Category: everyday life

More Christmas Gifts

Because of predictable slowness of the mail around Christmas and New Year, I received a lot of presents in the days after Christmas. Which made it even more fun – I feel like I have a month worth of Christmas!

My older granddaughter Nadia made these ornaments with her palm print all by herself 🙂

The packager from New Zealand arrived as well. Each Christmas, I feel like this is the coolest thing to receive cookies from the opposite side of the globe! And it’s not just cookies, each year there is something else special!

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A Lonely Gym Goer

I thought it was a really funny picture. Since there is no mask mandate in our gym, and although some people wear masks, not everybody does, I only go there very early in the morning, wear a mask and leave when the first person after me arrives. I took this picture when I was leaving the gym last week, and this first person just came in.

About a Major Crisis

Today, on January 11, we finally have every chapter of our book submitted. Out of the total of eighteen chapters, including the introduction and conclusion, four are still being reviewed, but they are really small ones. Even if our technical reviewer would suggest some changes, there won’t be massive rewriting. I am doing a final walk-through with all examples, ensuring everything works as expected, and creating the source code files in the process.

I feel very good about this accomplishment, and if there weren’t a major crisis, everything would be in place a week ago. I know that I kept my friends uninformed, so here are some details about my family’s happened in the past two weeks.

For three weeks, we were going back and forth about Christmas and what is safe. Finally, we decided on a hybrid solution. 

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Note To Myself: How To Store Freshly Baked Bread

Saving instructions on how to store freshly baked bread

Hettie D.'s avatarHealthy Cooking - Hettie's Way

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2020 Reading

When Goodreads sent me my 2020 report, to my surprise and astonishment, I found only two books there! 

I know that I didn’t record everything I read, but it was definitely more than two!

When I checked my books on Goodreads, I found that because most of the time, I’ve recorded my reading way later than I read the books, I almost never put the date when I finished reading, and thereby Goodreads omitted them. 

I had to go back to my list of books and fill in the approximate dates when I finished them. It ended up being twenty-five books. It does not sound like a lot, but I do not record the books I read in Russian, and I do not record the books I do like. Full discloser: most of the time, if I do not like a book twenty percent into it, I just drop it. 

The last two books which I finished last year were Wildwood Creek and Redlined. The first didn’t quite meet my expectations. The beginning of the story was auspicious and expected a lot, but then it somehow ended abruptly, in a hurry, with some threads abandoned. At least, that’s how I feel. 

Igor recommended the “Redlined,” and I liked it a lot! I like the whole real-life plot: after both parents passed away, their children found their dairies, where they described the same events each from their perspective. Also, the first-generation immigrant family, and also – Chicago’s West Side transformations. Maybe, this book is not so meaningful for those who do not live in Chicago, but I enjoyed it a lot!

I am now finishing the Promised Land, and also listening and reading a couple of Russian books. They will be my first reads of 2021. 

Pandemic Financials

I just closed my books for 2020. I use regular Excel with some smart formulas for my finances. Boris and I came up with these formulas many years ago, even before Excel. In the times of MS-DOS, there was one primitive program that could calculate some sums and averages, and that’s what we used. Now, for many years, I have one Excel file for each year, two tabs per month, plus the Totals tab.

I was curious to see how much did my budget change in comparison with 2019. To my surprise, the changes were minimal. Same as last year, my regular expenses were a little bit under the budget and irregular – a little bit over, but in the end, everything was in balance. Most of the averages were surprisingly close.

I spent way more money on groceries this year and less on entertainment, but surprisingly almost the same amount on clothes and extras. The latter proves that I like nice clothes not because I care about other people’s opinion, but because I like how I look in these clothes, even if I am at home alone.Christmas spendings were the same, and birthdays spendings were lower, because we decided to postpone all family birthdays celebrations till the time after.

One of my friends posted the link to this NYT article about the current economic situation, and it looks like it can be applied to me. The only kind of expenses which stand out are my huge medical bills from my three surgeries and multiple other medical procedures. 

Usually, when I start new Excel for the new year, I review my spending limits and financial goals and make some adjustments, but I didn’t feel I need it this year. It will be interesting to see in six months how things will turn out. 

It Was a Very Productive Weekend

And I completed a couple of important projects which were still holding me back in 2020. There were (and still are) several things to worry about. So I am not exactly in 2021 yet, but I hope to be there soon.

New Year’s Motivations

This year might be not exactly a year to have a resolution about going to the gym, because… well, everybody knows why. Still, trying to keep my tradition of motivating people to exercise, I am posting the pictures I took in my home gym with minimal equipment On December 31 and January 1. I am not saying, you can do it no matter what, but I am saying, you can definitely do something :).

Now I am back to maintaining this balance on both left and right side for 40 sec
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The Year Is Not Finished For Me Yet

Not only because there are several more hours left, but also, because there are too many things “in flight” now. In course of the past three days I had several new experiences, including driving with the baby on board :), and overall, I am seen this year off not like I planned a couple of days ago.

This been said, I hope that in a week I will be finally able to say good bye to 2020. Until that, I have tons of things to do.

On the bright side, I have more presents! This mask was set to me from Michigan, and I love it!

And just today, I received the sweets from my friend from Ufa, which is not an alien settlement, but the capital of Bashkortostan. Which in turn is not an imaginary country, but a part of Russia, located on the border of Europe and Asia.

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Everything Is Falling Apart Again!

This year can’t finish without more calamities!

On Christmas Eve morning, I felt like the hot water was cooler than it should be and that it took longer for it to get warm. However, since the weather was exceptionally cold, I attributed the water temperature to that fact. By evening, however, I’ve grown a suspicion that something is wrong with the water heater.

My water heater can keep the water warm for a long time, and I am not sure when it actually stopped heating. I thought that I would survive a Christmas Day (nobody would come out anyway), and I could call Allied Saturday morning.

On Saturday morning, the water was still warm enough for me to take a quick shower. Then, I called Allied. It was 6 AM, so I didn’t expect anybody to be in, but I wanted to leave a voice message. Following the prompts, I reach to the technician on call only to find out that they are not picking up, and their mailbox is full. When I call at 7-30 AM, the message was that the office is closed for the holidays. They suggested another company for emergency service.

I called and texted them, and there was no answer. I started to look on the internet for alternatives and quickly found one. I called them, and they said that they will come over within two hours.
By that time, the first company replied, saying that they are swamped with work and won’t come on Saturday, but they can come on Monday. I replied: no problem, somebody is coming.

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