Author: Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

The Shostakovich’s Fifth

Yesterday, I took mom to the CSO – one of my subscription series was Sunday matinee so that I could take her. And after last week’s success with taking the L to the Atr Institute, she was excited to return to resume more cultural activities.

But that’s not about mom; it’s about the program. It was an all-Russian program, and I believe the hit of it was intended to be the “Dairy of a Madman” by Lera Auerbach. I liked the piece; however, the Shostakovich Fith Symphony was the one that impressed me the most.

Interestingly, I vividly remember when I hear it for the first time. It was in Leningrad State Philarmonic. I was fourteen or fifteen, and I even remember where approximately mom and I sat. I also remember that it was performed after the intermission and that I understood nothing about it! I remember thinking – what all these random parts could mean together?! 

After that first time, I listened to this symphony at different concerts at least three times, but it was yesterday that I felt I heard it for the first time. At first sounds, I thought: is it really the same piece?! I can’t remember it sounding like that! 

And then I listened as if for the first time, and I could not believe what I was hearing. On my way back, I even looked it up to check what critics were saying and how this symphony is usually interpreted. Because the question I had was – how it was ever allowed to be performed in the Soviet Union?! 

Yes, Shostakovich is a hooligan in most of his works (and that’s what I love about his music). But how could anybody ever believe that this piece was “glorifying the Soviet achievements?! This bitter irony, these twists of the “heroic” themes, such a distinct picture of violence which follows “the hero” – how could it be possible that nobody noticed it?! Or is it that those who noticed were silent? When I asked Boris just this: how this piece was allowed to be performed in the Soviet Union, Boris told me that once he was present at the musical lecture at the Composers’ association, and the lecturer told them that “there is a lot of mystery in this piece.” Well… 🙂

Done With The Mice. For Now

Hopefully, the latest season of “mice and me” is over. After two weeks of being unable to schedule and miscommunications, a person who was going to take care of the mice hole in my kitchen was here!

Originally, it was supposed to be a big project. For a while, exterminators who came to my apartment said they did not know where the hole was. Then, in summer, an inspector said it looked like the hole was behind the kitchen cabinets. That sounded terrifying because I have granite countertops, and there was no easy way to disassemble them.

We discussed it with our building handyman several times and finally agreed to cut the back of the cabinets and try to locate the hole. But when another guy who takes work from him arrived, he said – how about we open the boards on the bottom of the cabinets? And he did, and then he was able to locate the hole and stuff it without any cabinets cutting!

My only question is, why the inspectors, whose job is to identify where mice are coming from, could not figure this out, and this person could? Oh, and he cleaned behind the stove where we set a new trap, and after he had left, he called me to say that if I see a mouse, I should call him, and he would come for free.

So why we have our biannual mice inspection in the building and most importantly, why we pay for it?!

The Locust At the GIft Theater

On Friday, I went to see a show in The Gift Theater. It was the first time I went there after the pandemic. I love this theater, I used to go to all of their performances and to “meet the cast” events, and I donated to them, and then it all stopped during the pandemic, plus I moved, and they moved 🙂
I finally made it to their new show because first, this show runs relatively close to where I live, and second – I wanted to take out my old friend, who is very much into the theater.
Both of us were impressed! The play is a thriller, and that’s not what I usually like. An FBI agent comes to her hometown to help the local police capture a serial killer, and she returns to her home and relives her past. But it is not about the plot but how the artists represent their characters, human feelings, and relationaships. The acting was superb! It is sad that so far, due to the COVID precautions, the actors do not come to meet the audience after the show. But OMG, what a pleasure!

Home Improvements

I could write a long saga of my kitchen lights, of which some didn’t work from the day I moved in. And to be precise, more light fixtures in this apartment did not work than did :). Same regarding the ceiling fans. 

I made one attempt to fix them in June 2021, which was only partially successful because the people who started fixing them went out of business. 

Recently, two more kitchen light fixtures stopped working, and I had to resume my search. There were several unsuccessful attempts, plus three no-shows, so basically, I went through the complete list of NextDoor recommendations.  

Finally, I scheduled an inspection from a bigger electrical company, which was a success. Although they said it would be a consultation only, the guy fixed all the kitchen lights (I never had them all working!) and turned on the jacuzzi (the actual switch still should be fixed, but at least I can plug/unplug it). And now they are going to fix all the non-working ceiling fans. The latter will cost close to 1K, but during my multiple attempts to fix them, I got a feeling that it would be something around that, even before inflation hit. I had money set aside back when this first company was going to fix them; it just never materialized. 

Now finally, my whole move-in list will be completed, although I already know what appliances I am ready to replace 🙂

Chicago PUG Meetup

On Tuesday, I hosted the second live meetup after the pandemic. I should have felt less anxious, but I didn’t. It was the first time I had invited speakers, and not even locals – people traveled, they made an effort to represent their company. Also, although I had a lot of RSVPs, the whole even was in danger because it was the day of the first snow, and nobody in Chicago wants to be out on the first day of snow unless they really need to be out.

Since most people have an option of working remotely, I was afraid that I will end up with zero participants. Fortunately, people came, although only half of those who RSVPed, but I was happy and thankful to everybody who came!

What Can You Do With So Many Apples?!

A lot of things, and I finally tried this new recipe I wanted to bake for a while – it has apples, and it can be served for breakfast 🙂

Art Institute

Since mom started to have difficulties climbing the stairs and walking, I stopped taking her to any cultural activities. I knew this was not the ideal situation, and I was trying to find a way to resume them. Mom said that taking a bus to the Loop would be worse because the bus takes longer, she would have to sit for longer, and it would be even harder for her to get up. I started to contemplate how I could convince her to take Uber, but then she said she wanted to try to climb the stair at Morse CTA.

One thing I knew won’t be working anymore – she won’t be able to take CTA by herself and meet me in the Loop, so whenever we would go for any cultural activities, I would have to be a weekend so that I could pick her up from home.

This Saturday, I planned to go to the Art Institute with her – there are three exhibits that I still didn’t have a chance to see, and two of them are closing in January.

Overall it was a success. Mom was so tired of sitting at home that she didn’t have time to complain about anything during our field trip. She said I ordered too much gelato for her at Amorino, but then she finished everything :).

Here are the exhibits we saw:

David Hockney

Continue reading “Art Institute” →

1969-1970

It was my last year before school. When we returned from Loo, I started to attend the “preparatory group” in my detskiy sad, which would be the equivalent of Kindergarten in the US, only it was more rigorous.

All the children who turned six and would start the first grade in the fall had two “lessons” a day. We sat at desks that looked a lot like school desks (two kids at one desk), and we did a lot of counting and other math exercises, speech development, and so on. We had to “tell the story looking at the picture” (which I hated with a burning passion). But overall, we were enormously proud to be “almost schoolchildren,” and I liked to wear a navy blue corduroy dress with a white lace collar resembling the school uniform (it was way before I started to hate school uniforms!).

Also, I started to take figure skating classes. They were free and were run by a local enthusiast, so nobody thought a big deal about them. Unlike the famous Soviet “sports schools,” there was no selection of future champions, and we just had fun and tried our best.

We didn’t have an option of skating indoors, so in the fall, we had PE in the local school gym for two evenings a week, and it was also enormous fun.

In some of the photos below, I show the exercises we learned during these classes.

IN the kitchen, sometime in fall 1969 with my favorite stuffy named Boska
Mom
Continue reading “1969-1970” →

A Week In Review

In addition to all the things I am doing at work:

  • My next live meetup is next week, and I have guest speakers, and I can’t believe things are getting back to normal.
  • PG Day Chicago website is coming up next week as well, and we have the dates and the talks selection committee,
  • While doing actual work, I fixed a bug in my DIFF open source project and figured out how to create partitioned bitemporal tables (this means nothing for 99% of the readers, but what is important is that my work allows me to contribute to the open source projects)
  • And I hope to write a couple of professional blog posts during the weekend
  • And I am not behind on holiday planning!

One More CSO Concert

Yesterday’s concert was even better than last week’s. I know I am saying it for the third time in a row, but that’s true! 

I learned about this concert almost at the last minute and hurried to get tickets (my neighbor joined me). We still got very decent seats and had a great experience. 

Here is what the CSO website says about this concert:

Dancers from Chicago’s world-renowned Joffrey Ballet invigorate the Symphony Center stage with two newly commissioned choreographies set to Siegfried Idyll, Wagner’s glowing birthday gift to his wife, and Rameau’s vivid ballet, composed for a royal wedding at the Palace of Versailles. Ravel evokes Baroque dance in Le tombeau de Couperin, with each movement becoming a touching tribute to friends who died in World War I. The program opens with the beguiling elegance of Mozart’s Symphony No. 34. 

How could you describe a dance? Especially Joffrey Ballet! I sat all the time, holding my breath with my eyes wide open. I can’t say which one I liked better – both are gems. Probably, Rameau was more unexpected.

Unfortunately, there are no official videos, at least could not find them.

Actually, I take it back – I found one in the news, click here.