The Siren Song Of The Kazboros or Got Dem Ole Nic Fit/Hello/Narrowband Blues Again
Candace is off shopping at Tsum Store. I’m uploading Otis pictures onto http://www.flickr.com/ and listening to the Siren Song of the Kazboros: “Only 80 Tenge, or 60¢ a pack, and they sell loosies too! Come on down, fat boy, it’s only one, one won’t kill you, you know you want it.” Working a piece of Juicy Fruit to death. Third Day, supposed to be the toughest, after that the physical cravings start to desist, and you’re left with the mental. “Amigo, fat boy, El Gordo!... over here, might tasty, fine Kazakh tobacco, come on, it’s only one.”
Finally solved the adding pictures to the blog problem, as you can see. Went to the Help section of Hello (the photo uploading software), which referred me to a Google newsgroup or two, all of which basically said: 'Hello and Picasa are crap, no support, buggy performance and the only way to get Hello to run again after reinstallation is to edit your registry file.' Finally posted a query on one of the groups, and someone was kind enough to suggest Flickr. It’s a web based application; more herky jerky than Hello, but so far, so good. “Come on fat boy, just one cigarette and all that nasty coughing will stop, we promise.”
On the 4th we went and saw Otis. As I wrote previously, Sagat showed up half an hour late, claiming to have been stuck behind an accident, he used that as an excuse last week as well. (CD: The way people drive here, it is in fact possibly true.) The ride to the baby house was quick and quiet (CD: stonily silent), on our part. Otis was fun as usual; it was an abbreviated visit and him falling asleep early wasn’t much fun, but it‘s always good to see the O-man. Schedule was changed as we wrote earlier, starting on 7-5, we start seeing Otis at 10:15.
We had been told that the Marines were throwing a 4th of July party at the Consulate, but it turned out that they celebrated on the 2nd, the day we went to the mountains, so no partying down with the jarheads for us. Sasha came over to look at the computer and phone line, said he thought the problem was with our laptop -- it wasn’t. Had drinks at the American Bar & Grill, hoping to maybe run into some compatriots but we were the only Yanks. “Come on, is ancient Kazakh tradition, buy a loosie!”
Yesterday (the 5th) Sagat called at 9:30 to say he would downstairs by 9:45. I guess somehow CD and I managed to communicate our anger (CD: Without losing our tempers – a new one for us). We arrived at the baby house and were told to go to the music room with Otis. When the O arrived, happy to see us, we found the music room and discovered that a puppet show was being set up. Someone came in and said we should go the regular room -- guess no puppet shows unless you can sit up. So, all the adoptive couples, all ten parents, plus five babies head back to the regular room. ‘Twas just a little crowded and a little hot. But everyone got on just fine, Otis was definitely livelier. Otis fell asleep way early, around 11:30; nurse laughed when she came to get him.
After lunch at Uzbek restaurant again, CD had Lagman, thick noodles (CD: Like a cross between cavatelli and lo mein) with lamb and vegetables; I had Manti, dumplings with ground lamb, cabbage and carrots. Trick to eating Uzbek and Kazakh food, I’ve decided, is to eat about half of what’s put in front of you; otherwise the oiliness of it overwhelms you. Sagat picked us up at 1:30 and we went to Green Bazaar. Finally dealt with the beef guys, which consisted of several of them unslinging what seemed to be a 30 pound piece of rump steak (CD: Cut as a 3” thick, 3’ long – yes, I have those little apostrophes correctly placed – steak) from a rack and stroking it and cooing over it like they’d just been intimate with it. I kept looking for something that was recognizable. Finally we came across a woman selling (European-style, i.e. not milk fed) veal chops; we bought the smaller of the two pieces she tried to sell us and returned here to trim it up as best we could and freeze it. (CD: It was sold as four ribs attached to the breast bone, and we have the crappiest knives here in the apartment.) Spent the rest of the night trying to get pics on the blog, without success and cursing narrowband. “Come on gringo, Loosies, one won’t kill you, you can quit again tomorrow.”
Otis was great this morning, kicking his legs a lot, laughing when we made faces, just a real joy to be with. Meanwhile it was my turn to have meltdown on the way there, nicotine cravings and frustrations of computers, uncertainty about court dates all piled up on me for once, and I had to ask Sagat to stop so I could get water and compose myself before we got to baby house. I’m tired of this fucking country, I want Brooklyn, bagels, the Alehouse, good pizza, baseball, including the one hitter and the dugout, Bruno, steak at the Palm II, a fucking ice cube tray!, a burger that isn’t cooked to death, $7 packs of cigarettes, no loosies, beer with hops etc. But I want my boy, too, so here I stay. Anyway Otis quickly made me forget all that, he was a one man band today, banging the rattle with one hand , the teething ring with the other and kicking both feet and going “Ahh… Ahhh.. Ahh!” He fell asleep ridiculously early today at something like 11:15, when I tried putting him down, he started crying, and Candace picked him and he immediately demanded to be handed back to me, I’m like, “Hey no fair, I can’t be the only parent whose arms you’ll fall asleep in.” He woke up after a few minutes and he & CD played at the piano, it was fun.
Candace is back, with beer, no loosies; the siren song failed for the moment. We’re uploading pics on Flickr and buying a pro account. Just gave up trying to send Elliott a 32mb video of Otis, probably would have taken overnight to upload. Chomping on my Juicy Fruit and working the beer buzz, maybe I can find those Xanax my sister gave me.
Finally solved the adding pictures to the blog problem, as you can see. Went to the Help section of Hello (the photo uploading software), which referred me to a Google newsgroup or two, all of which basically said: 'Hello and Picasa are crap, no support, buggy performance and the only way to get Hello to run again after reinstallation is to edit your registry file.' Finally posted a query on one of the groups, and someone was kind enough to suggest Flickr. It’s a web based application; more herky jerky than Hello, but so far, so good. “Come on fat boy, just one cigarette and all that nasty coughing will stop, we promise.”
On the 4th we went and saw Otis. As I wrote previously, Sagat showed up half an hour late, claiming to have been stuck behind an accident, he used that as an excuse last week as well. (CD: The way people drive here, it is in fact possibly true.) The ride to the baby house was quick and quiet (CD: stonily silent), on our part. Otis was fun as usual; it was an abbreviated visit and him falling asleep early wasn’t much fun, but it‘s always good to see the O-man. Schedule was changed as we wrote earlier, starting on 7-5, we start seeing Otis at 10:15.
We had been told that the Marines were throwing a 4th of July party at the Consulate, but it turned out that they celebrated on the 2nd, the day we went to the mountains, so no partying down with the jarheads for us. Sasha came over to look at the computer and phone line, said he thought the problem was with our laptop -- it wasn’t. Had drinks at the American Bar & Grill, hoping to maybe run into some compatriots but we were the only Yanks. “Come on, is ancient Kazakh tradition, buy a loosie!”
Yesterday (the 5th) Sagat called at 9:30 to say he would downstairs by 9:45. I guess somehow CD and I managed to communicate our anger (CD: Without losing our tempers – a new one for us). We arrived at the baby house and were told to go to the music room with Otis. When the O arrived, happy to see us, we found the music room and discovered that a puppet show was being set up. Someone came in and said we should go the regular room -- guess no puppet shows unless you can sit up. So, all the adoptive couples, all ten parents, plus five babies head back to the regular room. ‘Twas just a little crowded and a little hot. But everyone got on just fine, Otis was definitely livelier. Otis fell asleep way early, around 11:30; nurse laughed when she came to get him.
After lunch at Uzbek restaurant again, CD had Lagman, thick noodles (CD: Like a cross between cavatelli and lo mein) with lamb and vegetables; I had Manti, dumplings with ground lamb, cabbage and carrots. Trick to eating Uzbek and Kazakh food, I’ve decided, is to eat about half of what’s put in front of you; otherwise the oiliness of it overwhelms you. Sagat picked us up at 1:30 and we went to Green Bazaar. Finally dealt with the beef guys, which consisted of several of them unslinging what seemed to be a 30 pound piece of rump steak (CD: Cut as a 3” thick, 3’ long – yes, I have those little apostrophes correctly placed – steak) from a rack and stroking it and cooing over it like they’d just been intimate with it. I kept looking for something that was recognizable. Finally we came across a woman selling (European-style, i.e. not milk fed) veal chops; we bought the smaller of the two pieces she tried to sell us and returned here to trim it up as best we could and freeze it. (CD: It was sold as four ribs attached to the breast bone, and we have the crappiest knives here in the apartment.) Spent the rest of the night trying to get pics on the blog, without success and cursing narrowband. “Come on gringo, Loosies, one won’t kill you, you can quit again tomorrow.”
Otis was great this morning, kicking his legs a lot, laughing when we made faces, just a real joy to be with. Meanwhile it was my turn to have meltdown on the way there, nicotine cravings and frustrations of computers, uncertainty about court dates all piled up on me for once, and I had to ask Sagat to stop so I could get water and compose myself before we got to baby house. I’m tired of this fucking country, I want Brooklyn, bagels, the Alehouse, good pizza, baseball, including the one hitter and the dugout, Bruno, steak at the Palm II, a fucking ice cube tray!, a burger that isn’t cooked to death, $7 packs of cigarettes, no loosies, beer with hops etc. But I want my boy, too, so here I stay. Anyway Otis quickly made me forget all that, he was a one man band today, banging the rattle with one hand , the teething ring with the other and kicking both feet and going “Ahh… Ahhh.. Ahh!” He fell asleep ridiculously early today at something like 11:15, when I tried putting him down, he started crying, and Candace picked him and he immediately demanded to be handed back to me, I’m like, “Hey no fair, I can’t be the only parent whose arms you’ll fall asleep in.” He woke up after a few minutes and he & CD played at the piano, it was fun.
Candace is back, with beer, no loosies; the siren song failed for the moment. We’re uploading pics on Flickr and buying a pro account. Just gave up trying to send Elliott a 32mb video of Otis, probably would have taken overnight to upload. Chomping on my Juicy Fruit and working the beer buzz, maybe I can find those Xanax my sister gave me.
posted by Candace and David at 7/06/2005 07:52:00 AM
4 Comments:
Would you guys like some nicotine GUM? It might make this stage a little easier (she says, smoking a cigarette.) Seriously, I can get some and send it over (re-up)--maybe even chew a little mine own self.
Two amusing bits, which perhaps you already caught on the news, to distract you from thinking about, the...y'know: Jaques Chirac "forgetting" that he was miked (yeah, West Wing covered that one) commenting on the Brits "You can't trust people who cook as badly as that." Truth that. And Bubba Crosby sliding into second, about three steps behind Giambi, who was ALSO sliding into second! Oops. Poor Bubba, that one'll be on the highlight reels for a while.
My Otis says "Yo!" to yours (I think that's what he said, but his mouth was full of catfood, so it's hard to tell...)
Go to the market and get some sunflower seeds--they're actually quite high in nicotine and good for you.
-Agent N
I'm doing the lozenges, which I prefer to the gum. D says "they're for sissies." Notwithstanding, I think we are about to take you up on your offer to send stuff - once we figure out to where it should be sent. We've missed those fun news moments - now we'll have to look for them. Good tip on the s'flower seeds - they're in all the grocery stores here. Love, C
Just logged on after not checking in for a few days to discover that in the midst of everything else you're dealing with, that you've both decided to give up the devil weed.
Figuring you have enough things going on to raise your anxiety levels or to keep you up at night, it might be helpful to know that caffeine is more readily absorbed by the body and has a greater stimulative effect when not mitigated by an interaction with nicotine. You may find it necessary to cut back or even eliminate your caffeine intake during this time to decrease the increased effects (anxiety, sleeplessness, headaches, ect.)
I know that the thought of cutting back on caffeine at the same time as nicotine sounds mad/bad/insane but it might decrease some of the dt's you're experiencing.
Sorry I don't have anything as helpful to say on the dt's you are going through each day leaving Otis; wish you could just grab the boy and run.
Regards,
Len
Come on, gringo, and gringa, stay away from those loosies...one might kill you (one leads to muy mas)...sure, you can quit again tomorrow, but it'll suck even worse.
Just remember you're doing it for the Otinator.
Dunno if they have umeboshi plums or paste there, but they're also good for cravings. Lemon, too.
Post a Comment
<< Home