Greetings from the Frozen Plain. Yeah it's cold here. And if you read my posting on Joffre's blog you know it's cold enough for a Minnesotan like myself to complain about it. Brrr! But of course there is a lot of fun involved, too. We have taken 20,000 blocks of ice out of local lakes and built a palace of ice that's about a hundred feet high. Last Saturday night when it was a balmy three above my wife, sis Anna and I went down to see it. Very cool. Lots of nice ice sculptures and the band playing at the palace wasn't half bad. Almost as good as Bero and co. Of course, it was cold. The palace is a part of our annual winter carnival here. Think Rio with parkas. We celebrate the reign of Boreas the king of Wind (god of wind?) rules over winter. The locals crown some old guy with lots of time and a warm coat to be Boreas. Of course, the caveat is that he gets deposed by the Vulcans in February or when the winter Carnival ends, whichever comes first. The Vulcans come and kiss all unchaperoned ladies and overthrow Boreas and bring warmth back to Minnesota.

Its a fun crazy tradition. It's the most fun you can have with snowpants on. See pictures of the palace at the Winter Carnival Website or catch a glimpse of it during the Hockey All Star Game which is being played here this year.

Alright, let me bring you up to speed on our lives so far. Alaina and I wisked to Minnesota on December 19. Life seemed disconnected for us. Home was now to be here, but it wasn't. This revealed itself in our immediate realization that we no longer had a church home. Our families are here, yes. But we were operating on batteries after being so accustomed to being plugged in. Please indulge some sentiments here. We visited the church my parents attended - which we attended before moving to Moscow - and we knew we could not return there. At the least our Paedo & Postmil beliefs would rock the boat too much. It's a good church, but not for us. After a month we visited a few other churches - one good CRC church we liked - we found Good Shepherd PCA. They're Postmil and on board with a lot of things we agree with. The past few Sabbaths we have thoroughly enjoyed felowship with them. Oh, and the pastor looks like Russel Crowe and has a Scottish accent because he's from Scotland, don'tcha know.

I'm employed by Caribou coffee as a manager. Their management training program is interesting and I'm learning so much more about managing resources than I ever thought I would learn. This is fantastic. The tools they provide tell you so much. I think I'd still prefer a singular coffeeshop to a corporate environment, but the tools I'm getting reveal so much. It's a completely different environment and if we don't do more customer traffic in a shift than Bucer's used to do in a day I'll be Michael Jackson's pet's uncle.

Anyway, I'll type more later. I'm finally plugged back in.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. I'd like to raise my beer to Terry Eckwright, the mannager of the Wine Company of Moscow. On my last night there he brought out the finest wine I have ever tasted. A 1982 Bordeaux Haut-Marbouzier I think it was. I forgot to write it down. Very nice and my personal best. His generosity has blown me away on a number of occasions and this was tops. Thanks, Terry.

W~

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// posted by The Wino @ 9:03 PM