Kimberly KG

Seeing The Odyssey in 70 mm is well worth it.

I have been a mother for exactly half of my life as of today.

As you’d expect, this is easily the most impactful event shaping who I am and how I perceive the world. I am so grateful that I get to watch my children continue growing as lovely, considerate, amazing humans alongside the lovely, considerate, amazing human that made me a mother to begin with.

For the past two years, I’ve been coordinating the core tool classes at the local woodworking guild. In that time, we’ve certified somewhere close to 650 people to use our shop.

Depending on a lot of factors, we’ve found that some of those students really aren’t ready to use the core tools independently after the class. While there’s a lot that goes into that, I think the core issue is whether they have the confidence to come back to the shop SOON after completing the class so they can solidify what they’ve learned with a real project.

I have been working on a proposal to add a third session to the class where we give each student plans and wood for a simple project that they will then complete essentially independently in our shop. As much as possible, I want that third session to resemble one of our open sessions where members use our shop to work on projects of their own except with the benefit of knowing that everyone in the shop understands you’re at the beginning of your guild membership and is there for support.

I definitely did not expect it to take nearly a year to get alignment from all the necessary parties and work out all the details, but we’re finally trying this starting in August. We’re treating the first couple months as an experiment; we know we’ll learn a lot as we adjust to this new schedule.

Today, some of the instructors and regular class assistants got together to assemble the first batch of project kits. The number of times someone said, “This is really happening!” was pretty funny. I definitely said it myself more than once.

I took some photos to mark the occasion. (Some of the simple projects students will be making included.)

Watched: The Newsroom 🍿

We watched this series again recently, it’s just so good. Turns out people behaving with integrity is quite compelling.

I uploaded quite a few photos of the tall ships in the Sail 250 parade to a collection:

Besides the Lynx, these two were my favorite.

Italy’s Amerigo Vespucci

Germany’s Gorch Foch

We’re at the airport heading back to Oregon. Saying “I don’t want my vacation to end” doesn’t quite capture the emotion. This has been a good reminder of both who I am and how I’d like to be spending more of my time.

Getting away from home sometimes is good for you, apparently. Ha!

These ships really are something. Seeing them together seems like a trip back in time.

We had dinner with Ally and her shipmates this evening. Nice to get to know everyone just a little bit.

Well, this was incredible. Seeing Ally’s ship come into view was the most excited I’ve been in a long while. Look how beautiful she is!

The two closest pizza places close at 5 am and 6 am respectively. Hello Brooklyn.

Another sign I’m not at home: there are police everywhere.

This week, tall ships from around the world are meeting in New York harbor to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

www.popsci.com/science/t…

I’m excited to see all the ships, of course, but honestly getting to hug my daughter for the time in 5 months is what I’m looking forward to most.

This event was the driving factor in her decision to stay on the Lynx after she volunteered to help them sail down to Georgia last November.

“Welcome, but be good!”

Are you kidding me? We’re issuing passports with the phrase “Welcome, but be good”? To US citizens that use the document to leave the country?

This is all the stupid I can take.

Watched: Master of the Universe 🍿

I knew I wanted to see this the first time I saw the trailer. I spent a lot of time as a kid watching He-Man with my brother.

It was better than I expected, I appreciated that it laughed at itself.

Watched: Toy Story 5 🍿

I liked it.

I keep composing posts in my head but I can’t seem to sit in front of the computer any longer than necessary lately.

Life is generally pretty good though, gratefully.

Being at PyConUS makes me think I need to find more local tech meetups to attend. Talking with humans in real life about tech is rather fun.

I’m down in Long Beach this week for PyCon. It’s beautiful here. Walking around near the shore reminds me of living in San Diego but that feels like it happened about a million years ago.

I’m looking forward to the conference though. (Not being in my house is good too.)

The two young cats went to live with their other owner up in Washington today for an as yet undetermined amount of time.

Completing tasks will be easier but I’m sure going to miss them. No adorable creature warming my lap every time I sit down. No fuzz ball laying on my back looking over my shoulder while I do laundry or the dishes. No kitty stretching up to ask to be carried upstairs at bedtime.

Meh.

The Sandia mountains, as visible from Sandia Park, New Mexico. I love that mountain.

I took my first backyard nap of the year today. Life has been fairly somber the last week so a nap among the trees was welcome.

The temperature in Portland got up to 90 (it was 60 yesterday) but my backyard has enough trees and bamboo and such that it’s always a fair bit cooler.

I wrote that last post much later than I should have, but I tried to write it as I had intended. Unfortunately, this post involves the death of a young person. Please skip this if you want or need to.

As I mentioned, Ally has gotten really close to all her shipmates. We have been hearing all kinds of fun stories about them and were excited to meet them this summer. Unfortunately, one of them died early Sunday morning.

The whole time she’s been on the ship and throughout the month she was home, Ally has been telling fun stories about Troy. Troy knew pretty early in childhood that he wanted to be a pirate. I understand he was fourteen when he decided he wanted to work on the Lynx. He dressed as a pirate whether he was on the ship or not. This was his life. He appreciated good rum and good root beer. Ally said Troy would often interrupt her when they were working together to point out a fun bird or a cloud that looked like a dragon. Ally had us mail her tricorn hat to her so she could complete her own outfit to be able to go out dressed appropriately with him. He was well known and well loved on the island.

Troy was tragically hit by a car and killed early Sunday morning while walking back to the ship. The driver left the scene.

The sailing community and the local community have all rallied around the crew of the Lynx and are being so kind. This is unfortunately not the first time Ally has lost a close friend that was near her age. I’m so grateful she has lovely people to lean on through this.

Troy had so much whimsy, love and life left to give. The knowledge that he was living the life he dreamed of has helped them cope with his loss. There’s a lesson in there, I guess.

Last November, I wrote about Ally’s Fun Adventure where she was asked to help a tall ship off the east coast of the US with a transit and got on a plane the next day. I’ve alluded to this a couple times, but not shared what has happened since.

She originally volunteered for 2 weeks, which would cover the transit from Virginia down to Georgia and then another week or so with local sails near St. Simons Island. By the time they finished the transit and got to Georgia, she had been offered a full time job. This isn’t surprising; this happens pretty regularly when people get to know her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. The atmosphere on the Lynx was different than the Lady Washington and she had been working on plans of her own in Oregon when this all came about. She committed to staying for a month more which had her coming home just a couple days before Christmas. Over that month though, she got to know everyone and also learned that the Lynx would be participating in Sail 250.

Sail 250 is an event to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of America, with tall ships coming from around the world to participate. The Lynx will lead the Eagle into New York harbor on the 4th of July. The opportunity to see so many ships and meet so many fellow sailors is pretty exciting. Ally decided to go back to the ship after Christmas and committed to staying on through the summer season. We are super excited for her to have this experience. We’ll be flying out to New York to see her and the ships ourselves.

She left in early February. They have been doing a bunch of maintenance getting the ship ready for another season. She fixed the flag you’ll see in one of the photos, but she’s also doing a huge amount of sanding, painting, varnishing and oiling. It’s a lot of work but she’s been having a great time working and having fun adventures with the other sailors.

I should have written this post when I originally meant to, about the time she left Oregon.

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.