Category: everyday life

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

Six Hours Short

Last weekend, I measured exactly how much time I needed to complete all the tasks on my list. I was six hours short. And it’s not anything “nice to have,” which could be postponed for the next weekend. All those were the tasks with deadlines; there were reasons why they should have been completed before today. Unfortunately, I am also 100% booked during the workday today, and I am entertaining important guests of the Postres community after work. Thereby, I do not even have my usual extra two to three “grace” hours on Monday to complete unfinished weekend tasks.


That’s what you get for taking too much on you:). And if I even had any slack time past weekend, it would be no more than an hour. And I do not include in these six hours a couple of my family history post I planned to write.

Just too much of life is going on 🙂

Health Updates

Most of my friends are aware that out of my multiple vision-related issues, the most annoying is my double vision. I went for years without any treatment until about five years ago, I got special prism-only glasses to address to issue. I can’t wear these glasses all the time, but I use them for driving and while in the movies or other shows. It helps a lot.

Recently, however, it became worse, and at my annual checkup, I’ve
complained to my eye doctor. She gave me a referral to the specialist, who is primarily dealing with that particular problem. That other doctor examined me and told me that she can work with my double vision, but first, I need to have my cataracts operated. That was news for me; I didn’t know I have cataracts, but that explained a lot about how I felt recently.

Continue reading “Health Updates” →

My New iPhone

I’ve got a new iPhone 11 Pro! For the past several years, I am on the FlexLease plan with Sprint, which means I can get the next version of the iPhone each time it appears (every 12-18 months) for virtually no extra cost. I have to admit, the plan itself is expensive, but I know what I am paying for. It’s an ability to be connected anywhere in the world, any time, with no switching to anything. And for always having a hotspot to connect my computer anywhere in the world. Also, I have my Mom and my sons hooked to the same plan (they all pay for their lines, but I pay a lion share of the bill). This is just to say, it is not the best option for everybody, but the best option for me, with my lifestyle.

That’s why I ended up with the new iPhone 11 Pro the other day. By now, I know the fastest way to get upgraded. I always order a new phone online, when it arrives, I wake it up and allow it to absorb information from my old phone and iCloud, and then next day go to the Sprint Store, which is two blocks from my work to perform the activation.

This time it was by far the most seamless upgrade, with a very short time it took to sync with the iCloud. Also, this time, I was able to retrieve from the iCloud all my passwords, which was great since I have a hundred applications installed. Even my Bluetooth scale recognized the phone, or rather the new phone was aware of the scale :).

And the main attraction – three cameras! I didn’t get a chance to play with them long enough since I work non-stop for the past two weeks, and especially for the past three days. But still – this is a picture of my room taken in complete darkness, except for two candles and a desk light behind me, which is not directed towards the room. Same shot with two cameras.