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We went to a typewriter shop in Philadelphia!

Friday, Mar 24th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

My new found fascination with typewriters is a bit unusual. I’m a computer-focused tech enthusiast and while I’ve always held a special place in my heart for the mechanical, it wasn’t until I had an old manual typewriter sitting on my desk every day that it blossomed into something a bit more. I don’t use it a ton, but it’s been fun to bond with my little kids over, both of whom love hitting the keys and seeing the result pop up on physical paper. My work repairing my Skyriter has been satisfying and fun, even if it can get a a bit tedious and frustrating too.

When we arrived at our vacation home in Philadelphia last week and I found myself without a typewriter at all, I felt a bit of sadness. But then I thought about it, surely there are typewriter stores in Philadelphia! Yep, there are two of them.

I decided to make plans to go to W.P.M. Typewriter Shop because I was charmed by their website and intrigued by their typewriter garden (which isn’t open until spring time, so we’ll have to go back when it’s warmer). Adam has been enjoying this typewriter journey with me, so the first Saturday we were in town I called ahead to make an appointment so we could explore the shop and get some help selecting a typewriter.

Shop owner Pamela Rogow was a delight to explore with. I admit my guidance to her was rather limited, but she knew where I was starting from and that I wanted something sturdy that Adam could type on. With that in mind we made our way through probably a dozen typewriters. I had my reservations about an electric typewriter, but we decided to try one since they are a lot easier to type on. She showed Adam around some of the keys and functions and then let him type away.

I actually would have liked this one a lot, and it would fit in with my crew of Smith-Corona typewriters. Alas, even though it was easy for Adam to use, the dull electronic buzz of it just being turned on annoyed him. Back to trying manuals!

She was incredibly patient as we made our way through the collection. We tried portables and standards, newer ones and older ones.

At one point, Adam decided it was his mission to locate and try every bell she had floating around the shop, which was pretty amusing. I’m glad he was having fun between typewriter demos.

I really wanted to be happier with one of the portables, but they were on the harder side for Adam to type on. He ended up being drawn to a wide-carriage 1946 Remington KMC with a ten-key tabulator, and once he decided upon this one, there was no dissuading him. This was our typewriter!

It’s really quite stunning, and a lot of fun to type on. As a reference point, it did set me back about $420 once we were all said and done with taxes, but this is what you’re going to have to expect for a professionally tended to manual typewriter. It was nice to learn that they also have a rent-to-own program that’s designed to allow people to try out a typewriter to see if they’ll use it, and bring it back if they decide it’s not for them. But this one is part of our life now, and I’ve quickly gotten the hang of it with the help of the Remington KMC Instructions, it’s great.

Filed under: kids, life, philadelphia, typewriter

Friends, Purim, and libraries

Tuesday, Mar 21st, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Pre-COVID, I’d say the majority of my social interactions came while I was traveling, and I was a bit of a hermit when I was at home. I didn’t see my local friends a whole lot, in spite of the tremendous amount of value I placed on them. Now with things opening up, but my opportunity to travel for work still limited, I’ve been making an extra effort to start building up those local relationships again. I’m slowly starting to see people after what has, in many cases, been more than four years between visits! If you’re counting at home, that means most of these people have never met my kids, or every really seen me in mother mode. I’m still me, but it is definitely a shift.

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!

Filed under: castro valley, family, kids, life

I’m now the proud owner of a 1950 Smith-Corona Skyriter

Sunday, Mar 19th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

I’ve had the book The Typewriter Revolution on my reading pile for a while, but I made my way back to it earlier this year and have put a good dent in it. It’s prompted me to start using writing prompts with my 1938 L.C. Smith-Corona so it gets a bit more use and I have a nice writing outlet. “Unfortunately” the chapter about selecting a typewriter also clued me in to the existence of the Smith-Corona Skyriter. It’s an ultra portable typewriter first introduced in 1949. This is an advertisement that was in an issue of Harper’s Magazine from 1950:


“The Typewriter for for Travelers” Travel tested by American Airlines

This was the intersection of my new found interest in mechanical typewriters and my love for travel. But I don’t need one, I already have a typewriter, and I already have a Smith-Corona!

But the heart wants what the heart wants.

I read about the Skyriter on January 22nd.

I placed my order for one off of eBay on February 21st.

It arrived on February 25th.

See, I showed a tiny bit of restraint! Almost a whole month!

Now, buying typewriters off of eBay is not the recommended route. The risk for damage is incredibly high, and you really don’t know what you’re getting. Plus, I’d never actually tried it out, I was just purchasing it on a whim. The best way to go about it is finding a local typewriter shop and then working with them to see if they can help you find one. It’s going to be A LOT more expensive than the sticker price on eBay, but chances are you’re going to end up at a typewriter repair shop anyway if you don’t have the time, skill, or interest in fixing and cleaning it yourself. Plus, it’s important to support your local typewriter shop!

That said, I decided that with the simplicity of the Skyriter, I did want to take the time, develop the skills, and take an interest in fixing it up for myself. So for about $100 including tax and shipping, a decent looking Skyriter was on its way to me.

It wasn’t in terrible shape, but it wasn’t great either. Out of the box, the type needed alignment, the space bar had to be pressed very deliberately to space, the roller rail seemed a little crooked, and the carriage would stop and require a strong nudge to continue typing.

The first thing I had to do was learn how to remove it from the bottom half of the case, so I hit YouTube and found Removing Smith Corona Skyriter from Shell Body. Which got me on my way. That allowed me to get a good look at the inside for the first time, and do a first pass at cleaning it. This first pass was just with some canned air and gentle wiping with a damp rag. Indeed, this is the only cleaning I’ve really done so far, a lot of the straight up metal components that hold it together could use a good scrub with soap and water, and I need to do a careful cleaning of some of the more delicate parts, including the strikers. I did manage to find the serial number though, and at 2Y-34249 that makes this a 1950 model (thanks again, typewriterdatabase.com!).

I quickly discovered what was making the roller rail crooked – a screw that was included but wasn’t in actually place (the metal plate it was supposed to go into, it wasn’t). I put that back in place, but I later had to remove it again when I realized that by “fixing” that I had introduced some new alignment issues. I think I finally got it though.

Then I could test what was going on with why the carriage kept stopping at a particular spot on the page. Turns out, the case was bent slightly, which was even more obvious when comparing it to the other side of the case. I gently bent it back into place with my screwdriver and no more getting stuck!

Type alignment was probably the hardest part, and I didn’t fully get it fixed. I couldn’t find documentation on exactly what you should adjust for this, but based on similar typewriters that I watched YouTube videos on, and a little mechanical fiddling, I believe these two screws and nuts are the key to it:


At least, they seem to be the screws that would have an impact on how far it goes up, and when I made adjustments and then went back to typing, it looks like it was making a difference, and it is an improvement:

It’s not 100% for sure. I need to sort out the remaining text alignment issues since the capital letters sometimes strike higher. The space bar still needs a deliberate press, which takes away from the flow of typing on it. It’s much improved though, and usable in the current state. I’ll see what I want to tackle once I finish the next pass of cleaning. It IS a simple typewriter though. As I gaze into the internals of some of the other mechanical standards I’ve seen, I wouldn’t even want to attempt fiddling with some of them. But this typewriter is a nice entry point.

But is it sky ready? Well, I decided against bringing it along on our trip to Philadelphia this week, and let’s be honest, I probably never will travel with it, but while I had the luggage scale out I decided to see if it was indeed 9lbs and hey! Just under!

I wouldn’t be typewriter-free in Philadelphia for long though, a trip to a local typewriter store was already on my schedule.

Filed under: typewriter

Trees, flowers, and a lake with the kiddos

Tuesday, Feb 21st, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Losing Caligula has been hard. I keep finding cat toys tucked behind doors and under furniture. This particular grief is definitely going to take some time to resolve, it’s been years since I’ve lived without a pet, and he was so incredibly special to me.

Earlier this month was the Jewish holiday of Tu BiShvat, known for being about trees. It was a bit too gloomy for us to go outside and commune with any trees this year, but we did want to observe it in a tree-y way, and so we did a bit of hand print tree art!

I haven’t been doing as much art with the boys as I’d like, partially because we’re still slogging our way through a cascade of illnesses every few weeks (having a kid in preschool is so fun!). Once I have the energy, I’m using it to clean the house or rotate their clothes yet again (how do they grow so fast?!), and then our activities are more of the toy-playing nature. Right now I seem to have a bit of a cold, which isn’t fun, but this is one of the more mild ones to sweep through lately.

The week of Valentine’s Day I got to experience my first four consecutive days of solo parenting. The pandemic changed a lot for us, with everyone being home for what ended up being nearly three years, MJ and I haven’t been going on any business trips like we used to. That changed last week when MJ went out of town for a conference. Our au pair was also traveling for vacation, so Sunday I had the boys on my own, and then we had a close family friend come by to watch the boys from Monday through Wednesday just while I worked, so I didn’t need to take time off.

That still meant keeping the boys occupied every morning and evening on my own, which I’m definitely not used to. I have a lot of fun with my kiddos, but having a two year old and a four year old is a lot of work, especially since the two year old still hasn’t quite gotten the hang of sleeping all night without waking up crying now and then, thus interrupting my sleep too. I was grateful to have the daytime help though, plus she was kind enough to do dishes, take out the trash, and do laundry for the kids, meaning the house did not descend into chaos while everyone was gone.

I’m not eager to repeat everyone being away, but I will say it was also kinda nice to have some time to myself. I didn’t get to write the next great American novel, but I did get to read and write a bit more than usual. I even decided that a little TV would be fine for the boys on Sunday afternoon and read with little Aaron sitting there right on my lap!

To mix up the evenings a bit, we went out to the mall via BART one evening, and I got them a new Duplo set before hitting the pizzeria at the mall. Another evening I joked that we had a rave, since the local dollar store had glowing bracelets and the boys love playing in the dark with flash lights, that bought us nearly an hour of giggly fun!

For Valentine’s Day MJ was still traveling, but sent me a couple dozen pink roses to mark the occasion. I decided to observe the day buy buying a half dozen white carnations and then using some food coloring to make them change colors. I may have created a monster with Adam though, he now periodically asks for the food coloring so we can do it again. I wouldn’t mind doing it from time to time, it’s something I hadn’t done since I was a kid and it really is a lot of fun, and very satisfying to see the flowers slowly take on a new hue.

Both MJ and our au pair returned late on Wednesday night, so I had them back for the rest of the week and MJ this past weekend. We eased into a pretty typical weekend, but on Sunday morning MJ took Aaron grocery shopping after dropping Adam and I off at a local park. It was a beautiful day and he’d been asking to go to a “beach” a lot lately. This wasn’t a beach park, but there was a big lake! He loves exploring nature and enjoys taking in scenery, so he’s my little hiking buddy. I also knew that the weather was about to take a turn for the chilly, so it was likely the last time we’d be able to get outside for a big adventure like this for a couple weeks.

And now I’m back in the middle of my work week, dealing with this cold. I’m hopeful it passes swiftly, but until then I’m grateful for cold medicine and decongestants that are allowing me to feel slightly better than perhaps I should.

Filed under: family, kids, life

Caligula has passed away

Thursday, Feb 16th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On February 7th, we said goodbye to our beloved 19 year old cat, Caligula.

That morning he was more lethargic than usual, and after peeing on the floor at the top of the stairs, he flopped down onto the tile floor. Accidents were becoming a bit more frequent for him, but not this far from his litter box, and I don’t think I’d ever see him rest on the cold tile floor before. Something was wrong. We called his vet and got him at 9:40AM appointment, I went with MJ to take him in. It was quickly apparent that he was quite sick, as the vet who had been treating him for his various age-related ailments wanted to put him on oxygen and suspected there was fluid in his lungs.

A few hours later we heard that they had indeed drained fluid from his lungs, and started on a regional search for a veterinary cardiologist who could see him quickly. It turns out there aren’t many around here right now, and our best bet in the short term would be a facility with a radiologist with a keen eye for heart problems. Our vet made some recommendations, but her predictions were still quite dire, with all his health issues, even with treatment for heart failure best case was that he only had a few more months. They kept him under observation for the rest of the day, and then gave us even more troubling news, when they took him off the oxygen treatment, he still wasn’t breathing well on his own, and they were transferring him to an emergency veterinary hospital.

On the drive over I sat in the back seat with him, and even I could tell that his breathing was labored. By the time we got across town, the emergency vet said she was surprised he had made it, and they immediately put him on oxygen before delivering the final blow to us: based on her experience, there was about a 50% chance he would pass away on his own overnight while they waited for the specialist to look at his heart. If he made it through the night, he might have a month left to live. It was time to make the decision of whether to euthanize. We agonized over it, but ultimately decided it was time, and we went home to pick up the boys.

And so that evening we said goodbye to our beloved Caligula. We brought his cat bed and one of his favorite toys. He was on oxygen as we crowded into the small exam room to give him final kisses and pets, and explained it all very clearly and directly to the boys. He passed away quietly with all of us there with him.

I was absolutely heartbroken as we left the vet that night and came home to our cat-free home. It’s taken me over a week to even write this.

We had him cremated. I picked up the ashes on Wednesday, and with that my heart broke all over again.

This grief will take some time to work through. He’d been my daily companion for most of my adult life, we’d been through so much together. I love you, Caligula. I miss you dearly.

Filed under: caligula

Wet/dry January, old/new tech

Saturday, Feb 4th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

It’s now the second month of 2023, and I can confirm that the arbitrary changing of the calendar year has not, in fact, made our immune systems better at fighting off every random bug that Adam brings home from preschool. At the beginning of January it was a brutal stomach bug, and we are now getting over a fast-moving cold. It does mean that we had an extremely low-key January.

It’s also been quite rainy this winter, which is excellent news for our drought-prone state. Unfortunately we got a bit too much all at once, and so our area has been suffering from damaged roadways and bridges, and mudslides. It hasn’t impacted our home directly, aside from noticing the seal on one of our garage doors isn’t working as well as it could, so I’m grateful for that.

Adam and I have also had some time to play in the rain. I got him some rain boots and a sturdy umbrella that’s more resistant to wind than the freebie ones we had been using. I now have no excuse not to take him outside on rainy days! Except that little Aaron does not enjoy wet weather, so there has to be another adult around if I want to go have rain adventures outside with Adam.

Aaron does like getting outside after the rain though, so when MJ was at the doctor with Adam one morning I brought Aaron out to one of his favorite parks… only to find the playground flooded! Still, we did manage to have some fun running around the rest of the park.

The opposite of our wet January, was my dry January. My father was an alcoholic, and while I don’t find my own relationship with alcohol to be particularly troublesome, it did seem like a nice excuse to put a pause on alcohol for a month. In retrospect, it’s kind of funny, because I’ve just come off a pair of 9-month alcohol-free stints when I was pregnant, and then greatly reduced while breastfeeding, so a month is barely worth noting. Still, it’s nice to know that I can just cut it out without much thought, or missing it much, and without external pressure like a baby to grow or feed. Like with pregnancy, it was more the social and outing aspect that I miss when I remove alcohol from my diet, since I don’t drink soda and options for beverages are quite limited in the US. At home it’s easy though, I fell in love with Hoplark hoptea when I was pregnant, and never looked back.

I’ve been bonding with my typewriter a bit lately, which started because one of the kids switched the ribbon from black to red and I had to figure out how to switch it back. Turns out, it’s actually pretty simple, but the wear on the switch made it non-obvious as I was scouring the machine for clues. But getting my hands on the machine made me remember how much I love using it for little things here and there, and that I should make some more typing art with the boys soon. I also got back to reading The Typewriter Revolution: A Typist’s Companion for the 21st Century, which has been in my reading queue since 2021 but I’ve neglected it for a while. In reading it, I learned a bit about tabulators, and my typewriter has a big Tabulator bar on it! So I plan on checking that out soon. The danger of reading this book though is that I am exposing myself to lots of beautiful old typewriters and I now have it stuck in my head that I want to get my hands on a Smith-Corona Skyriter. Help. Keep me away from eBay!

In other vintage tech news, I recently met up with an online friend who I’d planned on meeting a bunch of times, but we both have young children so someone has always been sick, for YEARS. When I noticed a gap in sickness mid-January I quickly reached out for an impromptu lunch together, and it all worked out. With the pandemic I haven’t had many social meetings lately, and it’s so nice to sit down and connect with other techy, like-minded folks in person. Plus, he brought me a geeky gift! A copy of Assembler language programming: The IBM system/360. The s/360 is the first in the line of mainframes I work on today, so it’s been a real joy sifting through the pages, seeing notes in the margins, and I even found an orange punch card inside from a programmer of yore. Plus, it inspired me to start using punch cards as bookmarks.

In new tech news, I replaced my primary phone in January. It wasn’t really planned, but there were lots of deals floating around for the Pixel 7 and we finally pounced on one through our carrier. I had extreme reservations about this phone, in particular the lack of a headphone jack. My friends will tease me about this, and my husband certainly did, but I use cheap Sony earbuds ALL THE TIME. I lose them or they break and just buy another pair, I don’t need to worry about having to charge them, or pairing being finicky that day. I just pop them in and go. A lot of this convenience goes away when you’re restricted to just the single USB-C port for everything. I had hoped I’d adapt to this, but the truth is I haven’t. I don’t regret the purchase, it is a very nice phone, but it has already been irritating more than once. I’m sure the first time I lose my moderately priced Bluetooth headphones I’m going to be particularly annoyed. Alas, this is the direction that all the latest high-end phones are going, and I had to get here at some point. It also means I’ve invested in a whole pile of USB-C to AUX adapters.

I’m continuing to struggle with time. I’ve written at length about how I struggle to balance my life now that I have young kids who I now spend so much of my time with. It feels like something in our house is always broken, and it probably goes without saying that something always needs to be cleaned. Every night I struggle with ask myself, do I go to bed early so I’m well-rested? Or do I stay up late to clutch to some down time to help my mental health? I keep coming back to moderation being the key, and that some nights I’ll get more sleep and some nights I’ll get to learn about my typewriter tabulator, or write in my blog (hello!). It’s still hard though, especially when the pendulum shifts too far in one direction, or I get unlucky and the night I decided to stay up late is also the night one of the kids has a rough night and I barely get any sleep. All things considered, I keep bringing myself back to how grateful I am to have a healthy, loving family and beautiful place to live. I may not be playing video games or hunkering down on programming hobby projects much anymore, but I have a lot to be thankful for.

Filed under: family, health, kids, life, tech, typewriter

20 Years of Blogging

Wednesday, Feb 1st, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On June 4, 2002 I started a blog with a post that simply said:

Oy… I started this just for fun.. I prolly wont continue to use it, and there is no way for me to delete my account, hmm… %)

In retrospect, this is pretty hilarious. I’ve now had a blog for over 20 years. Above, I linked to a post that’s currently self-hosted on a WordPress instance, but at the time the “account” I mentioned was on an old blogging site called Xanga. It was popular at the time and a couple people I knew had started doing this “blogging” thing over there so I decided to check it out.

I eventually moved to LiveJournal as community momentum shifted, and I brought all my Xanga posts over. A couple years later I started self-hosting with a WordPress instance and I once again moved everything over. When I did that migration, I considered doing some editing of posts, since looking back at those old posts is pretty embarrassing. I was young (20), very bored, and my writing was very bad. The early posts had the rawness of a stream-of-consciousness rather than anything carefully written. I never expected it to last, and I certainly never expected to eventually become a published author!

I am also dyslexic, and had a lot of support when I was really young to learn to read. Writing was a tremendous challenge throughout middle school, and only slightly improved in high school. When I was starting my blog, I still had a long way to go, but I just sat down and wrote every day. It was silly, self-involved, and random, but I got it down, and ultimately I kept it up. My blog posts today are much more polished and thoughtful. Seeing this all laid bare it’s a reminder to me that we aren’t born knowing how to write, it takes practice, which is what I happened to spend years doing aimlessly.

People often ask me how I got into writing. I wouldn’t recommend the aimless route I took. If your goal is actually becoming a writer, it probably makes sense to go down one of the paths of using writing prompts and doing more than just pouring “what I did today” notes into a public blog. Still, it did work for me, even if it took a long time.

As to why I did it, I think it was the same reason we use short-form social media today. It was a way to keep in touch with people, save moments of my daily life, and be part of a community beyond my desk. As the LiveJournal grew in popularity there was a community like you see on social media today, you became friends of friends after seeing their comments or link to each other’s posts, and other friends from other spaces of the web would make their own blogs that would show up on your Friends list.

By the time most people had moved on from blogging and over to mediums like Facebook and Twitter, I had started to see the value in blogging for myself as a reference and sort of autobiography. What year did we take that trip? When did I last visit that festival? Who was the intro act to that show we went to? All these questions are quickly answered by my blog! I’m reminded of this every time I fall behind on posting or am building up the momentum (and often skipping sleep) to write about something. I also know the value in owning your own words and thoughts, if I was serving up that stream of thoughts and moments to a company hosting it at no cost, with no guarantee of preservation, I’d be deeply concerned about control and posterity. I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed with what they’ve lost as the cracks start to form in our digital footprints.

A great story shouldn’t end here, but I don’t have anything revolutionary to say about this milestone of 20 years. I don’t think I’ll be making any real changes to what I do today. I don’t publish as much as I used to, but that’s really just an artifact of how much my life has changed, I simply don’t have as much time as I used to. I also found that my blog has trended to be much more positive and less raw and critical. As I’ve matured I’ve realized that I’m no longer just throwing my words into a black hole. Every time I throw a thought out that’s critical of something someone else has made, that has the potential to land with a real person, and I don’t want my thoughtless, throw-away comments to hurt someone. The positive nature of my blog today is related to this, but also a result of my struggle to write at all when I’m not in a very good mood, so I don’t. I do sometimes worry that both these things make my blog less genuine than it used to be, and that may be true, but I think I’m OK with that. I still think I’m more honest here than most people are in public, and this blog was never meant to be a private journal that I kept locked in my bedside table.

Filed under: author, reflection

The adventures of 2022

Tuesday, Jan 24th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

2022 was a mixed bag. On the one hand, our three year old started preschool and ended up bringing every sickness he came across home, and we were essentially sick for half the year. We also finally succumbed to COVID-19 in July.

On the flip side, the boys finally got vaccinated! And we finally got to go back to Philadelphia, twice! I went to my first in-person conference since March of 2020, and generally things began opening up again. We’re still not back to where we were before the pandemic, but I’m not sure we’ll ever be, or if that’s a desirable state. Folks in the United States have really played fast and loose with illness for decades, and now the thought of going out without a mask when I have a cold just feels rude.

I’ve also had a bit of a reckoning with myself that’s still in progress. I’m a mother now, and in charge of a single family home. As a result, these two things consume almost all of my free time, most of the rest of which goes to attempting to get enough sleep. I keep setting milestones after which I think I’ll feel better (conclusion of breastfeeding, my youngest sleeping through the night, not being sick) but I keep being disappointed. So in 2022 I worked with my doctor to start a low dose of antidepressants, and started talking to a therapist. I also spent a day away on my own at a local resort, which was a brief respite but one that I really needed. Most days I can tell that the medication and small changes here and there are helping, but I definitely have work to do and am in need of more support.

MJ and I got to connect a bit more in 2022. It’s so difficult finding time to spend together with a baby at home, so as the boys slowly eased out of baby-hood this year, we were able to go out on a couple big date evenings (anniversary and my birthday) and have started leaving the house on weekdays as we can to do lunch together. In October we even got to go out for a quickly little day trip to a BART maintenance facility, which may not be the most romantic thing, but it was nice to get out together and enjoy something together that we totally would have done before we had kids.

I love a lot about being a parent though. I have always been happy about the fact that I never grew up too much and still know how to play and be silly, but it’s really kicked up a notch when you have kids around. Being thoughtful and creative with them comes so naturally not because I have experience with kids (I don’t), but because we share so many of the same interests and the so many of the same things bring us joy. As my boys continue to get bigger, I’m enjoying sharing my interests with them, from riding a train to looking at the stars and identifying planets (we’re big fans of Jupiter over here).

Work was quite fulfilling in 2022. We had some major product launches that I worked hard on supporting, several major events, and I was thrilled that the work I put in to preparing my promotion resulted in said promotion. I’ve become more focused with what learning I want to do each quarter, which has had the unintended consequence of strengthening my bonds with the mainframe community as I find I’m able to connect even more. In all, I’m still loving my job, and everything I’m continuing to learn.

The only trips we took in 2022 were two to Philadelphia, the first in September and the second in December, but I did still give some talks! Mostly virtual, but I did give a couple in-person at the Open Mainframe Summit while I was in Philadelphia in September. The following is my talk rundown.

As we ease into 2023, I’m hopeful that this year will bring some of the changes to my life that I need to take. I’m aiming for some more milestones at work, and I’m going to continue pursue taking better care of my self, both with regard to my physical and my mental health.

Filed under: EOY

Adam is 4!

Tuesday, Jan 17th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Adam turned four in early January. It’s a little hard to believe that four years ago I had my first newborn at home!

His birthday landed on a Friday and unfortunately he wasn’t feeling very well that evening. Instead of going out to dinner as planned, we spent the evening playing Lights Out! in his bedroom, where I put some LED candles around his room and we all played with glow sticks and flashlights. Given his love for the dark (and my own!) it made for a perfect, low-key evening.

And Saturday we had his party!

At his request, we had a Pixar Cars themed little party with a small group of local friends. He’d been talking about the cake for about a month, periodically reminding me that he wanted the same one his brother got last year, complete with the same car toys on top. Thankfully our friend (and former au pair) was kind enough to go to the store and order the cake while we were out of town so it would be ready for the party on Saturday.


It was nice to have people over, for the first time in ages the play room had four kids running around having fun together. Adam received a few gifts and Aaron enjoyed helping him open them. We ordered a couple pizzas and everyone seemed to have a nice time.

Their birthdays are a mere five weeks apart, with Hanukkah (usually) in the middle, and that’s been a challenge. But I think celebrating Aaron’s before we leave for Philadelphia for the holidays and Adam’s afterwards is working out well. It’s causing clear delineation between their parties which allows us to focus on each of them fully. I think we all are a little partied out by the time mid January rolls around though.

Filed under: family, food, kids, life

Winter Holidays in Philadelphia

Monday, Jan 16th, 2023 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On December 14th we flew to Philadelphia to spend three weeks with family and friends over the winter holidays. Things didn’t exactly go as planned.

As soon as we got into town it was clear that the kids had caught some kind of cold. A few days later MJ ended up on antibiotics, and the kids had full blown colds. Somehow, I managed to get out unscathed, but that meant I was taking care of everyone and doing sleeping shifts on the couch so I could more easily run downstairs to care for Aaron, or upstairs to check on Adam, all while letting MJ get rest so he could recover. I was also working to get my end of year tasks done at work and generally getting things squared off so I could depart for the rest of the year with as much done as possible. It was exhausting, and I kept having to pause and remind myself how lucky I was that I wasn’t sick too.

The first Saturday we were in town I also went to a Celebration of Life for CJ Fearnley, whose sudden passing I already wrote about. I wasn’t sick, but I was sure to mask up the whole time in case I was contagious. The grief I was feeling over that weighed heavy on me, and I was grateful that MJ was still feeling well enough at that point to watch the boys for the afternoon so I could go to the service. I said a few words, connected with some folks who I hadn’t seen in years, and in one case someone I knew through my work at CJ’s company years ago but never got around to meeting in person. Seeing how he touched so many lives and was soothing, and attending was a good step in my path to heal from this loss. In the time since his passing, I find myself constantly reminded at how many small ways he touched my life, he really was a wonderful person and mentor.

In more uplifting news, it snowed! Neither of the boys had experienced snow in person since we’ve been hunkered down in snow-free coastal California for the past three winters. The snow was brief, and the rest of the trip ended up being warmer and rainy, but it was enough for us to get outside for a few minutes to run around and take some pictures.

Everyone was on the mend by the time my little sister Annette and my nephew Xavier came into town to visit on December 24th. The last time we saw them was the summer of 2019 when they came out to California to meet baby Adam and spend a week with us. The pandemic sure threw a wrench in our ability to connect, and I’m really happy that the trio of cousins got to meet and spend time together, it ended up being the highlight of our trip for me. The cousins enjoyed a bunch of outings together, and some staying home playing video games (Adam played Mario Kart for the first time!) and doing things like decorating gingerbread men. It was also really nice to catch up with my sister.


With Hanukkah landing late in the year and at the same time as Christmas, we also had the treat of spending all of Hanukkah in Philadelphia. My sister and nephew got to experience the final two nights of it with us too.

The boys and I set up the model train I always bring out for the season, and I piled presents on the table. I enjoyed the train long before I had kids, but it’s nice to get to share that joy with kids who are happy to just spend a half hour watching the train go in circles as they move models around and see how much they can speed it up without a derailment.

We also met up with some folks from the Philadelphia Linux Users Group who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic and we did a little outing to the Mercer Museum in Doylestown. Adam thoroughly enjoyed exploring the labyrinthine museum and all the curious items to look at, while Aaron seemed content to spend most of the time in the children’s room, which is a new addition since I was last there over a decade ago, and one of the only rooms with heating. Afterwards we all ended up at a Hibachi place for lunch, which was also a whole new experience for the boys.

Speaking of new experiences, we quickly discovered that the change of scenery of the townhouse caused Adam to explore his surroundings a bit more, which included hopping out of his crib and running around the house in the morning. Since this isn’t really safe for him, we started evaluating our options. We hadn’t moved to a toddler bed in California yet, but it swiftly became clear that we’d have to do something. Unfortunately the way the room and door are set up, there isn’t actually a place to put a bed against a wall that doesn’t collide with a window, closet, or door. Infuriatingly, the spot where his crib lived was about 2 inches too small to put a twin bed in the same position, so some creativity was required. We ended up going to Ikea and getting a MINNEN extendable bed frame and associated spring mattress which takes twin sheets and in the medium state fits perfectly in his room. The boys enjoyed helping us assemble it, and as a bonus, I was able to move the crib down to Aaron’s little room so he could take that instead of the Pack N Play with mattress that he had been using, and rapidly outgrowing. The first few nights were a little rough, but I think they were both much happier with the final result.


There are a lot of birthdays in our family in December, so while my family was in town we invited MJ’s extended family over for a big five-person birthday party. We also got to spend time with MJ’s family on New Years Eve in a little house party that had kids everywhere! It’s so funny reflecting on how our extended family was child-free until Adam came along, and now it’s all so lively and chaotic at family gatherings, quite the change.

At the end of our trip the weather warmed and dried up quite a bit, allowing us to go to a local park with MJ’s step-sister and her son. It was nice to get a little more time in with them and somewhat make up for the first ten days of our trip when we were all sick.

The flight home was uneventful, though we did have concerns about storms hitting the bay area upon our return. Thankfully there were no delays, and while it’s still challenging, we are getting better at traveling with two young kids. A big backpack full of snacks and activities, plus their own headphones and phones loaded with downloaded content were all lifesavers.

If I’m honest, the trip had bright spots but it wasn’t the reset I was hoping for. I came home feeling more exhausted and worn out than before, and I was already quite tired coming off of Thanksgiving. But it was pretty much on track for 2022, with our oldest starting preschool it felt like we were sick with something or other all year. Plus, with the addition of a “bed project” it meant that are already disrupted plans for house projects while we were in town were further shifted, which was also disappointing.

Here’s to 2023 being healthier, or our least our immune systems being better a fighting off whatever comes along!

Filed under: family, kids, life, philadelphia
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