17 Days and Counting…..and Stinking

WARNING-You all may want to hold your breath while reading the following blog. Just for the record, it is both bad luck and bad form to plan your weekly shower for the exact day your water pipes freeze for 9+ days. That’s right, I took a shower on the 30th of December and was planning on the 6th. Well the winter blizzard hit that days, all of Azerbaijan froze-streets, pipes (Tom had a pipe and 2 faucets burst), doors, ice, everything. We got a total of about 1.5 feet of snow, but it has been butt cold every day until yesterday. I think we got into the 40’s with sun and things started to melt, but not my pipes. I’m heading to Baku on the Wednesday night train for meetings and will have a hotel room Thursday, so I’ll be taking a shower as soon as possible when I get there-20 days on stinkitude later. Just for the record, I’ve worn the same clothes all day every day once I realized I wasn’t getting clean any time soon and didn’t want to contaminate any other clothes and also, the 16th day really took a turn for the worse. I had a few friends give me a “smell test” and said I was fine, but I know yesterday I started to emit a mild and moldy stench.
Let’s see, what else is really going on….oh wait, NOTHING! That’s not really true, but the entire country seemed to be shut down last week and everything went in slow motion so as not to fall on the ice. I have my PC grants committee meeting this Friday, Ram and I are meeting with one or two organizations in Baku about our medical supplies project-this could be the make or break week for that so think happy thoughts please, I went to cut Nene’s wood yesterday and found out two 22 year old soldiers will be crashing at her place for three months, so hopefully she’ll be a little less bored. I’ve been working on making a “How To” manual for our boys camps to give future groups of PCVs, and that’s about it. I’ve been reading about two books a week so far over the winter, so I’m glad about that. I watched “No Country For Old Men” the other night. If any of you have seen it, shoot me an email to discuss-I kinda get it, but I don’t. Joyce, my site mate, has been keeping me up to date on the primaries and such-should be an interesting year of politics in America it seems. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad I’ll miss most of it. All Azeris have read Jack London books for some reason, so I finally read a couple and really liked them. Ok, that’s about all I’ve got. I’m going to go buy a bunch of car pine tree air fresheners and rub them all over my body and clothes…