Independence/Coronation Day Weekend (LT update 5)

This weekend has been essentially a four-day weekend. This is actually harder to explain than you would think.

Friday was obviously July 4th. That's easy to explain. The Embassy had the day off, except for the huge event that we had at the Ambassador's house in the suburbs, where everybody and their brother was invited, so long as they had some red-white-and-blue in 'em.

Yesterday was Coronation Day, the day that the legendary King Mindaugas was crowned, ushering in an era of prosperity for Lithuania. Anyways, today's Lithuanians don't consider it a holiday unless they get to miss work, so today is also a holiday. Apparently though, the way these things work around here is that if you miss a work day at during the regular week, you come in on Saturday. The Embassy doesn't really observe this policy, though, so they all just end up taking lots of days off.

Oh, and also, on Thursday night, the American Chamber of Commerce hosted an event with free food and whatnot. All Americans or American sympathizers in Lithuania were invited. For those of you who don't know, the American Chamber of Commerce promotes American investment in Lithuania. Thus, the sponsors included McDonalds, Kraft, Mars, Scotch-Brite, etc. All companies that already have investments here. Fucking Scotch-Brite had a dude in a sponge costume walking around. Given that I'm kind of laying off the booze after getting a little too spirited last weekend, I was upset that I wouldn't let myself be plastered enough to tackle the shit out of that mascot. As I may or may not have said on the blog already, it's one of my lifelong dreams to get in a fight with a mascot. Preferably the smelly piece of shit Philly Phanatic. Bravo, Tommy LaSorda, for body-slamming it into the turf. Also, kudos to you, Fernando Vina, you mediocre son of a bitch.

Let's also not forget the Expos' Youppi!, whatever the fuck that thing is supposed to be.

What the hell was I talking about?

Oh right.

Anyways, Thursday was pretty chill, I ate a lot of food and ended up staying almost until dark. Some Obama supporter was trying to convince me that if I were to vote purely on economics, I should vote for Obama. I was/am having none of that talk. He seemed to suffer from some pretty fallacious reasoning, thinking that the Iraq War was the only expense facing the United States. Also, he was all giddy about Obama raising taxes. Who the fuck wants raised taxes? And he forgot to mention that Obama wants to raise taxes just for rich people and big corporations. Furthermore, Obama wants to pay for everyone to go to college and create universal health care, both of which are hugely expensive in their own right. I could have slammed him with so many different hammers, shovels, and pickaxes of fallacy, but I declined. I'm not even in America right now, I don't want to talk about American politics.

Friday was the gala at the Ambassador's house. I was in charge of taking pictures, which I did for a while, but then bailed in favor of free food. Of course, the Marines started making fun of me for always being in the free food line. I can't blame them, really, since every time I walk into work, past the guard post, I have food with me. And let's face it, I'm a fat kid. More on that later.

Highlights of the July 4th event include getting pictures with not one, but two former presidents of Lithuania. This was my goal from the very moment I knew I was going to be working at this event. Actually, what I really wanted was a picture with the current president, but he was a last-minute scratch from the event. Anyways, I ran my idea past Niblet, an embassy employee with good contacts within the Lithuanian government. She agreed that we should totally get pictures taken with these guys. Eventually, she sought out a contact she had in the Presidential Office, who got us the "in" with Algirdas Brazauskas, who was sitting on the patio with some very ancient guy. He was more than happy to give us a picture. Incidentally, Brazauskas is built like a house -- not obese, but it looks in a Brazauskas-vs-trolleybus fight, I would give 7:1 odds in favor of the former president.

Next up was Landsbergis, who is a quite a small guy. This picture, which I will eventually post, is hilarious for two reasons. One, Niblet is quite tall (taller than I am) and so Landsbergis is standing there, bracketed by two people who are much taller than him. Two, he was eating an ice cream cone at the time. So here's this little old guy, giving the "who are these people?" look to the camera, holding a little pink ice cream cone. Simply hilarious. I should be able to post it at some point this week.

The rest of the party was fairly uneventful. I ate a little less than a dozen chocolate chip cookies.

Yesterday afternoon/evening was taken up by a get-together at the house of one of the Embassy employees. TheFulbrighter and Niblet were both in attendance, along with some other assorted Embassy folks. Judith, one of the residents there, prepared some most excellent burgers, and as such, I ate four of them in addition to a hot dog and three brownies. Nothing notable happened really, though it was a nice evening for all involved.

Moral of the story? I have absolutely no desire to eat breakfast today, and it looks like I'll have to stick to rice, pasta, and yogurt for the next week or so. Woof.