Sunday morning I woke up with a slight hangover to the sound of Finn’s voice. She was asking if we would play chess with her, having set up the board while we were sleeping. We’d had friends over Saturday night for drinks and dinner, with emphasis on drinks, and both Jen and I were feeling the effects in the morning. It was my turn to get up, so I made some coffee, organized the board correctly, and we got to playing. She played four games, trying to make sense of the rules, but quickly got better with each. Later in the day, I started rolling white on the walls in the living room, covering over brown paint that dates back to 2006.
Saturday’s schedule called for a soccer game but it was cancelled due to rain. At the local Marshall’s, we found a raincoat for Jen and I found a down coat for the winter, a new fleece, and a sweater. We used the afternoon to clean up the house and prepare for our guests.
The week at work was very busy, which makes this three-day weekend that much more appreciated. Among other large projects, I found myself about five feet from Al Gore on Wednesday evening, running second camera video for a friend. We launched the US version of the New Climate Economy report on Friday, where I shot stills, and then went across town to attend a lunch seminar on infographics with some very interesting speakers.
The update on my yeast is good. It finally started working on Thursday morning and it’s been burbling ever since. The recipe says it only needs two weeks to be done, but I’ll probably transfer it next week and leave it in the secondary for another two.
We took Finn out for pizza and ice cream this evening after another great week of reports from school. She’s doing great and seems to be settling in very well. We have plans, actually, for Sunday afternoon with one of her schoolmates’ families—a family we’ve not met before. Fingers crossed.
I got the sick iMac up and running with the help of some tools and a new hard drive. After some research, I did my first migration from a Time Machine backup, which seems to have been successful. Being able to help friends save money makes me feel good.
Meanwhile, at work on Thursday, I set up and shot a single-camera interview on a Canon 5D with lavalier mics, and after reviewing the footage, I think it went really well. Later that day I shot an event on the roof of our office (we have a swank living roof with tables and chairs and trees) with the same camera and a high-powered 70-200 lens, which worked out great. After getting used to the differences between the 5D MII and the 7D, I was able to quietly move around and capture some great candids as well as the entire shot list. I had a great review this afternoon (it’s actually coming up on one year at WRI) and I left the office feeling really good.
I also successfully made the case for hiring a junior designer for my department based on some rough numbers from the past three years, which will help our productivity and internal capacity greatly. As my role shifts from designer to manager, I’m having problems letting the joy of digging into a single project go (I am never happier than when I’m focused on a task and in the zone) and shifting to head juggler. But thinking in broader terms is something I’ve been itching to do for years now. It’s great to be empowered, trusted, and listened to.
Well, that’s it. All of the old hand-coded log is now here in WordPress. After I-don’t-know-how-many-years, I finished migrating it the other night, so everything from 2001 is included here.
Meanwhile, poking around my other site, I came across a bunch of stuff I’d forgotten about. From 2002-2005 (pre-Flickr) I used to use a small script to generate galleries of photos and then post them to my website, but there’s never been any real good list of links to the whole cache. Here’s a master list, in date-correct order:
6/7/02 – Backyard pictures from my old house in Canton
6/11/02 – More backyard progress shots
6/22/02 – Assorted pictures, Jen’s apartment kitchen
7/6/02 – Fourth of July weekend and some more backyard pictures
7/15/02 – Model T Club meetup in Ellicot City
7/30/02 – July vacation in Aurora
9/1/02 – Labor Day in Aurora
9/14/02 – Matt comes in from San Francisco, and our group of friends meets at Rob & Karean’s house in Canton
3/18/03 – Snowfall in Canton
3/17/03 – St. Patrick’s Day weekend
3/29/03 – Checking out a old building on River Road in Ellicott City
bimini_photos – Bimini pictures
divelog – Bimini trip writeup with pictures
5/27/2003 – Engagement trip to Savannah, GA
5/10/03 wedding – Tim & Betty’s wedding in DC
5/24/03 – Engagement trip to Aurora
6/7/03 – Lockard reunion in Orlando
7/4/03 – Fourth of July 2003, up in Aurora
7/25/03 Stas & Vicki’s wedding in NY
9/8/03 – New Catonsville house pictures
12/21/03 – Christmas dinner on Tyndale Ave.
4/4/20 – Spring flowers
Wedding – Wedding pictures
Rome – Honeymoon trip to Rome with writeup
4/10/9 – Matt & Sophie’s wedding in San Francisco
4/11/26 – B&O Railroad Museum
Baby – Finn’s progression in Jen’s belly
House – Shots from the first day we looked at the house
House_photos – A few pictures from the house inspection
House_progress – Semi-updated gallery of house renovation pictures
Oklahoma – Pictures of the crazy roadside signs in Oklahoma, 1992
Panoramics – Test panoramics (needs a Java applet, which I don’t have a link for)
At some point, I’d like to upload all of these to Flickr, but I don’t know of a way to backdate them so that they list in sequence. I’ll have to look into that some more.
Our weekend was full and fun. Saturday we started out with a soccer game under bright blue skies. Finn claimed she was nervous on the ride over, but as she got onto the field and comfortable, she guarded the goal well.
On one play toward the second half of the game, she collected the ball in front of her own goal and drove it all the way down the field to the other side–and past the opposing team’s goal. She’s come so far in a couple of weeks!
In the afternoon she hung out with me while I got a bunch of boring house chores done:
- Hauled brush to the dump
- Brought in the AC units
- Closed the storm windows
- Cleaned off the front porch
- Cleaned up and closed up the attic
- Closed up the cracks in our foundation with hydraulic cement
Then we walked over to the neighbors’ and grilled on their deck. As the sun set we built a fire in the firepit, enjoyed adult conversation, and let the kids play until long after bedtime.
I’m wrapping up a lot of small projects here today:
- I’ve got a sick iMac on my desk waiting for a fresh install of Snow Leopard. The hard drive died on it last week so I had R&K drop it off to let me do a little surgery. I put a new 1TB drive in it and got it back up and running. Now I have to find out what OS it tops out at and attempt a rebuild from their backup.
- I’ve had another sick MacBook Pro come in and out of the office, the victim of an overstuffed email database and general malaise.
- I’ve got a web project for Finn’s old pre-K school that’s going pretty well. It’s a church site I built in WordPress with some nice calendar functionality and some other custom features, and I’m waiting for them to start adding content so that I can style it and fill out the pages.
- I’ve got another client who’s going through a move and needed two MailChimp templates for a pair of email blasts, as well as an updated address to all the pages on their site.
- We’ve got a friend who’s been looking to get a personal WordPress site off the ground for a while, and has a renewed focus on making that happen.
I was able to wrap up a lot of small things this afternoon, which feels good and should open my weeknights back up. Last week I was bouncing from one thing to the next but not making a lot of headway, so an afternoon’s full attention made all the difference. I like having paying work, and I’d like to solicit some more, just as long as it’s not overwhelming–as it has in the past.
I got a hair up my behind the other day and started adding old content from 2001 into the site, the only months left from my original weblog. I got May in last night, which leaves about two months to go. It’s funny how much I used to post about random stuff and how similar the stuff I was posting about is to the modern day: tech stuff, news, repairs to the house, friends. The big difference is the lack of photos.
The weekend was great. We started out with a showing of Frozen at the neighbors’ house on Friday night. Saturday morning I took Finn to her soccer game. She was nervous at first, like she normally is, but the coach coaxed her out into one of the defensive positions, and there she did great. By the end of the first half she was going after the ball when it came to her side of the field, and actually chasing it back downfield to help her teammates! I think, much like her old man, she likes to get comfortable with things first before she dives in all the way.
After the game we came home and geared up for her birthday party. This year’s theme was apples, and our approach was one of simplicity. A homemade cake, some drinks, pizza delivery, and simple games with friends. As the sun set, I built a fire in the firepit and we sat outside enjoying it until everyone went home and it was time for her to go to bed.
One of her big requests this year were more chapter books, which warms my heart more than I can explain. Finn and I have had a ritual since she was a toddler: Daddy is in charge of bathtime. After we get PJs on and teeth brushed, we jump on the bed and crack open a book. For the last couple of months we’ve been reading from two series–Ivy & Bean and the Never Girls. We started by reading alternate pages aloud. Finn would take time to sound out certain words and I helped her with the phonetics, and she’s been getting better and faster every day. It’s to the point now where we burn through a 15-page chapter in about ten minutes, and it’s my favorite time of the day. I tuck her into bed and hootch up next to her to get the bed warm, and we pass the book back and forth.
The new album by Royal Blood got panned by Pitchfork, but I have to say I’m enjoying it. It’s amazing what you can do with a drumkit, a bass, and a shitload of effects pedals.
Finn and I went for ice cream last night. The light is falling behind the trees earlier now, and the air is cool. She’s starting Kindergarten tomorrow, which means fall isn’t too far off. I’m not ready for summer to end, nor am I alright with my daughter growing up so goddamn fast.