15 September 2011

After staring at all the emails I need to reply to, doing two Sudoku puzzles, eating dinner, and looking again at the emails, I decided it would be best to just write in my blog instead.

I had such a lovely day yesterday... It was a national holiday to honor the patron saint of Slovakia, but that didn't really affect my day.
First, I ran a whole 5 kilometers in less than 40 minutes. The last kilometer was a killer, and I was getting bored, so I just kept speeding up the treadmill until it looked like I could finish the 5 k in less than 40 min, so I pushed really hard for that goal (*note that I don't set goals until I see that I'm about to reach them*) and met it with a time of 39:52. Felt so good!
Then, I ate some muesli and hung out with Katka on the back porch...
then I took a shower...
then I did some vacuuming and emptied some rubbish bins...
then I went with Zuzka to take Hajdy to the vet for another operation. This problem with her eye is not so simple to solve. This was her second operation, and she still needs eye drops every few hours. :(  The operation was going to take about two and a half hours, so Zuzka and I went to the zoo to pass the time. I thought I was pretty neutral about zoos, but actually, I LOVED it! I wish I had brought my camera so I could share the experience with you all. Well, compared to some zoos (like the Wild Animal park in San Diego), the areas for the animals to live in at the Bratislava zoo were quite small, but I'm not so sensitive about how people treat animals, so it didn't bother me. We saw baby cougars, and a lion couple taking a nap in the sun, and huge pieces of raw meat in the tiger cage. They had all sorts of different monkeys that would reach their long arms out of the cage to grab the grass and popcorn outside. I thought my favorite was the zebras, but then we saw a rhinosauras and I was smitten! I just love its leathery, gray skin, and the way it pushes its big lips around on the dirt when it's eating. Later we saw a black pygmy hippo, and some baby goats practicing ramming their heads together, and some hyenas, and lemurs, and a type of deer with the tiniest feet I've ever seen!  And we sat and enjoyed the weather for awhile, and drank some Kofola (a special Slovak soft drink) and ate some ice cream. It was perfect :)
When we were home just in time for me to quickly change my clothes and run off to do Zumba with Katka. It wasn't a problem that the instructions were all in Slovak; I was only as bad at it as usual. It was loads of fun, but the music (mostly Latin dance songs in Spanish- the same songs they use in Zumba classes at the Y in Flagstaff) made me a little bit homesick for the Southwest. I never thought I would experience a wave of homesickness for the Southwest without a craving for Mexican food!
Finally, after getting home again and eating dinner, I got to talk on Skype with a friend in Flagstaff for 2 hours (a much needed catch-up time)! A perfect finish to a lovely day :)


 Today I went to some meetings at work and enjoyed seeing the different personalities of my new coworkers. In some ways their sense of humor is so much like my ol' Domers, except these people mostly have accents from around the UK, which almost makes all their jokes funnier.


Tonight I'm going to sample some sips of wine at the famous wine festival in Pežinok with Katka and some other Slovak girls!