Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

Suspended Volunteering

Today, I received an email from our volunteers’ coordinator at the ODS saying that all volunteering will be suspended till the end of March. Those were excruciating news. Although, when I was at the ODS last time, which was just nine days ago, I thought that the activities might be suspended for some time, but I honestly thought it would be till mid-December at the most.

Now the activities are shut down for almost five months. And now I am thinking about every minute of last Tuesday, how it was usual: you want to go? – I do not want, but I need to. And now I think that I should have stayed longer, although I know that thirty minutes extra won’t make up for the five months ahead. 

I waved and waved, and I was saying: I will be back! I am not sure when, but I will be back. And now, for so many of the youth, it will be –  never. 

Rules and What’s Not

Mom is keeping asking me what is allowed and what is not allowed. She asked about me going/not going to the office since last week, about my volunteering, and pretty much about everything I am doing. 

Somehow it is hard for me to explain to her that even if something is not prohibited, it does not mean you should do it. I tried to cite what the governor said: if you do not have to do that – do NOT do that.

The same thing often happens when I talk to people from Russia. Quite often, it’s a question: are you allowed to do this and that? 

And it is hard for these people to process my answer: it is not forbidden, but you should use your best judgment. 

I meant to write about it for a while. It is such a small thing that each time I would stop and decide against writing about it… Now I did, and I am still not sure how to explain why such behavior bothers me. It’s simply that you can govern people through each and single step; they should be able to make their own decisions. If they do not understand why specific behavior is the right one, you can’t expect them to adopt such behavior. Just saying

Invisible Women: a Book Review

One more time, I am so behind in the book reviews that I can hardly remember what the last book I reviewed was. But consulting my Audible library, here are the three books I wanted to write about. 

The first on the list is Invisible Women Data Bias in a World Designed for Men A person who recommended it said that it’s a horror book. I thought that maybe it’s a horror for them, but I could hardly imagine that there can be something in the book about women’s unfair treatment that I do not know. And boy, how wrong I was!

When I checked the reviews, I saw that many readers shared the same sentiment, saying that they could not even think about the depth of prejudgement and that there are so many defaults they never thought of. 

I can relate to all these sentiments since I felt the same way. This book is about the data gaps which are present in nearly every research in virtually any field. Each chapter of this book is dedicated to one of the areas in which research routinely exclude or under-represent women: medical trails, interior design, government… The book introduces a “default male,” and I never realized how deeply this default male concept is enrooted in almost all assumptions I make. An eye-opening moment was when I realized that when I write or say “a user,” I picture a male! And that’s me, a fierce advocate of women’s equality in technology! 

If you want to know the depth of your own “default to male” presumption, I highly recommend this book! 

About the Past Several Days

These past several days were not the best days of my life. On Wednesday, we learned about the stay-at-home advisory, first for Chicago, and the next day – for Cook County. The case numbers raised alarmingly. A couple of days before that, we already discussed with Anna their most-likely-not-coming for Thanksgiving. And the question was not even about what officials were saying, but about the number of cases themselves. It is evident that the tough decisions had to be made, and it was so sad.

I do not doubt the necessity of all the measures; it’s just devastating that we need to go in this direction again.

On Wednesday evening, I went to do my nails; there was no call for the nail spas to close, but still, I was the only client at 5-30 PM.

On Thursday, I went to the office, primarily because I wanted to take home some food which I left there. Also, I wanted to do one more tour of the city before we part for a while again.
There will be no activities in the ODS, and our forest preserve volunteering is also postponed till mid-December.

It took me a while to go through all of these emotions. Plus, I was so preoccupied with these emotions that I could hardly be productive; meanwhile, the work which was not done continues to pile up.

I feel better now, and I finally put myself through all these, “yet another time.” Hope-hope-hope, it will be better, I mean, I will feel better:). It’s just so hard…

Pelmeni

Publish on Vlad’s request. Hope that the time will come and I will be able to add pictures to that post 🙂

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

As it turned out, I never recorded the pelmeni recipe in English, and a possible reason is that we didn’t make them in my house for years! Still, I am happy that Anna is making them at home on a more or less regular basis, and Vlad recently requested the recipe as well. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures, but I hope that “when the war will be over, ” we will get together and make five hundred of them, as in old times.

For now, here is a recipe.

Note. Pelmeni are usually counted in hundreds :); this recipe is supposed to be for one hundred, but in reality, it yields around 110-115 pelmeni.

Dough.

2 eggs,

1/2 cup of water

1 tbsp butter

1/2 tsp salt

flour – as much as it can take

Combine all the liquids and then add flour (it will be at…

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For Our Victory!

Tuesdays ended up being the last day for many things. It was the last day of this unusual stretch of warm weather, and the last day of dining out – the indoor dining is banned in Chicago for now, and I do not thing it will be realistic to sit outdoors in winter.

I met with Vlad to celebrate the elections victory – since Saturday, we were talking about drinking champaign :). And so we did it on Tuesday:

After work, I went to the ODS. That was the time, when we weather started turning to the cold sharply, with tornado warning, and the winds blowing crazy, and the thunderstorm, and the temperature dropping 40F in the course of three hours. We cooked dinner, and had great conversations. Afterwards, I talked to the volunteer coordinator, and we shared our mutual feeling that we might go on lockdown again, with the cases being so hight. So we decided not to make any further plans, until we know.

We are not on the lockdown formally, but the Illinois Department of Public Health asks everybody to stay at home for the next three weeks, which I am going to oblige. I am going to the office today, just to pick up food which I left in the fridge, and then, I guess, next time will be only after the Thanksgiving. It is very sad, but you know what – I can’t say that I am better than others, and the ask is not related to me. It’s for everybody.

When We Have Summer In November…

Seeing the city Christmas Tree being installed at +75F is… surreal 🙂

Weekend Baking

I want to complain about how I didn’t have time for the book writing this weekend, but I probably shouldn’t. After all, there were many other things which I did, although I didn’t have to do. this includes baking.

Although baking was in my weekend plans even before the election results were announced, I decided that it was in honor of our victory 🙂

I baked these two cakes:

Georgia Apple Cake

Orange Cake

The recipes are not super-complex, but both require a lot of time, especially the Apple cake which takes about four hours from start to finish (this includes three hours of wait :), but still)

Both cakes are delicious – i can’t even describe to what extent! You can’t stop till you are done 🙂

Christmas Card And Christmas Cookies

Whatever happens with the world, my Christmas cookies are here to stay:). This being said, it might be my 10th cookies giveaway campaign, but only the second one on the WP platform.

Here is it. First, I will be happy to exchange to Christmas cards with anybody in the world who would like to.

Second, I will be shipping my holiday cookies all over the world, as I’ve done for the past ten years.

  • First 10 requests from any country in the world, not including Canada
  • First five requests from Canada
  • Unlimited requests from the US not including Chicago and suburbs (I just have to know you, al least virtually:))
  • For Chicago and suburbs: unlimited pickup either at my house in Palatine or in Chicago Downtown on the week of December 14

Please send me a DM if interested 🙂

What Finland Has To Offer

My daughter sent me this link yesterday. She commented that one of her friends considered it as a backup plan if Trump would win. As for that statement, both she and I agree, that fleeing the country in difficult times is not right, and if Trump would win, we would stay here to fight.

But I also agree with her, that is is an example of excellent marketing, and moreover, both she and I know that it’s all true.

I am not saying I will never ever move to some other country; after all life proved I can’t ever make the “never” promises, but one thing I am sure about: I will never ever move somewhere for pure economic reasons. I like a lot of things in Finland, and I want many of them to happen in the United States, and I will work on making them happen here. At least now, there is ahope that some of thet will be possible:)