Category: everyday life

How I Feel These Days

There are too many good things happening! Unfortunately, at the same time, I have another wave of stress because-everything-is-falling-apart at work, but still.

Objectively, there are too many things going great. First and foremost, the news and politics feel surreally normal. I do not know how else to describe them. Something we dreamed about for all these long four years, and now that it happened, it feels like you are dreaming 🙂

Then my birthday, when I felt so loved by everybody, with all the gifts being so thoughtful, with all the conversations I had these days.

And then the announcement of the book and the postgres_air database! My LinkedIn account exploded! I want to check whether there are more reactions than on my Technologist of the Year announcement, but I think that’s true :).

My Belated Birthday Cake

As it turned out, Vlad and Anna were planning to deliver a specially ordered cake for me on my actual birthday. When I told Anna that I will be in the city on that day, partially because I need to pick up my inauguration day order from Vanille Chicago, they had to change their plans. Anna canceled their order in an attempt to move it to Wednesday, but by that time, they were overbooked for the inauguration day :).

After all, it was not that bad because I (with mom’s help) was more than half done with the pie. 

On Friday, when I was sitting working, my door opened, and Vlad delivered a cake. And let me tell you – it was something! It was just great; I have nothing else to add! Yes, it was huge, and it might look completely unpractical, but that was just right! I was in such need of an unpractical, fabulously looking present, and the one I would never get for myself 🙂 

A six-inch cake!

Our Book Will Be Available Soon!

Reblogging from my professional site – one more time about the book

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

There will be a lot of me on social media today because I have a couple of important announcements to make.

Those of my friends and colleagues, current and former, who attended yesterday’s Chicago PostgreSQL User Group were the first to know.

Last night, I presented two projects that I, together with my wonderful co-authors, were working on during the pandemic. These two projects are closely related, but I want to talk about each of them separately.

At the beginning of March 2020, when I was busy getting ready for yet another conference,Jonathan Gennickconnected with me on LinkedIn and asked whether I want to write a book about Postgres performance. I said: yes, but I am busy; please reach out in a month :). When he reached out in a month, we all lived in a totally different world, and I was ready to dive in. I am…

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Inauguration

I took a half-day off today to spend some time with mom. First, because she didn’t get a chance to say happy birthday to me yesterday, and second, I wanted her to see the inauguration.
It was a cold but sunny and really beautiful day, and I went for a short walk.

Yes, I started to put flowers in my bedroom again
Continue reading “Inauguration” →

How Was My Birthday

It was great, even though you might think it is impossible in the time of pandemic with everybody being remote.

It started with this picture I received from Boris at 4-35 in the morning (that’s when I wake up, and he knows :)). And since he is not sentimental at all, I liked it even more 🙂


Today was my office day. I didn’t have breakfast at home (I only took a small container of fresh-cut fruit with me) because I had a Starbuck birthday reward, which I planned to use. Unfortunately, the Starbucks at the Palatine Train Station closed for good (which breaks my heart!). But with the new train schedule, I take an early express, so I ate my breakfast at the city’s train station.

Continue reading “How Was My Birthday” →

Days Full of Snow

Stress, Chocolate And Me

I hoped that this weekend would be a “return to normal,” but it ended up being anything like that. On Friday evening, after I already spent two days trying to resolve upgrade issues, I realized that I would have to work on Saturday. At that point, I thought it would be just a couple of hours (it ended up being eight).

I had a million things to do in the morning, so I told my co-worker that I want to start the next upgrade at one. That still put me on a tight schedule since I also planned to talk to Boris before work started.

I was trying to lay out all my morning moves in the best possible way, including the fact that I had to go shopping with mom.

The point is that I was trying very hard to keep my schedule and be home at noon to talk to Boris, and I had ten stops to make.

As a result, I forgot two things. One is that I forgot to apply my birthday coupon at IKEA (it was valid for the whole month of January, but I am not planning to go there one more time). And the second is that I forgot to pick up my Brazilian chocolates at the w=Winter market. They are only there for two hours every other Saturday, and they only deliver pre-orders. Not like I do not have enough chocolate at home, but I thought it would be nice to support them, and my birthday is a good reason to do so.

So I ordered a box of brigadeiros and two packages of alfajores and figure out that between mom, post office, and IKEA, I will be able to stop by the Winter market. And I forgot!
Moreover, it turned out they texted me fifteen minutes before the market was over, and I didn’t see this message because I was already late for my online date:).
I only saw this message two hours later, when I was already deep in work and texted then a million apologies.

Their reply was: we are glad you are OK! I realized that, knowing me for a while, they could not imagine anything stopping me from picking up chocolates! And then they texted me that they will deliver, and they did.

ANd it was so good to have all this chocolate at the end of exceptionally stressful day!

Last Sunday

On Sunday, it was my mom’s birthday. Last year she turned eighty-five, and we had a big surprise party for her. This time, it was just me and her, although all her grandchildren sent her messages, and she received lots of birthday wishes from her friends and former colleagues.

I still tried to make it festive. As mom likes, I made tiny sandwiches, and we drank Vlad’s liquor and had coffee with tiny cheesecakes and other pastries. And I took the time to listen to her and let her talk. I gave her Kindle Paperwhite, and taught her how to operate it, and uploaded a dozen of her favorite books and some others that she might like. I also ordered a photo calendar for her.

I didn’t feel like I made too much of an effort, but when I dropped her off at her place and returned home, I felt exhausted to the degree I wanted to cry. I am not even sure why. She is not hostile anymore, and even when she is upset, she is not making scenes, which should be a relief. It is sad to see how her personality is changing. She is becoming more like a child in many aspects, and she is becoming dependent on me emotionally in an almost unhealthy way.

The same as when I was a child, and even a teen, developed this unhealthy psychological dependency, that I could feel good only when she was around, she is now developing towards me. I think she does not have any other models of relationships. Like a small child, she feels it when I am upset, so I need to watch my behavior when I am upset with something. Like when my water heater broke, and when she thought that Anna and her family left, while in reality, we had this COVID situation here.

There was one thing that surprised me, though. Sometime between Christmas and New Year, my friend, whom mom also knows well, told my mom and me separately that her son had COVID and that he didn’t tell her until it was all over and he was tested negative.

I knew the story from my friend, and when I came to visit mom, she told me the same story. After she shared it with me, to my surprise, she said: good boy! I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. She repeated: he did it right! I was planning to tell her about Vlad’s infection, but when I heard that, I said to myself: great, thank you for letting me know!

I got mad at Igor when I learned that he told my mom about his positive test on her birthday. I expected a major crisis. But she was surprisingly OK with everything. Even before that, I saw that she was not even half upset with the news of John’s infection as of Nadia’s. I think she still does not realize that this virus is way more dangerous for adults than for kids. But it felt like she does not want to let additional worries into her head. And I am going to leave it as is for now.

More Christmas Gifts

Because of predictable slowness of the mail around Christmas and New Year, I received a lot of presents in the days after Christmas. Which made it even more fun – I feel like I have a month worth of Christmas!

My older granddaughter Nadia made these ornaments with her palm print all by herself 🙂

The packager from New Zealand arrived as well. Each Christmas, I feel like this is the coolest thing to receive cookies from the opposite side of the globe! And it’s not just cookies, each year there is something else special!

Continue reading “More Christmas Gifts” →

A Lonely Gym Goer

I thought it was a really funny picture. Since there is no mask mandate in our gym, and although some people wear masks, not everybody does, I only go there very early in the morning, wear a mask and leave when the first person after me arrives. I took this picture when I was leaving the gym last week, and this first person just came in.