Snickers Is Good For More Than Hunger!

It's been a rather tough week despite only having been 4 days of work. Among the highlights was a malfunctioning stoplight between me and where I catch the marshrutka. It's on the main road and for some reason it started changing from red to green roughly every 3 seconds. So it was a situation where cars kept slowing on approach because it was red and then flooring it because it was turning green.

For cars it must have been frustrating, but for pedestrians it was downright terrifying. That light doesn't give us a very long time to cross when it's working and drivers here hit the accelerator when the light starts to turn green (it flashes red and yellow at the same time just before it changes so they know when it's coming) regardless of whether anyone is still in the crosswalk.

It probably would have been comical if it hadn't also been deadly. Now I know how Frogger feels. Fortunately, after a couple of days, someone noticed the problem and fixed it.

The other big problem this week has been that our internet service has been on the fritz. We've had to have the technicians come out at least three times in the last week. It's been a huge problem considering that Stephanie requires internet access in order to work. So far, they've been able to fix it each time. But today was really something. Eventually they determined that we needed to buy a new modem. This was particularly vexing because we only have a few months left here and probably won't need a dial-up to ethernet modem ever again. Of course, we need it for the next few months, so we had to go for it.

Today was not the best day at work either. I had to let one of my employees go, which is never easy. This was someone that I really liked, but rules are rules. It was just a crappy way to end the week.

So, finding ourselves at the end of a not-so-nice week, Stephanie and I shook off our frustrations by trying a new type of Snickers bar and opening a bottle of wine. The new Snickers has almonds, hazelnuts, and peanuts, and it's incredibly delicious. I can definitely say that it made up for some of the bad parts this week. Here's to a better weekend...