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Well, at no prompting from me, my dear Russian pen pal wrote two notes. She switched email addresses again (address number three for her). Here are clips from the two emails:

“I did not receive the answer from you. I hope that all well there. It can be not reached the letter you? I donot know. Write to me the letter.”

“Only the short letter. The first day of spring today came.Spring this time of love and happiness. I wish you good mood.”

By the way…according to the Weather Channel, the high temp in St. Petersburg is supposed to be 19 degrees Fahrenheit today!

So, to contrast, here is a photo from this weekend in SF. This is Dobie’s favorite perch on the balcony. She loves to watch the birds in all the backyards we overlook.

With the threat of returning winter rain Sunday, Jeff and I decided to get out and enjoy the sunshine and warm temperatures. We headed south to the Pinnacles National Monument–about two and a half hours south of San Francisco. This is a hiking park, so we chose a trail that would take us to one of the more unique local features–the Bear Gulch caves. This gave us a nice view of the landscape, the rocks (including numerous climbers…no that is not Jeff nor me), and some cool caves to walk through.

Right on cue…the rain arrived Sunday morning. The garden is happy 🙂

Well, I did in fact write back to my Russian spammer and indicate that I’m sure that she had the wrong address. I did this from a safe address to see what direction the spam would take. Well, I got a lengthy response in very broken English. I won’t include it all, but a small segment will give you an idea.

“I the operator in the telephone company. I am 27 years old. My growth of 176 centimeters. I like music and to dance. My hobby it cheerfully to spend time with friends. … Probably it is interesting to you why I decided to get acquainted with you. It is very simple. Recently my fellow worker married the person. Certainly we girls envied her. But when I learned that she got acquainted with the husband on the Internet and that he from other country I decided too to try to find somebody.”

Oh, she also included a slightly tawdry photo. So, being the paranoid sort (and Jeff being even more cautious than me), I will let the conversation die here. I don’t want all of this to lead in some nefarious direction. Something tells me that the next email will contain a plea for money or something like that.

Back to photos of random places.

Well, early official reports from my folks would seem to indicate that 1) our mysterious egg is possibly a Morning Dove egg, and 2) real egg reportings would include a ruler or some scale reference. So here…a ruler. Ok, ok, it also proves that I don’t know how long a centimeter is since the egg was really 2.5 cm long.

OK, I love a good spam email. Particularly the ones from victims of political turmoil pleading with me to help them transfer huge sums of money. Truly, they make me chuckle. But today’s spam from the mysterious “Elena” has me puzzled. The social scientist in me always wants to figure out the hook that would lure unsuspecting recipients to reply with their personal information. But “Elena” had no hook. Her email didn’t make sense, and I don’t know what she WANTS from me. Sigh.

Check this out…the punctuation and grammar are directly copied. Its still fascinating.

“Hi! My name is Elena , My job in Moscow , but now i’m workingin Saint-Petersburg. I’d like to travel between Saint-Petersburg andMoscow all the time, I work for a phone-provider company. I will giveyou more detail later. You can email me on my work email address to:elena27@mysunday.org I will send a photo and tell you more if you reply.”

Huh? Oh, “Elena”. Why am I drawn to this stuff?

And, no, I have no new pictures this morning to accompany this posting. I’m off to class this afternoon, however, so I’m sure that I will have a fresh assignment to work on. Maybe the assignment will be “odd food products” and I’ll be golden with my Bingles!