the good, the bad, and the ...

Okay, so I couldn't think of a witting ending for that title. I just woke up.

I am currently experiencing the coldest March of the past 30 years. The other day I went into the living room to look at the thermometer. Marina was in there drying her hair and was a witness to the fact that I actually gave the thermometer the bird. I'm really sick of temps in the teens. But we had a little snow storm on Friday which prompted Marina to say "its snowing, that means its warming up." Go figure, I'm no metereologist. The experts do, however promise a bonafide spring in April with temps in the 50s. According to everyone I know, spring in April means that winter will come back in March.

The good news is that here in St. Petersburg, we already have MORE than 12 hours of daylight everyday, and its getting longer by more than 5 minutes everyday. In fact, we have 12 hours 13 minutes of daylight today, and Charlottesville will have only 12 hours 9 minutes. (www.wunderground.com), but their daylight increases by only about 2 minutes everyday.

I've been working lately. Went to an art exhibit at the Marble Palace, which Catherine the Great built for her lover, Orlov, which was the are of Natalia Nesterova, a contemporary Russian artist who emigrated to New York and paints very interesting realist, yet not realist scenes. I also went to a concert at the Sheremetev Palace to see the friend of Marina's friend Sveta play several piano concertos. The palace is in the middle of downtown, and Sheremetev seemed to live quite well there, considering it wasn't his main resident. He was a count, and one of the richest people in the Russian empire and owned a tract of land which encompassed what is now most of northern Moscow (and the international airport, incidentally is called "Sheremetevo" because it was built on his former land). While Beethoven was playing I imagined the Russian aristocracy milling around, speaking French and German and discussing European politics. When Chopin was playing, I imagined them later, at the turn of the century, probably a little less smug and a little bit scared.

I may (this is not anything yet, I haven't even applied) but there is an opportunity to be an instructor at a college in Lynchburg next spring for one course on Soviet history. (!)

The parrot is being an absolute terror lately.