Tag: weather

Only In Chicago!

It is in the mid-40s and sunny. And almost no wind. Amazing weather for the past couple of days.

On Tuesday, I was in the office and went skating during the lunch break. Today,

I had unplanned work from home and went biking during the lunch break.

How is it possible that the weather is perfect for both?!


‘Only in Chicago! (c)

More Travel

Thinking about this week in Spring when we had both Nordic PG Day and PG Day Paris, I can feel the difference – there was too much travel for me this time! I didn’t need to travel anywhere for Nordic because I was already in Helsinki, and there was a one-day gap between Nordic and Paris. And now, I had to travel to Amsterdam and then skip a part of Uptime to travel to Vienna. And I was so tired! I will never do it again! Probably, I should have just traveled to Amsterdam directly from Chicago.


The PG Day Austria went really well. Although there was no emerging dessert table, the conference venue was splendid, and the talks were great.

Continue reading “More Travel” →

Thank You, Universe, For The Lake!

The days were hot, but I could not get any break from work neither Thursday, no Friday, and it was raining on Thursday evening. Usually, I do not go to the beach when it is getting dark, that’s Igor’s thing, but I didn’t get a chance yesterday until close to 8 PM. So I went when I could because I could not let one more summer day waisted, and there I was when the sun was almost set.

It could not be more perfect! The water was warm, the air was warm but not stuffy, and there were a lot of people on the beach. And the clouds were pink 🙂

More Helsinki

What else is there in summer? The strawberries that can’t be matched, forty flavors of ice cream, pride festivities, 86F weather for two weeks in a row.

Oodi deck – it’s almost impossible to stay there at 87F!

And also – Helsinki’s IKEA.

IKEA always gives me a sense of stability and an “all is right” feeling. Now, it is almost impossible for me to go to the Schaumburg IKEA, so most of my orders are online (which means, that IKEA food is out of reach for me). We decided to go to IKEA “just for window shopping,” but then we found these coffee cups of that perfect pale turquoise which was gone several years ago. The cups were not rectangular as Boris likes them, but they were still near perfect. We didn’t buy them because I wanted to check online first, and for some reason, my internet went down. When I checked at home, it turned out that 1) this was a new product and 2) this color was sold out in all of the IKEA stores in the US!

The next day, when I was at the Swiss PG Day, Boris went there again and got two boxes of coffee cups with saucers, and a box of espresso cups. I only managed to get one box in my luggage, and he should bring the other two when he comes to Chicago next time.

I Want To Skip These Days

I had a really exciting day on Saturday, I took tons of pictures, and I wanted to share all about it. But after the shooting, I can’t make myself write.

On Sunday, I made a huge effort to deliver the first segments of my educational video. I successfully submitted them, but now I am waiting for feedback, and I do not want to proceed with more segments until I receive it.

Today was way more productive. Not only a very good day at work, but I finally submitted one of the four talk proposals which I promised to submit. Also, I released some new code to NORM_GEN. Although I have an accepted talk for Swiss PG Day, I need to make sure I have enough of this new material to present.

And the weather was outstanding – just another gift from Nature.

A Year of Living by the Lake

I moved to my new home a year ago. On the one hand, I am still telling people that I “recently moved.” On the other hand, it feels like O already lived here for half of my life.

This week, the weather finally became warmer, and I biked a lot. The sun rises early enough for me to go for long bike rides in the morning.

Today, the temperature suddenly rose up to 89F, and I rushed to the beach as soon as I could get off work. It was way colder by the water, but still, I could lay down on my tarp, not moving, not reading, not thinking, just feeling the lake nearby.

When It Goes To 68F after 37F…

The outline of yesterday:

  • Lena came to visit, and we went to the Orchid Show in the Chicago Botanic Garden
  • Since it was 68F, we went biking at the Lakefront Trail
  • We spend the evening creating posters for today’s rally
  • We desperately tried to send money to Ukraine with unsatisfactory results, but I will try some alternative routes

So that’s our bike ride. As I said, it was 68F, so technically speaking, people could go short sleeves, and some did. At the same time, the ice can’t melt instantaneously, so the lakeshore looked like that:

And here are us!