Armenia - how I miss you!

Anya and me came to cafe Armenia last night to say goodbye for this year as we're not going to see each other in London. As we got to the entry it was very dark inside so I wasn't sure whether it's actually open. But we looked at the opening hours board and it said they opened from 6pm 'till 10pm on a Monday and it was 6:47, so we walked in. Inside Serg (the owner) and some other guy were sitting in a far corner talking, there were no other customers. So as we walked in we stood still as we weren't quite sure whether they were open. And then Serg looks at us rather grumpily and says "What do you want?!"... I was taken aback a bit, but then said "To eat"... he laughed and asked us to sit down and his wife served us. Serg and the other guy moved into the back room and we could hear them talking. The other guy must've been a lawer or some other such person... they were speaking in russian in very high tones, and his wife between serving us would come into the back room and we'd hear her say "Serg, calm down please"... Thus the whole experience was rather surreal - only two of us sitting in a fastly darkening soviet style restaurant, and listening to a domestic arguement that's breaking out in the back room changing from russian to bits of english and finally armenian in very VERY high notes. When I went to order a coke though the lady asked if we'd rather have KBAC instead... and so we did... the spelling of it in english was 'quass'... :) ruskies will understand.

Finally after eating the wonderful Piti and Lamb shashlik on the bone (and Serg did come up and grunted that we had to eat the meat with our hands and not with the knife and fork that we were trying to do)... we dropped by my place and ventured our way to Polly bar in Brunswick street for some cocktails... I had a Damage Control followed by a Tuscan Monk, and Anya had a 'something or rather watermelon', followed by Raunchy Affair, followed by Whip me Slowly... at this point Jack joined in and had a Boags followed by a Lemonaide. It's great to have great family who are also your friends!

Down to teens

It's 18 days to go - so we're down to teens of days.

We had our Garage Sale last weekend and it went reasonably well considering we got rid of at least half of stuff that we didn't want and made about $500. I do have ethical issues with selling people things that I don't like or those that may not function to their best abilities, but my excuse is that if people expect to buy high quality stuff at garage sales, they're a bit silly. Anyhow, I'm sure I'll burn in hell at some point in the future, and it's not going to be the worst of my sins.

The shed is also finished and the first pic is myself and Jack on the roof - me working the drill - YESSS. And the one on the left here is the finished shed from the inside - with Adrian and Jack doing the concreting... very exciting.

So it's all very close and I think I am slowly starting to get excited and not think about all the things that still need to be done!

russkies are the same everywhere

their beaurocracy is in any case...

Needed to find info on how to translate my russian birth certificate into german - ie. where can you do it, how much it is, and how long it takes.. So sent an email to the Russian Consul in Berlin... only afterwards to notice a small print in the bottom of their contacts page - "Уважаемые дамы и господа! Поскольку Посольство получает чрезвычайно большое количество обращений, просим отнестись с пониманием к тому, что мы не в состоянии ответить на каждое письмо. Тем не менее, все запросы тщательно изучаются и принимаются во внимание, даже если и остаются без ответа."

This roughly translates to "Dear ppls! You'll understand that we can't answer everyones' emails/questions, so don't be upset if we don't reply to you. However your questions are very important to us and we will read and think about each one even if we don't reply." which naturally made me think that if you're actually going to read and think about each one, then why not answer? but that's russian psyche for you... as we say ourselves "zagadochnaya russkaya dusha" - ie. "the mystical russian soul". *cough cough*