Personal

I’ll be spending this Christmas away from family for the first time ever. I’ve been left trying to make the best of the situation. I’m not alone: I’m spending Christmas with my fiancee, and we have been decorating her small San Francisco apartment with lights. Our parents have sent us cookies and gifts, and we have a small tree on the table. 1 I think the biggest difference is that this is the first year where I don’t have a distinct build-up towards Christmas externally pressed upon me. Until I graduated college, there was always winter break. The last two years, flying home for the holidays was a clear marker where I was now working remotely for a couple of weeks, surrounded by family and trying to see all my friends who were back as well. ...

On Saturday of this past weekend, I was able to check out the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It’s a truly beautiful place. What struck me was a description of what the designer, Bernard Maybeck, intended to create when forming this area. First, he wanted to make sure that it was using the natural landscape. To that end, there is the large pond, trees and bushes growing all around it, and no desire to reform the landscape. Second, the intended feel was that of well-preserved Roman ruins. I think he nailed that. It’s gorgeous, and although out-of-place in the broader scope of San Francisco, walking around it really makes you feel like you’re in another world.

I’m planning on making the best use of this long weekend that I can, since it’ll likely be the last one I get until Thanksgiving. To that end: https://xkcd.com/157/

Erin and I embarked on yet another cross-country road trip from Minnesota to California this past weekend. It’s the third we’ve had, and each one has proven more successful than the last. ...

After several months back in Minnesota, I’m finally preparing to head back to California. There is a lot to be said for a change in scenery. It’s become a bit difficult to focus in my current set-up in Minnesota. There are more distractions than I’ve been used to prior, and I no longer have the same desk situation from the past couple of months. I’m looking forward to getting a reset. ...

This post is a little late since I was camping this past weekend. A good chunk of my time was spent sitting in a chair (or in a hammock, or on a diving platform in the water) reading some books. While camping for about 3 days, I was able to finish 3 books. Managing to read that much was an excellent starting point for my brain. I felt focused and calm while reading, and was able to ignore my phone (particularly since there’s no service where I was.) ...

The word came in this week that my company will be working from home until at least the end of the year. Although we’ve already been working from home for about 5 months now, knowing that it’s another 5 months (and that I’ll be heading back to San Diego fairly soon) changes the feeling a bit. ...

A while ago, one of the water bottle sleeves in my backpack started to tear. In addition, the nature of my traveling life began to change. I was taking weekend trips to San Francisco, and the occasional long-term trip back to Minnesota (such as I am on now.) Now that I’m armed with a little bit of birthday money, particularly a gift card to REI, I’m on the hunt for a new backpack. ...

I’ve been thinking about the Fourth of July. During the past couple of years, I’ve become less confident that there’s any agreement what precisely it is meant to celebrate. In theory it’s a celebration of our self-proclaimed anniversary of independence from British rule. Excellent. Yet it more closely resembles a general celebration of whatever America means to each particular celebrant. ...

I’ve moved to a new position at work recently, going from a Curriculum Developer to a Curriculum Project Manager. My main role is no longer creating products that will directly go off to students (although I’ll still be doing a bit of that). Instead, my job is to create the processes and structures for my fellow curriculum developers to make sure they have clear goals in a project, and a set of tasks that allows them to effectively get their work done. The entire goal is to remove the planning and scheduling cruft that our team was doing (poorly) on our own, since we could each only give a little bit of time to thinking about it. ...