Core Memories
It's yet another one of those times when I don't post for weeks at a time because I'm alternating between being busy and wrecked! So, jumping back:
Seattle was lovely! The winter weather was very nice. Only two days of our nine there were notably rainy, and overall it was very mild. We did some touristy things, spent a lot of time hanging out with DJ and Mishy (including a lovely New Year's celebration / early birthday celebration for Erica at their home), briefly met up with David and Kelcy (who were in from Portland, Oregon for New Year's), had dinner with Susan (one of Julie's Church Lab friends), took the kid for a swim in the hotel pool, and spent the entire time drinking good coffee. Good friends, good food, generally a wonderful, relaxing trip.
We did manage to get in a little business while we were there, too: Julie took the opportunity for some face-to-face meetings with Seattle-area biotech contacts, and I got out to Google Kirkland to meet with a team I'd collaborated with on some 20%-project work and to say hello to Mark Chang (one of my Olin profs who's now working at Google).
On the way back, Eris had a seat to herself on the plane for the first time. I was actually looking forward to being required to pay for the extra seat by that point, she's definitely getting quite a bit too big to be an infant in lap. (Having another seat to put carry-on bags under also means a lot in terms of legroom.)
After returning, I came down with a bad cold that had me working from home basically the entirety of last week.
On Thursday, Eris came down with a bad stomach bug. This one was her first real stomach bug as a toddler (the full waterworks, and a long night of not being able to keep down even water). Needless to say no one enjoyed the experience. Had to wipe down the whole house and do all the laundry. Fortunately, the worst of it seemed to be a 24-hour affair.
Friday through Monday was MIT Mystery Hunt, which I got to experience from the writing side this year, since my team, Death & Mayhem, won last year's hunt. I can't say I contributed as much as many members of my team (my contribution to the writing process was mostly limited to a bit of test-solving), but Julie did pull a lot of extra weight on childcare this weekend (including on her birthday) so I could help out some weekend-of. I helped run a couple of the interactions, but mostly I called phones (made 569 callbacks about puzzle answers over the long weekend).
This year's Hunt was themed after Pixar's Inside Out, putting hunters inside the mind of a student having an emotional crisis as they try to win the 2018 Health & Safety Hunt run by Team Life & Order. Teams solved layers of puzzles to get the five emotions back to HQ, recover four lost core memories, and complete the epic Health & Safety walkaround. 12 teams completed the hunt, led by last year's writing team, Setec Astronomy (whose tongue-and-cheek pledge to never write Hunt again seems to have not stuck for very long at all).
Overall, Hunt went amazingly well, the puzzles were great and it was a ton of fun. I'll post some links to that once they're up in the archive (presumably after the part of the team working on tech has had a few days to recover).
Today, I'm sick. Despite my best hygiene efforts, I'm down with whatever stomach bug Eris had. This seems to be a really bad winter, disease-wise.
Eristic improvements: Jumping in place unassisted, more intricate play with building toys (duplo, magnablocks, traintrack toys, and the like).
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwith.
comments are there.
Seattle was lovely! The winter weather was very nice. Only two days of our nine there were notably rainy, and overall it was very mild. We did some touristy things, spent a lot of time hanging out with DJ and Mishy (including a lovely New Year's celebration / early birthday celebration for Erica at their home), briefly met up with David and Kelcy (who were in from Portland, Oregon for New Year's), had dinner with Susan (one of Julie's Church Lab friends), took the kid for a swim in the hotel pool, and spent the entire time drinking good coffee. Good friends, good food, generally a wonderful, relaxing trip.
We did manage to get in a little business while we were there, too: Julie took the opportunity for some face-to-face meetings with Seattle-area biotech contacts, and I got out to Google Kirkland to meet with a team I'd collaborated with on some 20%-project work and to say hello to Mark Chang (one of my Olin profs who's now working at Google).
On the way back, Eris had a seat to herself on the plane for the first time. I was actually looking forward to being required to pay for the extra seat by that point, she's definitely getting quite a bit too big to be an infant in lap. (Having another seat to put carry-on bags under also means a lot in terms of legroom.)
After returning, I came down with a bad cold that had me working from home basically the entirety of last week.
On Thursday, Eris came down with a bad stomach bug. This one was her first real stomach bug as a toddler (the full waterworks, and a long night of not being able to keep down even water). Needless to say no one enjoyed the experience. Had to wipe down the whole house and do all the laundry. Fortunately, the worst of it seemed to be a 24-hour affair.
Friday through Monday was MIT Mystery Hunt, which I got to experience from the writing side this year, since my team, Death & Mayhem, won last year's hunt. I can't say I contributed as much as many members of my team (my contribution to the writing process was mostly limited to a bit of test-solving), but Julie did pull a lot of extra weight on childcare this weekend (including on her birthday) so I could help out some weekend-of. I helped run a couple of the interactions, but mostly I called phones (made 569 callbacks about puzzle answers over the long weekend).
This year's Hunt was themed after Pixar's Inside Out, putting hunters inside the mind of a student having an emotional crisis as they try to win the 2018 Health & Safety Hunt run by Team Life & Order. Teams solved layers of puzzles to get the five emotions back to HQ, recover four lost core memories, and complete the epic Health & Safety walkaround. 12 teams completed the hunt, led by last year's writing team, Setec Astronomy (whose tongue-and-cheek pledge to never write Hunt again seems to have not stuck for very long at all).
Overall, Hunt went amazingly well, the puzzles were great and it was a ton of fun. I'll post some links to that once they're up in the archive (presumably after the part of the team working on tech has had a few days to recover).
Today, I'm sick. Despite my best hygiene efforts, I'm down with whatever stomach bug Eris had. This seems to be a really bad winter, disease-wise.
Eristic improvements: Jumping in place unassisted, more intricate play with building toys (duplo, magnablocks, traintrack toys, and the like).
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwith.
comments are there.