Category: everyday life

Finnish Blueberry Rye Cereal

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

They do not call it a cereal in Finland, and from what I understand the actual word means something liquid-ish, like a creamy soup, or a breakfast meal. But I can’t find a work in English with the meaning close enough, maybe my Finnish friends can advise.

I’ve got this recipe from one of my Finnish friends, and it is very Finnish since blueberry is a national berry of Finland :). I usually make it in the second half of summer, when the weather is still hot so that you would look for a clod breakfast, rather than for a warm meal. Also, this is the time, when Michigan blueberries start to arrive, and you do not feel guilty to consume the whole cup of them in one meal.


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On Time Management, And When It Can’t Help

I am usually doing great with time management, as all my friends attest. Most of the time I can squizz in three times more activities, that anybody can imagine. And this is not for the record – I love doing everything I am doing. Since I happen not to be Hermione Granger, and nobody gives me a Time-Turner, I have to be creative. But sometimes even my time-management skills are not enough.

And that’s how this week looked like. I feel like it was one long workday. Yes, I did a couple of activities after work. I cooked at the Youth homeless shelter on Monday, I went to the concert at Millennium Park on Wednesday, and I went on a casual bike ride with Palatine Bike Club on Thursday.

It might look enough – for anybody, except me :). Besides, I was so busy at work, that I couldn’t even get out for a short stroll or for an ice-cream. And I didn’t have time to email or chat with my friends. Ad I still have a little bit of work to do over the weekend.

So when my coworkers were asking today – any plans for a weekend? I would reply – to catch up with life! Hopefully, more blog post will follow 🙂

Postgres DEI Work Group

I am usually keeping my personal and professional life separately, but I wanted to share this one!

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

Last Friday, I participated in the first conference call of the DEI Work Group of PostgresConf. And if you are wondering what DEI means, it means Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion.

The whole conversation started at the PostgresConf  2019 in New York. There we had a diversity panel on the last day of the conference. I was mildly unhappy with both low attendance and somewhat too universal coverage of the issues of diversity. I think that the striking lack of diversity in the Postgres community is a bigger problem than in IT in general, and was expecting a more in-depth conversation.

And then a usual exchange happened. I am a person of action, and I can’t complain about anything without proposing a solution (even when nobody asks for one!). But this time I was actually asked whether I will be interested in doing something to improve the situation, and granted, I…

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More Pictures From The Outdoor Gym

I’ve already posted some pictures of our new outdoor gym in this post; now I’ve decided to show more pictures to demonstrate all the equipment we have there.

I took these pictures last Friday morning between 5-40 and 6-10. At that time of the day there is nobody except me over there :). Now as the summer rolls into its second half, the sunrise is later and later every day, which affects the early raisers like myself.
I am up before 5 AM every day, and most of the year, I head to the Anytime Fitness facility right away. But during summer months I try to do as much outdoors, as possible, and this new gym equipment was exactly what I needed. Now and probably for another week or two, I will only go to ATF if there will be raining. Otherwise, I start at my home gym, and in about 30-40 minutes, I walk to this outdoor gym and exercise there for another 20 minutes. I love the fact that I can work out when the sun is rising.

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I Can’t Even Call It A Salad…

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

I’ve chosen some vegetables from the last CSA delivery, sliced them and arranged on the plate.

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Ingredients: baby spring mix, zucchini, cucumber and radishes with tzatziki sauce

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Watching The “Music Man”

On Saturday, I was at Goodman’s performance of the “Music Man.” I have a “Whenever Goodman” subscription, which means that I could choose which shows I will be attending, and how many tickets I will allocate for each. I knew that the last play of the season would be the “Music Man,” so I’ve saved the last four tickets for it, not even knowing whom I will invite.

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A Couple Of Words About Myself And Biking

Unlike all normal people, I didn’t learn to bike when I was a child. Taking off the training wheels didn’t work with me, and my mom didn’t consider this skill a priority. Later, some of my friends made attempts to teach me, and I remember at least two of those. Both ended up with no success, and I was pronounced unfit for biking. I was of the same opinion on this subject; you might not believe me, but I was sure that there are two things I will never learn: to ride a bike and to take pictures. Go figure :).

When we’ve moved to the US, Boris taught all my children how to ride a bike (actually, Anna might have mastered it while still in Russia, but I can’t remember now). And then he started to teach me :). I was so afraid to start this process one more time that he suggested I use Anna’s 12-inch bike first, and I did.

Twenty years later, I can’t imagine my life without biking. In fact, during my after-surgery period, biking was the thing I’ve missed most. Since I am a very social person, I joined the Palatine Bike Club and started to participate in various bike rides in the community.

Although the Palatine Bike Club has been active for a while, until recently, Palatine was not the most bike-friendly community. Things started to change in the last couple of years, and although we are still far from Madison, WI in terms of being bike-friendly, what we have now (bike lanes, bike racks) is a huge improvement. Although I am keeping telling everybody, what we should be more like Madison 🙂

About The Biking Event, And How I broke My Bike And Fixed It

On Saturday morning we had a first Palatine Community bike ride, with the Mayor and Village officials present. Although it was extremely hot, there was no question for me, whether to show up or not. Taking the weather into account, the participation was great. The police (both the cars and bikers) were escorting our cavalcade through the whole ride and would hold the traffic when we were crossing the Northwest Highway. It was a real community event, with many people participating for the first time.

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Cooked: Survival By ZIP Code

In these super-hot July days, when the temperature climbs to the 100s, I’ve attended the screening of the documentary Cooked: Survival By The ZIP Code. I watched it on Monday, unfortunately almost the only screening without any public discussion as a follow-up. That was my only option to see it, and I am happy I went, but boy, how much you want to discuss this movie after the final acknowledgments appear on the screen!

From the Siskel center website:

Inspired by Eric Klineberg’s book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Helfand (BLUE VINYL) takes a hard, personal, and often quirky look at the inequity of natural disaster, beginning with her family’s own experience of Hurricane Sandy. She ultimately zeroes in on Chicago’s shockingly inadequate response to the deadly July 1995 heatwave, during which the city morgue overflowed with the sudden deaths of 726 citizens, largely the elderly and people of color from the city’s impoverished South and West Side. This audacious look at natural disaster American-style starts with the stark premise that a zip code can be an accurate predictor of life or death when nature unleashes its worst. With increasing frequency and force, climate change sets the agenda for hurricanes, floods, heat waves, and such, but systemic neglect, deep poverty, and political expediency have already drawn the line between the survivors and the doomed, even before disaster strikes.

Cooked: Survival by Zip Code (2018) | Official Trailer from Kartemquin Films on Vimeo.

I do not even know how to describe this movie. It could very well become trivial – who does not talk about the predominantly black impoverished neighborhoods. Yet the evidence is striking. The footage of the news coverage back from 1995. Mayor Daley statement: “That’s why we love Chicago.” The refrigerator trucks storing the bodies awaiting autopsy outside the city hospitals. The life expectancy numbers – sixteen years difference between the North and the South.

The director takes a broader approach and poses very pointed questions to the officials: why we can’t address the issue preventively, before a disaster strikes? She also links the heatwave casualties with the overall state of the neighborhoods: the absence of affordable health care, inability to pay electric bills, the food deserts. If fact, one of the most striking episodes is the one in the mobile grocery store when the workers on the bus are trying to convince a teen to eat an apple – for the first time in his life!

The movie calls for action, and I can’t imagine anybody dismissing it’ s message.

About The Play I Saw Today

I like the Silk Road Rising theater a lot. I’ve been coming to their performances almost since they were founded, and I find most of the plays they stage quite exciting. When I’ve received their newsletter where they announced the short festival of the staged readings of the plays from the former Soviet Middle Asia republics, I immediately started to contemplate, who I can see them all.

This plan appeared to be impossible, for a simple reason that I have other things to do as well, but I still wanted to see some of them. So today Igor and I went to see “Uzbek, ” and I am keeping thinking about what I saw.

It is a great play, and in my opinion, it touches the topics which are very relevant to Russian society these days. However, both Igor and I feel that there was not enough context for the part of the audience, which is not very familiar with the subject of the play.

During the after-show conversation, one of the Russian playwriters said, that this play is supposed to be “hilarious,” which is true, but only if one can understand the cultural references, can figure out, which statements are an exaggeration, which are sarcastic and which are satirical. And if you have no idea, how things look in reality, you can’t appreciate the author’s reference points. For example, if you are unfamiliar with the ways of Russian bureaucracy, you can’t see the point of comparing it to the Uzbek bureaucracy. If you do not know anything about different socioeconomic groups in nowadays Russia, you can’t detect the origin of the person by listening to his alternated speech.

Now that I’ve thought about this play for some time, I do not think that all the jokes are so funny, even if (or precisely because of that) you know the context.

Several people talked to us after this conversation was over, and they were saying that they were going to ask the same context question and that they agree with me.

The reason why I react at this with such a fuss is that that’s precisely how the myths are being born, and precisely the reason I am so articulate in my posts about the Soviet and Russian history, describing all ifs and why.

Sometimes Russian actors, singers, and playwriters are going on the international tours to cater exclusively to the immigrant audience, and there is nothing wrong about it if that’s all they plan. However, I think this specific play can potentially bring a lot of value in the understanding of the current situation in Russia by the America audience if accompanied by more details about the setup and cultural and historical context.