MoldovAnn

Spring is definitely coming out of hibernation these last few days in Kyiv. There’s such a feeling of relief each year when I realize we’ve made it past the hump, we survived another dark and dreary winter. I always stock up on something to keep me occupied during the winters, and this year it was cross-stitch and American TV shows. I watched the entire series of Homicide: Life on the Streets and The West Wing. I’d loved both series when they originally aired, but never saw the first season of Homicide, or the last couple seasons of either series. Can I just say, holy cow did West Wing ever rock! And talk about life imitating art – it was a bit freaky to watch the last two seasons of West Wing in the months following the election and inauguration of Barack Obama. Homicide was a great series, too, but it got under my skin to watch it so intensely, so many episodes back to back. I realized I needed to take a break when I started to see killers and rapists everywhere around me. Kind of like if you watch The Sopranos too much you start dropping F-bombs like there’s no tomorrow.

I also caught up to the broadcasts of Battlestar Galactica and Lost. It was bittersweet to watch the BG series finale last week, but frankly I can’t wait for Lost to wrap up too. Both series seem to get a bit lost (no pun intended) for awhile there, but BG pulled it together really nicely at the end. I’m gonna miss those folks. They had some interesting lessons to share, for both the business and political worlds.

And during all this TV watching, I’ve been making good progress on my cross-stitching. I finished two small projects then moved on to two bigger and more complicated ones. I finished the second of those last week (I thought it was never going to end!) and decided it’s time to try my hand at what I really wanted to be doing – a rushnik, or Ukrainian embroidered towel. It’s daunting to pick up the long cloth and start the first of what will be thousands of stitches, but it’s exciting. I honed my skills all winter long with this project as my goal, and with the new spring I start working on that goal -yeah!

The only downside to all this cross-stitching is that I haven’t been reading much, since the two don’t really go hand-in-hand, so to say (hence the extreme TV watching all winter long). I did read a few good books in recent months, but not nearly as many as in past winters. As usual, my reading list is on GoodReads.