It's The Most Wonderful Time Of the Year

To all my wonderful blogger friends, during the most wonderful time of the year, I want to wish you one thing - happiness, because happiness is everything else. It is hard to believe that this is my third Christmas on the Story Blob blog and going forward. See you all in January 2010, and thank you all again for keeping me on my toes.

This time I want to share with you some of my favorite happiness quotes.

'We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.'   ~ by Frederick Keonig

'The best vitamin to be a happy person is B1.'  ~ by Author Unknown

'Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.'  ~ by Maxim Gorky

'When you're really happy, the birds chirp and the sun shines even on cold dark winter nights - and flowers will bloom on a barren land.'  ~ by Grey Livingston

...and since I have engineering background, I had to include this one:

'Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.'  ~ by Robert Frost

Employment Resume for the Professional Mother

I thought it would be cool [may be for real one day] to have resume section designated to parenting responsibilities, experience and accomplishments. They say that it is hard to find a job when you are away from work for few years raising children, but then who said that parenting is not a 'work'.  Since I had such a great thought I decided to write my first resume draft here.

May 07, 2008 - Nov 07, 2009
Title: Mother

RESPONSIBILITIES
° Breastfed on demand around the clock for one year. Continue to breastfeed on the occasion during the day, and sometimes at night. Planning to stop when our child reaches his second birthday. Following the African breastfeeding model.
° Cooking for our child since he was four months old. All the food is high quality home made. Due to limited access to prunes, the prunes jars are bought from the store. Excellent source of fiber, and it works if you should ask why I give it to our child.
° Bathing our child every day before sleep. Soaps and shampoos are used on the occasion, and some virgin olive oil to cure the cradle cap. It is a very nice and relaxing time to spend with our child just before bed.
° Ensured that our child got fresh air every day, thus daily 1-2 hours walks to the playgrounds or parks.
° Continue with toilet training that started about 6 months ago. At first it all started with our child playing with the potty, then sitting on it for fun, then actually going for number two with the diaper on, and now our child goes without diaper - all this in the period of 6 months. One more task to go, and we are done - yes I need to teach our child to tell us instead of us telling him.
° I have been reading to our child since he was 2-3 months old. The results are showing, at age of 18 months our son can clearly pronounce over 30 words, combine some words together, name each letter of the alphabet, spell every word around the house, and speak to us 'baby talk', which 80% of time we don't understand.
° I performed some sawing on the occasion to alter some of the children's clothing. I believe in comfort more than the look, therefore, I took all the baby body suits and got rid of the bottom section.
° Additional chores: laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, baking, event planning, and very little television watching. However, I am making sure that I am keeping up with latest technology trend called blogging.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS
° Successfully planned and organized baptism, and first birthday.
° Successfully raised 18 months old son, of course, I am not done yet.
° Thought our baby words, letters, some spelling.
° Successfully completed 75% of the toilet training.
° Reduced diaper usage by 50%, a substantial cost reduction in our family.
° Learned how to cook efficiently for our baby. Can prepare meal with three courses in 10 minutes.

Cover Letter to follow ...

Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine's Got Talent)

I know I have not posted here for a while, but I am back again. For my come back I wanted to share with you this video I came across a while ago somewhere on other blog. I watched it first time and I fell in love with the concept. This girl on the video is a real talent. I never knew about the art of 'sand animation', and I will not go into a detail here. All you have to do is watch this video and you will see for yourself.

Sleeping During Lecture

It is good to remember good times, and university was one of them. I only remember good times. All other times where we had to study hard and sometimes results were not so pretty are gone and I never looked back once. But then let me tell you this funny and memorable story.

In our fourth year of university we ended up having tough professor for one of the solid mechanics course. He was a happy individual, but tough. He was one of those professors who wants you to pay attention in class - so guess what, he would ask questions, and if you didn't know then you are shining star on the spot light.

Well, one day the lecture wasn't very interesting, but we all tried hard not to show how bored we were, otherwise, this usually initiated question and answer period. Well there is always that small percentage of the population that will surprise you. So we are vividly paying attention, and suddenly professor points at one student in the auditorium - 'Hey you in the brown jacket, would you be kind enough to wake that guy up beside you' - he said. The student in the brown jacket looks back at the professor and answers - 'You put him to sleep, you wake him up'. I could see that probably every hair including mine, on every student got stiff when hearing the reply. But to our surprise, the professor started to laugh, and said - 'That was good one, I guess I will have to wake him up'. We all laughed, and the sleepy head didn't know what did just happpen.

Calculation Bloopers - Conversations and Blobbing

Dog's Lung Capacity
- So how did your test go?
- It was okay.
- Just okay. You probably did well. I saw you study a lot.
- Yes I did, but you know how it is when you have to calculate something under lot of pressure.
- Oh yes I know, I know. But you always did well. It seems like you are thinking about something.
- Yeah. I am still trying to figure out what I did wrong.
- What do you mean?
- There was this problem I had to solve, and I cannot figure out what I did wrong.
- How do you know you did it wrong. Did you know the answer ahead?
- No no, it was logical calculation, meaning real life numbers. So if you see the answer then you will know that you did something wrong.
- Okay then....
- Well, I left this problem to the last thinking that it was the easiest. It wasn't much time to go back and to correct. Boy... the teacher is going to have a good chuckle.
- Aha...
- Okay, the problem asked to solve the dog's lung capacity, meaning to determine the size of the dog's lungs.
- Okay, and then what?
- Well, don't laugh! My result showed that the lungs were bigger than the dog.
- Ouch....can I laugh with you.

Beam to Space
- Hey I finally finished my report. Do you want to see it?
- Yes yes, show me.
- Here it is.
- Wow you are so neat and organized, this is very nice looking report you have.
- Thank you!
- Do you mind that I look at the numbers, I used to take the civil engineering statics course.
- Yes go ahead. I checked my numbers and they seem okay.
- Just okay.
- Yes, but please do look it over.
Looking over the report briefly.
- So, did you really check your numbers.
- Yes I did. Why? What is wrong?
- Oh nothing, just a small mistake - it looks like your beam is bigger than our Mother Earth circumference. Please tell me that the problem asked for it.

Weight Loss Calculator
I don't know what was wrong with this online weight loss calculator, however, according to the data I entered, I have to loose additional 50 pounds. You tell me if I should. I am 125 pounds and 164 cm tall. I think the prefect name for this calculator would be - 'Become Anorexic' Calculator. Oh wait a second, may be they got their units wrong.