Well, it's the 4th of december and I've slacked off and not written for a while. It's come to my attention that there are some people at utopia who aren't interested in receiving my journals....Well, I've got two suggestions: 1) As the messages are BCCed to junk, you might set your copy of eudora to trash mail sent both from and to me. or 2) you can bear with me for 2 more weeks...during which I doubt i'll write more than twice... Well, today we had an excursion to the KGB museum...it was sort of interesting. they had a series of displays of spy stuff they'd confiscated from western agents... I've got new-found respect for the CIA's tech people....Afterwards, leslie, jocelyn and I went off in search of fresh salmon as we're planning to make sushi on thursday. (don't laugh....we did it last week with tuna and it was great) We found a supermarket near the KGB building that didn't have fresh salmon, but they did have all sorts of great western things like LIMES..This was the first time since august that I'd seen a lime..They also had all sorts of name-brand western goods that I hadn't found here before. After that, we headed to a bookstore, where I purchased my very on copy of the russian translation of "The New Hackers' Dictionary." This evening, jerry, emily and I grabbed dinner at mcdonalds before heading home. Once we got home, a Korean girl who lives next door came over to hang out....At some point, she asked us if we wanted some kim-chi..Well, of course we did....So, we ended up in her room slurping kim-chi and rice.....that was some seriously good and spicy food..... I tried to give a friend back home a ring, but discovered that my calling-card was no good....and so I got switched through to the ATT calling card center....who called my mom to verify that I was me....Well, after my mom told them that I was her son, they hung up and my mom hung up and I waited on the line for the ATT operator who didn't pick up again....but my mom did...so we talked for a few. I'm 99 percent sure that we weren't being charged for talking, as I never dialed my mom and they were calling her to verify that I was me. Well, that's it for today...what's happened in the past few weeks...well, lots of things....my dad and brother have come and gone again, taking home about 1/2 my stuff. Oh, yesterday, I finally mailed off some chocolate to a friend studying in italy. I'd tried to mail it on monday...I waited in line for 20 minutes at my local post office: Jesse: Hi, I'd like to mail this to italy. Disgruntled Postal Worker:To where? J: Italy DPW: Oh, Italy...you can't do that here. J: Well, where can I do it? DPW: Only at the central post office. J:Please? DPW: What's in it? J:Chocolate..it's a gift DPW:Well, come back later. (At this point, I realized that it would be a bad idea to mail it there. So, on tuesday, I went to the central post office and waited in line for 10 minutes J:Hi, I'd like to send this to italy DPW2:You can't do that here J:But my post office said i could do it her DPW2:No. You have to go to Clean Ponds metro stop. you can only mail letters here. J:But this isn't very big DPW2:this isn't a letter. this is a small parcel. You can't mail small parcels from here, only letters. J:But my post office said that I could only mail this from here DPW2: You can't mail this here. Go to clean ponds metro Later that evening at the post office clean ponds metro, I waited in line for 20 minutes, only to be scolded for sealing my parcel. I opened it up and the DPW scolded me for not sealing the box of chocolates. I just couldn't win. She took the box of chocolates and wrapped it in twine..then stuck it back in my padded mailer...then she wrapped my padded mailer in brown paper. I was then told that I had to fill out a customs declaration in quadruplicate. The only thing I really messed up on the declaration was that I merely wrote "chocolate" under "contents" instead of "chocolate, one box." After paying about 8 bucks for airmail, I was told that I was done. I asked when I might expect my package to arrive. The DPW refused to answer....I asked a number of variations on the question which she also refused to answer.