I have so many things going on, and so many things I am behind on, that I worry about them all the time, and barely posted anything here for almost a week. If I didn’t mention anything happening on any particular day, it means that on that day I came home from work and started crossing the things off my list; mainly different tasks, big and small, related to the conference and to the meetup, and kept doing it until late.
On Wednesday, I visited a potential new venue for our meetups. I liked what I saw a lot, but things are still in the making, and I do not want to share until they materialize.
On Thursday, I finally went to the early morning escorting shift after a long winter break, and then went to the ACM meetup after work. The meetup went well, although there were way fewer people than I expected (probably because we didn’t have pizza :)).
Then, it was Good Friday, which we have off, and I took a super-early train to Milwaukee (and I already posted about it). We had a good time there, but the weather was really bad both Friday and Saturday. I returned to Chicago on Saturday morning and walked to Lea to have breakfast there (I needed something to compensate for the cold and rain!)
Then I returned home and did the conference things until evening, almost non-stop, until it was time to go to see mom and to take her to Above the Law theater. I really like Above the Law, and they did great with “Cyrano,” but my mom was in a really bad mood and yelled at both Igor and me (and she kept doing it since then!)
On Saturday evening, our co-workers from the London office landed in Chicago, and I took them touring the city on Sunday. It was still cold, but at least sunny and no rain, and it became warmer later in the day, so we had a great time overall, and I could show them a lot!
(They still owe me my pictures, so I will post more when I have them!)
And once again, I came back home from our touring day, and started emailing/discussing/posting to speakers, volunteers, and attendees, and it feels like I will never be able to complete all the tasks I need to complete!
All this week, there will be meetings at work, and a lot of collaboration, and I still need to execute on one million community things, and I am still nervious about all of them, and about not enough conference advertisement, and mom still yells at everyone, but I have no time to be upset about it!
By now, Jarco, who oversees all the technical side at Valo, is my good friend, and happily greeta me when I arrive. This time, he told me: now we have a proper app, and you can make reservations there, and you can also get your morning porrige for free. Do you like porrige?
Unfortunately, for some reason, I was unalbe to find the app in the App Store, which I reported to him later that day. Next day, when he saw me walking down for breakfast, he asked meL are you eating a proper breakfast today, or just porrige? That was, in fact, the day when I ate fruits and protein at home before heading to Valo, so I said – I was thinking just a porrige today. He said: OK, let’s go! He walked down to the cafeteria with me and told the cashier: she is booked for today, she just doesn’t have the app, can she have porrige?
That was very sweet, and although it looked like I could get the same porrige for free just showing my QR code, I was very thankful to him for taking care of me 🙂
And I can’t miss this opportunity to show VALO Works one more time. I never read the inside of the cards which are placed on the shelves in each room:
The weather is miserable, which is good at the time when I am spending yet another weekend on conference-related work.
The first one is my presentation at PG Day Nordic, which I absolutely had to finalize this weekend, and I just did. When I submitted this proposal, I thought that this would be just the second half of the “long queries” part of my Prague tutorial. However, I realized that it won’t fly immediately after I set down for my first “cut and paste” session.
Then I had been nervous and procrastinating for a very long time, because each time I would start to modify this presentation, I felt it was falling apart, and had too many slides, and at the same time looked like “something from the middle of a tutorial”, not a complete presentation. I changed the idea of what and how I want to talk about several times. Finally, two days ago, I realized I wanted to make this presentation completely different from what I originally had in mind, which meant a significant rewrite.
Since I had several other bullet points approaching deadlines, I had a number of good excuses to keep pushing this rewrite to an uncertain future date, except that I couldn’t, and I finally finished it, and really happy with how it looks now! I don’t even want to think about how many hours it took.
And the second one is a never-ending list of things for PG DATA. I am genuinely puzzled because several volunteers are busy doing a lot, for which I am very thankful, but at the same time, I am busy with conference-related projects all the time, and there is no way to ignore them. A never-ending chain of email – check – submit – respond.
Monday ended up being another overloaded day. There was a lot to do at work (no missed workday goes unpunished!), and I also needed to visit our prospective conference site (planned for 2027). I loved it when I visited for the first time, and now that another Organizational committee member was in town, I wanted to show it to him.
He also loved it and shared my excitement, so I think we made up our minds for the next season, although we still need to make sure this year’s conference is a success 🙂
Later on Monday, I went to pick up the first batch of conference t-shirts. I’ve under-estimated how far the place was from the Roosevelt Red Line, so it took me way longer than I planned (and I still needed to see my mom afterwards).
Still, I am so happy that I could feel and touch them!
And here is a Prairie Postgres Elephant – our future speaker’s gift!
The best thing happened when I finally got home: a letter from the Illinois AG office informed me that our organization it finally officially registered and can solicit donations in the State of Illinois!
I do not want to repeat the same thing again, namely that the workload is unimaginable, but it is still the case. I had a very difficult problem at work, and I couldn’t figure it out all day yesterday. The problem was urgent, but even if it wasn’t, I won’t be able to stop thinking about it or trying to resolve it. I finally figured it out today, along with two other problems (but these ones were way easier).
When I was able to figure it out, there was nobody around who could share my joy, and no one wanted to listen to the details. I ended up calling Boris, although it was rather late for him, but at least he understood the level of my happiness – he knew how much I was annoyed by this problem.
There is no pleasure in the world that could be compared with a techinical puzzle being solved, I am convinced! At least, that’s true for me :). The most potent drug 🙂
I can’t say I didn’t have fun this weekend. I had a pottery class with Nadia, I saw Salome, and I biked. Still, most of my time was my non-work work.
I finally finished my presentation slides for SCaLE and got an idea of how I will be presenting this new topic. Besides that, there was a lot of emailing on different aspects of PG DATA. We got one more Community Sponsor, and a Lanyard Sponsor, and for the first time ever, we are seriously talking about an Academic Partnership with one of the Universities.
On Friday, when I was walking to the Union Station after work, I looked up at the sunset and thought that, despite all complications, setbacks, and time-consuming discussions, things are going the right way! I invested so much of my soul intot his conference, and it is turning out great (knock on wood :)).
I updated the post about Prague with the hotel pictures this morning. Before that, things were really intense, and they still are.
On Thursday, I had to do several things after I got back to Chicago. An additional challenge was that my flight from Prague arrived at 10:50 PM (not a delay; that was how it was scheduled), and my flight to London was at 7:50 AM the next day (with a 7:20 AM boarding time). Boris crafted a morning route using public transportation that was not longer than a taxi ride, and we had to leave the house at 5 AM.
I packed almost everything in my large suitcase (the one I would take home) before my departure to Prague, but I still had to move things from the small luggage to the big one, and I had to pack yogurts from the fridge right before leaving the house. I decided that, in addition to having breakfast in the Finnair lounge, I would also take a shower there. The plan was very tight, especially because I also needed to check in a large luggage. The plan worked perfectly.
A button-operated shower
After we boarded the aircraft, the captain announced that there was fog in London (surprise :)), and all flights were queued, and our turn is 1.5 hours from our original time. I started panicing, but it was not much I could do, except for hoping that the long flight will be held to pick up all late passengers. Also, since we were scheduled to be delayed, the crew got permission to distribute care packages; the best you could possibly imagine!
Fortunately, we were allowed to take off about 30 minutes later, so everything looked manageable. We landed in London about 20 min behind the schedule. Since the connection time was short from the start, and I had to go to anothe terminal, and to the furthest gate there, it was still very close, but I made it.
The only thing which went not as planned was that I wan unable to connect to the in-flight internet from ny work computer. Typically, I do not work on the flight, but this time, I had two big things coming upon my arrival. One thing had to be performed on Thursdays after my arrival, and 4:30 PM, and another one on Friday. Both of them requiered some prep work, and I was almost on schedule with the Friday one, but I didn’t prep for Thursday. It was supposed to be a fast and easy thing, but I was hoping to script the work while I am in the air, and I couldn’t.
The flight to Chicago departed on time, and it landed an hour earlier. All was great, except for I was still unable to connect to the internet from the work laptop. As it always happens in ORD in the situations like this, there was no gate for us, so we spent another 25 min taxing, but still arrived 30 min earlier. As it is common these days, there are no lines for the border control at all, and the most time-consuming part was waiting for the luggage.
Last time when I waited for Uber for more than 20 minutes, I made a note to myself to use a regular cab instead, and it worked perfectly. There was no wait (same as in Helsinki), so things looked perfect for the rest of my plans for that evening. I still had time to prep for my 4:30, which should have taken no more than 15-20 min, and I was even hoping to stop by my mom before heading to the Opera.
And that’s where my plans derailed. When I came home and logged to work, I realized that I had to do something else, and I only started prepping for my 4:30 PM at about 3:45. Then I realized that some information was missing, and that overall things were not as easy as I thought. Long story short, I worked until 6:15 nonstop, then checked that Salome had no intermission and realized it’s not even worth trying to get there, because , at a minimum, I needed to change from the clothes I wore since departure and to put the contacts in.
I texted my neighbor that I had a work crisis, and that she would have to see the opera without me (she was already on her way). It was actually good that I didn’t try to go, because one more issue popped up.
The advantage of me not going to the opera was that I had time to go to see my mom, and also, I had time to sort my mail and unpack the packages, take care of my plants, start my laundry, etc. However, while I was done with my Thursday work, more unexpected details for Friday kept coming, so I ended up going to bed at almost 11:30 PM, and had to go to work on Friday. OK, I didn’t “have to,” but I had no food at home, so it made sense to go to the office and relocate home for the evening work.
In case you didn’t know, January 31 is a National Croissant Day. I pre-ordered special croissants from Vanille while I was still in Prague, and picked them up before relocating home for the rest of the day- evening.
Once again, the work was supposed to start at 4 PM and go for 2-3 hours, at least the part where I was involved, but things didn’t end up as I planned yet another time. I still didn’t have food in the house except of what was left since before my trip (surprisingly, even the milk survived). I had a CSA deliver, but there were still some items I needed.
Since Amazon Fresh repeatedly said there were no delivery slots, I ordered food deliver directly from Jewel Osco, and it was such a pleasant experience that I will continue doing it (no out-of stock at the last minute, could use my coupons, local delivery, etc).
As of now (Saturday morning), the work is still not done, and thought technically I could be still busy at that time, I didn’t expect to be :)). I hope that everything will be done in the next three hours, because I do not want to derail more plans!
Thursday and Friday were super-hectic because my time-sensitive project at work re-emerged with almost the same deadline, but now with me traveling. In addition, I needed to significantly modify both of my PGConf.dev submissions. I submitted everything more than two weeks ago, because I didn’t want to submit at the last minute, and I had to do it anyway, with the submission deadline being the EOD Friday.
With all of the above, I had very little sleep since Wednesday. Even though the show on Wednesday ended early, I couldn’t go to bed because I saw a new conference sponsor sign up, so I had to respond immediately and send a contract to sign. For some reason, I could not fall asleep for a while after that, and this pattern has been going on since then. Usually, I can fall asleep immediately when my head hits a pillow, and that’s one of the reasons a short sleep is enough for me. Something got broken, and even though I was very tired, I couldn’t fall asleep, and since Wednesday, my sleep pattern is completely messed up, so my goal for the next several days is to get it back on track.
Since I was packing for my trip in a half-sleep mode, I was sure I had forgotten something. One thing I realized on Thursday evening was that I couldn’t find my new good presenter, and it was already too late to order a new one. Boris said he will lend me one of his, but I know it won’t be as good as the one I had, and I can’t figure out why mine was missing.
What appeared to be more critical was that it wasn’t until I arrived in Helsinki last night that I realized that I hadn’t pack any extra jeans. I am not sure how this happened, but now it’s a problem – we left for Vienna early in the morning, and we will come back late on Tuesday evening, so no shopping till Wednesday sometime. Unfortunately, airport duty-free shops have only super-fashionable jeans, and I do not like the wide-leg look that is now popular. And I do not want to spend time shopping in Vienna – we have better things to do!
To finish on a positive note, one of my Thursday accomplishments was moving the box with all cookie-related items back to storage. This box is huge and so heavy that I dreaded taking it down and putting it up on the top shelf, and I still do not know how I managed to do it, but I did!
2025 was a difficult year, though which year isn’t? I had been through many fights and won many battles, but a significant portion of those victories were Pyrrhic, so by the end of the year, I was not sure whether I had achieved anything. Still, I wanted to write a short summary of what I consider the wins of 2025 (and what’s not), and how I am going to build on them. I plan to have it in three separate parts.
Money
It starts with money, because if you do not have enough of it, nothing else can happen. Everyone who knows me believes my money management is perfect; however, the only reason it appears that way is that I plan with large margins. Last year, I realized that although I was not overspending (not spending more than I make), my budget became rather mythical, and that I lost a clear distinction between what was “necessary” and what was “extra.” I haven’t changed anything in this classification since I first set it up 20+ years ago, and I was wondering why my wealth manager and I couldn’t find common ground. A year ago, I completely redesigned my budget (the totals didn’t change, but everything else did :)), and at the end of the year, it ended up being very close to reality. I didn’t make any major changes, only some minor adjustments, and I consider this result to be one of my best achievements of 2025.
Professional
Many years ago, when I first told Boris what I wanted to do when I retired, he told me it was not a retirement but a change of profession. Although I still have at least a couple of years until retirement, I feel like my profession has partially changed, or rather, I have added something new to it. Speaking strictly about my technical expertise, I am extremely happy that in 2025, I learned new techniques and technologies and became better at what I have already been doing very well. I have been presented with several major technical challenges, and I have resolved them in a new way, not relying solely on my previous experience. I consider it a very important achievement, because that’s what keeps me at the top of my profession, but at the same time, I know I could do more. There are several areas that I have never touched before because “it was not my thing,” but I believe that the time has come to broaden my expertise and not to be solely focused on the areas I am already good at. I have a list of techniques and tools I want to learn in 2026, and I hope it comes true.
For the first time since I started at my current job, I was able to create new open-source projects. My current job does not leave me much time to pursue professional projects outside the job itself, but this year I added one new project and almost added another. Formally speaking, I added it yesterday, but the work was done in Q4 of 2025.
Prairie Postgres
This is part of my volunteer work, but it is so massive that it warrants a separate section. Obviously, that’s the first time in my life of running a not-for-profit, and I still think I had more fails than successes. The level of responsibilities was no less than in my “normal” job, and I was not fully prepared for that. For much of the year, I felt like a complete failure because I didn’t have time to do everything this “other job” demanded of me. My accomplishment is that I was not a complete failure after all; we survived, and we are slowly growing.
The rest of the volunteering
I am not completely happy about it. Firstly, I now strongly believe I took on too many responsibilities, and I am glad I had the sense to drop the Howard-Evanston community board, not without hesitation. But I still have too much, and all my volunteer positions were because I wanted them, not because someone forced me to take them. That was the first year I had more than one professional volunteer responsibility, and they have all been very time-consuming from the start. I know that I do not fulfill my volunteer obligations at least for two organizations, and I need to figure out how to change it.
It’s still a mixed bag with the Night Ministry. I know that I am doing at least something good, and I know that at least some people are thankful, but it has been a very challenging environment during the last year. Several times I thought that I was doing so little there that it would be better to stop coming altogether, but each time, I feel that I would create a void in my heart.
I am happier with Clinic escort volunteering, because of the early morning shifts – I finally figured out how to be useful regularly!
Hettie's Reflections 