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.

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I managed to finish my training slidesyesterday, and I even did it relatively early in the day. I realized that I needed less than 210 slides because I will have a break in the middle and a quiz at the end. I need to come up with the quiz, and read through the whole thing one more time to make sure there are no stupid typos.

Also (how typical of me!) I realized that I double-scheduled myself for Tuesday and Wednesday (even more for Wednesday), but I must go with that since I made promises. The extra promise I made was for one more pizza-making at the ODS, and since, after almost a year of turbulence, things are finally working there, I am prioritizing these visits.

This week is, in some sense, experimental because I am trying not to stay late and not to rush but still do most of the things I want to.

My mom is still sorting all the presents she received. I showed her all the text messages I received from her party attendees and forwarded to her a lovely email from my two-floors-below neighbor, who admired my mom’s life accomplishments. I think, two days later, she appreciates the party even more 🙂

TIME Magazine: Saying YES Instead Of NO

This article is the last of the “New Year Resolutions” Time Magazine articles that I planned to write about. My initial reaction to the article’s header was – that’s definitely not about me! I say “yes” less frequently than I would love to. But when I started reading it, I realized it was more about my behavior than I wanted to admit.

Full text below.

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Mom’s Birthday Celebration

Everything went great, even with all the things I mentioned yesterday, plus today’s problems on the Red Line that made Igor and my mom being 30 minutes late to her party, and some guests as well :). There were a couple of times in the past when my mom got really upset about us not letting her know in advance that somebody was going to visit, that’s why we tried to plan it being a surprise, but not a complete surprise :).

I invited those with whom my mom interacted through all these seven years she has been in the USA, with the hope that she will remember. I was pleasantly surprised that she recognized everyone and addressed everyone by name, even those she hadn’t seen for a long time. About half an hour later, however, she started to ask me again who was who and how she knew them. When I shared this observation with Anna and John, they suggested that she got tired, and they must be right. I am going to focus on the positive side of things 🙂

Everyone whom I asked came, and the food was delicious, and Vanille’s cake was awesome.

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Russian Lies #5

The fifth of the “Russian lies” documentaries, that one is about the role of media in Russian society, and it is restricted. Probably the least surprising of all of these documentaries – all happened on my watch.

Mom’s Birthday

My mom turned 90 today. We are giving her a “semi-surprise party” tomorrow, and we have already had enough of disasters: Vlad couldn’t come because the earlier snowstorm in DC pushed the training he had to conduct to the weekend; both Anna and I had a work crisis (and Igor was super busy, too). We had to move to another venue two days before the party. Anna forgot the frame for our collective present at home; all the printing is done not at the last minute but one after the last, and so on.

After disassembling my Christmas tree, I realized I needed new boxes for ornaments. I ordered them, and they arrived, but I didn’t have time even to unpack them until today, so i was repacking ornaments when Anna’s family arrived.

BTW the boxes are great, and I feel like I always feel when I replace something old with a newer model – why didn’t I do it earlier?! It’s so much better!

TIME Magazine: Exercising For PR

One more “New Year” Time Magazine article – I always loved the idea of competing with myself rather than with others. Keep reading below!

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How The New Year Started

Obviously, it’s a new year – a new crisis at work, but in addition, I realized about a week ago that I need to rework the training I am doing in Prague at the end of January. When I submitted this training proposal, I knew “I had it,” but what I didn’t realize was that :

  • It has been two years since the last time I ran this training, and all examples are from the book’s first edition and from the year 2020
  • I need to apply different template/different formatting
  • I have almost three times more material than the training time, so I needed to decide what to keep!

And… that all takes time! And it’s about 220 slides!

Russian Lies #4

I wish this documentary was separated into at least two films because it touches on several different topics. Otherwise, I have little to comment on. Being intimately familiar with the selection process and the teaching methods at the Vaganova Academy through a friend, I never had illusions about Russian ballet. I remember an evening at my Palatine neighbor’s home when her older daughter rushed in after her first ballet class with a Russian teacher: “She was hitting us on our legs! “

As for looting art, it is, unfortunately, a universal problem. Some governments choose to correct their mistakes, and some don’t…

TIME Magazine: History Lessons For Retirement

One of the things I plan to change is that I aim to retire at 65 with a part-time consulting. This article was interesting for me from a historical perspective: some details were new to me.

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TIME Magazine: Questions To Ask Yourself

One more New Year’s article from Time Magazine. I agree with pretty much everything it says. People often don’t believe me when I say I do only those things I want to do, but that’s the driver of my life. When I decide that I “need” to do something, it always means that I “want” to do this to achieve something :). I understand that there is a fine line, but that’s how I think about it, and that’s the most important/ I never think that someone or something “makes” me to do certain things – it’s only me who decides.

I asked myself most of the questions which are listed in this article during the quiet time of the past two weeks, and there are some changes I want to make – because I want some things to change:)

The full text is below.

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