During the Christmas and New Year in Russia, you can always see pictures of Santa Claus (or "Santa Claus" as it is called here), accompanied by a beautiful "Snow Maiden", which is supposed to be his granddaughter.

Maiden is depicted as a beautiful girl with long blond hair who enjoys the snow flakes that fall around her.

Well, it's always interesting to see how closely a fact can follow fiction.

And in the case of our beautiful Helena below, I think you can understand why ..

So maybe there IS something going on with this Global Warming thing..

Right now in December the locals should be building their yearly ice castles in the local parks..   But they’re not… Can’t exactly make a cool looking fortress with slushy brown melting snow now can you?

The sidewalks should have at least a few inches of packed solid ice on them..  but they don’t.. instead we have wet melting ice that is completely treacherous to walk on.  You are almost safer trying to glide across it.

My friends in Moscow tell me that in some places the grass is growing and some trees are blooming..

The News channels say that the southern birds are wanting to migrate back up north early..  Along with the fact that the Polar Bears are having a hard time hibernating in wet snow..

Well I guess this is just Mother Natures way of balancing everything out.. If we are dealing with Global Warming then obviously this warmer spell will increase the growing season for plants.. which in turn will help to remove more CO2 out of the air.

The Ladies sure aren’t complaining about this Weather though..

Heck most of them wish that the rest of the Winter can stay like this.

Well I guess the sooner they can get back into their Sexy Spring Fashions the better!

It was probably about 30F degrees today with a strong wind blowing in from the arctic.

In the time that I have been here this has to have been the shortest summer I’ve ever experienced in my life. I am truly amazed at how quickly this autumn cold and rain has literally dropped in on us. No use trying to use an umbrella today unless you wanted to turn it completely inside out and then throw it away.

One of my lady friends from the Northern Regions just informed me that it has already started to snow where she is from. Amazing.. and we are only in the last half of September.

Here’s the funny thing though..

There is a fierce snowstorm raging outside the Siberian right now.

Cars crawl on the icy road, and a small army of excavators are in effect trying to clean up mountains of blinding snow that Mother Nature is dumping on us.

I feel like a member of the Alliance was hiding on the ice world Although right now.

It's really unpleasant and unforgiving out there.

There are thousands of museums to explore during your trip to Russia and the capital city has just added another one, which happens to be the largest of its kind in all of Europe. The indoor ice sculpture museum at Sokolniki Park occupies over 7,500sq.ft. and is now welcoming visitors to gaze upon various frozen creations.

World famous sculptors used 800 tons of ice and 200 tons of snow to construct a living room complete with ice furniture, a Christmas manger scene, a world of insects, an alien invasion, a prehistoric section with a giant mammoth, and more. Guests can also enjoy the finest Russian vodka in glasses made of ice.

Our lovely Maria was kind enough to share some of the photos of his girlfriend with us.

I'm sure you'll enjoy them as I have.

Meet our friend Alona.

She’s a simple 22 year old young lady studying to be in the tourism industry in the hopes that she can explore strange new worlds… to seek out new life and civilizations.  To boldly go where no one has gone..

Oops.. I was having one of my exotic hot Star Trek alien flashbacks again.

Our lovely Siberian beauty Lena has a new video and its in high definition no less.

Nothing fancy here.

Just a simple walk in the park that I hope all of you will enjoy and appreciate.

IDEA # 71

On a special occasion create a unique present for your partner by buying two white t-shirts and some fabric paint. Draw half a heart and the letters LO on one t-shirt and the half a heart and the letters VE on the other t-shirt. When you walk down the street holding each other close, the heart will be made whole and your message of love revealed. An example is shown below.

IDEA # 72

On a hot summers day, buy two large water pistols and take them to the beach with you. Pull them out and throw one to your partner and then have a huge water fight.

I originally wanted to write a story about how mentally resilient Russian Women can be but instead I ended up writing about what many of these ladies go through on a daily basis.   I think this post is equally effective in illustrating my original point about their general fortitude.  The following scenario in itself is fictional but every element is completely grounded in everyday reality here.  Click the various links below to see more images.

Did you know that only 34% of Russian families own cars and the rest rely on various forms of public transportation to get around?

Now at first glance this may not seem so bad but when you combine this with extreme weather and a lack of modern infrastructure for the vast majority of the country outside of Moscow, a whole different set of visuals comes to mind.