bktheirregular

Came to New York to get vaccinated and help my parents pack for a permanent move to Greece.

Spent time in Maryland for ... well, for very good reasons.

Came back for my second COVID shot and to finish organizing and sorting out how much of my own life I'll be leaving behind.

Tonight is the last night I will spend in New York. Perhaps forever.

It's been almost a year since I posted on this thing. Wow.

Well, life gets distracting, I suppose. Greece is calm - the fascists are out on the fringe rather than entrenched in the halls of power. Exile is harder to escape than I could wish for, especially since it looks like the world's staring down the barrel of what might be a pandemic.

My hope is that whatever it is doesn't impact transatlantic travel in early May - which is when I'm next escaping to the US for quality time.

If all goes well, I'll be in the DC area for about a week.

Feels like there should be more to say, but work intrudes.

Still not a fan of Valentine's Day, but these days, it's more for impersonal, academic reasons rather than the visceral hate I had for it until about five years ago.

Maybe I don't have the stomach for crass commercialism any more.

Time passes more quickly as we get older. It feels like I just got back from Christmas break, and now I'm flying back Stateside for Easter. Baltimore, to be precise, with a side trip to New York if weather permits.

Less than 24 hours to takeoff; by now it's become a bit of a routine. Even though Emirates Airways now does non-stop flights from Athens to New York (Newark Airport, not JFK), if I'm going to BWI, the most sensible option for me is flying through London. The layover is a bit long at five-plus hours, but it gives me time to get through Heathrow security and relax a little after the four-hour Athens-to-London flight, and steel myself for the transatlantic hop. I've been largely flying British Airways for a number of years, ever since Olympic Airways got privatized and downsized from a major international airline to a regional one, and Delta and Continental stopped doing out-of-season non-stops from New York to Athens. (This was also before Continental got taken over by United, and given recent press, I'm hesitant to fly United except at gunpoint.)

The only real downside to this trip is right at the beginning, because an eight o'clock AM departure means leaving for the airport at six AM, which means setting my alarm for five AM, better known as stupid o'clock AM in my book.

Still, it'll be good to be home again, even if only for a little while, despite the mess being made of it by the bloodthirsty monsters in charge.

My brain yesterday:

"May they burn eternally for their cruelty, and may the retribution they face be so overwhelming that they need lead-lined cenotaphs."

My brain today:

"You know what would have been hilariously awesome? Kermit the Frog as the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car on Top Gear."

Yeah, yeah, Valentine's Day. Isn't it romantic? Look at all the promotions! Buy cards! Buy flowers! Buy conflict diamonds to show your significant other you care! (And if you don't have a significant other, then why are you breathing air that can be used by people who can give us lots of money?)

Yeah, I'm not exactly a fan.

Granted, these days, my objections are less personal in nature.

Good riddance to 2016, and any hopes that 2017 will be a good one are of the forlorn variety.

Still, came back home, saw family, saw loved ones (though a fever messed with my plans). Flying back from New York to Athens via London tonight.

Be excellent to one another, everyone, okay?

At the moment, I am Not Dealing with the results. I'm trying to keep myself sane, and if I'm honest, a bit distracted.

My colleagues here in Greece are divided between wondering how the hell it could have happened and reassuring me that this too shall pass.

I'm not worried for myself, but I am worried for many friends whose lives are likely to take a dramatic turn for the worse.

I've gradually come to realize that there is something I look for in a candidate for an office, or more precisely, something that will disqualify a candidate seeking an office from getting my vote, no matter what his or her positions are.

Cruelty.

If you're cruel to others, and you look to me for support, you're looking in the wrong direction. For those who see cruelty as a virtue? Forget it.

I reserve the right to be subjective on this point.

I'm fairly certain it will influence how I vote in November, though it left me in a bit of a quandry as to how to vote in the New York primary - something I didn't realize I had a voice in as an absentee voter. Thankfully, there was a way for me to express my opinion that both remaining candidates in the Democratic primaries deserved to be heard: one can vote for delegates individually. Twelve delegates were on the ballot: six women, six men, six pledged to Bernie Sanders, six pledged to Hillary Clinton. (Each had three men and three women pledged.)

When I looked at others' attempts to blatantly restrict the rights of women, I figured that women needed a stronger voice, so I marked down all six women as my choices for delegates.

My ballot is currently in a mailbox at the Hellenic Post office on the corner of Karneadou and Ploutarchou streets in Athens.

Pardon my rambling.

Today's headache is brought to you by the letters O, T, and E.

I don't know what that particular three-letter acronym would mean in English, but in Greece, OTE means «Οργανισμός Τηλεπικοινωνιών Ελλάδος», "Organismos Tilepikinonion Ellados", or "Hellenic Telecommunications Organization".

And they sometimes behave like AT&T in the bad old days.

Got a call from them yesterday (Tuesday the 9th), notifying me that they were doing infrastructure upgrades to their networks, and as part of it, I could upgrade my DSL line without any increase in my phone bill. After assurances that there wouldn't be any problems with equipment during the switchover, I finally decided to agree to it. They tell me that they'll be delivering a new VDSL modem-router, free of charge, on Friday the 12th.

Wednesday the 10th (which is today) rolls around, and when I go to check my work e-mail before heading out the door to schlep to the office, suddenly I can't connect to the office Gmail system. I check a couple of other sites and notice that they're not connecting either; I check my router stats page and find there's no connection; I reset the router, still no connection; I pick up my landline phone and there's no dialtone.

I grab my cell phone, call OTE Customer Service, and find out that the reason my phone line went down is that they're doing the switchover to VDSL today. As in two days before they send me the equipment to handle the switchover. I'm late for work by the time I get that answer, so I've got to hoof it over to the office and get to work.

Two calls to OTE Customer Service later (the next attempt transferred me to limbo), I'm told by a technician that no, an ADSL modem-router can't understand a VDSL signal, so what they're going to do is give me ten gigabytes of cell phone data free of charge, so I can tether anything to my phone until the new modem comes. I ask if maybe I can just go to an OTE office or storefront or something and pick up a modem from them, instead of being stuck until delivery, and the tech hems and haws and finally says he can't guarantee anything, because he wouldn't know what any store would have in stock.

Fine. I break early for lunch and head to the OTE storefront/office at Syntagma Square (which, contrary to public perception, is actually quite calm these days; the marble steps in front of the hotels have a year and a half or so of weathering on them, which didn't happen when they were being smashed regularly). I go and ask if I can pick up a new VDSL modem-router from them instead of being stuck in limbo. The answer: they're on different systems, and can't interact between the store and the courier system.

In other words, SOL.

Is it me, or would it have made sense for the phone company to have checked to make sure the equipment was in place before switching over the line?

Bleah.