A Day in the Life of...

A picture says more than a thousand words, right?

So, here are my thousands of words:

Armenian Gentleman

Temple

Sibs

Beach Feet

Pillow

The beautiful architecture that the weather is supposedly worth enduring for.

Stray Dog

Another Stray Dog

Biological Male Parent at the Market

P.S.
Be back with the writing soon. There just isn't much to bitch and whine about lately other than the usual.

This is Russia (In February) Some more Pictures

Here are some more photos that I've taken around my block today.
It's just winter in Russia.

This first one is my hallway. One time I came home at night and I had the music from "Halloween" playing on my Ipod, and then some elderly neighbor came shambling down the hall, and I swear to god I shit my pants a little bit. But obviously, it's a bit less creepy in the daylight.




I like to call this one below "The Good Earth."

This is just my courtyard. It's been snowing all day.





Ah, yes, the Russian park, with it's inescapable empty bottles of beer. Also, the infamous drain pipe with the frozen dirty ice pouring out of it. Frozen in time like some sort of monument to this city's inefficiency at water drainage and the ability to deal with it's own climate.



These last four are just details. This city is all about details when it comes to the pretty. And the Erotic shop is right across the street from my building. Very classy. Go St. Petersburg!

Horrible Pictures with My Horrible Camera

Ok, I'm sorry you guys because I'm completely too drained to actually write anything. I just spent the entire weekend in bed with a man who is seven years my junior and I'm tuckered out. So while I'm learning the intricacies of Russian dating, here are some pictures for your entertainment. They are as usual of completely suckass quality, but I think that everyone should be used to that by now. So anyway, enjoy.
These are just to prove that I do go places and see stuff and know people and shit. I'm not just sitting at home watching the L Word non stop.

Also, about how these pics look, is approximately what my life here feels like. Blurry and confusing and full of warm red. But I think that's life in Russia in general. Some of these people are friends, some are relations, some are acquaintances. And I did see some art. So there is some level of intellectual enlightenment going on somewhere in between all the bar-hopping and work.

Pictures from Frozen Hell

Yep. Took some pictures today y'all. It was hard because, and I can't stress this enough, the devil camera won't charge all the way and keeps taunting me by turning on for 3 second at a time, and then crapping out and taking a five minute smoke break. Also, I hate taking pictures with flash. Everything looks even colder and grayer than it already is. I'd rather the picture have the blurry, but warm quality to it. It's cold enough here as it is. So without further ado, here are a few pics from a day in the life of Plusha:

Alright, now the one above is a photo of the escalator leading out of the Metro here. For those of you not in the know, this lovely city was built on a freaking swamp back in the day (which explains the massive amounts of mosquitoes here during the summer). As a result of the swamp, when it came time to modernize and build them some subway stations, they had to dig real deep to get underneath the swamps. So the subways here are way further down underground than they are in NYC. And consequently, the escalators are frighteningly long and fast. I swear, when I have to ride that thing in the morning, it feels like I'm heading down to some level of Dante's inferno, only mechanized.

The weather conditions today were great. I believe the word for it here is Metel. That's like snow wind that blows in your eyes and your face and is everywhere and you feel like you're getting your ass kicked by little pieces of white Satan the whole way to work. But by the time I got out of work, this is what I saw:

And this:
I'm not sure if this comes across through the pictures, but it totally made me think of nuclear winter.

Later, I saw a little bit of pretty on a large street. Someone had lit up some trees with colorful lights:

Naturally, I had to take the escalator again, so here it is just in case you didn't get a good enough impression of it from the first picture. Only difference is that in this one I'm actually going down. Hey, if I have to deal with this shit twice a day, then you do as well, if you love me:

This is me after I bought some pine tree branches (that's going to be our "Christmas tree" this year), and was trying to get home through the throngs of people and freeze:

And then finally, at home, thawed out, with my new "Christmas tree" I'm just grateful that I can feel my hands again:

Happy Hanukkah everybody!