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Wisdom begins in wonder. - Socrates
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Activity Summary
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Reviews Written: 418
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Member Visits: 36,694
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Total Visits: 639,892
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About lyagushka
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The one small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.
-- Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
I am obsessed with food. You could even say my life revolves around it. Accordingly, my member picture shows me at the table, ready to eat. I trained and worked professionally as a cook many years ago. Now I cook at home: everything and anything that catches my fancy. Italian and Thai are possibly my favorites, but every cuisine has something to offer. You'll find many food-related reviews in my portfolio.
Also, I read a lot, fiction as much as non-fiction. I like words and languages. I've studied several. My user name means "frog" in Russian. It was, improbably, one of the first words I picked up in Russia, before I came back to the States and studied it formally. The word brings back memories of good times for me, and it wasn't spoken for when I became an epinions member.
After calling the San Francisco bay area home for twenty years, my husband and I moved "back east" and bought a house, as well as a separate 50-acre parcel of land, in late 2006. The time since has been a study in frugality and doing more with less. I love it. Thrift is an underrated virtue. And it's another motivation, other than food quality, to do a lot of gardening. After cooking, eating, and reading, gardening is one of life's greatest pleasures for me. In early 2008, we added four laying hens to our mini-homestead. They're very amusing, and they earn their keep. Now I'm always looking for egg recipes.
I joined epinions near the beginning of a four-year stint in Belgium. During that time we traveled extensively in Europe. So much so that by the end we were almost sick of travel. Almost. I wrote a LOT of Travel reviews in those years. These days homeownership, frugality, gardening, and the TSA all conspire to make travel a lot less appealing to me. So you won't see too many Travel reviews from me anymore, but if you plan to visit Europe, you may still find my reviews useful, especially if you travel to eat. I think my Destination reviews are some of the best I've written. Check them out via the drop down menu below.
I'm always practicing my writing, and lately I'm trying to write shorter, more succinct reviews. If you spot an error in my review - grammatical or factual - please let me know of it. The comment section will do fine for this purpose; no need to worry about embarrassing me.
If you want to talk to me, please drop me a note at: lyagushka at gmail dot com. If you're writing to ask me to take a look at something you wrote, please include a link.
Go ahead and send me those Restaurant & Gourmet SAP requests you've got. Please make it easier on me by including as much information as you've got on the product you want added to the database. Specifically, for restaurant reviews, I will need the following:
1. your epinions member id
2. the name and location of the restaurant
3. type of cuisine
4. restaurant website
5. a link for a logo or image of the restaurant that ends in .gif or .jpg
SAP requests that include all the necessary information go to the head of the queue. If your request lacks a needed piece of information, I might, in my munificence, choose to do the legwork for you whenever I can get to it, which may take quite a while in some cases. If I can't find the information needed to add the product, your request will not pass Go and will not collect $200.
If it's been a really long time since you emailed me without any response, please give me the benefit of the doubt and try sending your email again. Gmail is great, but it's not perfect.
If I could steer readers to only one of my reviews, it would be the one I wrote about my bank. How do you feel about your bank? I love mine. Click to find out why.
Book Reviews
Travel Reviews
Foodie Stuff
Etceterrata
And now a few quotes about writing, the substance of what we do here at epinions:
The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. -- Mark Twain
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. -- Thomas Mann
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. -- Robert Heinlein
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