The End

Ok, thanks to the generosity of co-worker Kathryn and my mad reading skillz, I have finished Harry Potter. No spoilers here, cuz I know my mom hasn't read it yet, either.

SO & I ritually burned some consumables last night, including 2 1/2 lbs of asparagus. And yes, we ate all of it. Then I sat in my chair & read. Is it only me, or is sitting down & reading an entire book almost like eating a whole bunch of candy that you're not supposed to but it's really good so you do it anyway? Without the being sick to your stomach part afterwards.

I think I am having an entire week of Mondays. Today is the second time I've spilled coffee on myself. And I'm wearing a white shirt, naturally. It's also crazy hot and humid outside. Unbelievable buckets of sweat this morning during & after my 8 mile tempo run. I think even the dog was sweating. At any rate, she was quite happy to jump in the lake. I was pretty close to my target pace (8:29), but I was a little too fast at the start. I sort of didn't warm up for a mile like I was supposed to.

Mile 1 - 8:22 (forget the warm up, let's run!)
Mile 2 - 7:40 (where'd this come from?)
Mile 3 - 8:23 (there's a gradual hill at the start of this mile, I'm surprised it was this fast)
Mile 4 - 8:46 (but apparently, the hill made me tired)
Mile 5 - 8:28
Mile 6 - 8:26 (I felt like I was barely hanging on for this mile & the next one)
Mile 7 - 8:23
Mile 8 and change - 9:28 (so happy to slow down!)

Average pace over 8.13 miles - 8:30. I also dropped a little more than 2 lbs of sweat.

I still have tons of Russia pix to post. I have an idea for the next set, but I have to sort, crop & resize them all first, and I sometimes get lazy about that.

Fashion

I promised an entry on Russian fashion and here it is. There could have been more dramatic pictures, but there were times when my jaw was dropped so far to the ground that operating the camera would have been difficult. I could have had a zillion more mullet pix, but Big Boy got annoyed with me when I took them. There were girl-mullets, boy-mullets, baby-mullets, all kinds of mullets. Here are just three of them:







The next category is interesting man-fashion. First, we have the vampires:



Now, given that they were out in daylight and they showed up on "film," they probably weren't real vampires. But, they sure looked like it. They both would have made little boy look pudgy in a side by side comparison. Now, lots of men carried around bags, that wasn't the issue. But the vampire on the right, check that bag out. That's not a bag, that's not a сумка (soomka), that's not a doctor's bag, that's a purse.


Those are capris, and yes, that's a shadow of me taking the picture.


More capris. And that's Big Boy's shadow. He's waiting for me to finish taking pictures of strangers. Luckily, I didn't take any shots of the scantily-dressed girls in St. Petersburg. That could have been a time consuming project.

Now on to footwear. They walk a lot in St. Pete. I'm not sure how this girl walked at all. I almost fell over just looking at her boots.


Those things are about 5" high. And the man on the right is sporting some of the "extra-long-toe" shoes. There was this guy trend of wearing shoes about 3" longer than one's actual toes. This was not an extreme example. We didn't get it.

Clothing with profanity. A trend we can only hope comes to America so that we, too, can wear things like this:




I can think of who would buy a shirt like this, but who would wear it?? And, yeah, it was hanging upside down in the window and I turned the picture over.

Finally, just some garden variety weirdos in front of the Moo Moo restaurant.


We were not the only ones staring at the weirdos. I think the girl in black on the right was taking a picture, too. And yes, I know that in English, it looks like My My, but it says Moo Moo. Like the cow.

I got in 7 miles this morning after I finally dragged myself out of bed. I feel crazy busy with a project for work; the new printer is also on the fritz. I have to think of how to entertain my uncle this weekend. Ideas?

Total media blackout

I'm on page 420 of Harry Potter, so if you know anything beyond that just shut up, as my dear old buddy Kurt would say. SO's plan was that we would take turns reading & finish up last night so that Big Boy could take the book with him on the bus to camp, then hand it off to little boy who'd then bring it back with him when he comes home on Friday.

Uh, not so much. I read the Sunday paper while SO read Harry, then we switched for awhile and I got to page 420. Then SO took the book and kept it from about 2pm until midnight. I am disinclined to spend my lunch hours at Target reading standing up 90 pages at a time until I finish the thing, hence the total media blackout. I won't get to read it next weekend because my uncle will be visiting from California. Maybe I'll just never find out what happens. Grrr.

Oh! Co-worker Kathryn says I can borrow her copy when she finishes, which will probably be on Wednesday. More good work news: someone came by while I was in a training this morning and removed the offensive light fixture (aka torture device) over my computer. Now there's just a gaping hole over my cube. Maybe it has to do with the water running up there and the leaks on the adjacent ceiling tiles.

I got up at 5am - it's getting dark again in the mornings, so I have to watch my klutzy feet. Out for 6 miles with Sky. It wasn't that hot, but it was windy and pretty humid. This week actually looks fairly easy as far as running goes: 2-6s, a 7, an 8, and then 18 on Saturday. Eighteen will be long, but not impossible, because I've already done it twice before. I took Big Boy to the bus for camp and I won't see him again for a month. They're going to be up in Ontario and Manitoba, on the Bloodvein River, ending up in Lake Winnipeg. He'll be 18 when he comes home. Did I mention that I'm having issues?

Inertia

Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Latin, lack of skill, from inert-, iners
1 a : a property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force b : an analogous property of other physical quantities (as electricity)
2 : indisposition to motion, exertion, or change (From Merriam-Webster's online dictionary.)

It has been so hard to run this week. Not the running itself, which has been going along just fine, but the hauling my carcass out of bed and getting out the door to do the actual running.

I did alright in SoDak, I got up each day at 5am so I could get runs in before the out-law shenanigans started, scare the cows, and watch the sun rise. Six miles on Saturday, 16 miles on Sunday - no mp3 player, no dog, just me & the road.

I foolishly tried a "recovery run" on Monday... some runners swear by them. Not me. I went out for 7 and was hating nearly every minute of it. I managed one loop around the lake and then headed home. I logged 4 miles and then just hurt all day. So, Tuesday was the off day for this week. Yesterday Sky & I ran 7, but I couldn't stomach running around the lake twice so we went on the Gateway Trail and just added an extra mile on to make the total come out to 7. It was so unbelievably humid, I was sweating like 10 or 20 whole women.

Today we ran the same way, and I ran a couple of the miles at a better than 8:00 pace. There was wind, cooler temps, and less humidity. It was almost completely fun after the first half mile. But it was so hard to get up. Once I was up and out the door things were pretty much going to remain in motion, but boy did I want to remain at rest.

Big Boy comes home tonight after having taken his placement tests in Milwaukee. As much as some members of the family are looking forward to his leaving for college, I gotta say, I'm not looking forward to it very much at all. I have a feeling this fall is going to be a bumpy ride.

My first farm auction

And now for mom: horses!

Bronze Horseman, i.e. Peter the Great, in St. Petersburg.


Monument to Nicholas I, St. Petersburg.


Anchikov Bridge over the Fontanka River in St. Petersburg.


Manezh Square in Moscow.


Actual real horses outside Dinamo Stadium before a soccer match.


More real horses. There were more cops than spectators at this game, I tell you.


Icon at Novodevichy Convent, Moscow.


Monument to General Zhukov, outside Red Square, Moscow.

Blue skies continued

My boys are back! little boy is taller, Big Boy has a goatee, they're both tan. We went for pizza and watched my softball team play. We did NOT go to the midnight showing of the new Harry Potter movie, although it was discussed. I read some of this instead.

I got in a 5 mile tempo run with a mile each warm up & cool down this morning. Sky was relatively well behaved. The boys are going to school for cross country practice today. SO is headed to SoDak today for the farm sale. And I have to get the car in for its 20K service.

More blue skies, this time over Moscow.


St. Basil's Cathedral.


Just a random building on the way to Red Square from the hostel. A group of drunk guys would hang out here with a sign that read something like "Please give money to drunken reprobates" and a box for donations.


Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Completely rebuilt in the 1990s after a swimming pool had been on the site for quite awhile.


The view from the hostel, around 10 at night.


One of the towers of the Kremlin.


The clock tower of the Kremlin.


View of the Kremlin from a bridge on a long walk that finally resulted in arriving at our intended destination.


In Kitay-Gorod. This is where we met Big Boy's classmate Paul & his family.


Bell Tower at Novodevichy Convent.

Bad dog/blue sky

It started out to be such a good run with Sky. It was early, not too hot, she wasn't pulling too much, the pace was decent... We'd passed at least 6 dogs and she stayed in heel position without use of the choke chain, which is a tremendous accomplishment for her. Usually I have to practically strangle her to keep her in heel when there's another dog around.

Then that last dog. It was my fault, I wasn't paying attention. Sky was out ahead at the end of her retractable leash and this cute black & white spaniel-type dog comes towards us with his runner. Sky went for the dog and I couldn't stop her in time. She just about got the dog, tripped up the runner, and somehow the other dog managed to get off his leash. Well, he comes over to see what Sky's problem is, not in an aggressive way, he seems like a nice dog. Sky, in the meantime, is getting cussed out and is sitting with her chain collar up under her ears. I asked the runner if his dog was ok, and he seemed to be, so Sky got to finish the mile and half home in heel. Dang dog.

Post title is something of a play on words, as Sky's middle name is Blue. I didn't mess with the hue or saturation of any of the following pictures, but I did crop a couple of them. The sky in Russia is blue. Crazy blue. Amazing blue. Really, mind-bogglingly blue. These are all from St. Petersburg. Tomorrow we'll take a look at Moscow.


Church on Spilled Blood. I didn't pick the name, Tsar Aleksandr II was murdered there.


Along the Moika Canal.


Mariinsky Palace. The St. Petersburg Duma meets here.


Church on Spilled Blood.


Cool light blue building near the circus. I can't for the life of me remember what it is, though.


The top of some church or another. You're supposed to be looking at the sky anyway.


Hero-City Leningrad. That's what it says. I can't make this stuff up. It's a hotel now.


Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace. Nevsky Prospect is to the left and the water is the Fontanka River.


Kazan Cathedral.


Fountain in the Neva River. We took this from the Winter Palace, aka Hermitage.


Peter & Paul Fortress from across the Neva.