Second day back to Chicago, and it’s a really long day! Escorting before work, work, nail salon, meeting with a friend for a quick bite before the opera, and finally – a Lyric Opera performance: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci – two operas in one evening. Now that it’s already way past 11 PM, I realized I made a mistake – I should have taken Uber back home. But it’s still warm outside, and I hopped on a bus just after I got out of Lyric, and I thought that I would be home before eleven. But then, I waited for a train at Lake for 15 minutes, and now we are stopped due to the police activity on Howard – do not ask why we are sitting at Thorndale!
OK, we started moving!
Anyway, it was awesome that my friend Elina could come with me, because she does not go to Lyric as often as I, and it is always great to share the joy of music, conversation and an intermission dessert at Florian 🙂
Back to Chicago, that resists. Back to my Lake. Back to being busy, getting up at 4:30 AM, and having a whole week of after-work activities.
Each time I am returning back from Finland, I promise myself to get six hours of sleep every night, and each time, it does not last for more than two days. I suspect, it will be the case again this time.
Recently, I read in one of the articles about aging, how important is it to get enough sleep, and that if you think that you need less than eigh hours, you are fooling yourself, and you should make an effort ti sleep longer, and that there is no such a thing as too much sleep.
For me, it defeats the whole point of living longer: I want to live longer, so that I can get more out of life, more experiences, more impressions. What’s the use of a long life if I would spend a bigger portion of it sleeping?!
On Monday night, when we just arrived at the Radisson Blue Latvija hotel and got into our room, I sat down on the bed and listed out loud everything that was wrong with it: no drawers whatsoever, no shelves, no space in the bathroom for any of the toiletries (even nothing under the sink!). The fitness center is a part of the Spa, and as such is open only from 7 AM to 9 PM. No dial to set up a specific room temperature (just a dial with “more” and “less” arrows).
And then I started laughing, because I remembered how Boris and I used to joke about “people are getting spoiled very fast.” I thought about the first conferences we attended together, including all the fun of not being able to be in the same room if you can’t show the marriage certificate (or a stamp in your internal passport, which affirmed that you indeed have one). Also, I remembered all the weird places we stayed in over many years of travel. I should start lining up new blog posts about it 🙂
And aside of not being open when I needed it, the fitness center was amazing:
And that is not even half of it; there were even more machines, a separate room for yoga, TRX, yoga balls, and countless other things.
Speaking about the hotel, though, it was a great conference venue. I do not know what they did differently in the rooms with placing the podiums, but it was easier than ever to see the speakers and follow their presentations. There were almost no lines for food and plenty of coffee on every corner :).
I didn’t take a picture of my speaker’s gift, so I am stealing it from the official conference feed. These are small wooden trays crafted by a local shop. They smell like local cuisine, and I am sure that if you put a warm pot on it, it will smell even better.
There was also a bag of dry fruit, which I’ve already consumed :).
Otherwise, I am using this weekend to email people with whom I didn’t talk at the conference, or didn’t talk enough 🙂
Yesterday, before I left for the airport, I walked to the beach and realized that if I wasn’t in a rush and didn’t put away all the beach things, I could still go! It was nice and warm and calm. Several people were walking in the shallow water, likely regretting having put their swimsuits into storage.
I rolled up my jeans and followed their example:).
During the past week, I had chances to catch up with three friends with whom I hadn’t met in person for several months. And, to a different degree, I can say the same thing about each of these meetings: the changes that started to happen in me and with me during the past year, and especially during the past six months, are more significant than any changes ever happened in my life.
I started to notice it in late spring: for years, there were friends with whom I could always “start from the place we left last time,” as if we didn’t speak for months and years, and it’s not the case anymore. If people follow me on social media, they at least have some ideas about how my life changed, and how my priorities changed. But otherwise, I do not know how to start a conversation.
When we met with my friend Maryann who knows me almost since the time I came to the US, she asked: so, what’s new with you? What happened since we last talked in spring? I took a deep breath and replied: tell me what’s new with you first!
I do not know where to start, how to say that yes, there is work, and there is family, all generations of it, and travels, but that’s not the most important part of my life. It’s especially difficult, because the things I am doing belong to a very narrow professional niche, and you can’t quickly explain “what is Postgres.”🤷🏻♀️
I am leaving on Saturday, and will be gone for two weeks, so I can’t imagine that my balcony flowers will survive, but they are blooming now, and I do not have the heart to discard them…
Today was my last market day of this season – I will be gone for the next two weekends. I had no time and no reason to go but went anyway, especially when I saw their Instagram post this morning:
As usual, my mom said that she didn’t understand anything, but enjoyed the acting. I told her that the plot is twisted enough so she might not have understood it even if it were in Russian 🙂
I am enrolled in as many Apple Health studies as applicable to me, because I like to know things about my health, and because I understand thatconsicten Apple Watch warerers can make a valuable contributions to studies of human health, behavior, and their relationships
My answers “almost never” change, but I always wonder why questions 2 and 3 do not allow to reply “always” 😀
Hettie's Reflections 