MERRY  CHRISTMAS!

We wish you and your families Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
We want this coming 2009 be peaceful, calm, healthy, prosperous, bright, fantastic, marvelous and wonderful to you!
We wish you all happiness and lots of sunny days in 2009. 

Hope to see all of you sometime in the near future!

Love,
Alexander & Olga Izyurov

Update: 20080607 Letter from Jim Guthrie received via Dennis Knudtson

About one week ago Rachid Usmanov was taking the train from Usinsk to Pechora and he died of a heart attack in Pechora.  Very sudden and quick. KAO colleagues will all remember what a great and patient and helpful IT professional he was, he got us through some tough times in those early days. He worked for me at KAO and SeverTEK both and I admired him both as a good kind person and a dedicated and very talented employee.

Yesterday Andrei Zhitlukin died from complications in surgery, I believe he had cancer of the liver.  Not all KAO employees would know him as he was a lawyer hired after most of the Canadians were gone.  He worked for me in SeverTEK and he attended both the Canadian and Russia reunions in 2005 and 2007 and as everyone remembers, he was the life of the party.  He played the guitar, sang all the great Russian songs, and dressed like he was born in High River, Alberta.  As you know, I called him Andy Lukin due to this penchant he had for dressing like a cowboy.

I will miss both of these men, they were good friends and great colleagues.

Regards, Jim

«Всем привет!

23 февраля открылся Центр Досуга (за бассейном построили). Финансировали проект несколько человек, включая Антипина и Зусмана. Там у них есть гостиница “Пилигрим” (взяли Лену Ткаченко директором), Стоимость очень доступная, завтрак включен, белье хорошее, в номере душ, туалет, ТВ, телефон, термос, чай, кофе (в холле - диспенсеры с горячей и холодной водой)- 2700 руб. 1-местный стандартный номер; в двухместном - 1800 на человека.

Есть кафе (большой и малый зал), бильярдная, тир, солярий, тренажерный, сауна, аэробика, бильярд, настольный теннис, массаж, маникюр, педикюр. Мы были с Сашей на открытии (также были Титаренко, Люда Иванова). Нам понравилось.

Ольга Изъюрова»

По фотографиям видно, что гостиница эта НАМНОГО лучше легендарной гостиницы «Нефтянник», в которой многие из нас выпили немало водки и сломали мебели. :)

Фотографии внутри поста.

От себя, и всех, кому уже сообщил эту новость, хочу поздравить их с долгожданным пополнением!

Вы можете поздравить Ирину и Стива, написав коментарий к этой публикации. Фото малышки внутри поста.

I would like to use this opportunity to inform all friends and acquaintances that Steve and Irina Purdy had their first baby girl Maia Diana Purdy born February 12, 2008. I would like congratulate Irina and Steve with this long awaited beautiful addition to their family!

You can congratulate Steve and Irina yourself by leaving your comments to this post. The photo of the baby is inside of this post.

Survived by his loving wife Fran of Big Valley; sons, Lionel (Lori) Stuber of Red Deer and Roy Stuber of Sicamous, B.C.; daughters, Colleen (Kevin) Grouette of Calgary and Mary (Mark) Doerksen of Winnipeg; grandchildren, Rebecca Stuber, Katherine Stuber, Alisha Grouette, Aimee Grouette, Micah Doerksen, Aby Doerksen and Richard Caruana; brothers, Fred (Joan) Stuber of Medicine Hat and John (Peggy) Stuber of Medicine Hat; many loving nieces, nephews and good friends.

Funeral Services will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2008, in the Heartland Chapel of STETTLER FUNERAL HOME, 4707 - 70 Street, Stettler, AB. Donations to Lutheran World Relief, Canadian Northern Society or Alberta Heart & Stroke Foundation, c/o Stettler Funeral Home, Box 1780, Stettler, AB, T0C 2L0.

Sympathies may be forwarded to the family by signing the guestbook at http://www.stettlerfuneralhome.com/ . STETTLER FUNERAL HOME & CREMATORIUM. Telephone: 1-877-844-3422.

Published in the Calgary Herald on 2/2/2008.

JULIA GOUSSEVA
Published in Tucson Citizen  

Most of my American friends assume I can play chess and ice-skate. After all, haven’t Russian figure skaters won lots of medals? Wasn’t Garry Kasparov the world’s youngest chess champion?

Yes, they have. Yes, he was. Me - that’s another matter.

Growing up in Russia, I always loved watching ice-skating competitions on TV, but my own attempts to ice-skate inevitably resulted in me sliding on the ice on the body part to which no skates could be attached.

The only two-loop maneuver I could perform involved tying my scarf.

By fourth grade, I gave up on trying to learn to ice-skate.

I moved to Tucson in 1993 as an adult, and I felt protected - by my age, Arizona’s heat and the apparent lack of ice - from the humiliation of skating.

When my son Alex reached kindergarten age, I found that one of the main social activities in Tucson elementary schools is roller-skating.

What’s a mother to do? I registered us both for group roller-skating lessons.

We were both a bit nervous when we arrived to Skate Country East for our first lesson.

Gary Watkins was checking in aspiring roller-skaters.

He politely nodded to me, then addressed Alex. “Good morning. What is your name, young man?”

“I am Alex. My mom is Julia. She needs a name tag, too. She is in my class.” Gary chuckled; I blushed.

Alex and I walked down an aisle lined with psychedelic purple plush carpet toward a matching bench. We put our skates on.

“Beginner class, line up, please,” coach Diane Watkins, Gary’s wife, said through the microphone.

The class included a dozen kids ages 3 through 6 and me. I felt a bit . . . tall.

“I am not doing this. This is a bad idea,” Alex said. “I hate roller-skating. I will fall down, my head will crack open, and I will cry a lot.”

“Come on, it’s easy. You can do it,” I said, wondering if my head would crack open.

Alex grabbed my hand. “Don’t let go, mom.”

Not convinced that attaching wheels to human feet was a good way to spend a Saturday morning, I limped onto the skating floor.

Holding on to the wall with my right hand and to Alex with my left, I tried to balance Alex’s 40-some pounds and my own significantly more without letting one of us drag our fragile skating structure down.

Soon I realized that if I bent my knees and leaned forward, I was less likely to fall on top of Alex and squish him.

We spent the rest of the lesson crawling around the floor, learning to fall down, get up and balance.

Everyone survived. My back was killing me.

More than four years have passed since that day. Alex and I are still taking roller-skating lessons.

We don’t have gold medals, and roller-skating is not an Olympic sport, but I can now proudly tell my friends I skate.

As for chess, Alex is doing the work for both of us: He is learning to play with the help of his school chess club.
Garry Kasparov, watch out!

Julia Gousseva, a native Russian, has lived in Tucson since 1993. E-mail: juliasmytucson@yahoo.com

Source: Tucson Citizen

Download this article in PDF format.

P.S. Julia also has her own column at the Tucson Citizen here:  http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/blogs/index.php?blog=24

Main event for us is that we have a baby in the family - Andrew Stuart Breese! Wonderful little guy. Olesya became a mom and I became a grandma. Now even more than before I’d like to be closer to them and spend less time working to witness the unique moments of watching him grow and change. Alas both are still dreams to come true.

Andrew is 7 months old now. Olesya got back to work for 5 hours a day and meanwhile the baby stays with the nanny.

Yulia graduates in 2008 so this coming year is important and challenging for her - graduation exams, diploma and looking for a job.

Other big event this year was our KomiArcticOil reunion in July in St.Petersburg, river cruise to Moscow and a party there. It was as impressive and unforgettable as our trip to Canada in 2005. If anything it was even more uniting as we were together the whole trip - Russians and Canadians (actually it was more international than that with Ukrainians and English there as well), which gave us a chance to communicate a lot. I think it was a great trip, the program was interesting, there were no unpleasant organizational issues and we again felt like one big family with the proud last name KomiArcticOil! It was a very emotional trip for almost all of us. I’m grateful to those who helped to make it such a PARTY OF THE SOUL! And thank you all for coming and participating.

Before the cruise Flora (Popova) and Don Bell, Bob and Beth Morrison went to the Great Novgorod for a couple of days to see Sasha and Irina Samsonenko, who were wonderfully hospitable and showed us around a lot for such a short time in their spectacular city. We are very thankful for that. By the way they both have temporarily moved to UAE (Dubai) and Irina has found a job in a real estate company.

In November in Usinsk we had a traditional party to celebrate KAO birthday, over 50 people attended, and you have probably already seen the pictures from the party. We have also brought there pictures and video from the summer trip. After the cruise in August I went to Kursk to see Irina Demidova, Galina Kozhevnikova, Tatiana Korobkina, Lena Rudenko who live there, Galina Degtyareva has also been there at the time, and btw in January she leaves Novy Urengoi for good and moves to Kursk. I have recorded their hellos to Usinsk people and this video was greatly cheered at KAO party.

As for my work there is still so much trouble because of the continuous mess with the supervising bodies established in the course of the administrative reform. Open fights for power as well as carpet wars between different authorities, landslides of paper which make us forget why we are doing it at all - to save our environment, to bring some practical help, get a result for people and nature! But for the authorities that hasn’t been an objective for a long time. So working in this area gets less and less interesting and engaging, I just don’t feel that we are useful anymore for the society, concrete company and people because we spend so much time doing useless paperwork. Nevertheless we received even more orders this year and in June I have certified one more – already third - lab dealing with radiology control.
In autumn we had a big problem - a pipe burst at night (our office is a former apartment in the living premises) and all rooms were flooded 15 cm from the floor. At least it was cold water and at least we are located on the first floor! Still it was a huge stress for me because in a week I planned to go on a business trip and then on vacation, so before that I had to make sure everything gets dry (heating was turned off still), change floors, get all office equipment started as some of it also suffered from water, and get everybody back to work in the shortest possible time. I managed to accomplish it all, but later when I went on vacation the stress caught up with me. Alas this year I didn’t make it to Mexico like planned. In September my sister and I went to Italy (it was her anniversary and we wanted to make it a special time). But this trip unfortunately became special for a different reason - on the third day I suffered sever abdominal pain. It was a non stop nightmare for the next three weeks, when I got back to Moscow they failed to diagnose appendicitis, and I got very lucky that it didn’t burst. When the doctors finally diagnosed it in Usinsk it was so bad that they couldn’t operate. Now having undergone several courses of antibiotics I’m waiting for the surgeons to allow an operation - and so I had to cancel all trips until better times.   
 
That’s how it was for me this year.

Coming year is of the home-loving rat and it will bring us all comfort and welfare in our homes and families. So may it be the most important and central thing in this turbulent world - my home is my fortress and my family is my back up.
I wish you and yours happiness and health! Nappy New Year and Merry Christmas!
 
With lots of love,
 
Tatiana Titarenko