My birthday was this week! I wrote a post about it.

I’m continuing to work on my workshop upgrade as much as I can. This week I:

• Added some light finish to my bench top (a blend of linseed oil and beeswax). I decided one coat is enough. It is just a workbench and as soon as I start using it the top will get dinged up anyway.
  • Using it so far has been great! It is very solid, a huge improvement over what was there before.
• Added weather stripping inside the doors to help the heater out and keep out some dampness
• Added some missing light switch covers
• Added a test set of French cleats to a side wall
• Made my first tool holder to go on the cleats: A holder for my lathe tools.
  • I used my Shopsmith in drill press mode for this for the first time in two years. I also set up the router table and got out the air brad nailer.
• Started modifying and installing my dust collector. Post forthcoming.
• Put an old style flexible spout and vent cap on my new diesel can because the new style “no spill” control spouts are terrible and so hard to use. Holding up the can with one hand while you squeeze the spout with your thumb instead of using your second hand to support and guide the nozzle is difficult. Full 5gal cans are heavy! After using it three times I was so frustrated that I ordered a replacement kit.

Things are starting to come together nicely and I’m pretty happy about it! I’m getting excited about working in there more.

Posts also forthcoming on the general upgrade project and the new workbench, and the French cleats.

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I met my coworker and friend Fernando and his girlfriend Gabriele for dinner on Friday. They live in Brazil but are visiting NYC for a week. We went to Lombardi’s, the first pizza place in the US. Afterward we had drinks and popcorn chicken at Double Chicken Please. There we lucked out and got offered a table in the Coop, which had a 5 hour wait, but someone had just canceled. I had the Waldorf Salad (scotch, walnut bitters, celery, apple, ginger ale) and the Americano Americano (Campari, vermouth, coffee liqueur, branca menta, soda). I thought the Americano Americano was clever because it combines the Americano coffee drink with the Americano cocktail. And it was tasty! On the popcorn chicken: If a place is well-known for their bar snacks, you have to get them. The chicken did not disappoint.

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Saturday was a full day. Charlie had gymnastics in the morning, then some of the gymnastics crew went to Dunkin Donuts for a snack and then Home Depot for the kids’ workshop. This month they built a butterfly house. Later that afternoon we went to a friend’s new job celebration party in Lake Peekskill. We brought esquites. There Charlie ate his first taco! Until now he would only eat the constituent parts instead of the whole thing together. I think the sour cream sold it for him… sour cream is one of his favorite foods.

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Sunday was sunny and warm, which was a nice change of pace. Charlie played outside while I did some more work on the workshop upgrade and Amanda went horseback riding. We also installed a handle on the workshop door at Charlie’s height so he can open and close the door himself.

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Challenging week at work. You might have seen various articles about Automattic from places like 404 Media this week. I won’t say anything other than the entire situation sucks. Like many other things in life, before you form your opinion you might want to consider assuming positive intent.

The big event two weeks ago was a snow storm on Tuesday. We got 11″ of snow here in Peekskill, the most in the region. Daycare was closed, along with everything else, so Amanda and I switched off hanging out with Charlie while the other worked. No snow days is a downside of remote work! (You still won’t catch me going into an office any time soon, though.)

Charlie woke me up that morning by saying, “Daddy, it NO-ing!”

Charlie and I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk twice, and took the sled out in the woods. Otherwise we hunkered down and stayed warm.

Charlie woke me up the next morning by saying, “Daddy, it Valentine’s Day!” – We’d been hyping it up all week, making cards, etc. He had a blast.

My parents came to visit for the holiday weekend on Friday. Dad helped me a lot with the workshop upgrade project:

• Saturday we finished putting in the rest of the insulation and installed the diesel heater (my birthday present from my parents)
  • I’ll put together a post once I finish the rest of the upgrades, but the heater is great. At one point we had it up to 70F in the minimally-insulated shed and had to turn the power down.
• Sunday we went to pick up some items from an auction and some plywood from Home Depot with their truck, then framed in the workbench, routed out spots for the legs and vise, then biscuit joined and glued the three pieces of the top together.
• Monday we put in the legs and shelving for the workbench, put a couple pieces of plywood up on the walls, and put in some electrical outlets above the new bench.

It was great to have my parents here. Always nice to spend time with them. Charlie loves it, too.

Wednesday night I hung lights above the bench and installed my vises.

More on that auction: An old woodturner in Fishkill passed away and his family ran an estate sale. I ended up not winning any of the wood he had roughed out and stacked in his shop because the bids went higher than I was willing to pay, but when I went to pick up the ShopVac that I won, I asked if they had any wood that didn’t sell. I lucked out! They forgot to post some of it to the online auction, so I offered cash on the spot and took it off their hands. 🪵 🙌

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we did some clean up and gave away some stuff on Buy Nothing. For the unfamiliar, there are local Facebook groups where you can post things you want to give away and people claim them. We gave away a giant beanbag chair, our old couch, and some baby stuff. We also claimed and picked up a toy piano for Charlie.

Friday morning we had a family breakfast date at the coffee shop.

We did the clean up to make space for reconfiguring the finished half of the basement into a half work/half art space for Amanda. Her desk was already down there, but we put up some bookshelves and moved her workspace around a little bit. Today (Sunday) is organizing.

Saturday afternoon and early evening Charlie and I met up with Jeremy and Miles to take the train to Cold Spring and hang out for a while. We went to the bookstore, playground, and dinner. Lots of running around outside, too. Everyone had fun.

I finished The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler this week. Good, fun, easy read.

One other cool thing this week: One of my posts was featured in the Stack Overflow newsletter!

Okay, I’m off to do some more work in my warm workshop. I’m putting up more plywood today, which I’ll later hang French cleats on.

I decided to go forward with the workshop upgrades, so that has been taking most of my time outside of work this week.

The current plan:

• Insulate with radiant barrier.
• Diesel heater for heat.
• Put a bench along the full back wall. 31.5″ deep, set up 36″ high. Top made out of laminated 2x4s on edge. Shelf underneath high enough for bins to slide underneath for storage.
  • Mounting my carpenter’s vice flush with the front of the bench for better full-length support. Probably left site, 1/4 of the way in.
  • Standard bench vice is probably going on the right side.
  • 3 4×4 feet in the front, 2×4 nailers on the back and side walls.
• Instead of a flip cart for the miter saw, I’ll build a platform to put the miter saw on top of my Shopsmith and use the tables on it to support the longer pieces. Saving the floor space.
• French cleats on the walls for storage.
• I may end up getting rid of the green cart/locker I’m currently using for storage. Every bit of floor space helps!

I spent a lot of time this weekend glueing together 2x4s and planing them for the bench top. After not pre-planing and jointing them in the first section, I decided to do the 14 remaining boards, which led to a much better result for the second section. I guess the first one will go in the back. As I write this, the third section is still curing in the basement. (This glue needs 55F to cure and it is in the 20F range here at night.)

I’m exhausted and sore, but I’m rushing to get the last section planed before the snow hits on Tuesday.

I’ve put up a third of the radiant barrier so far.

More future workshop upgrade projects in my digital garden.

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Charlie loves Home Depot. Good thing we’ve been three times this week.

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Crocuses are starting to bloom!

Getting steadily earlier each year, according to my unscientific records:

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The weather was sunny and warm on Friday, so we picked up pizzas and met up with another family at the playground after work on Friday. The kids loved it. Nice to have the days growing long enough to do that again.

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Amanda and I started watching Griselda and we like it. So our two shows right now are True Detective and Griselda.

Charlie was home Monday and part of Wednesday because he was teething this week and had a cough in addition to the mouth pain. Unfortunately getting him to take any kind of medicine has been a struggle recently, so it was a tough couple of days for everyone.

He recovered by the end of the week and had a great Saturday: Gymnastics with some daycare friends in the morning, then a kids workshop at Home Depot where he got to build and paint a Valentine’s Card Box with some of the same friends. Panera afterward, then home for a much needed nap.

I got things started and Amanda helped Charlie finish. He loves using his tools.

Amanda and I had our friends Jeremy and Marie over for dinner on Saturday evening. I roasted a duck and used the rendered fat for roasting potatoes and sautéing green beans with garlic and breadcrumbs. Marie made kartoshka from her grandmother’s recipe, a Ukrainian truffle-like dessert that we all enjoyed. Afterward Amanda and J played some flute duets.

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As I mentioned last week, I’m trying to improve my lathe turning skills. I realized that not using a skew is a serious skill deficiency, and in learning how to use one I found out that the 45 degree angle and straight edge make it pretty difficult to use for peeling and planing cuts. So I got a used Shopsmith-mounted grinder on eBay and reground my 1in skew to a smaller angle with a radius. It works much better now, and I used it exclusively to make this tool handle, without having a single catch. That might sound pretty normal to a seasoned turner, but it was a breakthrough for me.

I’m also proud of myself because I haven’t done much tool grinding or shaping. I started out with the bench grinder and got the profile I wanted, but found it hard to make a consistent bevel on a 1in tool and a 3/4in grinding wheel, so I cleaned it up on the disc sander.

Next steps:

• I ordered some grinding wheels from McMaster Carr, which was the only place that had the combo of 5″ wheel + 5/8 arbor I could find.
• I need to get some finer sand paper for the disc sander, or figure out another way to hone my tools.
• Write up my sharpening techniques on my digital garden for future me
• Perhaps I can mount the sharpening jig to the other side of the lathe for easy sharpening while I turn to keep things in top shape.
• Figure out better storage close to the Shopsmith. I like the bottom shelf I have, but the sawdust and wood shavings are too much. Perhaps I need to enclose it.

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Charlie climbing and checking out the lathe.

Before this he and I were looking at different kinds of maps (some local, some national parks) and drawing our own on paper. He is a lot of fun.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about building a new bench, moving things around for better layout, and insulating/heating the shed so working out there in the winter isn’t so brutal. Some things on the top of my mind:

• Diesel heater or small wood stove?
  • Diesel heaters heat up quickly and turn off instantly, so I don’t need to start a fire and worry about it while i’m not in the shed.
  • Wood stoves are quieter and put out a nice radiant heat.
• Foam board or fiberglass for insulation?
  • Both are kind of annoying to install, but foam board might be less itchy.
• Can I make a flip-top cart with a router one one side and miter saw on the other? That would minimize dedicated workbench space usage and help me get things out of the way if needed.
• I need to think about dust collection, but have no idea where to start.

More to come on this. I’m talking to my Dad, some friends, and reading a lot online.

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I started using How to Draw Almost Every Day for some simple daily drawing prompts. I like it!

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The Roberta’s frozen pizzas are the best frozen pizzas I’ve had. I don’t know what they do differently, but they are excellent. Great crust that crisps up in the oven and great flavor.

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After not reading for most of January, I picked up The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler and am enjoying it so far.

So many courses and membership platforms with private log-in built on WordPress are trivially easy to circumvent because they don’t lock down access to the REST API endpoints.

Related, Vimeo’s domain-level privacy setting is also trivially easy to circumvent as long as you know which domain it is supposed to be embedded on. It relies on the referer header, which you can specify with curl’s –referer option.

If you make course or membership plugin, don’t forget to restrict REST API access for your post types to authenticated users!

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I started a new ferment this week after bottling my gin & tonic seltzer last weekend. I’m making an imperial hard cider, flavored with some oak and calvados. Should be ready in a couple weeks.

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I spent two days in Manhattan this week—Wednesday and Friday.

Wednesday was a “I need a change of scenery” day. Amanda and Charlie had plans with another mom and toddler after work/daycare, so I worked from the WeWork in Union Square (terrible place to be productive, but great kombucha), got lunch at Halal Guys (chicken over rice white sauce hot sauce), dinner at Soothr (khao soi sai ua), then walked up to Kalustyan’s and explored before going home. I picked up some tasty hot sauces. Since eating that Paqui One Chip Challenge at Christmas, my heat tolerance is much higher than before. I’m now using habanero sauces like I used to use Frank’s, and when I want to heat it up I’m now reaching for ghost pepper sauces. My current rotation: Marie Sharp’s green habanero, Woodstock Ghost Pepper, Melinda’s Red Savina and Bhut Jolokia. Next time I think I’ll try Marie Sharp’s Belizean Heat and the Woodstock Scorpion.

The next day I learned that Matt was hosting a happy hour at the Automattic office on Friday ahead of his upcoming sabbatical, so I decided to head in and work from the Automattic office in NoHo (Crosby St). I had lunch at George Motz’s Hamburger America (onion burger, coffee milk, and fries). It was excellent.

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Amanda and I went on a date on Saturday! We went to Goosefeather. The food was excellent, but the service and ambiance left a bit to be desired. I’m trying to recreate one of the cocktails I had.

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Last week I mentioned some of my current interests in the shop. Here’s how I’m moving forward:

• I got out an old book I have on wood turning to revisit the basics. I also checked a newer one out of the library to compare.
• Found some resources online about wood turning.
• Watched ebay for a bent gouge and a grinder that will attach to my Shopsmith. Won both!

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I read a recent study about certain strains of probiotics reducing acid reflux, which I suffer from. It renewed my interest in probiotics, so I’m taking some again. If you have some that have been particularly effective for you, I’d love to hear about it.

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Sunday was a rare rainy weekend day where I had some gumption, so I organized the basement, replaced some pieces of the floating vinyl flooring that had cracked down there, and cleaned out the small basement fridge. Then made pork enchiladas with tomatillo salsa from our garden tomatillos for dinner.

Charlie helped with the crow bar.

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Worked on some SQL optimization last week. It is insane how much faster integer comparisons are than string comparisons. This is where my lack of a computer science background makes me miss things other people might think is obvious.

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We went to the library! We go every other week.

Charlie really likes Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. I love that he notices different things on the page than I notice. Reading with him is one of my favorite things.

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The new season of True Detective is good, but not for the faint of heart. IMO it is more disturbing than the previous seasons.

The snow melted by the end of the day Tuesday because of all the rain we had. More is forecasted for this week though!

This has been a wild weather week around the US. On a single day, US folks on my team shared in Slack that they experienced tornados, flooding, heavy wind, and heavy snow. A couple days later there was more snow and extremely low temperatures.

If you don’t have backup plans for heat and some emergency preparations, now is probably a good time to start thinking about that. I don’t think this extreme weather is going to improve.

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Charlie was home sick from daycare most of the week, and Amanda caught the bug as well. I was mostly spared except for some sore throat, but it did throw a wrench in the week nonetheless.

Working from home with a sick kid is tough. I work best when it is quiet and I’m alone, which makes it impossible to an eye on Charlie and get real work done. Unfortunately, Amanda’s work tends to be call-heavy, also impossible to do and keep an eye on Charlie. We trade off, so neither of us gets enough done.

Charlie recovered enough to daycare on Friday, but Amanda and I had dentist appointments. After mine, I took a walk down to Bruised Apple BooksArchived Link while Amanda finished her appointment. I picked up a couple Edward Abbey books and a book I’ve had my eye on there for over a year: The Internet Atlas by Richard Dinnick. Subtitle: Your indespensible guide to the best 1000 sites on the web. Published in 2000. I love flipping through the screenshots of the web 1.0 sites. I experienced them, but it is a reminder of what the web used to be like.

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I spent a couple late nights working on a blog redesign. I have a few more templates to make before I move it over to this site.

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The weekend was better. Saturday morning we took a trip up to Lagrangeville to pick up Amanda’s flute from a music shop where she had some maintenance work done on it. Saturday afternoon Charlie got a haircut (so handsome!), then he and I did some grocery shopping while Amanda got her nails done.

Sunday we all did some yardwork together (emptied and put away some straggler terra cotta pots, filled the bird feeders), I put up a pull-up bar on the back side of the swingset (not visible from the front, which is a win), then I made a mallet in the shop, and revived some dead tool batteries while Amanda and Charlie took a nap and baked banana bread.

New Year’s Day feels like the only real rest day we had during the holiday break.

• We made peanut butter bird seed pinecones for the birds.
• We took a walk in the woods.
• Charlie took a long nap and Amanda and I sat on the couch together for a while. I blogged and Amanda got ready for the week.
• I made pasta for dinner.

This week was back-to-work. Tuesday night we made pizza and calzones from the extra NYE dough. I’m really getting the hang of shaping the dough and using the Ooni.

My daily stretching and drawing resolution is going well. I’m staying on trackToo soon to see benefits IMO, but glad I’m sticking with it and it doesnt feel like too much of a drag.

We went to Feed the Birds! in Croton and got a new bird feeder. Charlie likes filling it up.

He also likes helping put out the recycling. He is generally a helpful guy.

Not a lot else to say about the rest of the week. We went back to work and kind of eased back in while a lot of people were still out. Amanda and I had a lunch date on Friday (Benny’s sandwiches at the waterfront). We re-joined the local wine shop’s wine club.

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The east coast finally got some snow this weekend. We enjoyed playing in it. We started in the yard in the morning, then my friend Jon came over after naptime and we went for a walk in the woods. Charlie enjoyed the sled a lot more this year then he did last year.

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Some snowy scenes.

I stumbled upon this and I absolutely love it. A cozy little place for a mouse or chipmunk to eat some nuts and seeds and keep out of the snow.

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I feel fortunate that none of us have gotten sick this winter. Big difference compared to last year when we were sick all the time.

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Taking care of an infant was physically difficult. Parenting a 2.5yo toddler is emotionally difficult. On one hand there are tons of meltdowns and independence struggles, then on the other hand they tell you they love you unprompted and very sweetly thank you for doing small everyday things for them.

Charlie’s use of function words has ramped up in the last couple weeks. They make his speaking sound a lot more natural. But he also still says things like “unga brella” for umbrella and “Magawine” for Madeline (which we’ve been reading a lot of), and it is super cute.

He amazes us and we are so proud of him, even if we go to bed emotionally exhausted every night. It can be, and is, both.

The end of both the autumn season and the calendar year. On the shortest day of the year we celebrated our friend Meg’s birthday at The Central, where her husband set up a surprise party and urged us all to get sitters and have a night out. We are glad we did. It was fun to be out with friends, sans kids, in a place where we’ve all been many times but in a completely different context. We dressed up, too!

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We’ve been going to the library every other week or so to pick out new books with Charlie. This last time he confidently stated he wanted a book about firetrucks, so we asked the kind librarian to help us find firetruck books and they delivered. Charlie enjoyed one on the ride home.

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We went back to Ohio for Christmas and had a nice trip.

The drive out was easy. Despite leaving late because we had a busy week and hadn’t packed much, the weather was nice and traffic light on the drive, so we made good time. Listened to Birdseye, Adventures of a Curious Man by Mark Kurlansky.

Some highlights from the trip:

• Making Dutch Babies on Christmas morning. We used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe and did one savory and one sweet.
• Making Sean Brock’s rabbit stew with black pepper dumplings recipe. We brought a rabbit from Hemlock Hill.
• Seeing Charlie play with his cousins.
• Charlie getting time with his grandparents and feeling completely comfortable at their house, opening up and being silly like he does at home.
• Working on a project with my Dad: Refinishing the top of an old work bench and mounting it to a cart with wheels. We took off about 1/8 of an inch of old wood with a power plane, evened it out with a belt sander, tightened the through bolts to squeeze everything back together, cut a straight edge, added a carpenter’s vice, and then put a mixture of beeswax and mineral oil on top.
• My cousins, uncle, and I eating Paqui One Chip Challenge chips. I eat a lot of hot stuff, but this was rough. It made me hiccup involuntarily for the first five minutes while I sweat like crazy.
• Playing the Four Letter Word Game.
• Learning and playing Tunk.

One of the bigger challenges this year is that Charlie got overstimulated and clingy at most of the bigger get-togethers we went to, so either Amanda or I spent a lot of 1:1 time with Charlie. It makes sense and is developmentally appropriate for 2.5 years old. We also think he is going through another leap right now because his language skills are increasing almost every day right now. His nap schedule was way off, too. Nonetheless, it is tiring for us and frustrating when we only see certain people once or twice a year and spend a huge chunk of that time not able to socialize. But we are reminding ourselves that this is a stage and we are thankful for the time we did get, and for the dedicated time with Charlie.

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My cousin Ryan filled me in on Smokin’ Ed Currie. He is the one who cultivated the Carolina Reaper pepper and now has a new world’s hottest pepper: Pepper X. It apparently takes about 10 years to make a stable cross-breed chile.

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On the way back from Ohio we stopped in Pittsburgh to visit our friends Erin and Tyler, which is becoming a tradition. Some highlights:

• Charlie and Gus playing outside with the chickens
• Charlie getting to pet some cats. We don’t have any pets, so he was thrilled and surprisingly gentle.
• Tyler gave me a couple nice pieces of black cherry wood to turn on the lathe.
• Erin shared some gardening advice and a book recommendation (The Old Way).
• Having a fantastic meal at Nicky’s Thai in Sewickley. I had Khao Soi and loved it. I’ll probably try to make some at home.
• Tyler played Bon Iver’s 22, A Million on the record player while the fireplace crackled and snow flurried outside.
  • I enjoy the vibes that putting on a record gives, and love when someone puts one on when we visit, but I have no interest in getting a record player or collecting records.
• Making Black & Green Manhattans (Manhattans with Zirbenz) and tasting some double oak bourbon. Tyler recommended seeking out Old Forester 1910.
• Playing Trivial Pursuit. The guys won.
  • One theory of Poe’s death is that he was so distressed about being forced to participate in Cooping that he had a panic attack and died
• Playing Monopoly Deal. Amanda won.
• Just chatting and laughing with old friends.

Every time we visit Erin and Tyler I’m tempted to buy a Moccamaster or Bonavita coffee maker, but I’m stubbornly attached to our hand grinding and manual pour over.

Every year I try to get Erin and Tyler to blog, to no avail. Erin is an incredible artist and I think she’d write great blog posts. We share a lot of common interests, but completely diverge on the blogging front.

Some choice quotes from this year:

“No, I haven’t read your blog. In fact, I’ve never read any blog.”

“I don’t know what you internet people do.”

“The collective has a hard time getting people to document their work because we are all too busy actually doing things to blog about it.”

Erin

“Your blog is about nothing… I mean, you blog about whatever is going on in your life at the time…nothing in particular.”

Tyler

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The drive back home was decent. Lots of rain, but Charlie was in a good mood and actually napped. Listened to Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time. Had a surreal experience where I thought we were both an hour further ahead in the audiobook and an hour further in our drive than we actually were. Losing an hour while listening to a book that challenges our standard conceptions of time is weird.

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We had a NYE get together at our house with Erica, Trevor, and Zoey.

• We made pizza in the Ooni. The dough came out great and was easy to work with. I’m getting the hang of the Ooni.
• We made Tiki drinks. Nui Nui (rum, cinnamon, vanilla, orange, lime) and Yuletide (tequila, cranberry, lime, orange).
• We had many appetizers and dips.
• Amanda made a toddler charcuterie board just for the kids.
• The kids made art and danced.
• Zoey made herself at home and tried to sleep on the couch when her parents said it was time to go home and go to bed.

It was a nice time. We started in the afternoon and were all in bed before midnight.

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Over the break I finally finished the eighth book of The Baroque Cycle. The series took me two years to finish. Which giant Neal Stephenson book should I read next? I’ve read over half of his fiction bibliography so far. We’ll see what strikes my fancy in a couple months when I’m ready to start another, but right now I’m leaning toward Anathem.

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I had big plans for overhauling this blog over the break, but didn’t do them. I took a break and hung out with my family instead. I’ll get to it eventually.

Christmas tree update: We added cranberries. We consider our tree a work in progress for all of December.

I got out in the shop and made some more ornaments on the lathe. That might be it for this year.

Charlie’s daycare class had a Christmas luncheon and Amanda made the menus and flowers.

We made some more Christmas cookies. Charlie stamped them. Using a circle cutter as a guide helped tremendously.

Charlie and I spent two hours exploring Depew park in a very open-ended way. As long as he wasn’t in danger or about to jump in the pond, I didn’t interfere with where he wanted to go. He loved it.

Charlie and I also took a night walk in the woods with his flashlight.

We sent out the last batch of Christmas cards today. We need to start writing them a bit earlier next year 🎄📬

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Reading

I finished The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler this week and started Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig and Liberty’s DaughterArchived Link by Naomi Kritzer.

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I joined a local Discord group and got included in some local Twitter lists. I am starting to feel like that was a mistake. The complainers tend to congregate there and complain together because no one else will listen to them. There they feel heard. Not really my kind of place.

To quote Frank Chodorov, “One is a crowd.”

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I’m looking forward to some time off next week. I need it this year. The last six months feel like a blur to me.

That’s all I’ve got.

I’m blogging later than usual because during my normal blogging times I was either out in the workshop turning things on the lathe, baking Christmas cookies, writing Christmas cards, making natural Christmas decorations, or at a Christmas party. All good things. ‘Tis the season.

This year we had Emily at Fox Burrow DesignsArchived Link, a local artist, design our cards. Last year it was Kate at Happy Places.

The Christmas party in Lake Peekskill, hosted by our friends Jeremy and Marie, included live music and caroling. That’s Amanda on the flute, Jeremy on the piano, and Detra (who you might recognize from HONY) singing in the background.

I spent a couple evenings in the workshop this week making things. First some dreidels for Hanukkah gifts (see also), then some ornaments and a dry vase. A little helper came to visit.

It is really nice to get back out in the shop and make things again. Trying to make it a regular thing.

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I’ve pretty much switched to the Arc browser now. I’m still getting my pins set up and a few work tools figured out, but it is a huge improvement over any other browsers I’ve used, except maybe for the web browser on Palm’s webOS. (That Palm Pre was by far the coolest phone I’ve owned.) See also.

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We’ve been going to the library with Charlie every couple weeks to pick out new books. He loves picking some himself and insists on carrying them back to the car. In addition to the cars and construction vehicles, he loves Madeline. Très bien!

Some books he’s been enjoying:

• Madeline’s Christmas (which he calls Magawine Christmas)
• Construction Site on Christmas Night
• Construction Vehicle ABCs (which he calls Excavator Dump Truck Book)
• Cars Go

I’m not done with it yet, but Ray Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea is a prime candidate for the best book I’ve read this year.

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State of the Word looks like it went well today. I’m curious to see how the community responds to the Data Liberation focus. I played a small part in getting some things ready for that behind the scenes. More to come on that front later. I’m excited about this focus, as migrations are a big chunk of my job and better tooling would be a huge help. I’d love the end user to be able to migrate everything on their own without calling in our team!

The Interactivity API is also pretty cool. I love how fast the demo site is.

I’m also in love with the Playground project. I wish the blueprint.json convention there would make its way to regular WP installs. I’d love to send someone a json file to include with a blank WP install and have everything installed and generated in a matter of seconds.

I’m glad Matt mentioned the Friends plugin. I use it here!

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I better get to bed. Toddlers wake up early. Thankfully Charlie started grinding our coffee for us in the morning!

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This week last year:

https://cagrimmett.com/week-of/2022/12/12/week-of-december-5/

A first for us: We decorated the Christmas Tree at 7am. That is when Charlie got up and was ready to go. We still need to dry the grapefruits to add to the tree. Every morning Charlie turns the tree on when he comes downstairs, and he turns it off before we leave. He loves it.

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Charlie playing trains.

Charlie helping make Christmas cookies

We went to the Harvest Moon Orchard Festival of Lights on Saturday. They had lots of great displays and a well-paced, self-guided path with calming music. We enjoyed it. Charlie’s favorite was the tractors.

I’m surprised more orchards and farms don’t do something like this. I know it is a lot of work, but this place is raking it in on what is the typical off season. They not only charge for admission, but they have 3 refreshment stations where you can buy hot chocolate, coffee, and booze while going through the lights, then food and fresh hot donuts at the end. Quick napkin math, I expect they are bringing in at least $30K per night on the weekends.

One more for good measure.

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I spent Saturday morning helping Jon frame out a woodshed at his place. We work well together. We usually drink our coffee and discuss the plan, then divide and conquer. We don’t waste much time.

I learned a new trick for squaring things like the bottom frames: The 3-4-5 rule. Mark 3ft on one side, 4ft on the other, and adjust until the hypotenuse is 5ft. This makes perfect sense, but I hadn’t thought to use it before.

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I’m feeling the itch to redesign my website. The homepage and archive pages need it. I’ll probably start by surveying other blogs I like and taking screenshots for inspiration.

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Reading

Amanda and I usually spend Charlie’s naptime on the weekends trying to get some stuff done around the house. Today we brewed some coffee, snuggled up on the couch together, and read for two and a half hours. It was nice.

• I just finished Candle by John Barnes.
• Currently reading The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler.
• Currently listening to the eighth and final book in The Baroque Cycle, System of the World.
• I gave up on the third book in the Red Rising saga. I liked the first, the second wasn’t as good, and just couldn’t stay interested in the third.

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Spotify Wrapped 2023

For as long as Spotify has been doing Wrapped, Tycho has been my number one artist, and that hasn’t changed. Though, I’m thankful that Spotify opts out kids music, because Blippi or Twenty Trucks might have taken the top spot this year…

Some new artists made it in my top songs list:

• Frou Frou (an Imogen Heap project)
• Sudan Archives
• The Hold Steady

Some old favorites resurfaced this year:

• Mighty Mighty Bosstones
• zebrahead
• Mutemath
• Foster the People

Some are no surprise:

• Rancid
• The Strokes
• Less Than Jake

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I made Japanese curry tonight, a cold weather favorite in our house. If you haven’t tried it, get some roux blocks and make a batch. We like the Vermont Curry brand, which is easy to find in the US. We make it with chicken, potatoes, peas, carrots, and onions, but it works well with ground beef or vegetarian, too. One batch is good for multiple meals.

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Twelve Days of the Rings

Seven swans to rule them all,
Six geese to find them,
Five rings to bring them all,
And in the pear tree bind them