Thursday, 24 July 2008 06:19
Funny how I've lost count of the days during this lazy, lazy month. The truth is I usually don't know what the date is on any given day, but that's only because Russian calendars are different from American (the Russian calendar week beginning on Monday.) I'm generally a day off in either direction. Even when I write appointments and things on the calendar, I tend to write them in the wrong block. All that to say I'm not sure what today's date is, but the calendar is all the way in the kitchen, and in order to check on it I would have to get up out of my chair, which makes it a supremely insignificant detail at the moment.
It's turned hot. Not hot hot, the Russians assure me. You haven't seen hot yet. You have no idea what hot really is, they say. But it's 100 Fahrenheit, which is hot enough for me, and I'm sensible enough to be thankful for it. One thing I know for sure is that even if it's not hot yet--even if 100 Fahrenheit is just a mild, warmish day in Kuban--it is too darn hot to cook. I've been trying to make salads early in the day, and get out of the kitchen. Unfortunately, my family (who are not picky eaters, Mom!) don't really care for summer salads. I've just about exhausted my repertoire of things-that-can-be-made-ahead-and-stuck-in-the-fridge-for-supper.
Last night, it didn't cool down enough to use the outside grill until 10 p.m. so that's when Tim grilled the chicken (which I will use today to make a salad, of course.) It was nice: Vladimir and Nina and Galya were out, all in high spirits. They boys tended the fire (Russians grill over open fire instead of charcoal briquets or a gas flame.) The dog ran around chasing the cats.
Robik the Armenian gardener has taken to buying us ice creams every day. He's crazy about Tim, and always super-friendly. Unfortunately, he's also taken to coming to work drunk, which we've never noticed him doing before. I'm not sure why the sudden change, but of course it puts me on my guard a bit since the more he drinks the friendlier he gets.
We're still not making any appreciable progress toward 1) buying a car or 2) getting our other laptop fixed. We're in a holding pattern for both. We've decided to try to open a bank account here in Krasnodar. Since we don't know any Americans who have actually done this (I'm sure they exist; we just don't know about them) we are going through the process with an interpreter, something we don't usually do on principle, but which seemed to be wisest in this case. Having a bank account will save us loads of fees, and make the process of buying and registering a car in our own name here much easier. Of course, like everything in Russia, the motto is, Rome wasn't built, nor bank accounts opened in a day.
We're still waiting on a package from the States that contains the software we need to heal our comatose laptop. Meanwhile, there is still no sign of the "master" who absconded with our 2,000 rubles for the modem. We trust he will show up when the time is right. If not, we know where to find him.
And as the temperature promises to be in the 100's again today (a nice, mild, warmish day here in Kuban) we're off to Solnichniy Ostrov again, to spend the day swimming in the river and basking in the shade.
