The first day

of the new year. This one Chinese. The Year of the Horse. For a long time, perhaps for a dozen years or so, I believed myself to be a Horse. Let's assume I've known my astrological sign for much longer than my zodiac sign. Let's assume for some reason the latter system wasn't widely spoken about in the Soviet Union. But then, somewhere in the late 80s perhaps astrology became popular and so I learned about the years of the animals. I learned that each year was named and ruled by an animal, and according to the list I was a Horse (just like pretty much everyone else in my class was). Well, years later I realized the Chinese years didn't necessarily start on January 1st. So I'm not a Horse after all. But I get along well with them.

Another phenomenon I've heard of but had no clear understanding of, are the first day covers. As I send letters maybe a bit more often than my average countrywomen I also visit post office quite regularly and do my research on stamps of various denominations and designs (just to see if anything new and cute is out there). So I'd heard about first days for new stamps, and had heard that they put special cancellation seals on mail. I guess I never bothered to figure out how exactly those things were done.

Today, however, I was in the post office sending a package and noticed there was a group of gentlemen huddled over a desk. I needed a counter space of my own to polish the package so I went and sat among the group. One of the men told another how he has a friend that really likes squirrels and the other one said to have a pal interested in all things Oriental. I couldn't help but had to glance over to see what kind of men were they, chatting about such unmanly things. Then I noticed they were lining up stamps on colorful cards or envelopes - oh, philatelists! And then I noticed they took turns reaching into a cardboard box in the middle of the desk, taking out a handstamp, and pressing it down on their deliverables - oh, first day of issue cancellations! So, I waited for my turn, and reached in my hand, and put down a cancellation myself. I'm not saying it would be the last time, either.

An outside thermometer

we have not. So when venturing out, we have to rely on visual observation  for precipitation and types of clothes worn by passersby and on various, sometimes contradicting, weather predictors on the web. On Friday morning around 10 I clicked open one of those bookmarked weather pages and was told that the temperature outside our windows was -19° C, that's -2° F. Up on top of the page I was informed that the weather at that time (3 a.m.) in Terre Haute, IN was -19° C or -2° F.

Believe me, it's on

In the evening we just had to go get us some Indian food, in the restaurant located up the street from Raekoja Square. When we got back home, the temperature had dropped to -21° C. That had no effect other than it made us think of warmer climates, such as Southern Spain with its daytime highs of 19°C or so.

Oh, ok, I admit it made me want to turn on the sauna which I did and sit in there for a bit.

The backbone of the winter

has been broken. I guess it was that woke up Winter and reminded it to come pay us a visit. So the winter has finally arrived. There were two activities worth recording that happened this week.

I used the self check out station in a grocery store. There are two supermarkets within five minutes from our apartment that I go to for our daily supplies. One is closer but smaller and less well stocked (I guess since it's new) with tighter check out area. The other one is a bit farther away but more spacious and with larger selection of goods. Both stores belong to the same Red chain originally from Sweden. Their biggest competitor is a Green chain originally from Finland. The Green chain tends to build its hypermarkets into or next to shopping centers some distance from downtown. I don't go to the Green stores too often, neither do I subscribe to their newsletter so it came as a surprise to me when shopping in one that I spotted some shoppers standing around in one spot that was in line with the cash registers but without any cashiers nearby. The shoppers seemed to be scanning and bagging their purchases. There were, however, two employees sitting behind a computer, seemingly keeping an eye on the buyers/purchases. So self check-out it was. I recalled our visits to a certain convenience store near the port in San Juan a year ago where it seemed we had to wait for a human assistant every time we tried to check out by ourselves. So I was a little weary giving this machine a try but as I only had one item with a nice looking bar code on it I decided I would. Turned out I needed no assistance so I might try again next time I happen to be in that store. By the way, it was probably less than a month ago than Mike and I discussed this modern practice and agreed amongst ourselves that we won't be seeing it in Tallinn's stores in the near future...

Another somewhat unique activity I judged worthy of chronicling involved a machine as well. This was a coin counting device housed in the museum shop of Estonian Bank. You see, it's been three years since we had to give away our kroons and take up euro as the new currency but according to some source there are still almost 50 million euros worth of kroons out there. We had them, too. Close to 300 coins and perhaps 30 notes. Coins are extra weight for people about to move, right? So we decided to take the coins back to the bank where they belong in return for a lesser number of some brand new, unused euros. The coin counting machine in the museum was like any other, nothing special about it. But the museum itself was pretty interesting if small. What I liked was that they featured wax figures of the people depicted on kroons, that they showed news reels about the issueing of kroons (I remember that day in '92 when the adults came home from the temporary exchange point in town and grandpa gave us some new smooth bills to keep), that they had some thousand year old coins on display, and that the bank/museum is still in the same beautiful house it used to be in almost a hundred years ago.

White Christmas

is something I boast about yearly. I take it easy and also without doubt that whatever the few weeks leading up to Christmas are like, there would certainly be snow by the big day. Well, not this time. No snow for Santa and his sleigh, no snow for kids yearning to go out and play, no snow to make it easier to find one's way in darkness in the cemetery. So these Christmas were different. “Surely, there would be snow and cold at the beginning of the new year,” was the next deadline I came up with. After all, the winter's back would be broken i.e. it would be half over (2.5 months gone, another 2.5 to go or something like that) by the middle of the month. But the mystery continues. I'm sure there are people out (t)here being greatly disappointed by the lack of snow and opportunities it brings but I personally am beginning to prefer this type of winter. I remember the five previous Januaries when I had to wear my warmest layers when going outside, I had to pull on good-tractioned boots to stay upright on those icy sidewalks, I had to remind myself to glance upwards every now and then to make sure there weren't any ominous looking icicles hanging above my head. Not to mention I really prefer warmer temperatures to colder ones. So this winter has been among my favorites so far.