Bye-bye holidays

This was an amazing week with plenty of events that took place.

My Mysterious He (MMH) and I explored Moscow, took long walks and enjoyed this awesome weather! It's been over 20 degrees these last days. 

I have been cooking a lot, but didn't picture all the dishes: pizzas, rolls, fried and sauced veggies, baked donuts or cookies, greek salad with tofu, bulgur with veggies, all of them were vegan :) here some of them:

We visited several new places to eat out when walking. Even some English pub to watch hockey :)

Yesterday we went to the city in the morning and walked walked walked until got really tired. It was the 9th of May, the day of Victory in the WWII, which is a great event in Russia. 

We saw the parade of the military technique, immortal regiment (a really impressive and heart-breaking thing), concerts, entertainments. Moscow is nicely decorated this year ;)

 

And every year, on the 9th of May they give big fireworks all over Moscow. I wanted to take MMH to the place with panoramic view over Moscow, and we actually did this, but in the afternoon, but since we live in the 24th floor, we decided to watch fireworks at our balcony which turned out to be a great idea, because we barely saw all of them (the big ones and some in our district) - I counted 11 fireworks.

And now...I'm on my way to the office. Cannot express how sad I am about this. Almost cried when locked the door and left MMH behind. I refuse to believe that it's already the 10th of May and we have 18 days left...because MMH is coming back to Sweden...the 28th of May, the day when I probably will sank in my tears ))

But still, we have the time left, and we already planned something for the next weekend. It's my mum's birthday on Saturday, and we are invited, and on Sunday we are going to watch a real hockey match ! Sweden-Switzerland!:)the first real match in my life :) 

Hope, this working week will be nice and relaxed, and hope, today is gonna be a great day! 

Ciao! :)

May holidays

Why does the time that you really enjoy pass so fast?

These have been very nice holidays that I spent with My Mysterious Him (MMH) and my family. 

We have been walking the first day of May in the parks and boulevards of Moscow which are now beautifully decorated and seem to offer a lot of entertainments :) 

Yesterday, the second of May my family, MMH and I went to the ethnical park-museum, which I would consider comparing to  Swedish Skansen, but it's still kinda different thing. It's called "ethnomir". There are numbers of different pavilions dedicated to different themes and countries, entering each of them you may learn something about the culture, take part in a workshop and taste traditional food. There are animals, such as farm ones, husky dogs, birds. But there's a very big BUT in it. Entrance fee comprises only entrance. You have to pay for extra activities such as workshops. Like....you bought an iPhone, and all of the apps are paid. ALL. 

We didn't participate in any of those workshops, though still managed to spend nice time together just by having a look at everything. However, tried Brazilian coffee at Brazilian pavilion, and tasted a "churchkhela" which is a dessert originated from Georgia and quite popular in such countries as Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and south of Russia. This is a sausage-shaped candy made of nuts (almonds, walnuts, hazel nuts) dipped in thickened grape juice. This is what it looks like:

I also made my own vegan sandwiches :)

The most interesting part of this museum was the USSR pavilion that's located near the main entrance. So, barely speaking, it was not even the main area of the museum, just some building with shops and restaurants in the surrounding territory :)

Mtv just pimped my ride 

My little party didn't kill anybody

Mr.Lenin!

MMh is suffering seasonal pollen allergies that is why we were back home pretty early. Had a nice evening together :)

Today ....allergy has shown its worst and in addition MMH got sick. And the worst is that we found this out only when he came back home from the gym.

While bed and warm blanket were curing him, I did something around the house, cooked and baked. 

Now I'm heading home from the railway station where I saw my granny off. She's going to the Volga region, where she was born and has an appartment, friends and relatives. For a week. Brought her my patty-cakes that I baked today with rice and tofu :)

Now running home to take care of my poor MMH!

Hope, he'll get better soon! I know the best treatment, it's preserved in my heart! 

Ciao:)

2 braids Thursday

Hey 

Just wanted to share brand new hair trends of the season:

BRAIDS

Made them myself this morning to get my hair more fluffy and add some volume. It's curly naturally, and when the humidity is really at a high level, as it is today, I got one trick how to keep my hair straight - I just need to attempt to make it curly. And it shows straight the opposite :) and since My Mysterious Him (MMH) said he liked it, I decided to keep the braids. Felt a bit uncomfortable as I always do when have my hair fixed. This is somehow related to having a lot of complexes, and I know, you need to love yourself, but seems like I need help. Or brain :) But well, about the hair, that is why it happens really rare when I have a bun or a tail. 

Got a llllot of comments today at work (like cute, cool, did you do them yourself, I would never make them so perfect and blablabla; but no one said this was "my" thing and that they fit me :(  ) but I was strong and here I am, heading to the pupil, still same hairstyle :)

Good luck !

Truly employed

Yo world

As always, I'm sending you warmest greeting from Moscow underground while heading to the office.

Here's my office outfit so that I keep my blog more or less catchy for someone's eye 

If you gotta work at the office, make sure you are as grey as the sky in November. Or today. It's about to rain and very gloomy :(

But, anyway, hope, this day will be awesome. Looking forward to my lunch break. No, I'm not hungry, the case is that I arranged a meeting with My Mysterious Him (MMH) to have lunch together ;) hope, I'll not dissolve into greyness of routine by this time :)

Yesterday I signed a real contract at work. I was employed in October 2015 as a temporary employee while the constant one was on her maternity leave. She's back now, but she's got a promotion or something like this, I don't really know, but at least, I'm sure she's now taking another position and I am  a real employee since now. Tadaaa

Ok, have a wonderful day, the one who got his eyes caught by this page...:)

CIAO! :)

On the way to Work

Just want this day to be nice!

Good morning, world :)

One more week before longer holidayzzz

Next weekends we celebrate the Labor Day which is on the 1st of May and that is why we stay out of work for 4 days (regular weekend and then 2 and 3 of May which are Monday and Tuesday :)))))))Already have some plans, pretty family time spending because on the 2 of May we arranged a visit to ethnographic park-museum near Moscow with My Mysterious Him (MMH) and my...parents :)Will see. Past weekend was niccce, and I met with Chris! My "colleague" from Stockholm :) my friend is a better word :) we invited her over on Saturday and spent a cozy evening :) I cooked a berry pie with one layer of blended sunflower seeds and that tasted like halvah and went actually pretty good since I was given 8 out of 10 for that. I cooked Olivier salad (vegan, and if you are interested, Olivier salad is a very Russian thing, almost the most important ever must-have of a New Year table, the ingredients are cucumber, sausage (I used vegan one), boiled carrot and boiled potato, canned peas.Everything chopped in cubes, you might want to add some onion but I skipped it and then it needs some dressing which is usually mayo(again, I used vegan one) when served. 2 portions that MMH ate in several moments would give me, to my mind, from 6 to 8 out of 10. Then, I baked vegan donuts and decorated it with a carob chocolate and sprinkled it with decorative eatable pins :)
And finally, some vegan pizza. I used a ready-to-use dough to economize the time, but next day I made my own :) So here it is my totally own-made pizza. It is without cheese but I added it at the very end, to have it just melted, not burned.Before the ovenAfter :)Chris has been working in Sweden for some time, from the new Year until April, then got back to Russia to fix some visa related deals and now she's coming back to Sweden :) Next day I decided to make some cashew-based things which turned out to be milk and cheese! :)The cashew cheese is still in the fridge, it takes some time to form it and to get the right consistency....hope, it will work :)MMH and I went to a big shopping mall yesterday and spent almost the whole day there, walking along sport stores playing table hockey and football and trying different clothes :)And nowwww I am approaching the office. I really hope today is gonna be a calm day at work :)Good luck and ciao! :)

It's a new day, it's a new life

Yo ninjas

It's Monday and I am in the metro, heading to the office

As usual. Feels better than last Monday after my sick leave but still not the best thing to do.

Anyway, hope, today is gonna be a good day.

I had great weekends that started with a snowy and gloomy Saturday (it's April !) which was followed by sunny and warm Sunday (however, I'm always cold). And that Sunday was the third one in April which meant no-entrance-fee museum day. And we didn't miss the opportunity to go to one of the museums participated in this event. My Mysterious He (MMH) and I went to Moscow museum of cosmonautics. When approaching the museum we saw a huge line but it went surprisingly fast and soon we found ourselves in the huge underground museum with several floors of history of cosmonautics and first objects ever launched into the space.

This is how the museum looks from the outside :

The monument of Russian cosmonautics and the statue of the founder: Tsiolkovskiy Konstantin 

And some photos from the museum:

And this is the world's first artificial satellite :) Russian 

The biggest part of the exhibition is dedicated to the first man flew into space - Yuriy Gagarin, but there's still a looot to see and learn about the history and other great and outstanding people. 

The museum of really interesting and big and it seems you can spend hours there and even more, but we soon felt hungry, so after checking the museum souvenir shop we went to dine. We returned home after that, and, given all the distances, this was all we managed to do yesterday. But you do not value by quantity, you value by quality. Which was great yesterday :)

And now it's almost my station to go off, so have a nice day anyone who might read this (statistics shows it happens but what if it's a technical bug..)))))

Ciao!

Sunday before work

Heyyy

It's Sunday already and that time without work passed really fast but it was awesome :) though, I am really afraid to come back to work because I might find myself into the deepest depression with a lot of work to do after these vacations. Didn't miss it at all, but I have no choice! Hope, it's all gonna be great and quite chill at the office tomorrow :)

This week my friend Mary flew to Israel to work as volunteer at the hostel and we invited her to a dinner together. 

We also visited 2 cathedrals and were to the red square.

The first cathedral is called St. Basil's  orthodoxe cathedral and it's located on the red square. It's a combination of the museums of old churches and cathedrals which were there before. I guess, everyone is quite familiar with this image 

And after this one we went to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior which is my favorite one in Moscow

Il est le temps des Cathedraaaaaaales

These days were quite lazy but it still was very cozy to stay at home. I didn't skip the lesson with my pupil so it kinda compensates my laziness during the whole sick leave)))

I even bought some origami, check this out:

Yesterday we went to some belgian beer bar because My Mysterious He (MMH) is fond of beer and it's not only knowing the difference between dark and light, filtred and non-filtred but knowing how it should be brewed and what it should taste like.

The weather was reeeally nice and now I defenitely feel spring and what makes me feel it even mre is my favorite parfume of all time.

I have been using it for several years and still feel in love with it.



And today, this Sunday, my last day before coming back to normal working week we went to visit Pugs' exhibition. Had no idea of what it could be like because I just found some information on the internet about the event without any details like entrance fees and who could access the exhibition but it seemed like everyone interested in pugs ( and MMH is really into pugs) could go see them and learn how to treat if you wanna have one. And even buy one there. Turned out to be a dog contest for pugs ;)







Those dudes didn't look happy about taking part in this event and me neither. Don't really think the dogs enjoy themselves being there just for fun of their owners.

Then we took a small walk in the park and look what I got theeeeree:



Vegan capucino (yes, I missed it so much) with soy milk and vegan roll with falafel which was so big that I still feel full after quite a while.

MMH went for some kind of donuts and corndog. Didn't say a single word but I was much happier with my choice than he. TADA

And btw, nowadays there's a big choice of vegan options on the menu and everywhere in street food shops and ordinary ones because this period before orthodox Easter is called Fasting which is not really fasting but eating proper non-animal products. And I am reeeally happy about this.

Well, we are now home, MMH is cooking something while I am trying to send the pics to the computer and to complete this post. My iphone screen seems to get broken soon and sometimes it doesn't work at all. This definetely ruins my big plans for the gifts to mum but I will still try to sort this all out.

And as for the face swap with Dusya, next time when I come to parents where Dusya resides;) will maybe do this if she is ok with it ;)

Ciao!

Big plans

Have you ever felt in debt which you might never be able to return ? Do you imagine how much we owe our parents ?

This is the feeling I start to have more frequently these days. Is it because I'm visiting them so rare now? Dunno 

But every time these thoughts come to my mind I have a very strong feeling that I need to do something in return. And more often materially. 

And I really want to make these (not even thoughts) dreams come true by May. My mom's birthday is in May and, obviously, I'm now speaking about a gift. Already have some ideas of what it might be, but don't want to share them, just in case I fail the plan)))) but will do my best not to!

Bark bark :)

expectedly extended vacation

Hey yall! I am on my sick leave till Friday, so, it barely turned out to be a real vacation. At home, though, but what could I do.

Anyway, this is so damn good, however, even now I feel a bit stressed about work. Like...I, definetely, cannot even imagine what an oodles of work it's gonna be when I'm back.

I even searched for kinda articles and books about how to deal with stress at work and in life, but what I happene tofind more often were books about leadership. Sounds pretty tempting, and it really seemed to me for a moment that one sigle book written by one of those phycology professors ( in the best case, usually these arepeople sharing their own experience and advice, like me, blogging )

could have changed my whole life. To be honest I even downloaded one or two books. Read only first page though, it was Onward: How Starbucks Fought for its life without losing its soul by Howard Schultz with Joanne Gordon. But it was not what I needed, And still need. Don't know if I manage to figure out what I really need to feel satisfied about finding a method to learn how to deal with stress and control the output of the emotions and energy. I mean, if it's gonna be a book, movie, article, vacation. Since I can now say that this sick leave is a perfect thing for now, but it doesn't help cure me of stress. Or is it not stress?

But well, for now, ofc, I am not worried this much so cannot live and enjoy my life normally. The thing is that I still care. About everything.

Don't know if I want to read the Starbucks book or not, I am still readung several books at the same time.

Have been thinking a lot of how I can entertain My Mysterious Him (MMH) while he's in Moscow. We already visited several museums (but not all the major ones, but will surely take MMH to some of them...if he's interested). 

But nowadays when it's often sunny I think it might be a good idea to go on a coach day-tour somewhere to Moscow region or nearest regions. Because...like even I know quite a little about crafts and folk arts, and nearest cities, towns and Moscow have a loooot to see.

So will keep you updated when I come up with an idea. There are plenty of tours ;)

Today is Thurday and it's a pupil day, and I feel like going to the pupil since my nose is much better now, however, I still have this annoying snivels, but, at least, I can breath. It's mostly allergic snivels now, so it's gonna be safe for the pupil.

Tututuu

Hey I'm on the train now heading to my parents :) will see lil Dusya sooooon

Didn't wanna go because felt lazy, tired and sick, but ...to be honest, mostly lazy ;) and now a bit ashamed of it. Since I like to test myself. Like no mercy towards myself, only "would you dare?" And no one dies if it takes me time, energy to do. This is why I was brought to this planet. To do something )

Ok, enough of bullshit and nonsense, consider that I'm still sick that is why can share some of my messy thoughts on my blog :)

Today is very sunny and I am very happy I can put in sunglasses. Because they remind me of summer, and what can be better? :)

Those are freaky ones but I kinda like sunglasses. The more weird they are the higher probability is that I buy them :)

unexpected vacation ^^)

YAHOOOO

No, I am not travelling abroad or something. I am sitting at home. It's ok for today since it's Saturday, but I didn't go to work yesterday :) And left earlier on Thursday.

Becaaause I got sick. I had fever, awwwwwful snivels and still have it and my throat was so red that the doctor gave me a long list of pills, sprays and syrups for throat only. And stuff to cure the rest as well. But, as for the throat pain, it's already gone. The only thing that makes me go nuts is the snivels. I cannot barely breath freely without all of those sprays and this is so annoying.

But anyway, I was so glad and happy like a small kid when realized I got sick. I know, this might sound a bit silly or childish, but I haven't visited doctor for several years because, hopefully, my immune system is pretty strong and that is why I didn't miss any of the lectures at the university,and even school! Don't remember having this sick vacation since the 9th or even earlier grade at school. Soooo I was literally dreaming sometimes of having a reason to miss the class or work. But though, anytime I felt bad or tired I always struggled and made myself a challenge to go through it, like "are you adult and strong enough not to give up because you just want to play the fool?". Don't know if it's a good attitude and behavioral pattern because, sometimes, they say you need to indulge yourself.

Well, next visit to the doctor is appointed next Tuesday ;) So I have 4 more days from now to enjoy!

That's a bit sad that I have to miss the birthday party ofmy fried which is today and in another city, but what can I do?)

Yesterday was quite achill day at home, but everytime I had a call from my boss (because she is now responsible for some of my duties) I got very scared and stressed out . My Mysterious He (MMH) cooked a dinner ( I helped :) :) ) and we watched some scary movie in the evening with Georgian red dry wine. I consider myself a wine lover, but I am not really good at choosing the right grape or just bottle. I usually go for Italian/ French/ Spanish grapes like Pinot Grogio/ Sangiovese/ Merlot/Medoc/ Rioja, but yesterday I decided to pick a Georgian wine Saperavi. I actually think that such regions as Georgia, Moldova and the Middle South are grate for planting grapes and producing wine. But you have to be veeery careful when choosing this type of wine because there are a lot of fakes.

Well, I wasn't mistaken, the wine I chose was really nice :)

And this morning I baked some croissants with cheese for MMH and chocolate and dry apricots with jam as veggie options :)

MMH is now working, and I am about to read something. What frequently happens to me is that I often start to read several books and then get lost in the plots. Will now try to sort this all out! :)

Cheers from curly head and
Have a nice day!))))))))))))))

Pursuit of happiness or sweet 2012 memories

Heyyyyyyyy

It's been quite a time that I reminisce those past times of my vacations.

Haven't been near the seaside (here I mean beach, sand and warm sea) since 2012.

That is, probably, why I dived into even deeper nostalgia for my 2012 summer when I was in Malta.

I remember posting something on the blog from there but don't really know if those pics were published :

Malta is where I met my friends I still keep in touch with. And this September My Mysterious He (MMH) and I are invited to the wedding of Liza and Martin who met in Malta in the year of 2012!
Malta is a pretty small island country with reeeeally nice climate and nature :)

But actually, there is one more reason for remembering summer 2012. The matter is that MMH is invited to a corporate party of his company that is to take place in Malta.
And I see no reasons why I would not be able to join him. Well, by these reasons I mean that nothing and nobody can prevent me from doing this but my financial situation :)

And all of the visa formalities definitely imply some difficulties but this is how it usually is. If you are Russian and if you wanna travel abroad to the Schengen area you have to go through all the paperwork. And pay :)

And I know, that I can save up for doing this but I, actually, had much more altruist plans on how to spend the money (within this context this word stands for my shitty salary).

Will see what takes over: egoism or altruism :) Or can I manage both?