Weeknote #78 (20260322-20260328)

meta

I was off Wednesday-Friday of this week; TheWife had the whole week off. It was nice to be able to relax and work on some stuff around the house, and to pretty much completely disconnect from work.

did

  • My “promotion”/title change finally hit the Workday at work, so I could announce that I’m now an engineering manager instead of a developer. (insert “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” gif…)
  • RIP Tracy Kidder. Soul of a New Machine (rightly) gets a lot of love, but the first thing of his I read was House (in an American Studies elective in undergrad) and it deeply informed my notion of craft and building things
  • As I mentioned, I was off the latter half of the week. Wednesday I tried to work in the yard, but kept getting rained on and didn’t make much progress. It was kind of a frustrating day, really
  • Thursday, TheWife and I took a little day trip over to the coast, had some lunch, saw some sights, walked on some beach. It was good
  • Friday, I was back out in the yard, and made a lot more progress
  • Also Friday, we went to the Peak Harvest pairing dinner at Bryn Mawr, which was — as usual! — absolutely amazing
  • Saturday, we hit the market, skirted the No Kings protest, and generally chilled out
  • What might very well be my last academic publication ever hit bioRxiv this week

read

This review of some amazingly cool graph paper-based sketches, via Wednesday Wonders

listened

Some covers of The Waterboys “Whole of the Moon” — one by Bleachers, one by Fiona Apple. I’ve loved this song since I first heard it on a comp album, some time in the 90s, and both of these covers are amazing in totally different ways

watched

  • On Sunday, we watched the Timbers hold on for a single point, while a man down, in a match they really should have won
  • Finished our re-watch of Ted Lasso; now we need to figure out what’s next…

cooked

The kitchen was basically closed this week, due to the aforementioned vacations

photo

Seals sunning on the beach off Yaquina Head

One of the places we stopped on Friday was Yaquina Head, where we saw quite a few harbor seals lounging in the sun during low tide.