These icicles are so captivating! I am wondering what caused them to angle like this? Is it a wind?!
Icicles
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.
Vietnamese Lunar New Year Parade
it was a small, but very nice parade! I am too impatient to post on YouTube two dozen of tiny videos, so just embedding the Instagram posts here.
Mice In The House
I knew from the very beginning that when you live in the city, the rodent question is not “if” but “when.” We the number of dead and alive mice and rats I saw on the streets, I knew there would be no way to escape.
I used to hear mice invading the kitchen in my old house because my office space was very close to it. Here, my office is on the opposite end of the apartment from the kitchen, and I never noticed anything. I made this unpleasant discovery in mid-January when I decided to use some of the remaining sweet potatoes. I was staring at a couple of potatoes which I pulled from the bottom of the box, trying to figure out what happened to them, and then I finally realized that somebody was gnawing them! It felt disgusting! I looked inside the box, and so some droppings and some crums. It looked very much like mice, and I knew that mice are a building problem in the city-dwelling, not an individual apartment problem.
The building management told me that I needed to contact the same extermination company that services our building twice a year, but I would still have to pay my bill myself. You can imagine that while I was waiting for them, I was nervously listening to all the noises. I put both boxes with potatoes on the top above the fridge, where I do not want to have anything at all, but in this case, I needed to isolate the potential rodent point of interest 🙂
An exterminator examined all the walls and the kitchen floor and said that he did not see any holes for the mice to get in “unless they sneaked in from the balcony when the door was open.” He left two mechanical traps and a bait with poison, which made me even more nervous because I am afraid of mice, live or dead!
Meanwhile, a board member was questioning everybody from my tier, and a neighbor right under me told her that a couple of weeks prior, he spotted a mouse, killed it, and threw a corps away. Can you imagine that?! He didn’t tell anybody, didn’t call an exterminator – I guess he didn’t know what to do when you a facing mice invasion?!
What made me particularly resentful was that I saw earlier that he was keeping after-parties leftovers on the balcony. When I saw that for the first time, I thought that somebody was calling for trouble and then, the trouble came to me!
I was leaving for Helsinki two days after the exterminator visit, and I had fears that I would return to the battlefield of dead mice. I asked Igor to check on the situation during my absence, and he did and saw none. It looks like mice are gone, but recalling my previous rodent encounters, I am afraid it was just “part one.”
Last Days In Helsinki
The remaining week in Helsinki was all work. I stayed on my US projects, so I had some free time in the morning and then worked from after lunch until bedtime. I did some clothes shopping on Wednesday morning, and I met with my friend Natasha on Thursday, and Friday morning was all spent trying to get a COVID test.
Although my flight back was not super-early, we both did not feel comfortable relying on the test at the airport and tried to get something in the city the day before. One of the clinics, which is relatively close to Boris’ place, was presumably doing tests for travel for everybody. When we came in, they told us that yes, please go to the lab and take the number. We did and waited in line, and then the nurse said – no, they can’t take me if I am not registered with their system. It was very annoying because we had already spent all this time, and now had to look for another place.
Long story short, I got the test, but I have to pay over 200 euros for it! Indeed, the ferry to Tallinn is the cheapest way to get the test, even with the fare and breakfast! I was tired and upset, but I had to buy some chocolate to take home, so we went to Stockmann, and I barely made it to the start of my workday.
One funny picture from the center of Helsinki – this is granite which is going to be used to mark the bike paths – love these giant “shopping bags” 🙂
Both flights on my way back were half-empty, and the food was surprisingly good. It looks like SAS either didn’t reduce their menu during COVID, or they already returned to the pre-COVID times. It is hard to believe, but I had to take additional layers with me because it was way colder in Chicago than in Helsinki!
Too Smart Phone!
Today, it was snowing in Chicago, which means there was a lot of snow! One of these days, that makes me very happy that I do not own a car anymore!
Still, I went for a walk in the middle of the day, because I just can’t stay inside all the time! On my way back, I stumbled on a pile of snow and fell. It was not even an accident, the snow was soft, and it was funny, but my phone slipped from my pocket and ended up in the snow.
Again, not a big deal – I picked it up, brushed the snow off, made sure the phone worked, and kept going.
I was going to the musical tonight and planned to leave the house at six. Around 5 PM, I plugged the phone to make sure it was charged before leaving the house for five hours. Immediately, I saw a message on the screen indicating that the is some water inside the plug, and I needed to wait till it was dry before charging; otherwise, I could damage the phone. I waited and tried again. Then I tried to dry it with the fan. Nothing changed.
Imagine: there is only 28% of power left, I need to leave in 10 minutes, and I have everything on the phone! My ventra card to get on the public transportation. My vaccination card. A ticket to the show (with a Broadway in Chicago subscription, the only way to display your ticket is using the phone, they do not even show a picture of QR code when you are on your laptop!
I turned the phone on, took a screenshot of the ticket, then printed it. I took a physical vaccination card with me,. and I only turned the phone on to get into the CTA station! I could not even use a computer while on CTA! Fortunately, the phone got dried when I arrived at the theater, and I could charge it with the portable power bank!
A Little Bit Of Tallinn
We had about three and a half hours in Tallinn. In contrast to our visit in October, the weather was sunny, and I was so glad to have one more opportunity to see the Old Town. On our way there, we passed this building:
It was erected in 1952 and probably symbolized the submission of Estonia to Russian occupation. However, it looks so grotesque with these tiny balconies, which do not go together with the imperial spear with the star on top, that it looks more like a caricature of the Soviet architecture.
Sweet Potato Pie
First day home – trying new recipes
The last pie I wanted to master (and once again, only because I had a lot of sweet potatoes from the CSA, and I had to use them!). For years, I thought that sweet potatoes are non-edible for me until I learned how to cook them! The next logical step was making a sweet potatoes pie, which I finally accomplished today.
Ingredients:
- 2 large sweet potatoes (should yeld 2 cups of puree)
- 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) of butter, melted
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1/4 cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 cup brown sugar and and 1/4 cup of crushed pecan to sprinkle the top.
Peel sweet potatoes, cut them into small pieces, bring to boil, and let them cook for about 15 min until soft. Drain, puree, and let it cool down.
In a bowl, cream melted butter with sugar; beat…
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Tartu – Part 3
We wondered whether there was anybody else except for us in the hotel, and hence we were curious to see whether somebody would show up for breakfast. The breakfast was served in the hotel restaurant in the basement. We saw one more person at breakfast 🙂
The buffet selection was great, but just when we filled our plates and sat down, a waitress appeared and asked whether we wanted to order something :).
Tartu – Part 2
We were looking for a nice place for dinner. There were a couple of internet suggestions very close to the hotel, and we decided to walk past them and check what they looked like. One of our potential top choices ended up being closed, so we went to another one. That one was the restaurant Holm located in the Lydia Hotel, and it turned out to be fantastic! In short, it was like in Peninsular when Vlad worked there, but for half-price. I should have figured out that this was a high-end place because I saw the menu online, but I forgot that we are in Estonia for a moment.
There was an option of a taster menu – a five-course dinner for the price of 53 euros, we asked whether the portions would be half-size, and when the answer was yes, we went ahead with this option. Unfortunately, I can reproduce all that was said by the waiter when he introduced each of the courses; I can only copy a very short description from the restaurant website.
Since I told them that it will be a non-alcoholic dinner, they started by offering us a special local quince soda, as they stated locally grown and produced.
Tartu – Part 1
On the brighter side – the trip to Tartu was fantastic, even with the weather as it was.
We took a ferry to Tallinn and then walked to the bus station, where we took a bus to Tartu. The Lux busses are very comfortable and convenient for travel. The seats are pretty much like the airplane seats. You can lower the back or even increase the gap between two seats, and there is a folding table and an entertainment screen. Also, there is WiFi available and an electric outlet at each seat.
Although it turned out that Boris had to take his computer with him (he was waiting for one important email confirmation), we resolved to reduce the computer usage to a very minimum and kept it that way.
Tartu is an ancient city, to the point that I believe there is no official founding time of the city; people have lived there since the 5th century B.C. However, the “second Estonian city” is pretty small, and it didn’t take us long to walk from the bus station to our hotel, which was located right across from the main building of the University of Tartu.
The hotel Antonius is located in the 17th-century building last rebuilt in 1811, and the interiors are kept pretty close to that period.
Hettie's Reflections 