Big flame - Little flame

These are the choices that faced me when I endeavored to preheat my oven to 325 degrees, Farenheit in order to bake a batch of brownies.

I also had no measuring cup.

Heather sent me back to Russia with two packets of brownie mix, which I decided to bake and bring to a dinner I was invited to last night.

Now I know you guys are waiting for me to tell you the part about how the oven blew up, the brownies caught on fire or came out raw. Sorry. They were a little cakey for my tastes, probably owing to the not quite exact measurements and scary Russian eggs.*

*(A friend of mine here said that Russian eggs look like they just took the hen, held it up over the carton and let the egg drop in. They are kind of unappetizing to look at, not our bleached white, clean shells)

But I kept an eye on them, deployed the toothpick numerous times to check doneness, and voila! Baked brownies in Russia. If only I had had more than 2 packets. Sigh.

The unfortunate development of the day was a cockroach who announced his presence in our apartment by trying to climb up my leg in the bathroom. Eek! I screamed like the girl that I am and ran out of the bathroom and shut the door. My announcement caused Alana, my roomate, to also scream like a girl. I peeked back in and found that my hasty exit had left our roach on his back with his nasty legs kicking in the air. I decided for the stepping on the newspaper approach to extermination, with a nasty clean up. Ugh. Alana begged me not to leave. We found holes in the kitchen wall behind the sink and don't know what to do about it. Maybe they've been around all this time, maybe he was a scout. I don't really want to know. Shudder.

Not as bad as Heather's mouse incident though.

Alana and I went to the Museum of Contemporary History today, which used to be the Revolution Museum, so I got to talk her ear off about Russian history, which I enjoyed! I was unable to talk our way through as Russians and had a little spat with the ticket woman, which ended in her suggestions that I talk to the management. Oh well. Unfortunately my narrative of Russian history to Alana turned into: "In 1891 there was a terrible famine." ... "So during the famine in 1922..." ..."The famine in 1932-33 killed millions of people." ..."Oh did I forget to tell you about the famine in 1946? How could I forget!" Sad, really. Not to mention the war casualties, victims of terror, etc. It was a fun day.

And such talk of famine left me so hungry that I had to run and get myself a double cheeseburger from none other than McDonalds. And let me tell you they are packed to the gills all the time. You'd think there was a famine.