We wake up at 6. Can't sleep - jet lag. It will take us two more days to resync. Three hours is easy, it takes more to do the other three.
I go to work first time. It's only friday. The offices are in a basement, which is marked T in the elevator - T for terrace, because there's a terrace outside and there's a real basement below this level.
The air smells nice, there's a lot of trees and I wonder where's the city.
Meanwhile, „the girls are taking a walk“... they went to K-mart, just across the other street, behind the hotel. They spent four hours rambling through the aisles, looking at stuff, planning what to buy soon, what to buy later, what never. Eventually they bought one pack of Q-tips, that was the immediate need. Greg was amazed at this, and kept telling this to anyone who had to listen. I don't know what he expected them to buy, everything at once? We aren't some fresh gastarbajter, we have some experience, and we've been abroad before, many times. And there'll be time, so scout it first.
Spent the day waiting for my machine to be completed and then inherited one from Walter, who was just leaving. He left it with a dumb network name, from some kids' movie... and I had to appear under that name for a few days. Picked a nice 19" monitor. What an eye opener, after so many years on 14".
I'm officially a gastarbajter again.
There's a court minutes shop next door, left in the hall. There they listen to the tapes made in the courtroom and type what they hear. No more court stenographers. Emmy's son works there, and one of the girls has her sights on him. She's wearing striped or patterned socks in heeled shoes - which was unimaginable until now. Now it's a fashion (but it didn't last). Emmy didn't like her, regardless of fashion.
Eleventh. Another hotel breakfast, we already got used to their firm spongy scrambled eggs and crisp fried bacon, and the rest of it isn't bad either. Beneath our windows there's a fastmunch, where we took chicken sandwiches a couple of times. Few years later the guy confessed he never had chicken, it was all turkey.
For lunch, Ford came to pick us up. His car was big enough, or was Jimmy (his wife) a soccer mom and thus had a van, so that's what he drove. He drove us all the way across the nearest chain of Appalachies, to the place in the valley where he lived. Stopped by a supermarket to get a fried chicken... that's for lunch. Well well, so that's american hospitality. And yet he still remembered the dinner at Brlja's a few times, never mentioning how we hosted him for eight days.
Met his wife and daughter, the sons have already gone off to live on their own (or was one coming home at times?). The lunch wasn't much, that chicken and some salad, don't remember if there was any soup. Than we sat around the coffee table, had a beer. The thin mexican Corona. Not really a beer, but okay, part of bridging the cultural differences, when in Rome, you eat what american tourists eat.
They have a huge dog, I think around 30kg at least, longhaired something with drooping ears, I'm bad with dog brands, and it was drooling all over the place, including my beer. Never touched a Corona since. Fuck your hygiene.
Um, had to check later what a soccer mom is. Since the meaning of football here isn't the same as here - american football is something related to rugby but it's not really it nor is it football, to avoid confusion, they refer to what the rest of the world calls footbal as „associaton football“, abbreviated soccer. Now how the 'ci', pronounced shi, became 'cce', pronounced ke, is beond me and beyond the point. The thing is that the soccer is making inroads here, by female line. It's a girls' sport. And the practice is usually on sunday afternoons, when fathers watch real football or baseball on TV, so it's moms who take the girls... and usually four to six moms take turns driving their girls. Thus they have to have vans. See a lady of around forty driving a van, must be a soccer mom.
Next day Emmy came to pick us up for lunch. She also had a van. But then they'd have a few vehicles around the house, her husband's business is limo rental. She brought us a portable teevee, with a stick antenna, which didn't catch much in that forest, just the local branch of PBS (which we still didn't know about) with loads of static. I think we grabbed one of the last episodes of „Allo, allo“ reruns.
Took us around for a tour of a few scenic and historical places (where we didn't enter, admission is charged, and when we learned that the tarriff applies to tourists, the locals pay a pittance, it was too late), to take in the view and get our bearings. She drives barefoot just like I do whenever I can. But when she dropped by a supermarket, she walked a few steps and came back to get her slippers. Said they wouldn't let her in barefoot, for hygienic reasons. Yeah, makes sense. The same folks who let their cats and dogs into their bedrooms and dining...
Her husband was doing a barbecue the american way - a chunk of beef, sized and shaped like half a mortadela. No charcoal, gas. And gas heats up the lava stones, and the fat drips on the stones and smokes. That must be some technique, to get it done inside and not overdone outside and still stay juicy, but he got it right.
The house is in a forest, which means some environmental rules have to be observed - only so much wood can be cleared for building and driveway, and the distance between the houses must be at least 80m in their area (could be more elsewhere). The mailbox is by the road, so the postman doesn't leave his little truck, he just stuffs it without getting his ass out of the seat. They had trouble getting TV and then internet too, because the cable doesn't cover them, the cost per subscriber is too high at these distances, and couldn't do satellite, because there's no good spot anywhere, the forest is too tall.