November

November is a special month to me. Being the ugliest of all others, I spend it mainly drinking tea, cooking warm dishes, carving pumpkin (did I mention I love pumpkin?), lighting candles, reading and celebrating. Haloween, Wojtek’s birthday, my birthday… Lots of occasions to meet and celebrate. To give and receive presents. To cook and eat. To love and to be loved 🙂

Ps – the pumpking pie you see in the first photo is done from this recipe.

Pinot

Last week I has a guest. Her name is Pinot (from the name of wine sort: Pinot Gris). It’s a cat of Ania’s colleagues from french classes – they were travelling on holidays for a week and were looking for someone to take care of their lovely cat.
So, for a week I had yet another flat-mate: Pinot. She is a very adorable cat who likes a presence of people. She also always reacts to her name. On top of that, she is very pretty – a bit grey, a bit ginger, a bit white.

Woman’s Day treats

Today was the International Woman’s Day. It’s an occasion widely celebrated in Poland. You can meet men giving away flowers to women on the streets and tons of ladies strolling around with bouquets (tulips and roses are the most popular).

Since I work in a rather manly environment (all in all there are only ~10% of women in my company), I experienced a lot of signs of good will and friendliness.

So my treats for this day comprised of:
– flowers and chocolates from my work colleagues and family
– photo shoot organised by my employer.

Yep, you got it right! An undeniable advantage of working in a corporation is that it creates a lot of possibilities of various kind. There are budgets for different activities and employees can really benefit from that.
This year we had a marvellous occasion to participate in a video shoot for the Woman’s Day. For those girls who volunteered, an additional keepsake was given. We had a professional photo session organised. I enjoyed both – video and photos.
Have a look at the results.

And the movie… Quoting from YT:
This video shows women in Tieto Poland who work on different levels in
the corporate hierarchy and are responsible for different areas related
to software engineering. We hope to encourage young women to choose
studies and career in the fields of information technology.

This
video is part of an information campaign in Poland, starting 8 March
2013, that is intended to show the diversity of possibilities for career
development for women in the IT industry. 

My cats – Introduction

Many people know me as a person who likes animals. I’m pretty sure some call me „a crazy cat lady”. Although I never heard it myself, I think it would suit me and Radek very often says: „if it wasn’t for me you would end up like a crazy cat lady”. Well, fortunately I don’t need to figure out how my life would look without my lovely husband, so we will never know.

Anyhow… At the moment I have four cats. Four is my upper limit (at least for the appartment I’m living in), so don’t worry, the flock will not grow any more.

My first cat is Mamba. We took her at the very beginning of our relationship, so she has witnessed let’s say 99% of  „la vie ensemble de Radek et Ania” (sounds like a title of some Comedy Central series). She was a kitten living wild in the gardens and was brought to us by my mom’s colleague. Now she is almost 8 years old and we call her „a stationary cat” since she is very majestic and acts like she doesn’t care about the earthly affairs of this existence (you should read it as „she doesn’t give a fig about anything”).

The next cat we got was Łatka (in translation: „Patch”). We got her 2 years after Mamba. She was found on the Internet (allegro) and taken in exchange for a bottle of home-made wine. Łatka is undoubtedly Radek’s cat. She approaches him every time he has a free hand and demands to be caressed, stroked, petted, scratched etc. She purrs in content every time she is near to my husband. The only time she spends with me is at night (she lies down on my side of the bed – no wonder, Radek is too „active” before falling asleep, he always kicks, turns and God knows what else not leaving any peace for cats at his side).

The third cat we have has three names in use. The main one is Tripod but we also call him Monsieur or Dziabąg (because he bites). He was taken a year ago, when we moved to the bigger appartment. He is handicapped, since he has only three legs (it explains the choice of his first name). At the moment I would call him my favourite one. It’s difficult to explain why – he has no special feature, maybe it’s his tranquillity that I like?

And last but not least – Miaubels. We didn’t plan a fourth cat, but 2 weeks after taking Tripod a lovely cat strayed in close to our place. We didn’t take him at first, but after two or three rendezvous he won our hearts and we took him home. It was definitely the best cat ever, I doubt we will ever gonna have one like that. Unfortunately, he passed away after a couple of months. For me it was very difficult to go through that time and I was deeply touched by his death. So we took Miaubels to fill in the hole the previous cat left. It worked.
Miaubels is still a young cat and it shows. He is the liveliest we have ever had and sometimes he needs to be watched over like a child because he likes to frolic a lot. It’s definitely his charm (although it requires a lot of petience). He likes people and often approaches us, only to be close.

So this it – our cats. Each of them is unique and I got used to all of them. They are like a family to us. I’m pretty sure that once in a while I’ll post pictures of them, so stay tuned.