Dinos Of Rus

Came out of the grocery store tonight and for just a second, rejoiced in the pale white-grey of the late-afternoon winter sky. Then the reflexive nausea kicks in as I recall the circumstances in which I first saw such a sky. It was in moving from Almaty to Moscow in early January, queasy with early pregnancy, the aftershock of my first professional failure, and the uncertainty of being engaged to some Russian guy I barely knew. The sun came up at about 8:30 in the morning and went down at about 3:30 or 4PM. The only thing that resembled daylight most days was that milky sky. I liked living that far north when I tried it later, in better personal and professional circumstances - I liked the long days in summer and even those weird milky days in winter - but when I encounter it afresh it takes me back to less pleasant memories.

The Russian Soul quotient of the day as a whole was fairly high. We ate pelmeni by the ton for lunch, then went off in search of Russian-language reading material for Dino Spouse and Babushka. All roads toward the Russian Soul lead to Pikesville, at least in this neck of the woods, so we checked out Russkij Dom (Russian House) and East-West. The latter has moved from its Reisterstown Road storefront location to the cutest little izba shoppe in the word ... they seem to be setting up some kind of Russian school action for kids there, too. Anyhow, behind those stops (fulfilling the Baba Christmas gift quota) and a run through the East Columbia Branch of the Howard County Library, my people were in the kind of good mood that comes of having more than one good thing to read.