No antonym to reality

What I get to say here is something simple and something less profound than I want it to be, but I say it anyway.

There's nothing really profound in this post, which is kind of the point. Instead of treating you to an occasional post of depth and meaning, I make do with frequent outbursts of the things that percolate to the top of my head.

So here they are.

- This place is a bizarre mirror-world version of both a cross between the U.S. and the 'Stan. The school where my sister works feels a lot like a nice private school in the states most of the time. Then I help out by spending a morning running cable for them, and it's running through cheap cable channel and holes drilled in the concrete wall. They have power and heat, but often not hot water. The people look semi-familiar because of the similar ethnicity, but then there's not enough of one ethnic group and they speak a weird language. I'm spending the day at a school that is not my school, and so doesn't really feel like school. Finally, my sister is here and around, which just makes it a nice weird place to be.

- I get mistaken for a native here, too!

- I got to talk with the narcoleptic ostrich farmer about music and books while I was in the U.S., which was cool because he's pretty much the only person in the world I have met who shares roughly similar tastes, and whom also knows me well enough (and vice versa) to be able to make recommendations.

- I have it easy in a lot of ways where I live. It's nice to step somewhere where I can really recognize that. I wish sometimes that other people could step out and see that. Even though I don't like everything the cook makes, or what they decide we should do about drivers, or all that jazz, we get taken care of really well.

- I am someday going to be somewhat successfully at being wholly given over to surrender.