A Small and Limited Background - continuation of the Beginning

All great books usually start with some sort of character background - something that can give the reader a foundation to jump off of when the actual storyline comes into play.  And by great books, I don't mean Charles Dickens books.  Unfortunately for literature buffs, I've never liked his body of work.  Also, he was ugly.

Anyway, I live in Philadelphia with my wife, who, as said previously, is due in January.  We've got a modest house, and we're both in our mid 20s.  It's not a terribly outstanding and original background until you throw into the mix that she is originally from Minsk, Belarus, and is Jewish.  An interesting side-note, her Belorussian Passport says that her nationality is not actually Belorussian, she is instead of Jewish nationality, a practice they are now stopping, apparently.

We met in college, French class to be more specific.

You know how in the first couple days of class, you sort of do a scan of your fellow students to figure out which ones are the hottest, and which ones you think you'd like to meet?  I picked her out as definitely the most attractive.  But i never thought i'd have the guts to get up and go talk to her.  Luckily, we both smoked back then.  You can say a lot of stuff about smoking cigarettes, but one thing you can't say is that it never promoted friendly bullshitting.  You can't really help but blabber with someone while puffing away.  So I actually got enough nerve to chat with her.

The majority of the rest is uninteresting.  however, i do have to add that at the time, she was only in the country for maybe two years.  I think this was the most interesting time in our relationship, simply because she only had a general command of the English language.  Flirting with a girl who only understands 50% of what you say can be...well...really fun.  And as luck would have it, she was into me enough to look past a lot of the bad jokes I made.  or, she just didn't understand them.  Or, as a third possibility, she did understand them but only pretended not to, playing to the possibility that i had a thing for being misunderstood.  I doubt it was the last one.

Anyway, this is the reason for the title of the Blog - Smells like Borscht.  A ridiculous inside joke alluding to the mixing of cultures, and centered around silly foods and traditions brought to the table by both a Lutheran American Former Punk, and a Jewish Belorussian literature and history geek.

As an addendum, please excuse these first posts.  I understand they have a lack of coherent or consistent voice and style, but i figure it'll take me a while to really work out how I want to write this thing.