UNEMPLOYED

Thursday, October 13th, 2005

I handed in my two-weeks notice today and will soon be joining the ranks of unemployed bums. Who’s with me?!

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CUTTING IT OFF

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005

I have made a decision. I’m cutting it off!
My hair has been with me as long as I can remember, and I’m not going to lie, I love it. It’s long, it’s curly, and against many people’s suggestions to experiment with my look, it has never been bleached, straightened, or colored. It is au-naturelle, and that’s the way I like it.
Nevertheless, the trip is coming and I have to consider our living conditions for the next year. Somehow I find it hard to believe that I will have the chance to wash my hair every day with hot water, shampoo and conditioner, in the Amazon jungle. Hell, the amounts of hair-mousse that I will need alone will take half of my backpack. No thank you.

And so, it’s coming off. Now, continuing with the tradition of “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, I have decided to donate my hair to “Wigs For Kids”, a company that accepts hair to make wigs for children who have lost hair due to chemotherapy.

( Pictures! )

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THE VERDICT IS IN

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005

Well dear friends, the verdict is in, and it seems I’m going to live. My morning visit to Dr.Goldsmith’s office looks to be my last one for a while, and I could not be happier!

Thanks to all who has been crossing their fingers for me!

Now the plan is truly in motion so we will “induce labor”, aka- buy tickets.

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THE GREAT APARTMENT HUNT 2

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005

Here we are, homeless again, back at the drawing board. Of course I’m exaggerating, because we are still staying in the Lenya & Masha’s house not being kicked out any time soon. In fact, the guys are convincing us to stay but we did already squat there for an entire month and feel a bit like a burden. Also, my mood is largely affected by me not knowing how my health is, and as well by the fact that this whole time of the year is filled with sad events (Sept. 29 is my parent’s wedding anniversary, Sept. 30 is the fourth anniversary of my father’s death, and Oct. 9 is my father’s birth date). Enough of the gloom. The hunt is in effect once again. This story is going to be shorter, however not without it’s own heart-risers.

It is the very last days of September and I finally find it! A $1100 “October only” listing with everything included. Awesome. I call, we go see it, and on that same day give the check to the current occupants of the apartment who have simply found something closer to work, but need to give a one month notice on this place, or potentially lose one month’s rent. We move in couple days later. And you’d think that the story could respectfully end here. Happy ending, la-di-da-di-da…

The very next morning, when Shurik went to work, and I decided to sleep in, I was awaken by three male voices definitely coming from the INSIDE of the apartment. “What is all this stuff?” one said, “I thought there was not supposed to be anybody here!”. Sleepy and in a daze I decided to let these people know that there is someone in the apartment before they go exploring and find my buck-naked ass under a tiny Wallmart sheet (as all of our stuff was very tightly packed in storage, we got some bare essentials in a discount store, only to throw or give away when we leave). “There is somebody here,” I said, “Who are you?” “The owner,” a booming voice answered. Before he had the chance to continue, I decided that this conversation is going to go better if all parties would be facing each other and have clothes on. “Stay in the living room! I’ll be right out.” It took me several minutes to realize the reason I could not see very clearly was because I didn’t have my glasses on, but I threw something on and came out to see what new “adventure” we stepped into this time.
( more… )

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THE GREAT APARTMENT HUNT

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005

As it was probably easy enough to understand from the previous entry, my medical condition has left us grounded. And although we were lucky enough to have great friends that let us abuse their hospitality, we decided that it would be best if for the month of October we moved to a place of our own. Thus, “the great apartment hunt” has begun. It was rather short, as we left the decision of moving to the very end, but EXTREEMLY eventful.
( more… )

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UNFORESEEN EVENTS

Monday, October 10th, 2005

With the house taken care of now, our plan was to stay with our friends Masha and Leo for the month of September, during which we would deal with any unfinished business. However, just as we were elbow deep in packing, our “adventure” before THE adventure decided to take place. You see, while most of our immunizations were given to us by the Travel Clinic, where you are sent to by our doctor the second you mention the sort of trip we were about to take. However, as it turned out, some of the more common shots like Hepatitis A, B, and TD, can be given to you in your own doctor’s office. Now, I am not a big believer in regular checkups, but when I heard that I would have to go to the doctor’s office anyway, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get myself a full physical. The check-up happened right before we signed the contract regarding the house, so the call about my results could not have came in a more hectic and stressful moment. “We found some abnormal cells,” she said, and then was quick to add, as my medical history was probably right in front of her as well, “It is not cancer” (my father passed away four years ago from gastric cancer). “Yet”.

The next couple of weeks passed by with one specialist appointment after another. I had a biopsy that confirmed that I do indeed have certain pre-cancerous cells present, but I was assured that my condition is 100% treatable. I had to undergo a minor operation and now await my Oct. 12th checkup to hear that all is well, and by the end of the month we would be free and safe to leave the country. Exciting.

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STUFF

Monday, October 10th, 2005

To tell you the truth I never imagined that by 23 I would accumulate so much ACTUAL baggage. Those who know my history know that I am a second time immigrant (Ukraine-Israel-USA). And even after my second immigration, in the short period of time I lived in this country (5 years), I have also managed to change states (NY to MA). Needless to say, the process of logging my life possessions around is not new to me. Nevertheless, stuff accumulates, and the fact that we got married only a year ago does not help the situation. We got many great presents, and now we just need to put them somewhere…. :)

Finding a place to store our belongings was a simple process of shopping around through online yellow pages. In a fairly short time we found a self-storage unit in Uncle Bob’s — $100 a month for a 10×10 very tall space. It’s in Salem, so it’s a little bit out of the way, but unlike other self-storage facilities we’ve found in this price range, this place was temperature and humidity controlled. The big items like the furniture we just bought for the living-dining area went to our good friends’ basement, and we sold our bedroom set to some Russian guy who came to MIT as a postdoc with his family.

Now we had the place to store everything. However, getting our things there was a different story… We found our tenants on Aug 20-something; add few day to sort out some lease details, and we had about a week to pack. In addition to that my 10-year old sister was visiting us for part of this time. Finally, Boston area is an absolute madhouse in the end of August as all the students are moving in. U-Hauls are booked months in advance, and even if you get lucky and do find one, you’d get to rent it only for half a day. We ended up using 4 different trucks during the move: cargo van from U-Save, a bigger truck from Uncle Bob’s that give for free half-a-day rental with move-in, half-a-day from U-Haul, and finally we borrowed our friend Misha’s pickup to pickup the slack.

The good thing about this move is that it has turned out to be the best cleaning ever! The amount of garbage that we threw out probably amounted to third of the stuff we put in storage. We also decided to donate a HUGE amount of stuff to Goodwill. I say HUGE not to sound all giving and righteous, believe me; it’s just that this move made us realize the amount of stuff we have and don’t need. In a different kind of move, we would have just thrown together a big box labeled “Stuff I don’t know what to do with” and promised ourselves to sort it out later which would’ve never happened. But with out space, trucks, and manpower constraints, we decided that the less, the merrier. So, we ended up with 4 rooms of furniture and boxes, several different places things had to go, and 4 trucks over two days. Of course we would’ve never made it without the gracious help of our friends. caperbush helped us pack and provided much needed moral support. And Leo, edashevs, and igorlord lent a muscle to move the furniture.

And of course, what would a real move be without a minor injury! On one of the moving days, well past midnight, we loaded the truck-of-moment with a couple of bookcases that we were giving to caperbush (there’s nothing worse than storing books in big piles on the floor, right?) Like in all these big trucks, there where only two seats in the front and there where 3 of us. Shurik was driving, so Katya and me decided I would sit on her lap during the drive. Shurik and Katya got in, and it was my turn to climb up. I set on Katya’s lap supporting myself by holding on to the roof of the truck, got my leg out of the door’s way and said: “It’s OK Kat’ka, you can now close the door.” As those words left my mouth I realized that I probably should get my hand out of the way first, but it was too late. Katya was already closing the heavy truck door. We all heard the cracking noise, and I felt something burning under my knuckles. Luckily, my hand was not broken just bruised. I carefully started moving my hand and fingers right away and in a few days the pain was gone.

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Warning traveling homeowners!

Saturday, October 8th, 2005

Before you go away for as long as we plan, it is in your best interest to find your home… well… a good home. :) To our surprise, renting our house proved to be a challenge. And this here is a very useful note for anybody looking in to renting out their place in the Boston area.

We have a four story (don’t get excited — it’s very narrow but tall and the first floor is only the laundry/utility room), three bedroom, two bathroom, newly renovated kitchen, and balcony, townhouse in Cambridge. Within a short drive or walk to both MIT and Harvard, it seems this would be the perfect rental for a visiting professor with a family, or some grad students.

So for your amusement and amazement, here are the facts:
In May ‘05 I have contacted ten (yes 10), realty companies and gave them all the exact same information about the house. Three month later, maybe one of these companies has brought half a customer. In other words, I don’t know how these people stay in business, because they just were not bringing clients by. We were patient, but when August rolled around, we started to get worried. Once again, I did the research and phoned the rest of the offices that met our criteria (brokers who also do property management). And once again I gave these new seven the same exact info. Among these was a company that at a first glance did not differ from all the others. Jacob Realty. Like everybody, they sent out a broker who did the exact same thing her predecessors did — took some pictures, and assured me that potential renters will be brought in by the boat load as soon as the next day. As usual, I smiled politely, and she went on her way. Now what happened next, was a complete surprise: Clients did start showing up the very next day, every day! As for the remaining 16, we’ve heard from them maybe once or twice and the total number of people that they all brought was maybe five, if not less. With these statistics, it was not really a surprise that the people who ended up renting from us, where brought in by Jacob.

So here it is for you. An unsolicited recommendation for Jacob Realty (also dba NextGen, BostonPads, CambridgePads, BackbayPads, etc). They have really done a great job!

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Aichmophobia

Saturday, October 8th, 2005

Seriously, I did not even think how much work preparing for a trip like this requires. The immunizations alone are enough to scare anyone away. For those of you who are interested, both Shurik and I had over 10 shots each. Total cost: over $3,300 for both of us.

And it is not enough that the shots themselves are not too pleasant, some of them really burn going in, but after you should be fine. However, as usual, I am the “lucky” one. The after-the-shot side effects blew by Shurik with just minor discomfort; whereas I had everything from flew-like symptoms, to my arm swelling up looking like I had a baseball implanted under my skin (lasted more then a week). Have to admit though; I quite enjoyed freaking people out with it.

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IT WAS ALL HIS FAULT!

Friday, October 7th, 2005

To be completely honest, and I hate to admit it, it’s all his fault. Many of you who know me and Shurik probably would not even stop to ponder whose, between the two of us, it was the idea to drop everything and set off to lands unknown to discover whatever.

The way it actually went is that in one of these not-doing-anything-in-particular moments, I asked Shurik what is it that he sees himself doing next. I was not really asking for a five-year plan, but more of what are the dreams of an almost thirty year old individual who at this point in his life pretty much has everything (as much as “everything” is defined by the “American dream”). “I always thought it would be cool to travel the world for a year or so,” he said… I am not sure what came after these words because I immediately went in to a state of blissful daydream filled with backpacks, wildlife, aborigines, and adventure.

Thus a plan was born. I have to say though it was not an easy labor… You see, at the time of the conception I still had one more semester to do in college, and there was also some stock that Shurik wanted to vest or some such, before we went anywhere, so it was pretty clear that we would not go anywhere till September ‘05. In the meantime, this “baby” of ours was developing in both our minds and as any expecting parents we both had doubts and expectations. We also did all the necessary research. Read books, consulted with doctors, and acquired all the much-needed equipment. I will not lie… Some of us at different points have thrown our hands up in despair and wanted to abort, but those where just moments of weakness and after a second look the plan was in motion once again.

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