When I'm done with this exam...

I'll get a bucket of cobb salad, a box of sushi  and a bottle of wine and will drown myself in bath for half a day with all this and Semenova's Valkyrie.

2 am

and we're sitting outside on the patio.

After a musical with friends, followed by a relaxing walk in the downtown, peaking in at somebody's movie and game night out near 16th St. and having impromptu drinks and appetizers somewhere on Larimer sq.

And now we're outside on the patio, with armagnac, wine, cigar and only missing the telescope - by now we're feeling to lazy to carry it outside.
Listening to the 7th Symphony by Shostakovich on my phone, talking about our plans for future, and realizing that we will never get old.

Tough summer.

The  more I push back the more challenges life throws at me, the louder I yell "No pasaran!" in return - the less time I have.
Maybe all I need to do is really to just let it all go for a while?

On the bright side, I prioritized 2 part-time locations for... when the life begins. Now that I am sure of what I want, let's see what'll become of it.

The biggest challenge right now (and ever) is sustaining self-discipline. All I want to do now is to grab the marshmallow and run, accept one of those Account Manager positions and forget this year-long leap of faith ever happened. Thank God I'm stubborn.

Funny enough, dreamt of one of my old friends last night. An acquaintant of mine and I were travelling to Suisse and at one point I left her mountain skiing at night (!), and paid a visit to my friend. He was not home, so I decided to wait for him and after a while saw a little white board in the corridor where he had a list of things to do written down; among others: do that many sets of crunches or do that exercise that many times... I took a black marker and wrote: Drop 2-3 sizes and buy a corset.
And left his apartment.

Pelevin has a strange effect on me.

 Instead of  getting back to my 16-19 year old life period, playing it over and over again in my head and trying to find the errors and fixing them (mentally, or course, just in case they come up again as life lesson in the future :) )  - coming back to my 15 years, just before all that... ehm... adventure began.

And then again, of course - trying to go over the key events. But were there really so many key events that year, between 15 and 16?

Frescoes depicting my old life

 are fading, cracking, chipping and from time to time pieces of plaster are falling down.

5 minutes ago I felt a sudden urge to check what became of my old Swiss number. I wonder why this never occurred to me before. I dialed it to discover it now belongs to a British woman.

Thoughts of the week

1. I should have read "To kill a mockingbird" a long time ago. I planned to open this book years ago, and while I never had enough time to start reading it, or had something else on my priority read-list, there already was so much from this little girl in me, all these years... And I can't help feeling a bit jealous of having older wise people around you at such a young age, and having a smart older brother. Well, the latter is what I always wanted anyway!

2. I never had time in the past 3 weeks to go over my new phone manual and learn about all its great functions and blah-blah, but I did download Any.do app, and am really amazed at how great it is, being so simple, and how helpful it can be for just the daily tasks. I still wouldn't be able to do without my Moleskine week planner and my goal notebook, but the ability of vocally jotting down a though as it crosses my mind and before it's gone too far, or walking around the house and making a list of things to do or fix - once again all vocally! - is priceless to me now.
Keeps my head clear of junk. Helps simplify my life. That's all I ever needed.

Dehumanization

occurs when instead of "capital purchases" you read "capital punishments":
"Capital punishments are recorded as government-wide governmental capital assets" and without a single thought that the Modified Accrual Accounting just became a bit too cynical - you reflect for a couple of minutes on why they would not be classified as Expenditures instead.

I'm completing my daily re-writing of goals

and at the same time - thinking about how lucky I am to have in my life all those people I have. Or had. Look closely - and every person can teach you a lesson, set an example, motivate you or share enthusiasm and optimism when you're down.

Those who can not quite serve as a good example at this point :) - can still help determine the way you don't want to live your life and things you never want to do, push you to develop patience, acceptance and grow wiser. 

Watch your family, friends and foes - and learn from each one of them, borrow their experiences, examine their mistakes, use their passions and goals. The everyday social environment can contribute so much to enhanced learning, that it would be impossible to fully develop as a human being in social isolation. 

Oh, girly girliness...

About a year ago I showed up at Central City Opera wearing a black and white grand piano case, low heel open sandals, my travel purse - and was feeling a bit shocked to see the crowd that night wearing evening gowns and cocktail dresses, high heels, jackets and cute "theater-style" purses.

A year passed, Figaro was getting married, and today it was me catching up on dressing up,  in my green cocktail dress, matching high heels and purse, and - 90% of the rest of the public - showing up smart-casual at best.
Back to normal.

If I were to commence another experiment right now,

I would go about seeing how much I can accomplish in the next six month performing on just my anger, hatred and despair energy.

I do hope I could do a lot, for it looks like the experiment is already on.

Sometimes the brain needs to be restarted.
Whole body needs to be mobilized before another year long leap of faith.
Auxiliary decisions need to be made.

All I can say is that's I am happy to be thousands of miles from home and slowly float as a grain of sand in a stream of yummy and concentrated life.
Interestingly enough this country has anything I could only wish for to fill my 2 weeks with, and no signs in English - which is a bonus bliss.

Facebook as a great tool for

 evaluating people. 

This thought crossed my mind from time to time when I was glancing through the friends' updates, but I never bothered to find time and right words to put it down on pixels paper.

Facebook makes you defenselessly public. All the pictures, personal info, statuses and places updates you put in - crack open your mind to whoever sees it - scanning through your profile reveals your priorities, fears, weaknesses by how you want yourself to be perceived. That's nothing new.

But. Another way you reveal even more about yourself is your reaction to the way others want you to perceive them. Your pattern of thinking shows much better in the way you comment on others' pictures posted and updates than if those were carefully picked by you. "LIKE" is a great shortcut to find out who is either in line with certain values, or supports somebody with those values or is playing neutral on expressing their opinion.

And so, it is with mixed feelings that I note to myself that a person I thought of as smart and interesting, can actually "like"  his friendless's girls' night out drunk pictures, updates on 0.7 pound weight loss by another friendess, an ongoing romantic correspondence between a friend and his fiancee, and a status updates by rhetoric questions obviously determined to emphasize the friendess's high moral and feminist values as well as self-perceived high IQ.

Online social networks are simply online social networks. But they can save a great deal of time in evaluating a person with just a few quick Litmus tests. That is, if you do pay attention to shallow and superficial friends' activity - your are either not such a profound person I thought you were, or - you care enough about your shallow and superficial friends to know you support them.

Priceless if you are unsure about how close to keep a certain person; although does not work on those who have a deep and sophisticated plan behind every comment and "like" :)  

End of April...

My first Baby-shower organized for a friend with another friend. Since the pregnant friend had airplane theme registry, I decided to try do the baby shower in airplane mode. The funniest part was putting the plane diaper cake together with the second friend: apart from diapers, wash clothes and a baby bottle, it took a load of scotch tape, double-sided scotch tape, staples, bamboo skewers, a needle and thread and a button, cardboard, ribbon and lots of cursing. Thanks to Sis the plane made it to the baby shower with only one skewer fallen out )) and then people started arriving to the clubhouse with food and help with the preparations, so everything was completed on time. 

The most surprising thing was to see that the contest of making and flying the paper airplanes was so much fun for those who participated and watched. Sometimes the simplest solutions work best! 

Our first hike with Artie. Went well, although I did not notice the baby hike carrier have pairs of rings and a pair of hooks for adjusting the baby seat until almost a mile down the road. But once the seat was adjusted, Art was able to look around, started to jump and smile more and stopped losing his hat )) a hiking backpack/carrier, baby sunblock, diapers and spare set of clothing, bottle of water and a pouch of purée - and  the freedom of the outdoors is all yours again! 

I can't picture a family like ours living  a hundred years ago, and am very happy to live at the time we are living now: no need to slow down your life, no need to make dramatic adjustments or unreasonable sacrifices. Depending on what angle you are looking at things, of course, there's so much more that needs improvement and so much more that simply makes me roll my eyes,  but there's more to the hope that the evolution of the quality of our lives will continue.

Thought of the week: need to immediately start getting rid of people that slow me down. 

Three thoughts of the week

About the crowd.
If you're strong, stand out and are... well, somewhat an achiever by nature, there is a chance most of the people that stick around are there because they want to see you being you. They want to observe you make every step of your life, they want to see your start up all your substantial projects, they want to know how you keep yourself strong, happy, motivated. They are seeking inspiration, peace of mind, thoughts on how to get ahead in life, or even - what to do with their lives, and they want to get ideas and learn by watching you.
And here you are - a life example of how to put the pieces of puzzle together and make things work. You excelled and they simply want to know how to excel too.
Don't flatter yourself - these are not all your friends.
As, chances are, one day day one of your biggest fans who comments the most and cheers the loudest will say: "You know, you're cool and what you do is very cool, but honestly - I would fit your place so much better!"

And about the achievers.
I am looking for examples of people whose productivity was actually boosted by the need to help their families.
Live examples, of the people I know.
And can't find any.
I do see many examples of people dragged behind by their abusive and authoritative parents, troublemaker siblings, bratty kids, and - for those from former Communist countries :) - relatives  did believe earlier in their lives that "money is evil" and "the state government will take care of us" and are now in deep financial need.
I do want to see evidence that it is possible to use your potential to the fullest to live not only your own life, but step in the lives of someone close to you. Or better yet, exceed your potential.
I want to know it's possible to have zero female role models in the family, but 2 female alcoholics instead - and still become a Wonder Woman.
I will gladly believe you can have a sick spouse and can still build a career, and have time for hobbies and sports - but seeing is believing...

What I notice though - and it might only be relevant to my circles, who knows :) - is that  people who are most successful and happy tend to focus on their own lives and their own priorities ONLY.
And no, it's not just that.
They seem to have a totally different kind of family and friends: their siblings and kids are self-sufficient, their grandparents are in great health, their fathers respect and support them no matter what, their mothers are just like their best friends, their friends are well educated, adventurous and real "friends indeed".
Alright, I understand the concept of creating your own circle of friends and business connections, but how do you create a problemless family?! :)
And so I look at the people around me and it seems that you can be quite... mediocre and still get far ahead in life if no one drags you down. (Good news!).
And you can be brilliant and determined to help the near and dear to you, but even if that motivates you to work extra hard - you will probably find yourself not being able to get the most out of your resources for neither them nor yourself. ( Bad news!).
So, how do you solve this puzzle?

About resources.
Inspired by seeing a woman of my age jogging peacefully along a busy road at 8.05am on Monday morning with her long hair pulled carelessly in a pony tail.
How do you get ALL the resources you know you need?
If you need certain resources for your life's exponential growth and development - how do you ensure a supply of those resources in a constant proportion with your life's growth? :)

It's unbelievable - but it's a fact :)

I completed all task I had written down for last week. Every single one is crossed out and there are no rollovers. Never thought I'd see the day :)
... and of course by the end of this weekend 1/2 of upcoming week in my agenda is already full of more notes and tasks. Cleaned the house top to bottom. The new vacuum cleaner works magic :) The feeling of having my life clean, organized and under control is priceless and is my main booster of peace of mind now.

My 2nd booster of peace of mind is knowing the health situation of everyone is my family is getting somewhat more stable. No concerning issues with  back, thyroid, heart, eyes, stomach, pancreas and other.

And then there is my endorphin booster that crawls around at a cosmic speed babbling "bah-bah-bye-dah-dah-dye" and smiling at me :)

The biggest project of the next 12 months is finally starting to look less like "Torture..." and more like "Adventure!".