How to (not) Kill a Snake

One thing I forgot to mention about the interesting trip to Lielvarde: we saw a snake!

Ilze noticed it, actually, and made me almost piss myself because as we were walking to the river we reached the path and she suddenly gasps really loudly and goes "ACK!" and all I saw was her dash away and something by me move, so I yelled, too. But then I saw it was just a snake and that I hadn't stepped on it, and proceeded to take pictures of it. As the snake seemed more interested in crossing the path away from me than stopping and rearing up to protect itself, there was no reason to worry. So there I am, taking pictures of this snake, when this older man speed-walking suddenly approaches from the opposite direciton. He sees us standing there and comes to see what I'm looking at, then goes:

Man: "Oh, that's just a *insert name of snake*, see the yellow on the head? It's okay, they're all over Latvia!"
Me: "Oh, okay." *keeps watching snake*
Man: "No, no, they're perfectly harmless! No reason to hit or kill it!"
Me: "...um, I-" *shifts expensive camera around in hands*
Man: "Really! Perfectly harmless, see how it's slithering away from us?"
Me: "Yeah, I know, no one's talking-"
Man: "Harmless!"
Me: "-about killing it."
Man: "It's just a *insert snake's name again*, this one's one of the bigger kinds. Don't have to hit it!"
Me: "Yeah, we know, I was just taking-" *once more indicates camera in hands*
Man: *abruptly walks away, still talking about how the yellow mark on the snake's head identifies its kind*
Me and Ilze: *kind of stand there, not really sure what just happened*

YEAH, because the FIRST thing I think of when I see a snake is to bash it to bits with my very expensive camera. Gut reaction, honestly. Forget going to find a stick, a Nikon D-60 is weapon of choice #1.

Whatever, weird speed-walking guy. Maybe it was because we were two females standing around looking at a snake that made him think our intentions toward it were anything but benign.

In addition! Since I've figured out that the reason pictures wouldn't load at a normal speed was due to my choice of browser, the photos at kaija.jatnieks.com/photos are going up faster than ever, starting with September 2008.

Dirty Deal and Comic Books

So.

Tonight I went here to see/support this. I left after an hour and a half due to the ever present illness (though I will say that the HUGE shot of balzams the bartender put in my hot currant juice might have finally done the trick), but I enjoyed every minute of it. My time there, not just the medicinal beverage. I sat for a bit and read some comics, then nursed my drink, then bought the rest of the comics to support comic books in latvia, then watched either Zidruns or Silards play (neither the Zidruns myspace page nor the Silards stuff at presiite.org sounds like whatever or whoever played tonight) - either way they were fantastic and I miss going out to hear bands like that perform, especially in that type of local. Dirty Deal is basically one huge room (with a back door leading...somewhere. I didn't get that far) with one bar and a few places to sit. Getting to the place made me feel like I was going to drop some kind of drug transaction at the docks, but once you get in the building that all fades away.

I'm mostly sad that I didn't follow through on my curiosity of what "kus!" might be and find out about this place sooner - this was the last "kus!" shindig. But now I have another site to keep my eye on, as I most certainly will be going back to Dirty Deal, which, from what I understand, supports these kinds of creative/contemporary events and artists.

Cold Season

Usually I'm one of the last people to fall into the cold season trap, but this time around I got hit first. I've been on the border of having a cold for the past week; Monday night it hit me full force. As such, I've been working from home since then. Sometime around the lunch hour I passed out for a few hours and felt like I might have had a slight fever. I also missed class yesterday, but am not worried about it – I'd rather miss class than sit in a closed, poorly ventilated room for 1.5 hours (or more, hence no going into work to work) and risk getting everyone else sick. Oh, yes, I'm so considerate. I'm also headachy and nose-drippy. At lease I managed to buy some Balzams and throat syrup Monday night. The Balzams I've been feeding into my system little by little by mixing it in with tea; the syrup is basically a mixture of honey and natural fruit sugars. As such I am saddened that I am only supposed to take the syrup three times daily. Last night I managed to drag myself to the closest grocery store and but dry-packet soup and lots of tissues. Good foresight!

So for now I'm working from home, sleeping when I can, drinking lots of liquids, etc. It kind of sucks.