Books

Some (not all the books) I listened to and read recently.

The Tree of Knowledge – I liked it when I just started reading it; it looked like an interesting

The Dream Machine I LOVED this book! So many things we now take for granted, and you do not think that at some point, somebody came up with this idea! Things like “there shall be memory” :). Starting from the very first ideas, how a computer should be built, the concepts of processor and memory, the concept of a program as a set of commands, binary representation… I knew some bits and pieces of that history, but only some. Absolutely fascinating reading.

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. I liked it less than all the other books by the same author. I felt like she tried to talk about too many characters in one book, and it ended up being more shallow than some of her other books.

After the Spike – great book! The first book on the subject of (de)population and declining birth rates that I have ever come across, which discusses the real causes of the problem, rather than merely suggesting that “women should be paid more and daycare should be affordable.” Love how the authors talk about the “opportunity cost” and what we all can do about it.

The Rope Walker. I learned who Jaan Kross is when I visited Tallinn last January, and saw his sculpture on one of the Old Town streets. I wanted to find out who this person is, and I learned that he lived in Estonia all his life, including the years of Soviet and German occupation. And during all this time, he has been writing historical novels. He was very popular, and for some reason, he was never prosecuted, and his books were regularly published. At the same time, he continued to be deeply respected by everyone in the country.

Naturally, I wanted to read his books, and I discovered that his most popular trilogy had been translated into English. It took me a while to finish it, because I rarely have time to sit and read, and there is no audio version, but I loved it!

Honestly, I do not know how in the world Jaan Kross got away with writing this kind of book under Soviet occupation, but I guess they took it literally like he was talking about Germans 🙂

Regardless of political context, it’s a great book! I may be biased, because I love Tallinn, and I know not every street, but almost every building mentioned. When you read this book, you are completely immersed in the life of Medieval Tallinn; I felt like I could hear every sound, and smell every smell… I am on book three now!

Going (almost) All The Way South

Today, Boris and I did what I wanted to do for a very long time: biked from our house all the way south, almost to the end of the Lake Front Trail. “Almost” was because of imperfect planning and our local problem of the absence of public bathrooms everywhere, especially in city parks, and specifically on the Lake Front Trail. Moreover, there were several portables sitting around during summer, but someone decided that summer was already over 🤷🏻‍♀️.

We planned for the worst-case bathroom scenario, so it was not a complete showstopper, but another thing I didn’t know was how many interesting things we would discover along the way. We should have planned a day trip to have time to stop by each overpass and look down, or cross the Lake Shore Drive and look at the small pond with swans, or stop at the wildlife sanctuary.

Also, for some reason, I thought that the Lake Front Trail ends by the Museum of Science and Industry, but it turns out that it doesn’t. I was determined to reach the very end, but there was a big traffic crossing very close to the abovementioned end, and I knew it was just a mile and a half left, so I made an executive decision to turn back.

In total, we covered 39.6 miles, and I was planning for 41 miles, but I decided not to focus on these small details 🙂

I took way fewer pictures than I planned, but it is definitely not the last time. Next time, we will plan for at least six hours on the road.

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Tenant Lounge

There was construction going on on the second floor of our office building, and a couple of weeks ago, a new tenant lounge was finally opened.

Just showing off 🙂

Past Birthdays

August 23 was Vlad’s and Anna’s 34th birthday, and I had plans to publish a historical post about this actual date (I already have one on my timeline, but without many details). However, I had too much life for a lengthy historical post (it might come at some point in the future, maybe next year when they will be 35 :)).

For the past month, I tried to arrange Vlad’s visit to Chicago, which is as challenging as you could imagine, given his work schedule and his ambitions. I am very thankful that he was able to make it, even though it was for less than 24 hours. Boris and I haven’t seen him for over a year, so I tried to make it happen when Boris is here. When we were discussing the schedule, I said that any day except for Tuesday would work, and of course, the only day Vlad could make was Tuesday!

Anyway, we met for an early dinner at the Gage to celebrate Boris’ 75th and their 34th birthdays, and I presented the T-shirts designed by Boris for the occasion:

Summer Dance At Loyola Park

They should have advertised more!

Last Day of Summer (sort of)

Last Saturday, I went for the longest non-stop bike ride I have ever done (28.1 miles), and then I went to the beach. I knew that a sharp temperature drop was in the forecast (and it happened, on the clock!), so I wanted to seize the moment. I know that’s not the “real” end of summer, and there will be more warm days, but it was definitely the end of an unconditional, abundant warmth – the default warmth with not a thought of an extra layer. So I soaked in the lake, saying numerous thanks to him, and then sat in my beach chair, and then lay down on the sand, and then sat in the chair a little bit more. As long as time allowed. And a little bit more 🙂

My Neighborhood

On the one-before-last day when my guests were still in Chicago, I made a bad decision regarding taking a bus instead of the L-train, and after an extensive waste of time, we ended up walking to the nearest Red Line station, which happened to be Fullerton.

I tried to make lemonade of the lemons life gave us, and said that at least they have a chance to see one more neighborhood, more upscale than mine, with beautiful houses. They immediately replied: Yes, the houses are beautiful, but there is not a single sign “Black Lives Matter”, or “Love is Love”, or “Hate has no home here!”

Love my neighborhood! Love my friends!

Jennifer

Several weeks have passed since I met Jennifer, a CTA employee who walked with me to the Metra Station when the Red Line was stopped. On the day we walked to the train, she mentioned that she works every weeknight, and that “we may see each other.” Since then, I was looking for her, but I never saw her again, until a week ago. It was Wednesday again, and I was running late. Actually, I was hoping to catch the previous CTA train, not realizing that it had already left. And it was when I ran into the station that I heard Jennifer’s voice from the corner. I yelled Hi, and rushed to the platform, but when I got up, I realized that I was late and had to wait for the next train. I thought of going back down, but then I saw Jennifer walking toward me on the platform.

We hugged, and Jenifer said: I was just telling my co-worker that you were like a ghost – I saw you once, and then you disappeared! We got on a train, sat across from each other, and kept chatting all the way. Jennifer even decided to switch to the Brown line at Fullerton instead of at Belmont. I can only imagine what other passengers could think of us, but we really enjoyed our conversation. At some point, I mentioned my mom and how we try to keep her living independently as long as possible, and I asked her how old her mom was, to which she replied that her mom died when she was nine. “But that’s ok, I had other women in my life,” she added.

I cursed myself for being an idiot and asking such questions, while she continued, “Still, nobody I know lived as long as your mom. All the people around me would pass away in their sixties or seventies.” I won’t describe everything I thought and felt during this conversation; it’s not something new or unknown to me. You just never know when it strikes.

Prioritization

If someone thinks I was relatively quiet in the past couple of days, that was true. The work was fine, but I had a sort of writer’s block with my tutorial, and I started to worry whether I would be able to finish it on time, with all my other responsibilities. One of the things that really bothered me was that I knew that for a workshop of that duration, I needed 100 slides. Also, I knew that even though some of the slides in my presentation were still placeholders, I had already put out there everything I wanted to cover. And when I mentally reviewed my tutorial, I felt strongly that I already had enough material.

I had several industrial slides that required a lot of time for research, but still, there was not enough, and I knew that I shouldn’t expand this part of my tutorial.

Tonight, I was finally able to overcome my writer’s block. I finished all the industrial slides, and when I moved to the next section of my presentation, I realized that there were several placeholders that should have been replaced with three slides each, not one! Finally, I had 94 slides, and I am sure that the remaining ones are somewhere there:).

Finally, I am producing the slides at a normal speed, and I should be able to (mostly) finish everything over the weekend.

And yes, about prioritization! With all being said

I covered an early morning escorting shift before work
I didn’t go to the Art Institute after work
I stopped at Osco for a couple of on-sale items
And I went to the beach at seven. The lifeguards were out, the air was cool, and the water was warmer than the air, and I knew that the swimming season was about to end!

And also, our conference website is live! But I will showcase it tomorrow 🙂

One More Chicago Weekend

On Saturday, my houseguests went to Milwaukee to visit Anna and the girls. I thought I would work on my tutorial, but I ended up catching up on life: cooking and baking, talking with Boris for over an hour, home accounting, and Prairie Postgres business.

And then all of a sudden, it was their last full day in Chicago! It turned out that I didn’t have a chance to feed them an American breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, so I had to cover that, and then we went to the Loop to check out old skyscrapers, which we also somehow neglected to include in our prior excursions.

Then we headed North, stopping at the Bridgehouse Museum:

Then we went to the Starbucks Reserve, because I ike to change people’s opinion about the Starbucks. The only problem was that it was a weekend tourist crowd, so it took a long time to get everything we wanted to eat in separate lines, but we go everything, including the expresso martinies:

Finally, we went to the Glenwood Art Fest. I made a mistake taking a bus from the Starbucks Reserve. It was the Chicago Air and Water Show, and the traffic in the direction of Lake Shore Drive simply didn’t move! After an hour of staying on a barely moving bus, we got off and walked to the Fullerton station, and finally arrived at the Art Fare.