Il drivewayo, she smells atari

After two rainout delays, we finally got a new sealant hand-squeegified onto our driveway, which makes it look black and smell funny, but doesn't really look as good as I'd hoped. I was thinking it would look like a smooth new road, but instead we just have darker cracks.

Ryan and Ainsley became intimately familiar with the DTRA cafeteria today, joining me for a lovely lunch outside by the lake and fountain. Unfortunately, Ryan is still sick, so nothing really pleased him, not a chicken sandwich for lunch, not my cool uniform with the shiny DTRA badge, not my "7x7" (as my bride called it) cubicle with all the pictures of the animals.

I met my boss's's boss yesterday, an Air Force colonel who's as big as a horse and just as nice. He's only been here since early August, so he said I was the guinea pig for meet & greets. I think I passed. I asked him if he knew why no one in DTRA offered a basic Russian language course for all these rotating military folks who come in and go to Russia, and he said he didn't know but asked me to find out what could be done and said he admired my initiative and gave me a lollipop.

In the meantime, I have a book that is at least showing me some of the cyrillic alphabet so I can start to get used to how words look and sound. And write my name in Russian. So now I can pee in the snow in Votkinsk.