Actually, it's not quite hard-frozen.  Mostly soggy.  I refer to the frozen tundra between Tug Hill Plateau and Lake Ontario, where I grew up, which looks a LOT like Russia.

My sister works in Manhattan for the EPA, and in the EPA world this region is in fact referred to as "the tundra."  Outside New York State you hear the area lumped into the following categories by people who don't know any better:

1) "upstate" (i.e. the entire state, which happens to be located north of 113th Street so therefore is "up").

2) the southeast Adirondacks, which is the wildest thing in New York as far as urbanites are concerned-- and by the way Lake George is NOT as wild a region and not remotely as remote as where I'm talking about.

3) Buffalo, Rochester, or Syracuse.  Again, the furthest north, wildest places people can think of.  This place where I am is far wilder, far colder, far snowier than those areas.

We are at the place of landfall for a storm system that starts in the middle of Canada, or maybe even the Yukon if you want to go back to the very beginning of where it starts to pick up steam.  There is a lot of exchange of labor force between my home area and Alaska, because the weather is similar.  The trees all lean and point branches to the east because of the literally constant wind off the lake to our west.  The land is mostly cleared for pasture land and corn or alfalfa.  There is a three month growing period.  It literally is a frozen tundra.

The train comes through and the subzero air carries the sound direct to our house's formidable west wall.  It is the loudest thing there is up here.  I mean, besides snowmobiles, the absence of which is the silver lining to the gross snow-less weather.

Even Russia isn't getting the snowfall it usually gets.  Kamchatka was bare of snow until mid-December, though it was in a deep freeze.  It's a quirky winter, that's for sure.

Finally the snow came...

This is the view of the street in front of my childhood home.

It's been a hard couple of days for a number of reasons, primarily because of stress from the upcoming deadline for my grad school application, which has me pretty overwhelmed, and I was so happy to find out:

1 - my friend and sometime fling Vlasta from Zagreb is coming to visit in March!  And, maybe, during a week when I'll be performing at a big bellydancing festival.

2 - I have enough frequent flier miles not only for a trip to Europe (read: Croatia and Slovenia), but enough for a FIRST CLASS ticket!  Whoo hoo!

This is where I want to be RIGHT NOW:

The Terme Palace

Waaaay in the back is where the little hot tubs are.  Vlasta and I had a little fun in the little hot tubs some three years ago.  She took a bus up from Zagreb just for the night, and then we took the bus back to her place in the morning.

Unfortunately she gave me a humongous headcold during that little fun in that little hot tub.  The rest of my trip was fairly miserable because of it.  Yet, the memory of the times I have had at Terme Palace transcend that consequence.  It is a MARVELOUS place to unwind.  Right beside the Adriatic, using Adriatic slightly-desalinated water, heated to different temperatures, and flowing in a current around the pools and waterfalls (which you can stand under) on a 10 minute timer, so the "tide" changes regularly, keeping people from bogarting the best spots.

Sigh...