Getting together with demure for lunch in about an hour and a half! Still unemployed :( But damn the bay area is gorgeous, so I'll take that consolation prize while not having a job.
i am moving to France for work (same company) and a new adventure/chapter of life in early september. don’t hesitate to reach out if you’ll be in the Toulouse area! also had lunch with c_hawkthorne !
It was also great getting lunch (and an up close and personal carillon show) with you!
Handed in my work stuff on Monday. I start the new gig Sept 4th so now I have a luxorious 5 weeks of freedom slash unemployment. Most of that time will be spent on a long list of DIY in and around the house, but I'm also making an effort to meet a bunch of friends and family who I haven't spoken to in a while. We also got solar yesterday! Five panels pointing east and five pointing west. The weather today was very cloudy and stormy, but they seem to be working great; I got a nice flat energy generation profile out of my panels which (at least today) matched my own energy profile quite well. The blue is all the energy I was able to directly use; green is generation, purple/pink is what I still needed to draw from the grid.
My two oldest kids are at sleep away camp for three weeks. Went ook our youngest to the Dolomites in Northern Italy. Photos cannot do this part of the world justice. The food and drink is amazing too. We had a blast hiking through the hills and lakes. Lago Di Braies is particularly breathtaking. We spent a couple of days in Munich and visited some family. Great city but if I didn’t have family there, not sure I’d return. While at our hotel in Munich we were contacted by our car insurance company stating our car was in an accident. I thought it was someone fishing. I called the local police to check our home and ensure our car was still there. They did. It was there and unscathed. The cop asked me to send him the accident report. I did. Turns out our license plate number is on the report. The cop at the scene mistook one number on the license. It took over an hour to figure it all out but in that hour I was convinced that somebody stole our car and got into an accident. It’s telling where your mind goes when something like this happens. I was initially convinced the insurance guy was trying to phish for our personal info. Then I started wondering who knew we were out of town and stole our car? Turns out a simple error. Crazy thing is the car in the accident was a similar model and color of the same car. All is well. I’m excited to get home and play some tennis!! I’m sufficiently obsessed. Just picked up my daughter from camp. These kids are having good lives. I’m proud of that. My son has one more week of camp. I miss him. Back to work on Monday. Looking forward to it. We are at the precipice of something cool.
On a mini vacation in nyc for a couple days with my wife. We try to get away from the kids for a few days a couple times per year. Good for everyone, and I can never really believe it when I meet so many parents who never leave their kids. Hired my first employee for my business. Recent PhD grad who I have high hopes for. Keep praying for me that the government will fork over some dollars or else her tenure may be a bit short! It’s cool to dream in the hypothetical about having a company, but it’s a whole other level when you suddenly commit to supporting someone’s livelihood. All good shit though. My hopes have never been higher than now.
Welcome to a new kind of stress and motivation unique to the entrepreneur. You’ve got this! Onward!
4 more months until 2024 and I’m ready to put this year behind me. Not out of exhaustion or annoyance (anymore), but just to have a nice bookend sooner than later. Posting these as a personal way to get this outta my mind for good. - 2 of the first 6 months had some combination of multiple guests and 2 extra pets staying with us. LEARNINGS: Accommodating guests is an art form… but while it can be a labor of love, sometimes it doesn’t have to be labor-intensive. The fact that people travel to be in your company (and/or home) doesn’t necessitate “showing them around town”. Sometimes, a comfy living space to rest and chat is good enough an activity. - 2 months were sharing a car while insurance refused to total the S/O’s - which only got done after I barked for 3 days straight, 2 rungs up the adjuster’s chain-of-command. LEARNINGS: ISO-9001 training rule #1, if it wasn’t documented, then it didn’t happen is very much applicable to every day life. Furthermore, persistance and assertiveness is palatable so long as you treat kindly as people as human beings. In fact, it can lend itself to them not shutting you down outright in spite of the situation. - Bonus points for a tornado tearing through on the 2nd night, allowing me to have the highest of moral grounds when one of us was stuck home without cell signal or power (and no car to escape (we’re fine, though)). LEARNINGS: Sometimes insurance adjusters will happen to know a good repair shop when you run out of collision repair center options… be very wary of those scenarios if you are in a rural area. But use your locality as a boon when talking with the collision repair center you are “assigned” to. Also, goddamn, the tornado alley really is shifting - Buying a new car LEARNINGS: Look, I love my 2022. My S/O loves her 2023. But if you can make it make sense, buying a model year 2019-2022 is just asking for parts and repairs issues due to supply chain right now.Not to mention recalls and bugs out the wah-zoo. - Replacing washing machine LEARNINGS: This year is sponsored by my new job. Getting paid weekly is the nuts. Made for a speedy ability to semi-comfortably pick up a new washing machine under a week of the old one breaking. Also, there are many washing machines out there without agitators now. The cons vastly out-weigh the pros by way of cleaning less while using more water. Last, front load washing machines break easier and faster. Don’t do it. - Joking last week we’ve replaced all main appliances for the house… 3 days before getting notified that the septic drain field (and the septic itself) need replacing. LEARNINGS: Keep my goddamn mouth shut. The price of septic tanks surprisingly has not budged much, if at all in the last decade. At least in Florida. Drainage fields release more “nutrient rich water” that can cause plants to grow faster near where the water exits. When the drainage field begins to fail, the foliage tends to grow even faster and with more variety in species. Related, a sign of a failing drainage field is bathroom drains seem to clog more for ‘no reason’. This year has been EXPENSIVE. And that’s leaving out that minor surgery before the car accident. Always check to be sure which bills you should expect to receive post-op. Don’t be afraid to call the number on the bill to negotiate the bill down or send it back to insurance. Finally, coconut cream and cream of coconut are entirely separate items with different shelf lifes. When making a piña colada for your beach getaway from life, use crushed ice in the blender alongside your cream of coconut, pineapple juice (not extract), and golden rum from a local distillery.