I'm wearing purple...

If you don't the reference look up Gogol Bordello - Purple on YouTube.

Anyway...Gogol Bordello in combination with these hellish Thursday schedules inspires my cooking skills - today's fun: Chicken and Rice...I guess if you want to be technical you might call it pilaf. It's pretty tasty and got a bit of a bite to it (the mushrooms are spicier than the chicken). The rice is just a normal brown and wild mix perhaps a little bit undercooked but fine to my taste...I don't like it mushy. I made a nice bed out of it. The actual food part of it was chicken doused with a little old red wine that's turning into vinegar (which I have been slowly depleting between portabello mushrooms, hamburger experiments and other insane recipes...I don't really like the wine hamburger thing...it just gets that really weak rusty dead wine taste) and rubbed with chili powder and salt. I then sauteed the mix in olive oil, garlic and those really basic mushrooms you buy at the grocery store (I didn't have enough because of my morning omelets). My progress was nearly waylaid by a misstep when I realized that I had failed to slice up my ~ 1kg of chicken breasts...no big deal...I just attacked them in the pan while cooking - it ended up looking sorta like fajita meat. Anyway, I laid it on the rice and topped it with some diced tomato. Glee!

Apart from that today has been pretty unbearable - I have 3 classes on Thursdays, which is more than any other day of the week (and it could become more soon *cringe*), but the killer is the breaks of 1.75 hours between each class. That means there's not enough time to go home 30-45 min each way or almost anywhere at all. So I crashed at coffee house for the second break - worked on my applications (which are going to be done this weekend that I can relax until I realize that summer has come and I don't know what I'm doing) until my computer's battery (the one I changed in DC) informed me that it is almost useless and died (hope you guys back home didn't throw away the old one :-P). I ordered a large coffee and a piece of cheesecake...which satisfied my craving...but it was really small and had a grainy texture too it...it also wasn't sour enough. I actually got a fair bit done. The first break I just wandered around trying to stay awake and got a coke from a kiosk - which brings me to the story of my morning and last night.

I knew today that I had a mainstream I couldn't miss first period, so, like a good boy I set my alarm clock for 6am - 1.25 hours between showering, dressing and omelet - with plenty of time to spare to get into a classroom by 8:15.

I proceeded to sleep until 7 or so. Got out of bed in a panic, booted up the email and facebook (I'm a little addicted), did a sloppy shave job, quickly (but effectively) showered and realized that I didn't have time to make another glorious omelet - settling for fried eggs and sausage (which I tasted until the cheesecake even after brushing my teeth) instead. I was still running late - leaving the house at 7:35 into morning traffic on the subway and spending my last card swipe in the process. After avoiding the babushki, boyfriends and other hooligans who decide that it's ok not to stand on the right side of the escalator and have no courtesy for those behind them, who may or more not be in a rush but a capable of moving faster than a two legged turtle, I somehow made it to the building and up to my classroom. There, outside the classroom was a group of very suspicious looking 17 year olds - you can tell they all look like the should still be in high school - sitting outside the classroom...that combined with the general dearth of lighting brought up the realization of my idiocy. Class didn't start until 8:45, which in Russia time is about 9:00.

Actually, I was feeling pretty good at this point - I got to rest for half an hour, wasn't late and was going to get some paperwork done. The class was interesting and moderately engaging, though not wholly understandable because I know next to nothing about literary history...which is to say much much more than most people, but not enough to be useful in most circumstances...regardless, I got my paperwork into the professor and he promised to do it. The rest of the day went as already said until immediately before my second literature class (after the Coffee House) when I collected the paperwork and discovered that I was indeed in Russia...again. The guy/his secretary didn't have the foresight to figure out that the front page was not the only page of the form nor that the podpis' (signature) that I needed was not anywhere on the front page...ugh it's worse than AZ high schoolers...just kidding.

So, I'll have to bring that back next week. Oh well, that sums up the day.

In additional news, I am going to the circus on Saturday, celebrating International Women's Day - it gets me a day off (that's what it's like to live in a liberal country), hopefully going museum hopping, planning a trip to Peter next weekend, planning a Spring Break trip (thinking of Kiev/Crimea/Odessa, Baku or Tashkent/Samarkand), maybe going to see Reel Big Fish next week, maybe planning a Caucuses ski trip for April, hopefully seeing the Watchmen, catching the end of a rugby game, and - if I'm really lucky, got my apps together and can find someone willing to come with me - might spoil myself with a restaurant for the holiday.

And so I'll leave you for now with...oh yay! I got tapped for an interview with a theater...cool! But I've got a hungry heart...maybe I'll have something to do in DC anyway...maybe even paid...w00t!