Bleach Mode

Last post of the decade! WooOoOOOoooO!

Nope. That's not what this is gonna be. Life didn't really get better, it just got different. The last two entries here were super depressing so hopefully some kind of a yearly wrap up will bring out the better instances of 2019 instead of the two that really destroyed me.

In 2019, I only had to go to immigration one time. One. Time. Last year I think I had to go eight or nine times to the decrepit little office on the outskirts of Brno where the clientele mostly looks like the third class cabin from the Titanic. Lots of phrase books, interpreters, people getting handcuffed, some people who just said "fuck it" and went down with the bureaucratic ship. After solidifying my position with IBM, I got to drop off my contract with a shit-eating grin and not care so much that I was getting yelled at in Czech. Again.

Getting yelled at in loud Czech is a common facet of an immigration office visit. Most employees there can actually speak English, but they won't. Passively armed with the pseudo-Czech I know, I was able to slide my IBM contract under the glass and give a woman who has zero time for me a quick smile. Pieces of paper were stamped and I signed where I was pointed to sign and I left. Twenty minutes, in and out, and I'm good for another two years. Usually this process takes a lot longer.

I'm not going to say my position at IBM is easy. The job itself is actually quite simple, but the communication with my team and other technical teams based around the EU can be challenging. I spend my time double, sometimes triple checking the phrasing of emails or the instructions on a task just to make sure the air quality of my snark is perfectly clear. A lot of my time is spent in Excel or IMing other folks on my team because we all have our headphones in but refuse to have a real conversation with the person sitting across from us. I really can't complain. I have good relationships with my superiors and I've only been late once in the last 11 months. I'm a 10 minute bus ride from the office and I can work from home two days a week if everything isn't really crazy, but January 2020 is going to be really crazy.

I also got to visit Seattle and Tucson in November like I did last year. I'm the only one on my team not taking any vacation during Christmas so instead I took two weeks during my birthday and Thanksgiving to go home. This trip was fraught with travel-inducing headaches but I was able to schedule time with the people I wanted to see and I got to headline my first club back home. I think when I come home next year I'm going to try to record my first album, but that's gonna depend on how much stage time I can get in Bratislava or Olomouc or wherever I end up performing beforehand. I have the material, but like last year, I was spending a fair amount of time on stage figuring out what jokes actually worked in Bratislava but not Portland, OR. I have a new closer in the US, but not in Brno unless I want to waste time explaining who the Zodiac Killer is (or isn't.)

In Tucson I spent time with my dad, step-mom, and uncle for some nuclear family time. My uncle gave me my favorite gift and it came with an unknown story. Before getting a job building Boeing planes during WWII, my grandfather practiced his machinery skills with small projects. He made a silver ring in an Art Deco style that my uncle has had for a number of years, and at Thanksgiving he passed it on to me. I haven't taken it off since I got it. In a way it's incredibly reflective of my grandfather's personality: simple, nothing flashy, but purposeful.

When I returned home to Brno, I came home to Gossamer, a cat I adopted in May after Patrick died. Gossamer's very different but equally cheerful and entertaining. His name was initially "Ragy," translating to "rags" in Czech. I sat around with him for a day before deciding on Gossamer, the delicately named big red hairy monster from Looney Tunes. He's a younger cat, definitely in his terrible twos. He's got a lot of energy but he has calmed down to snuggle since the weather got colder.

The woman who fostered him got him fixed and cleaned up and medicated after he had been on the street for an undetermined amount of time. When he was found at my neighborhood Tesco, he looked like he had just gotten sober so I knew we'd get along. She thinks he's a flame-point ragdoll because of his markings and serious floof and size. It's hard to imagine such a cat to be alone on the street. I'll never know his full story, but some people I've talked to actually don't think he was homeless and that perhaps he was abandoned, or a family moved and didn't take him. It makes me really sad to think about, but I'm happy I can give him a good life and all the little crinkled up paper he can handle.

Right now I'm writing this and Gossamer is playing with his new favorite toy, a condensed ball of his own hair. He's a little crosseyed and it makes me chuckle. He can't not look like that. Sometimes I ask him if he's a nerd and he has to look at me with his goofy expression. He's an amazing cat, a good companion. He likes stealing my glasses off of my face, headbutting me, and waiting outside my shower to get little drinks out of my drain.

One thing I'm going to try to do more in 2020 is travel because I'm a white woman in her 30s. It probably sounds ridiculous for a person living in Europe to say that, but it's true. Most of the travel I did this year was mostly little 18-24 hour trips for comedy, there and back in one night. These were mostly jaunts to Poland, and while I love Poland, I was technically at these places for work and wasn't taking the time really needing to relax or experience anything culturally significant. So I put down some money, something I hardly do because I'm...what's a good way to say this, thrifty as fuck, and I bought at ticket to Pearl Jam and the Pixies in Italy next summer.

After doing some research, it turned out the show at the Ferrari autodrome was the cheapest option because all of the tickets are general admission. The shows in Vienna, Budapest, even Krakow were more expensive and they didn't give me the option of exploring uncharted territory, so off to Bologna I'll go next July. I'm happy because I'll be doing some traveling just for me. Not for stand up or holiday obligations, but just for me. The concert is on a Sunday night so I'm debating about taking the whole week off and doing some exploring in the Balkans or something. I dunno, I have six months to figure it out but that doesn't mean I can't start the incessant, impulsive planning meant for late spring.

Now that I have some decent job security, I've been able to be more flexible with my appearance. I spent half the year platinum blonde and half the year bright pink. I got my hand tattooed and I put my septum piercing back in. I'm basically the person 23-year-old Liz wanted to be. I honestly don't notice myself looking that alternative except for when older Czech people stare me down with the same eyes that have witnessed multiple political revolutions. My look definitely isn't conducive to the semi-conservative atmosphere in Brno. In Prague or Vienna, I'm more anonymous, part of a seamless crowd. Now if I see people staring at me, I stare back at them because I'm no longer a shy, language-less foreigner.

So here's the official nonsense count for 2019:

Three notebooks/jokebooks

Six pairs of headphones

Two vaporizers

Three hair colors

Two bouts of serious depression

Six flights

One break from Facebook

Seven countries visited

Two new medications

Eight phone chargers

Five vet visits

Three books read

One minor heartbreak

Two refrigerators

Two new flavors of Skittles

One political demonstration

Zero hospital visits

Pretty good overall. The 2020 election will most likely decide where I'll be spending my time in 2021. But if I have to stay here, it's not the worst thing in the world. I'd actually prefer that. In terms of "resolutions," which aren't really resolutions but a romanticized list of things I'd like to accomplish once I get my shit together, there's only a few:

Write poetry more regularly

Pay more attention to gut instincts

Take some kind of Czech language course that isn't just Slavic memes

Continue good control of my blood sugar and a1C (6.3!)

This isn't too crazy of a list. I think I'm intentionally setting the bar low knowing I'm in a funk right now and I've yet to come completely out of it. I have the whole year to work on it once we stop hibernating.