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.

Christmas Rush, As Usual

The past week was another week of extreme sleep deprivation, packing and mailing cookies, writing postcards, and figuring out and ordering the remaining presents.


In addition, there was a holiday party in the youth shelter on Tuesday, a party at Igor’s office on Wednesday (I went to see his workplace), and a VIP reception at the Chicago Architectural Center on Thursday!

The weekend was “Christmas in Chicago” for Anna and her family. With infections rising in Illinois and worldwide, I worried till the last moment that something might not work out, but nobody got sick, and we had a fantastic weekend! Although we had to skip some of the things we had planned due to the extremely cold weather, most of our plans worked, sometimes better than expected. More to follow.

My talks recordings are live

September conferences recordings

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

The recordings from Uptime 2022 and PG Conf NY 2022 are live; many thanks to the conference organizers and volunteers!!!

Now, two more versions of my NORM-GEN talk are available:

Uptime here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-h690cqXvo

and PG Conf NYC 2022

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Our Magical City

When I see Chicago decorated with holiday lights, the only thing I can say is, “What a beautiful city we live in!”

Several years ago, at one of the Caroling at the Clod Gate concerts, I heard somebody near me say this. And I remember I felt I could relate: you come to Millennium Park, look around, and see this beauty as if for the first time. And you are breathless!

Each time I come to the Chicago Architectural Center, I fee the same way! I want to repeat it over and over: what

Continue reading “Our Magical City” →

Multilingual…

There is one very nice Polish cleaning lady in our office. I run into her each time I stay later than 5 PM. She speaks very little English, and she was excited to learn that I speak Russian and understand some Polish. She keeps telling me that she watches a lot of movies on YouTube which are dubbed in Russian and that she can understand it decently, even when she can’t speak Russian so well.

Picture the situation when you have no idea from which of three languages the next world is coming, and add to this mix Ukrainian, which I do not know at all. (Sometimes, Ala uses Ukrainian words thinking that they are Russian.)

I think that in order to fully appreciate how our conversations sound, one should know at least a little bit of all three languages. Today, to my remarks that people in the Polish communities often start talking Polish to me because of the way I look, she replied enthusiastically something about “European uroda” 😀

Keep Ukraine Moving

Watch their stories here.

Christmas Cookies Day 4

1150 cookies! Done for this season, however, it will be a whole week of packing, shipping, and giving.

And it would be never possible without the help of my friends and neighbors!

Christmas Cookies Day 3

Today, I started the day by making a big pot of borshch because I knew that people would be coming to help me with the cookies, I would need to feed them, and the oven will be in use. For that reason, I made baked salmon and roasted potatoes last night before going to the theater. I thought that salmon might not be enough, and I was right! Another thing I did last night – I made three kinds of dough: the gluten-free dough for sugar cookies, the regular sugar cookies dough, and one more portion of kolacki – all of them had to stay in the fridge for several hours, so it all worked great.

After I was done with borshch in the morning, I baked the gluten-free cookies to be done with them first and won’t contaminate them with regular flour. and then finally people showed up for cookies decoration:)

One more day of baking, and then packing, and all non-international shipping. And giving:)

How Come…

…that there is such an amazing theater right in front of my house, and it took me so long to go there! Yes, it was not operating during the pandemic, but now it does! And it’s a treasure!.

Theatre Above the Law

Christmas Is Getting Closer

Yesterday, we were decorating cookies in the youth shelter. It was very challenging this time to find a day that could work. Thursday was the only one that was somehow acceptable, and the only time I could come was after six. The staff was decorating a tree, and there was a lot of motion, so first I was not even sure whether I could fit with my cookies.

I brought a whole bunch of baked undecorated cookies and also some dough, but when I came in and saw how busy everybody was, I realized there was no room for more baking.

After all, I was happy with the results: several residents came to decorate, and the little kids were amazingly patient, so we went through about two dozen. There were no amazing artistic talents like in 2019, but we did decently. I loved this very unexpected decoration of the snowflake:

Today I took the whole day off to catch up on life and decorate the tree. It was the first time I ordered delivery and installation; all things considered, it was worth it! Same as last year, I ordered from the Gethsemane Garden Center. I picked a tree on Wednesday, and it was delivered today.

Ideally, I wanted it to be a little bit taller, but turned out that eight feet is a non-standard size! Also, I realized that I didn’t bring one of the boxes from the storage, so some of the missing stuff was found, and I remembered that I wanted a new star… well, now, there will be a lot of amazon returns!

About Holiday Lights (And Those Who Don’t Have Them)

On Tuesday, when I walked from my office to the Orchestra Hall, the city was all illuminated. That’s one of my favorite things during the holiday season: I like to walk in the Loop and stare at the office and shop windows at all the Christmas trees and decorations. The weather was very nice, above freezing and no rain, and I had my red coat on and a new small black hat.

I took a couple of pictures, and then suddenly I thought: how lucky we are to have all these lights, and how horrible is it that cities in Ukraine are not only without holiday lights but lights in general, and also without heat and water. And when I thought about it once, I could not go back to blissful ignorance. That is one of the things I was trying to explain last week – the feeling is not precisely Christmas – like.