From another thread, someone suggested I needed glasses. Turns out all I needed was a better font!!
I switched to Arial (for my personal vocab notes), and it was much easier to read Russian, esp. for a beginner. The serifs were what was confusing me.
To make it even easier, I went into Format... Font... Character Spacing... and expanded the spacing a little bit.
Maybe this'll help some others in the same boat as me. Good luck!
