Been having a stressful week… got stopped by the FSB (the Federal Security Bureau, loosely translated, and successor to the KGB) and questioned for 2 hours yesterday because I stopped to take a photo of a cute dog and it turned out I was right next to some “secret office”. Bother. It was scary, but they were pretty professional overall and it was just some elderly former KGB guy who kept me from leaving within 10 minutes of getting pulled in.

Felt really jumpy today though. It was a plainclothes guy who grabbed me and dragged me to the office, and I really didn’t know if he was a criminal or what, and today I was just looking at everyone and wondering… really wanted to just go to the train station and get a ticket to anywhere away from here. Fucking police states. I left home because it was starting to feel way too much like one, and had no trouble for three years and then I go to take a picture of a stupid dachshund in a raincoat and end up spending two hours explaining what I’m doing in Russia.
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Anyway, got Windows reinstalled today. Don’t have all the drivers in yet but I think I’ll have everything important back on it by this weekend. Spent Saturday doing a major model shoot with a girl named Karina, much fun, and need to get those processed.

In other news, I want to drop about half my students because they’re driving me nuts, or because their “fastest way to the metro” happened to go right by an FSB compound and thank you very much I don’t want to go through that again.

Anyway, stressed and tired, off to bed.