Lana V Lynx
Bio
Avid reader and occasional writer of satire and short fiction. For my own sanity and security, I write under a pen name. My books: Moscow Calling - 2017 and President & Psychiatrist
Stories (236/0)
Trip to Peru, Part 1
I have the best travel partner in my life: My soon-to-be-20-year-old son. I'm pretty sure he will soon tell me that he wants to travel with his friends rather than me, but we still enjoy each other's company while traveling, especially abroad. Between 2011 and now, we've had amazing adventures together in Ireland, Turkey (Istanbul), Germany, and Brazil. Not to mention multiple trips to Russia and Central Asia where I come from. My son is a college student, I'm a college professor, so we both have good winter and summer breaks and before the pandemic we always traveled somewhere far away.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Wander
My Sleep Resolution for 2022
Next year will be my 52nd revolution around the Sun. Good place to pay more attention to sleep. When I was about 33, my sleep pattern changed completely, turning me from a sound 8-hour sleeper into a restless wreck who slept less than 6 hours a night and constantly felt exhausted during the day. It was partly because I was a new mother and my son was a hyperactive infant who slept in short intervals and woke up several times during the night. I envied new parents whose kids started to sleep through most of the night in infancy. My son slept through 7 uninterrupted hours for the first time when he was 25 months, and I couldn't believe my luck, waking up every couple of hours to check if he was still sleeping. Another reason for my restless sleep was my demanding job: as a department chair at a university, I had too many responsibilities, several people to manage and endless deadlines to meet.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Longevity
Don't Look Up - Movie Review
I watched the new Netflix movie on Christmas Day and it wouldn’t let me go. Everything in the movie alludes to the four years we survived with Trump and some of the allusions are indeed too fresh and too close to home. But something tells me that if Trump watched it he’d think that Meryl Streep is playing Hillary Clinton, not him, just because she is a woman president. Even the reference that the president’s son is her Chief of Staff (played by Jonah Hill with a clear allusion to Ivanka, especially with his improvisation of sexual tension between the mother and son) would go over his head because Trump has normalized it.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Geeks
Power of JLL Power Pro Juicer
Years ago, I believe around 2006, I bought a Jack LaLanne (JLL) Power Pro Juicer. It served me very well for a looooong time, until about a couple of years ago when in the move the only crucial plastic part in it (the juicer is mostly stainless steel, lasts forever) snapped and broke into two. The part secures the mesh filter, which means the juicer cannot work without it. It is also located on the base motor and impossible to replace, so my juicer is just standing there on the kitchen counter crippled, reminding me of its former glory.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Feast
Moscow's Calling - 4
The following conversation took place on Dec.23, 2021, after Putin performed his annual 3.5-hour TV show of a live conference call with citizens and journalists where he answered a total of 44 questions. For his own memorable performance, Trump gave an interview to Candace Owens.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Fiction
What Could Have Been
This story is based on true events. Names of participants are changed to protect their identity. ***** In mid 1990s, Tatiana, a smart and attractive young woman from Ukraine (a classical “Slavic” beauty, as many would describe her), was a graduate student at a Midwestern American university. In one of her MBA classes, she met a fellow graduate student Terrell, who looked very much like Denzel Washington. She liked him at first sight. They worked together on a couple of group projects, and Tatiana liked him even more for his smarts. She was admiring and longing for him, suffering in silence for about two months, and then confided in her Indian friend, a fellow graduate student.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Humans
Boomerang of Happiness - 19
In about a week after Anna started working, Colonel Grushevsky came to visit Alex at the station in the afternoon and said almost immediately after the greeting, as if he needed to unload this off his shoulders, “I’m sorry, Alex, but I’ll have to let Anna go.”
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Fiction
Never Healed
When I was 15 and my sister - 12, my step-father, a kindest man with a huge heart but exhausted will to fight his alcoholism addiction, hung himself in our bathtub. Two days before my mom’s birthday, one day after his own. My mother was working that day, and thought he was just sleeping off his hangover after celebrating with his buddies. She started to worry when he did not answer the phone or knocks on the door and left the key in the lock turned from the inside so that no one could open it from the outside. One of our male neighbors found him by climbing a tree to our 2nd floor apartment’s balcony. My step-father used my sister's jumping rope, hindging it on a clothesline hook. Neither me nor my sister were allowed to see him in all the commotion of removing the body when we came home from the infamous Soviet subbotniks (Saturday community clean-up days). That’s how I’ll always remember it happened on a Saturday. My mom did not allow us to go to his funeral either.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Confessions
Mirror
I’m standing in front of a mirror giving myself a pep talk, working up my confidence. With almost 25 years of teaching under my belt, I only have to do it occasionally, for important research presentations or teaching a class where a colleague will be sitting in for a peer evaluation.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Horror
Boomerang of Happiness - 18
A week later, Anna reported for the first day of work as an accountant for the Border Guards. She produced a mixed first impression: While looking through the books to familiarize herself with the specifics, Anna found several significant mistakes and discrepancies, which both upset and impressed the chief accountant. Upset because the newcomer was so quick to pick up on her younger associates’ sloppiness and impressed because they had time to correct everything before the audit looming in two days.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Fiction
Boomerang of Happiness - 17
The job prospect for Anna was by no means a happy coincidence. Colonel Grushevsky, even being on a solid border guard career path, was a tech nerd. He was interested in all new technologies, including computers and robotics. When he’d found out about Alex and his new project, Grushevsky made every effort to learn about it as much as possible. He arranged for Alex and Anna to get the apartment in the Border Guard housing and made sure everything was ready for them.
By Lana V Lynx2 years ago in Fiction