Stuff I'll remember while I'm home for a week

I'm just minutes from being picked up to go the airport for a one-week return to California's High Desert and some time in downtown L.A. and Burbank.

Becuase I was ill for a while, I had to scramble the rest of this week to get my work done at the TV station. My sometimes silly journal/blog had to take the back seat.

This time around -- a sort of hodge-podge of images. The pictures include a plaque that's not far from the RTS Television building I wrote about before this was a blog. RTS is the government-run TV/Radio station the NATO planes bombed during the Kosovo confilict.

My Serbian associate, Boske, made it a point to show me this plaque to show me that it honors the people who died in the attack. It names them all and makes the clear point that none of them were journalists. They were technicians and make-up artists and management people and the like. His point is that it was wrong to go after an media outlet. There's so much more to this story, but there's not the time now.

Nearby is the only Russian Orthodox Church in Belgrade (maybe in all of Serbia? I can't remember).


And to the left of the view you see of the Russian Church is a regular Orthodox Church that's quite impressive.


As you can tell, in the time I have I can't fill the space with enough words to get me to the next picture, so you'll have to figure all this out.

The next little series is about how a finicky eater survives in a place where most "normal" people would be in food heaven -- especially meat eaters.

But I have to find just the right combination of pasta and meat and tomato sauce of some kind -- but it can't have any surprises in it or anything like that.

The solution I found when I needed a quick and cheap meal (why pay a lot of money to eat alone -- especially when you leave most of the stuff behind?) was to go to a little fast food place near my hotel and wait until the kid behind the counter realized I don't speak Serbian. The he or she would call out to someone back out of sight and a more English-friendly teenager (they seemed like teenagers) would come out and help me make the dish I want -- or make the elements of the dish.

You see, to get the pasta, I'd have to order a combination that's pictured in a sign above the counter -- don't need Serbian for that.

Then, I'd point off the the right to where they have this delicious-looking mystery meat spinning on a verticle spit thing (just look at the picture please). Turns out it's the meat they use for their Giro sandwiches (a quick point to the people who didn't like the prior title of this blog: I had no clue this was the "Hero" sandwich I'd heard people talk about for years. It was only recently that Mr. Brilliant figured out the there wasn't a gyro sandwhich. Although if this one spun faster then - - - never mind.).

So I order the giro "samo messo" (that means "only meat"), then they bring me a separate paper bowl of the giro meat. I sit down, mix the two dishes and sleep well that night.

Now, I must head downstairs, pay my bill and hope that the tall guy who brought me here three weeks ago is here on time and that I can make it to the car without needing a coat. I packed it. It's always warm on a plane and it'll be warm in Ontario, California, when I arrive in about 22 hours.

Stay tuned. By the way -- no time to proof this. Send me an e-mail and I'll fix it when I get home.