It was Lydia Borisovna's birthday today. Ksusha and her parents came over. Anton and his parents did not put in an appearance. There's some kind of whack family politics here that I'm not a party to. But that's okay. I'm not sure that I really am up for family drama in any other family than mine. Russian gives me a headache. Mostly because it's hard for me to follow fast excited Russian conversation about how to remodel apartments. That's just so many words that I don't know.

We had a pretty good tort, though. It was meringue with whipped cream and prunes. I feel like I'm 80, but prunes are kinda tasty, as long as I just keep telling myself that it's only a plum. It's like a plum-raisin. Yummy.