Kimberly KG

I’m now quite adept at postponing the process of making actual plans for things I want to do until they become impossible or prohibitively expensive. It’s gotten to a point where I rather want someone to celebrate with me every time I leave the house for something that isn’t mandatory. This wasn’t always the case and I don’t like it.

However, plans have finally been made. Matt and I will be going to New York in July and PyCon next month in California. Today, for no real reason, I drove myself to a small town at the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula.

This has all been so much more challenging than I would like, but I’m working on it. Sheesh.

When I asked for a dinner suggestion the person at the front desk of this hotel said, “There’s an Applebee’s and some fast food. This is a retirement community and everything shuts down early so everything else is closed.” Hmm. I managed to find a local cafe, but it turns out they were hosting karaoke. The age of the diners and singers suggested she was right about the retirement community comment. I’ve never seen sober people have so much fun doing karaoke in my life. One man had a train whistle and a harmonica and got the whole restaurant to join him in singing “City of New Orleans”. I’m glad I got out of my house today.

Having acclimated to the new medicine, my sleep schedule has gone back to normal. Today though, is rough.

This weekend was gloriously bright and beautiful but it’s so dark today. The temptation to crawl into bed until the sun comes back is strong.

Am I a bad person for turning on most of the lights?

At a worship service at the Pentagon on March 25, Hegseth asked God for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Wait, are they calling for violence against the Iranian citizens that were being gunned down for protesting for their own freedom? The ones Trump said he’d save? Or against the still in charge Islamic Regime that Trump is negotiating with?

I have an opinion of my own about who deserves no mercy.

Ally has been asking me to make her a sling bag for a long while. She’s particular about her tastes though and I didn’t want to make her a bag that she wouldn’t use. I finally asked her to choose a pattern from the many she had sent me and then we looked at what vinyl we could use from my stash before heading to the fabric store to buy the rest. We were both super excited about the fabrics she picked out. Unfortunately, I had to order the hardware and it didn’t get her until the day before she left. (I guess I still need to write about that, she’s back on the ship!)

You know that feeling when you want something to be perfect and you’re not sure you’re up to the task? I started panicking about every detail. What if the mix of fabrics is not right? What if I screw up the curves? What if what if what if?

It took me a lot longer to work through that and finish the bag than I would have liked.

However, it’s done and I’m so happy with how it turned out! Matt designed and cut the label on the laser cutter. It definitely elevates the whole project. The bag arrived safely in Georgia this week and Ally loves it! Mission success! Some of her shipmates would like one now too! Ha!

There was another factor (or two) that slowed me down. They are adorable, but so curious. Using a rotary cutter and having a cat leap from the ironing board to your shoulder is disconcerting. Being in the act of using a sewing machine with the needle bobbing up and down is not the best time to figure out you have a curious cat 2 inches from the needle.

The pattern was made by Kandou Patterns. The vinyl, zipper and hardware are products from Zipper Valley.

The doctor recommended I start taking some medication to help me feel better (less pain/anxiety). If sleeping all the time counts as feeling better, I guess it works.

I’m crossing my fingers that this gets better, but I’m struggling to keep my eyes open just writing this sentence.

For whatever reason, I usually upload these photos to my Shows collection and call it good, but I want to highlight the last two musicals I’ve seen.

The Notebook was included in the regular season tickets for Broadway in Portland and it is the favorite this year for both Matt and I. The way they handled the different timelines was really fun.

Les Misérables was not part of the regular season, but Ally and I both really wanted to see it. With Ally being out of town, I didn’t plan to get tickets. Then my neighbor asked if I was going after she had gotten a single ticket and I managed to buy a single ticket for the seat right next to her! I’m so glad! The actors, their voices, the sets, the lighting, the music, everything was amazing!

I was trying to pay attention to the meeting, I promise.

First there was one.

Then two.

Then three.

The bird left just as happy as it arrived.

A young man on my team at work shared recently that he was waiting to hear if his mom had cancer. Not surprisingly, the fear was evident in his face and his voice. Gratefully, the doctors gave her an “all clear” not too much later. While we talked, I couldn’t help but think about how young he looked. He IS young.

I was his age when I found out my mom had cancer. I didn’t feel young at the time; I very much felt like a fully grown adult who mostly had things figured out. I definitely didn’t. I have wished for more years with my mom a million or so times, but it hit me pretty hard this week how young I really was.

While celebrating my neighbor’s 7th birthday this weekend, with dog treats for the birthday girl and all the good boys and girls walking by and cake and rosé for the adults, this beautiful creature made an appearance.

I don’t usually post much about my work. I also haven’t been posting here as much as I’d like. Those two things are related.

I joined this company in September to manage a team of engineers. That team has a nice variety of experience levels, backgrounds, interests and skills. They cover the full stack and QA. It’s a good group of people. It is bigger than a 2 pizza team but not too bad. The most obvious challenge the team faces is timezones. We are spread from the west coast of North America to Bosnia. I do 1:1s with folks starting at 7 a.m. for me and team meetings at 8. The people outside of North America log off for the day when those are done. It was a struggle to get going with this schedule, but it’s been working. Living somewhere near the middle would be better. Oregon is not that.

In early November there was a plan to shuffle some folks around so I was expecting to add four more engineers to my team starting in January. This is now way more than a 2 pizza team, but still the same set of time zones.

In the middle of December I got an email announcing that I would be managing a team of engineers in India due to some broader org changes. On paper, this made sense. That team is responsible for a core capability and my other team was so far the only consumer.

You know where it doesn’t make sense? Timezones! Those lovely humans are thirteen and a half hours ahead of me most of the year. I can’t be the kind of manager I want to be for a group of people that the only time we can overlap is for a short window of time in the early morning or late at night.

I’m pushing for them to get a manager that lives a whole lot closer. I’m worried people might question my work ethic, but I’m willing to take that risk. I want them to get a manager that can help them grow just as much as I want my evenings back.

Watched: Project Hail Mary 🍿

Various clubs around the area, including the astronomy club, were offered tickets to an advanced screening of this movie. I was really excited to see this and I enjoyed it as much as I hoped I would.

Everyone was warned not to record any part of the movie and then people kept standing in the doorway with some little device that they used to scan people, presumably making sure no one was recording? That was a little weird. Separately, this was my first time going to a movie at the Lloyd Center Regal theater. I don’t know of another IMAX theater in Portland with seats that are so comfortable.

Watched: Kiki’s Delivery Service 🍿

Thanks to @manton for the pointer, we saw Kiki’s Delivery Service in 4K IMAX. I’ve seen the dubbed (non 4K IMAX) version a huge number of times, but we watched this one with subtitles. They extended some of the scenes and changed the nature of others a little bit, but it’s still just delightful. One of my favorites.

blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/0…

I’m not sure our tech future is working out as well as it could have.

One of the designers my software team works with opened his first PR on Friday. (AI was involved.)

Anyone want to guess what every single meeting I’ve had since has been about?

The U.S. is going to run Venezuela now?

I’m angry. I’m particularly angry that I expect everyone to grumble a little bit and then go back to pretending we’ll be able to vote these traitors out in the next election with no other action necessary.

Wordle 1,654 1/6*

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It finally happened.

Having firelight be the theme for day 3 of the 12 Days of Winter Wonder was convenient after the power went out at 1 a.m. and didn’t come back until 8 this evening.

This is a work in progress, but it looks cute with the candle light. Would I recommend stitching by candle light? I would not.

Day 2 of the 12 Days of Winter Wonder is cozy.

When Ally moved home earlier this year, she came with two cats. (She shares custody of them with her best friend.) Neptune more moved into my lap than into our home, however. While Neptune sleeps in my lap, his brother Beau is often snuggled near my feet under the blanket I drape over myself. When I think of “cozy”, I can’t help but think of the hours spent each day with fuzzballs keeping my warm.

I thought it might be fun to participate with the 12 Days of Winter Wonder photo challenge. Portland hasn’t been below freezing once this fall, so of course the first prompt would be frost.

This photo represents a happier part of a stressful winter day.

I’m not really one to post or talk about celebrities, but Rob Reiner’s death hits hard. I woke up still with a pit in my stomach. Seeing the nonsense the piece of shit in office wrote turns that grief into anger.

Watched: Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair 🍿

This is being shown in 70mm at the Hollywood theater in Portland, Oregon right now. This was a real treat, even with sitting in a theater seat for four and a half hours.