On family history, parenting, education, social issues and more
Boris took me to another rose garden – and I thought I knew all of them in Helsinki, at least the ones which are close to the city center. But here is another one – and in walking distance from our home.
And yes, not all of the flowers pictured here are roses, I know 🙂
Helsinki greeted me with rain and barely 60F, but today is sunny, and isn’t it great to be so close to the North on the Summer Soltis?! I do not think I saw any dark last night:). Somehow, 63F seems miserably cold in Chicago but feels perfectly summery in Helsinki.
And the bike paths! And the ability to bike everywhere, and the parks so close to the city center! Yes, as much as I complain about missing out on two weeks of Chicago summer, I enjoy these days in Helsinki – a perfect summer in a different way.
So here I am, leaving my beautiful Chicago at the best time of the year, leaving the lake that just started warming up—going on a two-week-long trip, which required lots of planning. I hope that everything will work out the way I planned!
The Computer History Museum took a good part of our second day. In the afternoon, we went for a tour of Lady Winchester Mansion. I saw it previously, and I wanted Boris to see it. I think the tour last time was better, more detailed, more history.
This time, they had smaller groups of visitors (still COVID restrictions) but they were letting the groups in every five minutes, and the tour guides were a little bit in a rush 🙂
I didn’t take any pictures this time, because I photographed almost everything in this house on the previous tour.
I still had some time before dinner and departure, and I decided to take a quick walk around the neighborhood. As quick as it was, I really enjoyed the beautiful nature and all its “unlikeness” to what I can in Illinois.
Overall, I think I feel California better now than after my previous multiple trips, so I guess it’s good to visit while you are not attending a conference 🙂
Still more from our California trip: on our second day, we visited the Computer History Museum.
This is an absolutely awesome museum! I took tons of pictures, and there is no way I will be able to tell about everything I saw. One thing I wanted to mention: I am shocked that such a museum does not have any public transportation access! It’s unbelievable! I am very grateful to my friend who suggested this museum and took us there – I won’t be able to visit it on any of my conference-related trips.
Pre-historic computers:
Introduction of punch cards:
Everybody knows how much I love farmers’ markets, right :)?
While I have some breathing room, here are more California pictures. When we finally arrived in Monterey, it was an afternoon already, and not even an early afternoon :). Did I say it already, how I completely forgot about traveling by car and traffic jams? Saying it again!
We had a late lunch/early dinner, and then we took a long walk along the ocean coast. The ocean is beautiful! So beautiful, it does not seem real! Not like I would trade living by lake Michigan for living by the Pacific :).
One more part of our California trip. Our friends wanted to take us to see a mission, and I liked this idea a lot because I saw one. Moreover, I didn’t even know about these catholic missions, nothing about that part of the US history. And there was so much to see and to learn!
Our hosts’ original plans were altered by the Memorial weekend traffic (frankly speaking, after living for a year without a car, I forgot how it feels when you can’t go anywhere without a car!) But we all agreed that this change of plans worked well – there was so much more to see at the San Juan Bautista Mission!
The whole week after we returned from California was insane. On any given workday, I was actively engaged with more than one customer, so it was a constant context switch. Things were so intense that I could not even have a normal lunch break when I didn’t have to look at my watch all the time or check work emails several times during a meal. Boris and I had only two no-rush conversations during his visit.
Just to be clear, I am far from being done with all the things I need to accomplish by tomorrow, but I want at least to post more pictures from California:)
We are visiting my friend in Campbell CA – I decided that I do not need to have an excuse of a conference to visit her, so I exchanged the tickets for San Francisco one more time and added Boris to that trip.
Yesterday we were on the go for the whole day: we visited the Rose Garden, the St. Juan Bautista mission, and Monterey, and I have a million pictures 🙂
As usual, not sure whether I will have time to write in detail about all of it, but here are some:
More to come!
my experiences with data, coding, reading and other life musings...
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