Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

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 – 

Home Movies from 1970s, Part 1

In 1971 my Mom bought a movie camera and started making home movies. We both enjoyed the process a lot. She soon acquired a magnetic board with letters, and we began to add captions to the films.

I do not remember what happened to the movie projector, but it disappeared a long time ago, and I was wondering whether I will ever be able to watch these movies again. Fortunately, nowadays, many companies can digitize your old movies, and several years ago, I sent the first two reels to convert them to mp4. I liked the result, and now that Mom brought several more back, I finally sent them to the same company, and I liked the results even more. 

Today, I am posting the first reel, which covers the time from early spring early summer 1971.

Apparently, if I spent enough time, I should be able to add captions to this movie, but I do not have time neither now, nor in the next several years, so let me just briefly mention what it is about.

The title says “Lialia’s school break.” Lialia was my nickname, and a break was a spring break in the first grade.  Everything was filmed in Saint-Petersburg (back then – Leningrad) and near suburbs.

By episode:

  1. I play with a big doll, which could “walk,” when you hold her by the hand. Her name was Walking Nina.
  2. I am walking around in the city center, close to the Church on Blood, not restored yet back then.
  3. In the Zoo
  4. In the courtyard of my home, playing “classes” on the asphalt.
  5. A canary named Solka. That was an amazing story – one cold November night, he flew inside our apartment when my aunt opened a window leaf for a minute. We tried to find out whether he was a runaway but didn’t succeed. Then we had to buy a cage and some books about canary care:).
  6. Waking at the Strelka – the edge of Vassilievski Island, then on the roof of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, and then inside the fortress. Then I take a camera and record Mom.
  7. At Strelna, a near suburb. We are there with Mom and Grandpa Fedia, and it’s hilarious how he is trying to help me to climb on a tree, and then helps me to get off, and this all happens three times in a row.
  8. Walking along the Neva River, and then taking a trip on a small boat
  9. In the Alexandrovskiy Park, close to the St. Isaac Cathedral, and by the river again.
  10. Later in spring. Since we see balloons, it should be May 1 or May 2 – we didn’t have balloons on regular days, only for big holidays, and May Day was one of the occasions when kids got balloons. Mom is filming, and I am there together with Mom’s friend Alla and her twin daughters Sveta and Lera. They were three or four years older than me. As a prank, we attach our balloons to the teeth of one of the Griffons on the Neva embankment. 
  11. All of us are back to my house, and we play with a collie puppy in the courtyard (he is not my dog, somebody else’s).
  12. Later in spring, probably mid – May. Mom and I are in Central Recreational Park. First, everybody is casing a squirrel – they are unseen in the city. 
  13. Then – intensive rope-jumping:)
  14. We are visiting an exhibit, which is called “Made in Poland.”

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.

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” →

Attending the University: Math-Mech Days

What else were we doing as students except for the studies? There were not many sports. Actually, among nerds it was not cool to do any sports, it was a strong presumption, that only people who can’t use their brain for anything productive, do sports. And the only sport I remember somebody was doing was our gymnastics team. If there were any other, they wouldn’t have any visibility.


There were obligatory political activities. There ere mathematical clubs in schools, which were called YMSCH – Youth Mathematical Schools. They were clubs, after-school activities, but we called them “schools.” And I will write about them at some point.


One of the highlights of student’s life was the Math-Mech Day. I can’t recall now, what was the way of choosing a date for it, but it was some time in spring, far enough from the finals. Later, it was transformed into the Math-Mech Week with different activities every day. But back then, it was not even a day, but just a performance – a student play, written, staged and performed by students, undergrads, grads and postgrads. That was probably the only one informal gathering I can recall from the Soviet era, definitely the only one in the University.

Continue reading “Attending the University: Math-Mech Days” →

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.