The boys are really getting the hang of school. The little guy walks just down the street. The big guy rides his scooter nearly a mile. When he gets home, before whatever comes next, he writes a sentence about the school day in his journal. One after-school activity that’s started back up is weekly music lessons; he taught himself quite a lot since last time, and is thrilled to be back with his teacher. Another likely candidate (after trying it yesterday) is a place designed for kids to learn about programming. He’s done a few warmups to this, like Robot Turtles a few years ago, and it seems like something he could love — especially when he’s ready to move, probably soon, from visual analogues to actual textual code. And he’s expressed interest in soccer. That’s going to be plenty.
The chickens have gotten the hang of the German language school on Saturday mornings, too. Since we’re all there anyway, the availability of classes for adult learners has become compelling. College Yiddish and years of Duolingo have given me a good head start. The time has finally come for me to learn German with intention, fellow learners, and a teacher.
My job search continues. I did decently well on a four-hour technical interview a couple weeks back, but not well enough to be the one selected for the engineering role. Too bad: I’m sure I would have performed at a high level, raised the level of those around me, learned a lot, and enjoyed the job. All that’ll have to happen somewhere else — perhaps as an engineering manager (interview Tuesday), perhaps as a technical coach (interview tomorrow), perhaps something else. I’m beginning to hope that the picture will resolve soonish. In the meantime, my strict schedule of strafing social media will continue until someone hires me. The schedule (US/Eastern):
- Monday and Friday mornings: A conversation-starter from Agile in 3 Minutes
- Monday mornings and Thursday afternoons: Live-coding Open Source software
- Tuesday lunchtimes: Zoom office hours
- Wednesday middays: One of the many podcasts I’ve guested on
Music-wise, for the last several weeks in a row I’ve learned-well-enough a string of Medtner pieces. Hoping to extend the streak this week. I got to play a neighbor’s new used baby grand, smaller but far surer than my childhood piano. It was a remarkable little joy to do the same thing I’ve been doing and have entirely different sounds come out. When the time comes to replace what I’ve got, I hope to find something half as good. Until then, I’ll continue playing this centenarian Baldwin into the ground.
B needs to go be with her family in Germany for a bit. I’m thankful my folks are so close by.
What’s this?
It’s a
/now page.
nownownow.com
is a directory of people with /now pages.
I’m listed there.