What Are The Haps My Friends

I, of course, stole the subject line from Ryan North, but then again, the syntax of my entire life has been permanently altered by T Rex-isms.

Things are bouncing along gaily over here in Russia, I guess you could say. There's another verb that would work really well here, but it escapes me. What I'm going for is that things are sort of normal, I'm not feeling especially vigorous or exhausted, or extremely excited or depressed. Normal, you could say. Except that I recognize that I'm lucky as hell to be able to do this in the first place, so that bumps it up to the positive side. "Bouncing", because things move up and down a little, and "gaily" because it seems to be a good positive word with "bouncing". Not that you care that much about why I phrase things the way I do, BUT there you are. I'm telling you anyway, and you're still reading it.

Saturday we went to the Hermitage, which was awesome and overwhelming and FREE FOR STUDENTS. I didn't hang out for too long after the tour, because it was a little overwhelming. I think I'll go back sometime on my own, or with a much smaller group of people. Yesterday we went to the Dostoevsky Museum, which is an apartment that he lived in for a couple of years. They had his hat, and some of their dishes (and a spoon), and a cabinet that belonged to their family. It was pretty all right. Not downright amazing, but as I've probably expressed before, I really like how the museums here are all buildings that were important (the Dostoevsky Museum was his apartment, the Hermitage is in the Winter Palace, etc.), rather than many museums in the States, which are just buildings that we built to house stuff we already think is cool. I have no pictures from either of those excursions, so don't get too excited.

In other news, I'm almost done with the... WHY DO I NOT HAVE THE REST OF THAT ALLEN TOUSSAINT AND ELVIS COSTELLO RECORD? HAVEN'T I REALIZED I NEED THIS ON ABOUT 6,783 OCCASIONS? ...front halves of my sweater, which I keep calling a sweater (свитер) in Russian, when they consider свитер and кофта (a lighter cardigany thing) to be different. After that, it's just sleeves... and finishing. And getting buttons.

On the subject of buttons:
I found them. I even found a yarn store next door. Unfortunately, they run on the касса system. Which terrifies me a little bit. Everything's behind a counter, and I think I have to tell someone what it is I want and then go pay for it and then come back and get it, but I'm not quite sure how to say all of that and put it in order and I'm not really sure what's involved in giving the cashier the price information, etc. So I'm putting that off a little longer. Don't let me get back to the U.S. with a buttonless sweater because I was a wimp, though. Lie to me, tell me the U.S. is having a button shortage and there's no telling when they'll be in stock, so I'd best stock up on them here, because God knows when you'll finish that cardigan if you don't put some buttons on in Russia.

I was probably going to tell you some other things, about classes this week (my terrible luck looking for information on new statues in St. Petersburg on the internet), and my impressions of the Russian music I hear on the radio, and how my penchant for sleeping and becoming severely distracted by the card game widget in Dashboard (recently rediscovered) have seriously been getting in the way of any plans to get homework done by a reasonable hour in the evening. Oh well. Like I said, things are bouncing along gaily. And this post is probably long enough by now. I don't think I have much else to say at the moment.

Other than that I totally realize that this Friday is the 4th of July, which means something in the U.S., and since I scrapped the idea of reading the Federalist Papers on the 4th back when I was packing, I decided to bring Twelve Angry Men with me to watch, as it always makes me feel especially proud to be an American, because it reminds me that our justice system works sometimes. Also, I shall be being patriotic in the tradition of our family (a tradition we decided must exist a couple of years back): listening to soul music. Needless to say, I don't think anyone will mind if I get a head start on that today...