Today is a medical day. Got up, washed — if you can call it that. You take a moist towelette, wipe your face and hair, then wrap it around a brush and massage your scalp. Take a new towelette, wrap it around your finger, and clean your teeth with it.

Works pretty well — brushing with a toothbrush is a hassle. You have to take the brush, apply paste, float over to station post one where our water is, wet your mouth, then brush, and after that take water in your mouth to rinse and not know what to do with it — you have to spit it into a towelette, since you can’t exactly drink it. That’s unpleasant. So cleaning with a finger and towelette is more convenient, and the doctors say it’s healthier too — it’s a massage at the same time. After shaving, you wipe your whole body with specially treated towelettes. If needed, you apply cream to your face, since the skin peels. The whole procedure takes about 20 minutes.

As for the toilet in the literal sense — you sit on this device, figuratively speaking, like Baba Yaga on a broomstick. How many funny stories all the guys have had with the space toilet! It doesn’t forgive mistakes.

In everyday matters on the station there’s no division or squeamishness toward your crewmate — everything is shared: food, toilet, mouthpieces… You don’t even notice it. But in habits we remain true to ourselves — you can understand a person’s character by them. Tolya is very neat; everything of his is put somewhere specific, organized — sometimes you don’t even know where.

We did a television report dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. We said their city is like a living banner of the Komsomol, because its youth lives on in it — the Komsomol veterans who built Komsomolsk and established Soviet power in the thirties in the Far East.

Then we also greeted Kazakhstan. We said that we cosmonauts know the land of Kazakhstan well — it’s spacious, fragrant, sunny, rich. Everyone knows that Kazakhstan became an international home during the Great Patriotic War, as many families were evacuated there and found in Kazakh families the warmth of a home hearth, where bread, sorrow, and joy were shared. That’s in the blood of many people who lived, grew up, and were born there.

The head of the medical team at TsUP came on comm and reported that my blood pressure is 130 over 70 and pulse 81. Good. Tolya’s pulse is 66, blood pressure also 130 over 70. I notice he’s rushing his speech. I say, Anatoly Dmitrievich, don’t hurry. If you have more information, you can tell us next time. Everyone rushes, and we start rushing too. And then nerves are taut, and that raises the probability of error.

Tomorrow is a hard day — working with the French astrophysical equipment. Today we’re preparing it. We determined our weight. First time being weighed in space. Obviously, ordinary scales can’t work here since there’s no weight. Our scales, unlike earthly ones, are unusual — they work on a different principle and consist of a platform oscillating on springs.

Before weighing, I lower the platform, compressing the springs, to the stops, lie on it, pressing tightly to the surface, and hold myself in position, grouping my body so it doesn’t sway, gripping the platform’s contoured support with my legs and arms. I press the release. A light push, and I feel oscillations. Their frequency appears on the digital display. I read the value, subtract the frequency code of the platform oscillating without a person, and determine my weight from the table. Result: 74 kg.

After that, we measured the noise levels in the station. The difference between compartments is small, but overall, I must say, it’s noisy. We ran the “Antibiotic” experiment. For this we take swabs from different parts of the body to collect microflora and place them in the “Tsitos” thermal chamber, where warm conditions promote their growth, followed by preservation for delivery to Earth. The experiment’s purpose is to determine the composition of microflora on our bodies and evaluate the sensitivity of microorganisms to a range of antibiotics.