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Uncle Keith, travel, office, pools and food

I lost my Uncle Keith to cancer on Friday, September 16th (obituary). It was an expected loss and I am glad I was able to spend some time him earlier this month. We weren’t close, and any condolence should go to my aunt, his wife, I know what it’s like to watch a loved one dying from long illness and it is very painful. Since Phoenix is just a two hour flight away, MJ and I will be flying out the evening of Friday Sept 30th to be with family for his memorial service on October 1st and coming home the evening of Sunday, October 2nd.

This trip means the only weekend I will be at home in October is 22-23, which happens to be the weekend of the OLPC-SF Summit which I will probably have to skip for sanity’s sake (even though I’m still helping with website stuff). We’ve booked a working trip to Philadelphia from 8-16 (MJ is attending a conference and I’ll be working from the hotel, and will probably have a company meeting while I’m in town with all my co-workers). On the evening of October 26th we’re taking a red-eye out to Orlando for a few days of Disney World (yay! finally!) and family visits before MJ flies home and I stick around for the week of the Ubuntu Developer Summit. I’ll be flying home on November 5th. It’s like May all over again! But at least all my travel this time is domestic.

We’ve made progress in the office/den, MJ spent a lot of time looking into a solution for housing our computers, switches and things that would be large enough depth-wise for the towers, strong enough to hold 5 servers and, the hardest part, something that’s not terribly ugly (we have to live in this space too!). He ended up buying a black Sanus audio rack:

No more computers on the floor, hooray! He also purchased some permanent power strips to manage everything we had to plug in, our printer is now permanently plugged into my desktop rather than having to plug it in with a cord across the office each time I want to use it. We also took the time to do some wire management, so it’s not such a wire disaster anymore.

To take a break this past Sunday I finally had the opportunity to use the Burke Williams Day Spa gift certificate that MJ got me for Valentine’s Day. I went to the location at Westfield San Francisco Centre and it was a truly relaxing 5 hours spent. Much needed.

The spa and my trip to Phoenix earlier this month where I enjoyed my aunt’s pool did remind me how much I miss pools. Back in the suburbs of Philadelphia a $40/mo gym membership easily got you a gym with a pool, so from 2006 until I moved away in 2010 I had pretty much constant access to a place to swim. Moving into a city changed this, my basic gym membership at a place without a pool topped at around $85/mo. I was idly exploring some options the other night when I learned about the Golden Gateway Tennis & Swim Club. Not only do they have pools, they have heated outdoor pools. They also have a steam room and sauna in their fitness center, which my gym lacks (had a sauna in PA, I’ve missed that too). It’s more expensive and further away from home than my current gym but a tour on Monday evening had me pretty much sold on the place. I signed the paperwork tonight and spent 2 hours with my nook, a pool and a hot tub as I watched the sky darken with the sunset and the city light up around me. Stunning. I don’t think I joined another gym, I joined an urban oasis. I’ll get to the fitness center next time.

Finally, I’ve committed to cooking at least one proper meal at home for week and by “proper” I mean not cereal, frozen, or otherwise prepared. I still don’t care for cooking but I am interested in eating healthier and reviving old family recipes. My latest creation? Beef Stroganoff (also archived here, in case that site disappears). Tomorrow I’ll be doing a very basic crock pot chili.

Now to heat up (it’s not making night!) some dinner.