Month: December 2021

Kwaki and Skipperich didn’t help 😦

This dude rocks out on buckets. Boston

Bingo!

The shark, by the way, has lips

On the way to the museum o’farts

What amazed me in the US was the sheer number of stores selling greeting cards for every taste and color – literally in every populated area along with the standard set of mattresses-zoo-gourmet-and-maybe-book store, there almost always was something to do with greeting cards. Mattresses in this group were surprising too.

Today I discovered that here before Christmas there are stores with roaming decorations, but – it’s not that simple. Decorations, baubles, come in any imaginable theme, and here these thousands, maybe tens of thousands, gather together. Because it’s a universal gift. You can buy just about anything. Even Bernie Sanders in mittens, or a dog of any breed. Here are athletes from all kinds of sports. And doctors with specialties. Probably, if you look hard enough, you can even find pathologists. It seems that for any somewhat frequent keyword there will be a sale, and it needs a bauble on the shelf. And these are not just cheap plastic, but something much heavier. Likely, the cost of manufacturing in small batches has been greatly reduced, and now the store impresses with its assortment. Ornament central – one of the major players. And here, balls with different patterns are somewhat tucked away in the corner. They are bought too, but the store was not built for them.

❌🙄I’ve never had such a gap between the number of rave reviews from FB friends and my own impression. Maybe it’s because the day before I rewatched “Pulp Fiction” and my taste-meter went off, needing recalibration? Kinopoisk shows 90% positive reviews. But it’s dreary, right? Really, the budget went to the stars, but the script and everything else… Even the “Christmas Chronicles” from 2018 was much better. Though, of course, such movies aren’t usually compared.

Awesome

Held a photo session of games and beer. Other options in the comments.

Switching to Valvoline oil. I found out that it’s not “valvolayn”, but “valvolin” or “valvoliin” (just so you know, these sound the same to us, but to Americans, they are completely different sounds, like black and white). Turns out, Valvoline is actually a girl’s name. Though, there is also “gasoline,” which isn’t a name but sounds similar.

Yuki and I meet deer every evening near the house, on the side of the pedestrian path. The deer and Yuki usually watch each other intently and for a long time. Yuki seems to be able to watch them for hours. The deer are also in no hurry. After the first ten minutes, I run out of patience, and the deer, seeing our approach, run away, their white behinds flashing. Unlike the deer, the hares seem dumb. And the squirrels, when approached on a bike, can easily jump under the wheels. The cleverest are the foxes. They manage to barely be seen, although by indirect signs, they are always somewhere nearby.

However, when another dog approaches, Yuki “turns on the hunter”. This never happens with wild animals. He immediately lies down on his belly, places his chin on the ground, and tucks in his tail. Then, with short dashes on semi-bent paws, he sneaks up to his target, crossed out the dog. Dogs are not surprised by this, and their owners smile. (Switching him back to normal mode only succeeded during trips. There, the dog did not behave this way) But Yuki, waiting until the distance is a few meters, suddenly jumps, and then it depends on luck. In half the cases, he plays, in the other half, he growls aggressively and starts a fight. It seems to correlate with the gender and size of the furry friend he meets, but not clearly. Apparently, he has his reasons.