pleia2's blog

Hanukkah 5785 in Philadelphia

2025-01-31T15:32:18Z

This year was the first time with the kids that Hanukkah ended up being observed all in Philadelphia.

Because of how it moves around on the Gregorian calendar, there is always a chance that we’ll be spending part or all of Hanukkah in Philadelphia over the winter school break. It presented an interesting challenge, how do we give the big gifts like their new bikes if the bikes are in California during Hanukkah? And for smaller things, do we just plan on bringing a bunch of gifts home instead of keeping them at our vacation home? We got creative, and brought along an extra suitcase just in case we ended up bringing things home (we did!).

Now, one of the things about winter break is that the kids are home from school, so we revisited our summer strategies of keeping them occupied. During this two and a half week trip, our au pair also decided to take some much deserved vacation over New Years and so that left us with most of Hanukkah just the four of us, and nearby family. This year it began on the evening of Christmas, and with most things closed the boys and I got to work on making a bunch of sugar cookies from my family recipe. We quickly discovered that we don’t own a rolling pin (our supplies are rather limited there) so we used a water bottle. The cookies came out great, I forgot how much I like them. I ate a bunch.

For dinner MJ and I got Wawa hoagies and I tried my hand at making latkes. We purchased a food processor a few days before so I wouldn’t have to manually shred potatoes and onions like I did last time when I made them in California. What I didn’t think about much was oil, so I just used what I had: vegetable oil. I came to regret that decision. Turns out, using vegetable oil for latkes makes them cook much too quickly and I ended up with burned latkes, only a few of them were even edible. It also filled the house with an oil smell that lasted for hours. Thankfully, my second attempt at the tail end of Hanukkah was much more successful with Canola oil and lots of ventilation.

Also, we discovered that Aaron loves latkes.

We did some Hanukkah crafts, including a table runner that the boys enjoyed coloring and putting up some small lights around the house.

The boys fell in love with sparklers over the summer, so I joked about and then produced “Hanukkah sparklers” which we played with in the snow on the second night, which is also the night they were treated by grandpa coming over and doing gifts with them. This year we also gave Adam the opportunity to help with candles, which he was really excited about.

Of course the Hanukkah train came out too! The boys are treated with year-around trains in Philly now that we have a Lego train that we put together over the summer, so we temporarily put that one away so we could enjoy the more traditional model train.

Next year there’s a good chance we’ll be splitting Hanukkah between coasts, so that will be an interesting one!

A castle, dinosaurs, and snow in Philly

2025-01-22T23:41:16Z

I wouldn’t recommend flying across the country 12 days after an appendectomy, it’s painful, but we had holiday plans in Philadelphia and our flights wouldn’t wait! On December 18th, with a lot of luggage help from our au pair, we made our way out to Philadelphia for two and a half weeks.

We were greeted with snow! The boys had seen flurries before, but they’d never actually had the opportunity to play in the snow, and that was remedied with this visit. They shoved a little, tried to ride their bikes in it, and delighted in throwing snowballs at me. I made the mistake of shoveling the driveway because I was worried about ice, and that set back my recovery by a couple days, but it didn’t tear anything, which I’m grateful for. It did end up being bitterly cold for several days though, and I’m glad we had recently bought some winter coats for them both.

I took the last week of the year off to enjoy Hanukkah, which I’ll write about later, and go on some adventures with the kids. The first was to Fonthill Castle in Doylestown. First we stopped for brunch at nearby Cross Keys Diner and it was absolutely perfect, it was everything I love about little Pennsylvania diners. Then it was off to the castle! I had been to the sister museum, Mercer Museum, a couple of times, including with the boys two years ago. The castle was a whole new experience. The museum is a winding path of all kinds of collected items from the early 20th century, including a lot of every day things, offering a real snapshot into life back then. The castle is where Henry Mercer actually lived, building what was a farmhouse into a castle of concrete. It’s just as strange and whimsical as the museum, which unexpected discoveries at every turn. We happened to pick up a children’s book about the castle when we were at the museum the last time, so we had some idea what to expect, and it was fun to match up the photos and drawings in the book with what we were seeing in person.

The whole place was absolutely fascinating. I loved how natural light was so effectively used in places like the library and map room, since electricity was still rather new and most rooms would have been lit by a single light bulb. In one room he had real cuneiform tablets built into the columns from thousands of years ago that he picked up on his adventures around the world. We also did a little hunt ourselves after MJ read a Hanukkah display that mentioned he had a menorah tile somewhere in the house – we found it, on the ceiling!

Aaron got a picture of his stuffed dog, also a purchase we made the last time we visited the museum, by Rollo’s Stairs, a series of stairs that the dog had run through and left his footprints in while the concrete was still drying.

Upon completion of our indoor exploration, we took some time to explore the grounds. One of the photos from the book had the tree-lined driveway pictured, so we took a nice stroll down the driveway to experience it.

It was probably the warmest day of our trip, so the boys also enjoyed running outside in the grass around the castle, which also allowed me to get a few more photos of the whole castle in all its glory.

Since both MJ and I had off on New Years’ Eve, we took the opportunity to hop on the regional train down to Philadelphia, an adventure the boys constantly ask for. Our first stop was to see the Ice Dinosaurs exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences. We love this museum and Aaron really loves dinosaurs, so we knew it was a must on our visit downtown. It was a hit with all of us!

From there, we took a bus over toward City Hall for lunch at Iron Hill Brewery, and then walked up Market street to visit The SEPTA store to pick up a bunch of transit goodies, and also look at their exhibits. They have a full size PCC trolley in the downstairs lobby, and also various small exhibits scattered around. In front of the store itself there are a couple of model train displays to enjoy. From there, we walked up to City Hall, which I’d never actually walked through before, and then visited the outdoor Holiday Market still going on. I am certain it has shrunk since Christmas, but there were still several booths still set up and the boys got to watch people ice skating. Now they really want to go ice skating. Plus, MJ found a cannoli with vegan filling, so he could eat it! Turns out, you can do just about anything with enough oil and sugar.

We filled the rest of the week with activities like free building with Lego, which it turns out Aaron really, really enjoys, and Adam and I finished our first Light My Bricks build, which was a lot of fun. We started with a small car we knew we could finish on our trip and took the other kits (R2-D2 and Tantive IV) home with us to California to work on them here.

The boys are also enamored with science kits, so they received a few of them from their grandpa for Hanukkah. One of them was a volcano experiment that had you first make the volcano and let it dry for a few days, and then use it for exciting eruptions!

And the Friday before we left was an exciting day: The release of “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” on Netflix in the US! The boys and I have been so excited about this, and watched all the other movies leading up to it in preparation. So first thing on Friday morning we all snuggled up on the couch and watched. I even paused for a little while to write about it on my fan site!

Our evening on Friday concluded with a final dusting of snow and dinner at our favorite Italian place in town, a beautiful conclusion to the trip and a nice distraction from all the house close up tasks we had the following morning.

For the trip home, I was four weeks post-op and thankfully had the ability to handle suitcases to a limited degree. The pain was definitely still there, but the flight didn’t add to it, and we all got home safely and on time.

Goodbye, appendix!

2025-01-01T14:56:38Z

We got home from Florida very late on Saturday night, and Sunday was spent resting and getting back into our California routine. On Monday, I had a stomach ache. I figured it was some vague “travel stomach” and it would go away. On Tuesday the pain continued, but I had a babysitter that night and took myself out to see Moana 2 and get some sushi, thinking that a walk around town would help sort out whatever cramps I was experiencing. It didn’t.

On Wednesday I decided to hang the Hanukkah lights outside, which has me precariously standing on a tall ladder while the kids play out front.

But this was also when the pain started to get really annoying. MJ insisted I make a doctor appointment. In the course of booking the appointment, the questionnaire had me get more specific about the pain. That’s when I began feeling around and realized it was in my lower right abdomen. Uh oh. You know what’s in your lower right abdomen? Your appendix!

On Thursday morning I took one rather important call at work that wrapped up shortly after 10AM (“let’s make this quick, I don’t feel well” I told our VP during the call, hah!) and then I drove myself over to the local hospital Urgent Care. Upon reviewing my symptoms, they walked me straight over to the ER for a more comprehensive evaluation.

The ER is rather chaotic there right now because they’re doing renovations, but the upside is that the temporary ER waiting room is in their beautifully well-lit main lobby, giving me a good spot to wait in, in spite of the circumstances. They are clearly crushed for space though, I spent 5 hours in that lobby, being shuttled to blood work, a CT scan, and a basic evaluation by an ER doctor (“does this hurt? how about when I push here?”). Around 3:30 I finally had my diagnosis: the CT confirmed my appendix was inflamed, the recommendation was surgery to get it removed.

This began the second phase of my hospital visit, five hours on gurney in an ER hallway! While there, I texted a woman I know who had just started a job at the hospital, and she stopped by for a visit and to make sure I was being treated well (yep!). Still, at this point I was extra grateful that I had the presence of mind to bring a couple books with me to the ER, since the battery life on my phone was waning and it had been a long day of waiting. I got more reading done that I have in a while! While I was in that hallway, MJ was able to come by after work and his own physical therapy (aren’t we a pair!) to visit and bring me my tablet, a charger, and an external battery. Unfortunately, he had to get home to the kids so I was solo again. A trauma surgeon came by during my wait to explain that I’d have a surgery in the morning and they’d admit me overnight while I waited. He also broke the bad news that I couldn’t eat until after the surgery, which was a real bummer because I hadn’t eaten since breakfast!

I finally got a room at the hospital around 9:30PM, which is good, because I had begun feeling nauseous my abdominal discomfort had finally gone from annoying to actual pain. By midnight I accepted their offer for pain medicine so I could get a little sleep. And “a little” sleep is all I got, with interruptions throughout the night. It was also a nice room, the hospital has undergone several renovations and my experiences there have always been positive.

The next morning was a lot of waiting. I met with the trauma surgeon who would be doing my surgery and she warned me of all the possible outcomes. I also asked about recovery because 1) Aaron had is birthday party the next day! and 2) we were planning on flying across the country 12 days post op. I don’t think she was entirely thrilled with any of this news recovery-wise, but told me that she would discharge me as early as she could on Saturday, and the flight should be OK if I’m careful. It was a Friday, so our au pair was on her usual schedule and MJ took the day off from work so he could be with me at the hospital for the surgery. Around 10:30 I was brought up to pre-op where they re-did my IV and asked a thousand questions before general anesthesia and the laparoscopic appendectomy!

Surgery sucks, even in the best case, which this was. Everything went well, but it still hurt a lot. Still, when offered to be discharged that evening instead of the next morning I took them up on the offer. While it might have been nice to get intravenous pain medication for another chunk of time, going home where I could actually get some rest in my own bed was probably best for my recovery, and would make Saturday less chaotic if I was already home.

Recovery. The first three days were really hard. We had Aaron’s little birthday party on Saturday afternoon, which thankfully was just having his current and former au pairs over to visit to do cake and presents. One of the things they tell you is that laying around isn’t a good way to recover because they pump your abdomen full of gas during the procedure and it needs to work its way out, and movement is important for that. So getting up and about for his party was a good thing, but I did have to lie down again after.

Since it was abdominal surgery and they cut into my muscles, changing positions was the hardest thing, with getting out of bed being the worst. I’d say it was on day 4 that things started looking up, with the pain not making me yelp and see stars anymore. Unfortunately, they only gave me enough pain medication for 2 days and I went without all day Monday because they didn’t call anything in until Tuesday. And on Tuesday I had to ask my neighbor for a ride to the pharmacy because I wasn’t in any condition to drive yet. She then brought over home made chicken soup for me, I’m really grateful to have such kind neighbors here.

I also have great support at work, with my boss sending flowers and assuring me that I should take whatever time I need.

We also lucked out with childcare. We had an existing babysitter who was in our rotation who was able to come by in the evenings, and recommended another woman who ended up being really great with the boys for the evenings our existing babysitter wasn’t available. They were able to do all the cooking and cleanup and playing with the boys that I couldn’t do, or had to rest during.

Speaking of whom, it’s been a little tricky explaining it all to the boys. I think the concept that we have internal organs is rather new, and the idea that they can go wrong and you need to be cut open is a bit unsettling, especially since it all happened so suddenly. So in a fit of retail therapy and desire to explain it to them, I bought a toy appendix to replace the one that was removed.

On Friday, one week post-op, I went out on my first adventure, to see my doctor! She was pleased with my recovery, and noted that everything was progressing normally and that I was healing nicely. MJ and I went out to lunch after as my first meal out since the surgery. Feeling very motivated, we also made a stop to check on our family car at the dealership to get some warranty repairs done. I ended up driving it home because it was as ready as it was going to be, and we needed it back before out trip to Philadelphia. It was definitely too much, but I was grateful that my recovery was going so well. That’s the day we also stopped with the evening babysitters, it was time to get back to normal!

But it wasn’t normal. Indeed, the long tail of recovery from an appendectomy truly does seem to extend 4-6 weeks. That first weekend with no babysitter was definitely a challenge. Since I couldn’t lift the kids, we put a step ladder next to the changing table so they could climb up themselves, which has worked out well. I probably pushed too hard though, I didn’t feel great after the weekend.

I returned to work part-time on Monday, but found that I had to lie down after a couple hours. And then 12 days post-op we had that flight to Philadelphia for the holidays as planned. I was cleared by my doctor to do it, but we really relied on our au pair a lot to help us with luggage, and MJ gave his good shoulder quite the workout too. Still, the flight and all the related walking and unpacking took a lot out of me, and I was quite tender for the next few days.

I’d say I turned a corner around Christmas, where there was still pain so I had to be careful, but it wasn’t constantly top of mind or taking as many breaks. Last night I found I could mostly sleep on my sides again without pain, which had been a real challenge as a side sleeper.

I’m approaching the four week mark, and I’m just hoping the recovery continues to chug along on schedule. Fingers crossed for an easy journey back to California on Saturday, this time we won’t have our au pair to help us out.

Aaron is 4 years old!

2025-01-01T03:32:24Z

At the end of November we flew home from Florida, which meant we had a little recovery time on Sunday after taking the boys to swim class, and then on Monday, December 2nd, Aaron turned 4 years old! Given the timing of holidays and travel plans of our own and friends, we decided to decorate the dining room for his birthday and bring a whole bunch of cupcakes to his preschool so he could celebrate with his classmates, but we’d have his birthday party over the next weekend.

It worked out really well, and on Saturday we were joined by our first au pair (who got married and stayed in the US), their second au pair (who is now going to school in the US) and their current au pair! Maybe next year we’ll do a birthday with other kids, but none of us were ready for that yet.

As requested, he had a cake with dark blue frosting and a Chase from Paw Patrol decorating theme.

And his au pairs brought him gifts, which is always fun.

He’s really grown up in these past few months. I think being in preschool is helping him, but generally he seems to have just really taken off conversationally. He’s also more strongly communicating his preference for things, like dinosaurs and drawing, so much drawing. I love the little person he’s growing into.

Beyond the birthday, December didn’t exactly unfold the way we expected. I had an emergency appendectomy the day before the party, which I’ll write about soon, and it knocked me out of commission until our trip to Philadelphia on the 18th. But before we left we made time to go over to our favorite donut shop, Rudy’s Donuts, which was closing for good. I’m really bummed, it was so good and we could walk there as a nice Saturday or Sunday adventure. But the owners are retiring and I that’s certainly a conclusion of business that I can respect. The news had gotten out about their pending closure though, and the weekend we went was the weekend before they closed and the line looped around inside the building! I can’t imagine how it was their final weekend.

As we packed for Philadelphia the boys got to pack their new Lego luggage! We picked the pair of suitcases up at Costco and they came with matching backpacks. This was the first trip where the boys would have their “own” luggage (what ended up in the bags was only partially theirs). In general, it was a success, though there were several times at the airport where they asked adults to pull them for a while.

The boys are growing up!

Thanksgiving in Florida: Part 2

2025-01-01T01:02:05Z

We spent the first half of our Florida trip in the south, and on Tuesday we drove almost 3 hours north to visit my family in Melbourne. On the drive up I received a call from my Aunt Mary Ellen who we had planned on spending Thanksgiving dinner with, only to learn she had contracted COVID-19. Oh no! Thankfully, a quick readjustment of plans was already in the works.

As far as the drive up goes, we learned over the summer that the boys do not enjoy long car rides, so three hours would be quite the challenge for all of us. We made plans ahead of time to stop halfway through for lunch, so at least then the drive would be split into two roughly 90 minute chunks. We ended up at Suzy Q’s Hometown Diner in Jupiter, Florida. It was perfect, we all found food that we enjoyed. In the car I sat in the back with the boys so I could help keep them entertained, and we played with a trouble-making puppet dinosaur, got out some Colorforms, and scoured the road for colorful cars and interesting landmarks. We arrived at our hotel in Melbourne the late afternoon and quickly discovered that the air conditioning in one of the rooms wasn’t working, and maintenance had to come by while we were at dinner.

For dinner we met with my Aunt Pam and her new husband Gil at Marker 99. It was a pleasure to catch up, and I was so excited for them to meet the boys, even if they checked out fairly early in the dinner to play on their phones. It was nighttime, but we did also enjoy the views over the intracoastal. After dinner, Adam and I went down to the end of a pier at the restaurant and looked at stars.

The next day we planned on spending the afternoon with my Uncle Don and Aunt Tanya, but we quickly discovered that the air conditioning problems hadn’t been resolved and we had to change rooms. Following this, the boys were feeling a bit on edge and we figured it might be better to just have a pure vacation day at the hotel. But we had to eat too! We had a fantastic breakfast at The Blueberry Muffin just down A1A from our hotel. I went with the blueberry pancakes, but we all found food to enjoy, and we also picked up a pumpkin pie to bring to Thanksgiving dinner the next day. After breakfast, it was down to the pool!

This chill day meant we had a fair amount of time in our room, which we filled with drawing and some Colorform games (mostly sorry and Snakes & Ladders), as well as working with Adam on a Lego Mustang that we had picked up at Walmart precisely for this reason. There was a fair amount of TV too, and while watching some around 5PM little Aaron fell asleep in a chair while eating an apple. The day off was the right move.

On Thanksgiving we began our day at the beach where Aaron build more sand castles and found a crab. Adam and I braved the surf again and had a bunch of fun in the water. We then rinsed off and made our way over to the pool for a little while before going back to our room to get showered and changed for Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving was held at my Uncle Frank and Aunt Amy’s house, with my Grandpa and his wife Jo, and my Uncle Don and Aunt Tanya also joining in the festivities. It was absolutely perfect, even if the boys were a little energetic. The food was great, and so was the conversation. We were also incredibly grateful that they were willing to host us on such short notice. It was great to catch up with everyone and have them meet the boys, especially having them visit with their great grandfather. Amy even gave the boys a tour of the back yard.

Friday was our last full day in Florida, and the weather was a little gloomy. We began the day by visiting a couple local parks to see if we could spot some manatees, which we didn’t succeed at, but we did see some birds, lizards, and rabbits! We then stopped for lunch and that’s when it started pouring out. While eating, we decided that the poor weather meant that we should take my Aunt Amy’s advice and drive up to The Dinosaur Store for the perfect afternoon visiting dinosaurs at their exhibits!

I think all kids like dinosaurs, but Aaron loves dinosaurs. Going to an exhibit with fossils alongside full size colorful recreations and scenes was an absolute delight. He ran around excitedly pointing at things and rushing between each next great exhibit. We got the tickets for the “Adventure Zone” which was an unlimited arcade area, which the boys enjoyed and I guess it was a nice spot for them to enjoy while I scoured the amazing store they had there (I picked up a moon rock and some fossil earrings), but it was a little underwhelming. There were also some live animals in the zone, which is where we finally saw an alligator! And several beautiful snakes. Still, the upstairs rooms with the museum really were the draw for us.

Our flight on Saturday out of Orlando was quite late, so we got up and went straight to the pool for a final dip.

MJ grabbed some lunch at a pizzeria across from the hotel, and then it was all the packing and packing while the boys ate lunch and watched TV in the room. We got to the Orlando airport suitably early to clear security, ride the air train, watch the air train a bunch, and spend a little time in a lounge getting some snacks. It was nice to not be rushing, and our flight home was uneventful.

It was a great trip, I’m so glad we went. It also made us feel a lot more secure in doing other trips with the boys. We definitely learned that having a small stash of toys/activities for the hotel room during gap time and healthy snacks was key, and to just expect sleep problems (even my own) and cope with it accordingly.

Thanksgiving in Florida: Part 1

2024-12-27T22:15:27Z

Back in July we had a plan to spend the 4th of July with family, and those plans fell apart when the whole household came down with COVID-19 just days before we were supposed to leave for our trip. But we still wanted to visit! MJ has a little cousin (now two years old!) who he’d never met, and it had been years since I saw most of my family in Florida. The desire to visit over a holiday was strong too, since then we wouldn’t be quite as restricted as to when we could see people timing-wise. I floated the idea of going for Thanksgiving rather early, and we eventually decided to move forward with it, with eight days in Florida.

Our trip started by flying into Miami and spending four days near Hollywood Beach, and we had Gaby with us to help with the kids during the daytime. On the first day we met up with my cousin Shannon at Frost Science Museum in Miami. Unfortunately our big adventure with her son and ours didn’t quite work out, but Adam and Aaron had an absolute blast at the museum anyway. They had a beautiful Bugs special exhibit, and you know what our boys love? Bugs.

And the ocean focus on a big chunk of the museum was a lot of fun. We also got to see a short planetarium show, this one about constellation stories from around the world, which was fun but we still need to get the boys out to a classic night sky show sometime. Maybe at Chabot when we’re back in California.

There were even some dinosaurs, and some hands-on exhibits where the boys could build paper airplanes and launch them across the room, always a hit.

The next day went better for meeting up with my cousin and her son. We spent the afternoon enjoying a fantastic pool, and I’m glad the boys got to meet, even if they largely ignored each other in favor of splashing pool time. I got to catch up with my cousin, who I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade but who I regularly chat with about kid stuff. She’s been such a life saver when I’m in mom crisis mode.

We also made plans to see MJ’s cousin Rachel, her husband, and their two year old son, finally! Gaby came with us, and found the perfect restaurant: Kosher de Brazil. MJ’s family is Jewish, and Gaby is Brazilian, so it was a nice mixing of worlds, and we all love a churrascaria! It was very good, and we even found some food from the market table (a salad bar, plus!) that the boys would eat. Aaron and our little cousin had a lot of fun running and dancing around the restaurant together, though we did have to rein them in a bit so they wouldn’t disturb other diners.

We were also in vacation mode. The hotel pool was spectacular and the boys were absolutely in love with it. Plus, Adam really enjoyed seeing the wild iguanas that were walking around nearby. They’ve been in swim classes for several months, but it didn’t quite cure them of the fear of pools, and some days we still struggled to get them both into the pool and focused on their lessons instead of playing. I think going to Florida and spending DAYS in the pools helped a lot. They’re a lot more comfortable with the water and have a better idea of why they need to learn how to properly swim. It was a ton of fun to play with them in the pools too, since I also love pools! And with appropriate use of long-sleeve bathing suits all around and reapplication of sunscreen, none of us got burned. Phew. And I had a dorky looking phone carrier for the pool, which helped me stay in touch with everyone as plans came together, and take photos in the pool, woo!

The beach was also a short walk from the hotel, so we spent a couple hours there one day. Adam and I spent a bunch of time hilariously crashing in the waves in the water. Aaron preferred to stay on land this time and enjoyed playing in the sand.

Eating while traveling is definitely tricky, since the kids don’t have a huge selection of things they’ll eat, and it’s all easier to accommodate at home, or at least supplement with some vegetables. We walked to a Super Wal-Mart at the beginning of our trip to stock up on fruits and healthy snacks, but honestly the boys just ate a lot of kids menu food. There was one restaurant that we went to twice during our four days in south Florida though, and that was Family Fresh Cafe. Why twice? Excellent, diverse menu making the meals very different (even for the boys) and a playroom in the back:

“Family Fresh® is the only restaurant which offers a kids playroom with with video surveillance broadcasted to the dining area so the parents can enjoy dining out and having kids entertained.”

GENIUS! The boys had a ton of fun, and asked to go back, so we were happy to oblige on our last night there. It clearly also works for the restaurant, it meant we went twice and ordered more food and drinks than we would have if we were rushing to get antsy kiddos out of the restaurant quickly.

That night we also dropped Gaby off at the Brightline train station so she could head up to Orlando to meet a friend for a vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday. We returned to our hotel and got ready for our own journey up to Melbourne the next day. The second half of our vacation was coming up quickly!

November books, politics, and fossils

2024-12-26T19:02:04Z

We had a very busy September and October with outings on most weekends. Most of them have been free events aimed at families, or came as part of one of the museum memberships we have. It’s been a lot of fun, but November changed things up a bit.

The first weekend in November began with me taking the boys over to our local Farmer’s Market, but this time riding their bikes! It was an interesting experiment, and worked pretty well, but when a woman who works at the bakery stall we frequent saw them, she shared how she remembered when we brought them in the stroller. Indeed, they have grown!

Sunday was spent at a book fair in San Ramon, where Aaron got to “meet” Bluey and Curious George. Adam passed on this experience, and the whole thing was a bit crowded and overwhelming, but we did manage to pick up some books from local authors, including the Captain Mama trilogy of books, written by USAF veteran Graciela Tiscareño-Sato, who was a delight to meeting. Adam loves her books, and we now talk a fair amount about the KC-135R aerial refueling airplane.

Imagine our delight and surprise when we walked into our library a few days later and saw a whole display featuring her!

But back to the day of the book fair, that evening Adam lost his first tooth! It’s a first for all of us really, the first time we did Tooth Fairy! How much is the going rate for a tooth at our house? $5. I also discovered that the whole experience really grosses me out, I’m reminded that it did when I was a kid too. I’m glad I’m not a shark.

That week also marked the results of a heartbreaking election. Donald Trump was elected to the presidency again, in what probably shouldn’t have come as a shock to me, but I really was quite upset. Personally, his first term emboldened folks who are not kind to Jewish people, and antisemitic attacks rose. It was really the first time I had fear related to raising our children Jewish in the United States. Beyond our immediate household, changes in immigration rules, draconian changes to women’s rights and those of other minorities, and the threat this puts on science and research is all terrifying. My heart goes out to loved ones who are at more risk than I, and my only hope is that communities can band together on a local level to protect our own, and that the backlash toward states like California won’t hurt too many people or do much long-term damage. It did remind me that it was a good time to get vaccinated, who knows when federal funding for health initiatives that his incoming administration doesn’t believe in will go away. Sigh.

But life goes on, and on Thursday I flew to Seattle for SeaGL 2024. I arrived mid-day on Thursday because the flights worked out well that way, and gave me some time to catch up some work in my hotel room before heading out in the early evening to visit the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, which was within walking distance of my hotel. I had planned on using my reciprocal membership there, but it turned out to be free that day, and open late! I was excited to see their fossil collection, but the museum was full of really beautiful displays and I enjoyed all of it.

Upon my return we celebrated our au pair’s birthday, complete with a Taylor Swift birthday cake, which was done by a local baker and came out spectacularly!

We spent the next weekend having a pretty chill time, we went to a playground, visited our usual weekend restaurants. And we needed some down time, as our Thanksgiving trip to Florida was coming up. I’ll write about that soon, but it’s only the second time we’ve all gone on vacation, and the first was just a road trip to New Jersey, so flights and eight days of hotels was quite the next experience.

SeaGL 2024

2024-12-23T22:41:00Z

Back in 2018 I attended my last conference before we welcomed our first child, the Seattle GNU/Linux conference (SeaGL). I was about 5 months pregnant and gave one of the keynotes! It was a great final adventure before parenthood, and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity. I wrote about it more here: SeaGL 2018.

It’s taken me a little while to get back into conferences, and I’m generally traveling less than I once was just because of how much my role has changed, so it wasn’t until this year that I finally made it back to Seattle for SeaGL.

One of the things I love about SeaGL is that they work hard to give voices to folks who haven’t presented before, and they always end up with a very diverse lineup. That means throughout the event you hear new perspectives and ideas, mixed in with voices like my own that have been around the open source world for decades.

The event kicked off with a keynote from Aaron Wolf, who spoke to conscious, and intentional leadership and organizations, and shared his resulting FLO-Conscience project. Then Christopher Neugebauer who gave us a fresh take on lessons (anti-lessons?) that can be drawn from failures in direction and leadership throughout the history of the open source software movement, and how that’s lead to a fundamental disconnect between users and developers which has done a lot to create a culture of maintainer burnout. It was really nice to take a step back and look at some of the history in this way, there are definitely some thoughts and oft-repeated phrases we’ve held dear in open source that aren’t doing us any favors.

I really enjoyed a talk by Vagrant Cascadian, who I knew from Reproducible Build work, where he compared and contrasted the approaches Debian and GNU Guix take to trustworthiness of their artifacts. I always learn something new that I hadn’t thought about before when I hear him speak, and this time I had a fascinating history lesson in how some unusual things came to be in Debian.

Ariadne Conill also brought her A-game with a talk on LoongArch, an architecture designed by an organization in China that had just recently landed on my radar as I schmooze in architecture circles. The talk helpfully brought me from zero knowledge to what I feel is reasonably well-informed for someone who moves in these spaces. It was also nice that she had real experience within Alpine and direct interaction with the architecture developers.

Saturday morning I showed up bright and early for VM Brasseur’s talk on Open Source governance. One of the things I love about going to her talks is that no matter how well I know her (including having read her book!), I always walk away feeling good from her talks and having learned something I hadn’t thought about. One of the things I’ve recently struggled with in a leadership capacity has been building up the work of women who are coming behind me, because they still struggle for recognition and respect that I now have in my communities. The easiest thing to do in these circumstances is to just have me handle everything because “they listen to you” but what I need to promote more is having these fresh leaders voice their opinion, and then adding my supportive voice to theirs. It seems obvious upon reflection, but it is the harder path in practice. I’ll mention now that Deb Nicholson’s talk was a nice flip side to this talk, re-focusing on how you can solve problems, and reminding us that we have the freedom to both learn from giants and forge our own path forward.

Allison Cao’s talk on “Building my first open source software with AI: A teenager’s journey into innovation for social good” was probably the one I’ve thought the most about since the conference. One of the strategies that code camps aimed at younger people have used is getting them to develop games. Makes sense! But for people like Allison, games were dull and social action was what was interesting. Plus, she learns in a way that a lot of self-taught people do (including myself) by finding a problem, cobbling pieces together for a solution, and then digging back into it to figure out how it all works to perfect and customize it. For example, when I was learning to build websites, I was viewing the source of lots of other websites to learn. Eventually I learned what all that funky CSS was doing to my HTML and built up a working understanding about it that way, rather than rote memorization of tags. The memorization came naturally. In her case, she wasn’t learning about variables, loops, and subroutines, she was using AI-driven code generation, and then when she needed to customize things she naturally learned about how variables, loops, and subroutines worked. Also, I was really impressed to see such a young woman presenting, so brave!

My talk was after lunch, and I was pleasantly surprised by how many people came back to it! So first, thanks to everyone who came by, was curious, and asked questions. Even thanks to my acquaintances who didn’t hold back from some good natured heckling. My talk covered resources for porting your open source project to various architectures, which I updated on a technical level since the last time giving it and added in a few new stories. Slides from my talk are available here: Will_your_open_source_project_run_on_a_mainframe_smartwatch_-_SeaGL_2024.pdf (1.2M).

Kenneth Finnegan gave a talk on open source mirroring work he’s being doing, and that was a great introduction to some of the challenges they’ve overcome to expand the amount of mirroring that’s happening as universities scale back their internal infrastructures that had been handling the bulk of it. It was also nice to chat with him and a couple friends of mine after the talk as we lost at Uno to a competitive seven year old.

Meeting new people and catching up with folks is where participation really shines for this event. I had a couple scheduled meetings with folks to check in on their s390x porting efforts, but the incidental chats I had in hallways and in the expo hall are why I’m there, and why I found pandemic virtual events to be such a struggle to extract value from. I also had lunch with a long time mentor of mine who I was able to be really with regarding some advice I was seeking, and it was precisely what I needed in that moment.

The event concluded with keynotes from Rachel Kelly and Duane O’Brien, both of whom I’ve known in the open source community for some time and was thrilled to see on stage. Rachel talked about having conversations around personal data management with your less technical loved ones, and stressed with all her examples of tooling that getting just them to a better place was worth it, even if it’s not quite as secure and open source as we would like. Duane’s talk was around funding in open source, and how we reach for sustainability. It’s something that I know a lot of organizations are struggling with, so I’m grateful that Duane is taking a serious look at it and bringing us along for the ride.

As the keynotes wrapped up it was time for me to get to the airport. Many thanks to the organizers and volunteers to made it all happen. I’ll be back!

Halloween 2024

2024-12-17T23:47:55Z

November flew by, in the best way possible, I had a couple trips, spent time with family, and made a lot of progress on projects at work. It was a little jarring to discover that now, in mid-December, I hadn’t yet writtern about Halloween!

As I’ve written about before, Halloween is my favorite holiday. We decorate a bit, and do family costumes (while the kids are young enough to tolerate it, hah!). This year, our family costume theme was decided by an exchange between MJ and Aaron:

Aaron: Dada, I want to be Darth Vader.
MJ: Oh, for Halloween?
Aaron: No, I want to BE Darth Vader.
MJ: …

Well, we can’t fulfill all of Aaron’s bad guy fantasies (ahem), but we could at least let him dress up as Darth Vader for Halloween, and have the rest of us follow. Adam was Obi-Wan Kenobi, MJ was the Emperor, and I was Princess Leia.

Event-wise, the big one we did with the boys was at Adam’s elementary school, where they had various games and activities, along with a fire truck.

We also got them a pair of light sabers to go with their costumes, which they enjoyed walking around the neighborhood with before Halloween as we visited the local Halloween lights.

The day before Halloween we carved pumpkins, during which I just went with carving a single pumpkin with a very classic design. It had been a pretty busy autumn and I wasn’t feeling as creative as usual, and I had a feeling that the boys would lose interest once we got deep into pumpkin creation (they did). Thankfully, our au pair and former au pair were more creative than I.

The evening of Halloween was our biggest adventure yet! In previous years we’d only gone down our own street, but this year we added the street parallel to ours after noticing it was still early enough and the boys were bundles of energy.

Our au pair (dressed as Padme) and our former au pair (dressed as Rei) joined us for the trick-or-treating festivities.

Many thanks to the passerby who snapped our photo, I hope your kids took some extra candy!

Holiday cards 2024

2024-12-02T17:12:56Z

Every year I send out a big batch of winter-themed holiday cards to friends, family, acquaintances, and anyone who made their way to this blog post.

Reading this? That means you!

Even if you’re outside the United States!

Even if we’ve never met!

Send me an email at lyz@princessleia.com with your postal mailing address and put “Holiday Card” in the subject so I can filter it appropriately. Please do this even if I’ve sent you a card in the past, I won’t necessarily be reusing lists from previous years. I’d like to conclude sending of cards by December 15th, so consider that your deadline :)

Note: My family is Jewish and we celebrate Hanukkah, but the cards are non-religious, with some non-religious variation of “Happy Holidays” on them.

Happy Holidays!