Revenge of the Killer Dust Bunnies

I'm not the cleanest person in the world, but I tell you...I have never seen dust bunnies like the ones that grow to amazing sizes and reproduce at an alarming rate in this apartment! The amount of dirt that collects in my apartment in a very short period of time is nothing short of incredible.

The craziness that is spring has begun (even if the weather that is spring has not yet). I leave on Sunday for Budapest for a 3-day ESL workshop and return the following Friday with a houseguest. A colleague from Slovakia will be spending a couple of weeks here, leading our March teacher training sessions around Romania and Moldova. She'll spend the first couple of days here with me, so I decided that evenings this week would be dedicated to a good spring cleaning.

Which for me means moving furniture. I get bored with the look of my apartment and feel the need to completely rearrange furniture every 3 months or so. I started with the bedroom since it really hadn't had a deep cleaning in a while. Can you say "disgusting"? I moved the bed...the first mistake, I suppose. Since my air is so hot and dry during the winter, the window is always open. And since the bed was on an angle in front of the windows (which are in the corner), I haven't cleaned behind the bed/under the windows in a really long time. Like since I moved the bed there...last summer, I think.

Apparently all of the stray dust from the street had settled on the floor behind my bed. Well, almost all of it. The rest of it was coating the plastic storage boxes under the bed. Seriously, who has to clean the tops of their storage boxes? If they were stored in a garage or basement, I would understand. But this is my house! Where does all the dirt come from?

Next step in the process (I won't bore you with too many details...suffice it to say, I conquer the record-sized dust bunnies in the bedroom and moved on) - washing curtains. I had done the ones in the bedrooms not long ago since they are white and easily show dirt. The ones in the living room and kitchen, however, are navy blue. They really don't show dirt at all. Nonetheless, I figured that a good spring cleaning meant washing curtains whether they needed it or not. Whether they needed it or not really wasn't the question...everything in this apartment needs washing. They just don't show it. Until you put them in a washing machine full of water. Which swiftly becomes mud. I probably should have washed them again, but couldn't justify the extra water/electricity.

The living room gets cleaned relatively often, so it was more a matter of dusting. And moving furniture, of course. After two years, I think I've exhausted the options in this room. But that's okay...it hasn't been like this for at least a year.

And since crazy spring is here, it can stay this way for a while. I won't be home enough to get tired of it :) Or to stop the revenge of the killer dust bunnies from recurring. Oh well, that battle can wait for another month!

On the road again

After 3 months, I'm so thankful to have my car legal and on the road again! Someone asked me where I would go first when I could drive again. I predicted it would probably be the grocery store (since grocery shopping trips have been the times when I've missed my car the most). But, once I got the plates & put them on the car, the first trip was to the office. Blessed convenience of making a quick trip rather than having to plan for a 1/2 hour walk to the office, time there, and then another 1/2 hour walk home! Next week I'll go back to walking for most of these in-town trips, but this week I'm enjoying the privilege of driving my car.

The not-so-happy news was that they can only give me plates valid until 1 month BEFORE my visa expires and I can't get new ones until I get my new visa. Since my visa expires the 31st of December and everything is closed around here until at least the 3rd of January usually, that means that we can't start the registration process (which takes at least a week) until the offices reopen after the holidays. So, theoretically, I'll have to do w/o my car for 6 weeks every Dec/Jan, unless I somehow receive a visa valid for longer than a year or register the car in a Romanian's name. Not going to worry about this for now...November is still a ways away!

On a sunny Saturday,

I decided to go walking. Here's where I went today. Missing are pictures of the first two signs, from Chendu and Balauseri, due to a technological blip (ie. the person using the camera wasn't too smart and didn't notice that one of the batteries was in upside down & then couldn't figure out why the camera wouldn't turn on). I'll have to go back to take those some other day.





And the pitstop for this leg of the race is...

What's cookin' in my kitchen...

...or rather, "who's cooking in my kitchen?" Not me! Last week was cooking week for the month, so now my kitchen just looks pretty and is the place to put dirty dishes.

The freezer's more full than it has ever been. I even had to take the shelf out since I couldn't figure out a way to make everything fit with it in. Current contents: 14 single serving lasagnas; 10 egg casseroles; 5 barbecued chicken/rice/broccoli meals; 3 roasted chicken/rosemary potatoes/green bean meals; 1 hamburger soup; 1 large container chocoloate chip cookie dough; 1 lg container peanut butter cookie dough; 1 lg container mashed potatoes; 1 small container green beans; 8 spaghetti/pizza/all-purpose-tomato-based sauce; 4 bags corn; 1 bag carrots; 1/2 bag french fries; and 1 container blueberries, currently being hoarded for a special occasion yet to be named (blueberries only appear in the market here for about a week each summer, and I've managed to miss that week both summers I've been here. A kind soul had mercy upon me and shared hers this year). So no more cooking for a while =)

Happy Birthday, Sadie!

Today my one & only niece turns 6 - happy birthday, Sadie!

A Quarter of a Century!

Today is my baby sister Sarah's 25th birthday - happy birthday, sista'!

I always make Sarah a birthday cake (and then send her pictures while we enjoy her cake over here!). This year she said she wanted a hamster-shaped cake. Not being a cake decorating genius, 2 questions immediately came to my mind: (1) how in the world do you make a hamster-shaped cake? and (2) who in the world would want a hamster-shaped cake, anyway? The answer to the second was obvious...my somewhat strange little sister. =) And the answer to the second? Well, after resorting to a Google image search, I came up with this. It is almost as random as the original request...

Yeah, I still haven't figured out the frosting thing...it doesn't seem to matter what I do, it always comes out soft. Then you put it in my overly warm apartment, and the frosting starts sliding off the side. Romanian powdered sugar has a different consistency, so it tastes okay, but isn't quite the same as a can of Duncan Hines!

The girls here thought we should have ham(ster)burgers, too, to make the meal complete. Don't you wish you were here, Sarah, so you could celebrate your birthday, too? Actually, Sarah celebrated her birthday by purchasing her plane tickets to come visit me at the end of March; maybe I'll make her another cake then (probably not shaped like a hamster's rear end, though).