Moving, Cats, Dust

There is an old woman sitting dejectedly on a chair on a balcony across the courtyard and two floors up. She looks like she's being punished. The door is closed behind her and she looks less than thrilled to be out in the fresh air. I wonder what she's done wrong.

Irrelevant. Today is the final day in the Riga apartment. Excitement and sadness. And a bit of frustration. I'll start with frustration. I love my (now former) flatmate and she's a wonderful friend and person, but when you move out and leave your key in the postbox without cleaning anything in the apartment and leave a bunch of your unwanted items behind for me to clean up, my positive feelings become a little harder to dole out. Good thing my best friend is coming out later to help me put this place back to order.

Sadness. This is a good place. It's a good location. The rent was decent enough. The landlady was a riot. The fridge is big enough to hold all of our assorted jams, mustards, and sauces (as we rarely had real food around). My cat had plenty of windows to guard from the onslaught of angry, dirty pigeons. Etcetera. Also, moving in general is a stressful undertaking.

Excitement. I leave with a few friends for a 10-day trip around Germany(!!!) and France. Then I get four days to pull myself together again before jetting off to the US for the rest of July. This will involve carting the cat, howling and piss-stained (the cat, not me), through four airports and three flights, followed by a two-day car ride across the eastern states. I'm excited for all of this, minus the piss part, but am also concerned for the cat. After today's vet visit, he has even ME convinced that I'm the worst person on the face of the planet. I hope the huge bay window facing the bird feeder in Minnesota will more than make up for what is to come.

As soon as I publish this post I'm off to keep throwing my belongings into unmarked boxes and bags -- it'll be like Christmas when I open them again in a few months or just days. I always want to write something more frequently, but June was a wild month in Latvia. I finished my contract at work and went in part-time to help out until they found someone to replace me (which has yet to happen), did some driving around Latvia with my dad, who was here on research/vacation purposes, and then the whole moving thing.

I can't keep my family obligations and thoughts straight right now. Hopefully I'll get some mental air cleared soon so I can make things interesting on here again.

That old woman is still out on the balcony. Now she's chewing her nails. What a world.

Um, June.

Stuff and things, and then some more stuff and things.

Vacation was fantastic. That's about all I can really thing to say of it right now. I can't even say if I'll attempt to go back and write some kind of re-cap for it.

This is my last contract week on the job in Riga. It's a little confusing, but I think I'll be okay. I still haven't made it to editing photos from the UK trip, and friends and family are getting restless.

My thoughts will settle, soon I'll maybe get more then 6 hours of sleep a night, and things will be right again. Or at least more right than they are now.

In Time for Vacation

We just had a long weekend in Latvia due to the national holiday on 4 May, marking 20 since Latvia proclaimed the renewal of its independence. I would be lying if I said I knew what went on during the holidays (except for the clusters of national flags propped up in strategic places around Old Town), as I was under the weather for all of it. Friday to Tuesday, I stayed at home, venturing outside only a few times and no further than the closest Narvesen a block away. Tonsillitis, nasal polyps, fever, headache. Best four-day weekend I've had in a LONG time.

Now I'm on my last day of antibiotics and am getting ready for a final few hours of mad dashing around to collect the last few items I need before heading off for a two week mother-daughter vacation. The last time we did this was in Germany in 2005, when my mother came to visit me while I was studying abroad. This year is a slight upgrade for her, as we'll be in a country where she fluently speaks the language.

I'm glad I got the worst part of the sickness out of the way before vacation, but will be wary the entire time of the cold and rainy UK weather. Forecasts say it will be around 10 degrees colder than it will be in Latvia. But I'll be armed with several scarves, plan on drinking more than my fair share of tea and am just excited for another chance to be away from the computer for two weeks. That said, I've got a few notebook pages scribbled full of geocaching locations, a handful of New Yorker fiction reading podcasts on my iPod and half a season of Corner Gas loaded onto my mobile phone. I think I'm more than prepared for the temporary separation.

There may or may not be updates posted during the actual trip. This depends on how frequently we have to visit internet cafes to find information on things to do or see. As if we're going to run out :) England, here we come!!