This has a lot to do with how English is taught in Russia. When I was a school kid (long time ago) we learned that there’s breakfast, dinner and supper, dinner being the midday meal. It was not until much later that I also learned words like lunch, brunch etc.

I’ve seen an article yesterday about the fruit stand seller who sold this banana to him for 50 cents or so, and was shocked to find out how much this art costs.

I’ve been writing postcards and letters to voters. It’s a little too late to jump on the postcard wagon but letters can be written until 10/29. It’s super easy, you’re provided templates, instructions and addresses, you just need paper, envelopes and stamps.

https://votefwd.org/

I wrote a ton of both and it did wonders to distract me and give me something of purpose to do at the same time.

I’m pretty sure text banking and phone banking is still going on too.

Blin s bekonom, ya peku s bekonom

Blin s bekonom, obyazatelno s bekonom

Blin s bekonom, vot tak ya delaju

Blin s bekonoooom

Pancake with bacon, I bake with bacon

Pancake with bacon, by all means with bacon

Pancake with bacon, that’s how I do it

Pancake with bacooooon

I had to have an abdominal ultrasound done once and the tech told me I have a great pancreas, “the most beautiful she’s ever seen”. I didn’t know what to say but it made me happy.

Who?

I was born in USSR and it collapsed when I was seven so my memories of it were at the very end when things were tough and scarce. I remember school books that were still about Lenin and Stalin, and we would write essays about Labor day parades and red hammer-and-sickle flags during our English classes, it sounded funny even for us first graders.

Yet, whatever little was available was cheap, we would have deficit problems but not financial ones unless you were trying to buy something that was smuggled into the country, like jeans.

We would take flights to Kazakhstan where my grandma lived, no borders no visas obviously. They lived on their own land there and were much better off in terms of food availability (Google USSR deficit to see what stores looked like).

Then we reached the point when food stamps had to be distributed and it was outright scary. I remember standing by our front door crying, because my mom gave me a bread stamp and sent me to get some bread, and I lost the stamp on the way and couldn’t bring myself to go back home. Eventually I was absent long enough for her to start worrying and she opened the door to go out and found me there sobbing.