When you don't have the weighty arguments...
My almost-a-year-old partisan war against the elevator in my new apartments ended up yesterday night by an open battle. As a result, my self-respect was smashed to pieces like Tataro-Mongol hordes after a Great Standing on the Ugra river. In case if you're unaware of this tragical story, I must explain that this beast refuses to take seriously my 105 lbs. I used to cheat with my pressure on the floor by pushing myself off of the wall. This trick worked until yesterday when the elevator lifted me to my 17th floor -- and stopped dead. I mean, all the buttons were dead including the button to call a dispatcher. Thank God, my cell phone was on and my son was at home, so that he called the dispatcher lady from the second elevator. It was quite a conversation! like the blind talking to the deaf. Eventually our collaborative efforts made a miracle, and she understood that we needed electrician right now, not tomorrow morning. It took them less than a year to arrive and five minutes more to resque me. And I swear, all this time this fucking elevator could open the doors, he just had fun listening to our negotiations. (Oh, I had fun, too. I had a book and a bottle of kefir -- what else I need to be happy!)
I also had the dubious honour to become an object of a new experiment in our hiking company. As you maybe know, sometimes when I'm not busy sitting in the elevators, or working, or doing other silly things I go hiking with a group of damn cannibals school children, apx. 10 --17 years old. There are also 4 teachers in the group including me, and being the least weighty member of a company I'm the favorite object of the various experiments. Last year the experimental part was that I commanded by a kayak (or canoe? don't know how it's called in English) so old that its skin was ready to tear under a single angry look. This year a veteran was relegated from active service to the reserve, so we needed something new instead. And they found something new for me. Make it, something very old, because it's a German kayak named RZ. The ship itself is almost unused, but production of this model was abandoned in the middle 70s. As you understand, nobody of us knows how this thing is assembled. Any kayak -- we call it baydarka -- well, every baydarka can be assembled from the folding frame and a skin. In the normal baydarkas the frame is made of aluminium tubing; in this new RZ thing it's purely wooden. (In practice this difference means that usually after assembling you have all your fingers cut, while now you have them pinched.) Using the extraordinary logic and intuition, we managed to assemble this RZ by the end of a day. To say frankly, I like it very much; at least, I like it when it lays on the floor. It's blue and graceful and beautiful, and we called it Blue Bird, like in the Meterlink's fairy tale. But it seems to be too graceful to wear anything weighty, and here we come to the experimental part of this year' adventure. Nobody knows how this bird will behave afloat. I hope it won't flip over on the very first stone! Well, let's see. I like surprises.