Category: everyday life

Dissent Pins

Last week, I came across the Stand With Ukraine collection on Dissent Pins – I wish I had seen it a month earlier! But I still purchased a couple of things:

I should have purchased more of the Kyiv metro token pins, because apparently they are in high demand, but I hope there will be other opportunities (and I’ve got a Christmas ornament, which will have to wait till next Christmas 🙂 )

Mom: Birthday And Medical

Today, my mom turned 89. Also, her follow-up visit happened to be today, just because it’s not easy to find evening appointments so that I won’t need to skip half of my workday. Since her doctor moved to a different office, the whole thing takes more than three hours, including my getting to Mom and getting back from her to my house.

I sent her a birthday email in the morning, saying what I knew would make her happy. I was not lying in this email. She, indeed, does an amazing job living on her own, with all the relativity of this “on her own” and “living independently.” Still, sometimes I forget how old she is – to be honest, we didn’t think she would live that long when she first came to the US.

When we visited the doctor today, she said she hopes to be in such great shape as my mom when she is eighty-nine ). She also asked my mom to tell her what she occupied herself with every day, and my mom gave her a complete list of her activities; she even spoke a little bit of English with the doctor. Speaking of which, they now have a new technology where they can call a translator from the doctor’s office, and not on the phone as it used to be but on a screen mounted on a rolling cart. It looks really cool: a doctor can take it from one room to another and have translators from twenty different languages available instantaneously. Unfortunately (although not surprisingly), my mom couldn’t hear what a translator was saying, so we had to call it off, and I carried out the translator’s duty.

So, the doctor believes my mom is doing great for her age, so I guess I need to accept the fact that what’s going on now is “great for her age.” I am not being sarcastic. I think that I should start to accept the process of my mom’s aging as a reality that nobody can avoid and not be frustrated with any particular incidents. We’ll see how long I will last with this resolution 🙂

The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan

If you wonder when I have time to read with everything going on in my life, the answer is that about 70% is listening to audiobooks, and most times, I listen while doing something, whether it is exercising, cooking, folding the laundry, you name it.

The Last Green Valley took me a long time to read, and that was one of the rare occasions when I did a synced reading/listening. I finished it a couple of days ago, and I am still under a very deep impression.

This book is just brilliant! It’s really impressive that somebody who does not have ethnic roots in Ukraine could present this story of struggle and survival with such compassion and understanding. Not a single false note!

The book was one more eye-opener for me – I never viewed these historical events from the perspective of ethnic Germans trying to escape the advancement of the Red Army. Lots of details were completely unknown to me, yet I can see how they fold into the big picture. The whole story sounds completely unbelievable, and it comes as a surprise at the end when you learn that it was based on a true story of a real family. When I hear stories like this, I feel that my own life is completely dull and uneventful. I know I will be thinking about this story for a long time, and possibly I will write more about that book.

It’s Not Work But

The things which fill in all my time for the past couple of days are not work-related but still, very PostgreSQL-related.

The first thing is my talk. I accepted being on an official reserve list for the FOSDEM conference, which means that most likely I won’t deliver my talk; still, I need to be prepared. In order to avoid procrastination, I’ve assigned myself to be a speaker for the January Chicago PUG meetup so that I would have to prepare this talk by January 17. Since next weekend will be one more “girls’ weekend,” I have to complete it in the next couple of days. My initial plan was to be done over the weekend but almost five hours on the phone (with friends and with Boris) made it impossible, and it turned out that there was way more work anyway. So now, I am frantically trying to complete it, and hopefully, I will be done by Wednesday.

The second thing is the conference (PG Day Chicago). There is only one more week left for submissions, and although we have enough submissions, we do not have enough speakers. I spent more than two hours today emailing, composing tweets, and asking people directly on all possible media platforms. I just checked how many new presentations/speakers were submitted, and it looks like I made a material impact :). On the one hand, I am happy with that. On the other hand, it’s wrong that big events in Chicago are still driven almost exclusively by my charisma. In any case, that’s my primary focus until next Monday.  

Presents

I wanted to show some of my Christmas present which I got this year. Possibly the most interesting was a present from my Ukrainian friend:

It is super cool, and I already bragged to Anna and my neighbors about it:

Continue reading “Presents” →

CSO For Kids And Other Activities

The CSO is doing a fantastic job with the concerts for the little kids: “Once Upon a Symphony” series. Today was the third time for Nadia and the second time for Kira, and the performance was based on Three Little Pigs (the Big Bad Wolf was a Building Inspector, so nobody was eaten :)). I think it’s really admirable how they can keep even very little kids engaged for forty minutes! This time, Anna was able to come (John drove), and we all enjoyed the performance.

The girls wanted to go back to my house, but today we had time for the concert only, they had to go back home right away, and I am also trying to finish ten different writing projects. Next weekend, however, will be all about family events: my Christmas presents for Anna and John and for Nadia. Also, we are going to celebrate my and my mom’s birthdays.

Tomorrow, my Christmas Tree will be removed, and last night and today, I spent a lot of time putting down all the decorations, taking down the ornaments from the tree, and packing everything into boxes. As I promised to Nadia and Kira, I brought them the gingerbread ornaments, which they ate surprisingly fast (I was sure that they were too hard to chew).

Now I can see that I have several “groups” of Christmas ornaments:

  • the very old ones, some older than me, some from my very early childhood
  • my ornaments from the 1970s
  • the ornaments we hand-made for our first US Christmas
  • the ones I bought on garage sales during the first two years in the US when we had very little money
  • gifts from friends
  • ornaments I brought from different places
  • some cool ornaments I purchased because I wanted them 🙂

And I am going to make sure that each Christmas, even if I do not have all of my ornaments on the tree, I have some form each group!

Just before I took the tree down

Radical Clay Exhibit

My friend, who moved from Chicago to Boston last year, was in town last week, and we went to the Art Institute for the Thursday evening hours. We saw an exhibit I hadn’t seen yet – “Radical Clay,” which presented the works of Japanese contemporary female sculptors made of clay/porcelain. 

The exhibit is small, but all the artworks are extraordinary! Here are some pictures that I took and some from the official webpage. 

This one is called “Looking for a crush”
Continue reading “Radical Clay Exhibit” →

Dr.Strangelove

I watched this movie based on a recommendation from a blog I follow.

Wow. Now I wonder why I never heard about this movie before, especially if it was so highly rated not only at the time it was made but years later … I guess, It’s one of these “people never learn” things. I am glad I watched it, but I find it difficult to write something meaningful about it. I just grabbed the Kindle book which this movie is based.

When I related my impressions to Boris earlier today, he said that it might have been filmed as a follow-up of the Caribean Crisis, but as I found out, the book was written earlier. I might write more after I read it!

USPS – 2

In addition to my troubles with mailing packages, there were similar troubles with receiving them. A package from Ukraine arrived on Saturday, right before my departure to Prague. They left a note in my mailbox, stating that “there was nobody to sign for the package.” That was not true because I was at home at that time, but granted, they wouldn’t have time to get out of the gate and buzz me down when they were already inside. Having that our post office is located very inconveniently for me to reach it, I worried that I will never get this package on time. Then I discovered that I could request redelivery and wave the signature and that I could do it online. I scheduled redelivery for next Saturday when I would be back. The request was accepted, but then nothing came that Saturday. The status of the package was marked as unknown, and the redeliver request “expired.” In addition, there is no way to call the local post office directly, they only list the centralized USPS system customer service number.

To my surprise, the package was magically delivered two days later (with no notification, of course!). Then, I received two more packages from Japan and from Germany; both were left by our mailboxes. And then, a day later, I received a notification from USPS that the packages could not be delivered because nobody was home!!!! 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

I am still waiting to hear about what happened to a package from Ireland which was apparently returned to sender (!!!) because the address was incorrect (!!!)

I also heard from another person about the certified mail letter being returned for an unknown reason, and also, one of my two packages to Switzerland was already returned twice for “incomplete customs declaration,” and I am about to give up on it!

Once again, not for next year: do not mail things last -minute!

The War Is Not Over

Just a day before that happened, I talked to my friend who was in Chicago for the Christmas break. We were very happy to get together and talk about everything in our lives, but not all of the conversation topics were happy. She expressed her frustration, which I seconded, with people around us being “fatigued” with the war and “moving forward.” The conversation she had with her colleagues really struck me. She related that when the holiday season started, many people asked her whether she was going home for the holidays, and when she replied that she couldn’t because her country was at war, people looked startled: which war? with Ukraine? Isn’t it over yet? I can only imagine how she felt, but I couldn’t agree more: one of the biggest frustrations at the end of the year was that the war was largely forgotten.

And then came the airstrikes.

Yes, for the past two days, each news broadcast starts with the Ukrainian war news. I wish there would be a different reason for that. Those lives that were taken won’t be back. But maybe, hopefully, these horrible events would make people think. I hope that what happened was a clear reminder for those who think that this war will never affect their lives. I hope that more aid for Ukraine is coming (and I am going to make it a part of my end-of-the-year donations as well). Aggressors never stop. They should be stopped. Using as much force as needed.