Getting the new year off to a wonderful start, Pirated-sites.com has made Feral Living the first honoree in its brand-new “hoax” section. Thanks a million, Tim.

Feral Living strongly supports what pirated-sites.com is up to and urges you to go there now and do the same.

But here are a few:
1)I resolve to bitch and rant about drivers who: pull in front of me and then slam on their brakes, drive faster than me, drive slower than me, or, worst of all, speed up to drive at exactly the same speed when I try to pass them. I resolve further to:
2)…not change banks even though our bank, faced with the choice of fixing software problems in the course of the transition to the Euro or simply killing our ATM cards did the latter, explaining to us when we complained about the inconvenience of being caught cashless with dead ATM cards that “A notice was posted in the bank lobby”, on the assumption that something equally stupid would eventually happen at any other bank I might change to.
3)…continue to raise my daughters to be interesting ball-busting divas, to the best of my ability.
4)…stay bewildered.
5)…lose weight.
6)…spend more time watching the lava lamp with my wife, if you know what I mean.

What’s that on Bauke’s face?

Happy New Year.
January first 2002 brings a new currency to many EU member states, including Austria: the Euro. I may go into greater detail about the Euro in a later post. Right now, I just wanted to quickly outline how the transition has affected us so far.

Knowing the start of the new year would bring a new currency, and in order to avoid the hassle of taking our cash in the old currency (Austrian shillings) to exchange for the new money, we simply did our best to spend it all, knowing that when the new year came, we could just go to the cash machine, otherwise known as ATM I believe, and stock up on fresh, crisp Euros.

This afternoon, on the way home from a tasty lunch of “midnight soup” at my in-laws’ house (my mother-in-law annually cooks a delicious Hungarian-style cabbage soup to eat at the turn of the new year), we did just that. I dashed into the closest bank lobby, stuck my card into the cash machine and was informed that it had expired.

Software bug, I assumed. So we drove to the next machine.

Out of order.

So we drove to our own bank in a nearby town. Expired. Alpha tried her card. Also expired.

So we drove home again. Cashless. Broke. Her car nearly out of gas, and she has to drive to work tomorrow, a commute of nearly one hour. Her father, who is a wonderful person, came to our house, filled her tank and gave her some cash to tide us over.

Tomorrow – part two: asking the bank why we weren’t sent new cash cards in time, and whether this has anything to do with the Euro transition, while the lobby is sure to be filled with a milling crowd of morons, with torches and pitchforks, surprised at this new money.

I’ll take “Wildly Fluctuating Body Weight” for fifty, Bob.

So Michele’s down ten pounds and getting married to Heath Ledger and we’re all there. I mean, we’re all there in the wedding suite as he carries her across the threshhold, throws her onto the large heart-shaped bed with all those mirrors all over the place and starts getting undressed. And he undresses and undresses, and doesn’t stop when he gets down to his skin, and peels that off too and UNDERNEATH HE’S FRED DURST!!!

And we’re all laughing and laughing and I fall out of bed and wake up, still laughing.

Okay, it wasn’t a real dream. I’ll try again tonight, Michele.

The intro video alone is worth the price of admission.