

Fry the onions with a bit of the chopped salami for a couple minutes, then add pressed garlic. Add one or two teaspoons of salt and black pepper. Fry until fragrant, then add the rest of the salami and the can of kidney beans with some, but not all, of the liquid. Cook for four or five minutes then add the red onion and cook for a minute or two longer. Next, squish the beans in the pan with a spatula or other kitchen implement. Add 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp. nutmeg, 1.5 tsp. cumin, and salt and black pepper to taste. Cook for a minute or two longer and eat on toast with spread cheese. Delicious!

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz

We are unquestionably on the brink of spring. Originally, this is why I came back to Budapest: warm bike rides around Margaret Island, open-air beer gardens, and, most importantly, more asparagus and strawberries than it is possible for one human being to reasonably consume.

But I wish it would wait a couple weeks longer. My coat is warm and I am in love, so I can withstand the cold. More importantly, winter is stasis. In winter I can postpone difficult decisions, looking for jobs, thinking about the future. Spring, however, hurdles rapidly towards summer, and summer becomes the fall, and fall is when I have to produce once more some semblance of a sustainable lifestyle (by which I find a job with some income). Please, don't make me do it yet!