What Winter?

            Is it winter? I can’t tell from all the sun and melting snow. It’s beginning to look a lot like spring…but maybe I should hold my tongue I don’t want to jinx myself. Especially since this welcome change in the weather is coming in the same week in which last year I was experiencing the coldest days I had ever been through in my life. Coincidentally while Mr. Groundhog sentenced us to more winter last year he was kind enough to give us a reprieve this year and his prediction has proved accurate for Moldova both times. Perhaps he is channeling European weather spirits when he is making his decision. In either case all the sunlight is great for putting everyone in a great mood after all the short gloomy winter days we have been having for the past few months.

            Aside from the weather, the only other excitement in my life has been focused on finally receiving my leave date. My last day in Moldova is now unofficially set as July 18^th. I say unofficially because while there was a lottery in which everyone was given a leave date, the days that we were given are not finalized until our COS (Close of Service) conference in April. Which gives everyone some time to trade their date around if they so choose. Now that I got that out of the way the only other thing I am waiting for now is a job offer. If you have any lying around feel free to toss one in my direction.

            Finally, my laptop is starting to show its age a little bit, which is understandable since I bought it used and it is now at least 6 years old. Recently, the ‘s’ key has been giving me trouble so every time I wanted an ‘s’ I had to massage the ‘s’ key until it felt like recognizing the attention I was giving it. At first it was only a simple annoyance but over time it took longer and longer of holding down the key to get a response until finally the cap of the key broke in two from all the stress I was putting it through. For a while this was actually a good thing because the ‘s’ key seemed to be a lot more sensitive without the cap in place but over a period of time it start to lose sensitivity until I was back to doing the same thing I had been doing before. Luckily, I am a master of computers so I simply changed the keyboard layout to make my ‘z’ key the ‘s’ key. After years of hammering into my brain where all the letters are on the keyboard I was expecting this simple move to overload my brain and make me incapable of typing without careful thought. However, funnily enough my brain has no problem substituting the ‘z’ key for the ‘s’ key, but for some unknown reason I can never find the ‘x’ key without consciously thinking about it and staring at my keyboard. It’s best not to question it.