Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Yesterday was plus 19, today it’s minus and real winter. That’s how we live

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.