An utterly boring evening I fear. The same old shit — watch movies, cook dinner. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I played cribbage online with Charles today. He beat me the first two games (including a second-game skunk), but I came back and took three in a row to win the match. It was a lot of fun to chat with him.

At some point I said something about winter break and he said that they’d been back in school for a week. And that practice matura is coming up soon. I mentioned that Danuta’s probably thrilled about that. “Adam doesn’t do anything and this will just add to her already-frantic workload.” There was some short exchange, and somehow I indicated that he’s fairly lazy or something. Anyway, he said something about him probably sitting in the teachers’ room drinking until ten minutes after the bell rings. I said that I didn’t really know from first-hand experience (obviously) but that Danuta had told me that he usually waits until all the teachers leave the teachers room before he leaves. Charles then asked me for his phone number.

“It’s the same as mine, I guess.”

“But I can’t remember it,” he responded.

I gave it to him, then asked, “Why do you want it, if I might be so nosy?”

“I’m going to call him and ‘gently’ encourage him to fulfill his responsibilities and stop making Americans look bad.”

“Well,” I replied, “He’s certainly not making Americans look bad in the other teachers’ eyes. According to Danuta they all like him much more than they liked me. Of course they didn’t like me at all, so that’s not saying much.”

He really didn’t say anything more to that. It’s not like Charles to talk about people, but I would honestly love to rant to him — he takes his job seriously and I think he’d understand my frustration with Adam.

Last night we watched Doc Hollywood — I’d forgotten the premise: New guy in small town spends a lot of time there; feels he’s making a difference; many people there like him and want him to stay; when it’s time to leave, he does so with a heavy heart; once back in his “home,” he can’t seem to get the little hamlet (deliberately cheesy word choice) out of his mind. Sound familiar? It fortuantely didn’t get me too stupidly sentimental about Lipnica.