Month: July 2025

At Work And Outside Work

My biggest disappointment of the last weekend was that I didn’t even start multiple projects, which I had planned to both start and finish over the weekend. I believe that my bad planning was the root cause of the problem, as the said plan was completely unrealistic. I was planning how “time-sensitive” events would fit into the schedule without giving a thought to all other activities that had to happen at some point, even if they didn’t have a pre-defined start and end time.

Not only did I leave a lot of conference-related action items incomplete, but I didn’t even start anything related to my conference talks prep, and I have four different talks to prepare, including my huge tutorial, which I barely started. I spent a significant portion of my time panicking about all of the above, along with a clear understanding that summer is short and I have only that many beach days left.

My worktime is extremely intense, and if I manage to carve some time to do something not-work-related, I have to do some work after work. The not-work-related include answering web designers questions two or three times per day, including providing new content, meeting with the whole org committee and individual members about their specific tasks.

I know that in a long run, this will save me time. For example, I talked to a person who volunteered to do our newsletter. I sent her a sample, sent a draft of the next newsletter, asked her to complete, reviewed her work, and met with her on zoom twice. She will be a huge help, but this week, it took over two hours of my time. Same goes to our social media accounts, people who will be handling catering, conference lodging, etc. Their help will be essential, but this week I am panicking because I am late with everything!

On top of that, during the first two days of this week I was asked 1) to vote up one Postgres patch (why me???) 2) to review a book proposal (I refused) 3) to write a new book (“because people like my writing”) – I said to reach out in six months 4) to give my opinion on the work of one of the Postgres “rising stars” company (I agreed and accepted a meeting invite).

… and I worked on my presentations for forty minutes only, when I need many hours!

The Morning Lake

Last summer, I discovered the pleasure of going to the beach early in the morning, before going to work, and this summer, I was not going to wait till the end of August.

Today was the first day I did it this season. I was unsure whether the lake is warm enough so that the water in the morning will be warm, and it was!

No picture can express the joy of immersing yourself into the lake facing the rising sun! All my tiredness of the past two weeks was washed away. You can tell that I was not the first person on the beach this morning, but pretty close to the first 🙂

It’s interesting that, apparently, the upcoming Thursday is International Self-Care Day. 🤷🏻‍♀️ My firm hosts multiple related events, but my best possible self-care was this morning! The only thing I need to figure out is how I can get this constantly missing extra half-hour of sleep.

The Factory Theater

The Factory Theater was the last of our neighborhood theaters that was on my to-see list, and that was the first time I finally went to see a performance there. The play description looked incredibly appealing:

Also, I realized that the past Saturday was the last opportunity to see it, so I made an effort, even though I was tired and had a million things to do.

The theater foyer exhibited the history of the motion pictures and the invention of the camera

Probably because I had high expectations, it was a slightly disappointing experience. The show “didn’t hold,” which would be understandable if it were an opening night, but that was the closing. I can’t say anything in particular about what exactly was bad, but it felt less professional than three other neighborhood storefront theaters I patronize. I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt: it could be just a one-off, or it could be that I was tired, so I am going to try it at least one more time next season.

New Appliance

I was on and off about whether I want to have a “normal” espresso maker. For many years, I was pretty happy with my mechanical espresso machine, which my kids gave me for Christmas many years ago. I liked its authenticity and uniqueness, but at some point, two things started to bother me: it took a long time to make two espresso shots (technically, you could do two cups in parallel, but then you would need to run the machine twice in a row) and the fact that boiling water is not steam, so the espresso would end up colder than I would like, especially if you want to make cappuccino, or just two espressos.

At the same time, I didn’t want to clutter my kitchen with more appliances because I felt I already had too many, and I don’t need to make espresso at home very often. I would love to be able to make a proper cappuccino, but I knew that this requires some skills, not only the equipment. For the past two years, I have started shopping for an espresso machine several times, and each time I decided I didn’t need it. That was all, until a couple of weeks ago, when the Shopsale app threw a $35 espresso machine in my face. I could not resist. I decided I could throw it away if it doesn’t work for me.

This weekend I finally unpacked it, read instructions, and set it up. At first, I experimented in the dining room, but I quickly realized it was not a great idea. Fortunately, this appliance is really small, so I was able to put it on a kitchen shelf (and moved the ROK to my home museum shelf side by side to the old German meat grinder). It produces an amazing espresso. I still need to work on making a cappuccino, but even the first attempt wasn’t a complete failure!

Friday

It’s not a mistake – I know that today is Sunday, and pretty late on Sunday! It’s just that looking back to Friday, I am wondering yet again why I think that weekends are inflatable!

Friday was great in some sense, because I had zero meetings at work, and nobody distracted me with anything “urgent,” so I was able to make progress on several tasks that required concentration, and close a whole bunch of tickets! I left work in a rearest state of “I’ve done everything!” Also, a friend who invited me on an art tour canceled, and I decided not to go on my own. I was hoping that this would give me extra time to focus on my conference presentations, which are many, and some are due soon!

However, there were so many other urgent things that had to be completed/resolved/started before Monday, that I did exactly zero for my presentations. Looking back at the weekend, I see that everything I’ve done was necessary and overdue, and I am happy I was able to address some of these, but once again – I need more time!

Long Bike Rides

Some pretty pictures from my Saturday morning ride:

And today, it was the first time I ventured well south of the Aquarium:

SNAP Renewal

My mom knew that her SNAP was set to expire at the end of August, and she was nervous about what would happen with the rest of the money she had left there. I told her that SNAP will be renewed, but I knew it was not automatic (not like her Medicaid, which is almost automatic – I just had to confirm online that nothing changed).

As I already mentioned many times, the IDHS site is far from being intuitive, so I could not figure out how to reapply until I received a paper letter explaining that :). Fortunately, when I took my mom to apply for SNAP two years ago, she signed the papers allowing me to be her legal representative, so I receive copies of all communications. I submitted the application, and the system replied that since I indicated I can’t come to the office due to work constraints, they will schedule a phone interview. I worried that I would have to leave the office and sit with mom waiting for this call at the most inconvenient time, but when the letter with the interview date/time arrived, I realized that they don’t need my mom; they can talk with me directly, and that was a relief and a huge time saver.

It turned out that at some point during the submission process, I indicated a preference for oral communications in Russian (leaving paper communications in English). I think that was when I was unsure whether my mom would have to be present. I thought that it would mean they would bring an interpreter on the call, which would make things worse (that’s why I usually do not check this option). But this time, a miracle happened! The person who called me was an actual Russian speaking person; I guess at least partially because of a large number of Ukrainain refugees, this option has become available. And because of that, the renewal took just 5 minutes. She asked: so, you reported no income for your mom? I replied: yes, let me tell you the whole story. My mom used to receive her pension and use it here, but since the war started… I didn’t even have to say another word. She said: Ok, I am putting the notes here. She will receive a renewal in the mail in a couple of weeks. She even explained to me about the cash assistance (my mom can’t get it until we reapply for SSI, so her explanation saved me some time).

The fastest renewal ever!

I Did It!!!

It was a long and painful project two years ago, but after a lot of struggle, my balcony lights were up. I was happy since then, until a couple of months ago, the light bulbs started to burn out one after another, and soon, there were three burned-out light bulbs.

It didn’t look pretty, and I didn’t have enough light on the balcony. The reason I couldn’t replace them was the same as why I didn’t put them on in the first place: they are too high, and I am afraid of height, especially when I am on the third-and-a-half floor!

Every day, I was telling myself that I would take the largest ladder out and try, and every day I was like, “let’s do it tomorrow.” I started to think that hanging the lights up was a bad idea, since I will never be able to replace the bulbs myself. I even started to discuss with Boris what could be an alternative: how I can hang up the lights lower, should I buy some poles, or buy some floor lights.

Finally, today, when I came home early enough and didn’t have to run anywhere, I took out my tallest ladder and unfolded it on the balcony. To my surprise, I realized that I can easily reach at least one of the light bulbs. I unscrewed it and went to check whether I might have some replacement bulbs. And voila – I found a box with five replacement bulbs! (I am sure they were left from when this handyman who installed the lights in the first place).

The first bulb was easy. The second was still reachable, and I even had the courage to unscrew the bulb with two hands, and srew in the new one. The other two looked scarier, and I was afraid to let the second hand go off the holder. With the third one, I let the other hand go for just a second, and with the last one, I didn’t dare, so I did everything with the right hand, holding the socket with two fingers and rotating the light bulb with the other two.

And I am proud of myself beyond any imagination!!!

ODS

As I keep saying, there are more misses than hits with ODS dinners, but it was really good today. First, I met a resident who had been there for a while, and we had several in-depth conversations over the past few months. Also, I know that these conversations are important for him, and even if it’s a small part of his life, it’s a positive part :).

There were just a few people when I arrived, so at first I thought that we would have to make pizzas only with the staff helping me, but then the residents started to appear, and a couple of late arrivals expressed interest in making their own pizza. I started the oven again, and helped with the process, and it was a very good new connection.

The kids in the shelter continue to surprise me. It so often happens that some of the residents have previous experience in catering or hospitality, and often are more comfortable cooking for a large number of people than I am. Today, one of the boys told me that he worked in the pizzeria before, and I could tell by watching his professional pizza slicing. I ended up asking for his recommendations on how long to keep pizza in the oven (the ODS oven functionality has always been imperfect, to put it mildly).

Prairie PUG

We couldn’t have a meetup in June because an intersection of my availability and our Training Center availability was empty:). That’s a very mathematical description of the situation, but no matter how you describe it, I didn’t have enough energy to look for an alternative, and we didn’t meet.

Yesterday’s meetup was great! I can tell it by how I felt. Finally, I was relaxed and could talk to everyone freely, and didn’t have any worries in the background. A person who was presenting was doing it for the first time; there were some issues, but he handled it well. The audience was very engaged, and the conversation after the meetup lasted until I asked people to leave because I needed to catch the train 😀.

One of the regulars said to me: I do not think I ever told you that, but what you are doing is so inspiring! You do no have to do all the things you are going, but you are doing it for the community! I am not going to lie, I was very happy to hear that!