5-21/22: Sam Finishes the Blog

I'm sitting on the soft couches in my somewhat unfamiliar living room at home. It's 2 in the afternoon and I've been awake since 5:30. The day outside, invited in with an open screen door, is unbelievably beautiful. I don't use that as hyperbole--seriously, it's hard to believe. The vivid colors and mid-morning haze make it look like the dream sequence from Happy Gilmore.

Pictured: Home, sweet home. And devoid of crocodiles!

I'm...confused. Happy, but confused. I decided to postpone writing this blog until I could sit down and fully sort my thoughts out (okay, that and I was having way too much fun in Frankfurt. And I'm a lazy bastard at heart. But mainly the first reason). I realized that if I were to do that, I'd probably be typing this in October. So for now, I'll tell the story (doing my best to leave out the introspection) and we'll figure it out from there.

THE STORY

Novi Sad, Three Days Before Lift-off: We bused out to Novi Sad, the capital of the Vojvodina region, an hour and change northwest of Beograd (as the crow flies, because it's about as flat as central Ohio and half as populated). Pulling into town, we disembarked, headed into the hotel, and immediately realized that half of us forgot our passports (apparently as useful for getting into hotels as they are for other countries). With a few photocopied versions, we checked in, and then headed to the final seminar.

Considering its role on the other end of the semester, Dave and I coined the process "disorientation". And to be fair, it kind of works. We circled up like a junior AA meeting and started unpacking our thoughts, emotions, reactions--everything we were feeling about the semester. It started moving about as smoothly as a rusted wheelbarrow, with gaping silences following extremely big questions, but with a little bit of adjustment, many of us soon arrived at the conclusion that we really were fucking going home in four days. Also, we realized that none of us have the slightest idea as to how to rate our contribution to the "group learning process and dynamic". I'm actually pretty okay with that.

That evening, we lit out for the fortress above Novi Sad (because every city in the Balkans needs a river and a fortress, apparently). Fortunately, this one is replete with an enormous restaurant and a view of half the city. Coupled with a plastic cover and a raging thunderstorm, the twenty pound trays of meat (!!!) made the night one to remember.

Novi Sad, Two Days Before Lift-off: I woke up early (noticing a theme here?) and went out to find some fruit for breakfast. I had three apples, a bottle of yogurt, and a half-hour to kill, so I wandered around Dunavski Park, one of the most beautiful artificial gardens I've ever seen. It was all very sha-shasha (it had freaking swans wandering around), but still an amazing way to kick off the morning.

We returned to Beograd by noon or so, and I commenced my nomadic wandering from bookstore to bookstore, because I'm a nerd of catastrophic proportions, and don't let anybody tell you different. I picked up a few interesting things (did you know they have Go the Fuck to Sleep translated into Serbian? Well now so do I). Day well-spent.

Beograd, One Day Before Lift-off: That was a frantic day consisting of marathoning the Walking Dead while packing (after four months of patient waiting, I can comfortably and confidently say Jesus Christ, Carl, what the hell is wrong with you?), which may not have been the most efficient method, but it was a hell of a stress reliever. I think it was also nice to inoculate myself back into the rhythm of things, take a bit to expose myself to something familiar of my life back in the states. I pounded out that whole process, wrapped all the rakija in four or five layers of cotton and plastic (which would prove to be a smart move), and headed off to the farewell dinner.

It took place in Supermarket, a fancy-sleek-chic-underground-hipster-noveau-haute-someotherbullshitwords restaurant/miscellaneous shop. I don't give a shit what it's called; it had delicious food. Trays upon trays of sushi and shrimp cocktails. I filled up on those as the restaurant filled up with homestay families. It felt like a family party at the age of eight all over again--the kids circled up and goofed off while the grown-ups caught up. The only difference here was that the kids went through all the wine, but I digress.

The party started winding down, and then my peers started dropping like flies. This is when the emotions hit, and as we moved out into the warm air and thirteen became ten, then seven, then four in increasing frequency, it started to hit me what my friends meant to me on this trip. Those damn feels are at it again. When it dwindled down to one, I crawled under the covers and drifted off.

Beograd, the Day Of: I woke up at 9, and puttered around until eleven. Then I sat for a while with my host family and talked about...well, everything, really. They gave me a bottle of rakija and a shirt, and walked me down.

The agency picked me up in a Mercedes, and the driver, god bless him, didn't care if I put the window down. I felt the spring (or maybe summer?) wind against my face as we tore down the streets I'd come to know, in some ways more intimately than I do those of my own hometown. We took a ramp onto the Old Ada Bridge and tore off for the airport, relishing the sweet, rare Beograd sun for the last time for a while (well, I did. I don't think the driver was sharing in my nostalgia trip).

I moved through the airport and am now utterly disturbed by Serbian airport security (I won't go into details, but suffice it to say I'm pretty sure their metal detector is just a plastic doorframe). Through the plate glass window, I took one last look at distant Belgrade and stepped aboard the plane.

Or so I'd thought. I was afforded my real last look when the plane banked to the right to change direction, showing me everything at once--I picked out the bridges I had run across and the river I had walked along with no difficulty. A bit of squinting showed me Kalemegdan, and then Tašmajdan, whose green expanses hosted some of my best memories of the trip. And I think, though I could be full of crap, that I maybe glimpsed the SIT building, across from the bus park before we pulled above some low clouds. See you, Beograd.

Frankfurt, the Day Of: I stayed at the Steigenberger Hotel. It's classy as fuck. I don't know what a saunarium is, but it felt phenomenal and I want one.

Frankfurt, the Night Of: And the Unterschweinsteig Restaurant has delicious rabbit haunch.

Frankfurt, the Day After: I forced myself out of the room and onto the airport shuttle, and somewhere between the entrance to the airport and passport control, the first and last tears happened. No waterworks, just a crystallized realization that it really was over in very many senses. I got my shit together, swiped my passport, and made my way to the gate with an hour and a half to spare. In the meantime, I spent the remainder of my euros on the new(ish) Stephen King book, a pack of gum, and a bottle of water, which served as a final validation of sorts for not studying in the eurozone.

The plane wasn't bad. With all the bus service around the Balkans, I think I've gotten distressingly used to this whole "sitting in one place for eight hours at a time" schtick. Of course the guy next to me was coming in from New Dehli, so I certainly can't complain anyway. The hours ticked by, I watched Jamie Foxx kill half the South, then Tom Cruise kill half of Pittsburgh, then scowled at the entire in-flight movie institution and read a book instead.

I landed and talked to the customs people. Upon asking my declarations, I told them I have a bottle of brandy. The customs agent asked what year, and upon hearing one of the bottles' vintage ('91) he informed me matter-of-factly that he'd have to seize it. Fortunately for everyone involved, he laughed about five seconds later, leaving me to wonder how I consistently seem to score the dubious honor of unearthing TSA employees with a bonafide sense of humor. Cleared through, I made my way to the parking garage, was picked up, and the rest, as they say, is history.

THE FEELS

Okay, let's bullet some things that I did within 24 hours:

• Ate some peanut butter products--you don't know what you're loving until you've lost it, my friends, and nowhere is this more true with Resee's Cups.
• Drove at a generally licit speed down 202 a few miles at six in the morning, with the windows down. listening to 93.3, because nothing reintroduces you to your mother tongue like a disc jockey.
•  Made some honest-to-god decent, Chinatown-bought looseleaf green tea. It's all coffee, coffee, coffee over in the Balkans.
• Played Gamecube, because guys--it's Gamecube.
• Went for a run, because it helps to kill the jetlag.
• Availed myself of the punching bag, because it's been half a year.
• Made a kale shake, because...shit, do I even need a reason?
• Conked out in my own bed for a while.

There really is nothing quite like coming home, and I wouldn't trade it for much.

But good lord, do I miss the Balkans. I'm not going to sit here and rattle off everything, but this surprised and stuck out to me: I miss the curtness. I'm already tired of people smiling just because "courtesy" told them that everything is worth smiling at. We cast emotions around like they're free here. I'm not saying be grumpy all the time, and if you see somebody who looks like they could use a friendly smile, of course you should crack one. But I'm starting to feel like a smile isn't really a smile anymore if it's obligatory. Or maybe I just don't want it to be.

I miss the people. I miss the random people I'd see on the street while walking the dog, and the regulars at Zeleni Venac, and the surly security guys behind the desk. I miss the clusters on buses and trams, outright eye contact and uncomfortably long looks.

To the friends I made on the program: I'll just say that without each and every one of you, I couldn't fairly say that this was one of the best experiences of my life and leave it at that.

But you know what? For every minute I miss Serbia, I feel two of excitement to bring it all home. I'm bursting at the seams to grill up pounds of ćevapi this summer. I can't wait to toast a glass of rakija when I see my friends and family very soon. I'm keeping an ear open for stray words of Bosnian from strangers I pass in the city, and the next time somebody (else) I know gets a haircut, I fully intend to flick 'em in the head with little to no explanation, because these things are all a part of me now (especially the ćevapi, but that's just protein synthesis) and they're not going anywhere. Take it or leave it.

To everybody whose been reading this whole mess (especially my readers from Russia and China--I'm not sure who you are, but cheers!), I'd like to express both my sincere gratitude at your dedication and my most profound sympathies as to the state of procrastination that drove you here. I've told plenty of half-stories on here, and omitted many more, so if you ever want to get me started, just let me know and I'd be glad to share over a glass of šliva.

Is this the last Serbia blog? Yup. Sorry. Is this the last blog, period? Well, and I say with as much conviction as I can muster: hell no. Ladies and gentlemen, I plan to go to a lot of exciting places, do a lot of cool shit, and make a lot of ridiculous errors, and I would do a disservice to both your entertainment options and my mental health if I didn't catalog them in some fashion. Just to whet the appetite...I'm certainly considering working abroad for a year or so after I graduate. So keep your eyes open, guys. Might be that this time next year, I'm sitting in a hostel in Bishkek while the rest of the city sleeps, with two cats purring quietly on my lap. Or maybe sitting in a dining room in Jakarta, getting the staredown from my Indonesian grandmother.

I hope she likes bread.

5-13: Why All of Your Arguments Are Wrong (And So Are Mine)

Today, let's talk about arguing.

We're taking it from the top. Two people, or camps, or parties, disagree. Belief in a higher power, your right to own a gun, the best Avenger, doesn't matter. Just pick a side.

I've got good news and I've got bad news, and I've even made it easy on you and rolled them into one package: You're both already wrong.

"But Sam," you say, because the only thing you enjoy more than an argument is a meta-argument, and also because you're woefully confused as to how the communication of the written word works, "how can that be? I haven't even said anything!"

Unless you excel at interpretive dance, presumably you were about to, and therein lies the problem.

Firstly, you're almost certainly not arguing something unless it means something to you. If it doesn't, you're in what's called debate club, and I'll get to you in a minute. But the fundamental assumption here lies in the idea that you are attached to the point that you're making. It holds value to you because you've built your sense of self around it--perhaps in a big way, as in your belief in a higher power, or perhaps in a significantly smaller one, as in your conviction that Thor is the shit. The former dictates the way you carry out your life, while the latter is just a point of personal pride and opinion. The point is that it's something that you've arrived at through your own thought process and reasoning, and so it's a part of you. You know God is watching out for you, you know that guns should be banned, and goddammit, you know that Thor could kick the Hulk's ass up and down Sakaar.

When you put those parts of yourself out into the world, they will invariably conflict with fundamental parts of other people. This devout atheist knows that belief in the invisible man in the sky turns people into assholes, and she knows that a society without guns is vulnerable to itself, and she knows that hammers and lightning can't do shit to the Hulk because he's the Hulk. She doesn't think these things, mind you, she knows them, same as you know yours.

So naturally, they meet at the baseball diamond in the park at midnight, wearing all black, with Ka-BAR knives and throw down to defend their points.

No, of course they don't. They argue about it. We're civilized human beings and therefore we use our words.

Stop here for a moment, though. Consider two things:

1. Are you honestly prepared to change your mind based on the outcome of this argument?
2. Would you express yourself in the same fashion if nobody challenged you?

The first one is a resounding "no", and if you disagree with that, then really, you're arguing that you're prepared to change your mind and are not going to abandon that point, and unless you do, then you're wrong in the first place. Get it so far?

Good, because the second point is that everything in the preceding paragraph is, to paraphrase the late, great George Carlin, stunningly full of shit. Not the tenets of it, but the fallacy wrapped around the method of delivery: the false dichotomy presented in that proposition is the fundamental flaw of the entire institution of argumentation--the conviction that it's either A or it's B. Let's take the religion argument.

The argument is this: Pick one option:

• God exists.
• God doesn't exist.

Immediately, we've got a problem: What exactly do you define as "god"?

Well shit, let's check a dictionary. Merriam-Webster offers this:

1. The supreme or ultimate reality: as
1. The Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshiped as creator and ruler of the universe
2. Christian Science: the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind
2. A being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality
3. A person or thing of supreme value.
4. A powerful ruler.

 If we accept the fact that one or both of the arguers have at least the capacity to comprehend any of the definitions above, I can illustrate as many arguments as you can count on both hands:

• I believe in God (acceptance of God as per definition 1.2)
• I do not believe in God (rejection of God as per definition 1.2)

But also:

• Nothing of any value exists. (Rejection of the idea of God as per def. 3)
• God is existence (Acceptance of God as per def. 3)
• I value divine-right monarchy (Belief in God as per def. 4)
• I don't believe in ghosts (Rejection of the idea of God as per def. 2)
• I believe in the sanctity of my own body (Belief in God as per def. 3)
• I believe in the Norse pantheon (Belief in God as per def.s 1 or 2)
• I don't believe in your basic human rights (Rejection of God as per def. 3)
• I worship Josip Broz Tito (Belief in God as per def. 4)

So we have ten possible arguments (or twenty, or thirty, or a thousand, depending on how careless we are with the word "exists") from what seemed like a two-sided debate. Obviously some of these are ridiculous, but think about the implications--a world of possibilities. A God existing in nature. Rejection of a personified God, but not a higher power. Belief in the Father and the Son, but fuck the Holy Spirit.

Pictured: Poor guy never saw it coming.

But there isn't exactly room for that, because we've generalized ourselves into our comfortable shell. We're not about to accept the nuances of the other person's argument because we're under attack.

It's not about whether or not God exists, it's about the fact that this motherfucker just denied you your right to perceive reality. If his point stands, it means that you got something wrong about reality. And even worse, you did it a very long time ago and you've since built a whole lot of very important things around it.

So it's not about whether or not God exists, it's about preserving your confidence in your ability to judge the world around you--and by extension, preserving reality. And most of us aren't willing to compromise that for the sake of truth. I'd like to be, but I'm not confident in saying that I can concede when my core foundation is challenged.

Thus the arguments become polarized. There's no middle ground because no matter what they're arguing about, be it God or guns or Mjolnir, it really doesn't have a damn thing to do with the many fascinating, humbling, transcendent possibilities that these two beautiful human beings can explore together by way of these subjects. In allowing the inflexible ego to run the show, there are only two ways this argument can go: "I'm right", or "I'm wrong". And considering the stakes, there's actually only one way this argument can go: "I'm right".

The entire institution of arguing isn't based on whatever it is you're arguing about, it's based on being right. And being right is inherently subjective. So by association, the entire idea of having an argument is to make somebody else think the way you're thinking.

But if we're all out to flip the other guy to our point of view, just who the hell is supposed to change their mind?

That's right: nobody. Precisely nobody walks into an argument saying "I wonder what I'll learn today?" so much as "This guy is a fucking idiot." or some less severe derivation if it's a friendly sort of thing. We don't argue anything--not the existence of God, not Hulk vs. Thor--without going for the win.

Well I'm tired of that shit. I'm not claiming to have transcended the ego or anything bitchin' like that. I'm just thoroughly exhausted with passive-aggressive competition and defensive trumping disguised as "civil discourse". People, unless you're arguing for the sake of argument, there is nothing civil about it. We are, as sure as jabbing one another with pointed sticks, attempting to damage the other to save ourselves. Just so happens we're doing it in the mind instead of in the middle of Thunderdome.

I can't think of any alternative except relaxing. Do your best to forget the circumstances. Forget about the past and the future, and just focus on what's going on right now. You've been right before and you've been wrong before; you will be both again. So in the meantime, forget about what you know and focus on what you feel. You might just surprise yourself.




Well, that was clearly on my mind. Thanks for sticking through that pseudo-transcendental head vomit. In other news, I'm back in Beograd, my birthday is tomorrow, and I'm going home in a week. It's the final countdown, kids, so stick around and see what's in store.

5-5: Sam Develops Psychic Powers, or Why I Hate Pants

Let's count today in the number of times I've had to change my pants.

For my first pair of pants, I changed out of relative nudity into shorts. I'm counting that because only two pants-changes doesn't exactly make for a good counting mechanism. I also wanted to see if I could work the term "relative nudity" into a blog post, which was actually regrettably easy, but I digress.

Anyway, I began my day in shorts, and maintained such a state until I discovered just how shallow the bowls in our kitchen are when I turned my bowl of Lion (yes, it comes in cereal form, yes, I will soon have diabetes) about half a degree and instantly deposited about four tablespoons of milk onto my right leg. At this point I mostly bemoaned the loss of cereal, scrubbed off my shorts, tossed them into the washing machine, and strapped on another.

Second pair of pants. Having given up on breakfast, I decided to give lunch a shot (it's a hard life out here). I reheated some of the pasta from last night--penne in a whiskey sauce with hot sausage, for the (epi)curious--and poured myself a welcome glass of orange juice. Carrying them back to my chair, I was treated to the sudden and inexplicable explosion of my glass. Fortunately, my bowl of pasta caught most of the liquid. Unfortunately, the rest of it landed on pretty much all of my pants. Also unfortunately, neither of the previous two locations caught any of the glass; that honor was reserved for my feet. For several seconds I stood there, broken glass in hand, wondering at what point in my day I pissed off physics.

Pictured: Probably when I laughed at this.

I have several reigning theories on how this happened.

• Resonance: The popular theory for "why glass goes boom", and what the internet, in all its sociologically-unsound wisdom, seems to think is always the answer. I dismissed this as fucking stupid pretty much out of hand, considering the properties of the glass, its non-static nature in my hand, and the notable lack of an overweight soprano singer anywhere near the premises.
• Heat: Charles' law in action: Increase the heat, increase the volume. Pockets of air (generally a gas) caused by imperfections in the glass get bigger, glass gets pushed, cup goes boom. Interesting, except I tend to prefer my orange juice sub-boiling. Call me old-fashioned.
• Snipers: A marksman operating from the balcony of the Hotel Europa several city blocks to the northwest could, compensating for air pressure on this rainy day, conceivably have blown away the bottom of my glass, possibly as a warning to me or as a statement of hatred against citrus-based juiced drinks. Two problems: first, there is no terminal sign of munitions anywhere in the apartment, and second, contrary to Hollywood portrayal, Sarajevo has not been riddled with snipers for quite some time.
• Divine retribution: Let's be honest: I'm one godless son of a bitch. Odds are good that in the past week alone, I've blasphemed against no fewer than five major world religions, and that's saying nothing of archaic/forgotten faiths (I have trouble going an hour without making a crack about sun gods or voodoo cults). It's not a malicious thing, I swear--It just so happens that I deal with the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful being or beings with the ability to blow me well off the edge of infinity and eternity with an errant, eldritch sneeze by laughing about it. I'm not much of a kneeler, so what else can you do? Anyway, yeah, I've definitely screwed the pooch on that whole Pascal's Wager deal. Thing is, I figure a blown-up glass of orange juice is the least of my concerns if this one is the case, so let's revisit this one if the showerhead turns into a snake and tries to kill me, or frogs and crickets start dropping out of the sky.
• Telekinesis: My nascent telekinetic powers manifested and fucked up my lunch. I'm going with this one based on my past experience with trolleycars and street lights, and the fact that I really want nascent telekinetic powers. 

So we're going with telekinesis? Cool.

Anyway, I was covered in all kinds of unpleasantness, so after tweezering some glass out of my body and scrubbing out the carpet, I was onto my next pair of pants.

The third pair of pants actually kicked ass (there's a pun in here but I"m letting it walk). Not only did I get a good chunk of my ISP done, and have a total Matrix moment where I whipped a fly out of the air with my belt (I generally don't condone random insecticide, but flies are and continue to be my exception), but I was treated to the first, and incredibly pleasant, summer thunderstorm of the year. Getting to enjoy it from a covered balcony in my apartment in Sarajevo was just golden. Totally worth exploding glasses any day.

5-3: "THAT Thing Flooded the River?"

Guys, I've got the plague.

Pictured: It's funny, trust me.

So Sarajevo and its visible pollen and dust got me to do something that I haven't done in three full years: get noticeably sick. Don't get me wrong, I've had sniffles, maybe an occasional headache, but last night I had a fever, headache, and stomach problems, and this morning I woke up and my mouth was black.

Trust me, that's not as bad as it sounds. I have no sore throat or any similarly horrible symptoms, and the black gunk hasn't made a reappearance, so I'm hopeful that I'll be back up to 100% imminently. Mainly I'm just pissed that my streak is broken, goddammit.

I poked around the interwebs, and it reaffirmed what I figured: I'd sleepwalked into the mountains and eaten dirt. No, seriously, I figured it was my immune system kicking out a buildup of dust/pollen, and being absolutely awful while doing it. Considering the weather lately, that makes enough sense that I buy it. If it persists into tomorrow, I'll go see a doctor.

Pictured: A doctor.

Besides that, my day loped on as it's wont to do. ISP stress, cooking, cat spam, so forth. A few highlights:

1. According to recently unearthed research on the history of Sarajevo, at one point in the late 19th century, the river that divides the city (which is, let's say, 15 yards wide and about two feet deep on a good day) ran over and flooded the city. I didn't think the river had it in it to flood a kiddie pool.
2. At least, I didn't until last night, when I'm lying in bed and hear a massive *WHOOOOOOOSH* noise coming from outside. I got up to see what it was, and from what I could tell, Sarajevo decided to turn on the river. The normally calm waters were cascading through the channel, and they looked to be...well, three feet deep. Which is something for this river, let me tell you. Mainly the speed, though.
3. I've got at least three government agencies telling me to call them back on for interviews on Monday. My project is due--DUE-due--on Thursday. Nah, it's cool, I didn't need non-frayed nerves all of next week, that's fine. I'll just go have a breakdown, should be fun.
4. I've also tried the UN IOM everyday for the last week and a half with absolutely no success. Congratulations on enforcing every hostile preconception I have about the UN in Bosnia. Stellar job.
5. That said, I've actually dropped an impressive amount of impressively-not awful writing on this document, and (interviews aside) I'm actually on/slightly ahead of schedule. Which I'm sure is going to come crashing down at any moment, but what can I say? I'll take it where I can get it.
6. I'll be going back to Beograd in a week. In two weeks and two days, I'll be heading home. I'm...not sure what to do with this information.

Back into the trenches of paper-writing. If anybody knows anything about human trafficking in Bosnia, you go ahead and drop me a line. Because I know all of my blog readers are Balkans-specializing law-enforcement personnel.

5-1: Things You Learn While Being Strangled by Research, or IT'S MAY, BITCHES!

So you learn several things as your mind twists in the wind thanks to the ginormous paper that may indeed have taken on a mind of its own. It reminds me of that Twilight Zone episode with the dummy that haunts the ventriloquist, and in the end you find out that the dummy overpowered the ventriloquist and made them switch places.

Pictured: Yup. That creepy son of a bitch.

So if the next time you see me, I'm a monotonous lunatic distantly dribbling facts about migrant labor exploitation in Bosnia & Herzegovina (as opposed to my normal role, a monotonous lunatic actively dribbling facts about migrant labor exploitation in Bosnia & Herzegovina), assume that my real self is trapped in a Word document somewhere. Please send help. Or at least justify the margins.

Anyway, here are a few things you realize when your paper starts to write you:

1. If footnotes could have footnotes, my paper would be one page of text and veritable colonies of footnotes. Embedded atop one another, with a unique eusocial hive structure, respite with worker/fighter/queen categories and intricate tunnel systems. My paper would be ants.
2. To paraphrase Blondie (the Tacarra, not the band), there's nothing quite like going to an exotic city, exploring it for a weekend, and promptly shutting yourself away in your apartment onto your laptop for the rest of the month to take on the massive, looming paper.
3. That said, I've been finding little breaks in the most enjoyable ways here (see aforementioned Evil Horde). Of note today was a lovely walk to the mouth of the river, cresting the waterfall, going up some old steps, and exploring an abandoned building we found up there. Absolutely beautiful.
4. Ah hell, I just used a parenthetical reference in my freaking blog post. Not okay.
5. Running. Running is getting better, if still taking it out of me for this whole "minimalist adjustment." I'm still considering getting running shoes for Tough Mudder, just to avoid the risk of real injury. Hopefully between what I've learned/strengthened barefooting it and with shoes that aren't absolute crap, I'll have regained the foot strength that I lost with the knee snafu.
6. Apparently, Bosnia closes on May 1st for some kind of epic holiday. Plan accordingly.

That's all I've got for today. If you want the rest of my words, request a copy of my ISP.