all hail vic

jaro

spring is in the air here in the czech republic.

i slept with my window partially open last night. during the course of the night, however, the wind slowly but surely forced it open all the way. it was nice though. because unlike a month ago, the wind now is chilly but refreshingly chilly. it's not freezing. and when you're nestled under a down comforter plus a blanket and your head is nice and toasty from a winter hat - having shaved my head, i've worn a winter hat every night since then as a matter of health - well, it's one of those super comfortable sleeps. a light breeze blows across your face and stirs you from sleep, stirs you from your nest, you awaken, and then in a moment of passing joy, you realize you can sleep some more.

some people would be annoyed by this. me, i love it. it reminds me a bit of college, when similar things would happen. that and my room (and surrounding neighborhood for that matter) distinctly feels like college property.

i took a lot of photos yesterday because spring is contributing something quite disastrous to this region: water. a lot of water. water in the way of melting snow, pouring down the mountains and joining with rivers and the rivers swelling and swelling...

and so i took photos of the Vltava river, which runs through Prague, yesterday. it's swelling and since the 2002 summer floods, the city has put in place new protection measures. so far the waters have yet to reach the height of the new barriers, but there's a report of rain today and on sunday. if, indeed, that happens, it could cause some major problems.

hungary, slovakia and germany have all been hit by floods. and regions in the czech republic have also begun to be affected. begun is an understatement.

there are photos here.

i wish i could post my own swelling river photos, but they're just too large and the photo editting program (PictureProject) that came with my new Nikon CoolPix sucks and i can't figure out how to reduce the size of the photo (in a memory capacity, not in a screen size capacity, of course). if anybody knows, i would appreciate the help!

anyway, spring is here. the weather has increased by an average of 12 degrees, which helps a lot. but then again, it's making the river flow. for the country's sake, i wish it would freeze again just to halt the thawing of the record snowfalls in the mountains for a little bit. let the rivers subside a bit before encouraging them again.

the world's averaging things out. disaster after disaster. the world wants to get rid of us. it's about time, considering how much we're helping it degrade.

a lot of that sounds pessimistic, but i assure you it's in good humor. i'm having a lovely time here. spring is excellent here. spring is excellent almost everywhere, except maybe the middle east for so many reasons.

i wonder how the kashmiri earthquake victims are faring...? or the katrina victims? or the old and new iranian earthquake victims? (remember there was a massive earthquake there a year and a half ago? you don't? it's not like it wasn't all over the news... for about three days... did you know there was another one in Iran this morning?) i wonder about the tsunami victims, now a year and a bit past their own time in the limelight?

to be weird..

sorry, but i'd like to be weird for a moment and reflect on my birth date. moreover, my birth month.

at this moment, and it could be the slight amount of wine i had significantly earlier, but i'm finding it weird to consider the possibility of ever being born in any other month than august!

i was just on MySpace, the sort of waste your time website that everybody of my generation uses, and somebody posted a bulletin... now i never read the bulletins there, but for some reason i decided to check out this post. it was an outline of human characteristics by astrological signs.

i read mine (leo) and felt agreeable to the assessment. and then, since two of five of my nuclear family is cancer, i checked out cancer. which i felt i agreed with as well. less so, but nonetheless, i agreed that it was me. and then i started thinking about birth dates/months.

which is when i started thinking about "what if"... for example, what if i was born on my brother's birthday (July 3rd). whoa, it blew my mind. really. i was dumbfounded. WHO has a birthday so close to JUNE?! i mean, mine is close to July... but JUNE?! whoa. weird.

something just strikes me as odd when i ponder the idea of being born in any other month (or astrological sign, i guess) other than August. as if it's not my place. i don't think i'd be me if i hadn't been born when i was born. i'd be a whole different "Iain" (or "Ian", if you will).

yeah, i suppose, even though the wine is well digested by now, it is still the wine talking. yeesh.

i am STIPE

this one goes out to all of you who have, through the years, told me that i look like michael stipe! (thanks goes to fancypants for this one!)

glutton for punishment

i've done the positive one.

now, it's time to get dark. the dark one. and please don't worry, i'm an open individual and willing to take criticism. if you must, use a pseudonym. i just wanna know what ya'll think because i'm self-centered like that.

thanks to fancypants for pointing the dark side out!

the crunch

i just thought i'd reflect on nature a bit this evening.

i just got home from a night in town. i live out of prague a (very) little way and so weather tends to be a little more effective out here because it's not as warm.

yesterday it was warm and almost all of the snow had melted out by my flat/apartment/whachuwill. the snow out here had been around since the first fall - wherein it turned to ice. but spring is coming and therefore it's going going gone. i thought to myself yesterday that it was probably the last day i'd see any snow for awhile.

i was wrong, of course, because today we got a few inches beginning in the evening.

and so as i walked back up the long hill to my flat, i decided to take it slowly, not the least because i'm having some issues with my right kuh-nee.

anyway, it was the perfect snow for a crunch. THE crunch. i absolutely love the sound of fresh snow crunching under your feet. it's spectacular. so, despite being in an urban area, i was able to marvel at the beauty of nature.

once i got to the top of the hill where my apartment building (and many others are) my senses became meditative. i slowed down significantly.

crunch.

pap.

pap.

pap. pap. pap. pap.

the snow is already melting and as it melts, it falls along the sides of the apartment buildings and hits the tin that juts out in places.

pap. pap. pap. pap. pap. pap.

crunch.

pap. pap-pap-pap.

crunch.

it was delightful. the feeling of spring was there, despite fresh snowfall.

the sense of renewal that is beginning to form in me, let alone the world at large, is one of my favorite feelings. people in the tropics miss this sort of thing. the deadly calm and emptiness of winter.

suffice it to say, i'm in a good mood this evening - not that that's rare. the world still has and always will have the ability to humble me to the maximum.

pap pap crunch.

a little self-indulgence

this is just the sort of thing i love. i'm curious and i hope that anybody who reads this and who knows me will do this for me.