A race between women running in high heels took place on Moscow’s Red Square:

Here is another picture:

About 100 women participated in the race to win $3,500 to spend at a fashion store.

I’m not even Russian but I feel hugely embarrassed for these women.

The bank teller greeted my request for $200 in bills of $5 and $80 in bills of $1 with suspicion. She probably thought I needed them to pay ransom. We are a very small town, so everything is small scale.

Can anybody guess the real reason I need all these bills?

I’ll need to start giving out prizes for solving these riddles soon.

OK, a stupid question here. As a person who lived the greatest part of her life in two cold countries (Ukraine and Quebec), I know very well what to eat when it’s cold. I have a collection of amazing recipes for the Fall, the winter, the first snow, the biting frost, being snowed in for two weeks, etc.

But what do you eat when it’s +44C (+111F)? I detest cold soups, so any gazpacho-like recipes are out. What else? Salads? That’s great but how many salads can you eat a day? I feel like I have cucumbers growing out of my ears already.

Any suggestions? I have to buy groceries and I have no idea what to get.

And the most important question of all: “Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère”? That’s a question from my favorite playwright Jean-Baptiste Molière and it means, “What possessed you, stupid Clarissa, to move to such an intolerably hot climate, you brainless thing?” Or something of the kind. I read so much Molière as a child that I feel I know his plays by heart.