I tried it once, and got lost :), so I was looking for an opportunity to bike early in the morning so that there will be no traffic, and on a day when I won’t have to go somewhere. Last Sunday, I decided that it’s now or never. The potential forty-minute round trip took over an hour, but at least I found the Garden!
The catch is that you can’t “bike to” that garden, you need to walk your bike on the last stretch. And Google was bringing me to the parking lot “under” the garden from where there was no way to get to the garden itself.
In addition to working two jobs simultaneously and having never-ending crises on both, I dealt with one more problem.
Over a week ago, when the rains were really heavy, we had the building utility basement flooded. I didn’t think much about it: there is a bike room and storage units there, and nothing else. Our board members encouraged us to check the content of the units, but I thought I am fine: my unit is the closest to the bike storage, and I see it every day.
However, on Monday, I finally decided to move to storage a utility cart, which was sitting on my balcony. When I opened my unit, I realized that one of the cardboard boxes was sitting on the floor, not on the shelves. I thought that I should move it back to the apartment for a while since now I know that I have space, but I never got to do this. And now, the box was visibly wet and damaged.
It turned out that I was not even aware of how many letters I had! I didn’t have space to set them dry, and I didn’t have time! This week was very work-intense, I tried to squeeze a half-hour here and there, but it was not enough.
Some letters and dairies were almost intact and required very little time to dry. Others were so wet that the paper was falling apart, or the ink would get almost dissolved. Some wet pieces of paper or postcards were pressed together so that I could not take them apart, and then they dried that way. I will need to spend some time over the long weekend sorting this stuff out.
On Saturday, I went to see the new Field Museum exhibit dedicated to Jane Goodall (and I took Igor and mom there as well). I was not sure till the last moment whether e should proceed with the plan: the forecast was rain and thunderstorm for the whole day. I went to clinic escort in the morning, and I meant to ask Igor to bring mom to the Loop by the time I will be done. But I was not sure about the rain. Miraculously, we managed almost to escape the worst of it, and I was really glad we did it!
Mom said she does not remember anything about Jane Goodall. It was sad because her books were translated into Russian when I was a teen, and I remember both mom and I reading them and discussing them. I still remember the names of all of the apes, and I was delighted to see them “in person”. Mom said she would look her up in Russian, and I hope she will. I loved this exhibit a lot; also, I got a chance to show both Igor and mom the Apsaalooke Women and Warriors exhibit, which I got a chance to see right before the lockdown.
Here are some pictures from the Jane Goodall exhibit:
On Sunday, I assembled the last two IKEA storage units in the dining room, moved to the guest bedroom the units which were there temporarily, and finally put all the things at their designated locations. Also, back on Friday, John and Anna took a bookshelf that I didn’t need anymore to my mom’s house. That way, finally, the last room in my new house started to look like I wanted it to look.
And you know what? I felt pretty depressed for a while, and every day, I told Boris that I am not sure what’s the primary cause of that: is it the old house, the job situation, or something else. And the moment I cleared the dining room, I realized that my primary source of depression is gone!
Although I found an emergency AC service on Friday, I could not get anybody to come out right away. The service I got connected to told me they could come on Saturday around 11 AM. I said – sure, but later I realized that we would be at Aquarium and texted them asking to come after 3 PM. In fact, we were back by 1 PM, and then the AC people only came at 3-30PM, while we could not go anywhere. I am happy that the AC was fixed, but we lost all this afternoon time – we didn’t go to the beach one more time or to the playground. The actual repair also took a long time. I knew that this AC unit was old, and I know that I will need to replace it in spring, but I want the old unit to last through the season.
The issue was the same as last time – the leakage. They patched the tubes like how the bike’s inner tubes are patched; only it cost way more!
The 11 feet ceilings and the powerful fans helped us survive the night, but it was still not fun to be at home without AC with 84F outside. It’s so frustrating that I already had HVAC failures multiple times within just five weeks since I moved!
Last Friday, I was so busy going things with Anna’s family that I completely ignored the event that was happening very close to my home: the Wall painting at Loyola Beach! Fortunately, Igor documented it pretty well, so I am going to use his photos and comments from his Flickr album, so I am copying his description here:
Rogers Park’s Loyola Beach has this structure right where the park ends and the beach starts. I’ve always called this structure “the steps,” because it looks more like a step on a staircase than a wall, but it is officially a sea wall.
Since 1993. Rogers Park residents have been invited to paint that wall. Loyola Park Advisory Council started the whole thing because they didn’t like the graffiti (gang and otherwise) that used to cover it. While I’ve heard it described as sort of pure expression of creativity, but because one has to pay for the right to paint at one of the 160 slots, the whole thing is really more a fundraiser for Loyola PAC that happens to involve making the wall look pretty.
Normally, the wall would get repainted once a year, but the COVID-19 obviously kiboshed the 2020 session. I honestly kind of assumed that Loyola PAC would leave the 2019 murals up until 2022, so I was surprised when I stopped by the beach three weeks ago and saw the wall completely bleached. I checked the Loyola PAC’s website and discovered that, yep, they will be repainting. While normally, it would all be done in one day, it was split over three days, on June 18-20, to give artists room to socially distance.
This isn’t a perfect before-and-after set, because I lost my photos of 2019 murals to a corrupted SD card, I kind of rushed through the beach on Friday and I didn’t check the past photos on Saturday and Sunday. But, at the very least, this will give you a view of this year’s painted murals and some of the behind-the-scenes stuff. I’ve been visiting Loyola Beach for the past 11 years or so, so I got to see many versions of the wall murals, but I never got to see it painted, so that was kind of neat.
For many years, I had a family Aquarium membership, but when the kids were grown up and gone, I witched to the individual one, occasionally bargaining for a pair of extra free tickets. When I realized in May that the Aquarium is reopening and that now it would be much easier for Anna’s family to visit, I decided to upgrade the membership back to the Family level. My individual membership expiration date was September 30, and I was sure it wouldn’t be a problem to upgrade earlier.
It turned out that it was a big problem! There was no way to pro-rate the membership. There were only two options: either to pay the full year of upgraded memberships right away, only for it to expire on September 30, or to wait till September 30 and upgrade then. I could not even “annul” the current membership because “two memberships at the same time are not allowed.” An additional complication was that they already took my money before realizing that they can’t do what I asked them to do :).
I was on the calls with them four times until I finally decided to take the September 30 upgrade. Also, they gave me two complimentary adult tickets and ticketed Nadia as a Chicago resident 🙂
That way, on Saturday, we all went to Aquarium pretty much for free:).
It was so-so-so good to be in Aquarium after such a long break!
When Anna and I were out for drinks and dessert on Friday night, I received a call from my realtor.
After the first week on the market, I asked him to bring the asking price of the house 10K down, which he did. All of a sudden, there were way more showings but no offers. After ten days of such development, I texted Mark to the effect of “what we are doing wrong.” The next day he called me with some questions and said that he thinks there will be an offer and maybe two. But again, nothing happened. On Friday night, he finally called to let me know that we have an offer for the asked price.
I e-signed the acceptance on Saturday, and by Tuesday, everything was pretty much settled. Knock on wood; I will close on July 30!
Believe it or not, but the presents arrived at 5-30, Anna and & Family returned from the beach at the same time, and Igor and mom came shortly after. I locked myself in my bedroom to wrap the presents while my mom tried to get in and ask whether the presents arrived :). I’ve got a dozen plastic cups filled with cherries and made two fruit bowls, and secured the candles “1” and “4” in the respective bowls.
The party turned out amazing. I was just thinking about the water balloons, but the neighbor kids were ahead of me and had a whole bucket of them ready:)
There was a balloon fight, and I told them it’s OK to throw balloons at me (I needed to cool down:)). Igor also offered himself as a target, and John smashed water balloons in his fist and threw them back. Also, one of the party items I bought out of desperation appeared to be the greatest hit: the tiny tubes of sparkling body gels! The girls covered themselves in sparkles, and I let them paint all parts of my body not covered with clothes 🙂
Then, a neighbor who is a mother of three girls observed the battleground covered with tiny colorful pieces of rubber and suggested the contest: who will pick up most of the pieces will get the prize! The girls rushed to all corners of the courtyard, and in a matter of minutes, the courtyard was clean. We decided that the race was tight, and everybody got an extra cupcake 🙂
I can’ recall being at the beach at 9-30 in the morning since I was 5 years old:). It was great; the beach was empty when we came, and there were waves, and sun, and the water was clean, and everything was perfect
Hettie's Reflections 