Submarine Days

Busy times at work lately, but fortunately winding down at the end of the week into what I was calling “submarine days”, referring to the old observation that being in a submarine at wartime involves long stretches of calm punctuated by minutes of sheer terror. In other words, while we’re starting to look at the next thing, we’re waiting to see if there are any urgent, last-minute things to do for the previous thing, and whether there are isn’t really known until someone discovers it. And then there’s WWDC this coming week, which is always a pretty big change of pace from my usual life as a software developer.

In addition, now that the unusually late rains have finally wound down, we’re in the midst of a heat wave this weekend! Oh joy! Actually it wasn’t as bad today as I’d feared: Today we went to the Sunnyvale Art & Wine Festival with our friends Lisa & Michel and their daughter, and although it was warm, it wasn’t really uncomfortable. We even had lunch outside at Thai Basil! I closed up the house while we were gone (we don’t have air conditioning) but I’m not sure it was necessary. We’ve had worse heat waves than this. It looks like it’ll stay this warm (highs in the mid-80s) through Monday, and then start cooling off slowly.

Of course, that means my walk to the train to get up to the conference could be a little sticky on Tuesday.

Other than work, life has continued apace. Our tomato and cucumber plants in the back yard are growing now that the rain has gone and the sun has arrived. Weeds are trying to take over the front lawn, and I’ve been pulling them up a few at a time. (If that doesn’t work we may need to re-sod the lawn.) We got together with Subrata and Susan last night for dinner and games – their family has been sick it seems almost continuously for three months, so we haven’t seen them much other than me seeing them at gaming.

We’ve done a number of little things in recent weeks that I haven’t written about: Gone to a nearby park to throw a frisbee around (Debbi has gotten a lot better at throwing than when we started a couple of years ago), gone to the coast and ridden our bikes on the coast trail, and I’ve started biking in to work regularly (rain permitting).

But I haven’t had the time and energy (at least, not both at the same time) to write new entries lately. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into it in the next couple of weeks.