What the f**k, it is 1st of December then why is it raining out there? Whatever snow that managed to fall and not melt immediately was washed away. Gross.

As a compensation I have found a couple of sites with most beautiful snowflakes photos:
Snowflakes photos on Lenta.ru.
Snowflakes and Snow Crystals

The only holiday my family decorates for is New Year/Christmas. I usually start decorating my room first, either on last weekend or 5-3 days before New Year. We put up tree and the rest of decorations on 29th to 31st, depending on how busy we are that year and if one of those days falls on weekend. I suspect this year all decorations will go up on 31st and there is no guarantee that I won't run tree-hunting on evening of 30th or on 31st again.

Tree and decorations stay up for as long as father and I can get away with leaving them up. Meaning all decorations except tree and ones in my room are down soon after Christmas. The rest we take down around next weekend after 13th - New Year's day Old Style.

Once again a post for photoschallenge.

( If I don't celebrate Thanksgiving, it doesn't mean I don't have things I'm thankful for. )

Dragon Cave looks like a good source of fun. I have joined their "250 books before 31 July 2010" challenge, well I'll have less time to do it, but I read fast so it is more a question of keeping a list of what I read.

( Under cut is a list of what I finished so far. )

http://www.russiatoday.com/About_Us/Blogs/orbital-log/2009-11-11.html

A link to a post from Maksim Suraev's blog as translated by Russia Today. Got it from news site I read at work. Looks like it will be interesting to read, if I'll find either a link to full translated blog or to original one (news article didn't have Russian link for some reason).

Why do my math skills always fail me when it comes to anything dealing with money? When it it plain numbers, I have no problem calculating in my mind or with basic calculator for division and multiplication. But the moment I need to even add several numbers and the result will have any relation to money operation... I might as well have absolutely no education in math.

Case in hand - I was filling out this month's bills. Most of them have a set fee, that is already printed on them and I needed only to copy it by hand (probably so that it was clear I know and agree with it). But electric bill is filled out based on our electrical counter, which to add to fun has day and night rate and the bill is filled out for a full month, but we pay it on 22-25th to avoid crowds. That all adds to a rather simple calculation... that I still can't do right first time. Or second, or third. Today I once again messed it up three times before giving up and entering all numbers and formulas into Excel. Got fourth result, that I hope is right. Well, mama didn't yell for me to come and explain (she is checking bills now) so I think I got it right.

Well, here is my entry for this week's challenge at photoschallenge. The challenge was "Post one photo representing each of the following types of weather/weather-related terms: Stormy, Hot/burning/heat, Cold/frozen, Rainy/wet, Cloudy/gloomy/dim, Snowy/icy, Sunny/bright, Dry/arid/parched, Humid/moist/muggy, Windy"

( Here they are: )

Friday 13th caught up to me on Sunday. Or probably Monday, as it was already after midnight.

I have run out of my anti allergic pills on Friday and forgot to buy them. Then i thought I would be all right until Monday, as I try not to rely on pills completely. But... last week there was 2 Birthday parties at work and then I made 4 apple cakes at home and while I didn't eat all that much of sweets and fruits, apparently it was enough. At about 1am I woke up because my allergy flared up in that "do I really need skin on my back? Didn't think so" way, and I twisted trying to sleep until 4am when I have finally remembered that I might have another pack hidden in my travel "medicine chest". Turned out I did have some there and twenty minutes later I was finally asleep.

But as a result I got way too little sleep (I get up at 6am) and I have scratched myself worse then I have since I was 18, I think. Very bad start of the day.

Yesterday I went to that cat show I wanted. At first plans included a friend (who didn't go) and then when I was leaving father thought about going, but changed his mind at the thought of using public transport. No idea why - I guess he got spoiled by always using car, I had no problems at all, despite it being half way across the city and quite a distance form a convenient bus stop. And...  his absence made it easier to donate money to cat shelter without him worrying about how much money I gave them.

A note for next time - don't be lazy and go no later then 2 hours after opening. At 2pm I came in the middle of the mob, all monobreed shows were over and most cats were tired and sleeping with their backs to the public. So I have very few decent photos to show, especially since I don't use flash when taking photos of cats on their places so that I won't bother them. Shows are a different story, as everyone use flashes then. I'll finish sorting photos and maybe post a couple in the evening.

For now here - Cat Club "Bast", some way down you can find professional photos (I didn't see them yet, as I'm posting this from work).

I was disappointed that there was only one Siamese cat on the show, and he was hiding behind plastic screen, so I couldn't even get any good photos of him. Overall most popular breeds right now are Oriental, Sphinx, British and Siberian (they look alike for me) and Cornish/Devon Rex. I had great time looking and petting them, well, when I could get close enough - I had to walk all three floors around three times before I could see all of the cats without a mob.

But it also drove home that while I'm Ok with cat shows and other people cats, I'm not ready to adopt one yet. Mama also said that she isn't ready, so we are going to wait until spring. Also... breed choice was corrected. Father is starting to get more comfortable with internet - after finding that it is a great source if various information on fishing - and he decided to find photos of Rex and Sphinx cats. When he did, he gave me an ultimatum - if I'll bring "that demon" instead of normal cat, he will through out both of us. All right, on seeing a modern Siamese cat - the whip-thin one with long limbs and nose - he said that this one isn't a cat too. So I guess when I'm ready, I will be stalking our cat shelter for a Siamese-colored and tempered mix.

I have said it before and i will say it again - placing a holiday in the middle of the work week is evil. Especially when this so-called "holiday" has absolutely no reason behind it's existence. Well, other than "People are used to having a holiday at the beginning of November". And we can't leave 7th of November as a state holiday, because it is the day of October's Revolution and that is a Soviet Holiday - it will mean saving and honoring our history. And that is something our government can't allow. No, we will first rename it as "Day of Agreement and Reconciliation" (commonly known as a DoA&R with full and utter idiocy of our government) and later make a new holiday, 3 days earlier, which we will call "Unity Day".

Well, cutting of that one rant as it can lead me far. The idiocy of our government it wast and far reaching and that is the reason I usually ignore it almost completely.

For me yesterday was just a day when I could sleep over and do nothing - winter is back and i didn't want to go out in cold. So basically, yesterday could just as well not exist for me.

Right now I'm mostly hit by resulting idiocy of my girls, who definitely turned their brains off for a holiday and forgot to turn them back on. 3 absolutely dumb questions so far and it is only 11:30. Good thing (for them) that I'm still sleepy and nice and not in mood to bite their heads off.

All right, if my father starts asking when I'm going to get a cat again... it is definitely a time to start thinking. Not to say that he was completely against getting a cat, but he always played "she is your cat and I'm tolerating her" both with Alisa and Musia before her. And I was ready to either spend a couple of weeks/months wearing him down or to just bring new cat home and then tell him she is living with us. On other hand, he was the first one to greet Alisa when we brought her home and he never chased her away when she wanted his attention.

My dreams don't help at all - in last weeks I had several where I've either found and adopted a stray kitten (or several) or Alisa would bring one to me.

Well, there is a cat show on 8th that I wanted to go to. And since I'm pretty much set on getting one of the Rex breeds I'll still have several months to ... I don't know... I guess to get ready to accept a new girl in my heart.

A chance look into a window revealed a heavy snowfall. First one of the year.

For this week's photoschallenge.

( 10 close-up photos - guess what are they )
[edit] repaired some links to larger images
[edit2] added answers

First time I have run into this "joke".

When you buy a 16 Gb flash card you will be dead wrong to expect that you'll be able to write 16 Gb of data on it. Because it's real size is 16'000'000'000 (16 million) bytes.

Argh!