Monday, July 29 2019

Dear Journal,

Yesterday was a day of driving. Sometime around the third or fourth hour, all of us started showing cracks in our composure. Our icecream had run out. We hit weekend Dells traffic. The car started to feel stuffy and sticky, and none of us felt like talking. But we made it home, and it felt so good to come into the house, close the door, and take a hot shower. Marissa climbed back into the car to go pick up the dogs, while Rodney and I stayed behind and tried to fit an entire weekend of R&R into just a few hours, and it felt like we got pretty close.

We got home a little later than we thought we would, and even though the plan was to talk to the market to pick up some food, it felt cruel to take Rodney on a long walk outside. He was settled in on the couch watching spider-man. So instead of running errands, we just ordered a pizza. I joined him on the couch and flipped through some comic books I loaned him from my shelf. He's way off from being able to understand them, but he likes looking at the pictures and trying to find cool Spider-Man poses.

Marissa got home with the dogs around 8:45. "The drive was fine - there was traffic, but I only screamed twice and cried once," she laughed. After letting Rodney play with the dogs for a few minutes, I put him to bed. Marissa and I ate some sliced up gouda on the couch and caught up on YouTube videos.

Aside from a stiff neck from tubing and a touch of sunburn on my legs, I'm feeling pretty good this morning. I'm ready to attack a new week. And this week is going to be a doozy. We're pressing on with our intern project at work, and this week will likely be fraught with blockers and last minute fixes. I'm also hoping to get started on my next computer build. I'm going to take apart the downstairs computer and mount the parts to Plexiglas in my room, so this week I hope to at least open it up to see what we're dealing with. I've also been chipping away at a side project that's still in pretty good shape. I'm glad I had the foresight to catch up on emails last Thursday before we left for Hayward.

Speaking of which, did you know that I still get emails? That might be the best part of this blog. I used to provide a section under each article for comments, but I've accidentally found that when you omit the comments, people reach out to you in other ways, and it's a lot more personal and substantive. Some weeks, I'll have a real, personal email thread ongoing between four or five people. It gives me a lot of joy. And if you're out there and you've been reading these updates, drop me a line and say hello! I'm still at alex@reckerfamily.com.

Time to get going. I really need to shave - at some point over the weekend my rugged beard became a negligent beard. Let's have a Monday. And just in case you're not all the way rested up from this weekend, take an hour today to just sit and eat some gouda.