Day of the Bureau of Technical Inventory BTI/День инвентаризатора (День работника БТИ): HRH Updates His Dream Home

By on 21/05/2013

HRH and Jennifer dust off their Bureau of Technical Inventory documents for an apartment renovation that sounds so much better in French! Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home. ~ John Howard Payne Congratulations to all (and you are legion) the good people who work in the Bureau of Technical Inventory, known [...]

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expat life in Russia

The Domestic Goddess of the Green Line

By on 14/03/2013

Here’s one of the great unsolved mysteries of the universe:  why does the Alumni Magazine get through the floundering Russian postal system with a regularity you can set your clock by, but The New Yorker almost never appears?  Why isn’t it the other way round?  Still, fresh reading material in Moscow should never be taken [...]

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Snow Tires for the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse

By on 19/12/2012

Russians don’t go in for the notion of climate change, and given recent events, can we blame them? A few days shy of the official opening day of winter in Russia, the heaviest snowfall in fifty years blanketed the Moscow Region. It was, in the immortal words of the elderly Native American who comes to [...]

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Sochi Mascots

Mascot Mitt

By on 20/11/2012

Democrats like me are still sighing with relief at President Obama’s victory in the most recent election. It was a close run thing – so close that rumor has it Mitt Romney did not even have a concession speech prepared. It’s clear from recent post-election analysis that the Romney camp is still scratching its head [...]

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Russia Lite discusses Undecided Voters in Russia

Russia’s Undecided Voters or Banging the Drum in Ostozhenka

By on 29/10/2012

AGGGHHHH!  I hate this last week before Election Day!  You can scour politico.com and 538.com for hints.  You can download and listen to the screaming talking heads on both sides of the political spectrum all you want, but until November 6th (that’s right minority voters in Pennsylvania for whom English is not a first language [...]

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Warming Up To Halloween

By on 15/10/2012

You have to hand it to the Russians – when it comes to holidays, more is more as far as they are concerned.  Some holidays, like New Year’s, are so popular that they are celebrated twice.  To augment their own 298 public and professional holidays, Russians have enthusiastically embraced foreign fetes as well.  Valentine’s Day [...]

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Russian orthodoxy

It’s a Great Pumpkin, HRH!

By on 08/10/2012

I lugged a four-kilo pumpkin home from Dorogomilovsky Market and set it on the kitchen counter.   HRH, my “Handsome Russian Husband” found us there, surrounded by dull knives and a whetstone, when he returned home from work. “What’s that for?” he asked. “For this month’s cooking column assignment,” I said with mock flourish, “the paper [...]

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Volk from Nu Pogodi

HRH and the Puffy Riot

By on 03/10/2012

The couple that surfs together stays together, and that is why I make sure that HRH and I start each day with some quality surfing time.  Two cups of coffee, two iPads, and two completely separate news streams.   While HRH scrolls through RBK and Rambler, I log on to the Huffington Post for some Real [...]

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Day of the Oil, Gas, and Fuel Industry Workers/День работников нефтяной, газовой и топливной промышленности: It Just Keeps On Gushing!

By on 02/09/2012

Auntie Mame:  You left a taxi running in the middle of a Depression? Uncle Beau:  Well, Ma’am, I’m in oil.  It just keeps gushing, ain’t nothing I can do about it…” ~ Patrick Dennis Today is all about what my classy British friend Posey called “The Oilys,” which God knows sounds better than “The Gassys.”  [...]

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