Category: everyday life

Good News!

Yesterday, I spoke to an old colleague of mine with whom I do not speak so often. Even when we speak, that’s usually a quick exchange on our careers. Yesterday, I spoke to him for longer than three minutes, and I asked him whether he would attend my next meetup, which will feature Bruce Momjian. He replied: It would be great, but I will be in Ukraine! My jaw dropped. I know his wife, and I know she’s Ukrainian, but as I said, we do not talk much recently. Sensing my unspoken question, he continued: You probably don’t know that N. (his wife) quit her job as a lawyer and now runs a non-for-profit. They supply all sorts of equipment to Ukraine, and she was going there every two to three months. They are opening a new distribution center, and this time, I am going to accompany her.

I can’t even describe how good it made me feel (and how inadequate I feel myself, trying to be everywhere and not committed enough to anything; at least, that’s how I feel sometimes.

Happy Independence Day, Ukraine!

Everything The Lake Can Give

I didn’t have a single day off while Boris was here. First, I just took a week and a half of vacation, and second: there was too much work! I was glad that Lena and I chose this weekend for our visit – it gave me an opportunity to disconnect from work almost entirely. Granted, I was doing a lot of “other” things, but it was still a disconnect.

Today I took the morning off, and Boris and I went for a relatively long bike ride in the morning (the weather was absolutely perfect!), and when we returned, I told him that I saw the waves on the lake while we were biking, and I want to go and jump in these waves before the lifeguards come. Boris does not understand the joy of jumping in the waves, but he walked to the beach with me and took some pictures of me in the waves.

Anti-Putin Rally

I am sure that Igor will post about today’s event in more detail, but I still want to post a couple of his pictures. He reports that the meeting went really well, and the participants were especially ecstatic seeing Putin jailed.

News In Gender Studies:)

Boris found this on Amazon:

Comfort Bike Seat Comfortable Gel Bicycle Saddle Replacement Soft Padded with Shock Absorbing Waterproof for MTB Mountain Bike Road Bike Exercise Bike Men Women and Ladies.

🤷🏻‍♀️

At The End Of The Week

I do not think I have ever had a work week as challenging as this one since I joined my current company. There was a lot of everything.

Nothing bad, just the discussions, which I had been trying to facilitate for a long time, finally started to happen. Several people came to me with problems that I could solve and at the same time, teach them some good practices. Nobody dumped extra work on me – I took it over myself:).

The backlog of outside-work items kept growing at an alarming speed, and that’s what worried me the most – I hate to be non-responsive, and I knew that most of the responses would take from five to ten minutes, not more, but there were dozens of them.

On Thursday, i pulled all my willpower and said to myself that I needed to finish as much work as possible because I will have several hours on the train to visit Lena, and I could catch up on almost all of my non-work items then. My “work-life integration” didn’t work this week at all – on most days, I didn’t take time even to pull out my personal laptop.

Now, being on the train, I believe, it was a good decision – knowing that I am detached form work until Monday afternoon, allowed me to focus on other overdue non-personal things: the book, conference submissions, Postgres User Goup, PG Day Chicago, LinkedIn, and so on. And to drop a couple of paragraphs here 🙂

Grant Park Concert

This summer, Grant Park Music Festival almost didn’t happen for me, with several severe storms ruining performances, me being away twice, me being busy, more storms, and more extreme heat. Yesterday, Boris and I went to the concert, which was almost the last for this season: there will be two more on Friday and Saturday, be we will be away.

And this “first and last” concert was perfect! That was the only time this season I watched Carlos Calmar conducting and listened to his commentary on the program and the composers – always funny and insightful. The program was great, consisting of little-known pieces. The weather was absolutely perfect, just warm and sunny enough not to be too hot and too sunny. And after the concert was over, we headed to Amorino and walked in right before the rest of the audience realized that it would be the perfect ending of the night and crowded the place!

Life is beautiful, and all the stress of the week was lifted :).

Clinic Escort, And All Thing Related

I saw this map in Time Magazine, and it’s terrifying: look at Illinois surrounded by states where abortion is banned or restricted. So we are in the center of public interest. I get it.

Last Saturday, a group of reporters from one of the city’s progressive newspapers came to the clinic at the start of our first shift. As I was told, they were asked not to come, but they came anyway. And just so you know – the situation is increasingly bad there. The number of antis is growing; they are loud and intimidating.

I understand that many people are outraged. However, for some reason, they don’t understand the difference between an anti-abortion rally and escorting. For the first event, you want as many people as possible; you want to be loud and visible. But when you are escorting patients to the clinic, you want the opposite. I can’t even start telling you how many bad things happen when counter-protesters start to attack antis by a clinic. Recently, we were asked not to put anything regarding escorting on our social media; that’s how bad things have become.

So, friends – it’s not a field trip.

Come To Anti-Putin Rally On August 20!

Details of the event are here.

Also, i wanted to make a copy of Igor’s Instagram post:

I couldn’t agree more with what Igor is saying. I can’t stress enough how critical it is to continue to oppose the war, to say no to Putin.

I think about it a lot recently – people tend to forget that the war is going on. Too many people reverse to “We should end this war – somehow,” not understanding that nothing had changed – it is still the same war, people are dying, and a big portion of Ukraine is occupied. It can’t be ended because “everybody is tired.” And it can’t be peace “at all cost.”

Today, I finished listening to Mikhail Zygar’s War and Punishment – such an awesome book! I picked it after I heard a short interview with Zygar on NPR. I was immediately taken by the way he spoke: clear, to the point, talking about his guilt in what was happening. And that’s how the whole book goes. I was reading about the events which happened “on my watch,” and I was horrified at how ignorant I was, how I was not following the events, and how I didn’t take the time to analyze the root causes of events.

While I Was Away

My mom has this idea “not to bother/upset me when I am traveling,” which creates all sorts of problems. I am always prepared for some surprises upon arrival, and this time I just could read between the lines that something had happened at the end of the week. Weighting on all my options (see the previous post), I decided to make an effort and stop by her on the night when I arrived. Fortunately, our flight arrived on time, even a little bit earlier, and also, there was no wait at passport control and at the luggage carousel.

I called her at about 6-45 and told her I would stop by. After a relatively long discussion about her phone and how she couldn’t reach her Russian bank, I told her that Boris would look at her phone when he would come. Then I looked at the text messages on her Russian phone and realized that her scheduled payments were already restored (there was a message about the successful payment processing). Then I showed her a message I received about the plumbing inspection, and she said that “actually, the shower switch was not working.” I tried to ask her why she didn’t ask Igor to call the management company or the handyman who gave her his number, and she replied something like “Igor has a long commute to his office.”

But that was not it. After we discussed all of the above (and remember, it was evening when I flew in), she told me that when she went for a walk on Friday, “something happened.” She was talking to a person she sometimes meets when walking, and it looked like she fainted. Thee happened to be a Russian-speaking person nearby (a caregiver of one old lady), who lifted her up, and called the personnel on the beach. My mom didn’t call Igor, and she didn’t tell him, so now we have no way to tell what exactly happened. All I am describing is “maybe- possibly.”

The paramedics put her in the wheelchair, which she was trying to resist (thank goodness they didn’t call mental services!). They took a blood test and EKG, presumably nothing dangerous because, in the end, they let her go). I was mad and scared, and I yelled at her (I hate to do this, but otherwise, she does not understand the severity of the problem).

I need to come up with the questionnaire to make sure we can figure out what she is trying to hide because otherwise, she “does not want to bother me” and does not want to tell Igor, and this all might end up badly.

I Am Back

I typed the title of this post on Thursday morning and didn’t move any further :). Life after the return was intense :).

There are a lot of things going on at work, including some reorganization and interviewing people for an open position. The to-do list is so wast, I do not even want to start on it. Let me rather tell you what I have done so far.

The was this amazing concert on Wednesday which I already blogged about. I went to the youth shelter on Thursday night. I was asked to make pizzas, and some of the youth were so excited waiting for my coming that they made most of the prep by the time I arrived. There was one new staff whom I liked a lot. One girl who did a TickToc recording from out previous cooking asked me whether we could do it again, and I said yes, and we had a lot of fun with that! She asked me about my heritage and what I had for dinner when I was a child, and we had fun chatting about that.

I biked along the Lakefront. I went to the beach and soaked my body in the lake. I received both my CSA deliveries. And I am on my way to the clinic escort.