It's 5 o'clock somewhere

I've noticed that all of my posts are either from Mondays, when I work at Bellona, or when I have a paper due. Funny how that happens.

As usual, I can't remember whether I've written about Bellona and am of course too lazy to actually reread earlier posts, so I apologize for any potential repetition.

Bellona's the environmental protection agency where I translate various texts from Russian to English and vice versa. In the process of working here, I've picked up a lot of useful terms such as "short-lived forcers" and "toxic waste" and "carbon dioxide." It's actually a miracle I've picked up anything at all — my first day here happened to be the birthday of one of the office workers. Everyone worked hard all day until about 5 pm, at which point monitors were turned off, wine glasses were fetched, and we gathered around the table in the main room. The celebration consisted of various toasts to the birthday girl, followed by environmental jokes that I probably wouldn't understand in English and certainly did not understand in Russian. After an hour an a half of celebrating, we returned to work.

The next time week, a couple of old men showed up and we followed the same timetable as the previous week, though instad of champagne, we had wine, and instead of birthday cake, grapes and cookies. I'm still unclear on what, exactly, these old men do for Bellona, but they seemed nice enough.

I'd begun to settle into the routine of drinking at work, but the next several weeks passed without any sign of booze. I'd given up hope when my mom came to visit and the two of us made plans to meet up after work. That day turned out to be another birthday, complete with the usual cake and assorted alcohol. I didn't manage to make it out of Bellona until late that night and arrived at our meeting place drunk and full off of birthday cake.

Moral of the story? I thought the perks (weekly ice cream, free cheesecake, etc.) of the governor's office were good; not surprisingly, Russian offices do it better.