It's 9:45am on a cloudless Wednesday morning here in summertime California.

My light meter reads 14 lux pointed directly at the sky — about as much as the middle of the night (with local light pollution), or about 1/1000 as much as a normal morning. They tell me that the skies are this apocalyptic shade of red due to the smoke from the 16 major wildfires currently burning in California¹. Local news has plenty to say on the cause if you want to read up. Damn if it isn't disconcerting to live through, though.

What world did I …

Hello hypothetical readers; sorry for my absence, but I've spent the last weeks pretty well busy – as I foreshadowed in May, I have a son now!

It's been quite an adjustment. Isaac was born on August 7, 2020 after a very long¹ labor, but he's happy and healthy now. I got 3 weeks off of work, which I spent with my wife doing intensive child care. Let me tell you, I have a whole new respect for single parents. Caring for an infant with just the two of us (since none of our families or friends can visit or …

PSA for folks in the Bay Area: The University of California Botanical Garden has re-opened for limited, outdoor-only visits. Seems like a nice (and reasonably) safe place to go during the pandemic. It's July, so not much is in bloom, but it's still beautiful.

As every company I've ever bought a product from has been reminding me all morning, today is my birthday. 32 revolutions around the sun. Still ticking.

Obviously it's been a pretty busy year; most of that is in my post from last month. According to the accelerometer on my wrist, I've walked 2,904,398 steps in the last year¹ but I'm mostly still in the same place as I was. Probably by the time I hit 33 revolutions around the sun, it'll be a very different story. Still got that baby on the way (another ~6 weeks to …

Hey, so, it's been a while since I posted. I guess I just wanted to post and update. Let's see… what has happened since February 2020....

Family

Yeah, so, we're having a baby. If you didn't see that on other social media already. He's¹ due at the end of July².

Lockdown

As you and everyone else knows, the world has been in lockdown since March due to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID-19. My company sent us all on mandatory work-from-home on March 12th and I haven't been across the bridge into San Francisco since. Working from home …

After more than 10 years of avoiding it, I've finally rejoined the ranks of the private-car-owning bourgeois. $SPOUSE and I spent the past few weeks doing research and reading reviews, spent Saturday and Sunday test-driving a bunch of vehicles, and ended up buying a brand new Cosmic Blue¹ 2020 Honda Insight yesterday afternoon.