In the morning we congratulated each other on the holiday of our children — the beginning of the school year. Yes, it really isn’t just a children’s holiday but one for us adults too. On this day everyone probably remembers their childhood and school years. We did a TV broadcast congratulating all children on September 1st. My thoughts are with Vitalka — he’s started school, loves his classmates, good boy!

Today in Star City they met Popov, Serebrov, and Savitskaya, returning from Baikonur. My Lyusya went to the reception. Then on comm, Deputy Flight Director Viktor Blagov tells me he saw her — cheerful, dark from suntan. He also said the crew, speaking at the State Commission, reported that we’re in very good physical and mental shape. They conveyed our readiness to complete the program.

I’m sitting now and my heart aches. Autonomic system. Apparently fatigue is taking its toll. It would be good to fly the remaining two months calmly. Now let me tell you about how we move around the station. First, the word “move” doesn’t really apply here — it’s more accurate to say we float or fly from one place to another. We’ve become so adept that we fly the length of the entire station from the instrument compartment to the transfer compartment, through the hatches, on a trajectory above the scientific equipment compartment and into the orbital module, without hitting anything. At the beginning of the flight we’d brake with our feet against side panels and knock off everything attached to them — documentation, cameras, dictaphones, lenses. Now only guests do that. The state of floating in weightlessness is very pleasant. You feel lightness in your body, control it freely, sense the distance and calibrate your push depending on the distance you need to fly. In general, in the enormous air aquarium of the station you swim like a space amphibian. At night, when you get up for the bathroom, you fly through the station silently so as not to wake your crewmate, skirting instruments and protruding equipment, and you enter the sleeping bag by first hovering above it, unzipping the zipper, and not climbing but floating in. We sleep in our bags in a semi-buoyant state — you don’t lie on the bag pressing down as on a bed, but rather feel the top of the bag envelope holding you from floating up, and your head doesn’t rest on the pillow but hangs in the air. Basically, you can sleep on one side all night here and never get a sore spot. When we work at post No. 1, where we have two small chairs with backs, to sit without floating up we turn around backwards, facing the backrest, wrap our legs around the seat, and hold the back with our hands — comfortable, as on Earth. And when working elsewhere on the station, we’ve adapted so well that our hands and feet find support by themselves.

I looked around the station and saw it anew. This is home now. Everything is familiar. Everything is ours. Close. There’s no longer rejection when looking at things, at the station’s interior, that it’s temporary or someone else’s, built by someone. Everything is perceived as one’s own.

I’ve already laid hands on everything. I know all the hiding places, where each instrument sits, not from the documentation but from memory. And many small things — seemingly inconspicuous — photographs on panels, children’s drawings, flowers, greenery in the garden — have transformed this engineering structure into our warm, cozy, unusual, but dear home.

COSMONAUT’S DAILY FOOD RATION ON BOARD

| No. | Product | Net weight, g | Content, g | Energy value, kcal | | | | | water | protein | fat | carbs | | | | 1st Breakfast | | 1. | Chopped bacon | 100 | 61.8 | 17.6 | 13.6 | 4.7 | 211 | | 2. | Mashed potatoes | 50 | 50 | 4.0 | 9.2 | 30.1 | 212 | | 3. | Borodinsky bread | 45 | 18.9 | 2.9 | 1.0 | 21.0 | 99 | | 4. | Fruit dessert, plum, cherry | 50 | 12.5 | 1.6 | - | 32.6 | 128 | | 5. | Coffee with sugar | 24 | - | - | - | 20.0 | 75 | | | Subtotal: | 269 | 95.7 | 26.1 | 23.8 | 108.4 | 725 | | | 2nd Breakfast | | 1. | Perch piquant | 100 | 70.0 | 18.0 | 7.0 | 1.3 | 140 | | 2. | “Arktika” crackers | 25 | 2.4 | 2.4 | 2.6 | 17.6 | 98 | | 3. | Peach-blackcurrant juice with pulp and glucose | 45 | 1.3 | - | - | 37.8 | 142 | | | Subtotal: | 170 | 63.7 | 20.4 | 9.6 | 86.5 | 380 | | | Lunch | | 1. | Quail pate | 100 | 59.8 | 17.3 | 20.4 | 0.42 | 54 | | 2. | Borscht with meat | 30 | 1.5 | 6.0 | 4.5 | 14.0 | 117 | | 3. | Tallinn beef with mashed potatoes | 52.5 | 2.6 | 18.4 | 7.9 | 16.7 | 207 | | 4. | Moscow rye bread | 45 | 18.9 | 2.9 | 1.1 | 20.7 | 99 | | 5. | Quince sticks | 50 | 12.5 | 0.5 | - | 34.2 | 130 | | 6. | Pasteurized cow’s milk | 25 | 1.0 | 6.4 | 6.3 | 9.9 | 119 | | | Subtotal: | 302.5 | 96.3 | 51.5 | 40.2 | 95.9 | 95.9 | | | Dinner | | 1. | Meat assortment | 100 | 60.8 | 17.8 | 10.6 | 8.8 | 200 | | 2. | Cottage cheese with blackcurrant puree | 165 | 85.1 | 13.5 | 22.6 | 40.6 | 410 | | 3. | White enriched bread | 30 | 9.6 | 2.7 | 2.3 | 15.0 | 87 | | 4. | Tea with sugar | 46 | - | - | - | 40.0 | 150 | | | Subtotal: | 341 | 155.5 | 34.0 | 35.5 | 104.4 | 847 | | 1. | Lyubitelskaya caviar spread | 82.5 | 52.0 | 3.3 | 11.1 | 11.5 | 157 | | | Total: | 1165 | 473.2 | 135.3 | 120.2 | 276.7 | 3035 | | | Condiments: | | | “Moldova” tomato-vegetable sauce | | | Apple-cranberry spread |

One multivitamin “Aerovit” dragee is provided with the first breakfast and lunch each day.

PRODUCT LIST FOR “SALYUT” STATION

BREAD PRODUCTS: 1. Table bread 2. Borodinsky bread 3. Moscow rye bread 4. White enriched bread 5. Honey cake

CANNED GOODS IN METAL TINS: 6. Entrecote 7. Loin 8. Beef tongue 9. Ham 10. Chopped pork with egg 11. Chopped bacon 12. Lyubitelskaya sausage 13. Meat assortment 14. Azu 15. Beef with mayonnaise 16. Veal with vegetables 17. Liver pate 18. Chicken with prunes 19. Goose liver cream 20. Quail pate 21. Quail with egg 22. Perch piquant 23. Perch Polish-style 24. Sturgeon aspic 25. Sturgeon in jellied tomato sauce 26. “Rossiysky” cheese

CANNED GOODS IN ALUMINUM TUBES: 27. Green shchi 28. Shchi from sauerkraut 29. Borscht with smoked meats 30. “Moldova” tomato-vegetable sauce 31. Lyubitelskaya caviar spread 32. Apple-cranberry condiment 33. Cottage cheese with blackcurrant puree 34. Cottage cheese with apple puree 35. Cottage cheese with cranberry puree 36. Blackcurrant juice with sugar 37. Apple juice with sugar 38. Cherry-apple juice with sugar 39. Cherry juice with sugar 40. Cranberry drink

FREEZE-DRIED PRODUCTS: 41. Cream of vegetable soup 42. Kharcho soup 43. Borscht with meat 44. Mashed potatoes 45. Braised beef with mashed potatoes 46. Tallinn beef with mashed potatoes 47. Pork tenderloin with mashed potatoes 48. Homestyle beef 49. Lazy cabbage rolls with meat 50. Vegetable ragout with meat 51. Stewed cabbage 52. Buckwheat porridge 53. Cottage cheese with nuts 54. Cottage cheese with strawberries 55. Pasteurized cow’s milk 56. High-fat acidophilus paste 57. Sweet yogurt 58. Strawberries 59. Blackcurrant juice with pulp 60. Cherry juice with pulp 61. Grape-plum juice with pulp 62. Apple juice with pulp 63. Apricot juice with pulp 64. Apple-blackcurrant juice with pulp 65. Peach-blackcurrant juice with pulp and glucose 66. “Aerovit” multivitamins

CONFECTIONS: 67. “Kunzhut” candy 68. Heat-resistant “Osoby” chocolate 69. “Sakharnoye” cookies 70. “Arktika” crackers 71. “Russkoye” cookies 72. Dried apricots 73. “Vostok” cookies

OTHER PRODUCTS: 74. Prunes with nuts 75. Apple-plum sticks 76. Prunes 77. Quince sticks 78. Fruit dessert, plum, cherry 79. Tea with sugar 80. Coffee with sugar 81. Tea without sugar 82. Apple-apricot sticks 83. “Stelutsa” fruit dessert