Good Morning

"Honey, get up. There's a fire" were the panic-laced words that wrenched me out of sleep this morning. There was indeed a fire, an electrical fire just outside the bathroom. We couldn't reach it or see it very well, but it kept crackling and smoldering and flashing while Andrew sprayed water on it, and while I started to suspect that water wasn't the most effective means of combatting an electrical fire. So we flipped the breaker and called the 'SanTechnic" to come have a look. He was there before too long, grumbling that he'd been to our apartment before (true) and that in his professional opinion, whoever did the wiring for the apartment did a very shoddy job (his professional opinion and my lay opinion concur precisely). It is not the first problem we've had. In fact, three or four of the outlets and one of the lights in our apartment simply don't work. That's sort of a lot considering the apartment is only 90 square meters and that it was remodelled just five years ago. After looking at the charred soggy mess, he said it needed to dry out and he would come over tomorrow. Sadly, tomorrow isn't convenient for our landlady, so the problem won't really be addressed until Wednesday, and there's no guarantee that there will be a solution by then. In the meantime, we have just three lights that work and two outlets. Andrew jerryrigged a tangle of extension cords so that essential applicances such as the fridge (and obviously the computer) would have electricity for the next two days. But we have to rotate them so that the sockets don't get over-charged and we end up with no electricity. Ella is enjoying the extensive use of flashlights, but is tripping over all the cords just like me. It's pretty hard to think of three things I like about Russia today.