A Personal Blog

slova = word

yezik = language/tongue

rooski = Russian

angle-inski = English

zalstra = tomorrow

sputnik = satellite!

Moosar = garbage

Meeyasa = meat (try not to mix up with garbage)

ootra = morning

dien = day

krasnay = red

vecher = evening

noche = night

snieg = snow

chetayoo = I read

shetayoo = I count

gavaryoo = I speak

horrowshow = good/well

plo-ha = bad

loobloo = love

ya n-ye znayoo pa rooski = I don’t know Russian!

Well, if you did not know, I am currently located about 6000 miles from you, give or take.  Thats 10,000 kilometers.  The other side of the world.  Chernigov, Ukraine.  Never been to another continent before.  Its different, and the differences are fascinating to me.  Soo much of it is just perception, but to me it feels like a very unique culture.  Or perhaps an interesting combinations of culture.  Small cultural things seem to come from every direction, north, south, east, and west influences combined into something completely of their own.  And its old! Influences can be traced not only from direction, but also era.  And not that I have met nearly enough people to say that this accounts for all of them, but I feel like the people I am with have a profound respect for living, and that in itself if exhilarating.  With all that said, no matter how different and foreign a place might seem, the some things are the same, and that is great as well.

The trip here was interesting.  I forgot to sleep before leaving, and I left my house at 1:30 in the morning.  Had plenty of time at the airport, no rush there, but as soon as I got on the first plane, there were problems (typical, I think I have an average of 1 in 3 of my flights and arrival getting messed up at this point).  The weather was really cold (teens in Fahrenheit), and I think that was probably complicating things, apparently they were having problems with a computer controller of the engines.  Back to the jet way we went…. computer got reset.  In the plane I was swearing to myself, as I only had a 40 minute layover at the next airport, and that time was quickly being eroded away.  If I missed the next flight, it was almost a guarantee that I would not make the international flight, and would like be spending a night at an airport.  Figure a 20 hour trip turned into a 36 hour trip- ugh.  However, fortunately, I hit the ground running and just barely made my next flight, the last person on the plane.  And, on that flight, I swear to god, Paul Giamatti, the actor, was sitting just a row behind me with his family.  I wasn’t sure if it was him on the plane, and even if it was, I didn’t want to be an asshole fan-like person.  But I looked up some stuff online after, and it was totally him and his family!  Hehehe, I thought it was cool, I really like “Lady in the Water”, even though everyone else hates it. 

From there, I didn’t spend much time in the next airport either, and then it was only 10 hours straight on  one more plane.  Ugh…..  stretched on forever.  I didn’t feel like I slept on the plane very much, if at all, but… somehow I can remember very little of the flight… When I was conscious on the plane, I had Luda to keep me company, my seat mate.  I must admit, she was awesome!  She was older lady that did not speak a lick of English, but she smiled a lot, and was really nice.  And I was able to help her when the stewardess came around with food and coffee and stuff!  Hehehe, I only know so many words, but it was awesome being useful. 

Soon enough I made it.  Off the plane and into Oksana’s arms.  Sigh… so nice .  At this point though, the only sleep I have had is bad sleep on the plane over a 38 hour period, and my clock is all kinds of messed up.  Even now, 2 days later, I desperately want to sleep at around 6 or 7 pm local time (10 am back home, which makes no sense at all to me….), and even after pushing it to 10 pm to sleep, I wake up at 5 am and can’t sleep at all after that.  I am trying really hard to force my internal clock, but circadian rhythms are a function of the body that I now realize are far beyond my control.  It’s a little frustrating…. but oh well.

I love all the food, but there is sooo much!  Many different flavors on the table, lots of wholesome food, lots of meat, it’s awesome!  Celebration.  And I must confess, I really liked having the first dinner with Oksana’s family, laughing, talking (sorta), and drinking local honey vodka!  It was awesome. 

Well, what else… Its cold, but not real bad.  Colder than Oregon.  The weather… overcast, feels like Oregon… maybe a little flatter though.  I walked on a frozen river yesterday!  Never done that before.  Well, now that I woke up and emptied my mind in the early morning, I’m starting to feel that maybe I do have a bit more sleep in me.  Just gotta keep the clock changing.

Its been a little while since that last post. I guess i am already getting to that point where i gotta push through if I wanna keep this blog thing up. ehhh, but i got nothing prepared right this second. week has been blah, nothing too important. Not enough work towards goals! Maybe a few new russian words… However, one cool thing was creating and posting the following videos on youtube. Both videos pretty recent, motorcycles was end of November, sled was earlier this week. Me and my brother

Yay snow! It snowed Friday night, stuck through Saturday, and is still on the ground as of now, Sunday night. I feel kind of sad, because I really don’t feel the same fascination with it from when I was kid. Its exciting, but its also cold, wet, and slippery. When I was a kid it was like a whole different world out there after it snowed. Every familiar place needed to be re-explored in response to the snow. These days… I just think brrrrrrrr. What a wuss. Ah well, at least its beautiful, as well as an excellent excuse to light the wood stove, which I also love.

Current weather restricts the star gazing, and I don’t really want to go out when its not coming down, because its freezing! Seriously, It’s not that I couldn’t go out, its just that I don’t really want to. So just trying to keep up on Stellarium, as the winter sky slowly changes. I’m still very much looking forward to observing Saturn, should be right around the corner.

So, I have a few things to note towards achieving some of my other goals. Something I have failed to mention previously is that I have had an ongoing, albeit small, effort towards learning Russian. I like the idea of simply broadening my horizons with this project. I purchased several beginners language books, including Russian several years ago. It’s nice to finally actually be going through one of the books. I am also fortunate, and grateful, to have an extra resource in this matter from a special friend .

Previously, I had found an introductory free audio course in Russian on Itunes called A spoonful of Russian. While definitely qualifying as introductory, it was very helpful in presenting various aspects of Russian speech as well as information on Russian culture. The author is of Russian origin, and quite friendly. However, even though I found the program interesting, it is also simplistic. Very recently I came across another free audio course at www.book2.de. The audio recordings are much more traditional, and not nearly as personal, but they were just the kind of thing I needed to increase my vocabulary beyond saying hello and thank you. I really haven’t gotten that far with this goal, but I would really like to persevere, just a little bit here and a little bit there. It was such a rush when I learned how to read the Cyrillic alphabet, even if I didn’t understand the words. I am really looking forward to hearing simple conversation and being able to understand what is being talked about.

Also, I have been thinking about making that cameesa t-shirt design. I’m really not much of an artist, but that’s just more motivation to flex my unused artistic muscle. All I have to do is come up with something simple, using a minimum of colors, and make it appealing to the eye. I’m not sure where the actual idea will come from, but I’m sure something will find me. Something I have realized over the years, is that I often tend to have friends that are far more creatively inclined than me. Always drawing, writing, singing, dreaming, and being creative. Its funny, but it seams like many of the most important people I have met in my life seem to have this creative penchant, whereas I feel relatively uninspired. Funny thing, dunno what to make of that. Anyway, point being, I think I will have to consult with some of these friends if I want to get anywhere in this matter.

I also keep telling myself to go make white wings! But I keep not getting to it. It’s not like I have a busy life right now, but no time for making paper airplanes? It’s a sin! Things happen though, work continues on the addition to the homestead, here and there. Other things come up, daily boring life things I guess. Well, not all boring ))).

Scott, one of those creative people I was talking about earlier, has invited me to his work’s Christmas party in Seattle. I’m psyched!!! Not everybody gets to go to a SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) Christmas celebration! And I’m not even a huge video game nerd! Only a medium sized nerd. Makes me feel like a pretty lucky bastard. Thank you Scott. Word!

So… I have been playing far too much Fallout 3.  I’m not really complaining, generally i have a hard time keeping interest in one game long enough to get very far in it.  Fallout is just soooo good.  Mixture of interesting subject matter (to me), and good gameplay.  It is just a very immersive game, it makes the hours disappear very quickly….

The game presents goals as a series of quests.  Some are vital to the main story line, and must be completed to finish the game, but many more present other interesting but unrequired goals with challenges and rewards.  In general they can be completed in any order, and one can be stopped midway while another is finished.  This presentation is very simple and unintimidating, even though the actual objectives can be very complex.

I have decided that this presentation might be an interesting new way for me to look at life.  I’m always having random ideas for interesting things to do, but my follow through sucks.  Yeah, i lived in the Caribbean for a year, and yeah i have some college under my belt; but there are many other things i would like to do, instead of just thinking about, and many of them aren’t very big, they just need to be remembered for more than 5 minutes.

So i wrote them down, and now I am going to present them to you.  Some of these might take a lifetime to get to and finish, others a day or less, but they all seem to reverberate in my head.  I might mention that putting up this blog is related to one of them, though I don’t expect any profit here.  Nonetheless a step in the right direction as far as experience with presenting a website goes.  Finally, i must add, some of this stuff might not happen at all, no matter how many times i look at the list.  Fine with me, better than just forgetting about it after daydreaming in the car.

Skylar’s quest list of interesting things to do:

• Bake bread from scratch
• Create beer/wine/liquor from scratch
• Backpack camping: hike in, hike out.  Long run, P(acific)C(rest)T(rail)
• Harvest firewood at Dad’s house
• Garden
• Turn old Saturn SL1 into an electric powered car (big project, who knows, fun idle talk though )
• Harvest electricity from small creek – microturbine
• Construct a homebuilt aircraft
• Learn Russian
• Get associates degree (need 1 credit, no joke, from UCC, I had transferred to OSU in ’06 on a credit per credit basis, never got associates)
• Write a book
• Create and get a t-shirt listed on cameesa. check it: cameesa.com
• Make some white wings (really cool paper airplanes, easy, but fun!)
• Learn the night sky
• Create a profitable website
• Finish College
• Play guitar
• Write a song
• .

Ok, lots of this stuff is not going to happen anytime soon.  But i have started a blog since i created this list.  Also, i started learning the night sky.  Got out the telescope last week and looked at the moon and the stars.  Also found a sweet program for the computer called stellarium. Beats the crap out of using a star map. I will post more about that in another post. I think that will be the idea of this blog in the mean time, categorizing posts to which “quest” they might relate to, and sharing my experience along each line. I personally love the technical aspects of some of these projects, and I generally like explaining things, so that will be a purpose of the blog as well. Besides, the best way to learn material is to teach it.

Alright, not much else to say i think… and it is 2am, time to hit the sack.  Peace out.