Don't Drink in the Red Square

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It was during this lovely evening with Henrique, Darren and Meg that I (we) had my (our) first encounter with the Russian Police. But I need to go back a bit to explain things......

I have learned that bad things happen to me in threes. This is a helpful thing to learn because although I never manage to prevent the second or third bad thing from happening, I am better prepared for it when it does.
Yesterday as I was leaving the hostel with Henrique, I realized that I had lost my moleskine, the little black book in which I write down EVERYTHING. Phone numbers, contacts, notes, addresses, plans, everything. That was the first bad thing.
Then later in the day, I felt in my pocket and noticed that I had misplaced my digital camera. And though I was pretty sure I knew where I had left it, it was still quite unsettling. Even more unsettling was the awareness that a third thing was about to happen. In retrospect, this knowledge/feeling should have led me to head directly to the hostel and stay there for the rest of the evening. But I did not do this.
Instead, I continued to hang out with Henrique, Darren, and Meg (Australian), three people that I had met in Moscow.
Here in Moscow (and in St. Petersburg), it is acceptable (though I am not sure if it is technically legal) to walk around in the streets with a beer. In front of the Kremlin, for instance, there are countless vendors selling beer in plastic cups, and the lawn is filled with tourists and locals alike, lounging or walking around talking with friends.
Our mistake, I think, was walking with our drinks into the Red Square, the central square adjacent to the Kremlin. And speaking in English loudly as to alert everyone that we were tourists.
To make a long story short, We were stopped by a group of four policemen and asked to present our identification. This is what I had been dreading all day. It is required of all travelers in Russia to have their passport stamped and registered in every city where they are staying. I had forgotten to do this in St. Petersburg, and since I knew that I would be registering my passport on Monday with the Lithuanian baseball team I was hoping that I would not be confronted until then.
The police explained that we had two choices: we could either go down to the police station and pay 1,000 rubles penalty, which would take a few hours, or we could pay 500 rubles each on the spot. In reality my penalty could possibly have been much more than 1000 rubles, I don't know for sure. We decided to take the on-the-spot option. It was quite intimidating to be surrounded by Russian police, for them to be speaking to you (and amongst themselves) in Russian, and only spouting a few words of english in our direction.

In the end, I never once had my passport stamped or registered. The plan had been to get it registered with the Lithuanian team once I had joined up with them but this never happened (the tournament officials collected our passports, held them for three days, and then returned them saying that they had taken care of everything, when in fact they had forgotten to get them stamped). Luckily I had no more encounters with the police, and at the border all they check is your visa and your entry stamp.

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[Mimi Pop]

Question
Did you ever find the little black book?