A rare spotting of enormous proportion

The gray of Odessa over the last four months

Three days running, folks. That's right, three days in a row something has been seen which has been an incredibly rare sight here in Odessa for at least the last four months. It doesn't matter how hard you look for it, how much money you have, whether you're an important and powerful figure, no one in Odessa or for that matter, in much of Ukraine, could experience a sighting of this rare thing. People have yearned for it and turn gray and wither away. Depression sets in. Plant life droops in desperation and as you wander down the street, you realize that you're alone, completely alone. You have no shadow, no one trailing along after you or bravely forging ahead. It's just you and your thoughts. And as the months wear on, you wonder if there will ever be an end in sight to this grayness and fog which blanket the land in dreariness.

And then, then....one day you awake to the most marvelous sight you have ever seen. Is this a dream? Where am I? Is this really happening? You think cynically to yourself that the magnificent rays of sun on which you are now feasting your eyes will surely slip behind the clouds in another few minutes, as they have done every other time they tantalizingly appeared. But no, they stay, for the entirety of the day. And you think to yourself that it is the best present you have received in a long, long time. But then it happens again the next day and the next and you realize that not only have you not seen the sun for over four months, you haven't seen a blue sky. And you stare and stare and stare and tell yourself that you shall never take it for granted again. It looks like Carolina Blue. How nice it is, how pleasant and wonderful, this rare and exceptional thing that we call the Sun.

The sun and blue skies in Odessa over the last three days