Weekend Approaching

As all 3 of you reading my blog might notice, I’ve been quite delinquent in posting this week. I went to the US a few days ago to visit my sick uncle, who passed away on Tuesday. It is sort of hard for me to cope with, as he was my favorite relative. My dad and I thought it was sort of strange, when we went to get coffee on Tuesday morning, how our lives had kinda stopped for a bit, but the world still managed to keep on going… Anyway: this weekend I will finally get to be a bum. More accurately, a semi-busy bum. I’ve been out of Prague for the past few weekends, and I have lots of stuff to do: 1) Find a gym. Every time I ate McDonalds at the Amsterdam airport I felt my belly get a little jigglier. 2) Buy a DVD player for my girlfriend. The woman has never seen Star Wars. I question her membership in Western civilization. 3) I will be holding a meeting for all the foreigners at my office. We will discuss the trials and tribulations of living in post-communist eastern Europe. The meeting will be taking place at a brewery. This is why I love this place… By the way, I would like to make everyone aware of the ridiculousness of movie companies. No, I’m not bothered by their production of various Tim Allen Christmas movies (there was one on the plane to Houston. Instead of watching it I just stared at the seat in front of me for two hours. More intellectually rewarding). It’s the whole Region 1/Region 2 DVD thing. This is an annoying travesty meant to screw me (specifically: NICK) over. It means that DVD’s from Europe can only be played in European DVD players. This means my Family Guy DVD’s won’t play here. But I got around that. My computer only allows you to change regions 5 times. I got around that. The DVD player I will buy here – I will purchase a Chinese off-brand for 70 bucks. The store will provide me with codes to get around the region problem. So I’ll get around that. The key here is grasping a new concept: the electronics handyman. They’re like the guys who used to fiddle with cars. They have no formal training, they can’t really do too much, but they can fix the stuff they need fixed. I have no idea what’s going on under the hood. But I can fix the balance on surround sound speakers. I can eliminate spyware from a computer. Parents: have a problem? Check with someone under the age of 27. They can fix it. And if there’s a problem with the car? Ask Dad.