I just wanted to let you all know that I have broken down and gotten a cell phone. I am sooooooo ashamed because I vowed that I would never carry one of those demonic devices. I just keep telling myself that it doesn’t count because I am out of the country. It will take a year to get a fixed phone installed in my apartment. It’s soooooo crazy. Renters cannot order the installation of a phone in an apartment, only the owner can. Once it’s ordered, if the owner doesn’t know someone in Romtelecom to bribe to push the order through, the work order will sit forever in limbo until god informs someone to install it. Since my direct line to god has always been busy, I decided to break one of my commandments and buy a cell. For those of you out there who suffered one of my very windy tirades against the use of cell phones…please have a good laugh. I am still calling and calling and leaving messages begging the owner to have a phone installed. That is if I can find him. He is out of the country . . . but I am sure he will turn up by the end of November for the rent payment. Blah blah blah . . . My number is 072 -366-1298, I am on Connex (if that means anything???). Please feel free to call me. Richard, since you can call for free from work…I am available at all hours for a chat. I am ten hours ahead of your time, but I am always open to early morning calls. I would love to talk and hear all about your new home. By the way, loved your quote in the article in Veta’s magazine. Some more welcome to Romania stories…winter (iarna) is coming. People are scurrying around like crazy cockroaches trying to buy as many vegetables as possible because they won’t be available during winter. Those that are will be very tiny (foarte mici) and very expensive (foarte scumpi). Therefore, everyone buys 40-60 kilos of vegetables and either cans or stores them in sand for the winter. I went over to a friend’s house and they were baking, peeling, draining, and freezing 40 kilos of eggplants. I helped, but by the fifth eggplant, my fingernails were black and my fingertips were blistered from the heat. Not only were they cooking the eggplants, but they had 30 kilos of cucumbers to pickle and 40 kilos of peppers to roast and can. They kept telling me to buy a crate and some sand to put in the basement of my block to store carrots and potatoes. I asked them if rats are attracted to these sandy storage bins and they confirmed my biggest fear. The basements of the blocks are full of rats in the winter because they come to eat the stored vegetables. .YUCK!!!!!!! FYI, did you know that you can store grapes in sand for the entire winter if you stick the stem in one of the raw potatoes??? The potatoes will keep them fresh and stop the grapes from rotting. If you believe that one…. Oh yeah, and drinking a glass of tuica (booze, but it’s natural and made from plums so it’s ok) in the morning kills the “germs” in your stomach. But don’t we need those “germs” to aid in digestion????? Needless to say, I will not be joining the crazed storing frenzy and will be avoiding basements at all costs. However, I will be stocking up on insecticides, and I am planning to plaster and plug every hole in my apartment. That is how I am preparing for winter. Speaking of rats, did I happen to mention the amount of pigeons here???? There’s an ungodly amount. When I go to work in the morning, I have to carry an umbrella to shield myself from the droppings. I leave at 6:45 and they are just waking up. The sound of their cooing, chirping and wing flapping is freaky enough to drive my shoulders over my head in fear. It sounds like the end of the world. I always think they are plotting some secret conspiracy to rendezvous at a certain tree and bomb the hell out of me with their shit. So, one step ahead, I try to avoid walking under all trees, and if I do have to pass under one, I run like the wind.I want to beat the people that leave bread for them in the piatas. From a distance the ground looks like bobbing grey stones when they’re all slumped over pecking for morsels of day-old bread. just thinking of it, makes me shudder and wave me balled up paws. I’d like to take those creepy bird feeders and scrape their faces on the pavements, of course only to scour away the dried up bird shit. Well I need to do some work now…see ya!!!! Vicki