“What do you want to do in San Francisco?”
“Just ride around in buses and trains and cable cars.”

That’s my boy. He also wanted to go back to the Cable Car Museum and to the new Transbay Terminal park where they have a fountain that activates along a path whenever a bus passes beneath it. With all these things in mind we mapped out a plan.

First up, we decided not to take the stroller. It was the first time taking both boys into San Francisco without it, so we were a little nervous, but we managed to keep walking to a minimum and relied on public transit. We took BART into the city and got off at Embarcadero Station where we picked up the California Street cable car. Aaron and I rode on the outside of the car while MJ and Adam rode inside for the first half of our ride. Once some people got off, MJ and Adam joined us on the outside and then we hopped off at the stop just down the street from the Cable Car Museum.

From there, we walked over to the new Rose Pak MUNI Metro station in Chinatown, during which we got to wave to several cable cars coming by!

We took the Metro from Chinatown back downtown where we then walked over to Jeffery’s Toys, which was sadly going out of business. We picked up a couple trinkets and then got lunch at a nearby California Pizza Kitchen that we sometimes went to when MJ and I lived nearby.

Right after lunch we stopped at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop at the corner of Market and New Montgomery for a couple sundaes.

After lunch we hopped on a PCC street car for a couple stops down Market and then made our way to the Transbay Terminal where we spent some time playing and watching the bus fountain until it was time to take our last exciting type of transit: a bus! It would take longer, but the boys really wanted to take a bus, and MJ found an AC Transit Transbay bus that we could take across the bay, through Alameda, and concluding at an Oakland BART station, which we’d then take back home. The plan was a hit for all of us. It was a nice and comfortable bus which was enjoyable to take, and Aaron fell asleep on me during the journey, so clearly he was comfortable!

That Sunday was quite rainy, and our only journey was to a thrift store to pick up a small filing cabinet to try and contain some of Adam’s school papers which had been increasingly taking over our house. During Aaron’s nap, Adam and I made a trio of custom shirts for Valentine’s Day!

Later in the afternoon, we made some banana bread and then some popcorn to enjoy with our stuck-indoors, movie-driven afternoon.

Speaking of movie-driven, I went to see a movie! I realized recently that something that would help a lot with life balance and mental health would be taking some time for myself. It may seem obvious, but our life is just so busy and we’ve been very reserved about hiring babysitters, only really doing it when absolutely necessary. Part of this is just a holdover from the pandemic, we haven’t adjusted our habits or repopulated our babysitter pool. But taking some time for me to go out, meet with friends, or just go to the record store on my own is so important. So last week I walked over to The Chabot theater, our local, historical, single screen theater and saw Argylle. It was so much fun! I also made some time to stop by my local record shop, and then over to the library where I picked up a couple books.

Last weekend celebrations began for the Lunar New Year. Adam had some celebrations at school to observe it and he was pretty excited, so I searched for some local events and found a lion dance event and crafts right nearby at our local library! So the boys and I first made our regular stop at the local farmers market, and then continued on our journey to the library where we met up with our au pair and her friend, and made it just in time for the dance to begin.

When that concluded, we made our way over to the children’s section of the library where they had celebratory crafts. Predictably, Aaron loved the crafts and Adam wanted to explore the rest of the library and check out a couple books. Around 11:30 MJ picked us up so we could go to lunch.

Before the sun rose on Sunday MJ was off to the airport for a business trip. That morning the boys and I went to the local Japanese Gardens. The boys love the gardens, they’re beautiful, have rocks to climb, and they can see fish and turtles in the water features. From there, we were off to lunch at our favorite local restaurant. Unfortunately, Aaron turned out to be terribly annoyed that we did the gardens instead of a playground, so we rectified that later in the afternoon by going to another park, this time with a playground.

Once all park needs were satisfied for the day, it was time to go home for the Super Bowl! We don’t really watch football and I can barely follow along, but Super Bowl Sunday is basically a holiday in the United States, and it turns out I really enjoy celebrating things with the boys. So we turned on the game, had snacks, chicken tenders, and little bagel bites. And we made and decorated sugar cookies. I guess making cookies isn’t a traditional Super Bowl thing, but the boys weren’t really going to watch the game and we needed something fun and different that we could do with the TV on aside from the regular playroom activities.

Then the game went into overtime right when I was supposed to start getting the boys ready for bed – oops! As a result, I was actively putting Aaron to bed as 5 minutes were left on the clock, and returned just in time to see Kansas City triumph over San Francisco. Adam was adorably disappointed because he knew San Francisco is “his” team, but he got over it within about 30 seconds and the subsequent bedtime routine went smoothly.

The week ahead promised to be very sugar-filled with a little birthday celebration for a friend and Valentine’s Day! We also have a week off from school coming up.

The second week in October is when our local pumpkin patch opened, and we were right there to welcome them! Pumpkin patches are odd things. I’m certain that in some areas they were actually the patches where pumpkins are grown, but every one I’ve ever been to has them delicately set out on a series of rows of hay bails. You wander up and down the rows and select your pumpkins. At the one we go to there are a bunch of rides for kids, which the boys really enjoy. We picked up a few small, decorative pumpkins while we were there.

For our actual carving pumpkins, we waited until the end of October and made the journey over to the grocery store for them. I’m not sure they’re fresher than getting them a few weeks earlier at the patch, but that was my hope, and we’ve had problems with carved pumpkins rotting very fast (within a day!) in the warm, northern California climate.

I joked when we got the pumpkins that I was only getting ONE to carve, because if I get one “for the boys” too, they’re interested for about 10 minutes before they run off and I’m left carving two pumpkins. Then Adam ended up bringing one home from school and insisted that we carve it, and I caved. Guess what happened? I carved two pumpkins. But I kept his simple and classic.

Mine was a bit more work. I found BART-themed pumpkin stencils and made myself a BART cat! Not sure what a BART cat is, but I think it must be related to Catbus. It’s cute and combines two of my favorite things, so I was happy.

Costume-wise, the boys are still young enough that we can follow their interests, but ultimately dress them up however we want and can pick a theme. This year it was Shaun the Sheep. Adam was Shaun, Aaron was baby Timmy, MJ was the farmer, and I got to be Bitzer the dog. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a terrible sheep dog, my sheep ran all over the place!

The first place they got to run around everywhere was Adam’s elementary school. They had games, music, and other activities, plus a firetruck that kids could climb into! They took turns in the fire truck, and little Aaron proclaimed that he wanted to climb the huge ladder. Classic. It was fun, but very loud, and there were lines for all the activities, which the boys had limited patience for.

Our next stop was over the weekend when we went to a Truck or Treat at park within walking distance of our house. We’ve gone to this event several years in a row, and it was definitely quieter this year than in the past, but we were perfectly fine with that. The kids got candy, and they got to do all the activities without much waiting!

And then finally, Halloween night! First, we ordered some pizza and watched Hotel Transylvania while answering the door for the first few trick-or-treaters of the evening. We’re very traditional Halloween-wise and stick to our own neighborhood. We don’t need big or fancy candies, and it’s OK if only half the houses are giving away candy. It’s a nice opportunity to meet some of the other families in the neighborhood, along with other neighbors who are opening doors to kids.

After our own trick-or-treat adventures, we watched more TV downstairs as we spent the rest of the evening answering the door and munching on candy far beyond standard bed times, just like you’d expect on Halloween. Thankfully the elementary school scheduled a staff-only day for November 1st, so we didn’t have to worry about getting out the door the next morning.

They had police horses that Aaron gathered the courage to pet, firetrucks that Aaron could climb up in, all while Adam explored the large grassy fields, marina, and generally enjoyed being outdoors in a park we haven’t spent a ton of time in.

Another evening Adam was rummaging around in my stuff in my home office (hey!) and found the Linux license plate that Compaq gave out back in 2000. I wasn’t the original owner, but it has been kicking around my office for some time without a home, and he excitedly told me that we should hang it up. Sounds good!

We did.

We wandered around the house replacing light bulbs and batteries another night, and the air filters for our HVAC system and air purifiers another. It actually turned these chores that had been piling up into a more fun and present experience. Instead of the boring manual labor of doing this tedious around-the-house work, I had a couple pint-sized helpers who would follow simple instructions like “bring me the screwdriver” or “bring me that trash bag” and enjoyed doing it.

One evening while out in the yard I even fixed the irrigation sprinklers. We had a monthly gardener for a while last year and on one of his visits he clipped one of the sprinkler heads and caused it to crack, which made the whole system unusable. Now, we don’t actually use it, so fixing it seems a bit silly, but the heads are less than $3 each and replacement is easy. Why not fix it? Plus, it was hot out, so it might be fun for the boys to play in the sprinklers!

Well, I quickly learned why we don’t use pop-up irrigation sprinklers with little kids. The damage a gardener did once was nothing compared to what a soggy kid who wants to clean his Cozy Coupe will do to a sprinkler head. I started with one broken one, and ended up replacing three. Oops. Though I guess I should be grateful that it was so easy to fix and they didn’t break anything more severely.

One of the reasons I’d been so eager to get out on a weeknight, or have more activities like fixing things, was that Adam hadn’t begun TK yet, and we had a (wonderful!) babysitter filling in while we were between au pairs for a few weeks. Unfortunately, due to the large price tag of hiring an hourly babysitter for what was effectively full time, we had her precisely cover while I was at work, not a moment more. That meant I had a bit more time with the boys than usual on weeknights, and that meant coming up with more activities to keep them engaged. At 2.5 and 4.5 years old, both are maturing in the direction that they can do solo play for longer stretches, so I’ve been able to get more chores done while still caring for them (and sometimes a little more work), a fact I was especially grateful for while juggling so much each day.

The week we matched with our new au pair, we went out to a local book shop to pick up some locally themed gifts and discovered the Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Factory Outlet over in San Leandro. Having played tourist in San Francisco many times at the founding location that isn’t actually a factory now, it was a lot of fun to park in the lot for the actual current factory and enjoy their new ice cream parlor that opened up inside. The boys and I shared a brownie sundae.

Afterwards, we had dinner at The Original Mels Diner just down the street, which is the cousin of Mel’s in San Francisco, which we used to go to relatively frequently. The boys got their dinner in little paper cars, which I was pretty envious of until the amazing cornbread that went along with my turkey dinner arrived.

The first full weekend our new au pair was here turned out to be quite an eventful one. First was the Castro Valley Cruise Night. The town doesn’t shut down roads like for some of our annual festivals, but the boulevard is packed as people from all around the area make loops down the road in their classic and exotic cars. “Cruising” is frowned upon in most places, illegal in others, but for one night a year it is fun to get out with the rest of the community and enjoy seeing cars.

The next day we went up to San Francisco and showed our new au pair some of the classic tourist spots. Earlier that week we had ventured up to the city to check on some things at our condo, and ended up at Fogo de Chão where we made the surprising discovery that kids eat free there (though only Aaron was really into the whole experience). Our weekend visit was a much more exciting one though. We started off doing a near round-trip on the California Street cable car!

We got off near Grace Cathedral and walked down to the Cable Car Museum, which I was a bit worried would be too loud for my sound-sensitive kiddos, but Adam surprised me and spent the rest of the day asking to go back.

After the museum, we did the steep but thankfully mostly downhill walk down to Pier 39 where we had lunch and visited the sea lions. The big adventure for the afternoon though was visiting Aquarium of the Bay. Aaron loves fish and other swimming things, so I’ve been wanting to take him to an aquarium for months. With our half off discount via the Oakland Zoo membership, this was the perfect opportunity, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s not a huge aquarium, but it has some wonderful fish tunnels and overall Aaron had a blast there.

Our final stop was to to the Musée Mécanique, which was quite crowded and everyone was getting tired at this point. I think the boys would have enjoyed it more if the circumstances had been different, I’ll have to keep it in mind for the future. From Fisherman’s Wharf, we hopped on a vintage street car and made our way back to BART to go home. A fun day, and a successful one of showing off how the Clipper cards and public transit around San Francisco works to our new au pair.

Living in beautiful-all-year California, the end of summer is kind of a vague thing, but with work getting busier, Adam going to TK, and generally some things changing in our household, these adventures actually did feel like a close to summertime.

The first event of the weekend was the Castro Valley Car Show. We go every year, and they shut down Castro Valley Boulevard for several blocks to showcase individuals and organizations bringing in all sorts of classic cars. We met up with a friend of mine around 3PM after the boys got up from their naps and had a lovely afternoon strolling along the boulevard.

After the show, we all went over to enjoy some Indian food for dinner. Adam is a bit of a picky eater, but we found a butter chicken (chicken makhani) a while back that he enjoyed, but was sadly discontinued. But we keep trying similar dishes and trying different restaurants. Aaron chowed down on the chicken makhani, but I think we’ll have to keep searching for Adam. And we all enjoyed the rice and naan!

Sunday was the Big Day as far as Father’s Day goes. We went out to an Oakland A’s game! In 2021 we went to a couple games, but made a big event out of it by bringing friends and renting a suite, but this time we decided to get seats in the stands. They were playing the Phillies, which was fun for us, and caused us to have amusing split loyalties in our gear; Adam was all decked out for the Phillies, while the rest of us wore green for the A’s. Truly, we all love both teams, so it was bound to be a fun game. Execution-wise, we took BART to the stadium, and agreed that we’d split up or all go home if it got to be too much for any of us (kids running off, troubled by too much noise, etc).

We made it through the game though! It wasn’t stress-free, sitting in the stands for long periods is definitely a struggle for them, and going on such a busy day meant that leaving our seats meant fighting our way through crowds, which was unpleasant for all of us. I think if we tried sitting in the stands again we’d go on a less busy day, or maybe even go to San Francisco where there are peripheral activities for the kids if they get bored of the game.

I think what really made the day was the end of the game when kids got to run the bases! Apparently this is a Sunday tradition that some parks follow when there isn’t a home game the next day, but it’s not something we’ve ever experienced. The line for it was incredibly long and patience was wearing thin, but it was worth it. MJ took Adam around the bases and I took Aaron, and we all had a lot of fun.

As a bonus it meant that we didn’t have to wait in line to get on a packed BART train to get home, we were able to leisurely walk to and wait for the train, and all got seats on the trip home.

We skipped naps for the boys to attend the game, so Aaron actually fell asleep in the stroller on the train, and I found Adam zonked out on the couch right after dinner, so we enjoyed a relaxing evening for the rest of the day.

Gift-wise, I’ve struggled to find something MJ would actually use, so in addition to a small gift the boys picked, I went the route of getting a piece of furniture that belonged to his grandparents fixed. During one of the moves (apartment, storage, pod, garage…) the top became detached from the base, and we weren’t confident in our ability to fix it ourselves without doing damage.

I contacted a local furniture restoration shop and they picked it up, got the top re-attached, and dropped it off! I then spent the next couple of days cleaning it, which was a transformation unto itself, and then got a pair of tight-fitting tablecloths that cover the remaining blemishes.

The table replaces the big, plastic folding table that we had in our upstairs entry way, so the chairs are re-united with their table now! It’s a smaller table, but it looks much nicer in the space, and less space for stuff to collect is probably for the best anyway.

The following weekend is the actual rodeo. I didn’t grow up in the west, so rodeos were always kind of a vague notion that I read about in history books. I knew they still existed, but it wasn’t something I paid much attention to. We talked about going last year but decided the boys were still a bit too young. This year we decided to go.

I joked that it wasn’t really my scene, and that’s a tremendous understatement. I think we all like to believe we have a bit of the wild west in us, at least in a playful way, but it swiftly became clear that I had grown into a city person with delicate sensibilities, much more at home with a book and a comfy fireplace than the dirt and excitement of a rodeo. Still, most of the events were exciting to watch and admire the talents of the men and women who were competing and performing.

But I’ll be the first to admit that I felt uncomfortable with some of the animal capture and tying events. I expect there’s a need for these skills and I appreciate the expertise of the folks who keep these skills alive, and I do eat meat, after all, but I didn’t enjoy it. Instead, I took the opportunity during these events to take the boys around to visit the vendors, browse the food stands, and get close to the animals.

Our walking adventures were quite enjoyable, except for a moment when I was walking around with Adam and the wind picked up, and picked up a vendor tent along with it. I went into instinctual protect-the-child mode and covered Adam with my own body and bore the brunt of a corner of a tent landing on us. After confirming Adam was OK (by panic-asking him about 30 times, hah!), I dusted myself off and assured folks around us that I was fine. I did develop a pretty nasty bruise on my elbow, but I kept thinking about how much worse it would have been if little Adam had gotten clobbered. Go parent instincts!

The following weekend was Memorial Day weekend, and we continued our spring activities by driving up to Brentwood for some cherry picking. I think it was one of the parent groups that clued me in to the cherry picking activity, but it was a natural fit given how much the boys love plants, and cherries. I didn’t quite appreciate how much they’d both enjoy it. They were both incredibly well-behaved as they took their little buckets around the orchard.

We had lunch in the nearby Brentwood downtown at Zephyr Grill & Bar. A festival was going on just outside and we were able to get a nice table outside where the boys sat peacefully for most of the meal, with the assistance of some cartoons on their phones. On the way back we stopped at a farm shop to pick up some last minute goodies.

Then we had four and a half pounds of cherries! We ate most of them straight up, but also took some to make cherry muffins, which came out really nicely.

The rest of the long weekend was a pretty low-key affair. Some local family meals out, a morning when I took Aaron out to a playground and a couple thrift shops before stopping for donuts. The following Saturday continued this with long Saturday walks around the neighborhood to stake out some garage sales, visit the farmer’s market and a playground, and a nice outdoor lunch at our favorite local cafe.

The final big activity was that Sunday when we returned to the antique fair in Alameda. I hadn’t quite gotten it out of my system the month before, especially after leaving behind a lovely old Underwood portable typewriter. I didn’t come across that Underwood again, but I did pick up a 1975 Olympia portable, my far the newest typewriter in my little fleet. Both MJ and I also picked up a few vinyl records, which made me laugh and bristle a bit at the whole things being called an antiques fair. But yeah. These vinyl records are from the 1960s and 70s, which means they meet the definition. And so do I, hah!

We had lunch there, and I ended up with a sunburn that would nag me for the rest of the week, but thankfully I had been more thorough with the application of sunblock on the boys, so I was the only one damaged. I think I did get the fair out of my system this time, so maybe our next second-hand adventure summer will be to one of the local flea markets.

Throughout all of this, we’ve also been adjusting to some change. I mentioned briefly that we welcomed a new au pair into our home, and that has meant getting her up to speed with not just getting to know us and the processes around child care, but also getting her settled in to the town, and doing lots of settling in paperwork. We also didn’t have our family car! Due to some problems with the head unit connecting to vehicle services, it was at the dealership for several weeks of diagnostics, hardware replacement, software updates, and who knows what. Thankfully, we had a no-cost loaner from the dealership during this time, but it was a smaller vehicle and we were constantly worried about getting it excessively dirty or damaged (muddy feet?! Shoes off!). While I’m grateful for the loaner, I don’t think I fully appreciated how low-key stressful the situation would be. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I keep trying to be gentle with myself and acknowledge that little things can pile up. Oh, and guess who knows how to climb out of his crib now? Join me next time for the saga of getting a two year old and a four year old to share a room overnight!

The first thing we did when we got back, aside from returning to work after a couple days off to prepare and travel home, was to go shopping for Passover food! Passover began on the evening of the first full day we were home, so MJ had to drive up to the city to grab our Seder plate and prepared meal (which we thankfully had the forethought to order the week before) and then stop at a couple places to grab some matzoh and some unleavened goodies for the week. We ended up not doing our family Seder on the first night because all of us were just too tired to pull it off, but we got to enjoy it all on the second night.

I also successfully made matzoh brei for the first time. The last time I tried was when MJ and I were living in San Francisco, and it turned out to be an eggy mess, and I wasn’t eager to try again. But MJ convinced me this year, and we needed something to eat on Saturday morning, when we usually have challah french toast. I watched a video on YouTube and then exercised my new found patience during cooking to execute. It came out just like it should! Admittedly, it may not look like much, and you’d never guess that matzoh and egg would turn out good, let alone something to apply syrup to, but it really does work, and everyone ate some, including Adam whose dislike for eggs made him extra skeptical.

In hobby news, I finally set up my Tidbyt and TrainTrackr. I say this like they’re actually related, but they’re not. The Tidbyt is a little retro display, and the TrainTrackr is a circuit board and series of components and LEDs arranged and programmed to do real-time tracking of BART trains. They are similar only in that they’re both neat little plug-and-play devices, they can both be used to track BART trains, and I had both sitting in a closet for over a year because their hokey WiFi configurations aren’t compatible with our WiFi setup here. So, did I solve our WiFi conundrum? Well, no. I just put them out and tether through my phone when I want to enjoy them, usually in the evening when I’m in my big comfy chair writing (hello!).

On weekends we’ve been spending a fair amount of time outdoors. Partially out of necessity, but it’s also been beautiful out. A very rainy winter led to the weeds in our yard getting quite out of control, and now that the boys are old enough to enjoy spending time outside in the garden, I’ve taken advantage of that. One Saturday was spent pulling weeds and mowing the small patch of lawn out front.

We spent that Sunday planning for and installing a series of inexpensive, solar-powered lights out front. We’ll end up replacing them when we get a more permanent outdoor landscaping plan set in motion, but for now it’s nice to make some small improvements. Plus, it was really fun to get out some pencils and rulers with Adam to plan out the lighting.

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Speaking of which, I also expanded my collection of lawn ornaments! I never saw myself as a lawn ornament person, and find most of them tacky, but then Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep series of lawn ornaments came out. They may still be tacky, but I fell in love. Plus, I had a nice spot of mulch-y garden that they’d fit nicely in. My collection began with Gromit, Shaun, and Timmy. A smaller, pacifier-laden Timmy came out recently, and I snapped that one up too during a recent Gromit Unleased order. The Wallace and Feathers McGraw figures had been on my radar for a while, but shipping from the UK is expensive (something I avoided with my first set, since they were available domestically), so I kept waiting for them to be offered here. Ultimately they still aren’t available here, and I was worried about them being discontinued, so I bought them last month. They round out our collection nicely!

To conclude some of our plant adventures, we checked out a local garden sale recently and then did some planting on Earth Day. The plants we got at the garden sale mostly just slotted into a big metal thing (vintage oven?) that came with the house, but I also decided to dig up some planters that the previous owner had left on the fence and we deposited some succulents in them, clippings from mature plants we have. Unfortunately I swiftly learned that critters like digging up those planters. Within a day, both had holes dug in the soil and all the succulent trimmings were displaced. I’m not sure where to go from here, the succulent clippings aren’t taking root as a result, and it’s hard for us to keep other types of plants alive, hah!

I am not optimistic about our ability to maintain a beautiful yard ourselves. Life and work as it is keeps us incredibly busy, and aside from the enjoyment we get with the boys, we don’t exactly enjoy regular gardening as an activity. But it did feel good to get the major weeding done so our yard is doesn’t get completely out of hand.

In keeping with this, my friend James came out to Castro Valley recently for a visit. He’s one of those friends who has kept in touch throughout the pandemic and gently nudged every few months to check on a visit, which is something I’m incredibly grateful for. I haven’t been asking my friends to come down for the whole family experience, but it does make scheduling much easier since time on my own is quite limited. When he offered joining the whole family for brunch I happily accepted. It was really nice catching up and hearing his own journey and stories from pandemic life and work. After brunch the two of us were able to sneak out during kiddo nap time to grab some tea at a local bakery and boba tea shop.

Back at home with the family, we did a light observation of Purim recently. Light because we didn’t dress up or go to any events because we’re still making our way through the maze of preschool era someone-is-always-sick and it didn’t come together. But we did make Hamantashen! Last year I used a recipe that was dairy free for MJ, but I went with full dairy this time because the non-dairy ones quickly became hard after the first day. These ones came out delicious! And Adam was my helper in filling them. Next time I’ll make more of the strawberry ones, since my house has a strong preference for those (even if my heart is with the raspberry ones!).

I’ve started getting out of the house more myself too to get back to coffee shop work some mornings. It’s nice to get out of the house and I’ve been enjoying exploring all my local cafes, and most recently, libraries! There’s a brand new library in the next town over that opened during the pandemic. It’s a beautiful building with lots of places to work, and features a little seed library and a little makerspace! I’ve been a couple times now. My first visit was on my own to check it out and work, and sign up at the makerspace. It’s a free service to the community besides materials and the requirement to sign some forms and complete safety training for the devices. I’m looking forward to trying out some of the machines, and delaying my need for my own 3D printer even further. In my next visit to the library, all of us went and I brought Adam up to check out the seed library, since he’s very interested in planting things this spring. I’ll definitely be adding this library to my list of go-to spots for regularly working though.

What will we do with all those old card catalogs? Seed library!

Work has been very busy, with some big changes happening with my role, in a good way. I’m also writing this from Philadelphia, so we had a cross-country journey to prep for in early March, but we’re getting much better at this. We have a solid checklist for getting ready, and I don’t think we forgot anything this time! The flight also went pretty well, we each took a kiddo and were able to keep them pretty entertained. Traveling with two little kids is still exhausting, and we haven’t yet tackled what it’s like going somewhere that’s not our east coast vacation home, but it’s still a win, and makes me less anxious about the whole process now. Unfortunately, it wasn’t far into a trip when it became very clear that we were all sick, but that’s a post for another time, when I’m feeling better!

It’s pretty rare to have tours of this facility, and I don’t think they’d ever done a fully public event, so this was a really special opportunity. Several hundred people showed up, and we were whisked off from a public BART station over to the facility via a series of shuttle buses. I get the impression that they were surprised and impressed by the turnout, but they were able to easily absorb the crowd. The board meeting was kept short, and then the facility tour began! We walked down the long corridors of the facility seeing stations for repairing all kinds of things for the trains. Every so often we’d pause to hear from one of the folks who worked there, either giving some details about the work, or sharing the history that led to some of the work that’s happening now. It was fun and fascinating to get such a behind-the-scenes look at everything.

And I’m glad it was fun. It occurred to us halfway through this tour that we hadn’t really gone out to do something other than meals together, alone, in quite some time. Date morning at the BART HMC? Hah!

In November I also got sick again. It happened a few days after I finally got the bivalent COVID booster, and along with a cough that needed an inhaler, I also had an incredibly stubborn sinus headache. Pile on some recent struggles with depression that caused me to contact my doctor and up my dosage of antidepressants, it was a tough few weeks as I struggled through not feeling well and a couple weeks of drowsiness caused by the medication change.

Still, I have two little ones and they love to go out! We met up with some other families one gloomy weekend recently to check out a fancy new playground in a nearby town, complete with a few rides, including a small train that went around the park and a carousel. I’ve succeeded in bestowing my love of trains upon my boys, so it was a really enjoyable time for everyone.

Our town also had the Castro Valley Light Parade recently. Like so many things, it went on a two year hiatus during the pandemic. MJ and Adam went to it in 2019 while I was out at a hackathon for work, but it was my first time experiencing it. We decided to go after the boys had dinner, which seems to have been a bit of a mistake since the parade really does conclude after an hour or so and then it’s just the festival, which was less interesting to the boys. Still, at this age it was actually a fine amount of time to be out, especially since they got to eat some cupcakes and get light-up bracelets while we were there.

Finally, MJ had a friend of his in town recently who came with us to the light parade. She traditionally has visited a couple times a year, but both the pandemic and having kids have changed it somewhat. Thankfully, she is interested in getting to know the kids more, so it gave me the opportunity to send them off with her and MJ one Sunday morning while I got some peaceful alone time. I took the opportunity to dig into my Sun SPARC Ultra10 project again. I ordered a hard drive that should work and got it all set up, but I was disappointed to discover that a lot of tools had changed since the last time I set up a PXE boot server, and I found myself reading more documentation than expected once I sat down and got started. As a result, I couldn’t get much done and was left feeling a little disappointed. Since then, I’ve been able to dig a bit deeper into the options out there for DHCP and TFTP, and will probably end up with a solution that uses dnsmasq exclusively for the whole setup, and be much simpler than ones I’ve used in the past. Bonus, if this works out I can document and re-purpose it for use at Partimus, and that cheered me up a bit and made the process of learning a new generation of tools more compelling.

Which brings me back to my mood. Now that I have mostly gotten past the drowsiness and the worst of this depressive episode, I’m going to try pushing myself again to get back on track with hobbies, house projects, and some of the things I enjoy but haven’t had the energy to do. I don’t have very much time to myself these days, but I certainly could use the time I have more effectively, which in turn should bring me out of this slump. I hope.

The doorbell worked intermittently when we moved in, and as the months progressed it stopped working entirely. Given our workload and focus on new family, it ended up near the bottom of our list of priorities, and with babies in the house, the lack of a doorbell was actually a feature most of the time. Still, it was a little annoying when people would stop by, since the front door is far from where we spend most of our time so knocking is rarely effective. Halloween this year changed my priorities. These past two years were pandemic Halloweens where we just put candies out front on a decorated table, but this year we were back to answering our door. A working doorbell would be incredibly useful, so I grabbed MJ and we set about debugging it a few weeks ago.

We honestly thought it would be a very involved project. It was not. I even questioned the value of writing this post at all for fear of getting hopes up about this being a deeply technical, fascinating story. It’s not. But it was still pretty fun to dig into, especially since I knew nothing about how doorbells actually worked.

The actual chimes live above the stairs, which is tricky to get to, so we decided to start at the button. Plus, figuring out if there was power even going to the button seemed like a valuable use of our time. Good news: power was good!

So up to the chimes we went. Taking off the cover led us to discover a much more interesting device than we expected. Manufactured in 1994, it appears to be a an Emerson Rittenhouse Model C8846R 8-Note Electronic Door Chime. It’s fully electronic, and lo! There’s a battery in there! Maybe that’s all it will take to “fix” it? I swapped out the battery and… it kind of worked. Huh.

That’s when I dropped the model number into Google and discovered this glorious YouTube video: Servicing an Emerson Rittenhouse Model C8846R 8-Note Electronic Door Chime Base. As the video shares, there are no service manuals, wiring diagrams, or any technical information that can be found online about this, so the video was all I had! Thankfully, the solution was hilariously simple. About halfway through the video he does a close-up of the board and it clearly says, “Use with two 9 volt batteries”. Two! There are TWO batteries inside this thing!

So I climbed back up to the chimes and dug around behind them until I fished out the other battery so I could replace it. That was the solution all along!

Our 28-year old doorbell lives once again, just in time for Halloween. In the couple of days it took for us to ferret out the issue, MJ did a bit of research into what we’ll eventually replace it with that can be tied into our overall home automation strategy. But I can wait, this old doorbell and I are pals now.

First, I discovered hooks along the front of our house last year, presumably used for Christmas lights in the past, and so I took the opportunity this year to buy Halloween lights! Adam “helped” me install them and I also put some pumpkins and a little wreath by our front door.

We did some Halloween art!

We took an afternoon to go to a local pumpkin patch and mini-carnival with rides for the kiddos!

And the weekend that led up to Halloween itself, we did a bunch of little activities in our costumes. This year Aaron and I dressed up as Stitch and Lilo, while MJ and Adam dressed up as the Man with the Yellow Hat and Curious George. Our first outing was to a trunk-or-treat that is held at a park within walking distance of our house. That afternoon, we walked down to our local comic book store for a festival they were having.

Sunday we attended a pumpkin decorating and playground event with other local families.

And that afternoon we went home and did our own pumpkin carving!

We have Gromit, Shaun, and Timmy lawn ornaments that a few of the kids in the neighborhood enjoy visiting, so I thought it would be fun to do Shaun and Gromit on the pumpkins this year.

The stencils I used were made available in a couple promotions Aardman did, and are still available online:

• http://aard.mn/shaupumpkin (direct pdf for Shaun)
• https://wallaceandgromit.com/resources (page includes stencils for Gromit, Wallace, and Feathers McGraw)

On Halloween itself we spent a little time at the village for a big Halloween event, but it was unexpectedly (for us!) crowded, and a bit much even at this phase. Besides, the boys didn’t actually need much candy and it was nice enough to get a little taste of the event and walk back home. That evening we went trick-or-treating!

Once we wrapped up trick-or-treating, we all hung out downstairs to answer the door to give out more candy. The boys probably enjoyed that just as much as getting candy themselves, as the novelty of people coming to our house is still fresh. It was also fun for them to see lots of kids and costumes, and generally to be up “late” doing an activity that was outside the norm.

Looking forward to lots more “normal” Halloweens with the boys in our future. It’s always been my favorite holiday, but celebrating with kids is a whole different experience.