Технический перерыв

Among the Multitran.ru on-line Russian-English dictionary search results for "технический перерыв" ("tekhnicheskii pereryv"):

Деловая лексика (business lexicon):
перерыв по техническим причинам - interruption for technical reasons

Техника (equipment):
перерыв по техническим причинам - maintenance outage

Телекоммуникации (telecommunications):
перерыв по техническим причинам - out-of-service

Some people talk about their blogs "going on hiatus," or "taking a break," or use other phrases to describe what happens when they don't have time to update as much as they would like. I prefer the all-encompassing Russian phrase "tekhnicheskii pereryv." Literally, it translates variously as the phrases listed above. In addition, I actually found - at a website called for office workers called klerk.ru - a lively online forum discussion of the legal meaning of this concept, which is worth checking out for laughs if you know Russian.

In practice, though, as anyone who's ever needed to (just for example) urgently change money in a one-exchange-booth town knows, it's a phenomenon that can occur at any time, although generally at an inconvenient time, and for just about any reason. One cashier and she has to take a bathroom break? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." The paper receipt roll in the cash register ran out? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." Smoke break? "Tekhnicheskii pereryv." You get the point.

Anyway, I've been posting less than I would like to recently, and I'd prefer to just call this my own little "tekhnicheskii pereryv." I'm happy, though, to break with the usual custom and provide an explanation for it. I am going to be transitioning out of my job here in Moscow by the end of June, which is requiring a fair amount of preparation. At the end of the summer, I'll be moving back to my hometown of DC, and getting the move organized and making sure we have a place to live there are also turning out to be labor-intensive endeavors. Also, I'm going to have about 6 weeks free this summer and a bunch of Aeroflot frequent flyer miles to travel in Russia and the CIS, so I'm spending some amount of time just daydreaming - well, and researching on the internet, ordering guidebooks, etc. - about where I might be going.

On top of all that, we're leaving tomorrow (well, today, actually) for a week in Shanghai to attend the wedding of an old, old friend of mine from DC (how often can you travel someplace you've never been to attend the wedding of someone you've known since pre-K?). I'll try to post at least once from there just for fun, but hopefully we'll be busy seeing things we may never get the chance to see again.

Plus, we're trying to get the most out of what Moscow has to offer while we're still here. Tonight, we just got back from an awesome show by Russian punk rockers NAIV at Tochka. In addition to playing a great set, the band screened their latest video, for the song "Chto nam delat'?" ("What are we to do?"), which contains many images from the tumultuous Russia of the 1990's: tanks around the "White House," Zhirinovsky picking a fight on the Duma floor, and Yeltsin dancing drunkenly, just to name a few of the nostalgia-inducing moments. Apparently, MTV Russia has refused to play the video, because it's "too political." And on MUZ-TV (the home-grown Russian MTV clone), apparently, if you don't pay, your video gets no play. But it turns out there are alternative music television channels, such as "Alternative One," which bills itself as Russia's "first alternative music channel" (and which I hadn't even heard of before), who are willing to take the risk.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled tekhnicheskii pereryv...