The bit I put on the blog about Russia being 55 miles from U.S. got a response from Jack LaGue this morning:  (Thanks, Jack!)

See http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/russia.asp

"In the middle of the Bering Strait are two small, sparsely populated islands: Big Diomede, which sits in Russian territory, and Little Diomede, which is part of the United States. At their closest, these two islands are a little less than two and a half miles apart, which means that, on a clear day, you can definitely see one from the other."

"To the Russian mainland from St. Lawrence Island, a bleak ice-bound expanse the size of Long Island out in the middle of the Bering Sea, the distance is 37 miles. From high ground there or from the Air Force facility at Tin City atop Cape Prince of Wales, the westernmost edge of mainland North America, on a clear day you can see Siberia with the naked eye."

'So it is that one of the quotes most strongly associated with former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin is the exclamation "I can see Russia from my house!" even though she didn't actually utter that phrase during the campaign. 

The basis for the line was Governor Palin's 11 September 2008 appearance on ABC News, her first major interview after being tapped as the vice-presidential nominee. During that appearance, interviewerCharles Gibson asked her what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, and she responded: "They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska"'

This just proves you can't really depend on what you hear or see on TV or on line.  I went to Wikipedia and found slightly different information: Diomede Islands. 

It's also interesting that the international time zone line is between the two islands - but it doesn't matter much that one is 23 hours ahead of the other, because there is no travel and probably little communication between the islands.  I liked that the two islands are sometimes called "Tomorrow" and "Yesterday."

On to another subject - my computer is needing a new hard drive, therefore, I may be out of commission for a while.  We are hoping to get whatever I'll need onto the laptop, but some things will need to wait.  I expect it will be a couple of weeks before I'm up to full steam again, beginning about the middle of next week, unless the thing fails completely before then.   I intend to enjoy my "down time."  I'll be monitoring and answering e-mail, so not much should change, actually.  Apparently my breaking eggs to break the spell of things happening in threes didn't work - or maybe I'm working on another set of three.  I've lost track of what has broken down around here recently, and prefer not to think about it.  Maybe if I ignore the "threes" thing it will go away.  

I'm pretty sure finding things to count as part of that superstition is pretty easy, so it could go on and on and I'd always be looking over my shoulder wondering "what next?"  I remember years ago, when I was a single mom with three boys growing up, I would get very nervous when things went smoothly for any extended period of time.  I always knew that just around the corner there would be some sort of catastrophe to deal with.  I'm not sure when that ominous feeling disappeared, but it did, and we look back on those years now with a great deal of  humor.  I'm forever grateful, however, that during those years there were "catastrophes" I never knew about; the boys relate some of those escapades now at family gatherings and I am happy to know things turned out ok even without my knowledge.