The weekend in the countryside was a bit of a roller coaster. Luckily the dips came first and we could end on a high. The flood water not only damaged my back wall and made my buboskemence too unstable to survive, but also damaged the gutter and put a hole in my water pump tank. A few phone calls and friend and neighbor Guszti Sr. welded the hole, and Lennard did some repairs on the gutter. I re-stacked wood in the stables and climbed on up the pile to paint the ceiling with anti-termite chemical, of which I completed 1/4 before I ran out of chemical. Jeroen picked plums and apples from the garden, and made a bogracs with eggplant, mint, tomatoes, peppers, couscous etc. the first night. The second night was grilled turkey with dill and red-pepper cheese from the Hunyadi ter market, salad, chicken wings and chicken shish-kabob. Neighbor Sanyi picked us several kilos of mushrooms; Quel/Changle mushroom (Sárga korallgomba), Butter bolete mushroom (Királyvargánya) and Chanterrelle (Sárga rókagomba).

The weekend included a couple interesting conversations. Lennard and Jeroen told me that gay people cannot donate blood because they are a high-risk group and have to wait three months for testing. Hmmm, well, I believe the gestation period of HIV is 3 months no matter if you are gay or straight and all blood should be screened regardless. Interesting that gay people are allowed to marry, adopt, die on the battlefield, vote, be dentists and doctors and work in the food industry (all high-risk jobs for blood accidents), but they cannot donate blood.

The other conversation was how I could pay off all my debt and live happily for the rest of my life on 1 million dollars. Of course everyone has this conversation on occasion. But I was thinking, the US has a population of 307 million. If Obama had, instead of bailing out the car companies (GM and Chrystler alone 60 billion USD), oil companies, the banks (hundreds of billions) and the airlines and other enterprises that have proven themselves to be unsustainable both economically and environmentally, and instead paid everyone 1 million dollars...307 trillion dollars (1000 billion). A B2 bomber costs 2.2 billion dollars. The war in Iraq costs over 720 million a day. 500 fewer nuclear bombers in the world, 3 years less in Iraq, all personal debt paid off in the country - sounds good. Of course, if everyone had a million dollars Jeroen pointed out, who would feel like growing food?