Category: everyday life

Air Quality Hazard

I never experienced anything like that! And from what I hear, it’s not just me – the hazardous air quality situation is the worst ever experienced in Chicago. It had dramatically worsened during the night, and I didn’t realize what was happening when I got out for the morning bike ride.

The smell of the air was awful, and I didn’t realize how “global” it was. The picture taken from one of my favorite spots shows a complete disappearance of the skyline.

When it was time for the girls to go to camp, they asked for masks, and they were not wrong. The situation became even worse later in the day, although I still hope that it will become better by Saturday, as the forecast promises!

Fruits And Berries

Anna & Fam traveled to Chicago from Michigan, which meant there was an abundance of fresh fruits and berries sold everywhere in mass quantities. Anna figured out it shouldn’t go to waste, and the four of us will consume it all, but it didn’t appear to be realistic, especially because I also stuffed the fridge with CSA delivery and other fruit and vegetable purchases.

I will check with Anna, but at first glance, there were at least 10 lb of perfectly ripe peaches, a box of at least 5 lb of blueberries (I actually think more), several pounds of both red and Rainier cherries, red currants, cucumbers, peppers, and raspberries. And most of them didn’t fit in the fridge!

It was only yesterday that I managed to fit the remaining goods into the fridge, and before that, I was making Finnish blueberry-rye cereal for breakfast for both of us, and we gave a lot of fruits to Igor and my neighbor downstairs. My next-door neighbor just returned from Michigan herself 🙂

Girls in Chicago

Nadia and Kira are attending the Drama Camp at the Lifeline Theater this week. Anna is trying to work from home, and I am trying to work whenever the opportunity presents itself 😂

The challenge is that the camp drop-off time is 8:50, and pickup time is at 3 PM, and it’s about a 15-minute walk from my house, so it’s only 5.5 hours of work in between. Yesterday, I worked from home and picked the girls up so that Anna could do more work during the day. Funny story: when I came for a pickup and the counselor asked for the kids’ names, I almost said, “Anna and Vlad” 😂. After the camp, we went to the beach, and when Anna was done, we switched :). I think the beach is the best thing in this whole arrangement! The water is warm, I bought two new bags of beach toys, so even the 90s (which is going to be the case for the whole week) feels manageable 🙂

Photos From Morning Biking

Injuries And Physical Therapy

While I was in Helsinki, I decided that my biking injuries were not healing fast enough, so after I returned, I went to physical therapy. Funny that I thought that my hip injury was healing slower and causing me more problems, but I soon realized that it was the opposite. Just after one visit to PT and doing exercises for a couple of days, I could run to catch the bus again:). It’s not healed completely, but the most important thing that affected my quality of life has improved.

The hand is healing more slowly, most likely because I use it all the time and often forget that I should be careful. When I went to PT for the second time (on Friday), my favorite physical therapist was in, and he did so many exercises with my hand, and it hurt the next morning. However, I see an improvement! It might still be a couple of weeks, and I still have bruises everywhere on my right side, but the progress is undeniable 🙂

Artists of the Wall 2026

Artists of the Wall is an annual Rogers Park event. I never participated in the actual painting, but I always loved what others had created. Anyone (although it is mostly local residents) can register to paint one of the sections of a 600-foot-long wall located by the lake near Loyola Beach. The Artists of the Wall Festival has been taking place since 1993, when neighbors banded together to cover up graffiti on the wall. Each year has its theme, but it’s usually broad enough to cover pretty much anything you want to paint.

This year’s theme is We Are All Neighbors.

First, last year’s paintings are covered with white (my mom’s photo), and all the slots are marked.

Then, for two days, participants create their paintings (sometimes, people come later to finish).

Continue reading “Artists of the Wall 2026” →

Summer!

I think I already had at least three announcements that summer is finally here, but it was still “not exactly”, because the lake was cold, and the temperatures were not getting to their summer level, and during the heat wave, I was away:).

The latter one does not imply that I wanted to be here during the heat wave:), but only after I came back, and was finally able to go to the beach after work, I could feel Chicago summer in full; the way I love it. Chicago summer at its best is the reason I never want to be away, at least in July and August.

On Tuesday, I finally went to the beach after work, and it felt super nice. And yesterday, I took a late break at work (I do not care what it is called, and why I am taking a break shortly before most people leave home; it’s just the time when I actually can take it!)

When you come to the office at 6:30 AM (no, I didn’t work, I had a virtual training session)
And then take a break at 3:30 PM, and walk the Riverwalk, and hear the music from the fun boats and from all the cafes you pass
Continue reading “Summer!” →

… And I Can Also Be Creative!

I mean “creative” the way I say it about some of our users: you would never imagine what they could possibly mess up!

On Tuesday, Boris and I planned to go for a bike ride after I got back from work (it was the first time I had tried biking in the late afternoon in Helsinki). Because of that, I tried to leave promptly at 5 PM, and as I’ve mentioned many times, depending on how long I have to wait for a bus, the door-to-door time is 12-19 minutes. I should also mention that the buses in Helsinki move much faster than in Chicago, and the distance between stops is significantly longer.

I called Boris to say I would be home soon, got out of the office and walked to the bus stop, and in a couple of minutes, I saw bus #400 approaching. This route stops in a slightly different place from all others at my destination, but I knew where to get off (or at least I thought so!)

There are multiple road construction projects and road closures throughout Helsinki, and a couple of streets around our building are completely closed to traffic. In addition, this bus didn’t have a new and improved screen showing all upcoming stops, and (a really rare case!) neither displayed nor announced them. I didn’t realize that it was already time to get off the bus and missed my stop. Getting off at the next one, I thought that I did not want to add more than ten minutes to my commute, and I would be better off walking across the street and getting on any bus going in the opposite direction. It would be a great idea if I didn’t forget to press the stop button upon entering the bus. I stood by the door, presuming the driver would realize I was going to get off, but I was wrong! The bus didn’t stop, and I was two stops back! I walked to the opposite side of the street again and, once more, saw bus #400 approaching, but I couldn’t bring myself to board it 😂. I decided to wait for a couple more minutes and get on another bus. When I finally walked into our apartment, I told Boris that he wouldn’t believe what had happened anyway, so we should just get on our bikes and go!

You Know I Am Good In Messing Things Up…

On Friday (in the morning of the day of my departure), I received an email from Chase Visa saying I didn’t pay my bill, which was due on that day. I clearly remember scheduling the payment for June 24 (it happened to me once that Chase processed my payment the next day and left me with a past-due amount, so I always make sure I have a payment scheduled a day before the due date).

I logged in to my bank account, and there was no payment on June 24, which left me puzzled. A minute later, I realized what was wrong: I had scheduled the payment for July 24 instead of June 24! I promptly scheduled a new payment, but since it was Friday, I could only schedule it for Monday, which would make it four days overdue.

I started calling my bank (and it’s not easy in the middle of my workday), and as always happens these days, it takes some time to reach a human. Fortunately, I succeeded, and a person on the other end of the line told me that they, “as a courtesy”, will remove the fees when they receive my payment on Monday. Which they did, and life became better 🙂

Then, on Monday, I was booking our trip to Tallinn, and was struggling with the Tallink website: they are prompting people to book a day trip, which is way cheaper than any overnight trip, so I did it incorrectly first, that tried to rebook, then was adding and removing meals, and finally, when it looked like everything was done, I hit the payment button. It was spinning forever; I saw the charge appear on my phone, but the Tallink website responded that “something was wrong,” but they will resolve it and send me an email.

The email never arrived, and Talling was still showing as an unpaid trip, so on Tuesday, I sent a message to customer support. They replied that I had a duplicate booking, and they just canceled the second one. I thought that the issue was happily resolved and didn’t look at the reservation again. It was only on Thursday morning, right before we were ready to leave the house, that I realized two things: that the booking had not been canceled, was a day trip, and also that I hadn’t booked a meal for the inbound trip. Unfortunately, it was already impossible to change the reservation, so I had to book a new one for the next day (this was a minor thing, because of the special pricing of day trips). What was worse that there was no way to pre-book a buffet, which I was hoping for. If there weren’t that many people on board, we could pay for the buffet “at the door,” but the ferry was packed. I was very disappointed, even though Boris kept telling me it wasn’t a big deal. And it was not, I just hate when things are not going as planned.

There are a lot of places to eat on a ferry, and even more places to sit, so it was just me not checking the tickets.

Pride Celebration

We had a Pride Month celebration in all of my company’s offices last week, and I was disappointed with what we had in the Chicago office. Here are the pictures that all other offices shared:

The Montreal office had a cookie decoration activity:

I assumed that our cookie decorating class would also be Pride-themed, as advertised, but it was not! They didn’t even have the right colors 😦

These are the cookies that I decorated. I could make the rainbow and the heart pride-themed, but they didn’t supply us with the proper color icing!

I feel left out! (Although I learned some decorating techniques, which I will use for my Christmas cookies)

And I missed the Chicago Pride Parade and the whole weekend of North Pride celebration in Rogers Park, and the next year will be even more challenging schedule-wise.