What’s really freaky is that in this photo from 1998, there is a purse that looks exactly like one of the purses I use now and that I bought in Florida. And I don’t even remember that purse or what happened to it:
This was taken in my apartment in Kharkiv. I’d spend many hours in this arm-chair, surrounded with dictionaries and working on my many languages.
When I look at this photo, I find it curious how little I changed. I still sit in a huge arm-chair surrounded with dictionaries. It’s a different arm-chair, a different continent, and a different husband these days. It’s also different dictionaries because in those days I worked with German and French and I don’t do that any longer. But still, I love being surrounded by books and papers that stick out of every crevice.
I very rarely smile in any photos because smiling makes me look half-witted. See the previous photo before you argue.

You have not changed at all.
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This photo does look like it could be recent, eh?
16,5 years. Unbelievable how much happened.
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It really does. You looked painfully young in the previous pictures, but in this one you look like yourself.
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Exactly.
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My readers know me well if they can determine which photo looks the most like me so easily. 🙂
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What I notice is the soviet era telephone. As awful as that system was I really love a lot of commie era design in the east bloc.
And since no one else has said it, you don’t look half-witted when you smile, you look…. beatific, for lack of a better word.
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“And since no one else has said it, you don’t look half-witted when you smile, you look…. beatific, for lack of a better word.”
“What I notice is the soviet era telephone. As awful as that system was I really love a lot of commie era design in the east bloc.”
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