Noirs play well in this corner of Kosovo

As I’m typing this, “Farewell My Lovely” (in the U.S., the 1944 film was titled “Murder, My Sweet”) is playing on the television behind me. Funny, I just watched that noir based on the Raymond Chandler novel for the first time a couple of months ago. It was part of the CenterStage summer film series. What’re the chances?

I’m sitting in the downtown Pristina apartment that we moved into on Sunday. In many ways, it’s the perfect spot: convenient to the ABA-CEELI office where Mary Pat works, near a decent grocery, boasting two rooms instead of the hotel single we’d been in since we arrived two weeks ago. The mattress is softer than a wrestling mat, the TV gets CNN, BBC and Movies 4 Men (a British Satellite TV channel that is playing in the background).

The only problem: The Internet connection doesn’t work worth a thimble full of spit. It functioned last night long enough for me to answer an e-mail from another former Spokanite who has been doing work here in Pristina. But I can’t check to see if it went through.

It’s not as if I don’t have choices. I can wait and see if the Web comes back on (seems doubtful). I can go down the Internet business located in the building’s basement and suck in more cigarette fumes than if I’d smoked a carton or two of unfiltered Camels . Or I can walk down to the office.

To do the latter, though, I’ll have to wait for the washing to finish. Yeah, that’s another benefit to this apartment: It has a washing machine. There’s no dryer, a concept still considered a novelty in Europe, but there’s an actual working washer.

That’s OK, though. That’ll give me time to finish watching Dick Powell try to fill the shoes of Philip Marlowe. For the former song-and-dance boy, it’s hardly a tight fit.

I’ll just have to post this later.