On the early mornin' road...

...with a coffee in my hand (I wish)
With a C-note in my jeans, on a trip I had not planned,
I'm oh, so close to home, with so much work to do.
On the early mornin' road, I'm feelin' mighty blue.

With apologies to... whomever (Gordon Lightfoot?).

Galina got the Ford serviced somewhere in town Friday because the transmission was making funny noises after the trip from Texas. It turns out the tranny was several quarts low on fluid, so the repair shop refilled the reservoir, did some other work, and sent Galina on her way. Over the weekend, it would appear most of the transmission fluid snuck out and committed seppuku on the concrete pad in front of the garage.

So, this morning, I ended up leaving at some unconscionably early hour, driving the Honda to Durango to pick up two large (I mean big!) bags of styrofoam packaging peanuts, visit the Office Depot for some supplies, and stop by a pet store for some special cat food. By the time I got back and unloaded, the morning was pretty much over. This afternoon, I spent about 1.5 hours at the store, helping generate labels for the day's UPS packages (50 of 'em today). The rest of the time, I've pretty much spent trying to translate.

Not doing too well, either, considering all the distractions. So I really shouldn't be sitting here grousing about it, right? (And more important, wasting valuable translation time!).

Cheers...

Persuasion...

Just a little over 63 years ago, on December 5, 1941, a tenacious resistance by Soviet forces (aided by "General Winter") managed to finally convince the Germans that their advance on Moscow wasn't progressing very well, and so that particular operation was formally called off. The Nazis never got closer than 23 kilometers to the city.

The Soviets erected a simple memorial to commemmorate having kept the Hun from Moscow, which today can be found at the 23rd kilometer of the Moscow--Leningrad highway. The memorial is in the form of three larger-than-life tank traps and a commemorative inscription. You can see it on the right-hand side of the road as you come into the city from Sheremetyevo airport.

I first visited the memorial during my first trip to Russia, and somewhere I have a Polaroid that shows this memorial standing at the side of the highway, surrounded by forest. It was, if memory serves, a quiet, contemplative setting that seemed appropriate to mark the sacrifice of so many soldiers and a significant milestone in the struggle that the Soviets called the "Great Patriotic War."

A lot has changed over the intervening years:



As you can imagine, IKEA caught a lot of crap over wanting to build their megastore in this particular spot, but the store got built (one of five that will be constructed by 2006, if I recall), to the disgust of many Muscovites. Personally, I think a better job could have been done of preserving the memorial, as right now it seems an awkward presence crowded into the middle of the hurly-burly of contemporary life in Khimki (a Moscow suburb).

But urban planning in Moscow is not the point of this post. The point is to mark the 63rd anniversary of the start of the Soviet counteroffensive, representing the turning of a significant corner in World War II.

Cheers...