This will be a really quick post. Today was a pretty busy day, but as it was all in preparation for tomorrow, it will probably be a bit tedious to recount. But I also don’t have a lot of time, since need to get to bed to be ready for the big day. (By which I mean Friday. Oh, and the day I get married.)

This morning was all about paperwork and rings. The paperwork went fine and all my accursed English language documents got their proper counterparts. The were a couple trips to the bank to pay for things — registration services, fees for document copying and prep, etc., etc. The other big thing of the morning was getting our rings. Viktoria had already found the “perfect ring” (her words), and she had already put a deposit on it. So it was really just a matter of picking it up and finding one for me. My choice was mostly predicated on what the had in my size, which wasn’t a lot. Sadly, only yellow gold, which wasn’t my first choice, but there was one with a pleasantly subtle pattern, not too wide or too thick (things I found I didn’t like from my “practice rings”) and, most importantly, a pretty good fit. The only trouble with the ring-getting was that the store had signs up saying they took credit cards (which is not a given over here), but on this particular day they didn’t/couldn’t. No problem, I thought, I’ll just hit the ATM, except that I needed more than the daily limit. I was just going to use my credit card anyway, but natch I couldn’t remember my pin. Resourcefulness won out, though, by means of a cash advance at a bank and I was able to purchase our rings.

The other big activity of the day was a special family dinner. Special for two reasons really: this was my first time meeting everyone, and in honor of my American holiday, they had put together a Thanksgiving-like meal. It was really very sweet of them. I won’t go into details, but I feel that everything went well. Viktoria’s mother insisted on giving us a blessing, so I’m going to take that as a good sign. (I did have to say “da” to something I didn’t understand, but I don’t think will come back to haunt me.)

I won’t go into the other details of the meeting — again, it’s bedtime — but I think it was a fine evening, even if it was me against four people where we didn’t have a working single language.

Since this is short, here’s a link to a music video that I think is hilarious. It’s in Russian, but I think the visual humor stands by itself.
https://showyou.com/v/h-jIW2VN5Mgwr1GL1q/russian-batman-vs-the-penguin