The Slavic Presence.

As the constable in the British mini-series "Sleepers" said, "It's been a real Russian week 'round 'ere one way or the other." Last Monday I spoke Russian for the first time in two months. My goodness it was bad. The pacing of proper Russian conversation goes at much more of a clip than casual English. Piecing words and phrases together and making sure that they're grammatically correct must be agonizing to have to listen to. I know a few people here get impatient with people, particularly Indians or Somalis, who can't speak clear or fluent English. I hear that the case is similar in Russia. As Ricky Nelson's character said in "Rio Bravo", "Well, looks like the shoe is on the other foot now."

The crazy thing though, is that over the course of this weekend, I had three seperate occasions where I met people who were immigrants from the former Soviet Union. While at work on Saturday I met a girl who was from Latvia and was studying at the U. Again, I garbled through my Russian, which, to my:00 AMazement, she understood. That evening at a club downtown (which is another story in and of itself and can be quickly summarized with, "well at least I didn't spend any money") I met a guy who was born in Kiev and left the Ukraine when he was six. THEN I was at work yesterday and met a young couple (who had an adorable little daughter) who were from Siberia. It was pretty crazy. One of my co-workers suggested that the cold weather must bring them out of the woodwork. Good point.

The Minnesota electoral campaigns are heating up and it's looking like I'll be casting my first vote in my life, having turned down the priviledge of submitting an absentee ballot in 2004 or voting in the Canadian general election this spring. Perhaps fittingly, I'll probably only being voting for the state elections and my attention, at least at the moment, seems to be focused on the gubernatorial race. At this point in time, my candidate of choice is Hutchinson the Independant candidate. I feel good about this because voting for Pawlenty would go against my political tendancies, but I'm not a Hatch fan either and I don't want to vote for the sake of voting someone out. So I guess you could say that, as of today I'm putting my support behind Peter Hutchinson. I could give another big spiel on my thoughts on electoral philosophy, but in the interests of time I'll refer you back to the treatise I wrote two years ago. You can read the comments if you like, but I don't think they add anything useful to the conversation and, to be honest, I wish I had deleted them.

I had my 90 day review at work this week. It was the first time I'd ever been reviewed by an employer. To sum up, I:00 AM not perfect, but it was a positive experience.

Odd story that I should have blogged two weeks ago:

I was idling at a stop light on 38th and Portland in my truck when another truck pulled up next to me and the driver started yelling at me,