The State of the PW

Comments will be answered shortly -- so far I haven't had the time and/or opportunity.

Friend Lois arrived very late last Wednesday and left very early on Sunday; picspam will be posted soon. I still can't believe how lucky we were re. the weather -- it was bad only on Thursday, but not too horrible, and Friday and Saturday were perfect. We went to Ohrid on Friday -- unmitigated success.
Since I had to get up at 4 a.m. on Sunday to make him coffee before he left, couldn't go back to sleep and played tennis from 9-11 all the same, the rest of Sunday was spent in a kind of tired haze. Since I had taken yesterday off work, however, I was able to get some much-needed R&R and am fine today.

*waves*

Picspam

On Friday, after a thorough sightseeing walk through Ohrid, we drove -- or rather, were being driven -- to the monastery of Sveti Naum, in the close vicinity of which there are the 47 (or 77?) springs feeding lake Ohrid.
 They're mostly underground springs which have formed a small, very irregularly shaped lake, depth varying between 50cm and 3m. I was a bit reluctant to do the boat tour of this small lake, but soooo happy I did it. The pictures don't really do it justice, both because I took them with my cell phone and because my photographing skills are less than abysmal, but I managed to capture at least a fraction of the silent, translucent beauty of the place.
There are water plants growing on the bottom, which give the impression of gliding across a shimmering meadow.
It's totally magical, and I'll be going back there at least once.