trip to the Happy Land

Once again children have reminded me that life is a gift, which is to be treasured.


I have been to an amazing exhibition called "We are different, but we are friends" that presents more than 700 works created by handicapped children from dozens of orphanages and compensatory kindergartens throughout the country.



The children have created a lot of colourful and very talented works in various techniques such as painting, graphic arts, makrame, patch work, engraving, applique' work, origami, herbarium, embroidery, beadwork, stained-glass, lace trimming, batic, stuffed toys and so on. I was astonished by very high quality of their arts and crafts and by immense joie de vivre radiating from each and every creation.


It was a fairy-like trip to the Happy Land that only children could enter and understand and I loved it.

weekend post

The beauty of freelancing is flexible working hours and an opportunity to flee any time. That was what I did last Friday. I got a return ticket to the capital and gone to see my friends.

On Saturday we visited a well-known picture gallery to look at the paintings of late 19th and early 20th centuries. The canvases took me in the past and I had a walk down lovely Paris streets, New York broadways and tiny Moscow alleyways. We also spent a couple of hours at impressionism halls, as I'm a huge admirer of this art movement. I love impressionists' boisterous and lively painings, because they are full of life and sunshine. I always feel a little happier after visiting these exhibitions.

On Sunday I managed to see almost all my friends. We went to my favourite blues bar "Road House" to listen to the most outstanding bluesmen and sing a few songs along. I performed "Wild Thing" right at the stage. It was a blast! What a wonderful night it was.

On Monday we just walked around the city, skated at a local park and talked and talked until my train left at 10 PM.

I'm going to miss my friends.

sporty tag

Stay at home mom Maria dreams of Bugatti Veyron and tagged me to write about my dream sports car.

The rules:
1. Just state what kind of sports car will you buy if you have a ton of money at the moment.
2. Don't spoil the fun guys, please get back to me if you are done posting it and leave a comment stating the name and kind of the vehicle.
3. If you could link me to the post, it would be awesome!

Unfortunately, I do not have any. Though, there is a car I would like to waste my money on. Bentley 4 1/4 Litre, released in 1939, was perfect for comfortable long distance Continental touring. The Bentley is incredibly elegant!

Later I googled for top 10 sports car to see if I actually like any. Well, none caught my eye, because apart of being fancy they are actually small and inconvenient.

After reading a dozen car charts I came across the photo of Aston Martin Vanquish with really cool paint job! So that will be my car of the day.

Now, I'm taggin' Southern Sage, Cowguy, Irish Gumbo, VodkaMom , Beth and everybody who wants to share his/her secret dreams.

S for Sunny

Mich, a wonderful bloger at Who is Mich? has picked a letter for me, which happens to be “S” for my nickname. I have to write about my top 10 favorite things that start with the letter “S”.

There they go in no particular order:

1) Snow, as it snows off all troubles revealing sparkling nature's beauty. Besides, I love winter fun, snowballs fights, skiing and sledging.

2) Scotch whisky on rocks is the best remedy from low-spirits and depression.

3) South Africa, my dream holiday destination. Though, I'm looking for a job there too.

4) Sense of humour. It may be weird, stupid, English, great, but it surely helps to survive in our crazy world.

5) Southern Sage's collection of dirty jokes and funny stories about relationship makes the whole men-vs-women thing look less complicated.
Don't take life too seriously, nobody gets out alive anyway.

6) Savage chickens, there is so much common sense in the cartoons.

7) Sunshine, it gives life to everything.

8) Snail mail, an old-fashioned version of gchat that I still use to the full and love every moment of it.

Note: it is not an advertisement, I'm just saying:

9) Shampoo "Phytum Actif" by YR. It turns hair into ultraglossy soft silk.

10) Sally Hansen's nail care products and nail polishes.

Now, if you feel like joining in the fun. Leave me a letter request in the comments and you'll get your letter in no time!

weekend post

Valentine’s was very nice. I woke up late to greet a snowy sunny day.

It started with a phone call from the man of my dreams (What a surprise!) who congratulated me swiftly and then talked for 25 minutes about his recent activities. I tried to response for the first few minutes, but he was so eager to speak that ignored any comments. He didn’t even suggest sex on the phone! That’s why I just put him on the loud speaker and took up polishing nails mumbling on the cell: “hm.. wow… I see” .

In 25 minutes he said that it was nice to have a chat and hung off. Well, at least my nails had been perfectly pink by that time. Besides my beloved siblings presented two huge dark chocolates accompanied with a CD of 24 beautiful love songs performed by a famous Philharmonic Orchestra. So I totally forgot about the guy.

Later the family got together and we had a delicious dinner followed by wild dancing. I have to admit, that a lot of Tom Jones’ music and red wine works much better that sex on the phone.

The conclusion of the day was that I have to find another man of my dreams in the neighbourhood, because long distance doesn’t intensify love at all. It destroys it and turns into indifference.

P.S. Here's some sweet love story about long distance. It may have a happier end than my and the man of my dream's one.

Tag - I'm it... weird

Fabulous blogger Maria at Maria Went to Chicago has tagged me to write 6 weird facts about me.

The rules: write a blog post of 6 weird things about you, choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave a comment that says "you are tagged" on their blogs.

1. I'm a huge fan of the "The A-Team". George Peppard, Mr. T, Dirk Benedict and Dwight Schultz rocked and will always be. Besides, I love it when a plan comes together as much as the A-Team members. Besides, I'm on the jazz most of the time.

2. I used to like green colour so much that had my room at the parents' house painted in green and my kitchen furniture was green. I wore only green clothes, used green copybooks, pens, soap, toothbrush and so on. Fortunatelly, the greenfever is over now.

3.I usually give pets a different name. Once a friend bought a cat, which had changed several names until "Zorka" was established. However I still call the cat its second name "Guatemala". The parents's husky was called "Carma", but for me it had always been "Candy" till the last day of her life, because she was the sweetest and the most kind-hearted dog I'd ever seen.

4. I love eating snow. The habbit has developed since my recent trip.

5. My first e-mail address was Pink_Cloud.

6. I'm still fond of colouring Barbie colouring books.

The tag goes to a bunch of really great bloggers. They are Sarah, Henry North London, John Finn, Janie, Mariah, Jordanka.

I'd love to know more about you, guys!

"Woodstock" & my college years

I’ve recently laid my hands on a copy of “Woodstock”, the Academy-Award-winning documentary about the first rock festival ever. The press called it “Disastrous Zone” while these were three days of Peace and Music. I’ve never seen a crowd that huge, which managed to get along and behave themselves so well.

The documentary covered all aspects of the event. It interviewed the kids around to find out the cause of their arrival. Some of them wanted to get answers to their lives in music, which seems very weird to me. Music may heal soul, inspire vigour, reflect emotional states, but it is hardly able to give answers to where the road of life is going to. The other young people came to hang around and become a part of whatever it was going to be. Finally, there were people who actually paid for the concert and intended to listen to the music.

Janis Joplin, the Who, Joe Cocker, Santana (to name a few) performed at the festival. They were skinny kids themselves, filled with right ideas, radiating energy and love. It was an amazing gig to watch even on a dvd.

The documentary took me back to college years, when I attended an event of the same sort for the first and the last time. The rock festival I went to was far less peaceful: the kids were rather aggressive after hours of rock music and bottles of beer. It was rainy and the kids dirt-bathed. I remember sweaty and smelly bodies around singing rather well to the bands on the stage. I remember the music affecting me more than any drug exist, I was stoned with rock power. The festival was the most disgusting and the most thrilling experience ever.

I wish I had been at Woodstock festival rather than at the local one.

animal planet

"No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap". ~ Carrie Snow

the pleasure of reading

I've recently read two wonderful novels written by New York Times bestselling authours. They are "Playing For Pizza" and "Darkfever". Both books impressed me a lot, as one of them is lovely and romantic, while another one is dark and shocking.

“Playing For Pizza” is a lovely light-hearted novel by John Grisham tells a story of a third-string quarterback Rick Dockery who screwed up at an important match and was dismissed from the National Football League. However Rick was not going to give up and made his agent to find him any team that might want him. Against enormous odds the agent eventually found such a team and Rick set off to a lovely city of Parma (Italy) to play for the Parma Panthers. There Rick fell in love with all things Italian and made a journey from an egotistical past, to a true desire and passion towards the sport he loves.

The novel is a wonderful read about building up a character, football, food and love.

I’m a fan of Italy myself. I’ve travelled there a lot and grew to love open-hearted Italians, fancy architecture, cosy villages, delicious meals and wine.

"Darkfever" in a shadowy novel that verges on the paranormal world of myths and legends and the real world, which most people are used to. It tells a tale of a perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman MacKayla Lane. Or so she thought…until something extraordinary happened. When her sister was murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeyed to Ireland in search of answers. As Mac delved deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move was shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future.

The series was called “A seductive mix of Celtic mythology and dark, sexy danger” by Chicago Tribune and that's what it is. If you like dark fantasies, you won't be dissapointed.

To me the main disadvantage of the novel is an absence of an end. The novel is over at some crusial point, and right after it comes the first chapter of the second book called "Bloodfever". "Bloodfever" ends with the first chapter of the third book "Faefever" , and a little voice in my head is saying that there'll be more 'fever" of some sort.

Anyway, the two novels are perfectly written and you'll enjoy them to the full.

down the mountain

The past two weeks were filled with extreme adventures and passion. It never occured to me that I may develop a crash on mountain skiing so fast.

The moment I slided down the mount for the first time I was hooked. It took two days to gain some paramount skills, and on the third day the cable-way lifted me to the height of 4700 metres and the adventures began.

I was so agitated and scared that had to pluck up courage for several minutes to ski down the narrow route in the teeth of the wind. There was a cliff to the left of me and a steep to the right, which left me with a metre-wide skitrack. Scary. Reckless. Wild.

I was sking down the Elbrus for almost four hours, while the descending normally takes maximum 30 minutes. The stress was immence and the next day was spent on lying around and walking.

The walk brought me to a lovely cafe at the foot of the Mount Cheget, where I met a man of my dreams. Together we stayed till the day I left. We went skiing all day and danced all night. We shared our life stories and believed we'd live forever.

It was a lovely winter romance with a man of my dreams and mountain skiing. I'm still not sure which I love most. Time will show.

midnight shopping

While half of the world is celebrating, I'm working fast to tie up loose ends and be able to flee from the cloudy city to snowy montains on Saturday.

Last night I went shopping really late and experienced all benefits of midnight shopping at a sports market. There were very few people, lower prices, mignight discounts and no rush at all. I have to admit that I loved it. So now I'm fully equiped to climb up the mountains and stay there for two weeks.

The cat is to be taken to Granny's in the evening today. The presents are already hidden under the fir-tree so that the family could find them on New Year's Eve. The suitcase is almost packed. Life's good!

fun google tag

Thank you, Maria, for Fun Google Tag. As I jusl love various pictures, it's going to be fun.

The rule is to use Google Images to search for your answers to the questions below. You must choose pictures from the first page from the results and post it as your answer.

1) Age of my next birthday

2) Place/places I would like to travel to...


3) My favourite place

4) My favourite thing


5) My favourite food

6) My favourite colour


7) The city I reside now
8) The city I was worn in


9) My college major
10) Name of your first lover



11) A bad habbit
12) Hobby



13) Wish list (max 3)












the tag goes to...

the purring cat
diary of a Polergirl
being brazen
clockwork orange
sounding forth