Back online! or I would have written sooner, if I had a working computer!

Last week Wednesday I was going to do a trade school post about Tuesday, which was one of the students birthdays. I didn't get around to it, instead I downloaded a new feed balancing program for Garry on his computer, and then when my computer decided it can't start (it lights up the row of buttons and then clicks off when you try to start it) downloaded some new drivers to get the video to work better on his for downloaded television shows.

Garry was looking at his first year grapevines and was excited to find some!

On Thursday afternoon, I tried to fix his computer because it started running really slow, and somehow it got stuck while trying to load windows updates....it couldn't get through part three, but it wouldn't do anything else but try.

Friday morning, Garry had his Russian lesson down at the school, and then went to breed a cow in another village, before we hurried off to Dnepropetroesk to start our police check for our new resident registration- Victor had finally been able to find out about doing it early--- we are supposed to do it when it expires, but that is January 2nd --- right during holiday time, we might not even be in the country and we need it to get back in---- and we are leaving to fly back to Canada on November 23rd---so now we will be finished with the whole process a few days before. We had to go to Dnepropajisk first as Garry's semen tank for breeding cows was nearly empty of liquid nitrogen, and the place he buys it closes at one o'clock----and so did the police station!

Victor rushed through the paperwork, filling out blanks with things like our names in Russian--- the translation inside our passports for the visa is in Ukrainian, so he had to think fast on how to translater Gerit Jan Willem, he says it has some tricky sounds to translate, and we only had 15 minutes from the time we arrived at the station until the lady was cloosing her wicket, Garry paid at the other window while Victor filled out forms as fast as possible and handed her copies of official documents and the receipts to show we paid, while he and three other people tried to beat the deadline and she snarled as she took then with a minute to spare.

 In two weeks we pick then up in person between three and five in the afternoon, which is when she hands things back on the assigned day. After we get them back, Victor gets to stand in line at another office to get the registration completed.

Afte that we drove further downtown to the place where Garry got the button fixed on his computer in January, where he hoped he could get his computer fixed, so he could use it for class and internet....but the guy was not hopeful, said maybe he could save some info, it might be the hard drive...

Saurday we had visitors, the day turned pleasant and sunny, so I hung out some laundry. Unfortunately I forgot to bring it in before dark, when Andrei came in and said it was raining. Those towels got rinsed very well several times before I got them in this afternoon...that's Monday afternoon and they were still damp!

Sunday when we dropped milk off at Victor's church, he mentioned that they had a netbook that didn't really use much anymore that we could borrow after church if we dropped by the house. Garry had a cold that was really bothering him, so we left after the service and communion. We didn't stay for the church's birthday
party, they were celebrating 18 years with a USSR party theme - there were old records and stuff for decoration and the kids were all putting on red bandannas - which someone told me they wore to school when they joined pioneers in the Soviet days----and dinner which featured old time lemonade soda.

the nastuiums are finally blooming!

Even the baby marigolds are getting ready to bloom now!

So that's why I can write this blogpost, we are back online with the netbook from Victor's house. It has been  rainy off and on for days, Garry is hoping for drier weather by the end of the week so he can get to work on making alfalfa and prusso millet silage. We have had two light frosts this last week, but no killing frost yet, which is nice because with the wet weather Garry's flowers have made a real comeback---in fact his nasturniums have finally started to bloom ---after barely hanging on all summer.