little women and the facts of life

i'm reading little women now on dailylit.com, after several unsuccessful attempts to get started.  i'm enjoying it a bit, but not as much as i had hoped.  could this be due to the fact that instead of picturing winona ryder as jo, i am picturing nancy mckeon?

nostalgia

i'm eating my way through a bag of dates now.  it takes me back to burkina days, except these are less dry.  delicious!

teradata 12 masters exam

i took the teradata 12 masters comprehensive exam today.  it kicked my ass.  normally i take these tests and i am challenged and i say "i failed it!" but then deep inside i know i probably passed it.  today, i have none of that confidence.  it was HARD.

this is from the driving instruction course that i have to take for work (italics mine)

Beware of driving with residual alcohol in your system!

If you leave an excellent party late in the evening or even in the early morning hours, it is more than probable that there will still be alcohol circulating in your blood even after you wake up. In such cases, the only reasonable measure is to examine your capability before driving by means of a detection device (a classic "tube", a digital alcohol tester).

trip planning

we're trying to plan our trip to hong kong and vietnam now.  it's a bit crazy, because i know nothing.  in helsinki, i would always check the lonely planet books out from the library for pre-reading, but that's not an option here in prague.

Groceries

We are trying a grocery service. Not just any grocery service, but one that has local, organically grown stuff. Last night we got our first package. We ordered a pork roast, and a "seasonal box". The box was full of fruits and vegetables like apples, pears, and carrots. And some random stuff like walnuts. I guess we need to buy a nut cracker now.

Autumn path

This is where I get off my bus when I come home.

what i do at work

my friend barrett half-asked about my job, and i think this is a good description of it:

my company makes databases.  like oracle, which many people have heard of.  but bigger and better than oracle!  and more expensive!  it's for storing *huge* amounts of data.  our customers tend to be enormous soulless corporations (walmart, ebay, amazon, and glaxosmithkline are a few). and what i do is teach our people how it works (how data is stored and retrieved and loaded and how to set up user accounts and privileges).  so i'm teaching, like i did in peace corps, except the people i'm helping are the moneyed elite.  am i the 1%?  no.  but my job is to help our people help the 1% further separate themselves from the 99%.  

in short, i am an asshole.  but i really enjoy the day-to-day of my work -- it's interesting and fun and i make good money which i don't donate enough of to causes i believe in.

Happy Halloween!

We carved pumpkins at the day care Halloween party!

having company

yesterday i was trying to do a poo on the toilet and lumi brought her little friends in to "go" as well.  during my sit i was joined by kartsa (a teddy bear), ernie (from sesame street), and vauva (her doll).  lumi stuffed them in the space between me and the back of the toilet and made the "sss" sound so they would pee.  it was awkward.

losing weight

today i brought my lunch instead of trying to eat a low-carb version of the lunch they serve here in the training center.  i fully expect to be thin and pretty by tomorrow!

the marriage plot

my first book club book!
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

i didn't enjoy this nearly as much as i had hoped to. the characters weren't lovable, nor were they very interesting. and the name dropping of authors was annoying.

but the most annoying thing was the time frames. for example, they move to pilgrim lake the last weekend of august, and there is lots of discussion about how pilgrim lake is with the parties and fun people, and then it all changes after labor day. that can't have been more than a week. if you just moved, you probably are getting settled and that atmosphere wouldn't have affected your thoughts of how the place is.

[spoiler]
and then in the last scene, mitchell heads to the 7am quaker meeting on sunday in a small town, but somehow stops beforehand to buy deodorant. where is this 24-hour pharmacy in 1983?



View all my reviews

stress

another sign i am stressed is that i haven't made a poo in 3 days.

stress

i feel very stressed lately, and shocked kimmo this weekend when i blew up at him over something completely stupid.  it just feels like i'm stretched very thin.  i'm trying very hard to be good at my job, plus a good mother to lumi, plus feed us all with good food, plus meet friends, plus keep up to date on reading.  i would also like to be a good wife, but i am definitely not being that.  i feel like i'm using a lot of energy trying to be patient and kind at work and with lumi and no patience is left over for kimmo.  so when he questions something i do or forgets something crucial, i just snap.  i don't know what to do.  i have looked at all the 'important' things and tried to find something to scale back on, but i'm not finding it.  i'm already not exercising how i would like to.  we have been watching downloaded tv shows (like downton abbey!) in the evenings and though that is significant time, it also feels like it's a way for kimmo and i to be together quietly without losing patience with each other.  maybe that's what has to go. 

this speaking baby of mine

lumi's speech is getting more advanced.

yesterday she said to me "so?"

work

work seems to be going quite well this week.  i updated a course to teach a new subject, and then started a follow-up program to the main course i teach.

parents meeting

we had a meeting at the day care place last night.  they talked about the kids schedules, and the learning philosophies, etc.  they did it mostly in czech, with some english and german parts.  for the czech, we were assigned a translator (one of lumi's teachers).  it was good to see how the program in the school has developed since it was just lumi there and the 'program' was just hanging out with her.

there was an exciting discussion about the lunches.  the price is going up, partially because they underestimated last year, and partially because the catering company is raising its prices.  they use a child-friendly company with mostly organic food, but the price per day will be 125 crowns.  this is about 6 US dollars.  not a small amount!  currently we only pay around 40 crowns per day, because the smaller kids get a half-portion (although they say lumi eats *all* of that so i think that may change soon).

however, there was also a fun icebreaker where they put a pile of toys in the center of the room and each parent had to pick the toy that they thought their kid would most want to play with, then tell who their kid was, etc.  we got off easy, because lumi adores dolls so we just picked the doll.  but anyway it became kind of a feel-good we-love-villa-luna discussion, because parents talked about how happy their kid was there.  and when it was our turn i spoke about how it's been challenging this first year living here in the czech republic where neither kimmo nor i speak the language and there are all these new things to figure out plus a new job, but no matter what was going on it was wonderful to know that lumi was happy and we are 100% comfortable with the people who take care of her.  and i got a little trembly!  her teachers were quite touched, i think.  lumi is a favorite anyway because she was the first kid enrolled at the daycare and she is very sweet-natured and open to being loved, and also i think the teachers feel this mothering instinct even toward kimmo and me because we're just bumbling along in prague.

the other good news is that we tried a babysitter for the first time in many months.  we had been a bit traumatized about how much lumi seemed to hate the babysitter we tried last december.  but this was great!  lumi cried a little when she realized we were leaving without her, but she seemed to really like her.  

failure

once again i missed yoga last night.  but i'm dieting and i'm feeling better.  and i'm trying to do push ups and squats and planks at home, which feels good too.

TD 14 exams

i took a TD14 beta exam this morning.  it was just the Basics exam, and the time allotted was 4.5 hours!  i took about 2.5 hours.  it was looooong.

downton abbey

we are now in the second season of downton abbey and enjoying the hell out of it.

Back at the hostel

At the Teradata office in Prague, there is a big group (100+) of consultants that work as labor-on-demand. The group is called the GCC, or global consultant center. Whenever a project in EMEA needs extra people for something like ETL, they can get a couple of trained Teradata consultants relatively inexpensively through the GCC. So these people are based in Prague, but most of the time they are scattered around Europe.

However, they have an all-hands meeting about once a quarter. There is one today. And the office is crazy: people who are rarely here are trying to get caught up on housekeeping (expense reports, what have you) and also catch up socially with each other. It is close to impossible to get any regular work done, and they atmosphere is festive.

It occurred to me this morning that the effect is strikingly similar to when we had events in Ouagadougou when I was in Burkina. The Peace Corps office would be swarming, and even though you only had 'a couple of things' to do, so did everybody else, so it was challenging. And if you wanted a quiet place to read/work/whatever, you were SOL.

It's cleaner than Ouaga in the Teradata Prague office, but otherwise I am nursing some heavy nostalgia right now.

baking a cake

i'm baking a cake today for kimmo's mother's sister's birthday.  it's chocolate and i'm stoked.

mummu!

kimmo's mother (mummu to lumi) and her sister are arriving today in prague!  we're excited to see them and to show them around a bit.

banning gay 'therapy' in california

this is great news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19789505

hot yoga

last night i went to bikram yoga for the first time in many years.  there is a studio quite close to the office here in prague.  i feel really beat but terrific.  

i like the repetitive aspects of it -- every time you try to do the same poses but get better and stronger.  and though this is probably a direct result of the same-routine-every-time aspect, most of the instructors can give you really thorough guidance through each of the poses.  i need the constant reminders of how to correct my body, so i like it ("chin up! belly in! hips forward! thigh flexed! knee locked! weight on heels!").  

and i guess also i like being really really hot!  i'm going to try to go every week throughout the winter, and i know on very cold days the yoga room feels wonderful.

back from oktoberfest

we had a good time at oktoberfest, but i am not so eager to go again.  it was really challenging to get a beer on saturday!  we waited in a queue at one of the fest halls for almost 2 hours and then ended up going to a smaller hall for what turned out to be a nice meal and a cheaper beer.

anyway, it was wonderful to see the friends we met there, so it was worth it.