Watching the rain...

At breakfast this morning, Olga (one of our servers) noted that half the sky was nearly black with clouds moving in from what I think is the southwest, portending rain. After breakfast, it became evident that my name on the list of folks scheduled to do a pad walkdown (inspection, more or less) was there as a contingency, and that I was actually free as a bird (in a fairly large aviary) until 1 pm, when I am scheduled to go to the полтинник for a shift that will go to 8 pm.

So in the meantime, I've been catching up on my travel expense reports and invoices. (A true love/hate relationship: I hate doing them because there are so many details to document, but I love what - in the end - they bring in the mail.)

In any event, here's what the banquet hall looked like last night before the crowd arrived:



Also, while reviewing photos, I ran across one I took at the London duty free shop. It is most certainly an attention-getter (although for the life of me, if not for the picture, I'd never be able to recall the product being advertised!), and is Exhibit A for the argument that Europeans have the U.S. beat hands down (or hands up, or around, or whatever) when it comes to using sex to sell products.



For now, I think I will turn to around the room and see what the weather is like outside, after the on-again-off-again rain that did pass through a little while ago. Work starts in just over two hours.

Cheers...