Category: everyday life

My Mailbox

FOr the past two weeks, from time to time I find Morrison’s campaign materials in my mailbox. I do not know whether his campaign decided to cut on data analyst or what, but my mail looks funny together:

Two days ago, my vote by mail package arrived. I am impressed by the number of languages:)

I am still undecided though whether I wan to vote by mail or vote early.

Work And More Work

On Wednesday morning, we submitted one more book chapter. Now we are half-through by the page count, and almost half-through by chapters. If not for the work crisis, which is going on for almost three weeks now, this chapter could be enjoyable. I mean, it was, but not without drama :).

I am very tired, I do not have time for any human activities, but I know that I am doing the right things. Unfortunately, I can’t share publicly most of the work things, but I am confident that I am doing everything the right way/ I just need a second life 🙂

IKEA

It’s that time of the year when squirrels run around with their tails up, getting food supplies into their nest to help them last through the winter. That’s what I thought of myself when I went to IKEA last Saturday, the first time after it reopened. I ran out of everything and needed to replenish supplies.

Do you know that nobody except IKEA sells cookies or cracker with cardamon?!
Lave both of these teas!
New cups
Continue reading “IKEA” →

Transit News

Last Thursday, both on my way to work and back, the train conductor announced multiple times that they would start checking the tickets on Monday.

Since the beginning of the lockdown, conductors stopped checking the tickets, although in the beginning, they were still going through the trains. And then they stopped completely. Tickets were on sale, and I purchased my monthly all that time. But everybody knew that tickets were not checked.

Although it was announced multiple times on the previous days, and on the train this morning, it turned out there were plenty of people who didn’t get the message, quite literally!

As I learned later from the brief conversation with one of the attendants, today was the first day Metra staff was back on the job. I didn’t connect it in the morning when I saw that Palatine train station was finally open. I was hoping they will open soon because it was getting colder every day, and they finally did. But it was a part of one big “back to work” thing. So my hypothesis that they didn’t realize how many people are commuting.

They still didn’t have conductors walking the trains, that the idea was that they would check the tickets before boarding at after getting off the trains at Ogilvie. To make things easier:), they closed a couple of exits.

And so that’s how it looked! As I said, many people didn’t get the message, so they stood at the bottom of the stairs trying either to find their ticket on the app or to buy it.

Hello, six feet apart!

In the morning, I was hoping that they won’t do it again tomorrow. In reality, nobody was checking at the platform when I was boarding the train back. We’ll see what will happen tomorrow morning 🙂

Phone Scam

It is incredibly embarrassing to share, but I am going to share so that other people know.
Today I lost two hours of my life and a small sum of money to very skillful scammers.

Here is how it worked. They called with an automated message, which I was about to ignore, but then I listened, and it was a request to approve (or disapprove) a large purchase on Amazon. I listened twice and then pressed 1 to say, “I do not approve.” Then the call was redirected to a human, and it was all like – yes, please confirm you didn’t want to purchase this iPhone, what other purchases did you make today which you can recognize. Then all this normal stuff, like do you share your account with anybody, then it started to be suspicious. They asked to verify the email, but when I did, and they said they would send a verification code, it turned out that they misspelled it. I got it on the second time only. It took me some more time to realize that they were not Amazon, but the way they talked and asked me to do one small thing at a time, it all looked normal. Only when I realized that I already gave them more information than they could possibly need, and when they asked to start screen sharing, I hang up on them.

I immediately changed my amazon password, my amazon email, and enabled two-step verification. And then I called actual amazon and notified them about what just happened. One important thing they told me that they would never call anybody unless the call was pre-arranged, i.e., if I requested the call. The money lost was for “account confirmation. purchase,” which was one before the last step for me to realize what was going on. And again, they were so-so-so “step-by-step, that it was easy to lose track of the sequence of actions

Good thing that no credit card information was accessed and that I reacted fast. However, I could figure it out earlier!

Time is the only non-replenishable resource, and the lost time is what I regret the most.

***

Two weeks ago, Boris had the same surgery as I had in February. Yet another time, I see a striking difference between our health care system and the one they have in Finland. But I do not want to elaborate on this subject just now 🙂

The fact is, that it was always thought that his vision is way worse than mine, because he has limited vision fields, and some blind spots right in the middle. So, I guess he has been thinking for a while that in comparison to that, the miopy in not an issue. And it is. So a couple of days after he had his first eye operated, he told me: you know, today I realized that I need to clean the kitchen floor! And I was: awww! I am so happy!

It’s not something you would comment on when you visit, so I aways suffered in silence 🙂

The second surgery is going to be in a week, and I think that after that, he may be able to see even better than me!

More of Chicago – I Just Can’t Stop!

It’s getting colder, much colder! I was doing my weekly laundry yesterday, and could not believe I wore shorts just last Sunday! But even cold and cloudy – isn’t our city beautiful?! Isn’t in gorgeous?!

Continue reading “More of Chicago – I Just Can’t Stop!” →

Celebration

We had a launch of new product today. It does not mean, that “it’s all over,” but that’s an accomplishment, at life will be just a little bit not so crazy 🙂

I was alone in the office today, and I celebrated with a glass of four different flavors of Jeni’s ice cream:)

A Short Description Of The Past Several Days

Working around the clock on a critical project at work (launching tomorrow 6-30 AM). Around the clock – literally. At the same time – trying not to miss a next chapter deadline with our book (had to ask for three days extension). The past nine days were the planning miracles because I managed to get it all done and have this Art Institute outing.

Today was all work, with no lunch break and no coffee breaks (all in front of the computer). Then, I went to my neighbor who lost her daughter, and when I came back, I saw more messages on the work slack. Which I am going to ignore for now because I need to do a couple of personal things, and I also need to prepare some teaching materials for tomorrow. OK, I didn’t ignore them :). But I told them, that I can’t allow this thing to go to production:).

And now I am going to spend the next forty minutes doing stuff fo myself, and another forty minutes to prepare teaching materials.

My First-Born Birthday

Today is Igor’s birthday, and it’s hard to believe that he is thirty-five. I can’t even describe how proud I am of all the things he achieved in life. He faced way more challenges than Vlad and Anna, not the least one being a first-born for the 22 years old mother. But here he is. A kind and compassionate person. An accomplished professional. A cancer survivor. A person who stands for his views and beliefs. Happy birthday @igorstudenkov!