alexpgp | Observations & digressions...

There's a Soyuz launch scheduled for 10:28 local time tonight, which means the sun will just be below the horizon, so there's a chance to see the rocket once it gains some altitude.

* * *I worked out this morning, covering 1.56 miles and burning (theoretically) 148 calories over a 27 minute period. What is even more important is that just over half a mile of that distance was covered while jogging at 6 mph, albeit I didn't run the entire distance in one shot, choosing instead to run a quarter mile followed by two 220-yard distances.

* * *I translated the morning meeting minutes upon arriving at the полтинник and was gratified to note that my work remained as I wrote it, with no rewriting of sentences to make them sound more "Russian," requiring the correction of only one spelling error before putting it in the outbox.

* * *No response yet to my email message to the taxicab driver, giving him the phone of a contact in Moscow with whom he could leave my found wallet. For the moment, I can explain this by a less-than-religious approach to reading emails; I remain confident the item will be returned.

* * *A couple of campaigns ago, before I learned of the room in which campaigners leave small packages of personal effects they would prefer not to schlepp back and forth across the world, I left a roll-up chess board and some appropriately sized chess pieces (plastic, and bought in Budapest back when I brought the Borland "OOP World Tour" to town in '91, if memory serves) in one of the closets in the company office downstairs. As far as I remember, the set and board were no longer there during last year's winter campaign, and I don't recall looking for it during the summer campaign.

While waiting around downstairs yesterday for something, I don't recall what, I glanced in the closets simply out of curiosity (and perhaps a small measure of hope) and... found the pieces of the set, loose in a box with some other stuff, and the board. Moreover, it turns out the set had remained complete, wherever it was, for all this time. If I do leave it in Baikonur, I'll make sure to leave it in my self-designed "time capsule" of personal stuff.

* * *Google Earth has added quite a bit of more detailed bitmaps describing this part of the world. Whereas previously, the Fili Hotel - my temporary home away from home - was represented by what appeared to be two or three pixels on the screen, it now appears as shown in the userpic to this post.

Cheers...