Апрель 29, 2007
Holy crud.
4/30 09:35, Pushkin time
Please observe what we saw out the window this morning (30 April, remember...):
That's right. It appears we have about four inches of snow accumulated overnight, with more falling pretty strong right now. Take THAT! all you people who looked at me funny for not yet getting around to having my studded tires changed off!
Really, that's about all there is to say this morning. We'll be heading back out to the hospital very shortly now.
Please observe what we saw out the window this morning (30 April, remember...):
That's right. It appears we have about four inches of snow accumulated overnight, with more falling pretty strong right now. Take THAT! all you people who looked at me funny for not yet getting around to having my studded tires changed off!Really, that's about all there is to say this morning. We'll be heading back out to the hospital very shortly now.
Further events
4/29 19:32, Pushkin time
This morning we got a call from L's doctor at the Children's hospital letting us know that since he was so far out of any risks he would be getting moved out of the neonatal intensive care section into the follow-up-and-observation section. So A and I piled all into the car and headed right off into to city to see about getting her moved in with him a couple days earlier than we had been led to believe.
Unfortunately, this was still not to be. What they did this morning was start the process of moving him -- said process to most likely occupy still two more days. He's in an in-between place in the hospital, not in the high-grade isolation-type area he was when he came in, but still not an actual private-type room. He is, however, finally wearing his own clothes and fully unplugged from everything, which is good. A was able to pick him up and carry him around a little bit, and she said he's starting to make some noises (now that his mouth and throat aren't occupied). We'll be back there more-than-frequently, until they elect to set A and he up in a room of their own, or until the 2nd, when the room his doctor pre-arranged for us yesterday comes available. As it appears right now, we're looking at maybe a week until he gets to come home.
As an aside: of course, Z and G are aware of the fact that their brother is still at the hospital; however, A and I agreed fairly early on that with them we wouldn't be going into any kind of detail as to the exact reason why this is so. The boys are perfectly satisfied with "the doctors aren't ready for him to leave yet", and much more in the way of details would be not only unnecessary for their comprehension, but likely just distress them needlessly. So when the boys get to Skype-talking again, please keep that in mind.
This morning we got a call from L's doctor at the Children's hospital letting us know that since he was so far out of any risks he would be getting moved out of the neonatal intensive care section into the follow-up-and-observation section. So A and I piled all into the car and headed right off into to city to see about getting her moved in with him a couple days earlier than we had been led to believe.
Unfortunately, this was still not to be. What they did this morning was start the process of moving him -- said process to most likely occupy still two more days. He's in an in-between place in the hospital, not in the high-grade isolation-type area he was when he came in, but still not an actual private-type room. He is, however, finally wearing his own clothes and fully unplugged from everything, which is good. A was able to pick him up and carry him around a little bit, and she said he's starting to make some noises (now that his mouth and throat aren't occupied). We'll be back there more-than-frequently, until they elect to set A and he up in a room of their own, or until the 2nd, when the room his doctor pre-arranged for us yesterday comes available. As it appears right now, we're looking at maybe a week until he gets to come home.
As an aside: of course, Z and G are aware of the fact that their brother is still at the hospital; however, A and I agreed fairly early on that with them we wouldn't be going into any kind of detail as to the exact reason why this is so. The boys are perfectly satisfied with "the doctors aren't ready for him to leave yet", and much more in the way of details would be not only unnecessary for their comprehension, but likely just distress them needlessly. So when the boys get to Skype-talking again, please keep that in mind.
Апрель 27, 2007
More Updating
4/28 10:57, Pushkin time
A's doctor released her a half-hour ago. We settled out the rest of our bill (the part pertaining to the epidural and L's stay in the neonatal care unit overnight, plus our nightly fee for the private room -- I'll get a final tally once we have L back at home with us) and got the stack of paperwork that comes with it. One document in particular is our 'receipt' for the baby. Fairly soon, I need to take that to the records office in Pushkin and have his birth certificate issued. С П told A that birth certificates are such a critically important document in Russia that they are the one thing that gets issued very quickly (within a week, we have been told to expect). Then with that we make an appointment and go to the US consulate to get whatever official document they want us to have preparatory to getting a passport for L. Then the passport, and once we have that, we can start the process of getting his visa invitation and then his visa. All of this in time for when he and A will be back in the US sometime in August.
Or so the plan goes.
For now, we are briefly stopping off at home to swap some gear and whatnot before heading on to the children's hospital to meet with the representative from the specialist-horde. Our intention is that A will stay there -- I'm led to understand that they have private rooms available there as well -- with L until the doctors are finished with their follow-up and are ready to let him out into the world. We will know more later today. A is pretty much over her nervousness about being by herself, language-wise; we found at the maternity hospital that a lot of what needs talking about can be done adequately on a simple vocabulary, plus since they're only just keeping an eye on things now, there's not much chance of anything really comprehension-time-critical coming up.
Will say more once we've done a bit more.
A's doctor released her a half-hour ago. We settled out the rest of our bill (the part pertaining to the epidural and L's stay in the neonatal care unit overnight, plus our nightly fee for the private room -- I'll get a final tally once we have L back at home with us) and got the stack of paperwork that comes with it. One document in particular is our 'receipt' for the baby. Fairly soon, I need to take that to the records office in Pushkin and have his birth certificate issued. С П told A that birth certificates are such a critically important document in Russia that they are the one thing that gets issued very quickly (within a week, we have been told to expect). Then with that we make an appointment and go to the US consulate to get whatever official document they want us to have preparatory to getting a passport for L. Then the passport, and once we have that, we can start the process of getting his visa invitation and then his visa. All of this in time for when he and A will be back in the US sometime in August.
Or so the plan goes.
For now, we are briefly stopping off at home to swap some gear and whatnot before heading on to the children's hospital to meet with the representative from the specialist-horde. Our intention is that A will stay there -- I'm led to understand that they have private rooms available there as well -- with L until the doctors are finished with their follow-up and are ready to let him out into the world. We will know more later today. A is pretty much over her nervousness about being by herself, language-wise; we found at the maternity hospital that a lot of what needs talking about can be done adequately on a simple vocabulary, plus since they're only just keeping an eye on things now, there's not much chance of anything really comprehension-time-critical coming up.
Will say more once we've done a bit more.
Update
4/27 17:26, Pushkin time
Hey everybody!
Not the most flattering picture, I know; but what else to do?...
This morning A's doctor told us that a release of her tomorrow is pretty well going to happen (as before, she heals up pretty quickly). On the other hand, L they were still not comfortable enough about to let him go right yet. This afternoon they moved him over to the Children's Hospital №1 in Petersburg. I went more or less with him -- the reception guy at the hospital sent me on a wild chase all over the 10-story building before I basically accidentally found where he was -- and was told that, since he just arrived, they are keeping him in the 'non-emergency, new arrivals' section until the horde of specialists comes to look him over tomorrow morning. And that area is a no-parents part of the hospital, so A and I will be spending one last night in RodDom №38, before heading off to the next place to join L.
Of course, doctors being who they are, no one would give me anything approaching an exit date for L until the specialists have seen him, though I did bully the main on-call pediatrician into telling me that based on what they see L is most likely just fine and that they will probably just want to unplug him and watch him for maybe a week (this would be in a room where A could stay with him). But it is all for the specialist-horde to say for sure. We will find out at around 1PM tomorrow.
We've had some other comforting words. The neonatal whatever-you-call-them doctor at the maternity hospital wanted to make sure that I understood that L's situation, while uncommon, is nothing they don't see at this hospital at least a couple of times a year, and that she has yet to have a single occurrence of any kind of problems or damage as a result of it. Then later today one of the African guys -- with whom I was working before getting the "it's time to go" call from A -- rang up to see how things were and when I relayed the bare-bones story, said that he was born a 'blue baby' (as they call them in South Africa) and went his first five or so minutes without breathing at all; and he's turned out alright, too. So at both ends, hopeful words.
As for the boys, Z has convinced the sitter that he is up to cooking (with help) and has made now two breakfasts -- the first, eggs with baked tomatoes; the second, blini (the Slavic analogue to pancakes or crepes) -- and a bit of a dinner. They're still approaching the whole situation as a get-away-from-the-parents opportunity, and are making the most of it.
By now everyone on the maternity hospital staff has met and talked at least a little bit with A. Both she and I get comments (surprised, when they find out that she's only been here a little while and didn't ever study formally) about how well she speaks. Also, I'd guess that nearly a third of the staff studied English when they were in school, and other than a couple words that are basically the same in both languages, nearly all of them can't remember a lick of it. As the anesthesiologist (who studied german, but that's not the point) said, 'it's not so much that he studied English, so much as that he was in an English class for a couple years.'
Sound familiar, anyone?...
Hey everybody!
Not the most flattering picture, I know; but what else to do?...This morning A's doctor told us that a release of her tomorrow is pretty well going to happen (as before, she heals up pretty quickly). On the other hand, L they were still not comfortable enough about to let him go right yet. This afternoon they moved him over to the Children's Hospital №1 in Petersburg. I went more or less with him -- the reception guy at the hospital sent me on a wild chase all over the 10-story building before I basically accidentally found where he was -- and was told that, since he just arrived, they are keeping him in the 'non-emergency, new arrivals' section until the horde of specialists comes to look him over tomorrow morning. And that area is a no-parents part of the hospital, so A and I will be spending one last night in RodDom №38, before heading off to the next place to join L.
Of course, doctors being who they are, no one would give me anything approaching an exit date for L until the specialists have seen him, though I did bully the main on-call pediatrician into telling me that based on what they see L is most likely just fine and that they will probably just want to unplug him and watch him for maybe a week (this would be in a room where A could stay with him). But it is all for the specialist-horde to say for sure. We will find out at around 1PM tomorrow.
We've had some other comforting words. The neonatal whatever-you-call-them doctor at the maternity hospital wanted to make sure that I understood that L's situation, while uncommon, is nothing they don't see at this hospital at least a couple of times a year, and that she has yet to have a single occurrence of any kind of problems or damage as a result of it. Then later today one of the African guys -- with whom I was working before getting the "it's time to go" call from A -- rang up to see how things were and when I relayed the bare-bones story, said that he was born a 'blue baby' (as they call them in South Africa) and went his first five or so minutes without breathing at all; and he's turned out alright, too. So at both ends, hopeful words.
As for the boys, Z has convinced the sitter that he is up to cooking (with help) and has made now two breakfasts -- the first, eggs with baked tomatoes; the second, blini (the Slavic analogue to pancakes or crepes) -- and a bit of a dinner. They're still approaching the whole situation as a get-away-from-the-parents opportunity, and are making the most of it.
By now everyone on the maternity hospital staff has met and talked at least a little bit with A. Both she and I get comments (surprised, when they find out that she's only been here a little while and didn't ever study formally) about how well she speaks. Also, I'd guess that nearly a third of the staff studied English when they were in school, and other than a couple words that are basically the same in both languages, nearly all of them can't remember a lick of it. As the anesthesiologist (who studied german, but that's not the point) said, 'it's not so much that he studied English, so much as that he was in an English class for a couple years.'
Sound familiar, anyone?...
Апрель 26, 2007
Outnumbered
4/26 19:21, Pushkin time
It's what A and I now officially are. Our latest addition, L, was born today in the Pushkin RodDom №38 at somewhere around 3PM, Pushkin time (I was a bit busy to take close notes). He weighed in at 3.95kg (8lb, 11-1/2oz) and was 56cm (do the math yourself; 2.54cm to the inch) long.
A called me in the afternoon of yesterday to let me know that the time had come. I -- amazingly -- got straight through the train crossings and home to her at about 5PM, right about the time the labor stuff quit. After going over our options a couple of times, we figured to go to the hospital just to be on the safe side. Z and G got to have a babysitter stay over, and promptly proceeded to abuse that privilege by staying up until almost 11 and having mainly cookies and sugar-with-tea for dinner. But A and I stayed the night at the hospital, and around noon today her water broke and we headed off to the birth floor to get things going.
After a couple hours trying, the doctors ended up getting the baby out, suction-cup-style. And, to add a bit of (not at all desired) excitement, when he came out he wasn't breathing. At all. In the maybe five seconds before they rushed him off to the baby-care section, I saw enough to put me in a terrible state - only bested by the state A was in; no matter how well I was able to block her view (and I tried, when I realized something was wrong) she nevertheless did not fail to notice that L did not cry at all. And then the baby doctors left, and nurses came in to clean up.
And everyone was really quiet.
And not talking to us.
...
And then, about six forevers later, A's doctor came up to tell us that L had not been breathing when he came out, and that they had him on a breathing apparatus, and that at this point he was doing okay on the apparatus, but they wanted (of course) to keep him in the special ward, since they weren't sure of the prognosis except for 'stable'.
And then nothing for another handful of eternities.
When finally another doctor came up and said that, in a few minutes I could go down and see L and talk to the pediatrics folks. Which, after offering a few more piss-poor reassurances to A, I did.
On the next floor down, they had L on basically the standard baby-warming tray, in blankets, with a beeping, number-flashing machine behind him and a tube in his mouth. But he breathed when i walked in, and wiggled a bit. And the doctors told me that he was basically only asphyxiated for the brief interval of time between the clamping of his cord and the getting him downstairs; and that before they had even been able to hook the throat-tube up to the air pump, he started breathing on his own (they unplugged him for a bit to let me see for myself. And as far as damage from oxygen lack, they said that at such a young age, the nervous system is very 'plastic', and this it would take a severe amount of damage to have any kind of lasting effect; then they flipped a bright light on right into his face, whereupon he sort of jumped and scrunched up even further (they say that the light reflex in newborns is one of the more sensitive to anoxia, and since his is going strong we don't have cause to worry). I was so relived I didn't even think to try to poke at him. Since Pushkin isn't a huge place, they said they would want to send him tomorrow into Petersburg, to a big pediatric hospital, so as to free up their equipment just in case another newborn needed it -- but not to worry, they had duplicate equipment in a special neonatal ambulance, and he wouldn't be left hanging for any appreciable time at all.
Back quickly with A I had to try to convince her of what I had seen, but she (of course) insisted on rushing the nurses taking care of her to get to go down and see for herself. And when she finally did, at close to 4:30, he was even wigglier -- especially when he heard her talking. By the time I had to briefly bail out to pick the boys up from their preschool (К was nice enough to take care of their delivery to and from home over the past night), the word was that he was so improved that they might end up handing him off to us tonight or tomorrow morning, rather than going into Petersburg. The pediatrics people were particularly affected by his reaction to hearing A's voice. No lethargy there...
So. Lacking context, it might appear that we are not out of the woods; but this is Russia, and children are the absolute priority in this culture. Everything is in very good hands, and from all appearances we actually left the woods a while ago -- they just want to make sure; they do not take chances with children here.
We did take a picture of him less than two hours after he was born. But I left the hospital only 95% mentally functional and the camera fell into that missing 5. I'll get it up later. Basically, he's pink and scrunched. And he has a big head-hickey from the suction cup they ended up using to get him out.
It's what A and I now officially are. Our latest addition, L, was born today in the Pushkin RodDom №38 at somewhere around 3PM, Pushkin time (I was a bit busy to take close notes). He weighed in at 3.95kg (8lb, 11-1/2oz) and was 56cm (do the math yourself; 2.54cm to the inch) long.
A called me in the afternoon of yesterday to let me know that the time had come. I -- amazingly -- got straight through the train crossings and home to her at about 5PM, right about the time the labor stuff quit. After going over our options a couple of times, we figured to go to the hospital just to be on the safe side. Z and G got to have a babysitter stay over, and promptly proceeded to abuse that privilege by staying up until almost 11 and having mainly cookies and sugar-with-tea for dinner. But A and I stayed the night at the hospital, and around noon today her water broke and we headed off to the birth floor to get things going.
After a couple hours trying, the doctors ended up getting the baby out, suction-cup-style. And, to add a bit of (not at all desired) excitement, when he came out he wasn't breathing. At all. In the maybe five seconds before they rushed him off to the baby-care section, I saw enough to put me in a terrible state - only bested by the state A was in; no matter how well I was able to block her view (and I tried, when I realized something was wrong) she nevertheless did not fail to notice that L did not cry at all. And then the baby doctors left, and nurses came in to clean up.
And everyone was really quiet.
And not talking to us.
...
And then, about six forevers later, A's doctor came up to tell us that L had not been breathing when he came out, and that they had him on a breathing apparatus, and that at this point he was doing okay on the apparatus, but they wanted (of course) to keep him in the special ward, since they weren't sure of the prognosis except for 'stable'.
And then nothing for another handful of eternities.
When finally another doctor came up and said that, in a few minutes I could go down and see L and talk to the pediatrics folks. Which, after offering a few more piss-poor reassurances to A, I did.
On the next floor down, they had L on basically the standard baby-warming tray, in blankets, with a beeping, number-flashing machine behind him and a tube in his mouth. But he breathed when i walked in, and wiggled a bit. And the doctors told me that he was basically only asphyxiated for the brief interval of time between the clamping of his cord and the getting him downstairs; and that before they had even been able to hook the throat-tube up to the air pump, he started breathing on his own (they unplugged him for a bit to let me see for myself. And as far as damage from oxygen lack, they said that at such a young age, the nervous system is very 'plastic', and this it would take a severe amount of damage to have any kind of lasting effect; then they flipped a bright light on right into his face, whereupon he sort of jumped and scrunched up even further (they say that the light reflex in newborns is one of the more sensitive to anoxia, and since his is going strong we don't have cause to worry). I was so relived I didn't even think to try to poke at him. Since Pushkin isn't a huge place, they said they would want to send him tomorrow into Petersburg, to a big pediatric hospital, so as to free up their equipment just in case another newborn needed it -- but not to worry, they had duplicate equipment in a special neonatal ambulance, and he wouldn't be left hanging for any appreciable time at all.
Back quickly with A I had to try to convince her of what I had seen, but she (of course) insisted on rushing the nurses taking care of her to get to go down and see for herself. And when she finally did, at close to 4:30, he was even wigglier -- especially when he heard her talking. By the time I had to briefly bail out to pick the boys up from their preschool (К was nice enough to take care of their delivery to and from home over the past night), the word was that he was so improved that they might end up handing him off to us tonight or tomorrow morning, rather than going into Petersburg. The pediatrics people were particularly affected by his reaction to hearing A's voice. No lethargy there...
So. Lacking context, it might appear that we are not out of the woods; but this is Russia, and children are the absolute priority in this culture. Everything is in very good hands, and from all appearances we actually left the woods a while ago -- they just want to make sure; they do not take chances with children here.
We did take a picture of him less than two hours after he was born. But I left the hospital only 95% mentally functional and the camera fell into that missing 5. I'll get it up later. Basically, he's pink and scrunched. And he has a big head-hickey from the suction cup they ended up using to get him out.
Апрель 23, 2007
Beginning
4/23 15:18, Pushkin time
Yet another long hiatus. As we approach and pass the birth of our third kid, I would expect these to continue to occur. Stuff comes up.
Thursday passed without comment. And Friday A and I visited the doctor at the maternity hospital for a check-up; the appointment was at 4PM, and I as even figuring that I'd make it back to work for a quick stop afterwards. That was not to be.
After some medical-activity, the doctor turned to me and explained that he wanted to keep A there for a while to check up on her. And wham-bang, she was hospital-gowned and checked into a room in the "pre-birth" part of the maternity hospital (that being the only thing with which they occupy themselves, all things are referenced to it). And I was being told that she might be kept there for as much as five days, at which point they might send her home until labor started and she came back (!!!). So after a bit of panicking, we resolved to let her stay there for the night; I would pick up the kids and get things set up for a just-in-case over the weekend, and we would aim to have her out the next day. Her doctor lightened things a little bit when he said that 'if she was doing better' she could probably leave the next day.
So I left and A got to spend the night alone as the sole nonfluent-Russian speaker in a hospital wing. Her friend, Т, as soon as she found out what had happened, came by to drop off some goodies and magazines (which helped morale probably more than I did..) and then volunteered to take both of the boys the next day so we could get things moving without distractions. Which works out really well for them; Т is the mom of Z's friend Masha and G's friend Makar (a not uncommon boys' name these days around here). So they were stoked.
And in the morning, A was well and truly sick of the hospital (visiting hours, by the way, start at 11AM). When I showed up after dropping off the boys, the nurse-doorman almost wouldn't let me in -- apparently there are no visitors for the pre-birth wing -- until another nurse recognized me and explained that we were on the 'pay' wing. Ohhhh. In that case, here's your white paper gown-thingy; head on up. Several of the nurses commented to me on how good of a job A did talking and understanding -- they work 48-hour shifts with 48-hours off in between them, so she had only the one set of nurses. Anyway, we were just about to the point of plotting how to make a speedy escape (A knows how to take out an IV, and was more than willing to make use of that knowledge), when her doctor came in with the news that all the tests they had done had come back fine, and that she could go back home. Which we did -- fast. In hindsight, it was probably a good experience, since we have a much better idea of what to expect when we come to actually have the baby.
And the boys look at it as a good time they got to have with their friends.
One other thing that I apparently forgot to detail from a week ago weekend. A friend of mine, А, invited Z and I to come to the banya for the regular sunday-evening thing that he and his buddies have been doing for better than fifteen years (and to which they have been taking their sons since as soon as they were old enough). So Z got another hard-core cultural experience. А's son, Sergey, is a couple years older than Z, and sort of tour-guided him through things. Z was particularly enamored of the dump-a-bucket-of-cold-water-on-your-head device for immediately after getting out of the banya. And he amused pretty much everyone when it was his turn to get the birch-branches treatment by -- before the branches had even touched him -- giving a little shriek and jumping up and running out to dive into the pool. But he had a good time, which is the main thing. So once we get the new baby set up, we'll almost certainly be making a regular thing of it. Eventually, G will get to come too. That will be quite an experience for all of us.
And also; we had an unexpected pleasant surprise; С П called on Thursday to say that he was driving up to Finland on saturday and maybe would stop by if we were up to it. So we got to entertain a guest and the boys got to show off for yet another person. He is vacationing in Ireland, and at this time of year tickets out of Moscow are expensive enough that it is cheaper to drive to Finland and fly out of one of the major airports there. Now that we know about it, we're definitely going to look into it as an option for people coming out to visit us or for us to go to visit back in the US. It'd be a four-hour train ride at the end of the flight, but according to С П you can easily knock off almost five hundred bucks a ticket.
Yet another long hiatus. As we approach and pass the birth of our third kid, I would expect these to continue to occur. Stuff comes up.
Thursday passed without comment. And Friday A and I visited the doctor at the maternity hospital for a check-up; the appointment was at 4PM, and I as even figuring that I'd make it back to work for a quick stop afterwards. That was not to be.
After some medical-activity, the doctor turned to me and explained that he wanted to keep A there for a while to check up on her. And wham-bang, she was hospital-gowned and checked into a room in the "pre-birth" part of the maternity hospital (that being the only thing with which they occupy themselves, all things are referenced to it). And I was being told that she might be kept there for as much as five days, at which point they might send her home until labor started and she came back (!!!). So after a bit of panicking, we resolved to let her stay there for the night; I would pick up the kids and get things set up for a just-in-case over the weekend, and we would aim to have her out the next day. Her doctor lightened things a little bit when he said that 'if she was doing better' she could probably leave the next day.
So I left and A got to spend the night alone as the sole nonfluent-Russian speaker in a hospital wing. Her friend, Т, as soon as she found out what had happened, came by to drop off some goodies and magazines (which helped morale probably more than I did..) and then volunteered to take both of the boys the next day so we could get things moving without distractions. Which works out really well for them; Т is the mom of Z's friend Masha and G's friend Makar (a not uncommon boys' name these days around here). So they were stoked.
And in the morning, A was well and truly sick of the hospital (visiting hours, by the way, start at 11AM). When I showed up after dropping off the boys, the nurse-doorman almost wouldn't let me in -- apparently there are no visitors for the pre-birth wing -- until another nurse recognized me and explained that we were on the 'pay' wing. Ohhhh. In that case, here's your white paper gown-thingy; head on up. Several of the nurses commented to me on how good of a job A did talking and understanding -- they work 48-hour shifts with 48-hours off in between them, so she had only the one set of nurses. Anyway, we were just about to the point of plotting how to make a speedy escape (A knows how to take out an IV, and was more than willing to make use of that knowledge), when her doctor came in with the news that all the tests they had done had come back fine, and that she could go back home. Which we did -- fast. In hindsight, it was probably a good experience, since we have a much better idea of what to expect when we come to actually have the baby.
And the boys look at it as a good time they got to have with their friends.
One other thing that I apparently forgot to detail from a week ago weekend. A friend of mine, А, invited Z and I to come to the banya for the regular sunday-evening thing that he and his buddies have been doing for better than fifteen years (and to which they have been taking their sons since as soon as they were old enough). So Z got another hard-core cultural experience. А's son, Sergey, is a couple years older than Z, and sort of tour-guided him through things. Z was particularly enamored of the dump-a-bucket-of-cold-water-on-your-head device for immediately after getting out of the banya. And he amused pretty much everyone when it was his turn to get the birch-branches treatment by -- before the branches had even touched him -- giving a little shriek and jumping up and running out to dive into the pool. But he had a good time, which is the main thing. So once we get the new baby set up, we'll almost certainly be making a regular thing of it. Eventually, G will get to come too. That will be quite an experience for all of us.
And also; we had an unexpected pleasant surprise; С П called on Thursday to say that he was driving up to Finland on saturday and maybe would stop by if we were up to it. So we got to entertain a guest and the boys got to show off for yet another person. He is vacationing in Ireland, and at this time of year tickets out of Moscow are expensive enough that it is cheaper to drive to Finland and fly out of one of the major airports there. Now that we know about it, we're definitely going to look into it as an option for people coming out to visit us or for us to go to visit back in the US. It'd be a four-hour train ride at the end of the flight, but according to С П you can easily knock off almost five hundred bucks a ticket.
Апрель 18, 2007
More
4/18 16:22, Pushkin time
The tax issue got resolved in a relatively satisfactory fashion (that is, no illegalities or mischaracterizations were found, so the cops made something up and fined us for it) and things have settled into a relatively comfortable level at work. I did get to spend Monday and Tuesday this week giving a sort of informal training course to a German and a Russian guy from Kazakhstan -- both were born there; the German left at age 35 to live in Germany for a while, but came back 'home' after only a couple years; he speaks better russian than german anyway. How he ended up being born there is a long story he never got around to telling me...
Really, the kids' lives have been more interesting than mine these last few days. On Thursday, G got invited to come to the birthday party of a friend of his. Since A wasn't feeling great on saturday (and Z was misbehaving) G and I went alone to the party. A four-year-old's birthday party, I can now confirm, is pretty much exactly the same no matter where it is happening. But G had a good time and the entire time was spent speaking russian - which he does very well when it is expected of him. After the party, G's friend's dad got to mentioning how much they missed seeing Z, and that, by the way, he and some friends had been making a regular thing of sunday-afternoon banya visits for going on forever; they bring along their boys with them too, would Z and I like to join them?
And then Sunday we ended up all out and running into some other of the kids' friends with their families and spent a decent chunk of time being shown around the springtime-with-kids spots in Pushkin. A ended up hitting it off really well with one of the moms (who has four kids, which is pretty big for around here), and they have been making a regular thing of getting together during the days for language practice and just to get out of the house for awhile.
Otherwise, we're just sort of hanging around, waiting for the next kid to come. Everything is pretty much as ready as it can be...
---
Oh, by the way, I did get nabbed by the cops turning left where it was strongly implied by signage that I shouldn't turn left (the fact that these cops were camped out in a prime location to spot people making that move and not much else strongly implies that I'm not the only one to not hew to that implication). Fairly straightforward, I got out and argued for a bit with the cop, both of us drawing diagrams in the dirt on the caravan's windows for a little bit, before giving up my license and passport. Then while we were waiting for the passenger seat in the cop car to free up (like I said, I'm not by far the only one to get nabbed making that move), he wanted to know about the van - how we liked it, how hard it was to get it over here, what kind of prices he could expect to find buying out of the US. Then into the car with the other cop to negotiate and pay my 500r and then afterwards, he wanted to chat a bit about the van, having just bought a 2003 model-year one himself. Stuff like where do we go to have it worked on, have we found any good spare parts places around the city, what kind of fuel economy it should get, and so forth. Cops around here are so civilized; I actually caught myself thinking, while I was waiting with the other cop on the side of the road for the guy in front of me to get processed, how nice of a day it was to be spending some time outside having a friendly conversation.
I can't recall ever being in the condition to have those kind of thoughts around cops in the States. But maybe that's just my memory acting up on me...
The tax issue got resolved in a relatively satisfactory fashion (that is, no illegalities or mischaracterizations were found, so the cops made something up and fined us for it) and things have settled into a relatively comfortable level at work. I did get to spend Monday and Tuesday this week giving a sort of informal training course to a German and a Russian guy from Kazakhstan -- both were born there; the German left at age 35 to live in Germany for a while, but came back 'home' after only a couple years; he speaks better russian than german anyway. How he ended up being born there is a long story he never got around to telling me...
Really, the kids' lives have been more interesting than mine these last few days. On Thursday, G got invited to come to the birthday party of a friend of his. Since A wasn't feeling great on saturday (and Z was misbehaving) G and I went alone to the party. A four-year-old's birthday party, I can now confirm, is pretty much exactly the same no matter where it is happening. But G had a good time and the entire time was spent speaking russian - which he does very well when it is expected of him. After the party, G's friend's dad got to mentioning how much they missed seeing Z, and that, by the way, he and some friends had been making a regular thing of sunday-afternoon banya visits for going on forever; they bring along their boys with them too, would Z and I like to join them?
And then Sunday we ended up all out and running into some other of the kids' friends with their families and spent a decent chunk of time being shown around the springtime-with-kids spots in Pushkin. A ended up hitting it off really well with one of the moms (who has four kids, which is pretty big for around here), and they have been making a regular thing of getting together during the days for language practice and just to get out of the house for awhile.
Otherwise, we're just sort of hanging around, waiting for the next kid to come. Everything is pretty much as ready as it can be...
---
Oh, by the way, I did get nabbed by the cops turning left where it was strongly implied by signage that I shouldn't turn left (the fact that these cops were camped out in a prime location to spot people making that move and not much else strongly implies that I'm not the only one to not hew to that implication). Fairly straightforward, I got out and argued for a bit with the cop, both of us drawing diagrams in the dirt on the caravan's windows for a little bit, before giving up my license and passport. Then while we were waiting for the passenger seat in the cop car to free up (like I said, I'm not by far the only one to get nabbed making that move), he wanted to know about the van - how we liked it, how hard it was to get it over here, what kind of prices he could expect to find buying out of the US. Then into the car with the other cop to negotiate and pay my 500r and then afterwards, he wanted to chat a bit about the van, having just bought a 2003 model-year one himself. Stuff like where do we go to have it worked on, have we found any good spare parts places around the city, what kind of fuel economy it should get, and so forth. Cops around here are so civilized; I actually caught myself thinking, while I was waiting with the other cop on the side of the road for the guy in front of me to get processed, how nice of a day it was to be spending some time outside having a friendly conversation.
I can't recall ever being in the condition to have those kind of thoughts around cops in the States. But maybe that's just my memory acting up on me...
Апрель 12, 2007
Tax Season
4/12 11:46, Pushkin time
In Russia, too, it appears.
Yesterday afternoon I got a call on my mobile from К. She asks where I am, and finding out that I am at my desk, tells me not to go anywhere until she calls again. Umm.. okay.
Shortly afterwards the server answering for our email and our internet access shuts off. So Е, А М, and I are sitting around for a bit with not much to do (I actually had a bit of translation to catch up on, but nevertheless...) So for about an hour and a half we hung around as things got very quiet. I popped briefly out to pee, an on the way back stopped by the secretary to ask about getting some mail sent out. Everyone there was quiet and preoccupied, too. By this point, I was somewhere between mildly concerned and wondering if some sort of elaborate (but very well executed) practical joke was being played on me. Fairly quickly, I figured out that the secretary wasn't going to be doing anything right then, and I'd be best heading back to wait where I was told. On the way, I ran into one of the dealership's couriers, and asked him what was up. His answer, while in the general usage is very good, in the specific sense of 'what the heck is going on right now?' is somewhat less helpful -- "It's just Russia". Umm.. okay - again.
So back in the office, and after maybe another ten minutes С С-ч comes in and tells us that we should all take off (it being still an hour before the end of business hours). At least the beginnings of an explanation were available from him - 'the cops are here, looking at stuff; best not to talk to them'. I suppose that beats no explanation at all. Of course, we all get up and grab our stuff to leave. Е grabs a handful of papers off his desk, folds them up, and stuffs them down the front of his pants; seeing the look on my face, he starts snickering (Russians are pretty fond of jokes) and pulls the blank sheets back out and tosses them in the trash.
So we all went home. And this morning, coming in, there was still the quiet. Apparently the cops were here with И and И В until five this morning, looking for some excuse to come down on them. Of course, there being nothing to find, they settled for making up some garbage about not having a Russian-truck certification (we don't need them, since all we deal in are American trucks) and about not having an ecological statement for parking trucks in our parking lot (??). The fine they elected to assess was paid, and they were sent off a bit ago. But as И pointed out, they had neither justification, nor right (according to the law) to do what they did; so it might not be unreasonable to assume that a competitor of ours paid someone, somewhere, to come and hassle us. Since the fine we paid was around ten thousand dollars, the next question is, how much did the instigator pay them? It is possible that they could be satisfied; alternately, a big sum of money could have been laid down at a very high level, and now that the first brigade (these guys were tax inspectors, more or less) has been sent away empty-handed -- a mere ten thousand dollars cash-in-pocket is pretty empty-handed in a country where most businesses genuinely are operating outside traditional legal parameters -- another brigade will be dispatched to seize computers, copy files, and so forth. Just in case, they gave me a run-down of stuff to look for on my computer and on the papers on and around my desk and set me, along with everyone else, to tidying up. Of course, I'm new to the whole thing (И says that the frequency of inspections varies with the profit margins in the industry; guys who sell apples and watermelons next to the train stations don't get hit at all; truck dealers seem to get about once every two or three years) so it took me a pretty long time to go through things. Some of the guys here were very helpful with advice on how to arrange things in day-to-day operations so that a cleaning can be done more quickly without a fear of losing something important. The new skill-sets I am coming into over here.
What else? Oh yes. I sent out yesterday the kids' birth certificates and passports, and A and my marriage certificate for Official, Notarized Translation, pursuant to our getting the temporary residency status. And in the afternoon got a call from the courier at the translation bureau (there is only one outfit in the city licensed to the required level of Officialdom); he handed the phone off to the clerk there, who proceeded to tell me that she couldn't verify our birth and marriage certificates, since they weren't officialized copies. Of course, they are in fact just those things (A having obtained them freshly from the state of Oregon people in January/February), but since they lacked stamps or embossed seals, the clerk was insisting that she couldn't validate them. I in an increasingly apoplectic manner, informed her that Oregon doesn't use those things, to which she responded that she had a copy of a certificate from the USA that was so marked. Then I, continuing to edge-towards freaking out at her, explained that each state does there own thing, and that there was no such thing as a "United States" birth certificate, to which she responded that we needed to have something from our federal government for it be validated, to which I again explained that the states each answer for those documents, and that there are not even overall standards for how each state has to do it. Shortly afterwards, I told her just to do the damn translation and stamp it however the hell she wanted; we'll take the issue up with the immigration folks when we actually get to applying. Grr.
In Russia, too, it appears.
Yesterday afternoon I got a call on my mobile from К. She asks where I am, and finding out that I am at my desk, tells me not to go anywhere until she calls again. Umm.. okay.
Shortly afterwards the server answering for our email and our internet access shuts off. So Е, А М, and I are sitting around for a bit with not much to do (I actually had a bit of translation to catch up on, but nevertheless...) So for about an hour and a half we hung around as things got very quiet. I popped briefly out to pee, an on the way back stopped by the secretary to ask about getting some mail sent out. Everyone there was quiet and preoccupied, too. By this point, I was somewhere between mildly concerned and wondering if some sort of elaborate (but very well executed) practical joke was being played on me. Fairly quickly, I figured out that the secretary wasn't going to be doing anything right then, and I'd be best heading back to wait where I was told. On the way, I ran into one of the dealership's couriers, and asked him what was up. His answer, while in the general usage is very good, in the specific sense of 'what the heck is going on right now?' is somewhat less helpful -- "It's just Russia". Umm.. okay - again.
So back in the office, and after maybe another ten minutes С С-ч comes in and tells us that we should all take off (it being still an hour before the end of business hours). At least the beginnings of an explanation were available from him - 'the cops are here, looking at stuff; best not to talk to them'. I suppose that beats no explanation at all. Of course, we all get up and grab our stuff to leave. Е grabs a handful of papers off his desk, folds them up, and stuffs them down the front of his pants; seeing the look on my face, he starts snickering (Russians are pretty fond of jokes) and pulls the blank sheets back out and tosses them in the trash.
So we all went home. And this morning, coming in, there was still the quiet. Apparently the cops were here with И and И В until five this morning, looking for some excuse to come down on them. Of course, there being nothing to find, they settled for making up some garbage about not having a Russian-truck certification (we don't need them, since all we deal in are American trucks) and about not having an ecological statement for parking trucks in our parking lot (??). The fine they elected to assess was paid, and they were sent off a bit ago. But as И pointed out, they had neither justification, nor right (according to the law) to do what they did; so it might not be unreasonable to assume that a competitor of ours paid someone, somewhere, to come and hassle us. Since the fine we paid was around ten thousand dollars, the next question is, how much did the instigator pay them? It is possible that they could be satisfied; alternately, a big sum of money could have been laid down at a very high level, and now that the first brigade (these guys were tax inspectors, more or less) has been sent away empty-handed -- a mere ten thousand dollars cash-in-pocket is pretty empty-handed in a country where most businesses genuinely are operating outside traditional legal parameters -- another brigade will be dispatched to seize computers, copy files, and so forth. Just in case, they gave me a run-down of stuff to look for on my computer and on the papers on and around my desk and set me, along with everyone else, to tidying up. Of course, I'm new to the whole thing (И says that the frequency of inspections varies with the profit margins in the industry; guys who sell apples and watermelons next to the train stations don't get hit at all; truck dealers seem to get about once every two or three years) so it took me a pretty long time to go through things. Some of the guys here were very helpful with advice on how to arrange things in day-to-day operations so that a cleaning can be done more quickly without a fear of losing something important. The new skill-sets I am coming into over here.
What else? Oh yes. I sent out yesterday the kids' birth certificates and passports, and A and my marriage certificate for Official, Notarized Translation, pursuant to our getting the temporary residency status. And in the afternoon got a call from the courier at the translation bureau (there is only one outfit in the city licensed to the required level of Officialdom); he handed the phone off to the clerk there, who proceeded to tell me that she couldn't verify our birth and marriage certificates, since they weren't officialized copies. Of course, they are in fact just those things (A having obtained them freshly from the state of Oregon people in January/February), but since they lacked stamps or embossed seals, the clerk was insisting that she couldn't validate them. I in an increasingly apoplectic manner, informed her that Oregon doesn't use those things, to which she responded that she had a copy of a certificate from the USA that was so marked. Then I, continuing to edge-towards freaking out at her, explained that each state does there own thing, and that there was no such thing as a "United States" birth certificate, to which she responded that we needed to have something from our federal government for it be validated, to which I again explained that the states each answer for those documents, and that there are not even overall standards for how each state has to do it. Shortly afterwards, I told her just to do the damn translation and stamp it however the hell she wanted; we'll take the issue up with the immigration folks when we actually get to applying. Grr.
Апрель 09, 2007
Cold Snap
4/9 14:08, Pushkin time
Last week wrapped up with a classic Portland winter pattern -- snow and maybe a sprinkling of hail in the evenings or overnight, melting off by mid-day. Sunday we even had as muchas a mild blizzard for an hour or so; still by now it's all gone except where the sun hasn't yet shone.
The big doing of the last couple days was actually this morning. Finally, Friday, I gave up on trying to get through and explain my needs to the home-visit medical clinic -- if you remember, for a Russian visa of validity longer than 90 days, everyone needs to get an HIV test. I asked К if her offer to do it for me still stood, and she in a matter of maybe two minutes on the phone had everything set up for a nurse to come out first thing monday morning.
As she hung up, I commented on how easy it was for her to do; every time I called, the guy who answered would ask one or two strange questions and then hang up -- by the sixth time I called, he must have recognized my voice and just hung up right away. К's response: "What guy? there's no guy answering phones at the clinic..."
Umm.
So we checked the number I had been calling; I was off by one digit from the clinic number. So for the past week, I have apparently been crank-calling some Russian guy and asking him to take a blood sample from me. And in hindsight, the questions he was asking me weren't all that strange after all, given the context of the conversations. Good thing we didn't actually go through with it...
Anyway, this morning, as advertised, a nurse came by our place with her blood-draw kit and paperwork. G insisted on going first (in fact, he was so stoked to have a new person to yell Russian at that I ended up having to remove him from the room while Z was getting done). Sitting on my lap, he watched the entire setup phase; the uncapping of the needle; the wipe-down of his arm; even the approach of the needle to his skin -- all perfectly calm. Even when the metal touched his skin -- not a whimper. And then, when it went in, he gives a little scream and a little jump and starts bitching out the nurse about how it hurts and why did she have to do that and so on. Pretty good vocabulary on him too, it seems. Then after G, I went, then Z. Amusingly, the receptionist at the clinic appears to have messed up our names -- not only spelling, which I suppose over the phone for foreign names is understandable, but also the order and concept. She had mine right in principle, but had listed my first name as our last name, and our last name as the boys' middle name and as my first name. No problem; straightened out easily enough. And the whole thing (testing included) came to about thirty-five bucks apiece, and took maybe twenty minutes if you were to include the time spent on the phone (with the clinic, not with the poor guy one digit off from the clinic). Not such a bad deal.
Last week wrapped up with a classic Portland winter pattern -- snow and maybe a sprinkling of hail in the evenings or overnight, melting off by mid-day. Sunday we even had as muchas a mild blizzard for an hour or so; still by now it's all gone except where the sun hasn't yet shone.
The big doing of the last couple days was actually this morning. Finally, Friday, I gave up on trying to get through and explain my needs to the home-visit medical clinic -- if you remember, for a Russian visa of validity longer than 90 days, everyone needs to get an HIV test. I asked К if her offer to do it for me still stood, and she in a matter of maybe two minutes on the phone had everything set up for a nurse to come out first thing monday morning.
As she hung up, I commented on how easy it was for her to do; every time I called, the guy who answered would ask one or two strange questions and then hang up -- by the sixth time I called, he must have recognized my voice and just hung up right away. К's response: "What guy? there's no guy answering phones at the clinic..."
Umm.
So we checked the number I had been calling; I was off by one digit from the clinic number. So for the past week, I have apparently been crank-calling some Russian guy and asking him to take a blood sample from me. And in hindsight, the questions he was asking me weren't all that strange after all, given the context of the conversations. Good thing we didn't actually go through with it...
Anyway, this morning, as advertised, a nurse came by our place with her blood-draw kit and paperwork. G insisted on going first (in fact, he was so stoked to have a new person to yell Russian at that I ended up having to remove him from the room while Z was getting done). Sitting on my lap, he watched the entire setup phase; the uncapping of the needle; the wipe-down of his arm; even the approach of the needle to his skin -- all perfectly calm. Even when the metal touched his skin -- not a whimper. And then, when it went in, he gives a little scream and a little jump and starts bitching out the nurse about how it hurts and why did she have to do that and so on. Pretty good vocabulary on him too, it seems. Then after G, I went, then Z. Amusingly, the receptionist at the clinic appears to have messed up our names -- not only spelling, which I suppose over the phone for foreign names is understandable, but also the order and concept. She had mine right in principle, but had listed my first name as our last name, and our last name as the boys' middle name and as my first name. No problem; straightened out easily enough. And the whole thing (testing included) came to about thirty-five bucks apiece, and took maybe twenty minutes if you were to include the time spent on the phone (with the clinic, not with the poor guy one digit off from the clinic). Not such a bad deal.
Апрель 03, 2007
April 4
4/4 11:00, Pushkin timeOur stretch of warm, dry weather broke, as you can see from the above (featuring one of the dealership's security guards on patrol). At the moment, an hour and a half after I snapped it, the sun is out, only a light snow is falling, and the inch or so that piled up is turning into slush. G will be livid; he was expecting a second winter. Word is that this kind of thing is normal pretty much throughout the month of April.
In addition to all of the mad effort that is going into preparations for the Moscow show and the certification of some new trucks and the completion of several of my projects (and the projecting for construction of our house and the actual beginning of construction of a fourth floor onto И В's house), there has begun a new frenzy of activity.
Some two weeks ago, the Russian government -- as required to be admitted to the WTO -- passed a new, much more stringent law for copyright. Where previously the fine for having a pirated piece of software was 300,000 rubles (something no one really worried about, since the cop that discovered such a thing would easily take a hundred-dollar on-the-spot payment to let things slide. Now the fine has been raised to 500,000 rubles, or six years in jail. This is, for each unregistered piece of software. And to make something like that go away informally... well, no one is really sure what kind of money that would take. And no one wants to find out.
So, after some scrambling and strategizing, the dealership is on the verge of doing a major migration of almost all its programs onto remote servers (where they can still be used, but will not be resident if a raid comes; shifting to Linux freeware for the absolutely necessary things like operating systems and the webserver software; and otherwise getting things in a new order. It's less convenient, but at the end things should work pretty much the same.
Of course, another effect of the new laws is that DVDs, CDs, and programs can no longer legally be sold anywhere outside of actual stores. We've noticed over the past weeks that the price of DVD movies has gone up, and that the selection has gone down. It is a shame that the underground (literally -- crosswalks for major intersections in the city go under the road and there are kiosks lining them in their entirety) kiosks aren't going to be as prevalent for a while. But there are still the 'internet stores'; where you can order on the internet and then either have shipped to you or go meet a guy somewhere to do a person-to-person transaction. И says that it would take ten years of concerted effort to shut that kind of thing down, if it could be done at all. The Soviet Union couldn't do it, and there's no reason to think it would be any easier for the current guys.
And besides, they say that once the WTO admission is a done deal the government will back off on the law. After all, most of the government guys have a piece of the grey DVD market (they'в be fools not to; the margin is too good). They even say that Putin has an outfit on a chunk of land he owns. So no worries; it's just a temporary bump.
Апрель 01, 2007
weekend
4/1 20:00, Pushkin time
Friday we got the dump truck body mounted; this coming week we'll wrap it all up and then it will go down to Moscow to be run through some testing so we can get our certification to make and sell those kind of things; then off to the big motor show at the end of April (which I won't be going to, since the baby will be born sometime in that time period).
Speaking of which, A and I went to the maternity hospital in Pushkin on friday afternoon to get things arranged for when the baby comes. We met the director of the hospital and had a bit of a tour around the various rooms they have; since we're paying everything cash, we at the end had written up an agreement to cover the birth and associated medical stuff surrounding it, including the basic cost of a room. Depending on which is available when we actually get there, we'll be using one of two a-bit-more-up-scale rooms, whose cost is an additional nightly charge (the 'nice' one is 400r a night; the 'great' one is 2000r a night). At the end, and ater meeting a few of the other staff there, the director asked if we had any requests for doctors or nurses or whatnot. The only thing i could think of was to ask if they could maybe have someone who had a few words of english to make A feel a little bit more comfortable. Right away the director gets on his phone and starts scoping out what it will take to arrange that. Pretty cool.
Anyway, it looks like the final cost of having the kid will be somewhere in the range of 600-800 dollars -- which is right about in line with what it cost us in co-pays to have our other two kids. And of course, for this one there will definitely be no insurance-billing-related screw-ups like there were with G (who, for a while on paper, was apparently circumcised twice). And as for taking care of Z and g while A and I are occupied, we have a few options available, so we'll be able to actually more or less choose (or maybe even use more than one of them) when the time comes. Which is also nice.
We went out on saturday to Pokrovskaya and took a bunch of pictures and some video (doofus that I am, I read the 'battery almost empty' picture as 'battery almost full' -- so we don't have as much video as I'd like). That will go up either here or on A's site fairly soon.
Friday we got the dump truck body mounted; this coming week we'll wrap it all up and then it will go down to Moscow to be run through some testing so we can get our certification to make and sell those kind of things; then off to the big motor show at the end of April (which I won't be going to, since the baby will be born sometime in that time period).
Speaking of which, A and I went to the maternity hospital in Pushkin on friday afternoon to get things arranged for when the baby comes. We met the director of the hospital and had a bit of a tour around the various rooms they have; since we're paying everything cash, we at the end had written up an agreement to cover the birth and associated medical stuff surrounding it, including the basic cost of a room. Depending on which is available when we actually get there, we'll be using one of two a-bit-more-up-scale rooms, whose cost is an additional nightly charge (the 'nice' one is 400r a night; the 'great' one is 2000r a night). At the end, and ater meeting a few of the other staff there, the director asked if we had any requests for doctors or nurses or whatnot. The only thing i could think of was to ask if they could maybe have someone who had a few words of english to make A feel a little bit more comfortable. Right away the director gets on his phone and starts scoping out what it will take to arrange that. Pretty cool.
Anyway, it looks like the final cost of having the kid will be somewhere in the range of 600-800 dollars -- which is right about in line with what it cost us in co-pays to have our other two kids. And of course, for this one there will definitely be no insurance-billing-related screw-ups like there were with G (who, for a while on paper, was apparently circumcised twice). And as for taking care of Z and g while A and I are occupied, we have a few options available, so we'll be able to actually more or less choose (or maybe even use more than one of them) when the time comes. Which is also nice.
We went out on saturday to Pokrovskaya and took a bunch of pictures and some video (doofus that I am, I read the 'battery almost empty' picture as 'battery almost full' -- so we don't have as much video as I'd like). That will go up either here or on A's site fairly soon.
