Category: everyday life

What Your Card Can Tell About You

Chicago has some public transport, which makes it better than many other US cities that don’t. Chicago Transit (CTA) has several different types of transit cards.
I have the one which perfectly fits my public transit usage pattern: it is linked to my credit card and automatically loads additional funds in a $25 increment when money is running low. One of the best things about it is that several people can use this card on one trip – I just need to tap it for each person who rides with me. It’s always the easiest way when it comes to giving tours to the out of town visitors.

I often think about my CTA card like a perfect sample of my life, if you look at where does this card go with me, and who uses it with me. Within just one week, it was used to get on the train the Great Magnus, my friend who was taking CTA for the first time in her life, and a homeless man, for whom I tapped one more time 🙂

First Motion Picture Unit

More details about the First Motion Picture Unit, the U.S. Army’s film production unit.

gremrien's avatarnocuous

Hettie asked about the authorship of the movie about Berlin, and I am very glad that I did some research about it and learned this interesting stuff!

I’ll quote my commentary to her:

“It’s good you asked this, because I was wondering about it too, but wouldn’t look it up specifically. I was sure that it was neither the Soviets (they did not have such a quality equipment/skills, and even if they used some looted cameras and film, they would rather make some hideous propaganda than such neutral/sympathetic to Germans footage) nor Germans (I doubt that any German would be allowed to film such things and be able even to fly over the city with the camera). And I imagined that it should have been some Americans, while they were still free to roam around the Soviet zone of occupation.

Now I did some research and found out that it…

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Berlin in July 1945

Reblogging two incredible posts by my friend, which showcase the works of s First Motion Picture Unit, the U.S. Army’s film production unit.

gremrien's avatarnocuous

Wow! Look at this fascinating color footage of Berlin in July 1945! It looks like a high-budget conceptual movie. The ruins are mind-blowing, and yet there is a feeling of a Really Great City and Really Cool People, right?

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Life is Still Crazy

This week was even worse than previous. Although I work through most of the weekend, I didn’t have enough time to prepare for all of the training I wanted to run this week in the office. Thereby I constrained myself to not doing anything, except necessities, and spend each and a single minute I had “extra” on the training development. 

I didn’t help much (maybe partially because, in reality, I was doing something extra, like going to the performance of Montreal Metropolitan Orchestra on Tuesday). So now, at 11:15 PM, I have a little bit more than half of tomorrow’s training ready. I’ve already booked 2.5 hours tomorrow morning to complete it, but I am ashamed of myself. 

Still, today after work as was at the Open Door Shelter. Last week, a group of youth from the Open Door Shelter had a field trip to the Christkindle Market, and I asked to message me when they will be close – my work is just a block away. We had a really great time at the market. One of the girls mentioned how much she loves German potato pancakes, and I told her we can make them next time. 

Today was the next time:), and we peeled and grated 10 lb of potatoes, and made beautiful potato pancakes. And I had truly amazing conversations with some of the youth. And when I was walking out of the shelter, thinking about these conversations and smiling, I felt that this is something I can never let to disappear from my life… 

For the Love of Dresses

I bought this dress four years ago (if not earlier) in Helsinki. It was a new fashion back then, and as it always happens with the trendy European clothing, you can’t be sure whether they will ever become fashionable in the US.


This one never did, which made it timeless, and now I can’t even tell why I didn’t wear it for the past three years. At some point, it felt too short, or that there is no proper occasion… I don’t even know! I wore it last Monday when I was taking my friend to Vlad’s bar, and I was like: OMG, I love this dress so much, it’s a perfect fit!


Here for me to remember to wear it more often 🙂

A Busy Life, but I am Thankful!

I am still insanely busy. There are several big projects at work, and I know that I need to put a lot of effort into planning and design before any work can even start. I know exactly, what needs to be done, but there is not enough time and not enough of me :). 

Also, there are still huge parts of training for the conference, which I didn’t prepare yet. 

When I first suggested I will do this training, I knew that I would need to spend tons of time vetting the examples, removing the company-specific parts, and also checking all the execution times and plans. And I knew it would take time. And it does! So for the past three weekends, it was mostly work. Not volunteering, not even doing stuff around the house, but plain work. Although the conference is in the first week of December, I need to finish everything this week, because I am doing a dry run in the office for my co-workers. I am immensely thankful to Boris for doing lots of dull work with this training, like formatting and re-formatting slides, getting pictures, in addition to the actual course development. 

Also, I have to give a talk at the same conference, on day two, and I need to find another four to six hours to bring it to where I want it to be. 

That’s about work and professional development. But I absolutely can’t skip the fact that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming, and I can’t miss on that! I have a feeling that I need a third brain to keep all the holiday things under control 🙂 And the fourth brain to keep all the processes smooth, and my mood calm, and overall experience being enjoyable. 

Christmas cards, cookies, Secret Santa, and “adopted families.” And a German Market in the CIty. And most importantly – my loved ones. 

The Worlds Largest Pumpkin Festival

I just can’t NOT reblog that! With all my love to pumpkins:)

Brittany's avatarBlissfulbritt

Anyone who knows me, knows I have an immense love for all things fall. This includes, but is not limited to: colored leaves, cold crisp mornings, sunshine on the skyline and frost on the grass, apples, halloween, and of course PUMPKINS! The moment I see pumpkins I turn into a 6 yr old child seeing Santa at the mall.

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All that said, I didn’t expect to see many fall themed activities in Germany. The locals here don’t really celebrate Halloween, they don’t really have pumpkin patches like we do in the states, and corn mazes? Forget it. Then I heard about a pumpkin festival north of me in Ludwigsburg, that claimed to be the largest pumpkin festival…in the world!

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This festival has a theme each year, and this years theme was fairy tales. There are creations made out of pumpkins…

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Holiday Post: Christmas Cards, Christmas Cookies, Christmas Wishes

Since this year I am on WP more than on other platforms, I think it will be a good idea to extend my “Christmas Cookies for All” campaign to this blog. Here is how it goes every year:

  • I love sending and receiving Christmas cards from all over the world. If you want to exchange Christmas greetings with me, please send me your postal address in the contact form. Will be happy to send a card to any place in the world:)
  • I am baking tons of Christmas cookies and sending them also pretty much all over the world, although sometimes I have to put a limit on the total number of parcels sent. If you are interested – let me know 🙂

Just to give you an idea – that’s how my house looks before Christmas – 

I feel Proud of Myself Today:)

Recently most of my days are very intense, and I continuously feel that I am completing only about half of the tasks I need to complete. But today, it was even worse. 

I worked from home (which I do not like that much these days) because I had myl physical in the afternoon. I’ve started my workday earlier, at 7-30, hoping to be mostly done by 2-15, when I had to leave for the doctor. I had a long work to-do list, not mentioning my still-in-progress training. 

And I ended up doing zero in course of these seven hours. Absolutely nothing productive. OK, I’ve reviewed two commits. I’ve dialed in three meetings, but just about 20 minutes total of them were somewhat productive. 

Several people were reaching out with the questions, which took harder to get resolved from home. And when you have twenty minutes in between things, it’s nothing you can do. 

I was mad. And I thought that nothing could make me feel better. And guess what I did then. “Then” – after I went to the doctor, went to my Mom, and finally got home. 

There was one thing which was on my to-do list for several weeks, and I was keeping postponing it and avoiding it. There were several forms which I needed to download from the Russian consulate website and help Anna and Vlad to fill them in. I was saying for weeks that I didn’t have time, but in reality, I was pushing this activity back. 

So when I came home, under the motto that I am late with everything anyway – I did it! And I felt soooo good about doing it, that suddenly the whole day didn’t feel like wasted!

Midwest Change of Seasons

One of the items with deadlines for the past weekend (when I was six hours short) was cleaning the back porch from the rest of the fallen leaves and putting away the rest of the flowerpots (I managed to put away the garden furniture and to fold and cover the umbrella the weekend before that). I knew I had to do it over the weekend, because on Monday we had tons of snow, and today we have an arctic cold wave.

Yesterday’s morning
Today’s morning