Chicago Adventures With Lena

Yesterday, my friend Lena from Ann Arbor came to visit me for the weekend, and today was a blast! Not even mentioning how much I enjoy Lena’s company, what a fun person she is, but we did tons of cool things together.

We started the day with the Millennium Art Fair on Michigan Avenue, where I bought two rings with flowers inside, and Lena bought a pair of earrings with butterfly wings (they explained to us that they collect the wings from dead butterflies).

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Not Again!

Even though the inspection a couple of months ago confirmed that there are no rodents in my house, I still had some doubts. Recently, I realized that somebody was cutting into the plastic bags with the bread and eating tiny pieces.

I vividly remember that on Wednesday morning, I thought: I need to call exterminators. And on Thursday, when I woke up and when to the bathroom, I heard these squeaking noises, and I saw that one of the mouse traps which an inspector left changed its position on the floor… Here we go!

I am capable of picking up and discarding mouse traps without looking, but since this one was not transparent, I was not sure whether the mouse was indeed there. And I was afraid to look. Then I remembered that the painter who will be working in my apartment next week was going to stop for his advance later in the day, and I decided to ask him.

When he came, I told him: I wanted to ask you for a favor. You know I am a strong woman, but there is one thing I am afraid of – I am afraid of mice! And he looked at me and said: I am afraid of mice, too!

Then he said: if it’s not a rat, but a mouse, I can look! I showed him a trap and told him that I could discard this mouse. He looked and then said – where is your broom? I handed him a broom and a shovel. He asked: are you ready with a garbage bag? Because I am not going to look! I said – yes, and with this collective effort, we successfully deposited the mouse into the garbage, and I took the garbage out:)

The Lake At It’s Best

This year, the spring was cold, and it took a while for the lake to warm up. Today was the first time that I didn’t want to get out of the water. It was a perfect moment in the evening when the air was still warm and the sun was just about to start to come down, and the water was magical.

Thank you, my lake!

My Fair Lady

I went to see a new production of My Fair Lady on Thursday. This was an outing I planned to do with mom (with hopes that she still remembers the plot she knew!) It turned out that she only remembered the name, not the plot, but it was still good, because it is a beautiful show, and I wanted her to experience the atmosphere of a great classic musical. So at least that worked 🙂

Broken Ties – Andrey Loshak’s Movie

Highly recommend watching this movie to all my friends who ask me “how Russian people feel about what’s going on”. There are English subtitles

Highland Park

Yesterday, Igor went to see the scene of the shooting and took a lot of pictures, which can be seen here.

The ones that actually gave me chills are those with the abandoned folding chairs, which were left behind when people ran in panic. And the sight of a completely empty downtown…

Central/1st - southeast corner
Central and 1st - northeast corner
IMG_3277

Different Views On Abortion In Illinois

This article was printed shortly after the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe/Wade. I sent it to one of my colleagues to illustrate how complicated the issue is and why many companies are careful about not explicitly condemning this decision. It is not so unanimous even in the Blue State of Illinois.

Not like we didn’t know before.

Postgres London 2022 in Pictures

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

I tried my best to take a picture of each speaker at Postgres London except for the very end when I had to take care of my next day’s airline reservation which had to be rebooked along with two more flights.

Opening remarks

Gabriele Bartolini

Nilesh Trivedi

Tomas Vondra

Jimmy Angelakos

Anthony Nowocien

Simon Riggs

Laetitia Avrot

Hettie Dombrovskaya

If somebody has pictures of the last two speakers, I would appreciate the links! Then, this report will be complete (except for the post-conference :))

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A New Twist In Biking In Helsinki

Boris had a very bad bike accident on Wednesday. He says that’s because the sun was bright and because he was not looking at the road but looking back, making sure I was not left behind. In my opinion, the problem was his state of mind. Before we went, I asked him whether he was sure we should go, and he said – yes, it might become better.

He had very serious reasons to be upset, so all is understandable, but as a result, he ran into the rear of a police car – at full speed! I am not even going to describe his face (it still looks very impressive, and actually worse than right after the accident), but the most amazing thing is that he broke a police car bumper!!!

The police filed a proper report, and the hilarious part of this story was that the officer said: we hope our insurance will cover the damage, but we need to check. Most times, it’s not the bike hitting a car, but the opposite, so we need to check whether they would cover the situations like this!

So…

I thought this trip felt a bit too perfect to go as planned. I am not flying to Ireland tomorrow, and it is very sad, mostly not because of Ireland but because I won’t see my friends. The only consolation is that it would be much worse if we found it out tomorrow! I spent two hours rebooking and rearranging my life for the next five days, and somehow it was rebooked and rearranged with virtually no financial loss.
I will cover the last three days later – they were great, but now I am infinitely sad and disappointed that things didn’t happen as planned.