Impressions and Cogitations: Coffee and aminulz ... I mean animals

After the verbal acid of my last blog, I drowned myself in a lot of intensive school work that I had to complete. As a result, the last 72 hours have been a pertinacious drive to complete nearly twenty pages of academic writing ... or self-torture that shot down my whole weekend. Now, I almost feel like Lenny in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and am forgetting things. Keys on the floor. Sunglasses (which I have actually needed this sunny gorgeous weather stint Petersburg has been experiencing) left in the bathroom. A post-it note with email contacts for a summer job in my underwear strap versus my pocket -- if I'm magically going to be finding paper in my underwear, I'd at least like it to be some major currency of a higher denomination that keeps its value on international markets! And I actually haven't had drop of alcohol in 2 & 1/7 weeks either, like I'm that sober high school student I once was. However, the problem starts if I begin to crush mouse skulls with my bare hands and swing from poles. That's when Big Nurse Ratched is going to have to drag me to the Cuckoo's Nest.

Large amounts of coffee have helped me stay focused -- both when I was writing and when I needed brain power to pay attention to yet more school work. And the girls at my nearest Shokolodnitsa have been just great too. As I said earlier, with all the moronic behavior that the yokels of this locale exhibit, the waitresses are just lovely jubbly. Considerate, mindful, efficient. They've made me become a regular. And I intend to be. It's nice being on an small island of affable competence than in an ocean of mentally unprepared troglodytes. This simple, run of the mill chain coffee shop has become one of my favorite places in Petersburg. I mean, who cares about Nabokov's apartment or the Russian Museum?? Sure they're all special, but you never know if you have some average, unaware (read: untamed) Kultural Kapitalite on duty!! But heavily laden sarcasm aside, I feel like my preference for some mundane Shokolodnitsa is like the proceeding picture --

So, despite the seemingly nice kitty bed that every other cat would presumably love, some often are attracted to a place that just feels better ... and is out of the way from areas. Other areas that despite being pretty, risk not having their $h1t together, consequently making the cat irritated and, well, catty. Such is my simple Shokolodnitsa at 108 Nevsky Prospekt. The unexpected place where this cat prefers to be --- the others can keep their palaces and shinier things. Hmmph.

And this creates, drum roll please, yet another segue, this time to animals! Animal viewing has been a great de-stresser for me. Be it on YouTube or my own pictures, which are mainly of cats, animals just can't go wrong. I can excuse them if they're stupid much quicker than these Petersburgers because they're cute! Even the most injurious of species are just ... so f^cking adorable they make you momentarily forget about all your problems like this video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y4cQEEyuTw&feature=player_embedded#at=72

A baby porcupine eating a banana ... that also has hiccups! That makes even a grouch like me melt like ice cream on a summer's day! Humans just don't have this effect. What's wrong with us?? And more people would definitely watch or read the news if there were random animal fun segment in the middle of the foreign affairs report. As such, I end this post, a bona fide St. Francis of Assissi, with pictures I've taken of aminulz ... I mean, animals.