Reindeer3 block the road / Renos3 bloquean la carretera/ Rennes3 bloquent la route/ Renas3 bloqueiam a estrada

If you think it’s a problem when geese block the road, here is a REAL problem!

Sartenada's avatarTravels in Finland and abroad

In English:

We went on a road trip and met reindeers

Background information.

I know that the title is not the best, but I wanted to point out that during this road trip to the northern parts of Finland, we met reindeers everywhere! The explanation for this is that the area belongs to the northeastern reindeer herding area which is larger than the northwestern area. In 2019, there were 4461 reindeer smashes although due to modern technique to warn about collisions of reindeers. This is so called the reindeer alarm application called in Finnish Porokello. Cons of Porokello (personal opinion): Gives a false feeling of security. Overall ratings of this application are for and against based on the user experiences. Many oncoming cars blinked their headlights to warn about reindeer – it worked great!

General information.

The length of our trip was 2413km / 1499mi. It lasted 10 nights /…

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Sandhill Cranes

I saw sandhill cranes in the forest preserve, when I was biking this morning, so close, that I nearly ran into them on my bike. The didn’t walk away from me, and I was staring at them, and taking more and more pictures lighted by the rising sun – how beautiful they were in these morning hours!

All The Books I Read And Did Not Review

I am trying to write this post for more than three weeks, and the list of books I’ve listened to or read is growing and growing, and I already lost hope to write even a paragraph about each. But since people are keeping asking me about what I am reading, and since I read a lot of really good books, I will try at least to compile a list with some notes.

This list covers the past four or five months, and includes only the books I liked.

First, I finally read all of the “Call the Midwife” trilogy. I can’t tell why it took me so long, I wanted to read it forever. Loved it to the last word:). I never had an opportunity to take a close look at the life of the impoverished population of London. I guess, I had no idea about what was happening between the times of Charles Dickens and nowadays. I could not help but noticing, how much the healthcare for the poor was developed in the UK even in the middle of the previous century, something which the US underprivileged population can’t even dream about.

Too Much And Never Enough – that was a classical example of “everybody is reading it, and I should, too.” It’s not like I didn’t like the book, but I guess I expected more of it after all the buzz.

The Book of Lost Friends – a beautiful book. The two threads of the story stand a hundred years apart, but even the “modern” part, which takes place in 1987 looks horrific from the nowadays point of view. Unfortunately, many schools in the underserved neighborhoods even these days have the same lack of resources and same limited expectations from their students. But I hope that school boards like the one described in this book, no longer exist!

Childhood, interrupted. Raising kids during pandemic – a short but charming essay by Sanjay Gupta, very personal and sincere.

When you finish saving the world – this book is available from Audible Originals, and does not exist on paper. The rating on Goodreads is somewhat low, but I really enjoyed the story, all three parts.

The things we cannot say – I mentioned this book in one of the recent posts, and I still hope to write more than a paragraph about it; it raised a storm in my mind. Same to the book Truths I Never Told You – these two books are painfully related in my heart.

As I said, I am only mentioning the books which I rally liked. I should probably mention the books which I started and didn’t like and didn’t finish, but it’s just not interesting to write about them 🙂

Our Outdoor Gym – One More Time

I am trying to use to the fullest the last days of summer when it is still warm enough to exercise outdoor, and there is still a possibility to catch some daylight before work. The latter possibility will be over pretty soon, but I am still able to use our outdoor gym for now.
I start my strength training sessions at home, in my home gym, and use my TRX and dumbells and my yoga ball. And then, I walk to the “Outdoor fitness park,” as I now know, it is called! I was very pleased to see this plaque and to learn that our outdoor gym is nationally recognized! It deserves that!

A Date With My City

This week, I started to go to the office again, and for the next couple of weeks, I am planning to be in the city three times a week.

I can’t even start to describe how much I love being in the city. Coming to the office gives me a lot of structure. Yes, I am a very organized person, but I still do not know why, but I always get more things done in the office. Also, for many years, I used the time on the train as “my personal time.” It was always that I had almost two hours a day when I could reply to my personal emails, ce=heck the social media, write my own blog posts. And when I work from home, it is like: when I sit down at my desk, it means work.

Walking in the city feels different, as well. I do not know why. Today, my Apple Watch shows more than fifteen thousand steps, and it feels like nothing. When I am in the city, I walk fast, and nothing hurts.

On Tuesday, I had lunch with Vlad (belated birthday lunch), and I didn’t get to walk much, because I had to carve time between meetings. But today – I walked and walked.

I went to the Art Institute. The same El Greco exhibit, which I saw on my last visit to the museum before it closed, is open again, and I felt infinitely good looking at these amazing paintings.
Afterward, when I realized that I have over an hour till the next train, I headed to the Riverwalk (actually, I half-planned it to be that way). That way my first real date with my city after months being apart, and I was breathing in this twilight, and the opaque water surface…

Birthday lunch with Vlad
Continue reading “A Date With My City”

Please Help Us to Win!

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

Dear friends and colleagues! Do you remember the same time in 2019? Do you remember how I asked you to vote for me and to help me win the “Technologist of the Year” award? Ok, it case you don’t remember – Here is my last year call for support. and here is a my victory post – thanks for all of your support, I won the nomination, the first female in the history of this award.

Now, it’s time to vote again, this time – for our amazing CEO Stephanie Klein who was nominated as a finalist for the Outstanding Tech CEO Award! Let me tell you – she should win!

She has a vision, she is not afraid of challenges. She thinks big. And most importantly, she really values each and a single employee of Braviant Holdings.

I’ve being in IT for thirty-seven years, and each CEO…

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Happy Birthday, Vlad and Anna!

Today is Vlad’s and Anna’s 29th birthday, and for the first time ever we won’t be able to celebrate together even on a different date. Below is a picture from our last year celebration, I am posting it here to remind myself that time will come and we will celebrate in person again:)

I just scrolled my timeline and realized that I do not have any post about the day Vlad and Anna were born. And this brings me to the conversations Anna and I had when she visited. Now, we talk a lot about parenting, and we are finding out tons of details I never mentioned. Each time Anna says that I should write a blog post about it, I hope that I will eventually. 

Some topics are easy to write about. In other cases, it isn’t easy to separate the historical details and personal emotions, and I know that I am trying to put off writing about some topics. We talked about me writing “about everything,” and I am leaning towards writing some protected posts, for which my children will have a passcode. 

Just this morning, I finished listening to the book The Things We Can’t Say. I loved the book, but it also prompted me to think about keeping secrets regarding someone’s past. There may be many reasons which seem perfectly rational, but you never know what will happen if you take these secrets to the grave, and your children and grandchildren will desperately try to solve these mysteries. 

So here is my children’s birthday resolution – I will do my best to write about everything  It will take time, but I hope I will be done before I will start to forget things 🙂

Family Time

My girls went back home today. We spent a wonderful five days together, going to places, doing things together, and talking non-stop. After they left, I told Boris that I either became too old or out of practice because I felt tired of all these non-stop activities. He replied that he thinks that I am just out of practice, and I asked whether he implies that I should do it more often. He laughed and said that probably yes.

Speaking about activities, we went to the Botanic Garden on Tuesday.

The signs say: Welcome back! We missed you!
Continue reading “Family Time”

Spending Time With My Girls

I took this whole week off work to spend time with my daughter and granddaughters, and all the things we are doing together take all the time I have. Everything is great and wonderful, and I am enjoying every moment of our time together, and I hope they enjoy it, too.

We went to the Botanic Garden, and we drove to Chicago to Millennium Park, and there are still tons of activities we planned for the remaining two and a half days.

More stories to follow 🙂

House Cleaning

The reason why this weekend ended up being as it was – my girls are coming to visit me tomorrow. Yesterday, Kira turned two months, and their pediatrician allowed them to extend the circle of contacts slowly.

I was planning to come and visit them in Wisconsin, but since the parents, understandably wanted me to quarantine before meeting the baby, and Mayor Lori wants me to self-quarantine myself after I visit Wisconsin, Anna decided to give me back two weeks of my life.

Nadia is old enough now to sleep in her bed, not pack-and-play. That meant that this time, everybody would stay downstairs, where I have two guest rooms. These rooms usually stay ready to host people who come to visit me, but nobody lived there for the past nine months due to the pandemic.

I never entered these rooms for the said nine months, because there was no need. Usually, they would be in use at least once in two months, and I would change the bedding and possibly dust and sweep, and they are ready for the next visitor. I do not remember when it was the last time they were vacant for nine months!

I am walking in, and I feel like I am walking into the cellar, that’s how it smells! There are cobwebs in the corners, and there is dust on the surfaces. The first thing I wanted to do was to open the windows, but there was no window screen in one of the rooms. A trip to the ACE hardware revealed (as usual!) that this size is no longer used. I ordered the “cut it yourself” kit on Amazon, but it will only arrive on Tuesday.

I took all the bedding fro that room upstairs and hung it to ventilate. Then I cleaned the floor and all the surfaces. I also had to put back the railing on the stairs (because I didn’t do it yesterday, remember?)

I called Boris so that I could consult him about drilling the holes and screwing the screws in. This plus a couple more trips to the stores – that’s how my day was!

However, I can even describe how ecstatic I am to see y girls and see Kira in the flesh for the first time! I am so looking forward to all the activities and conversations!