birthdays

Birthdays! I love birthdays: drinks all around!

Most members of my family managed to be born in spring, that is why March and April are the most festive months of the year here. We used to organize thematic birthdays parties, masquerades, family sports competitions and so on. Those parties were hilarious.

Later various diseases started to take us down one by one. So those, who are still alive, have learned to treasure the rare occasions of just gathering around the table talking, sharing recent news and photographs of the past and present.

Somehow birthdays have turned into tributes to those who passed away. There is a tradition to propose the second toast to the birthday girl's or boy's parents. The parents are not with us any longer, and these moments are the most intense and sad.The toast is usually followed by a silence, as everyone goes back to the past mentally for a few moments to meet the dearest ones again. These were the days we thought would never end...

Then I slip into the present and see the little ones fooling around, playing and amusing themselves. They still believe that a birthday is a day of fun, presents and laughter.

I wish they had more happy birthdays than we do.

animal planet

"The start of a World Cross Country event is like riding a horse in the middle of a buffalo stampede. It's a thrill if you keep up, but one slip and you're nothing but hoof prints".

weekend post

The forecast promised sunny weekends, so I invited the guy to have a walk in one of my favourite suburbs. He had never been there before, so we had a tour around the park and the palace wondering how inconvenient living there would be.

The guy pictured how complicated it would be to run around the house palace if the bedrooms were in the left wing of the building, the kitchen were in the right one and the living-room -somewhere in the middle. He would watch football and ask me nicely to get him a beer from a fridge. I tried to explain that the match would have been over by the time I fetched a beer from the kitchen. To that he promised to buy a bicycle so that I could go around the place faster.
What a nice guy, you'd think.

Anyway, we walked down the park paths, skated on the frozen lake and had a lovely dinner later in the evening. All weekend long the song "Strangers In The Night" was playing in my head...

It was just one of those days to remember.

animal planet

"A lion's work hours are only when he's hungry; once he's satisfied, the predator and prey live peacefully together".

by Chuck Jones

The photographer's site is here

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.

about women

"Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater.

If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby.

If you give her a house, she'll give you a home.

If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal.

If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart.

She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her..

So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit".

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.