The past few days...

Saturday we held a poker tournament at the AH. For me, this was incredibly boring. I have never been one for playing card games, I don't enjoy them and I'm not good at them. And I never understood this televised poker craze thing... who the hell wants to watch other people play cards? Yawn! But, we all had to be there, so I went, although I mostly assisted by staying out of the way. After poker, we showed Batman Begins (the AH shows English language movies on Saturdays). I hadn't intended to watch it... Saturday was such an incredibly beautiful day, and I didn't want to waste it in the basement watching a movie I'd already seen... but I couldn't help myself. I'd kind of forgotten how absolutely brilliant that film is. Just like when I saw it in the theater, I sat on the edge of my seat, grinning like an idiot throughout the whole thing. After the movie, six of us headed for Shesh-Besh. We really have become regulars there, to the point that the staff knows us. If any of you ever come to Vladimir as tourists, your guide will probably try to get you to eat at Traktir. Traktir isn't bad, but compared to Shesh-Besh, the food there's mundane at best. And when you go to Shesh-besh, you can't forget to buy a pitcher (koovsheen) of their semi-sweet red wine, as it is the best wine you will ever taste. For various reasons, only three of us were drinking from the pitcher, which may or may not have led to three people, arms linked, staggering along Bolshaya Moscovskaya singing about how our milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard. Sigh.

Sunday morning, B, Y and I went to Dobryak (Vladimir's very large, warehouse-like shopping center) for the purpose of finding spring coats for Y and B. Y came away with a hot orange coat (I tried to have Brooke take a picture of the two of us in our spring coats: Apelsinchik and Apple-Green-chik as we like to say.... but unfortunately my camera was set on video not photo, and I didn't notice until, well, this morning. Whoops.) I bought an absolutely absurd shirt, that kind of makes me look like a Renaissance Elf. So obviously, I love it, even though I will be laughed at every time I wear it.

Renaissance Elf

After leaving Dobryak, I met up with L at the AH for belly dancing lessons. L's been teaching me, B and Y basic belly dancing moves for some time now, in preparation for entering us into a Russian belly dancing class. Yesterday I was the only one dancing with L. (Or trying to dance and making an ass of myself!) But it was fun, and today I ache all over in places where I've never ached before, so it was definitely a work-out. After dancing, we went over to the univermag, and L helped me pick out a scarf covered in coins to wear during belly dancing. Of course, I went home and wore the damn thing around for about an hour, jingling all the way.

Jingly-Jangly

In other news, we had a weird, sudden snowstorm this morning. It went from being sunny to blizzardy in about three minutes. Now it's merely overcast. So much for the wonderful weather we've been having!

Before and after. I miss the blue sky already.