Category: everyday life

VALO Pictures

By now, Jarco, who oversees all the technical side at Valo, is my good friend, and happily greeta me when I arrive. This time, he told me: now we have a proper app, and you can make reservations there, and you can also get your morning porrige for free. Do you like porrige?

Unfortunately, for some reason, I was unalbe to find the app in the App Store, which I reported to him later that day. Next day, when he saw me walking down for breakfast, he asked meL are you eating a proper breakfast today, or just porrige? That was, in fact, the day when I ate fruits and protein at home before heading to Valo, so I said – I was thinking just a porrige today. He said: OK, let’s go! He walked down to the cafeteria with me and told the cashier: she is booked for today, she just doesn’t have the app, can she have porrige?

That was very sweet, and although it looked like I could get the same porrige for free just showing my QR code, I was very thankful to him for taking care of me 🙂

And I can’t miss this opportunity to show VALO Works one more time. I never read the inside of the cards which are placed on the shelves in each room:

On Friday, I was in a corner room – the view from the window
Continue reading “VALO Pictures” →

Friends And Chocolate

I can’t be in Helsinki without meeting with my friend Natasha! I was so thankful that, even though she now works full-time, she still found time to stop by my coworking space after work, and we sat and talked for almost two hours! (And yes, I love that we could do it in the same space, and it was OK with everyone)

Natasha brought me a bag of Ukrainian sweets: there is a new store operated by Ukrainian refugees, and they ship directly from Ukraine. She was happy to support their business, and the sweets taste great (and it’s a terrific idea to mix all varieties in one bag – I can barely find two of the same kind!).

(I might still bring some of them home, althought I can’t guarantee :))

Morning Biking, Season 6

This is going to be my sixth summer in Rogers Park. On May 9, it will be five years since I moved here, and six years since I discovered biking along Lake Michigan. That being said, even though it’s not even five years just yet, it’s definitely season six 🙂

Prairie Postgres March Meetup

Prairie Postgres March Meetup

The Weather

It’s not only that the temperature jumps up and down, not only that we have snowfalls and thunderstorms within a couple of hours, but it’s also something in the atmosphere that affects people’s minds and moods.

I felt completely dysfunctional both on Monday and today. Well, today I was mostly tired for no good reason (I mean, there was no more reason to be tired today than on any other day of the week), but Monday felt really bad.

There was an accident on the Red line, and the trains were rerouted, and I only realized it after I stayed on the platform at Lake for more than ten minutes. I knew I had to visit my mom as well and be back for a yoga class, so, without any ETA for this transportation crisis, I called Uber during rush hour, which I never do!

My mom was also quite emotionally disturbed for no good reason, which made me think it was something “in the air,” but nevertheless, I did not feel like my usual self, and was tired like a normal person 😀.

Also, I felt like I was getting a cold, which I didn’t get after all (maybe, just “so far”). It was exceptionally cold on Tuesday, and it was supposed to get better today, so then I got out of the house this morning and saw it was snowing again, I was ready to cry. It’s started to warm up by the afternoon, but now I do not trust this weather 🙂

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! 😂

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!