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.

It’s Not Work But

The things which fill in all my time for the past couple of days are not work-related but still, very PostgreSQL-related.

The first thing is my talk. I accepted being on an official reserve list for the FOSDEM conference, which means that most likely I won’t deliver my talk; still, I need to be prepared. In order to avoid procrastination, I’ve assigned myself to be a speaker for the January Chicago PUG meetup so that I would have to prepare this talk by January 17. Since next weekend will be one more “girls’ weekend,” I have to complete it in the next couple of days. My initial plan was to be done over the weekend but almost five hours on the phone (with friends and with Boris) made it impossible, and it turned out that there was way more work anyway. So now, I am frantically trying to complete it, and hopefully, I will be done by Wednesday.

The second thing is the conference (PG Day Chicago). There is only one more week left for submissions, and although we have enough submissions, we do not have enough speakers. I spent more than two hours today emailing, composing tweets, and asking people directly on all possible media platforms. I just checked how many new presentations/speakers were submitted, and it looks like I made a material impact :). On the one hand, I am happy with that. On the other hand, it’s wrong that big events in Chicago are still driven almost exclusively by my charisma. In any case, that’s my primary focus until next Monday.  

Presents

I wanted to show some of my Christmas present which I got this year. Possibly the most interesting was a present from my Ukrainian friend:

It is super cool, and I already bragged to Anna and my neighbors about it:

Continue reading “Presents” →

CSO For Kids And Other Activities

The CSO is doing a fantastic job with the concerts for the little kids: “Once Upon a Symphony” series. Today was the third time for Nadia and the second time for Kira, and the performance was based on Three Little Pigs (the Big Bad Wolf was a Building Inspector, so nobody was eaten :)). I think it’s really admirable how they can keep even very little kids engaged for forty minutes! This time, Anna was able to come (John drove), and we all enjoyed the performance.

The girls wanted to go back to my house, but today we had time for the concert only, they had to go back home right away, and I am also trying to finish ten different writing projects. Next weekend, however, will be all about family events: my Christmas presents for Anna and John and for Nadia. Also, we are going to celebrate my and my mom’s birthdays.

Tomorrow, my Christmas Tree will be removed, and last night and today, I spent a lot of time putting down all the decorations, taking down the ornaments from the tree, and packing everything into boxes. As I promised to Nadia and Kira, I brought them the gingerbread ornaments, which they ate surprisingly fast (I was sure that they were too hard to chew).

Now I can see that I have several “groups” of Christmas ornaments:

  • the very old ones, some older than me, some from my very early childhood
  • my ornaments from the 1970s
  • the ornaments we hand-made for our first US Christmas
  • the ones I bought on garage sales during the first two years in the US when we had very little money
  • gifts from friends
  • ornaments I brought from different places
  • some cool ornaments I purchased because I wanted them 🙂

And I am going to make sure that each Christmas, even if I do not have all of my ornaments on the tree, I have some form each group!

Just before I took the tree down

Gender Bias

There is one more episode that happened at PG Conf EU that I wanted to talk about. Several weeks before the conference, I received a dinner invite from the Swiss Postgres User Group for the third evening of the conference. Having my previous experience with that group, my original intention was to decline, but then I decided to give their organizer a third chance (he is a very nice person!) I accepted, and we went. 

The group was bigger than their largest table could accommodate, so the restaurant added a smaller table, and somehow, Boris and I decided that we would have a better conversation if we chose the seats at this smaller table, especially because the organizer sat there as well.

Well, we were wrong. It was the same story as in the summer of 2022, after which I decided to “never-ever.” Six people at the table; Boris and I are the only two who do not speak German, and the conversation keeps going in German with the occasional “attempts” to talk to us on the usual topic: “So you are Russian, and you drink vodka.” BTW, it started when a Romanian at our table asked for still water, and the waiter brought a pitcher “which looked like vodka,” according to other people at the table. After the second round, I asked to drop this conversation; however, it continued. Another attempt to include us in the conversation was, “So you are from Chicago. And you traveled that far?..

I silently lamented the wasted time and thought about leaving when, all of a sudden, the conversation changed. These two, who were speaking German all the time and asking me about vodka, suddenly started to talk about Postgres, asking me questions, taking notes, and saying that their DBAs should buy my book. 

On our way back to the hotel, Boris said he couldn’t understand why they suddenly started behaving “normally.” But I knew. It started after I saw them checking the conference schedule on their phones and asked them whether they decided where to go the next day. Apparently, until that moment, they thought that I was a plus one of Boris. And after I asked them which talks they liked and answered a professional question, they finally realized that talking to me may be helpful!

The moral of the story:

  1. That’s why we need “Barbie talks” at community conferences.
  2. “Never-ever”

Radical Clay Exhibit

My friend, who moved from Chicago to Boston last year, was in town last week, and we went to the Art Institute for the Thursday evening hours. We saw an exhibit I hadn’t seen yet – “Radical Clay,” which presented the works of Japanese contemporary female sculptors made of clay/porcelain. 

The exhibit is small, but all the artworks are extraordinary! Here are some pictures that I took and some from the official webpage. 

This one is called “Looking for a crush”
Continue reading “Radical Clay Exhibit” →

What I Want To Do…

Same as a year ago, I am not writing down the “summary” of 2023, nor am I making any New Year resolutions. However, I had a relatively quiet time in the past several days, and I used this time to think about the directions I am moving, and possible course corrections.

This morning, I asked Boris what he thought I should do less and what I should do more in 2024. He said that he wanted me to be a little bit more relaxed. I started laughing, but he made a very specific point. He said, as he often says, that I am trying to pack too many things on any given day, and because of that, my plans can be easily ruined, and then I am always unhappy about it.

He said that if I left a little bit more room between planned activities, my plans would be more resilient, and although it may feel that I am doing less, I would be able to do more in the end.

I promised to think about that, and I will.

I started several new activities this year, and although they say that starting new activities is good to keep your mind sharp, I know that I had too many. Here are some things I did this year for the first time:

  • Writing paid blogs (that was a second attempt). This activity has both good and bad sides, and as of now, I almost want to stop doing it, but I believe that the better option would be to limit it to one article per month (which is objectively happening now) and to give more thought on what content might be beneficial for me, rather than for the publisher.
  • A number of mentoring opportunities:
    • Code2College volunteering. This was another mixed-bag experience, and I will probably give it another try. The negative part is that I do not believe in remote mentoring, and when you are in different states with your mentee, you can’t even suggest an impromptu meeting. The positive part is that I can see that I make a difference, and my mentee is a young woman with great potential.
    • Greenwood project. I was pulled for one Lunch and Learn event through my work, and I had such positive feedback from the participants that I want to get more involved. I was hesitant to follow up with the project because I was afraid of overcommitment, but the more I think about it, the more I am leaning toward doing just this one rather than others.
    • One more attempt to go back to OMD: I am not doing it again. I had enough sense to cancel my participation before meeting my student (after I passed all the checks and training), and at least for now, that was the right decision.
    • Participating in the Women’s Mentoring Circle at work. I like the idea; the actual implementation was variable, but now, three months into the program, I can see its positive impact. The biggest challenge for me was to let other people speak :).
  • Attending sessions with a therapist. That was a very targeted activity with the goal of improving my communication with my mom, and it really helped. Still, I need to remind myself about the techniques I can use to make this experience better for both of us. No negative sides; all positive
  • Becoming CSO Kids’ ambassador. I most definitely have no time for that activity, but it is so exciting to participate, and there are so many perks that I can’t walk away from this opportunity!
  • Going camping for the first time since I was a”young pioneer.” I liked it, but most likely, I won’t do it without Anna.
  • Discovering Fort Sheridan – I hope I will have more of it next season, and I hope it will become an even more important part of my life.

There are two more activities to which I tentatively agreed, but they didn’t start yet, so it does not count.

P.S. Yes, I am hopeless 🙂

P.P.S. This post is not about “where I want to go” yet. More to come 🙂

Bias Against Bodies Podcasts

WBEZ’s Sasha-Ann Simmons ran the Bias Against Bodies podcast for most of 2023. Here are just three of the episodes.

Fitness

Fashions

Workplace discrimination

Welcoming The New Year

Igor and I went to the City of Chicago fireworks, and I have nothing but good to say about how everything was organized this time. We should have come earlier and watched “The Best of the Art on the Mart,” but I was not sure that the CTA would deliver as promised (it did!), so we decided to come later and saw only a little bit:

Continue reading “Welcoming The New Year” →

I Can’t…

Several times this year, I told myself that I should write something in Russian on Russian social media because I know people for whom reading in English is difficult, and I know that Google Translate does not do justice. I admire those who can write in Russian without compromising themselves. I can’t. Each time I try, I come across people who blog as if everything is normal and it’s OK to wish each other a happy and healthy new year. It might sound not fair because I also blog about “normal stuff,” but I still can’t get over that. Maybe I should rephrase it. It’s not about what people write about but more about whether they consider their lives “normal.” That’s a breaking point for me.

I have friends whom I love and support, and I know that they experience the same outrage reading these “life goes on” posts. For their sake, I should be more present, but each time I try, I feel that I can’t be sincere in liking “all the best in the New Year” posts.

Another possibility is to have a Russian language blog on this platform, which I contemplated several times but never tried. I know that those who get into trouble going to another social media platform just to be able to read what I am writing are people who share my values. I want to be able to keep talking to them.

Dr.Strangelove

I watched this movie based on a recommendation from a blog I follow.

Wow. Now I wonder why I never heard about this movie before, especially if it was so highly rated not only at the time it was made but years later … I guess, It’s one of these “people never learn” things. I am glad I watched it, but I find it difficult to write something meaningful about it. I just grabbed the Kindle book which this movie is based.

When I related my impressions to Boris earlier today, he said that it might have been filmed as a follow-up of the Caribean Crisis, but as I found out, the book was written earlier. I might write more after I read it!