We flew out on Friday, so we were able to attend a birthday for their cousin Sam. The birthday party took place at an large indoor playground with all kinds of fun stuff for the kids to run around and play on. It was a lot of fun for them, and I enjoyed the Godzilla theme and cake.

Afterwards we did a bit of shopping nearby, but it was a pretty long day having just arrived the day before! It was nice to check off some shopping things off our list at the beginning of the trip though.

The following day we made our way over to New Jersey to visit with some family and continue a TV setup process that MJ started over the winter holidays. It was nice to visit them again, and the boys enjoyed playing on their power lift recliner.

Since MJ and I work while we’re there, the weekdays were pretty normal with our au pair, who travels with us, watching the kids during the day. The weather was beautiful for most of the time were were there, so throughout the trip the kids got to visit lots of interesting playgrounds and Ana also brought them to a K1 go kart place one day, which Adam hasn’t stopped talking about (Aaron isn’t big enough yet, but he enjoyed the video games!).

One evening I took the boys to the theater to see Hoppers. They’re getting a lot better at being quiet and focused during visits to the theater, which is nice because I enjoyed taking them, even if they weren’t huge fans of the movie. I was surprised at how expensive it’s become though, I clearly need to find a cheaper way to do this in the long term, but in the short term I found a pile of AMC ticket vouchers that MJ bought YEARS ago that should still be valid. With all the great movies coming out this year, we’ll have a summer full of theater adventures!

I already wrote about spending the next Saturday at CPOSC. On the way home we took the scenic route down 340 and the boys enjoyed seeing all the horses and Amish buggies, counted farms along the way, they stopped when they got to 100. We haven’t properly done Lancaster with them, so maybe that’s an adventure we’ll embark on over the summer. On the way home we needed some dinner, so we stopped in King of Prussia and went back to the Netflix House and had a surprisingly chill dinner at NetFlix Bites.

On Wednesday I took the day off from work to prepare for a Passover Seder. I’m glad I did. Even though I wasn’t cooking the meal, I did have to pick up the catered food, and I made Charoset for the first time! Making Charoset is actually pretty easy, I looked at a few recipes and then settled on a version of My FAVORITE Passover Charoset where I simplified it spice-wise, swapped out the walnuts for almonds, and wine for grape juice, so the recipe ended up being:

• 1/2 granny smith apple
• 1 gala apple
• 3/8 cup sliced almonds
• 3/4 Tablespoons honey
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 Tablespoons grape juice

For chopping the apples I pulled out the food processor that I got a couple years ago for latkes.

I know it’s dead simple and all you do is mix everything together, but I’m no chef, so anything is a win. I think I will double the recipe next year so we end up with leftovers.

Then it was time to prep the dishes! I decided to pull out nice china that belonged to MJ’s grandparents, a set of glasses that my father-in-law explained came from a trip to Italy, and took some polish wipes to the silver utensils, also inherited from MJ’s grandparents. We didn’t have a Seder plate in Philly, but I solved that the week before with a drive down to Jerusalem Israeli Gift Shop. The women who own the shop were incredibly helpful, and I left with a Seder plate, a matzoh plate, a matzoh cover, and a couple bottles of wine. The last bit of shopping was picking up some endives from Acme. Finally, I had to roast the lamb shank bone that we picked up from House of Kosher, along with the hard boiled egg, both for the Seder plate.

It was a lot to do for a day when I’m “not cooking”. All worth it though, things came together really nicely and the boys enjoyed having grandpa come over instead of just doing a Seder with our immediate family in California.

I wanted to make sure I slowed down to enjoy our time too, so we didn’t really focus on home improvement projects. However, a built-in microwave repair was thrust upon us a couple days before we left. I wasn’t a microwave person until I had kids, and now we use it all the time. The switch inside the door had stopped working properly, so it could no longer reliably sense when the door was open or closed, which meant sometimes it would work. Thankfully, an appliance repair company was able to come out the next day and get it fixed. I still have mixed feelings about repairing it verses replacing it for how much we paid, but I kept an otherwise perfectly fine appliance out of a landfill, and saved us all the stress of shopping and coordinating a mounted installation, so it was probably the right move.

And I wasn’t completely idle. I realized one of the ways I want to enjoy our home there is by using our deck. We’re coming up on our 9th year with the townhouse, and we’ve never had deck furniture! Sometimes I’ll haul a folding table out there for a “picnic” or the boys will use it to run around, but effectively it wasn’t a space we could really enjoy. To change this I did a minimal amount of searching and found a nice patio couch and coffee table set that I could pick up at the Home Depot right away, and got that assembled one evening. Hooray!

Coincidentally, a neighbor also posted on the Facebook group for the development that she was looking to get rid of her patio table and six chairs. It’s a nice set, so I reached out and arranged a pick-up time. That’s how MJ and I ended up hauling a table over a deck railing and into our house the night before we left Philly, hah! It’s on the larger side, but I think I found an orientation that will work for us on the deck. I’ll take some better pictures when everything is set up over the summer.

Super Mario Galaxy came out while we were in town, we planned on having all of us go, but Aaron fell ill with a stomach bug that slowly made its way through our household, and so I just took Adam. It was a fun movie, and it turns out the whole family will get an opportunity to see it together at the end of this week when we go to our local single-screen theater to see it with their elementary school.

As the visit wound down, we managed to get lunch with cousin Lauren and her husband and new baby. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of them over the summer, as they’re only about 40 minutes away now and they have pools at their development. And what do our kids love? Pools. And we got to see Aunt Irina and cousin Sammy one last time before we left, we picked up some takeout sushi and had a nice time in her recently renovated back yard, and then down in the playroom basement where I got to play with Lego. Oh, and the kids played with Lego too. I also managed to successfully make matzoh brie on the Saturday before we left, even if MJ and I were the only ones who enjoyed it.

In all, it was a really nice visit that didn’t end up feeling like too much, in spite of how much we packed into it. The kids had plenty of down time to play video games, and I did too. I finished reading a book while we were there, and definitely got some springtime enjoyment out of that new couch in the back, from nighttime playing on my Switch to having breakfast outside with the boys. We also had a deck umbrella delivered which will fit nicely into the hole in our new table, we’ll just need to get a small umbrella base when we get into town so that it stays put during our visit (we’ll bring it inside between visits).

All the research and purchasing was done by MJ. I think the daunting number of options was a bit overwhelming to me, and if we waited for me to do the research we wouldn’t have landed on a very good result, if we ever got there. He decided that based on our time and experience (both minimal) plus the desire to print things up to basic engineering parts, meant that the Bambu H2D was the right model for us. We also bought a mountain of filament. It’s topped with a 4-color AMS Pro 2 and an AMS HT.

The whole thing is terrifying to me. Hah! I don’t want to break it. So I’m following MJ’s lead here as he shows me how load and dry filament, change nozzles, and do some basic things from the UI on the printer itself. Thus far I haven’t worked up the courage to use Bambu Studio and print something by myself, but I’m sure I’ll get there. Plus, it gives MJ the opportunity to play with it first while I endlessly send him silly things to print for me and the boys.

Obviously, I started off with an IBM z17 mainframe model. We switched to the 0.2mm nozzle and did a long, slow print for the first one, all orange, to see how stunning we could make it. And stunning it was.

We’ve also tried a few other prints of the z17, like an all black one, playing with orientation, and also playing with multi-color so we could print the inset colors on the doors. We’ve had varying levels of success, but it was a fun model for MJ to experiment with new things on the printer as we get going.

Our youngest, Aaron, believes we got a 3D printer just to print toys for him. Over the summer he found a 3D-printed Toothless dragon at a toy shop and MJ got to chatting with the guy at the shop who printed them, going full 3D printer geek mode. Instead of buying one, we bought the printer file so we could do one of our first proper multicolor prints, and it came out beautifully! It’s one of my favorite things so far. I want one too.

Adam has followed in my love of stuff from the 80s somehow (poor kid) and has asked for stuff from Tron and Knight Rider. There’s limited real merchandise for both, even with the latest Tron: Ares film, but the 3D printing world is the right kind of people for finding this sort of thing.

First up was a “wireframe” type wall art of KITT the car from Knight Rider, using this model as a starting point: KITT Night Rider 2D wallart. MJ loaded it up in an editor and modified it so the print would be done with both red and black, instead of separate pieces. Neat. If we did it again, we’d probably do it face-down so the part that faces outwards is the one with the cooler looking surface.

Next up: Tron! We bought some glow in the dark filament, so this was a nice opportunity to give it a spin. We went with “Version 2” of this Tron Legacy Logo. No edits on this one, it just came out looking really cool!

Our next step was making a bit of a pilgrimage: to Microcenter. I have never been to the Microcenter here in the bay area, though I used to go to the one just outside of Philly. It was a great store for computer stuff, but these days it’s also a great spot for 3d printing stuff. The boys also wanted to go to see EVERYTHING. They have several models of 3D printers on display, and staff will help with demos if you ask.

They also have a massive machine that dispenses filament, when it works. That day was not a day it was working, which was kind of a bummer. Not just because I wanted to see the giant filament vending machine work, but also because their alternative was manual searching through hundreds of spools of filament on a series of carts, yikes! It was mostly a fun trip, so I got a couple PLA+ filaments I wanted for a project and then got some goofy PLA ones (sparkles!). At least the PLA+ was on sale.

I’ve started learning how to use FreeCAD, because there are some things I want to eventually design, like a replacement ribbon cover for one of my portable typewriters. It’s slow going, but thanks to a recommendation from Mark Fraser I’m well on my way with FreeCAD for Makers.

Next up: A big project! I was pretty excited to learn that someone had 3D printed a clone of the AEG Mignon Index Typewriter. They say it’s the first typewriter someone has made using 3D printing, and I don’t own an index typewriter, so I thought it would be a fun merging of worlds. It’s over 100 pieces though, so I’ve once again dragged MJ into my project and I’ve been going through the files and picking colors and order of print while he’s loading them up in the slicer. Stay tuned! It’s going to be really cool. I hope.

And maybe I’ll gather the courage to use Bambu Lab and print something all by myself.

For Adam, it was the water robot. It mixes two things he loves, and within a couple minutes he was able to control the robot’s movement around a little water tank. With other kids waiting, we had to swiftly move on from it, but he kept asking to go back. As our visit to the event wound down we made sure to go back so he could enjoy it more.

For Aaron it was roasting a marshmallow with a parabolic mirror! He’s only 3, so he had some help, but lighting a marshmallow on fire and then enjoying the sugary result of the roasting was definitely memorable. He now routinely asks if we can light marshmallows on fire at home, hah!

They had several student robots teams throughout the event, and elementary schools that had various small activities for kids to build little STEM activities, including a sling-shot made out of popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and a plastic spoon, which we had fun with, launching ping pong balls into buckets.

The event also featured four bouncy houses that were available to the kids for free, which was a nice treat. It’s no surprse that both boys had a ton of fun with those.

Unfortunately it was a very hot day. We left shortly before noon when the temperature got up to 95 and I was beginning to wilt, later that day it soared over 100.

We had several days of unseasonably warm weather, but one of the upsides of this is that during the Sunday morning swim classes that the boys go to they often complain of it being too cold to walk to BART to take it to classes and we drive instead. But when it’s 80 degrees at 8:30AM, it’s not too cold! It’ll probably be one of the last ones of the year that we could take BART to instead of driving, so I definitely wanted to take advantage of it. Plus it’s funny to watch the boys run home from the train station in their bathrobes.

After the weekend I took Tuesday evening off to enjoy on my own. First I walked over to my favorite local sushi place for a quick dinner, then I went to visit our local one-screen theater to see “The Wild Robot” which was a really well-done movie. It was one that I was supposed to see with Adam before we all came down with a cold, so it was a little bittersweet, but I’m still glad I went, and it was a nice break for me.

Unfortunately, we’re not robots, and we got sick again this past week. Aaron got sick with a stomach bug on Tuesday night and couldn’t go to preschool on Wednesday. Adam got sent home from school with a stomach ache on Thursday, and I came down with it on Thursday evening, totally destroying my Friday and causing me to reschedule a doctor appointment. It’s probably the worst stomach bug that’s swept through the whole house.

Thankfully we were all feeling mostly better by Saturday and could ease back into the world, and gave me time to wash everything that sickness may have touched, and clean up the temporary crib mattress we put on the floor of the family room that the kids took turn sleeping on as the illness made their way through. Here’s hoping for a healthier month ahead!

I had a couple days off around Christmas and New Years, so I spent one of those evenings with MJ de-soldering the SLT card I have. There’s still more work to be done on it, since the cards appear to have been assembled by hand and in addition to the solder, I have 50 year old bent wire to wrangle to get all the little the resistors out.

It was fun getting some new toys (de-soldering tool!) and working on a project together. So much of our lives revolve around the kids and the house, the ability carving out some hobby time together right now is rare. I managed to snag a couple more SLT cards from Etsy this week, along with some lamps from the IBM s/360 that I’ll work to incorporate into jewelry once we get our soldering iron (ordered! But supply chain issues…).

I spent a lot of time with the kids too. I’m definitely struggling to balance how much time I spend on the floor playing with them, and the time I spend on chores during the day. They’re aged one and three, and I know this time won’t last forever, but I’m definitely getting burnt out by pushing all chores to after they go to bed. Doing dishes, folding laundry, and other chores can be done while keeping an eye on the boys and I also know how important it is that they grow up knowing that chores get done, and sometimes helping with them.

Still, a strong focus on time with the boys meant that Adam and I could make a gingerbread house together!

And do some art!

And jump in puddles!

And make muffins!

And play with the train!

We also had a rough few days with baby Aaron as he worked his way through a reaction to his Measles vaccines. Due to the pandemic-driven isolation, neither of the boys have gotten sick lately. Aaron hasn’t had so much as a cold. I forgot how hard it is to watch your little one struggle, and how exhausting it is when it interrupts their sleep and a fever puts them in a bad mood. Still, he’s generally a cheerful boy, and that personality is always dominant, even when he’s a little grumpy for a few days.

He does mostly sleep through the night now, which was a whole struggle this year. The wake-ups he does have don’t require us to go in, and he solidly wakes up around 6AM, in spite of our attempts to shift this later by adjusting his bed time. I don’t love this development, Adam always slept until 7AM once he settled into a routine, and I do not enjoy mornings. Still, everything I’ve read says that 6AM is fair game for little ones, and I just need to focus on getting to sleep by 10PM.

Right before New Years I went for a long walk with a friend. It’s something I hadn’t done in almost two years because of the pandemic, but I realized that I could really use the company outside of our household. It did cause some self-reflection on how much trauma we’ve all had these past couple years. Before the walk I was worried a bit that I’d unload a lot of feelings onto this friend that had been pent up for a couple years and look like a total mess. It may have happened, but it was OK. I think we’re all in a similar place, especially those of us who were particularly cooped up with small children, as much as we love them.

The first step was creating a “cardboard doughnut” and that meant waiting for a box that had a flat space big enough to make a 14 inch circle. I ended up going with one with a flap, which worked out fine because it wasn’t very creased. I used a sharpie, tack, and string to make the circles and then scissors for the outer edge, and an exacto knife for the inside hole. It took a few minutes, but went well. I am not much of a crafter, so I take nothing for granted!

Then it took me a couple weeks to start the actual wreath. You see, I have two very small children, and not a lot of free time! I was able to create the 50 punch card petals required for this project during some meetings at work (don’t tell!). I did quickly discover that each petal only really takes half a card, so my 53 punch cards went twice as far as I expected! I still have plenty left for my next project.

The stapling and decorating really had to be done when I could focus on it, meaning carving time out of my precious evenings. I really wanted it to be done by Halloween, so I stepped things up last week and got 20 petals stapled around the edge.

And eventually another 20 petals….

And then I got there with the final 10 on the inside circle!

Toss some silver garland on there, and a store-bought Halloween accent, and voila! My office door was ready for Halloween!

I have another store-bought accent queued up for Thanksgiving, but I may need to make my own for Hanukkah. As someone who is not very crafty, it’s been really fun to have and share.

Plus, I had company! The Continuum Drag podcast was watching them too. A few days after each pair of episodes I watched, I would load up the next podcast on my walk or run, and voila! Some folks to enjoy the pain and laughs with. They were definitely harsher on it than I was, but I think I’ve come to be more comfortable with camp and older shows as I’ve gotten older. I also deeply appreciated how bad all the computer scenes were, so I had a fondness for the show that I think is hard for someone who doesn’t work full time in tech to appreciate.

But my favorite thing about the show? The Autocar. It’s instantly recognizable as a Lamborghini Countach LP400, the car that, to this day, I think of when I think of “the car of the future.” I don’t know why the Countach landed in my head like that, but it probably is the most iconic car of the 1980s.

The car graces the DVD cover:

And Shout! Factory (who was responsible for the DVD release) put a lovely clip up on YouTube:

Cool. But then, our friends at Continuum Drag tweeted about Automan merchandise and made me want an Autocar of my own! At first, I publicly mused about 3-D printing one, but after looking into designs and pricing, I started looking at toy cars that already exist and could be repurposed, so that’s what I decided to do.

First stop, eBay! I picked up a Matchbox 1982 Lamborghini Countach LP500 for about $10, shipped.

A few things about this model for this project:

• It’s green. Looking at the listing again, you can tell from the photos, but I guess I wasn’t looking that closely
• It has “Lamborghini” scrolled across the sides
• It has a spoiler
• Technically it’s the LP500 rather than the LP400, but I am pretty sure the exteriors are the same

My first decision had to be whether I wanted to repaint the whole thing black. I decided against it. I’m not very good at painting (as you will see), and I worried that I’d botch it, and it would just end up looking awful. Plus, this toy is the most fun when the lights are off anyway! And the spoiler? I’ll just have to live with it.

So, paint. I learned from my baby mainframes the best paints to use for this kind of work were acrylics, and I went with Golden Artist Colors.

In the baby mainframe project I learned that putting on a coat of white paint over the black did wonders for having the subsequent color put on. Now, this is also true of the glow-in-the-dark paint, but it turns out the Light Ultramarine Blue I was using doesn’t need a white base coat. I could have saved myself a lot of time and ugliness if I had skipped the white base coat. Oh, well.

But as I said, a base on the green was important for the Spacebeams Aquaris glow-in-the-dark paint. When I put the glowing paint on without a base, it barely showed up. So the good news is, if you could put the blue coat on nicely, you could afford to be a little sloppy with the glowing paint. Unfortunately, I’m not very good at any of it, so my Autocar is a cute hobby craft, rather than a work of art. The glowing paint also is mostly transparent over the blue, but not totally, so it did make for a slightly toned down blue in the light.

But once the lights were off, I was totally in love! The colors were perfect!

It’s my very own toy Autocar!

Oh, yeah, I also got a t-shirt.

Once this was all complete, I felt a bit silly about it all. I’m a 40 year old woman with two small kids, and very little time to myself. This is what I spend it on? But this project is so very me that I kept me entertained and grounded through a transformative time in my life. It’s silly, but it’s mine, and right now I need more that’s just mine.