In a manner of speaking, Russians were involved in our moving. . .

So now we are moved in-ish.

And you can interpret the "-ish" to mean, moved in but utterly and completely living out of boxes still. Oh well, so it goes. Nothing to be done.

But that's why I've been a skimpy blogger lately. Well, that and finals week is coming up. And the hours at Barnes. Whatev.

But a funny story.

Friday night we did move out of the old and into the new, but had to spend 6 hours cleaning the apartment. Six. hours. But it wasn't bad really. We accumulated such a pile of garbage though that it took several trips to the dumpster to get it all out. During one such trip, I noticed a guy and woman - mid-twenties, decidedly NOT C.H.U.D.-like- pull up in a Jaguar of some sort or another, park horizontally behind several cars in our parking lot, and cut the engine. I tastefully averted my eyes, of course.

On a subsequent trip to the dumpster a few minutes later, I noticed that the guy was sitting in the car now san femme.

On another subsequent trip to the dumptster with Julie now, I noticed that HER car was actually one fo the cars the Jag driver had blocked in. I commented on this to her. He saw me looking at the car, put the Jag in gear (without starting it first) and rolled forward six feet or so to give us clearance to get out. Strange, but whatever: this was at 12:30AM on a Friday night.

My next trip out though, Julie and I were loading getting ready to load up her car with stuff that would be making the trip to the new house, when I noticed that now the original girl, another blonde girl, and the original guy are out of the car, chatting just out of earshot. Now, note the scene. The girls are both small things, quite done-up actually, with jeans tucked into their furry boots, and furry coats a la mode.

And then, this was spectacular, the girls go around to the back of the car w(hile the guy sits in driver seat) and they being pushing the car up the hill. Sort of. They were certainly pushing on the car, but the car wasn't really responding as it were. No, they were really more leaning on the car than pushing, I suppose. I stood and stared now, obviously.

After a couple minutes of this, the guy gets out of the car and waves for the girl to sit in the car. Now the guy and the second girl start pushing, with only slightly more effect than before. At this point, I put down my stuff and walk over to them.

"So, uh, what are we doin' here?" I ask.

The guy stops pushing for a second, looks up at me and says, ". . . the car . . . it no go" and then, shaking his head, mumbles "gas." He was Russian (or some other pseudo-Russian / former Russian state that you cannot pronounce the name of.) And then both girls start yelling back and forth and to him. . . . in Russian. So obviously this is neat, because again, as I've stated before, living a singular life is worthwhile and frankly how many other people in the Cincinnati area are helping 3 fashionably dressed, allbeit sort of dumb Russians with an empty gas tank at 12:30AM on a Friday night / Saturday morning, and because the whole thing is just silly, I'm in.

So, Russian Girl #1 gets back into the car and Russian Girl #2, the guy and I start pushing the car in some non-specific direction that seems to be vaguely up a hill. I'm convinced he wasn't pulling his weight and that Russian Girl #2 and I are really the only one's pushing. So we manage to push the Jag up an incline and into some arbitrary position which is really strategically no better or more satisfactory than its original position and we look upon our act with a certain level of satisfaction, I suppose, and then the Russian guy starts mumbling Russianly about how it still needs to go further.

Julie, who has been working at the trunk of her car throughout this, offers to move her car out of the way and we can just roll it BACK DOWN THE HILL we just pushed it up and into her spot. This resolution is passed because the guy no longer was allowed to have an opinion, RG#1 is still in the driver seat shivering, and RG#2 seems to both a) think that its a good idea and b) seems to not understand what we're saying. So now, in a moment of almost virtuoso stupidity, the Russian guy goes to the door, and tells RG#1 to get out and push. She comes back to me to help us push and the guy tries to start the car. He. Tries. To. Start. The. Car. Much to the chagrin of RGs #1 & 2. He opens his door, tells us it won't start, puts it back in neutral and we push the car back down the hill.

And then he hit the brakes because I suppose the momentum acrued by a car in neutral on a 30 degree slope was far to excessive to him, and myself and the two RGs run into the car chest first. RG1 yells at the guy, he lets up on the brakes and we push again, he cuts his wheels late, and then he hits the breaks, killing all our momentum again and forcing us now to push him BACK up another incline to situation him in the parking spot. This continues for a few more minutes.

Finally, safely in his parking spot that WAS Julie's parking spot, he mumbles "okay, thanks" and all three vanish like a puff of steamy breath on a cold winter night. The end.

Actually, not really. The ending irony to this is that over the next hour as I'm taking MORE garbage to the dumpster, I get the joy of noticing that a) he left his interior lights on, and b) by the time we left, his battery was dead.

Now, the end.

So there you go.