Snapshots of Ukrainian Life, Part 7

• TV ad #1: A woman lovingly and elaborately prepares a beautiful green salad. She slices tomatoes and bell peppers to accentuate the crisp lettuce. She arranges everything with care in a large glass bowl. But wait! What's this?.... There's still something missing. The salad's not ready yet. And it looks suspiciously healthy and salad-y. Hmmmmm.....how about a tasty topping of mayonnaise from a bag? Yum. Now that's more like it.

• TV ad #2. Scared me to death: Person boils water on the stove, makes a cup of tea. "GAS! GAS!" warns the tv screen. Person turns on the light in another room, boom! Kitchen explodes. Holy cow, this freaked me out, just like it did when I first heard the apocryphal stories. But this time it was an actual government service warning on tv! (and check this out)

• Tanya and I have done a lot of clothes shopping lately (more window shopping than actually finding things) and I've discovered the Kharkov law of clothing: buy something for $15 from Turkey and it will literally (literally) disintegrate within a week or pay $60 for a t-shirt that is of decent quality.

• A large majority of the stores here have shopper loyalty cards. And not just food stores either.... Anyways, some stores have pretty simple plans- show your card, get a 2% discount- while others have very, very complicated plans that don't seem to really do anything. Even Coffee Life (the Starbucks of Ukraine) has a card but their plan is pretty dubious. It mainly involves the cashier constantly asking how much money you'd like to pre-load onto the card. Um none, thanks. I just want my discount.

•  And what's up with this cold? Check it out: BBC news: 222 dead as cold snap grips Europe. It's almost.....Alaskan, which means that D is not very happy. I knew I should have insisted on Costa Rica, he grumbles. Meanwhile, we've been known to occasionally use the stove as a space heater....which makes always think of explosions.