hockey hockey hockey hockey HOCKEY!!!!!!!

Well, I was on my way to this gay gypsy Bar Mitzvah for the disabled, when I suddenly thought, “Gosh, the Third Reich’s a bit rubbish — I think I’ll kill the Führer.” Who’s with me?

My employer is playing the Assholes from the Hill on teeeeveeee tonight. I’m listening to the school that should have gotten all my money and I’m following the school that did get my money via a college hockey app.

IT’S HOCKEY SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The buzz in the office was amazing. The first home game of the season. The team’s newest rival in the house. A sell-out (or damn close).

Despite the shit that’s been going on, deep down I do still love where I work very much.

Speaking of… I had a long talk with [someone] about [something] this morning. Things fell into place. The world was set right.

I feel better about things than I have in a long time.

——

I had other things I wanted to talk about, but it all pales in comparison.

I do love me some Burger King. (Not the restaurant, the person who let me vent and let me know I wasn’t alone… who just happened to remind me of a fast-food restaurant.)

——

Thatcher Demko is a fucking sieve tonight which means that this hockey season is off to an awesome start.

Fuck ‘em up! Fuck ‘em up! BC SUCKS!!!!!

Look at how little he was!

guinness as a wee lad

The italki October challenge has begun and I just scheduled the rest of my 12 hours. Thankfully, $20 of those fees were a ‘gift’ from a webinar I signed up for. More importantly, I’ll get back my original pledge plus some extra. It doesn’t make up for the hit on my credit card, but it will help pay for future sessions.

Because, in true me fashion, I decided that the $6/hr tutor wasn’t the right fit to move forward with and the $12/hr one was.

Either way, I’ll get in my 12 hours and will hopefully get somewhere farther than where I am now.

I’m tired of beating myself up about not putting in the time and not putting in the effort… I just need to suck it up and actually DO something. Even if it’s five minutes a day.

That said, do you think I did my homework from Wednesday yet? For Monday’s class? 

Nope.

——

That webinar I mentioned is actually a speaking ‘bootcamp”. It’s main purpose is to help us find the right fit for speaking partners by helping us really narrow down what we want and making that clear to the people on the different conversation exchange sites. So far, I’ve gotten some good ideas for my profile, some decent tricks to reduce the stage fright, and a list of phrases to translate, like “I don’t understand”. (Я не розумію - I’m a pro at that one!) Is it worth the money? It wasn’t too expensive, but I probably could have found the same information for free on the web. Eh, I wanted to be spoon fed and he’s doing it. (Plus, British accent!)

Sadly, I’m more likely to do his homework (send him a list of those phrases - I don’t understand, could you please speak slowly, etc) than I am the italki tutor’s one because I’ve already learned those phrases.

——

I never heard back from the second immigration law firm.

I don’t know what to do to move forward, except literally move. Five years in Ukraine in order to get a passport? Seems easier every day.

——

In more news, J got a new car this weekend. (His was paid off, too, so why not? *sigh*)

An orange Crosstrek. ORANGE!

We’re on our third Subaru each, so I guess we’re a Subaru family after all.

——

And now… it’s time for ice cream!

(Or морозиво if you really want to know what it is in Ukie.)

Так! Я люблю Україну!

i’ve always loved sunflowers…

The more you know:

I grew up LOVING the colours blue and yellow together. Maybe it’s because I saw the Ukrainian flag so much growing up?

I also grew up loving sunflowers. I never knew why, but I think this might have something to do with it… I wish I knew where I found this. It was in a random word doc I found in my Dropbox. (I have got to stop Googling shit when I’m drunk. LOL)

Sunflower in Ukrainian folklore and tradition is the symbol of the solar energy, of the vigor of life and of well-being. In Ukrainian heraldry, the sunflower symbolizes fertility, unity, solar power and fecundity.  The sunflower keeps turning its head as it follows the progress of the sun across the sky, and when the sun hides behind the horizon, the sunflower’s head droops sadly, and ponders the profound issues of life. The sunflower reminds us that the sun should be respected as the life- and light-giver, and that the humans should respect their native land in a similar manner.

——

Related: when I heard this on the radio during my commute, I burst out in tears. It’s basically a love song to Ukraine. (Link is to Google Translate’s passable translation).

At any rate, what struck me / strikes me about this song is not so much the actual lyrics, but the overwhelming flood of emotion I felt in Toronto. Getting to hear TIK perform this, the crowd singing along, the Ukrainian flags being waved…

It pisses me off to no end that it took me almost 40-something years to learn what’s in my DNA, but I’m enjoying every step of the journey. Even if it makes me sob ugly tears.

 

Там, де трави вмиваються росами.
Де поля золотяться покосами,
Де живе в моїм серці едина, -
Там вона, там моя Україна!

Я не хочу писати віршів сумних
Про те, як живется в Ріднім Краю.
Я не хочу тлумачити кожному з них,
За що я люблю Країну Мою!

І дивно чути від знайомих людей,
Що з цієї країни потрібно тікати.
Я не емігрант, я маю Батьківщину,
І я не боюся в голос сказати:

Приспів:
Так! Я люблю Україну! Я тут народився і тут хочу жити!
Так! Я люблю Україну! Сильно люблю і буду любити!
Так! Я люблю Україну! Свою родину, свою сім’ю!
Мені є, що втрачати, є кого любити.
І я сильно ціную те, що люблю!

Можно змиритись із втратою.
Ми завжди цінуємо те, що втрачаємо.
Живемо під вічною вартою.
Маємо волю, а право не маєм!

І хтось мені скаже: а ти що співаєш?
Де твоя зброя? Народ підіймай!
Я просто перезаряджаю набої,
А ти коли хочеш - зі мною співай.

Приспів:
Так! Я люблю Україну! Я тут народився і тут хочу жити!
Так! Я люблю Україну! Сильно люблю і буду любити!
Так! Я люблю Україну! Свою родину, свою сім’ю!
Мені є, що втрачати, є кого любити.
І я сильно ціную те, що люблю!

Так! Я люблю Україну! Я тут народився і тут хочу жити!
Так! Я люблю Україну! Сильно люблю і буду любити!
Так! Я люблю Україну! Свою родину, свою сім’ю!
Мені є, що втрачати, є кого любити.
І я сильно ціную те, що люблю!

Cue “Twilight Zone” theme

A little more genealogical research led me to a really fucking weird coincidence…

The root of my grandparents’ last name, Rohatyn, is also the name of a city in Ukraine.

From Wikipedia: “However, the town crest has a horn of a deer which gives the first part of the Slavish name of Rohatyn or Rogatyn - “Rog” (“Horn”). The second part “Tyn” can be connected with a word which means “Stacket”. Together these two words give us “Horn Stacket”.

Also there is a legend connected with the image of the deer horn of the town crest. It is said that a wife of the Duke Jaroslav Osmomysl, being lost in a forest, met a deer. She survived by following the deer out of the forest. A fort was built with name “Rogach” (“Deer”) on the place where the duchess supposedly stepped out of the forest.”

My father worked for the Hartford Insurance Group. The logo of the Hartford is a stag.

My dad used to joke that he worked for the company with the Moose. This was a joke that would last my entire life, culminating in the engraving of a stag on the box his ashes are held in.

There’s no way in hell that either he, nor my mother, would have ever known about this coincidence.

But I do… and it makes me feel good.

Everything my father said about my mother (the woman he knew, not the one I knew) right before he died makes even more sense now.

Ribbit! Ribbit!

*sigh* all that work… headed to the frog pond

So… yeah.

My first socks done toe-up and TAAT are headed to the frog pond. Somewhere, somehow, I screwed up pretty badly and there’s laddering up the borders of the pattern. It looks terrible on the needles and even worse on the foot. I’m not sure if it was because I did them two-at-a-tme, I counted completely wrong, or if I managed to drop a stitch on both socks in the exact same spot. All of which are, sadly, very likely to occur and may have even happened simultaneously. That’s how bad they are.

I don’t want to frog them, but as I looked at how fucked up they were, I realised that - more importantly - I hated knitting that fucking pattern. I mean, REALLY hated it.

I love the way Hermione’s Everyday Socks are knitting up, even though I’ve just started a pair in that pattern. (Socks for a friend, unfortunately.) I think it will look equally awesome in that red. And HES isn’t nearly as boring to work on.

It’s really weird how that happens - both are four row repeats, both are relatively simple combinations of knits and purls - but one is infinitely more fun to knit than the other.

——

I ended up buying a new Forester last Friday and broke it in by heading to Woodstock for Black Mountain Symphony’s record release party. 492 miles from the Subaru dealership, to Seabrook Town Hall, to my house, to Woodstock and back to my house - I’m already at 1,000 miles.

Have I mentioned I’ve only had the damn thing a week?

It was a hard decision and one I didn’t make lightly, despite how it may seem.

My dream car - my BMW - doesn’t come in a stick until you get to the 335, and I need an X-Drive (all wheel drive). When I found one, the sticker on it was $51K. FIFTY ONE THOUSAND. FOR A CAR. I still can’t get past the fact that my very first house was only $32K and I still can’t justify buying a car that costs more than a house. (Even though my current house has an insurance replacement value of $289K, I can’t use that for comparison. I just can’t.)

I know, I know… and I did know it was going to be ugly. I could go down to a 320 / 328, but I don’t want an automatic that thinks it’s a stick. I refuse to drive anything but a stick.

So… my car had had these ongoing issues with the fuel line. It kept throwing up “Check Engine” errors and the dealership was kind of playing hit or miss with the repairs. The first time, it was $500 for a new gas cap and some kind of fuel container thingy. This last time, it was $300 for a stupid gasket. (There were some tests, but seriously? $300 for what ended up being a $6 part.)

When I got it back, the car stunk like gas, but I was told that it was natural and the smell would go away. I didn’t have anything to worry about unless the check engine light came back on.

I don’t know about you, but worrying if my fuel line was going to go while I’m on the backwoods of MA / NY isn’t my idea of a good time. Worrying about whether or not the car would spontaneously combust wasn’t particularly enjoyable, either.

Maybe those are stupid concerns… but the car was paid off. If it hadn’t been, I’d probably still be scared shitless to drive it, but sucking it up until I could afford to pay it off.

I got a brand new 2015 Forester - approximately the same exact car (minus the horizontal roof rack thingies), with technology befitting a car seven model years newer - for the same exact payment as my old car.

I suppose I could have done a lot worse.

I have mixed feelings about it, which sounds completely weird, right? I love it - I really do - but it’s just that I didn’t want a damn car payment.

*sigh*

——

I have mixed feelings about Black Mountain Symphony’s new album. It sounds ‘flat’. I thought it was my speakers in the new car because I hadn’t tweaked them, but my iMac, iPhone, and Jamie’s car confirmed that it just sounds flat and shitty. Maybe it’s because I’ve heard the songs live a bazillion times and that energy didn’t carry over? I don’t know, but the first album sounded so crisp and clear that the mix on this album is really disappointing.

My other complaint with this album - and it’s definitely petty - is that I wasn’t listed on the liner notes, but someone’s dog was. We all joke that I’m the #1 fan, the miles I’ve put on my car, the amount of money I’ve put in tip jars, the fact that I’ve let them stay in my house (not once, but twice)... all of those are testaments to my dedication to them. I know they sincerely appreciate me. I’ve NEVER doubted that. Not for a second.

But.

It would have been nice to get a public thank you… and there are quite a few others who are surprised that I was left off.

Especially in light of someone’s fucking DOG being thanked.

I’m not going to lie. It hurts.

I’ll get past it because it is so petty and minor in the grand scheme of things, but for now, I’m just going to let it bother me so I can get it out of my system.

——

I contacted another immigration law firm this morning. I laid out the reasons why I think I can claim citizenship and asked them simply if they thought I could and how much it would cost for that privilege.

I guess we’ll see…