view from my glass door

This is my gorgeous view from my glass door, down my stone path, past Fireglow, to the blue little bird statue I have on the wall. You can see green from the red bleeding heart, the blue lacecap hydrangea, and the Irish Moss. Plus, the fabulously beautiful wild blue phlox. 

I taught my second of my two classes today. Again they liked that I presented concepts in an accessible manner. The head of the program said they've taught a thousand finance classes and not once did they teach them such that people could have a discussion with their grandmothers afterward and that they've been teaching them wrong. People felt that they actually understood the concepts and could apply them to their projects. The students were relieved. 

A lot of the day sucked so I'm going to focus on how well the beginning part went and all the compliments including, "we didn't make you this way, you're a natural!" "It was a perfect session." 

Maybe I'll be asked to teach future classes, which, since I love it, would be awesome. 

Yesterday I wrote that people are speculating about Putin's health. Now there are speculations that footage of him attending an Easter service this year is .... from last year. There is speculation of Parkinson's. There is speculation that his bloated face and aggressive, irrational decision-making is the result of steroid treatment for thyroid cancer. 

The US and Ukraine are working so well together on cyber intelligence because of Russia's past actions, including their cyberattack in Ukraine in 2015, taking down parts of its electricity grid, and its interference in the US presidential election in 2016. Roosters. Home. To roost. 

Most of the refugees are women and children, since men aged 18-60 have to stay. Imagine Ukrainian women finally making it to the border and there are many men with signs of the names of cities, offering to give them rides. Anyone with sense can see that this would be scary. Now Ella Jarmulska, using Facebook, has recruited scores of women to drive Ukrainian women around Poland. Their organization is Women Take the Wheel. 

Russia was stripped of its rights to host upcoming ice hockey and figure skating competitions. 

Large fires broke out at two oil depots in the Russian city of Bryansk, less than 100 miles from the border with Ukraine.

Recently Russian oil company Rosneft tried to sell enough oil to fill a fleet of tankers, and couldn't find a buyer. (Wall Street Journal, April 26) Increasingly European companies are finding non-Russian sources of oil. Russia doesn't have a lot of storage space for oil, so when they can't sell the oil fast enough, they'll have to stop the drilling. Once wells are turned off, they can be hard to turn back on to their previous capacity. 

Supertankers will increasingly be used to send US oil to Europe. This year four supertankers have moved oil from the US to Europe, up from one during this time period last year. 

Asya Serpinska, a 77-year-old who runs an animal shelter northwest of Kyiv, kept 700 dogs and 100 cats alive, and rescued a lion and a peacock. Her husband drove through the night and hostile checkpoints to bring her a generator. She founded the shelter after retiring from being a math professor.