Ploofle

So, fyi, I am at home writing this freshly bathed and in my heavy long underwear top, flannel-lined pants, and down booties. I will dress more appropriately for the outside in a bit, but for now, my feet get to breathe a bit from their week-long entrapment in heavy wool socks and my heavy boots (woo Amy and Jordan! They are very useful now.)

This week or two has been eventful at least from a personal life standpoint. Due to my impending weeks-long trips to UB, US, and elsewhere (woo host family!) I started putting more pressure on getting my pipe fixed. In case I didn’t write about this before, the short version is - two weeks or so back, toilet incoming water pipe doo-dangle jury rig disintegrated, shooting water uncontrollably out of the pipe, and me wearing no pants as I was just getting ready to do laundry, thus conundrum while I stuck my finger in the pipe to stop the water, tried to figure out how to contact my landlady with my cell phone in the kitchen, and get my pants on before she arrives. Resolution to that was to re-jury rig but with a plastic bag, but then I made the pipe valve thingy leak as I was trying to shut off the water pre-calling her and post-putting pants on. Both of these were still leaking, albeit slowly, but it wouldn’t do to have em leaving without someone to empty out buckets of water - and actually the toilet leak issue was worsening such that I had to empty out water once every 8 hours or so. So, in comes the chain-smoking fanny pack/tool-bearing plumber, which quite effectively fixes the leaky pipe while admonishing me to not touch the valve again as he ashes into my toilet bowl. The solution involved horse hair, several bolts, and a home-made washer made on the spot from a panel of rubber he had. Ta-da.

I partially sealed my windows with this putty stuff you can buy at the market for 1200 tugriks a kilo. For the first time ever, I actually get some condesation fogging on my windows, so I’m gonna get another kilo to finish it up.

Then the next evening was the local-ish christmas/holiday/etc party. Other foreigners were invited as well as Mongolian friends, there were wonderful sugar cookies by Stacey, a white elephant gift exchange, a string of christmas lights, punch made with Tang, and other goodies. The donuts (cake donut holes, more like it) I made were sad because I didn’t blot them very well and so when you ate a few the inside of your mouth would be coated with a thin layer of mutton lard…plus they didn’t rise much which is also why they went from my imagination of jelly donuts which I would fill with my apricot jam to cake donut holes. Pfft. The sugar cookies had icing and thus I was very happy, and my white elephant gift was in summary a toy camel that plays the miami vice(?) theme song or something like it, walks across the room, and has red flashing eyes. It will be coming with me to the US and probably back.

I bought my winter meat and veggies per the advice of my counterpart, who said the prices go up a lot later and the quality isn’t as good, as pretty much the meat you buy is probably the sheep that was killed in the past few days or so, and animals get awful skinny by the end of winter. Thus, 10kg (22lb) of mutton later, I am set I think until early March. I spent a few hours on Sunday trimming fat and deboning and packaging into 1-2lb parcels for easier use. I’ve also experimentally trimmed all the tops off the carrots to keep em from sprouting in the big flour sack in my closet…the mutton and soup bones are residing on my balcony (I live on the 4th floor, so I think they’re safe from animals). Here’s it mostly sorted out:

Re: my first real experience playing soccer - I don’t know how long my legs are, and this isn’t a contact sport, and 16-year-old Mongolian men are way too hard to play against when you don’t get to shove em to the ground or actually have foot contact with the ball.

Jeff and I are going to bring our controllers to training in UB and with my laptop and AV cables set up some fun SNES games, bwahaha…

I will also be an aarul mule this trip.

Alrighties, on to lunch (mutton japanese curry) and then work. I believe I’ll be getting a treat tonight - someone’s making horse sausage tsuivan and I’m invited.

P.S. I just found out my grater can also make crinkle-cuts, say for crinkle cut fries, and in a fit of enthusiasm last night my curry is now full of crinkle-cut potatoes and carrots. Maybe I’ll make fries for a meal before I fly out just for the experience…

P.P.S Bah proper writing style - I see a variety of problems above. I’m busy.

Tags: mutton, plumbers, soccer, travel