I'm deathly tired tonight; little wonder, I suppose, since I've been getting by the past few days on an unholy mixture of adrenaline, peppermint mochas, and Diet Coke. It's the end of the quarter at work, which is when I'm at my absolute busiest, and this end-of-quarter is compounded by the fact that I'm out of the office for the next ten days. Actually, I've been leaving the office at the end of the quarter in each of the past six quarters, which implies a stellar lack of planning on my part, but also implies that I should be used to it; Q3 2005 I left India, Q4 2005 I went home for Christmas, Q1 2006 I drove to Iowa before going to Ireland, Q2 2006 I went to South Africa, Iowa, and then California, Q3 2006 I went to Iowa for Katie's wedding, and now I'm going to Iowa again. Someday, perhaps, I'll stop leaving at the crucial end-quarter time, but nothing in life is certain.
Anyway, I came home tonight at 5:30 (I went in at eight a.m. voluntarily, which should show how bad the situation was) because I had finally slogged through the most vital things. I came home with the intention of working for another few hours to make a dent in my ballooning inbox, but instead laid on the couch and watched 'Scrubs', rubbed my stomach for awhile (stress always gives me stomachaches, and I've had some doozies the past few days), then started reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'. I've heard good things about it but was having trouble getting into it, so I turned instead to 'A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian'. I've carried the book around for ages; I believe that I bought it in Singapore long ago, but never got around to reading it (instead, as I recall, I took an Ambien and slept for nine hours to avoid the grief and homesickness I was feeling for India). I read the whole thing in one fell swoop, as is my habit, and I quite enjoyed it. I really want to go back to Ukraine someday; my memories of the place are colored by my twelve-year-old perspective, which at the time I thought was incredibly mature for my age, but I think that if I had been living there as an adult, I would have had a much different experience. Not to say that my twelve-year-old experience was bad; I think that that year was perhaps the most formative year of my entire life, even if it wasn't quite as relentlessly entertaining as the six months I spent in India. It may also explain why my family is so close; if four people can spend a year in a two-bedroom apartment, with only the Voice of America radio and occasional visits from completely insane representatives of the World Bank to alleviate boredom, and refrain from killing each other, then clearly they can survive anything.
Anyway, the book was about an elderly Ukrainian immigrant in Britain who is lured into marrying a 36-year-old newly-arrived Ukrainian who has overstayed her tourist visa, and how his two daughters try to rescue him from this disaster. I could just picture the gold-digger woman, with her love of trashy luxuries and status symbol cars/appliances--the fall of communism created some crazy characters. But, I also liked that the book touched on the wartime experience of the parents and the eldest daughter; the parents survived Stalin's enforced famine of the 30s, only to end up in a forced-labor camp in Germany with their five-year-old daughter, before a twist of fate and geography allowed them to emigrate to Britain at the end of the war. The younger daughter, born in Britain, never fully understood how different her experience was from that of her sister, and I loved how she came to realize some of this over the course of the book. Of course, I'm a sucker for all things related to Ukraine, the Soviets, and the Nazis, so I may have liked the book better than most. But, the writing was very quick and sharp, and the story/characters were believable, so I enjoyed reading it and highly recommend it.
Now, though, I need to go to bed; I have tons to do tomorrow, and my flight leaves tomorrow night! Here's hoping I don't get stranded in some random airport...goodnight!
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