Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

New Year Celebration

For some reason, my company has January 3 off for January 1, not December 31, as in most companies. On the one hand, I am grateful I have one more day off tomorrow. On the other hand, it was challenging to get everything ready for a New Year celebration when you work on this day and are still new at the job, so things take time. 

I decided that I made enough salads in Milwaukee, and since only three of us are celebrating, I just made a nice three-course dinner. I had a lot of farmer’s vegetables, so I made borshch entirely from this fresh organic produce. I also had a chicken from my other CSA, and I roasted it (frantically searching on the web and combining three different recipes in one :)).

Borshch looks so festive in these plates, I should use them more often!

And I made an apple tart and a pumpkin pie as I had wanted for a long time. (For the record, the purpose of this post is to showcase these two pies :))

Cookies from friends from all over the world!

Usually, I am neutral about the New Year, but it was good that we celebrated (Igor and I went to the fireworks right after). 2021 was a very eventful year, more than I wanted, so it was a good idea to mark its ending with something a little bit more special than I usually do. 

My New Home Office

The first thing (literally) they told me before I even signed the offer letter was about the home office setup allowance. I could (and should have) spent $500 on the office furniture, and that’s not counting external monitors, cables, etc.

Boris told me I should get an adjustable desk. I told him (one more time) that I do not like working standing, but he said that the adjustable desk would be good for me. I asked Anna what she would get for the home office, and she was: Mom, get a standing desk! – Are you guys related or what?!

Then, there was a long story of choosing all of the components, and then they started to arrive separately! I was hoping that all the parts would arrive while Boris was still here, but this didn’t happen. The tabletop arrived after he left, and FedEx just dumped it on the grass by the front door. Thankfully, Anna and her family came a day later, and they carried the door to my apartment, but they had no time to assemble it. 

When Vlad visited unexpectedly, I was more than happy to see him, but my next thought was: oh, he is here for just a short while, he won’t be able to assemble a desk for me. And you know what? He and Dylon found the time to assemble the desk, install the monitor arm, disassemble the old desk, bring it (and all the packaging of the new desk) down, and put the old desk on Craig’s list! That was a real gift! Almost better than Nancy Pelosi candle 🙂

Economics Of Living In The City

I spent most of the day today talking to people over Skype and Facetime; I ended up with almost eight hours’ worth of talking! The only other thing I did was wrap up my ledgers for 2021, sup up the budget for 2022, and start my new financial excel file.

I am pretty happy with how my 2022 budget looks. I would never think it could be cheaper to live in the city than in the suburbs, but numbers do not lie. Of course, a big saving is living without a car – I never thought it was such a significant part of my budget. Also, mom’s place here is cheaper than in Palatine, and also – my house refinancing. Even with the current inflation, I have a cushion, so I hope that I will be able to repay my mortgage ahead of schedule and be done with it by the time I retire.

On a related topic: I always had higher energy bills in December, but I was never sure which portion of the electric bill was due to all the Christmas lights and which – to extra baking. Now that I have a gas stove, I know the answer: the electric bill barely changed, while the gas bill is three times higher than in November. So it all goes to the cookies!

Happy New Year!

I always wanted to see the city’s New Year fireworks, but it was challenging when I lived in Palatine, even when they had a couple of late-night trains. Going all that way for just fireworks is not worth the time. But now that I live in the city, I thought I had to ring the New Year in the very heart of it!
The fireworks were fired from the Riverwalk, all the way, in multiple places, which made them very convenient to watch.


The only problem was going back. If I only knew there wouldn’t be any trains for 45 minutes, I would suggest Igor walk half the way. But the Ventra app kept showing the next train coming in 14, 10, 8 minutes – and then flipping! Waiting indoors in the crowd of people when not all of them wore masks was not fun. Next year, I will know better!

The Night Ministry Health Outreach Bus In Action

More Home Movies

I just received the digitized versions of two more home movies. I will need to write in more detail about their contents, but I short: they were filmed by my mom in summer 1975 when we went on a railway cruise through Ukraine.

I will need to spend some time identifying all the places. The trip started in Kyiv, continued in Lviv, then there is should be some footage from different places in the Carpathian mountains, Chernovcy, and Odessa.

The quality of the footage is really bad, there was something stuck to the camera lense, but it is what it is.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs and what was before and after.

Lots Of Presents

What else about Christmas? There was a lot of cooking and a lot of washing dishes, as I already mentioned. And there were presents. 

Nadia spent a lot of time coloring the wooden ornaments, and then she packed them for different people. It was great to see that she already understands the joy of giving.

 

I was very happy with the presents I picked for my granddaughters. I got insider information from Anna that Nadia thinks that Baba will give her ice skates for Christmas. I was happy to follow up :).

Continue reading “Lots Of Presents” →

Christmas In Milwaukee

“On Christmas Eve in the morning” I tried to get out of the house quickly and prepared the breakfast tray the night before. And guess what – the sideboard broke, and my breakfast ended up on the floor, the fruits, and milk,,and everything mixed!
Boarding the Hiawatha Train
It was not on purpose!
Kitchen assignment: all Russian traditional salads
I love this picture, but the background situation was a non-working dishwasher, which created extra work with eleven people in the house to be very problematic, even with the single-use plates!
Continue reading “Christmas In Milwaukee” →

The story behind the mural that got painted in Austin, Chicago last summer

I ended up doing this article because, back in November, a week before Thanksgiving, I was taking the bus past the intersection of Chicago and Laramie avenues and noticed a large, bright mural on the building at the northeast corner intersection that definitely wasn’t there back in June. I noticed the name of the artist – the iconic Chicago muralist Rahmaan “Statik” Barnes – and tried to reach out to him. It took a few weeks to successfully pitch the things and get in touch with Barnes, but I filed the article December 9.

A very truncated version of the article was published in print, in the December 15 issue of Austin Weekly News, but, as of this writing, it never showed up online. Since I thought that the print version lost some pretty interesting parts, and since it doesn’t officially exist online in any form, I decided to post the article as submitted.

A bit of a side note. When I was trying to take a picture below, the group of Black teens who were hanging out nearby weren’t exactly happy to see a white guy with a camera. But when I persuaded them that I wasn’t there to photograph them, they offered me weed.

Continue reading “The story behind the mural that got painted in Austin, Chicago last summer” →

Last Days Before Christmas

On Wednesday, I took a half-day off, having plans to do my haircut in Palatine, visit my former neighbor, and meet with my other Palatine friend with whom we did the forest preserve volunteering.

First, my hairstylist texted me that she tested positive for COVID. I know that it can happen with anybody, but I felt that this was unfair to her because she was vaccinated and boosters, and she was always so careful! She got it light, thanks to the vaccine, but obviously, we had to cancel my appointment.

I thought – OK, I will have more time with my friends, and we even made an ambitious plan to go to the forest preserve, but you won’t believe it! The car got stuck on the tracks just to stations from Palatine, and we spent almost an hour not moving!


We still had a good conversation, but it felt very unfair once again!

On the bright side – I texted my hairstylist that I would mail her the cookies I would have given her in person. I had no expectations regarding their arrival time, but miraculously, the priority mail was delivered the next day, as if it was not the Christmas season.

I finished packing, helped mom assemble goody bags for all adults with whom we would celebrate Christmas. I also gave my neighbors cookies, did a couple of other last-minute things, and ended up going to bed after midnight for several days straight again.

Then’ we had very busy but beautiful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with Anna’s family, and now I am back, and I’ve been smiling non-stop for the past two days!

my neighborhood just before Christmas