Month: March 2026

A Piano Recital At The Fine Arts Building

I was there on Sunday, because my friend Y started to take piano lessons there, and she really wanted me to come, and I promised her I would.

To say I was impressed with her teacher is not enough. She works with such a diverse student body and has so much patience and love, and offers endless encouragement and support. And all this in that amazing building, where the walls speak of history and great artists of the past!

I deeply regretted that I couldn’t stay after the recital for a small reception, but that weekend, my time didn’t belong to me; I had way too many things to complete. Even today, I feel very bad that I had to leave, because this teacher is doing God’s work, and I should have told her that in person, not through my friend Y.

I will definitely come to the next recital, and I already told Y that she should stay with this teacher and never quit 🙂

Orchids

I know, I know.. I promised I would never have more than three orchids, and I already have four :). My excuses are that the new one is mini (on the left), and that the oldest one (on the back) is not in great shape. When Lena visited, she helped me nurture this one, cut the burned leaves and unhealthy roots, and I just replanted it in a more comfortable pot. Still, Lena thinks it won’t bloom this season, and if it doesn’t bloom next year, I will probably say goodbye to it.

Until that – let it be three and a half!

Bureaucracy

That’s the mildest term for how things went with registering our NFP with the Office of the Illinois Attorney General. When I started this journey in October 2024, everyone who was ever close to the NFP business would tell me that getting the tax-exempt status with the IRS was the most difficult and time-consuming task.

Indeed, registering an NFP took two days and was all online; setting up our EIN took only days and was all online as well. The trademark business took a couple of weeks, but only because we ran into some inconsistencies on the trademark holder’s website, and it took time to resolve it. Our greatest surprise, the tax-exempt letter arrived only fice weeks after we applied! Nobody could believe it, and I counted our blessings.

The last step was registering with the Illinois AG office, and that was the first thing we had to do on paper. We checked the list of documents we had to submit, both Anna and I signed them, I printed them and sent the package by Priority Mail.

A week later, I saw our registration fee check cashed, and I thought that we will recieve the confirmation letter soon. However, when the letter arrived, it was not the confirmation of the registration, but the list of things we did wrong!

We submitted the corrected package, and after that, somehting weird started to happen. People were not returning our calls, the documents we mailed were never received even though the tracking showed it ws delivered. It took many hours to reach anyone, and at some point, we were told that we abandoned the registration, because we never mailed missing information, and we had to start all over.

At that point of our odyssey, I started walking to the AG office and leaving the papers there, making sure they are all stampted as received. This didn’t stop the stream of the lost items. Also, by that time, the AG office finally introduced the online application submission system, but since we started on paper, we had to continue on paper, and it took even longer. Finally, when we received a new list of missing items, Anna and I got together online and wrote an email to our State Representative Constituent service, who saved us!

It still took several weeks! However, each time “something was missing” we took a note regarding how long it would take if our State Rep office won’t interfere. I believe, they saved us anothe six months!

My biggest regret is that I didn’t know we didn’t have to wait for this registration to apply for the Illinois Tax Exempt status! We could already have it, and now it’s another six months wait! At least, I could apply online!

And the moral of the story – Long live Constituent Service!

Conferences

The weather is miserable, which is good at the time when I am spending yet another weekend on conference-related work.

The first one is my presentation at PG Day Nordic, which I absolutely had to finalize this weekend, and I just did. When I submitted this proposal, I thought that this would be just the second half of the “long queries” part of my Prague tutorial. However, I realized that it won’t fly immediately after I set down for my first “cut and paste” session.

Then I had been nervous and procrastinating for a very long time, because each time I would start to modify this presentation, I felt it was falling apart, and had too many slides, and at the same time looked like “something from the middle of a tutorial”, not a complete presentation. I changed the idea of what and how I want to talk about several times. Finally, two days ago, I realized I wanted to make this presentation completely different from what I originally had in mind, which meant a significant rewrite.

Since I had several other bullet points approaching deadlines, I had a number of good excuses to keep pushing this rewrite to an uncertain future date, except that I couldn’t, and I finally finished it, and really happy with how it looks now! I don’t even want to think about how many hours it took.

And the second one is a never-ending list of things for PG DATA. I am genuinely puzzled because several volunteers are busy doing a lot, for which I am very thankful, but at the same time, I am busy with conference-related projects all the time, and there is no way to ignore them. A never-ending chain of email – check – submit – respond.

I know, nobody forced me! 😂

DePaul Industry Night

On Wednesday, March 11, our non-profit Pairie Postgres participated in the  Business & Data Analytics Industry Night at DePaul University as a resource for students. I was pleasantly surprised that our communications with DePaul are deepening, and they actually do all they can to include us in any events we might be interested in. It was great to talk with students directly. Yes, it might feel like a very modest outcome: one student registered for our June conference, and one student emailed us to tell us he wants to volunteer, but it’s so much better than nothing (which we had before!).

Carlos, the only local Board member except for me, was able to join me, and another organization member, Robert, also joined us. We had a great time at the event and appreciate the opportunity to connect with students and share that learning about databases can benefit their future careers.

I saved the last copy of our book from being silently taken 🙂

Mr. Nobody Against Putin

Just watched it at the Siskel Center – the theater was packed, and a significant part of the audience was not Russian-speaking. The English subtitles were OK – some nuances were definitely missing, but still quite accurate. They should have run the subtitles in the end, when they play a recording of “Broad and vast is our mighty country” – it’s not like every English speaker knows this song, and I think it’s important that during the time of a tightening oppressive regime they play “where man is gloriously free.”

The documentary is unimaginably depressing. Not only because of what exactly it shows, not only because the audience physically feels the pressure of the Russian propaganda machine, but also because of how Pasha chooses to be blind even after he left Russia: everything was fine before February 2022, and then all of a sudden…

As always, I didn’t read any reviews before watching, and now I see some interviews with Pasha, and I am oging to try to watch at least some of them (I have no idea when I find time, but…)

A New Laundry Basket

Can I post something “ordinary” once in a while? Back in January, when I was in Helsinki, Boris and I went to IKEA. Since the Schamburg IKEA is non-reachable by public transportation, we often check what’s new in Helsinki (yes, sometimes you need this “look and feel”), and then I take a picture of the label and check the availability in Schamburg, and then order online 🙂

What I love about this laundry basket is that it is tall, looks tidy, and occupies very little floor space. Before I got this basket, I had a laundry bag hanging on the closet door and a regular laundry basket on the closet floor. Both of them had less capacity than this basket, and also, I didn’t necessarily want to see my dirty laundry each time I open the closet :). I tried to squish as much as possible in the bag, and when it was time to bring the laundry to the washing machine, I would move everything to the basket and carry it. Lots of unnecessary moves, and lots of space taken. Now I am looking at this perfectly designed basket and thinking: why didn’t I get it five years ago?!

A Busy Monday

Monday ended up being another overloaded day. There was a lot to do at work (no missed workday goes unpunished!), and I also needed to visit our prospective conference site (planned for 2027). I loved it when I visited for the first time, and now that another Organizational committee member was in town, I wanted to show it to him.

He also loved it and shared my excitement, so I think we made up our minds for the next season, although we still need to make sure this year’s conference is a success 🙂

Later on Monday, I went to pick up the first batch of conference t-shirts. I’ve under-estimated how far the place was from the Roosevelt Red Line, so it took me way longer than I planned (and I still needed to see my mom afterwards).

Still, I am so happy that I could feel and touch them!

And here is a Prairie Postgres Elephant – our future speaker’s gift!

The best thing happened when I finally got home: a letter from the Illinois AG office informed me that our organization it finally officially registered and can solicit donations in the State of Illinois!

Daylight Time Change After a Sleepless Night

I had an overnight flight from LA, and it was also a day of switching to DST, which resulted in a 3-hour time change. With the flight lasting less than four hours, I slept so little that my Apple watch didn’t even scream at me, but made a sad face: bad nights happen!

Also, I didn’t realize that the CTA was doing something on the Red Line Lake station, so when I exited the Blue Line at Washington, and walked to the Red Line, I found everything closed and a CTA worker explaining to me that I needed to return to the Blue Line exit, get out to the street and walk to Wabash where the Red Line was rerouted for a day. And if I knew, I could just get off at the previous stop and transfer! Another 30 min without breakfast 😂

Finally, I got home, ate breakfast at 9:30 AM, started laundry, talked to Boris, visited my Mom, and went for a short bike ride. Yea, I know!!! But that was not it!

I had a ticket to the Drowsy Chaperone at Theo that night, and I was going to go there with my friend MaryAnn, so there was no question of not going.

Don’t take me wrong, I liked the show, it was something very unexpected, and very well done, but MaryAnn was crazy about the show, and kept telling me how much she liked it. And I was happy that she was happy 🙂

Unfortunately (and as always!), they do not have any pictures and videos from the show yet, because it was just a preview weekend, but I will update this post later!

Educational Track at SCaLE: Listening to John “maddog” Hall Talk

Listening to John “maddog” Hall at SCaLE x23