Today is Lida’s birthday — Tolya’s wife. In the evening she came to the comm together with Lyusya and Vitalik. They sat down at a table, opened a bottle of champagne, and we symbolically raised tubes — mine with mustard, Tolya’s with sauce. Vitalik is doing well, getting straight fives and fours. Lyusya was in a good mood, spoke pleasantly. Our wives, though, talk a lot about how they’re waiting and missing us. We even had to rein them in: we know all that, tell us something interesting instead.

I watched the fields of Brazil beyond the equator in South America. They look very different from ours — much larger, regular square shapes, reddish-brown and yellow with a brownish tint, lots of greenery; spring is in full swing there. And our loved ones are asking for winter to come sooner — that’s when the landing is. We tell them the sun has already crossed below the equator, so snow is coming soon.

In the evening we marked Lida’s birthday together. Tolya had saved two tubes of his favorite juice, which he’d marked with stickers from the children’s magazine “Murzilka” to find them easily among the other food tubes.

For the occasion we set aside two packs of freeze-dried strawberries, three tomatoes, and two apples, and took the rest from the buffet.