B-Day Flowers from Zoya & Galina

B-Day Flowers from Zoya & Galina
Originally uploaded by jakeyd.

The big purple jobbies (zinnias, Cyn?) are from Zoya, the pink lilies from Galina, who also gave me a very nice, very Russian-looking silk scarf. OK, OK, she's not so bad. She's just, you know, "shy." (Now all the female readers say, "ah;" males say, "huh?")

We took them out for a celebratory/birthday dinner at the very good Kazakh restaurant Sagat had taken us to earlier. We had read up on Kazkh toasting etiquette and, I think, acquitted ourselves adequately.

Had an interesting conversation re comparative courtroom procedure. Apparently, here the prosecutor is a much bigger deal than the judge, although the set up of the courtroom respects the fiction of the judge's primacy. Therefore, according to Galina, some combination of Galina's extensive work with the prosecutor, the prosecutor's general good nature, the prosecutor's respect for this particular judge, and sheer good luck (my Dad always said I was born under a lucky star) resulted in a very unusual proceeding - to our tremendous benefit. Not that the end result would have been different, but it sure was nice that it was easy.