Category Archives: Updates

A New Computer and a Cake

On March 15 I received an email from Framework telling me that they were preparing my computer batch. I had been waiting a long time for this computer so I was very excited. Though, Julian’s birthday party was scheduled for March 23 and I was worried about having my attention divided if it turned up before the party. I received a shipping notice on March 21 with an estimated arrival of March 25. This seemed like a good time for the laptop to arrive.

Jaeger’s parents were coming to visit us for Julian’s birthday and so we played musical offices. Jaeger’s office is also our guest bedroom so he moved up to my office, because I’m better at blocking out random noises, and I moved to the gateleg table in our living room. For a temporary space, it isn’t too bad. I borrow Jaeger’s portable monitor and my Zoom “background” can’t be beat because it shows off our bookshelves and Jaeger’s pygmy date palm. As one of my work colleagues commented, it’s the perfect zoom background¹. However, I still miss my two full-size monitors at my regular desk.

Overall, my current job involves a lot of collaboration and a lot of meetings. I don’t usually have many meetings on Friday but last Friday was an exception. I ended up with five meetings that day. During my first meeting the doorbell rang and Jaeger went to answer it. I figured it was a replacement hammock which I had ordered for Julian. However, Jaeger returned with a suspiciously computer-like box and placed it down next to my desk. It was Bree, my Framework laptop, and it sat there taunting me my entire work day. Fortunately, Friday is one of Jaeger’s nights to cook so once I logged off work I started putting my computer together. Work had been a lot that day and I was still a little flustered so I didn’t get proper unboxing pictures. However, I did get a couple of pictures in the in-between stages. I purchased the DIY Framework option so the computer came without the hard drive, memory, keyboard, touchpad, bezel, and ports installed.
Framework’s instructions were easy to follow and I put it all together and verified I could bring up the Bios right before Jaeger announced supper was ready.

After supper we played Wingspan together. Julian and Jaeger’s mom were a team and Julian kept trying to give her instructions using pseudocode, which didn’t work particularly well. However, point-wise they still ended up solidly in the middle.

Saturday morning I woke up early and nervous because it was Julian’s birthday party day. I went downstairs to make muffins for breakfast and then discovered I had too little sugar for the cakes I was planning to make while the muffins were baking. It was still very early, and everyone else was still in bed, so I rushed to the store to pickup sugar. I got back and mixed up the muffin batter. I went to put the muffins in the oven and discovered that my oven was broken.

So . . . I have a history with this oven. Back in 2021, a couple of months after we moved in, it was Jaeger’s birthday and I baked a cake for him. That went fine. However, after the cake was finished I went to bake the main entree for the evening and discovered the oven was broken. This wasn’t great but we also had a range oven so it wasn’t terrible to have the wall oven broken. I had a repair person come out and he told me it was likely the control board was broken but the oven was old enough we couldn’t get replacement parts for it anymore. However, he said I could send it into some random place on the internet and they could likely repair the board. I delayed for quite a while but eventually sent them in and discovered to my astonishment that it actually fixed the oven. I had two ovens again! However, this last fall, my range oven died and is still dead. I was thinking about replacing it but for complicated reasons it would be pretty expensive and I decided I could live with only having one oven. After all, most people survive perfectly fine with one oven. All that to say, when my wall oven broke Saturday morning, it was a problem.

I contemplated the situation in a mild panic. Clearly I could go to the store and buy a cake but Julian had already specifically requested a strawberry cake with chocolate frosting. I pulled up Consumer Reports and their top rated toaster oven was a Breville Smart Oven it was expensive for a toaster oven but Consumer Reports rated the baking component as “very good”. Miraculously, the specialty cooking store in Santa Cruz actually had one in stock so Jaeger went to pick it up. While he was gone we continued our various birthday preparations. He got back and I started baking the cake in batches. The toaster oven fit a 9″ round cake pan but it obviously would only fit one at a time. That said, I have now baked three cakes in the toaster oven² and I can confirm that the baking function is very good. The cakes turned out perfectly. While the cakes were cooling, I started putting together the ingredients for the frosting. Then I realized I was out of powdered sugar. I have never had so much trouble making a cake before. I did a last minute pivot to a whipped chocolate ganache topping and finished it minutes before guests arrived.

The party involved a lot of kids, some adults, and a lot of overall chaos. I think it turned out well, aside from Julian having a breakdown at the end, and we all survived.

Everyone departed around 4:00pm which allowed me to squeeze in a little quality computer time with my new laptop. My next task was to install the OS (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). That went smoothly and I had a functioning computer before I had to go make supper.

As time permits, I’ve continued tinkering with Bree. Overall, I like it. In my opinion, the big screen makes it worth the extra weight but I could definitely see it being too big and bulky for many people. I briefly tested out Sketchup and, unlike my old laptop, it looks like it shouldn’t have any problems running it. I now have all my essential programs installed but will likely continue customizing it for a while. I have the option of either having a numpad or centering the keyboard without a numpad and I’m still testing things out to see which layout I like best. Likewise, it came with the graphics module installed and I want to try it without to see if I prefer the (slightly) smaller size.

Once finish transferring everything from Myfanwy to Bree, I’m going to repurpose Myfanwy to be Julian’s new computer. Julian inherited a very cheap laptop we had original bought for our au pairs to use as a TV for our streaming services. Once our au pairs left, we gave the computer to Julian but it is a very cheap computer and is painfully slow to use. While Myfanwy is old, she still works significantly better than Julian’s current laptop. I’m also planning to switch him from Windows to Linux which will provide more complications from a parental control perspective but I’m tired of dealing with Windows. I have this Friday off, for Cesar Chavez Day³, so I plan to schedule some dedicated tinkering time.

Normally they see patterned blue curtains. My curly hair makes the virtual zoom backgrounds, or blur backgrounds, look weird. ↩
I made two for Julian’s party and then one for Calvin’s birthday today. ↩
This is a state holiday in California but for some reason the kid’s still have school. ↩

Isolating

5/30/2023 Update:
Jaeger and Calvin and now both testing positive for COVID. So, we gave isolation a shot but clearly didn’t do it quick enough. I guess that goes under lessons learned.

Original:
Of the houses we’ve owned, our current one is one of my favorites (probably a toss-up with our Gunbarrel house). However, there’s one feature that has always baffled us. On the ground floor of our house there is a 4th bedroom with an en suite bathroom¹. For some reason, this en suite bathroom has an exterior door that takes you to the side of the house. It’s not near the garage or laundry room and isn’t particularly near to where one would put a hot tub. Till this weekend, we could never figure out what you’d use the door for.

Unfortunately, this weekend Julian and I contracted COVID for the first time since the pandemic started. Jaeger and Calvin were both testing negative so we decided that Julian and I should try to isolate. After some thought, we concluded the ground floor bedroom was our best option. It’s primarily Jaeger’s office but doubles as our exercise and guest bedroom. We have a sleeper sofa and the room is big enough we could bring in Julian’s mattress.

We moved one of our air purifiers right next to the interior door ² and are keeping the interior door closed. Julian and I enter and exit the room exclusively via the exterior door. I am still going into the main part of the house, primarily the kitchen, but for limited amounts of time and fully masked. We’re taking all our meals outside. The sky has been pretty gray but surprisingly warm.

One of the things this experience is emphasizing to me is how much we underutilized our outdoor spaces. I like interior design so I’ve thought a lot about how various spaces in the house are used and what we can do to optimize their utility. However, I still haven’t figured out how to encourage use of our outdoor spaces. I think if I came up with a plan I could keep an eye out on Craigslist for good furniture. I just haven’t come up with a plan yet.

Overall, we have a pretty nice setup and Julian is loving getting unlimited screen time. Rio seems to be the most unhappy about the whole situation. We discovered when my parents came over that she doesn’t like strangers at all. She mostly stayed upstairs for the brief time they were here and even when she did venture downstairs, she’d run away the instant she saw either of them. After they left, she had one normal night and then Julian and I moved downstairs. She clearly did not approve and spent a significant amount of the night meowing at our door. While the rest of us eat outside, Rio sits by the sliding glass door and mournfully watches us.

I had a really bad cold about a month ago, probably brought home by Julian, which caused me to miss almost a week of work so I’m tired of being sick. However, so far I’m doing pretty well. I’m on Paxlovid and have the weird metallic taste side effect but none of the others³. Yesterday I wasn’t feeling great but still had enough energy to read a couple of books. Today my physical energy is a bit lower than normal, and I have a fair amount of coughing and runny nose, but I think my brain is back to functioning. At the moment, I think I’ll be working tomorrow.

One of the advantages of remote work is, as long as I’m feeling ok, I can work while sick without infecting anyone else. Today Jaeger and I swapped our office setup, with the exception of the monitors and desks, so we’re ready for tomorrow. I have four meetings tomorrow, which isn’t ideal with a kid in the same room, but I expect Minecraft will keep Julian suitably entertained. I’ll also have a great view.

A little to my surprise, our precautions appear to have paid off, at least so far⁴. Neither Jaeger nor Calvin have any COVID symptoms and Jaeger just tested negative again today.

According to the permits, this bed/bath is one year newer than the rest of the house. ↩
We own four Winix 5300-2 Air Purifier purchased back in 2019 for wildfire season and I have never regretted their purchase. Normally, we have them running in auto mode but right now all of them are running at full blast in addition to having windows open during the warmer parts of the day. ↩
It turns out a piece of dark chocolate helps mask it. ↩
As a typical teenager, Calvin mainly lives in his room so probably had the least amount of exposure. However, Jaeger slept right next to me the night before I tested positive. ↩

Using Mastodon

I first heard about Mastodon in 2017. Yanthor was also intrigued and he got me to take the next step and actually join octodon.social, a Mastodon instance. I stayed on Octodon for a bit but wandering.shop had more people talking about books so I eventually migrated to that instance because I found the local timeline more interesting. I don’t post a lot, particularly compared to others, but I’ve been a regular user since November 2017 and I have seen many people come and go over the years.

As I mentioned on Twitter, I’m slowly edging away from my account there. However, I don’t use my wandering.shop account in the same way I used my Twitter account. I do post life updates on wandering.shop but what I really love to talk about in that space is books, usually science fiction or fantasy. After some thinking, I’ve decided to use my old Octodon account as a general Twitter replacement.

If you are interested, there are a couple of different ways you can see what I’m posting on my Octodon account:

The easiest option is to just go to my public timeline whenever you think about it. This is probably the easiest approach.
If you want to get slightly fancier, you can also get an RSS feed of my local timeline. This is probably not a good option unless you already use an RSS reader for other things.
If you want to be extra special fancy, you can get your own Mastodon account.

General Mastodon
If you’ve never been on a Mastodon instance before, I imagine there’s a lot of terms in my prior paragraphs that doesn’t make sense. A Brief Mastodon Guide for Social Media Worriers is a good introduction for beginners. However, below is a summary of some of the details I think are pertinent.

Unlike Twitter, there is no one Mastodon. Instead, there are lots of Instances which know how to talk to each other. Many people explain this as being similar to email. Gmail users can email Yahoo users who can email Outlook users. However, unlike email, the community and culture of specific Mastodon instance can vary widely and is often based on specific shared interest. For example, code4lib.social tends to be a place for techie librarians/information professionals while mastodon.art people post a lot of art. Most of these instances have some sort of rules they require accounts to follow, for example here are mastodon.art’s rules.

If you use a Mastodon instance similar to how you use Twitter, your instance doesn’t matter as much as long as you stick to your instance’s rules. However, one fun thing Mastodon has is local timelines. This is where you can go and see what everyone else is publicly talking about on your instance. This is also why it’s particularly fun to find an instance centered around topics you find interesting. However, it’s pretty easy to move instances so it’s fine to start with a larger one like mastodon.social until you find a more interesting one¹. It’s much easier to move instances than it is to change email addresses.

Content Warnings
Mastodon etiquette will vary from instance to instance. However, it’s generally considered good manners to use content warnings when you suspect someone may be bothered or annoyed by a topic. Common topics to content warn include things like politics, traumatic events, graphic pictures, mental health, etc. However, the specifics do depend a little bit on your instance and the other people you follow. For example, food is often content warned on my instance and often they’ll explicitly content warn if it’s non-veg. If you go look at your local timeline, you can often get a feel for what people content warn and what they don’t.

You can also use content warnings to discuss spoilers which allows people to enjoy book/movie discussions without accidentally learning major plot points ahead of time.

I also use content warnings when I’m talking about things that don’t really fall into the general interests of my instance (such as parenting or kids). However, I just realized that’s probably not the right way to do it. I probably should have also been using the “unlisted” feature where my followers can see what I’m talking about but it doesn’t appear in the local timeline. I’ve been using Mastodon for five years and am still learning new things.

While I use content warnings heavily at wandering.shop, I’m planning to use them much less frequently with my Octodon account. Instead, I’m going to try keeping my posts primarily unlisted so they don’t ambush people in the local timeline. My thought is that keeping things without content warnings will probably be easier for the family member who just wants to see updates without a lot of clicking. This is an experiment so we’ll see how it goes.

Alt Text
The other thing that is strongly encouraged is to provide alt text for any images you post. There are a fair number of users that use screen readers and they really appreciate alt text being added. Here’s a good guide on entering helpful alt text.

Mastodon App
When using a desktop, it’s really easy to load and use Mastodon in a browser window. Personally, I suggest enabling the “advanced web interface” view. However, there are various apps available for use on mobile devices. Since my transition back to Android, I’ve been using the “official” Mastodon app. Which, it turns out has quite a few limitations. I just started using Tusky which lets me post unlisted and also allows me to easily see the local timeline.

Hashtags
Mastodon doesn’t allow searching on your posts unless you hashtag them. If you want to be found by people with common interests, hashtag your posts. If you don’t want to be found, don’t hashtag topics. When Elon Musk first threatened to buy Twitter we had a lot of new users. I did an introduction post and listed my general interests. All of a sudden, my timeline got much busier than I wanted. This time, I’m keeping quiet and not hashtagging anything. I’ll probably start hashtagging more once things get quieter again.

Support
If you end up sticking around, and can afford it, make a small contribution to help support your instance. Most instances have a way to give money, such as a Patreon account.

Mastodon is made up of flawed humans
Some people come to Mastodon expecting utopia. However, Mastodon is far from perfect and it has many of the same problems that Twitter does. Unfortunately, people get harassed on Mastodon instances just like they do at Twitter. However, your instance has more control over what it allows through and so moderation is sometimes better on Mastodon (and sometimes worse). Like Twitter, you will also have very well meaning people who just don’t think before they say something hurtful. Or, a mob of users may gang up on someone because of a innocently meant remark.

That said, I generally find Mastodon to be a more pleasant experience than Twitter. If I’m tired of hearing about election news, I can easily scroll past it because people are content warning it. If I don’t have the energy to handle someone else’s bad day, I don’t click into their content warned post. If I need something good in my life, I go search for #catsofmastodon or #florespondence². It’s not a perfect place but I still enjoy using it.

Additional Reading

Because of the Twitter drama a lot of the smaller Mastodon instances are currently overwhelmed. As a result, quite a few of them have chosen to stop allowing new users or have switched to only allowing new users to join if they have an invite from a current user. However, they often open back up once things calm down again. ↩
If nothing appears when you click, it’s possible the server is currently overloaded. Again, this will even out when most people go back to Twitter. ↩

What’s Happening Now

While I’ve posted random misc stuff the last couple of years, it looks like I haven’t done any life updates since the summer of 2020. I would start an update and then stop because I found it too depressing. There was, of course, COVID-19 but the biggest challenge for me was our move from Washington to California. So, I’m giving up on the past, it’s not a healthy place for me to remember.

Here’s a scattering of more recent updates:

We’ve lived in our most recent house for about nine months. I’m hoping this is our last house for a couple of decades. I’m so tired of moving. We are still settling in. Every house is different and I’ve been scouring Craigslist looking for furniture that fits this house. Unfortunately, Jaeger and I together have very specific and narrow tastes so it takes a while to find furniture we both like. This house will take as much money as we’re willing to give it so I’m trying to keep my furniture budget relatively restrained.

The kids have been going to in-person school since the start of this school year. Calvin got a B in PE with a note that he talks too much with other classmates. Personally, we’re delighted to hear he talks to classmates. Overall, he seems to be much happier this year than last. Julian really likes first grade and loves math. He keeps creating math worksheets for everyone to do and doesn’t understand why we don’t find this as exciting as he does.

Julian got vaccinated for COVID-19 in December and Calvin got his booster in January so everyone is our household is currently up-to-date on all vaccinations. We also switched from cloth masks to KF-94 masks at the beginning of January. The kids had a lot of potential school exposures in January and February¹ but the school was doing weekly, and sometimes twice weekly, testing and the kids never got a positive result. Starting March 12, CA will no longer require children to be masked in school but it’s still “highly recommended”. For now, we’re planning to require Julian wear a mask and strongly encourage Calvin to wear a mask at school.

We are inviting Julian’s classmates to an in-person birthday party this year at a local playground. Julian just handed out the invitations today and I have no idea if other families are ready to go to birthday parties again. Hopefully having it outside will make them a bit more comfortable with it. If not, we’ll still have pizza and cake so Julian will still probably be happy.

I think the pandemic played to my strengths more than many other people. The hardest bit was having other people constantly in the same house as me. We went to the Monterey Bay Acquarium this weekend and it had more people than I could deal with so I spent most of the time either on the outside decks or with my back pressed against the wall watching the kelp forest. It’s tempting to blame my lack of social endurance on COVID-19. However, then I think of the work party Jaeger took me to once which was so overwhelming I eventually just left and hid in a stairwell for a while. COVID-19 created an environment where I didn’t have to deal with people and while I don’t think it affected my level of social anxiety, it did allow my pretend-I’m-not-panicking skills to get very rusty.

On a completely different note, I’ve put Calvin in charge of his own clothes shopping. We’re giving him an allowance that includes enough for clothes and I set him up with a checking account and as an authorized user on a low-limit credit card. Ideally, I’d like him to have a savings account too but the interest rates are so pathetic I don’t think I could teach any real life lessons about the power of interest that way. However, I am teaching him the basic concepts of double entry bookkeeping and making him keep track of his expenses in GnuCash. We’re also having monthly money meetings together where we do things like reconcile his bank statements and make sure he’s tracking all his expenses.

My job is going well. While I miss being a public librarian, the work culture at my current place is much more family friendly than Seattle was. I’ve also been hired as a permanent remote worker so I never have to go “back” to the office.

My reading life is still sporadic. I’m still reading a lot of fluff and am very, very thankful that fluff reads exist. Sometimes that’s all the energy I have. However, I’m start to read a bit more than just fluff.

We no longer have an au pair. Now that Julian has started in-person school, and I’m working from home, I thought we could get by without additional childcare. Julian misses having someone available to play board games with him constantly but other than that it’s been going fairly well. Jaeger is enjoying working in a room that isn’t our bedroom. I’m enjoying having the second floor to myself most of the day.

Most evenings Jaeger and I watch an hour of TV with Calvin. I suppose at some point we’re going to need to start including Julian but we haven’t yet. Friday nights are movie night, usually just with Calvin but sometimes we try to start early and have a “family” movie night so we can include Julian. Most Saturdays nights we play a boardgame with Calvin. Those go way too late for Julian so sometimes we try playing slightly easier games during the day. Julian can play Catan but it’s a little long for his attention span. However, he does pretty decent at Splendor, even beating Jaeger once.

Life continues.

Several weeks in a row Calvin had 4 exposure notifications. Julian’s school had so many exposures for a while that they gave up keeping track of the classrooms and just said everyone was exposed. ↩

Work and School from Home: Learning about Racism

I am bad at talking about racism. I never know the right thing to say so I tend to stay silent and watch and listen. I’m also too timid, which I understand is a privilege many people don’t have. However, I feel like my sporadic updates about COVID-19 would be incomplete without acknowledging our additional crisis caused by racism.

I’ve watched COVID-19 magnify existing problems. For example, organizations bad at communication become even worse at communicating. It’s also widening the differences between our socioeconomic classes¹ as well as racial groups², particularly for black people.

Then, police officers murdered George Floyd³. This is too common ⁴. Protests erupted, including in Seattle.

Calvin and I now share an office. A couple of days ago, while I was reading a Seattle Times article on the protests, I must have made a sound because Calvin asked me what I was doing. I told him I was reading about the protests and he asked me why there was a car on fire. For a moment, my mind went blank. How do I explain?

A while back Calvin and I watched a movie on Netflix called See You Yesterday. We had just recently watched Back to the Future and this movie seemed like a good continuation. The central plot of See You Yesterday is a teenage girl’s quest to change the past and save her brother from being shot by the police. Commonsense Media suggests it’s appropriate for ages 15+. Calvin was 10 at the time we watched it together. I wasn’t sure if Calvin was old enough to see a film with police violence. However, as I was looking for articles about the movie I ran across one, I can’t remember which one, which pointed out that black children don’t have the luxury to be ignorant. So, we watched the movie. It was really good.

So, when Calvin asked me what the protests were about, I asked him if he remembered watching See You Yesterday. He said he did. I then told him that while the movie was obviously fictional, police killing unarmed black people was not, it had happened many times before. The protests were because another murder had happened and people are justifiably enraged.

As I said, I don’t do a good job talking about racism and I’m also deeply ignorant about so much of its impact on people. However, I felt I needed to give Calvin some additional context. When in doubt, I turn to books. So, I started looking for audiobooks that could help explain it to Calvin. Eventually, I ran across a list from The Book Table, an independent book store, that had A Black Lives Matter Reading List. It included Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. The reviews were good so I bought it⁵.

Calvin and I both listened to it. It’s for a juvenile/teen audience so is substantially shorter than the book it’s adapted from, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. As I listened, it reminded me of when I was an adult reference librarian and was asked for basic information about a specific topic. Sometimes the best way to learn something new is to find a book in the children’s area explaining the topic. Stamped is both engaging and informative. I think it gave Calvin and I a lot to think about.

About Half Of Lower-income Americans Report Household Job or Wage Loss Due To Covid-19
Kim Parker-Juliana Horowitz-Anna Brown – https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/04/21/about-half-of-lower-income-americans-report-household-job-or-wage-loss-due-to-covid-19/ ↩
Race and Income Shape Covid-19 Risk: Sph: Boston University
Samuel lhemdi – https://www.bu.edu/sph/2020/04/28/race-and-income-shape-covid-19-risk/ ↩
Four Minneapolis Officers Are Fired After Video Shows One Kneeling on Neck Of Black Man Who Later Died
Dalton Bennett-Brittany Shammas-Katie Mettler-Timothy Bella – https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/four-minneapolis-officers-are-fired-after-video-shows-one-kneeling-on-neck-of-black-man-who-later-died/ ↩
A Decade Of Watching Black People Die
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/29/865261916/a-decade-of-watching-black-people-die ↩
At the time, the library didn’t own the audiobook version. Less than 48 hours later, they currently own 10 copies but there are 47 holds ↩

Work and School from Home: School

The First Week
On Wednesday, March 11, Seattle Public Schools announced they were closing for at least two weeks starting the next day. I had half been expecting schools to close but I thought they would finish the week and then close. I think closing so quickly threw everyone off-guard.

Within about three hours we had an email from Calvin’s teacher. She said all kids were coming home with a packet of what they could work on and gave guidance on how long kids should work on each subject to mirror school time. Wednesday evening I moved the kitchen desk and computer down to the office where I was working and came up with a schedule for Calvin.

I decided it would probably work best if I tried to coordinate Calvin’s schedule with mine. My first attempt was pretty structured.

9:00-10:00 – Math
10:00-10:15 – Walk around the block
10:15-11:15 – Reading
11:15-12:45 – Lunch/Free Time
12:45-1:15 – Longer Walk
1:15-2:00 – Writing
2:00-2:15 – Walk around the block
2:15-3:00 – Science/Social Studies
3:00-3:30 – Art/Music
3:30-4:30 – Free Time
4:30-5:00 – House hold cleanup time
5:00-6:00 – Free Time

Julian’s daycare was still open but Jaeger and I talked and decided since everyone else was home, it probably made sense to keep Julian home also, starting Friday. We sent Julian to daycare on Thursday in order to get Calvin use to the new routine without Julian around.

Wednesday evening I talked to Calvin about the plan and requested to see his school packet. Calvin had no idea what I was talking about. I asked to see everything he brought home and did find several things for him to work on but no math. I emailed his teacher for clarification and she apologized for the confusion and said she and the other teachers had only an hour’s notice on Wednesday to prepare packets for the kids. However, Calvin could practice his math by going to an online site.

Thursday morning dawned and at 9:00 I dragged Calvin down to the office. He was visibly dismayed to discover this wasn’t just going to be time off from school. The first school day at home went ok. Calvin complained a lot about the all the walking but settled down with just a bit of grumbling. Though, he was ready to go back to regular school by the middle of the day.

One bright spot of Thursday was Creative Coding, Calvin’s in-person coding class. They managed one of the best pivots I’ve seen during this crisis. They saw the warning signs and came up with a contingency plan by March 4. Just hours after the school closures were announced, on March 11, they sent out an email saying that class was going to continue online and information on how that would work. On Thursday, they emailed out additional online classes students could sign up for. I immediately signed Calvin up for an additional class. I was tempted to sign up for more but decided 2 a week was probably enough. Plus, I didn’t want to hog all the spaces.

Work was a different story. I have a lot of experience working from home. After Calvin was born I spent 7 years working from home full-time. However, working from home in the middle of a burgeoning crisis, while also supervising a child’s school work, is not a normal work from home situation. It was probably one of my least productive working days. I spent the majority of the time waiting to see what our library was going to do while I contingency planned with other libraries on the best way to configure the integrated library system for a shut-down, or partially shut down, of the library. That evening, a notice was posted that, at end of day Friday, the library would be closing to the public till at least April 13.¹.

Friday was hectic. Calvin was still resistant to the new school at home experience and I had a lot of systems work to shut down the library to the public. Jaeger and I did discover some bugs with all of us working from home. For example, I was relatively use to the experience of ignoring screaming around me to focus on work. Jaeger was not use to working with kids in the house and did not appreciate being given the opportunity to learn. After some consultation, I told the children that if they were going to be rambunctious during Calvin’s freetime, they had to stay on the first floor of the house. Overall, the school schedule still seemed to mostly work.

The Second Week
Things started unraveling the next Monday. Calvin moved from grudging acceptance to whining obstruction. I had several failures on Monday. First, I had decided to have Calvin work on art and music on alternate days. Monday was a music day. However, I was working so I couldn’t do any actual music instruction. I decided that I could give him a book about music and call it music appreciation. This didn’t work well. Second, he was suppose to do some sort of “social studies”. Again, my solution was to find a book roughly about the right subject. Third, Calvin truly hated how much I was dragging him out the house for boring walks.

Tuesday’s successes included:

Learning I could login to Schoology, the online software Calvin’s school uses, and view what his teacher posted to the class myself. This made it much, much easier to keep track of what Calvin was “suppose” to be working on.
Calvin video conferencing with his classmates. This seemed to help a bit with the social isolation. This involved learning real life skills such as keeping your mic on mute unless you were talking.
Art. Calvin’s clearly loved art and, after watching a video, drew a great sketch of a Mandalorian.

Tuesday’s problems included:

Math – The prior week Calvin had grumbled about doing math. Tuesday he was outright rebellious and spent the whole time allocated for it whining.
Exercise – The same thing happened with exercise. This concerned me as we didn’t have a lot of options for aerobic exercises in our house and I was worried that Calvin would become unhealthy.
Schedule – I learned that if I didn’t set an alarm for each “school period”, both Calvin and I would forget and he wouldn’t get through everything I had intended.
My Work – I was spending so much time trying to manage Calvin that I was having trouble concentrating on my paying job.

After supper I called a meeting with Jaeger and Calvin to discuss the school problems and request suggestions. Both Jaeger and Calvin thought it was completely unreasonable to have math first thing in the morning at 9:00 AM. I also compromised on exercise and told Calvin he didn’t need to come on the short walks with me but I still wanted him to do the lunch walk.

The prior Thursday we had ordered Calvin a chromebook computer. This was because we discovered that my old all-in-one desktop, which was adequate for basic internet connectivity, did not work for video conferencing. We had an external camera for the all-in-one but there weren’t any Windows 10 drivers. We had managed the first coding class by having Calvin login to two sessions: one on the computer so the teacher could see his screen and the other on the ipad so Calvin could talk and the teacher could see his face. However, it wasn’t ideal. Jaeger did some rush researching and determined that a Chromebook would probably meet all our needs and wasn’t excessively expensive. The Chromebook arrived on Tuesday and Calvin was very excited to have his own laptop computer. Jaeger set the computer with Calvin’s Google Family Link account as well as giving me a parent login for it.

Wednesday we started the revised schedule. Reading now became the first subject of the day which seemed to agree with Calvin better. At Calvin’s 10AM video conference, we started running into the limitations of the Family Link setup. Calvin was trying to join his class via Zoom when we discovered that child accounts couldn’t install apps or extensions. Jaeger investigated and verified the problem. He suggested having Calvin use the guest account to get around the problem temporarily which did seem to work, though it wasn’t ideal.

The Third Week
By the third week we had settled into a schedule that was roughly working and allowed Calvin to get some education while I also managed to do productive paid work. I relented on requiring him to take walks with me which also seemed to help his mood. Instead, I suggested he do some basic weight exercises while he watch YouTube. Not ideal but at least it was some level of movement.

For reading time, Calvin started reading The Complete Worst-case Scenario Survival Handbook. I was amused when Calvin pointed out that it had a section on Flu Pandemic. With the exception of masks², the advice was exactly what everyone was recommending for the COVID-19 situation. I find it particularly amusing to see such a relevant section since previously Calvin had been reading about how to escape an alien abduction.

Thursday was Calvin’s birthday. Not good timing for a birthday. I decided to take the day off work and not require Calvin to do any school work. Instead, I tried to make the day as decadent as possible. We started the day with Chocolate waffles, topped with Nutella, whipped cream, and strawberries. After breakfast, we started watching the original Star Wars trilogy and had pizza for lunch. I had forgotten Calvin had coding class, which he wanted to attend, so he took a break from Star Wars for that. We we had a supper of fruit salad and cake and ended the evening by finishing up the original Star Wars trilogy. While I’m sure it’s not the birthday Calvin would have preferred, he seemed reasonably content with it.

While I had been wrestling with figuring out how to make school work for Calvin, our au pair had been trying to figure out how to keep Julian entertained. Initially, they had been going to the playground but Seattle had made playgrounds off-limits the prior weekend. I invited him on my walks, and he’d come occasionally, but that still left a lot of time when Jaeger, Calvin, and I were occupied. He did a couple of FaceTime chats with his cousin. Our au pair also ended up playing what looked like endless Catan Junior games with Julian. I inquired of a mom’s group what other games we might try and ordered Sleeping Queens as well as Ticket to Ride: First Journey.

The Fourth Week
The Seattle School District had been very leery of providing online education during the school closure due to equity issues. In practice, this seems to have meant that how much education support was happening was very dependent on the school/teacher. On March 23, The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) released revised guidelines saying that education had to continue during the closure. The Seattle School District came up with a plan that involved online education for those that were able and paper packets and TV lectures for those that were not. Calvin was quite miffed to discover that learning up to this point had been somewhat optional.

From our perspective, the school district’s change of plans didn’t really affect Calvin’s classes. His teacher was already doing roughly what they were recommending so she just made a few tweaks. The one big difference I noticed is that with so many users Schoology was much slower and was obviously having capacity issues. I tried having Calvin listen to a couple of the district recorded sessions. The teachers obviously were trying very hard, and I thought the production quality was pretty decent. However, Calvin didn’t find it engaging at all so I eventually gave up.

For some of the school subjects, such as reading time, I required Calvin to spend the entire time doing the assigned task. However, for other school work that had more finite assignments, I let him do other things until it was time for the next school subject. Calvin spent most of this extra time, and much of his middle-of-the-day freetime, playing games on the Scratch website that other users had coded.

We continued to try to figure out how to make the Google Family Link do what we needed. One of the biggest problem was that regular YouTube was blocked and only YouTube Kids³ was available. This works fine for some things, such as the YouTube art videos his teacher was linking to. However, it worked less well for many other YouTube videos she suggested he watch. Our best work around was either to have him watch them on the iPad min, or to log out of his account and login to the Chromebook guest account.

The Fifth Week
One of the advantages of both Washington and California having school at home is that suddenly many Google parents were testing out Family Link. Monday morning Jaeger let me know that we should now be able to install the official Zoom extension in Calvin’s profile.

My original schedule had evolved over time and by week five looked something like this:

9:00 – Reading
10:00 – Class Video Conference
11:00 – Respond to class chat question
11:15 – Freetime
12:00 – Exercise (weights or step)
12:30 – Freetime
1:00 – Writing
1:30 – Science
2:30 – Math
3:00 – Art
3:30 – Freetime

While Calvin and I had settled into a reasonable daily schedule, Julian started getting more clingy. It finally occurred to me that, while our au pair was doing a fantastic job, Julian felt left out because everyone else in the family was “working”. After a disastrous Tuesday, where Julian spent the last hour of my working day sitting on my lap, I decided I needed another plan. I told Julian anytime he wanted to be in the office he’d have to do “school work”. Previously, I had loaded up a whole bunch of audiobooks and preschool apps on our old iPad and I removed the less educational and more game-like apps. So, when Julian visited us I’d either have him do something on the iPad, or draw a picture. That approach seemed to work ok.

I had initially tried the district’s recorded resources and decided they didn’t work for Calvin. However, his teacher assigned the Ecosystems video and worksheets so I had Calvin try them. Neither he nor I could muster much enthusiasm for them so I had him watch Netflix’s Our Planet instead. It wasn’t teaching exactly the same lesson but it did cover how everything is interrelated which I felt was roughly the Ecosystems module’s message.

The Sixth Week
Calvin had spring break from April 13-17 which was a little weird. I wanted to keep Calvin occupied so I came up with an idea to have a “books to movie” week. The idea being that he’d read the book and then we’d watch the movie. That didn’t quite work out. I also decided to only work half days that week so I could spend more times with the kids, particularly Julian. That didn’t really work out either. I was hoping to convince Julian to go down to the Gas Works Park parking lot and practice riding his peddle bike but I never was able to convince him. So, it wasn’t a terrible week but wasn’t a particularly great week either.

The Seventh Week
I was relieved when spring break ended and Calvin went “back” to school. I had been a bit nervous about whether or not Calvin would be resistant to doing school work again but he didn’t spend too much time grumbling. I think he enjoyed being able to videoconference with his class again. His teacher changed the schedule so Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays were all-class video conferences. However, Tuesdays and Thursdays she would break the class into smaller groups. During one of the small video conferences they talked about a new assignment where they were suppose to write a “Farewall Letter to Jamestown”. It sounds like they were suppose to emulate older speech patterns and I heard Calvin say “Huzzah!” a fair amount.

Julian’s preschool decided it would start doing some Zoom conferences and they sent a schedule out which worked out to about 1/2 hour of video conference a day. As this was the first week there were some bumps. I’m not sure how much education Julian got out of the experience but it did break up his day a bit and I believe he enjoyed having a video conference just like everyone else in the family.

My main focus during this time has been to try to keep Calvin on track with reading, math, and exercise. I view reading and math as fundamental to the rest of education and exercise as fundamental to a healthy life. I felt ok about Calvin’s math and reading but still wasn’t particularly comfortable with the amount of exercise Calvin was getting. He was doing some but I didn’t feel like it was enough. However, this week we finally had an exercise breakthrough. I can’t remember whether Calvin or I suggested it. However, he started walking on the treadmill while watching YouTube. Thus entertained, he averaged at least an hour of walking a day which made me feel better about his activity level.

Calvin has been enjoying the art assignments every day and continues to put his own unique spin on them. For example, Calvin’s teacher suggested his class draw a glass of lemonade. Calvin drew the glass and then expanded it to show a zombie holding the glass.

In Conclusion
On April 6, The Seattle Public Schools announced students would continue to learn from home for the rest of the school year. As a result, we have quite a few weeks left in this new weird school at home experience. It’s certainly not my first choice of schooling for Calvin but it’s the only option we have at the moment. All in all, we have our ups and downs but so far seem to be surviving.

This resulted in many desperate people flocking to the library on Friday. It even got national coverage with U.S. News reporting that we had 8 times our normal Friday checkouts (https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2020-03-17/coronavirus-closes-libraries-in-seattle-around-the-nation). ↩
The book recommended wearing masks. However, as of March 25 public health officials were still discouraging healthy people from wearing masks in order to save them for sick people and healthcare workers. ↩
Among other reasons, Calvin doesn’t like YouTube Kids because shortcuts don’t work the way they do with regular YouTube, including the very standard spacebar key to pause and restart videos. ↩

Work and School from Home: The Beginning

Wow. This month has been surreal.

On Monday, February 24 I woke up with a sore throat. By that evening, I had a feeling I was getting sick. I woke up in the night and took my temperature. It was 99 which is high for me¹. I emailed my manager I was sick and went back to bed. Jaeger was gone to Mountain View. However, our au pair was already scheduled to start at 7:00, because that is usually when I leave for work, so I didn’t have to get up to get the kids ready for school. We knew there had been a case of COVID-19 in Washington but, at the time, they were saying only people who had contact with people from Wuhan were at risk. By the end of the day I was feeling better and didn’t have a fever anymore.

On Wednesday, February 25, my symptoms had morphed into coughing and a runny nose. However, I had no fever² and believed my energy was back so I went to work. I also went to work on Thursday but at that point COVID-19 was starting to make a bigger splash and people were obviously nervous when I coughed. So, I requested working from home on Friday.

In general, my library is not supportive of working from home. However, the IT department is a little more flexible because it is very useful to do some things on off-hours and weekends and no one wants to spend time commuting on a weekend if they don’t have to. However, there are still rules. I can request to work from home for one day in the future. I cannot request to work from home for multiple days at a time. At the beginning of my day I have to send out what I’m planning to work on. At the end of the day, I have to send a detailed³ report of what I actually worked on. While the rules seem excessive and can sometimes be inconvenient, I’ve never had my work from home request declined. Though, I usually don’t request it more than one day a week.

Over the weekend, King County Health Department reported it’s first COVID-19 death. Library employees started expressing concerns about everyone getting together for staff day, which was planned for the following Tuesday.

On Monday, March 2, I was still coughing and people were getting even more worried about COVID-19. I once again requested to work from home and it was granted. The intranet thread about COVID-19 and staff day concerns had exploded. At the end of day, administration had posted that Staff Day was still on for Tuesday but anyone who felt sick should stay home. I was feeling fine but still coughing a lot which I did not think would go over well around large crowds of people. So, I requested to work from home and once again, it was granted.

My cough had become less noticeable, especially if I constantly sucked hard candy, so I went in to work on Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, the King County Healthy department said that anyone who could work from home should. However, my work didn’t support working from home during the Seattle Squeeze so I doubted they’d pay attention this time either. As a result, I went to work on Thursday. On Thursday, the city sent out a memo saying that employees were encouraged to work from home following the alternative work arrangement process that had been put in place during the Seattle Squeeze the previous year. Also on Thursday, our IT manager became increasingly concerned about the COVID-19 situation and said that anyone who could work from home should consider it. Except, this wasn’t supported library-wide yet so we still needed go through the normal process of requesting to work from home. Thus I requested, and was granted, permission to work from home on Friday.

Late evening Wednesday Jaeger’s work had sent out an email saying that Seattle employees should strongly consider working from home. Except Jaeger didn’t see it till he arrived at work on Thursday. Before he left, his employer had increased the strength of their work from home recommendation and said that anyone who wanted to take their equipment, such as monitors, home could do so. That decided Jaeger so he packed his desk into his car to take home.

Thursday is our normal date night. I get off work before Jaeger and usually walk to his work which is about a 1/2 hour walk. There were already signs that the big tech employers were strongly encouraging their employees to stay home. While people were still on the street, there was significantly less traffic than usual and the closer I got to South Lake Union, the sparser traffic became. On my walk, I passed a Girl Scout trying to sell cookies. Almost no one was going past her table, which was completely full looking. I stopped and bought some Thin Mints, even though I almost never buy Girl Scout cookies. I continued on my way and passed an salon that did eyebrow waxings. Two employees were sitting with nothing to do. I had been thinking of getting my eyebrows waxed for a while but I haven’t found a regular place in Seattle yet. So, I popped in and got my eyebrows waxed.

I met Jaeger and we went to eat at a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. The fascinating thing about this restaurant is they didn’t appear SDA. However, they used Loma Linda and Worthington fake meats in their food. Nowadays there are so many fake meat options, including amazing choices from Taiwan⁴, that I don’t expect to see traditional SDA fake meat. While eating, we discussed the prospect of both of us working from home for an extended period of time. Jaeger almost always goes into work⁵ and I don’t normally telecommute more than once a week, if that. Fortunately, since Jaeger’s employer let him take his monitor home, we weren’t going to have a monitor crisis. However, we decided we did need some additional supplies and so headed to Fred Meyer.

The store was an interesting experience. They had most of what we were looking for but some weird gaps. I had groceries delivered the prior Monday and my shopper said he couldn’t find any frozen mangoes, so I decided to see if any were back in stock. The frozen vegetable/fruit aisle had been decimated. I knew people were hoarding toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and soap. I didn’t realize that frozen vegetables were also a thing. Interestingly, I did pass several bottles of soap⁶.

Once home, I started reconfiguring the office. Our office doubles as our guest bedroom, and up-till-now, may have gotten more use as a guest bedroom. I prefer working from our bedroom because there’s more natural light and the view is better. However, since Jaeger wakes up later than me, it made sense that he would work in the bedroom. The desk in the bedroom was too small for Jaeger’s two giant monitors so we swapped it with the larger desk that was in the kitchen. Both looked better in their new positions so we probably should have done that all along. I surveyed the downstairs office and decided additional lighting would improve it. However, we didn’t have any extra lighting. I tried stringing Christmas lights and it did improve the vibe, but didn’t offer much additional lighting. I tried to convince myself I didn’t need more light but that lasted only a day after which I ordered another light from Amazon⁷. We also only had one office chair, and I contemplated buying another, but eventually decided I didn’t want to spend even more money and settled on using a dining room chair.

I got permission to work from home Friday-Tuesday. On Wednesday, March 11, I went back into work because I had a couple of in-person meetings which hadn’t been cancelled yet. Plus, I had a couple of library holds to pick up which were going to expire soon. Truthfully, that may have been the main reason I went in. The IT office was empty. Eventually, some people drifted in. At around 10am, administration posted an announcement to our intranet saying that they realized people who could work from home should and so they were going to start determining who might be able to work from home.

Our IT manager sent out a link to the livestream of Governor Inslee’s press conference about COVID-19 so I listened to it with one ear while I continued to work. As expected, he announced that gatherings of more than 25 people were now prohibited in King County. However, he also said that schools should start making plans for what to do if they were shut down in the next couple of days. At that, I started paying more attention and messaged Jaeger that we should come up with a contingency plan for if schools were going to be closed. Jaeger was not listening to the press conference but forwarded me a tweet from the governor saying he was not currently calling for schools to close. However, listening to the actual speech, I was pretty convinced it was a matter of when, not if.

Two hours later, The Seattle Public Schools announced they were closing for at least two weeks. Right about the time Jaeger sent me the link to the announcement, I heard some loud exclamation from my supervisor’s office (my supervisor is parent to four school-aged kids). I went to my supervisor’s office, we exchanged stunned looks, and then I took my lunch break and went down to the children’s section of the library and checked out 25 books. I probably would have checked out more but that’s all I could fit in my backpack and spare grocery bag I had with me and I was taking the bus back home.

Our IT manager strongly recommended that anyone still in the office that could work from home go home. So, after checking out books, I headed back home and finished the day working from home. Though, I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in a daze.

My normal temp is 97.9. The last time I had a fever was probably sometime before Julian was born. ↩
I’ve been trained to believe one should go to school/work unless one is vomiting or has a fever. Obviously, this is not the protocol I’m following now. ↩
As in, I can’t say I worked on tickets, I have to note the ticket numbers I worked on and say what I did. ↩
I know that Taiwan’s vegetarian history predates that of SDAs, but SDA is the one I grew up with. ↩
For being a tech employer with amazing conferencing tools, they’re weirdly antithetical to working from home. ↩
Which I did not get because I usually get the giant refill containers of soap which was still mostly full. ↩
A couple of months ago I bought a light for Julian’s room. He has an overhead light but it weirdly is in a corner of his room which makes for odd shadows. I like this light because it’s a warm LED and also has three brightness settings. Julian likes it on the lowest setting when he sleeps. ↩

Westmoreland Park Nature Play, Portland, OR

A couple of weeks ago we decided to go down to Portland to visit my grandmother. We decided to stay at a hotel downtown near OMSI¹. I was delight to discover that our Pacific Science Center membership included a reciprocal agreement with OMSI, along with other science center/museums, for free general admission. We all went our first day. However, on our second day Calvin wanted to go back but Julian wanted to go to a playground instead. Several years ago my mom sent me an article about a trend toward natural playgrounds in Portland. I had been wanting to visit one for years but the timing was never convenient. However, Julian’s wish to go to a playground seemed like a good time to try one out.

Julian and I hopped into the car and, trusting Google maps, successfully found the Westmoreland park. There didn’t seem to be a parking lot but street parking was adequate, at least for a drizzly day². The first thing we saw was a grassy area with a bunch of picnic tables.

From the picnic area we crossed a bridge to get to the play area.

View from the bridge.

Julian immediately headed for a group of logs installed horizontal to the ground.

He was so proud when he was able to stand up and walk on them.

These logs led to a tower of rocks for kids to climb.

There were a variety of other wood climbing options but they were too big for Julian. I think Calvin would have enjoyed them if he had been there.

They also had some logs propped against a small hill. Julian seemed to enjoy climbing them but they didn’t keep his attention as much as the horizontal logs did.

There was also a sand area which Julian enjoyed.

It looks like in summer there may be an option to play with water in the sand which would be fantastic.

Overall, it was a fun playground and a lovely park to visit. However, I’m not convinced the “natural” play area has any innate advantage over the more traditional playground.

Summary:

Features	Many climbing opportunities on logs, stumps, and stone, small slide, sand area, water area (I think) in summer.
Surface Material	Wood chips
Restrooms	Yes
Water fountain	Yes
Shade	Lovely mature trees that look like they might provide a nice amount of shade.
Picnic area	Yes, though main picnic area isn’t within site of the play area.
Parking	Street parking.
Coffee	None.
Pros	Natural aesthetic makes for a nice change. Large sand area
Cons	Not much for really small kids.

View Random Parks and Playgrounds in a larger map

Still my favorite science museum. ↩
Contrary to what the pictures show, the park had a lot of people in it. I was just trying to avoid taking pictures of other people. This is one reason I haven’t done a post about Gas Works Playground yet. It’s always mobbed and impossible to avoid pictures of other children. ↩

Taking a Break

The beginning of last week was a bit much for me. I woke up exhausted Monday and the day didn’t get better. I stayed awake just long enough to shepherd Calvin to bed and then went to bed myself. Tuesday morning didn’t start much better. I emailed Jaeger and told him I wanted to go off by myself that weekend. Then, I realized I had scheduled Willow’s vet appointment for the weekend which initially derailed my plans until Jaeger offered to take both the kids and Willow to the vets office. I was ecstatic.

I didn’t have a plan when I emailed Jaeger, I just needed to be by myself. I would have preferred to stay home and have everyone else leave. My favorite vacation in recent memory was when Jaeger took Calvin to New York City. However, I didn’t feel like I could kick everyone else out on a whim.

After considering several scenarios, I settled on renting an Airbnb in Edmonds, which is about 30 minutes north of Seattle. The Thursday before I left I got groceries delivered. It topped up the basics for Jaeger and the kids. However, I also ordered prepackaged meals to take on my vacation so I wouldn’t have to leave the Airbnb if I didn’t want to. Friday, I came home, made supper, ate, and then put Julian to bed. Then, I was off on my adventure.

The adventure did not start auspiciously as I had to jump start the van in the dark. Jump starting the van is actually not very hard, we have a portable battery to do that. However, getting the van’s hood open is an art form. It involves jamming the handle of a screwdriver in at just the right angle to force the catch to release. Eventually, the hood did concede and I was able to start the van. I piled my stuff in, started my new audiobook, and drove off. About one block away I remembered I had forgotten to put the screwdriver back in the van. Not wishing to be stranded in Edmonds with a car I couldn’t start, I circled around and picked up the screwdriver. Then, I was really off on my vacation.

It was a lovely drive. I left late enough there wasn’t a significant amount of traffic to worry about. It was raining as I pulled into the driveway. The place I had rented was a loft attached to a main house. My Airbnb host met me and made sure I was able to get in ok and then left. It was so quiet. The loft was really cute. I puttered around and arranged my stuff. Then, I watched an episode of The Doctor Blake Mysteries before going to sleep.

I woke up around 7:30 on Saturday, reveled in not having to do anything, and went back to sleep for an hour. I eventually got up, made breakfast, and showered while contemplating my day. The Airbnb I picked was not close to downtown Edmonds. I was loathe to exert myself enough to drive anywhere so eventually decided I would take the bus into town. To be clear, the bus was not a remotely efficient way to get to downtown but since I was on vacation I decided I didn’t have to be efficient. I put on my raincoat, started up my audiobook, and took a 20 minute walk to the bus. The bus runs only once an hour so I got there about 20 minutes early. I spread my rain skirt on the grass, sat down, and continued enjoying my audiobook. It was very relaxing.

Eventually the bus showed up and, after a transfer, I successfully made it to the touristy downtown. I was amused to see that the downtown association had green communal umbrellas for shoppers. I wandered around and naturally ended up in a used bookstore. Among other things, I ended up with a physical copy of Home Comforts. It is one of my aspirational books I read when I want to pretend I have the time to perfectly organize my life.

The books were heavy and it was nearly lunchtime. I decided I had enough of people for the day so I took the bus back to the loft. The rest of the day I alternated between eating, reading, and watching movies. It was a glorious day.

Routine

The new school year has started and I’m finally back on a consistent routine.

Mountain View is still a long commute but, other than that, I do enjoy my job. Back in February I started taking BART/Caltrain to work instead of driving. Mass transit does take a little bit longer than driving¹ but it’s fantastic to be able to work on other stuff while I commute. On the way down I usually work on paying bills, balancing bank accounts, and other misc household stuff I can do online. On my trip home I usually read a book which is the only consistent reading time I’ve had since Julian was born².

When I get home I make supper, we eat, and then I start Julian’s nighttime routine. Currently, this involves him taking a bath while I clean the bathroom³. After bath I read him several stories and then pop him into bed. Then, it’s time to start Calvin’s bedtime routine.

For years I read to Calvin ever night. However, Jaeger was gone for a couple of weeks in the summer and I decided I needed to find a way to relax and have bonding time with Calvin at the same time. I strongly believe in reading to kids, even after they can read to themselves. However, while Jaeger was gone, I decided to try watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with Calvin instead. This ended up working really well. Even if I was running behind in my schedule I could start the episode for him and then join him as soon as I could. This also resulted in him going to bed at a more consistent time every night. After Jaeger got back I considered going back to reading. However, Jaeger started joining us so we end up with more “family” time watching TV than we did when Jaeger or I read to Calvin. For now, we’re sticking with the nightly TV time. It seems to work for our family.

After months of waiting, I got approved to telecommute on most Fridays. Getting approved for telecommuting was a fascinating, and terrifying, peak into city bureaucracy. I had to take workplace safety and ergonomics training so I could make sure that my home house was up to spec. Then I had pages of checkboxes. I had to check to certify that I had a first aid box in the house, I had fire extinguishers, I didn’t have tripping hazards, etc. Then there were all the agreements I had to sign stating I understood that telecommuting was not a right and MV could revoke the option any time they wanted⁴, along with other stuff. After I filled out my paperwork, my manager, and her manager needed to approve it. Then it wended it way through IT, the assistant manager, and finally landed at HR. I applied in May and in August learned I had official approval to telecommute.

It’s amazing how much difference just having one telecommute day makes in my weekly schedule. A couple of weeks ago our au pair needed Friday off in order to attend a class. Being able to work from home that day meant I only need to find an afternoon babysitter instead of also figuring out dropoff/pickup logistics for daycare and school. It still requires thought and planning but isn’t as overwhelming as if I were gone 6:30am-6:00pm like I am on a normal day.

I’m still trying to figure out what I want to get out of the weekend. Julian has almost dropped his afternoon nap which makes it harder for me to take an afternoon nap but also opens up more afternoon activities.

Though not as much as one would think because of the abysmal traffic coming back at nights. ↩
I did listen to audiobooks when driving but I don’t like listening to the same stuff that I read. Plus, it was really hard for me to switch books mid-commute on the occasions when I discovered mid-way the book was terrible. ↩
This house has a lot of bathrooms, which is one of the most expensive parts when paying for house cleaning. To cut costs, I rotate which bathroom Julian takes his bath in and use the time to clean it. Much cheaper than paying a house cleaner and it’s also very efficient :) ↩
And of course, my silent whispering back, “and I can quit anytime I want.” ↩

Kiesa's Mutterings

Rarely updated entries on my life