Prior To Coffee

Are Russians really everywhere? I went to Wal-Mart this morning -- felt like getting a comb for my beard, it feels good -- and everyone working there had a Russian accent. Okay, or Ukrainian. At Burning Man I met a guy who had been kicked out of a club because he celebrated Ukrainian Independence Day with too much enthusiasm. I can't tell Ukrainians from Russians except by last name. But whichever, they're all over the office this morning too, moving boxes and relocating cubicles. I've remarked before that they run the Hertz franchise at PDX. Dominated our second-rate hotel in Chicago.

So what? Well, the news about immigrants is always in relation to Hispanics. But the immigrant community around here is Eastern European. Before that, it was Southeast Asian. The Hispanic community is well established. So well established, I honestly am irritated that our ballots are half in Spanish because frankly, if someone is motivated to vote, they should either pay to have the materials translated themselves, or the government should do it for everybody. Everybody. But I don't see voting materials being sent around in Russian and Farsi and Hmong. Do you?

I also got a memory card for my new camera. Replacing the one that drowned in the desert. Figured I need a pocket camera for upcoming adventures and general life documentation. Here's a picture from it.


Here's another from the ol' jobberoo, taken with my older camera.


Criminy, I have a digital camera that's seven years old! Anyway, as you can see, I have a strange job. Those paper-thin TV monitors they watched while eating breakfast in 2001 are old news. But otherwise, nothing's changed: Something is always going wrong. This whole getup exists because something went wrong. If things didn't go wrong I wouldn't have a job, or my group would be smaller and I'd have a different job, or something. Whatever. A job's a job. Beats the alternative, as my grandfather used to say about getting older.

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Fun with stitching software and pretty mornings.