Today I received my test mail from the US. What was estimated to arrive in “seven to ten days” took a month to get here.

In other news, trees and lights are going up all over town. Actually, they have been for a little while already, but now the more impressive decorations are coming out, like the tree above, and it seems very early indeed. Of course, Russia doesn’t mark American Thanksgiving, so there isn’t as definite a consensus on when decorations are acceptable and when they’re early. But when one considers that Christmas isn’t until January 7th (okay, a large majority of the decorations are really New Year’s related, but even that isn’t until the very end of December), November 17th seems premature.