Burlaki [back] on the Hudson

Don’t tell my younger daughter, but I am awfully late with what she surely expects will be my gift to her on her next birthday. Given that the similar enterprise for the benefit of her older sister six years ago took me roughly nine months to finish, I shouldn’t have waited until March to start something that I need to complete in June.

One thing works for me: I do not have to digitize hundreds of hours of 8mm video recordings this time around. Also, I now have a considerably more powerful hardware than I had then. And I am undoubtedly more skillful with the various media software. On the other hand, I haven’t done much movie-making since before our England years; I could be rusty, for all I know.

My activity log so far has a couple of hours for photo prep and about the same amount for introductory slideshow. I expect the total time to be in the vicinity of 150 hours. I better get on with that.

Chronicles

The children and I went to see Alice in Wonderland on Sunday. We are all big aficionados of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece, and anything coming out in 3D these days has a strong attraction for us anyway.

We weren’t disappointed. The 3D experience is quite rewarding, special effects and amalgamation of live action and CGI continues to amaze, Johnny Depp is brilliant, other members of the cast were all quite good, Tim Burton’s take on the familiar story is appropriately dark and hilarious by turns. Kimmy, who is normally easily scared by on-screen monsters and startling action cuts, did not find the proceedings too scary.

My only problem was with Mad Hatter falling into Scottish accent during his rants. It must have been too long since I left UK – I had a bit of trouble deciphering his speech. Becky, on the other hand, had no such problem.

A solid on my scale.

Chronicles

Spent a few days in Chicago on business. The schedule was fairly packed, but I managed to squeeze in an evening with the little brother and his family. Did not manage to find much time for idle city-seeing, although I did try to take different routes between the hotel and the office, as I aways do.

From a point of view of an architecture lover, Chicago must be one of the most impressive American cities. All over the Loop, there are gorgeous examples of a wide variety of architectural styles. The concept of uniformity was seemingly paid no heed whatsoever when Chicago was built up in 19th-20th centuries, so there are literally no two like buildings in any proximity of one another. On a bright, sunny day, even the heart of the city’s concrete jungle is rather pleasing to the eye.

I’ve been to Chicago quite a few times in the past, and yet I never knew that many streets in its Downtown area exist on two levels, with the lower level providing a quicker driving route between various points; much fewer cars use those lower streets. When you walk around Chicago on foot, you may never realize that a wide thoroughfare such as North Michigan Ave is, in fact, an elevated roadway, with the ground-level street directly underneath it. When a taxicab suddenly took me along the lower-level route, I was stunned by the discovery.

I also feel like I should have been familiar with that before.

Having had been a comparatively frequent business traveler prior to the family move to England, I have not been on a business trip for nearly three years. The shaving cream can felt victim to my lack of recent exposure to traveling without checked-in luggage. It was a large container, well above the 100g limit allowed in the carry-on these days. The TSA agent looked at me with barely concealed disdain and my pride took a serious hit for being publicly nailed in an attempt to break the law, however inadvertently, especially as I was unable to conceal my incredulity and duly attracted the attention of everyone behind me in the security check line. It all makes sense, I suppose: Idiotic rules make you feel like an idiot.

On the other hand, I consoled myself, at least I can hope that a truly dangerous object would not escape TSA folks’ scrutiny, seeing how successful they were in preventing various bottles, cans and containers to accompany their hapless owners. My shaving cream joined a pile of at least 50 similar objects…

Chronicles, Travel

A junk-mail envelope felt to touch as if it had some sort of a card inside, and my curiosity took upper hand. As it turned out, a run-of-the-mill “invitation” was accompanied by the following:
 

 
How do I end up on their mailing list, I’d like to know!?

Chronicles

The best snow-blower is four guys with snow shovels.

20 minutes, 40 bucks, and I have not had even to step out of the house.

I don’t know why they did not show up and offer their services after previous snowfalls, but I sure hope they’ll be showing up the next time.

Chronicles

The second big storm of the winter – and just like the last time, northern parts of the Tri-State metropolitan area got no snow to speak of, while we got over a foot and parts to the south of us even more than that.

Is geography broken? Shouldn’t it be colder and more snowy as you move towards the North Pole rather than in the opposite direction?

Chronicles

I have been wounding down this recurring feature on my blog, for lack of material. Unless I get a sudden flashback to some remarkable piece, I can no longer think of a non-Russian song or performer that holds a special place in my memories. And I do not feel much enthusiasm for pulling in Russian songs into the series. I guess about 50 entries in a feature is a pretty good run.

For a finale, though, I will use a Russian exhibit. Not a song, though, but rather the theme from one of my favorite old Soviet movies. As far as melodies go, this one is undoubtedly my most favorite melody of all time, bar none. I can’t exactly explain why but I literally get goose bumps when it reaches crescendo somewhere around two minutes in.
 

Chronicles

Both of the teams I was rooting for lost in conference championship games on Sunday. The Jets were exposed as a lower-class team with mostly toothless offense and only occasionally stingy defense. The Vikings turned the ball over four times and yet had the game for the taking with 2:29 remaining in the fourth quarter. Except, my erstwhile most favorite football player – on his second consecutive one-year un-retirement – single-handedly gave it up with yet another turnover, followed by the overtime in which he did not get a chance to touch the ball. NFL overtime rules are beyond stupid, a questionable officiating decision helped the Saints on their winning drive, but the bottom line is, as I was sitting on the couch repeating to myself “Protect the ball, get into the field goal range” at the end of the regulation, Favre managed the latter, and then screwed up with the former.

The Superbowl now holds decidedly limited interest for me: Not having seen it on the American TV for several years, I’m curious as to the commercials aspect of it. Colts in a shootout, anyway.

In other news, Cablevision and Scripps Networks have resolved their dispute regarding Food Network and HGTV, and both are back on air. Since these two channels constitute roughly 80% of Natasha’s choice of viewing, she is now back in contention for TV-watching time.

And on an entirely unrelated note, my corporate overlords recently decided to block access to a variety of blogging sites. Stand-alone domains such as mine are still accessible, but services such as Blogger are not anymore. I can still use my RSS aggregator for reading, but my ability to click through has been curtailed, which means however little I commented in the past, there will be even less of that going forward. And it goes almost without saying that I practically never spend time on blog-reading when at home. If they block RSS sites as well, I might drop out of the blogosphere altogether. Advance apologies to all of my pen friends.

Chronicles, Sports

I took a few days off blogging after New Year’s, mostly on account of being busy with various friendly get-together engagements. There have been only a couple of days in the last week and a half that we did not spend in company of good friends.

Which is, as I have been repeatedly pointing out lately, the main reason for our recent repatriation.

I actually spent last week in December on vacation; I had exactly 4 vacation days left for 2009, and my corporate overlords do not look favorably on carrying those over into the new year. This was the first vacation in years that I spent entirely at home (driving trips to various corners of New Jersey and New York notwithstanding). A novel experience, without a doubt. Turned out not that bad, with all those social events.

We greeted 2010 with a traditional party at our close friends’ house, with a nice meal, plenty of karaoke and lots of general silliness. After getting a few hours of sleep on the morning of the 1st, we came back for breakfast, but even that failed to clear considerable amounts of food prepared for the occasion. I had trouble buttoning the pants around my waist this morning as I was dressing for work…

We went comparatively light on the presents this year, but the kids each got at least one thing that they most wanted, and I managed to very pleasantly surprise my wife with what I bought her. That does not happen often. Practically never. I am a notoriously inept present-picker.

One of the things we bought as a “family present” was Wii, which marks the first time that there is a gaming system in our household (beyond various handheld devices). Kimmy immediately occupied herself with hours of playing Wii Fit. I tried a bit as well, and even set a goal to lose a few pounds. Didn’t help with the pants this morning, of course, after only a couple of sessions. This would be my 497th attempt at regular exercise, light as it is. None of the previous ones ended in success. At least, here I can combine exercising with playing with Kimmy. Two incentives for the price of one!

Back in office for the first time in 11 days – and it’s as if the holidays and the vacation did not happen. Fun, fun, fun!

Chronicles

A few days ago, Natasha found a couple of small items that we thought were lost during the relocation move, stuffed into a decorative box that we did not think had anything inside. A souvenir small Russian wooden bowl, one of the hedgehogs from Becky’s collection, that type of stuff. We sort of gave up on finding them already, and they weren’t either expensive or otherwise too important to us to claim damages from the relocation company, and as it turns out, they were in the house all the time anyway.

With that, we are happy to conclude that we cannot think of anything that was broken, damaged or altogether lost during our relocation from the UK. I think most of the corporate relocations end up with fairly minimal losses, but our return experience must have been accompanied by exceptional luck.

Too bad I did not think of channeling that luck into winning a lottery or something.

Chronicles

 
How I hate snow! How I miss London weather! (Although they say that it’s been quite heavily snowing in London as well these past several days.)

Above is the view from our porch this morning.

Two feet of snow – admittedly, not as much as what people in Alaska or elsewhere have to deal with, but still way too much for my liking.

My driveway is about 20 yards long and 8 yards wide. That’s roughly 1500 square feet. Or 3000 cubic feet of snow that I had to shovel this morning.

Yes, shovel. Because the surface of my driveway looks too delicately fancy and the friendly neighbor advised me against borrowing his snowblower. At least, he himself cleared a quadrant of the street in front of the house, so when the snowplow comes – if it comes – it will not pile up too much again.

Two and a half hours of healthy exercise… Brilliant sunny day… Kimmy in snowy heaven playing outside with neighbor kids…

I hate snow.

Chronicles

I’m walking towards my bus stop one morning, maybe four minutes into my fifteen-minute walk. It’s a crisp clear morning, so I don’t particularly mind the walk.

A car pulls up next to me, the driver rolls down his window and asks: “Are you going to the bus stop? Can I give you a lift?”

Just like that, I am chauffeured to the bus by a heretofore unfamiliar neighbor (whose house is far enough from ours so we shouldn’t be bumping into each other too often).

I am slightly embarrassed to admit that when I am in a car on my own, it never occurs to me to offer a ride in my car to strangers. These Americans sometimes surprise me to no end.

Chronicles

One thing that we missed in our years in England was costume parties that our group of friends holds a couple of times a year. Upon our return, we are finally able to participate in that good fun again.

This fall’s party was styled after some Japanese fertility festival (豊年祭, pronounced something like Ho-nan Ma-tsu-ri). If you Google using those three characters, you will undoubtedly come across pictures of the phallic centerpiece of the proceedings in the land of the Rising Sun. Despite such undertones, the costumes at our party were primarily after common Japanese themes: several geishas, a few samurai, a ninja or two, a couple of sumo wrestlers… A few costumes were truly inventive and spectacular, such as an overgrown Bonsai tree or an Origami (made entirely of paper, by the way).

Our personal approach to party costumes is low-cost/effort first. Yet, as anyone would, we prefer to exhibit some originality. Right from the beginning, I had a brilliant idea of dressing up as some anime characters – none of my friends have more than a passing idea of what anime is, so we were guaranteed to stand out from the crowd. The problem is, I myself have a little more than passing idea about it. However, I do have a teenage child who is quite familiar with whatever anime offerings there exist on American TV. So, we enlisted Becky as an advisor and she suggested that we go as Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask from the Sailor Moon franchise.

Natasha scoured our wardrobes for appropriate attributes, borrowed some stuff from friends, hand-made a couple of accessories, etc. We simplified some elements, but ended up with sufficient resemblance.
 

  

 
We were unique. Of course, no one at the party had the slightest idea of who we were, but that mattered little…

Chronicles, Pictures

From the “useless trivia about me” department: I always typed with just three fingers. Middle and index fingers of my right hand and index finger of my left – more than sufficient for yours truly. Thumbs for spacebar and some limited use for the other middle finger, otherwise.

I am reasonably fast at that, too. The downside is, obviously, not looking at the screen while typing, so if, for instance, I happened to have a russificator on at an inopportune moment, I might type a whole line of gibberish before noticing that I needed to switch. Interestingly, I’ve never been making too many typos, so well I mastered the three-finger technique.

But, in a fit of restlessness, I decided to challenge myself and to finally learn how to type blind. I am happy to announce that this little post has been typed up entirely blind. Which only took me roughly five times as long as it normally would.

Don’t expect much in the coming days, in other words.

Chronicles

Finally, a Halloween to my kids’ liking. As I mentioned on a few occasions in the past years (for instance, here), the girls did not get to enjoy much of the Halloween in England. Back in the States, it is all different.

Houses decorated in dozens inventive ways, with whole Christmas-like moving displays and blow-up statues. Parties of kids dressed in all different types of costumes prowling the streets on trick-or-treating quests. I am decidedly indifferent to this type of festivities, but I can clearly see how children might like it.

We did not do much in terms of decorations, beyond a couple of finely carved jack’o'lanterns. We had our fair share of visitors looking for treats, although I suspect our tucked-into-a-corner location reduced the traffic a bit. My girls, of course, had costumes to wear and went on several trick-or-treating expeditions, with different groups of friends.

I suppose this is one of the big reasons they wanted to come back to America.
 

Chronicles

It did not take me long to realize that if I sleep for 15 minutes longer in the morning, but then wake up Natasha to drive me to the bus, instead of walking, I’d be catching the same bus while shortening my door-to-door commute. The weather of the last couple of days makes it an easy decision. Natasha has so far held her displeasure in check…

Of course, it did not take me any longer to realize that if I sleep for 45 minutes longer in the morning, the only side effect of that is getting into the office about half an hour later than before (which is still before 9am). The first time was a case of accidental oversleeping. This morning, I did it on purpose. Given how well I’ve been sleeping lately, I might make it a norm…

Our social calendar has been so congested the last few weeks and for the foreseeable future, that we can no longer pride ourselves on being always ready to get together with friends on a short notice. Between various birthday and celebrations, serial housewarmings and planned outings, we suddenly find ourselves having to plan simple meet-ups weeks in advance. Must be a function of immersion back into our old social circle again – we want to see too many people and do too many things simultaneously…

The calendar includes a couple of road trips to see friends who do not live too close to us, by the way. That’ll be our “travel allowance” for the time being.

I found out that Cablevision Optimum DVR only holds 40 hours of recordings, which means that I cannot keep a large number of movies in the queue for indefinite period of time, similarly to my ways back in England. Given that I only found time to watch one single movie in the last few weeks, the approach of hoarding recordings for the future is out of the window. We might need to consider re-subscribing to a movies-by-mail club…

Whatever little free time I have this weekend will be spent configuring my new home PC and possibly struggling with its putative distance from the wireless router. That should be fun.

Chronicles

Combining an outdoor outing with an important staple of our newly-congested social calendar, we went this weekend to the semi-annual КСП festival.

КСП, as I once mentioned, is loosely translated into English as Author-performed Song Club. It is a cultural tradition widely spread amongst ex-Soviet intelligentsia: Gathering together around a table – or better yet, a gently-crackling fire, – for the primary purpose of singing under guitar accompaniment.

We went in the past and obviously could not pass up the first opportunity to go upon our return to the States. The event is held in Pennsylvania mountains, on a wooded campground. The weekend was spent on singing, complemented heavily by eating and drinking, with the requisite sleeping in a tent, however little time for that was left after all of the festivities.

There are always a number of organized concerts, featuring both local performers and occasional well-known guest bards from Russia and various diasporas. There are spontaneous performances at whatever sites on the grounds happen to host the most active guests. People often migrate between sites, stopping in to listen to whoever is singing at the moment, picking up a morsel of food or a cup of hot wine, and staying for as long as they desire before moving on to the next site. Some are lazier, preferring to spend the time mainly at their own site, in the company of friends, singing to their heart’s content.

Kids are free to spend the time as they please; younger ones go to the playground, older ones tend to gravitate towards teenage-centric locations. Becky and Kimmy both sang in the kids’ concert, but other than that, they spent time with friends their own age, both old and new.

Friday night was rainy, Saturday night was pretty cold (cold enough that when we finally went to sleep around 4am, we had to keep on several layers of clothing even inside sleeping bags), but we still had fantastic time overall.

I had another opportunity to recognize my grave shortcomings as a guitar-player, compared with all of the virtuosos I saw and heard around the camp. Which did not preclude me from taking a singing lead whenever I had a chance. It’s a good thing I don’t have any meetings in my diary today – my voice is rather hoarse from all the singing and imbibing…

Chronicles

High winds in New Jersey.

A big branch split off a tree at the edge of our front lawn.

Natasha always had a lumberjack fantasy.

Not what you thought!
 

 

 
By the time I came home, she already talked a neighbor into taking a chainsaw to the thickest parts… The lawn is clean, but we have a pile of chopped wood and branches by the curb. Hopefully, the township will pick it up.

Ah, the joys of homeownership…

P.S. [next day] It suddenly occurred to me that if we dumped a chopped-up fallen tree by the curb in front of a house in England, it would block the entire street. In front of our house in New Jersey, it just looks like a weird little Halloween decoration.

Chronicles, Pictures

We have a nice pond with a little waterfall and fish in the garden.
 

 
It caused us quite a lot of pain in the run up to closing the house purchase. We’ve been given several versions of the events by various sources, and were finally able to piece it all together.

The previous owners of the house liked that pond very much. They installed it over 15 years ago, with appropriate permits from the township, and enjoyed the sound of gently cascading water and the pleasing ambiance of having it in the garden. Adding to the charm, a bunch of koi fish lived in the pond.

Then, a few years ago, the owners decided to add frogs to the mix.

Yep. They figured that the sound of a dozen croaking frogs is exactly what’s been missing from the picture.

And the frogs croaked. Or barked, given that this species of amphibians is known as “barking frog”. The owners loved it.

The neighbors, however, were not happy at all. Their much younger children could not fall asleep under the constant accompaniment of frogs. I am not sure how many times, if at all, they asked our sellers to get rid of the frogs, but eventually they complained to the township. I fully understand their desperation.

The township couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything about the frogs directly, but it suddenly “realized” that the pond was built on top of a utility easement. Which is a serious no-no.

The sellers did remove the frogs eventually. Or the frogs died out, I am not sure. But when the owners applied for a Certificate of Occupancy in order to sell the house to us, the township refused to issue one unless the pond was altogether removed, correcting the issue with the easement. For practical and impractical reasons, nobody wanted to do that. The sellers’ attorney engaged in negotiations with the township, which yielded the following result: The CO was issued in exchange for us signing a document that granted us a revocable license from the township to use the koi pond – and nothing else – on this particular easement. The township has the right to demand that we remove the pond from the property at our sole expense, but nobody seems to think that this will ever happen. (Whether this will become an issue when we decide to sell the place is a point of concern, but I’m not willing to lose sleep over it for the next ten years or so.)

These negotiations ended up pushing the entire process back by a week, which sounds like an unremarkable inconvenience until you factor in all of the other inconveniences related to being in between houses.

On the plus side, we have a beautiful pond.

A couple of days after we moved in, the landscaper who worked on our new garden for the last however-many years paid us a visit to introduce himself and to offer his continuous services. Our neighbors saw him and almost had a heart attack. They inferred from his visit that we would be getting the frogs as well.

We assured them that we have no interest in that. I can’t say that I much enjoy any night-time noises. The chirping of crickets, at least, largely becomes white noise after a while…

Chronicles, Pictures

An unexpected hold-over from my days on British Isles – I don’t use a car on my commute. We now live only about a mile away from the nearest commuter bus stop. So I walk.

My stop is one of the major ones on the same service that I used to take years ago when we first moved into the area. In the morning, I can get onto a waiting empty bus, and in the evening, I can catch express service with the first stop where I need to get off. There are also making-all-stops buses to be used as an alternative. Fairly convenient, reasonably frequent, does not take much longer than a train would, fares are cheaper than on the rail service. Plus, I don’t have to worry about parking.

Wake up at 6:15, get out of the door at 6:46, get on the waiting bus at 7:03. Same driver every day, with his priorities – to get customers to the destination as quickly as possible – firmly in order. In the office around 8:30-8:35. Two twenty-minute walks at each end of an hour-plus bus journey. Roughly the same commute duration that I always had while living in Jersey.

The walk on the “home” side is pleasant enough, along quiet leafy streets. There are uninterrupted sidewalks, but I am the only pedestrian on them most of the time. I pass people walking their dogs occasionally, and a group of girls of high-school age waiting for their school bus in the morning, but nobody else seems to be making a similar walk to the bus stop. No more than a dozen cars drive by those streets while I’m on my way.

In the evening, with minimal lighting coming from nearby houses and sparse street-lamps, the walk is a bit eerie… The other night, a guy came out of a house to check for something in his car parked near the sidewalk. He did not notice me until I was practically next to him. He was startled to a point of cowering and raising his hands as if to protect himself from an attack. Then he realized that I was just passing by. I said, “Sorry, man, I did not mean to startle you”. He laughed nervously, and sheepishly said something along the lines of “nobody walks here, ever”…

Natasha can drive me to the stop and get back home within a space of five minutes. There’s always that when the weather turns bad.

Chronicles