Back from Russia

Doug returned from Moscow Wednesday afternoon. He slept for a few hours and then had dinner and went back to bed until about 4:30am.

His trip to Moscow was cold, snowy and icy. His hotel room was however, about 90 degrees. His work schedule did not go well either. The machine was held up in customs for a week; then the site did not have power and they waited to get an electrician to the site to get that completed; then they waited for money to test the machine...only to be unable to do the testing themselves. (They were not allowed to touch the money - only the employees). He spent most of his first day back doing alot of work for that site as well.

He is very happy to be home.

To the left are photos of my russian nesting dolls he brought home. My dolls have 10 different dolls, the smallest one is about the size of a bebe.







Here is some information from Wikipedia about Russian Nesting Dolls:
A matryoshka [mɐˈtrʲoʂkə]) doll or a Russian nested doll (also called a stacking doll or Babushka doll) is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside another. "Matryoshka" is a derivative of the Russian female first name "Matryona", which is traditionally associated with a fat, robust, rustic Russian woman.
A set of matryoshkas consists of a wooden figure which can be pulled apart to reveal another figure of the same sort inside. It has, in turn, another figure inside, and so on. The number of nested figures is usually five or more. The shape is mostly cylindrical, rounded at the top for the head and tapered towards the bottom, but little else; the dolls have no hands (except those that are painted). Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, dressed in a sarafan, holding a rooster. Inside, it contains other figures that may be of both genders, usually ending in a baby that does not open. The artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be extremely elaborate.
Matryoshkas are often designed to follow a particular theme, for instance peasant girls in traditional dress, but the theme can be anything, from fairy tale characters to Soviet leaders.
Matryoshkas are a relatively new Russian handicraft; the first one dates from 1890, and is said to have been inspired by souvenir dolls from Japan. However, the concept of nested objects was familiar in Russia, having been applied to carved wooden apples and Easter eggs; the first Fabergé egg, in 1885, had a nesting of egg, yolk, hen, and crown.
The story goes that Sergei Maliutin, a painter from a folk crafts workshop in the Abramtsevo estate of a famous Russian industrialist and patron of arts Savva Mamontov, saw a set of Japanese wooden dolls representing Shichi-fuku-jin, the Seven Gods of Fortune. The largest doll was that of Fukurokuju - a happy, bald god with an unusually tall chin - and within it nested the six remaining deities. Inspired, Maliutin drew a sketch of a Russian version of the toy. It was carved by Vasiliy Zvezdochkin in a toy workshop in Sergiyev Posad and painted by Sergei Maliutin. It consisted of eight dolls; the outermost was a girl in an apron, then the dolls alternated between boy and girl, with the innermost – a baby. In 1900, M.A. Mamontova, the wife of Savva Mamontov, presented the dolls at the World Exhibition in Paris and the toy earned a bronze medal. Soon, many other places in Russia started making matryoshki of various styles. A doll which represents an old woman is often called a baboushka or babushka, that which represents an old man a dedoushka or dedushka.