Things that I've contemplated but can't justfiy making a whole post about

1. Pigtails are great.

In some circles, I am known for having super long, thick hair. I started growing my hair out in elementary school and by the time I hit middle school, I had hair down to the middle of my back, near my waist. My hair is also thick and heavy (even more so back then, before I got it layered), and consequently, it always fell flat and tangled when I tried to wear it down. So I never did. Most of the time, I braided my hair to keep it out of my eyes and whipped people with the Pigtails of Pain. This lasted until high school when, too eager to grow up and seem cool, I stopped braiding my hair. I started using hair clips (the huuuuuge ones) and pony tailed it a lot of the time. And then right before I went to college, I chopped it all off. Well...not all off. But it was shorter than I had ever had it, and ever since, it's been in some kind of layered, banged state about 4 inches past my shoulders. It's long enough to put up but also not a hassle when I leave it down.

Except.

When I want to wear a hat in the heat. Because my hair covers the back of my neck and there's too much of it to put inside my floppy hat. The solution? Low pigtails. Not appropriate for work, but I don't wear a hat to work anyways.

2. Don't bother me; it's coffee time!

I drink coffee occasionally, though at school I usually try to rely on sleep (HAH!) and fruit to get me awake in the mornings. Since getting here however, I have indulged quite a bit more just so that I can open my eyes in the morning, especially on Monday mornings and days when we hung out with Dionysis. There's a coffee shop right across the street from work (it's a tiny street), and I went so often that I had a "regular". And when I took the bus instead of the trolleys in the morning, I would more often than not stop by McDonalds which has 1 Euro any-kind-of-coffee-you-like. The Greeks take their coffee very seriously; there's a special Greek coffee where the grounds are actually left in your cup, resulting in a very strong cup of very concentrated coffee. Also, their iced cappuccinos have the cream on top so you have to mix it in yourself, which is quite enjoyable. :D And, Greek sugar is much sweeter than sugar in the US. Watch out for it.

All that being said, I have finally broken the vicious cycle of delicious frappes and cappuccinos that have been keeping me awake at work because I finally got a nice block of sleep since we stayed in Athens this weekend.

3. Greece is like China

There's a similar energy here, which you might not expect because you'd think all Chinese people were very intense due to the number of intense Chinese high school students trying to get into the Ivy League, but the day to day life is remarkably similar. Besides the fact that the non-marble sidewalks are paved the same way as those in China, people also hang their laundry on their balconies unconcerned that others are seeing their undies, they smoke everywhere (although Greeks tend to chain smoke more, I think), and they sell fried goods on the sidewalks. Man, I could really use a 油条 right now.

4. Greece is like LA

The coloring is similar to downtown; a lot of gray dotted with green and the chaparral around the city remind me of the hills of Sylmar. The climate is also very similar, dry with the sun beating down on you like an overbearing football coach. And the Metro system is also very similar. Although there are the addition of trams and the train system is much cleaner, I feel like I am living in LA sometimes, especially with the number of sunglasses going around.

5. The taxi system

To get a taxi, one must wave it down. Sounds simple enough, right? Except when not all taxi drivers know where you're going. So they roll down the window, ask you, and yay or nay you. This could get quite annoying if you were trying to get somewhere fast (like I was, to the long-distance bus terminal). Also, they charge extra fees for taking you to the airport or the bus terminal. However, if you saw a taxi with someone in it, you could also try to wave them down, because if they're going the same direction, they might just take you along for the ride. How to split the cost then? They don't. Two passengers, two meters.

6. The bus system

The bus and metro system work like this. You buy a little ticket (it's actually little, just a stub of paper), validate it when you get on the bus, and 90% of the time, no one checks. You can just get on any door on the bus and ride the bus or metro anywhere. The only time you get screwed is when they catch you without a ticket. Then you pay 60x the amount a ticket usually costs (1E). Although this is not the most profitable system, they do catch everyone when they do because they stand on the train and when you try to exit, they ask for your ticket. Much better than walking through the train checking everyone's ticket.

Luckily for me, I have a monthly pass so I don't have to worry about it.

7. Stuffed peppers

A food I had never eaten before coming to Greece. Is it a Grecian specialty, you ask? I don't know but our apartment makes some delicious stuffed peppers. Take some ground turkey. Add chopped veggies of your choice (usually bell peppers and spinach for us), lots of spices (salt, pepper, chili flakes, cumin, curry powder, and whatever else is tasty), and some rice. Stir it all together. Bake a pepper, stuff it with the stuffing and bake it some more. Our first batch definitely came out better than the second. Yay suite bonding. Nom.

8. Smoothies

We ordered smoothies the other day at work and maaaaan were they good. The first time I got one from there (it started with a Z...) I got the "Slim Down" smoothie that had a lot of mango goodness in it. I sucked it down in about 5 minutes. This time, I got a "Stress Relief" smoothie that had banana and mango it in, amongst other things (like an antioxidant boost) and again, down within 5 minutes. I know I should savor them but they're just so delicious, and live up to their name, smooth as satin. I would venture to say that they're better than Jamba Juice smoothies and I'm on the Jamba Juice email list.

Speaking of smoothies...

9. Fruit

One of the things I miss terribly here is fruit. It's not that there is no fruit but that it's very hard to stock up when all the fruit is just ripe and you don't know if you're going to be here on weekends and you can't carry it all back. Also, I'm not sure about the prices because they sell by the kilo here so I can't convert prices very well and I'm never quite sure if I'm being ripped off so I tend not to buy fruit as much. I really miss having a house full of fruit and not having to worry about having any one fruit to eat. Which is why I was so happy about getting the smoothie I guess. Nom...fruit.

10. Make the best of what you've got. And by this I mean, stick with your crappy computer when it keeps crashing because you ain't got nothing else. [I'm talking to you, PC.] 

Today was a great day at work. I don't talk about work a lot because there's really not a lot to talk about. I'm usually banging my head at the fact that though it does many amazing things, iMovie can't do a lot of the things I need to do to make a "fun and fresh" organization profile. The footage I have is not that great, qualitywise, as a lot of it was taken in the mid-90s with a handheld camera. Even the footage I took was that not that great because there were no lighting considerations and some of it I was trying to get rather surreptitiously. Also, a lot of the music I'm using comes from Garageband because I have nothing to record with so I'm trying to make it sound less Garageband-like, yet...

That all being said, I finally finished enough to get what I've got into After Effects, and after I relearned how to use it, made me extremely happy. Making paths and making things look pretty I like. It's really like Photoshop for video and I love playing around with Photoshop. Still, along with everything else, the computers at the office are not that great and keep crashing [kinda like the ones at Montecito...hmmm...] so I've also relearned to save every time I do something. I got spoiled because iMovie doesn't need to save, but PCs....Then, when I moved to another computer, the computer stayed on, but the program kept crashing, so again, save with every action. But I got a lot done which means a lot of endorphins flowing through my veins tonight. 

~~

I'll end with a joke that was told to me today at work while my computer was constantly crashing.

Jesus and the Devil were having a programming contest to see who could write code the fastest. Jesus, in all his serene glory, typed rather leisurely, while the Devil pounded away furiously. 3000 lines later, the power goes out and all the Devil's work is lost. He howls and curses until the power comes back on and resumes his assault. Meanwhile, Jesus is still leisurely tapping away. 5000 lines later, the power fails again. The Devil blows up, screaming and fireballing all over the place. Finally the power comes back on and the Devil is back, trying to make up for lost time. A couple minutes later, Jesus proclaims himself done. 

"How the hell could you be done?" asks the Devil, "The power failed twice!"

Smiling his Jesus smile, "Jesus saves."