My Personal Observations

On the Latest Supposed Leaks" and the New NSA "Leaker"

07 June 2017, 12:55

Winter Refuses to Fade as Life Flashes By

03 June 2017, 16:23

Nothing good to report except that the global warming appears to be a scam. I was just outside doing some work and a hail storm started. It is June and it is frezzing here. People are walking around in coats.

Winter Fades as Vacation Flashes By

24 April 2012, 16:00

Best of the day to you all, or the night, wherever you may be and whatever the case may be. In the event that you have visited my little corner recently and wondered what had happened to me, I guess I owe you all an explanation, you see, my bosses, in their lovely wisdom, decided to let me take a few days off, and the timing could not have been better.

So many things have happened in the past week that it seems like I have been away for years, but that is how it is these days, isn’t it? The world and all of the events and people in it are moving at lightning speed. Is this good or bad? Doesn’t matter really, it is just the way it is and we have to deal with it, like it or not.

So, I have just gotten back from vacation, and it is nice, in a way. Vacations are good, few would argue and they are right, but idle hands are the Devil’s plaything, but oh how sweet… lounging about, sleeping in, or partying till you drop.  However as with all good things, which end too soon, and too much of a good thing is also bad, it is time to move on, as the world has moved on, so there you have an enigma wrapped in a metaphor.

As the sun comes up I stretch out and bask in the morning sun savoring, relishing, soaking up, and luxuriating in the sunlight shining through my window, the hot sun kisses my skin, strange and pleasant and life giving after almost eight months of virtual darkness, freezing cold, and the brutal elements that go with winter this far north. The sun, so powerful so needed and so able to affect everything around us, brings new life into my old carcass blocking out almost everything else as it heals and nurtures my very soul. Sorry got carried away a little perhaps.

If you are fortunate or unfortunate, as the case may be, depending on how character-building you wish to views such things, and live in more moderate climes. You may say I sound half-cocked, ranting and raving about the sun and the weather as if something so benign could be something worth talking about, but if you have experienced decades of Russian winter you will probably understand me, you would know how weather can be a force which dictates how things are, how they will be and how it can be so powerful as to change your life, your psyche and your very existence.

I remember quite well my first full winter in Moscow, it was a doozy, with no exaggeration I did not see the sun, not even a slight five second glance through altocumulus, altostratus, cirrocumulus, cirrus, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, or any other type of cloud or frozen or otherwise air-borne precipitation for more than eight months. With days that were less than six hours long, and temperatures that brutally did not move much higher than minus 25 degrees Celsius for months, it may not be too much of a stretch of the imagination to say it was like a frozen hell. But I, mad lover of cold, and things extreme, loved it….Except for one little thing, after six months of not seeing the sun it dampened the spirit…

So the sun has come to Moscow, and this year the transition from freezing winter to shirt sleeve heat took less than a week, I kid you not! The first day of my vacation I was still wearing my heavy winter coat, and there was still snow everywhere, on the third day I was watching rain fall outside the window and opening the windows to get a little fresh air as I walked around in shorts.

Getting used to such a weather change so fast is hard for some (sometimes it really feels as if the blood runs thicker in the winter like a big truck running number 2 diesel) and perhaps a major disappointment for those who invested heavily in spring collections, but it is what we have and I for one am glad.

Happy to be back, talk to you all tomorrow…. Enjoy the spring, or the fall for that matter, depending on where you are… Fall is also a wonderful thing…