Category: Fitness

Wait for a Springtime Tide

Seasons change and so do I.  I’ve been trying to focus on springtime projects these days, and striking off a bunch of long-standing tasks from my todo list.  Last week I took the mustang into the shop for some maintenance, including an oil change and inspection.  The car is almost sixty years old, so it’s good to have some confidence that everything mechanical is in good shape when I drive it.  I also began and completed project dirt, which started with getting a cubic yard of topsoil delivered to my house.  I used it to fill in some low spots in my yard, mainly where there had been trees years before and now decayed remnants of the stumps and roots have left sunken and uneven areas.  The last step was to cover it with grass seed and start watering it.  We had an unusual heat wave last week, and it got up to ninety degrees three days in a row.  These happened to be the days I was out working in the yard shoveling dirt.  Ah well, at least once I was done it rained for a whole day, so the watering is off to a good start.  Next up: project patio!

I’ve been biking more and more.  Last week I did five days in a row agin.  My longer rides have been getting progressively long, the last one being thirteen miles, with a good amount of pulling up hills, and half of it on mountain biking trails.  Meanwhile I’ve added an extra loop to my short ride, brining it up to six miles.  The weather had been widely variable from day to day, so it’s not easy to figure out how to dress.  I’ve yet to get out to the rail trail this spring.  That’s flat and smooth, and I usually go between sixteen and twenty-four miles on it.  Last year I got up to thirty miles one time.  I also went up in weight on my weightlifting working a few weeks ago.  I’m now up to two hundred and two pounds on the bench press, and one hundred fifteen on the curls and other dumbbell exercises.  Hoping to go up again later this spring.

I’ve been putting alot of time into The Global Jukebox lately.  Plenty to do for the upcoming release of version 4.0.  Recently I’ve been focusing on making the wheel and the map work with alternative taxonomies for language and peoples in addition to the default taxonomy for people.  Nick did alot of foundation work for this: reading in the data and building the models in memory, and a first pass at the interactive UI stuff.  I thought it would be pretty quick to finish of the remaining functionality and fix a few minor bugs, but it turned out to be surprisingly deep.  I ended up doing a major refactoring across five classes.  I’m pretty much done the functionality, but still want to do some more foundational work. Now that I’ve come this far it’s become alot clearer what theright abstractions and design patterns are.

This last Sunday I went into the city to teach origami at OUSA Special Sessions at the American Museum of Natural History.  My class was Fun Spaceships, and included a bunch of intermediate level models from my book Air and Space Origami.  The class was small, and two of the students were really bright kids.  It was great because it was a fun and casual vibe, and I could give everyone enough attention if they needed it.  We ended up folding five models in two hours.  One of them was the Space Probe, which I haven’t folded in a long time and had forgotten what a fun model it is.  Jeannie and Michelle came too, and after the class we did a quick tour of the museum, hitting the dinosaurs, which are always amazing, a loop around the planetarium, and the halls of big dioramas of African and North American Mammals, and ending with the Whale Room. 

A-Hoppin’ an’ A-Boppin’

It’s been a busy few weeks.  Winter is over and one or twice a week we get a day nice enough to be hopeful that spring will be here any day now.  I’ve been going into the city alot recently.  The week after our trip to Chicago we went to a tribute concert to Billy Joel at Carnegie Hall.  I’d never been to Carnegie Hall before (even though I practice every day), so that was pretty cool.  The concert itself was great.  The band was Billy Joel’s backing band, and a series of guest artists sang a bunch of his hits and deep tracks, some doing pretty different interpretations.  Among the highlights were the singer who did River of Dreams on ukulele, and Natalie Merchant’s rendition of Allentown, which Michelle called “the saddest version ever”.

The week after that we saw Kurt Elling at Birdland, with the Future of Jazz big band.  The show was excellent, and afterwards we were talking to the bass player because his father was sitting next to us in the audience.  Kurt did Joco’s Three Views of a Secret and he remarked that he wasn’t really familiar with the song and it blew his mind.  I was thinking, you’re a jazz bassist in a big band and you don’t know the record Word of Mouth?  Kids today I tell you.

Only a couple days after that I went into the city for work, mainly to go to lunch and say goodbye to my friend Sukhi.  She was the product manager on our product Permission Slip, but CR is getting out of the privacy business, so she’s moving on.  The general vibe of the company now is fear and uncertainty, so it makes me wonder about the future of the Innovation Lab. 

Finally, Jeannie and I took a quick little trip to Boston for a special event for the Global Jukebox.  It was in induction ceremony for the Americana Roots and Folk Music Hall of Fame, and Alan Lomax was one of the honorees.  Anna accepted the award on his behalf, and got to invite a number of people as guest to the ceremony.  So we were part of her entourage.  I met Odysseus and his family, and some others of the Lomax clan, and Kiki and Robert were there too.  The event took place a beautiful old theatre.  There was a cocktail hour in the lobby with amazing bacon Old-fasioned’s.  The main event was a dinner with the tables set up on an enormous stage with the band turned around facing us. The house band that played a few songs after each honoree’s acceptance speech, with numerous guests.  All very good.  Anna mentioned the Global Jukebox in her speech and me by name, so I got to stand up and take a box.  Very kind of her.

Finally, my band Spacecats had a gig last Friday.  It was a good crowd and the music went over well, although we didn’t make much money.  One of the new songs we did was Joy Spring.  Another was a jazz interpretation of Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden.  This went over amazingly well.  Several people sitting way over at the bar came out to stand in front of the stage and record us with their phones.

Meanwhile, like I said we’ve had a few nice days.  Over the last two weekends I began the spring cycle of yardwork by raking up all the leaves and debris on the lawn and in the flowerbeds and under the hedges, and did a little but of trimming.  I also got the Mustang out on the road for the first time this season.  Happily it started right up, even after a brutally cold winter.  But now I need to get it into the shop for an oil change, a soft tire, and a bunch of other minor issues.  Ah well.  Maybe this is the year I’ll finally get it painted.

I’ve also been able to get out on my bike a bunch of times, maybe two or three days a week.  I’m over 20 rides and 120 miles for the year already.  I’m hoping start going pretty much every day soon.

Ah, spring!!!

Wintry Mix

After two weeks back at work it’s nice to have a day off.  Work seems to be going pretty well these days, despite a backdrop of uncertainty around the company as a whole.  A few old projects finishing up, and some new ones finally gaining traction.  I’m feeling quite good for the middle of winter compared to most years.

For the first week and a half or so of January the weather was mild and I even got out on my bike a half dozen times, braving withered crusts of iced-up snow on the streets.  Then it turned colder a few days ago it turned cold and we got several decent snowfalls. 

Our Spacecats gig went really well. The crowd was pretty good considering there was three or inches of snow the first half of the day and everyone had to shovel out.  The the music continues to advance and evolve.  We debuted six new songs, including several originals, and some of the more complicated songs we’ve done a few times continue to get tighter and more expressive.

Two of the new songs are compositions of mine.  I wanted to have some all-new original material as we prepare to head into the studio.  I looked thru my notebooks of ideas to see if anything sounded compelling enough to be worth working up, and a few of them leapt out.

One is a song I’ve titled Green Landings, which plays with the idea of a chord progression with inner voicings moving down by half steps while the bass stays on a pedal tone. To this I added some structure, a contrasting bridge, and on top of it all a jaunty melody.

The other one I’m calling Djinni’s Wish, and it’s based on a very old idea I had a long time ago.  The form of the song is a bolero, which is a kind of dance rhythm in 6/4 or 18/8 that has characteristics of both a march and a waltz, although I only recently learned this.  The melody is straightforward and fairly repetitive, and the harmony is in an exotic mode derived from the juxtaposition of the chords D major and G minor, and alot of the drama of the songs comes from the ebb and flow of the dynamics.  All I had to begin with is the statement of the them, so I decided to see if we could improvise over it and make it into jazz.  This was actually pretty successful, although it demands everyone playing and thinking in a different way.  I’m really happy and grateful to have a group of musicians who are open enough to want to try my ideas and advanced enough to make them sound good.

So we have enough material for a new record and then some.  Over the holidays I bought a new desktop to computer to eventually replace my venerable protools machine.  This will take some time to move into and get set up, but I proved the new drum mics and audio interface can work with my laptop and capture a good sound, so it’s time to move forward.

And since it was a long weekend with fresh snow, we went skiing for the first time this season, up at Catamount.  We went up for so-called night skiing, which actually begins in the afternoon.  On the drive up we listened to Jazz for Hell by Frank Zappa and Song X by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny.   The first few runs for me were not great since it was icy and it took a while for me get comfortable on my skis again.  Meanwhile Michelle bought a whole new ski setup this year, but was having trouble with her boots.  After a few runs I got back in the groove and Michelle got her thing sorted out.  Then it started to gently snow so suddenly conditions on the mountain were great.  I was happy to find that my legs are quite strong these days I can ski with confidence, control, speed, maneuverability and endurance.  On the way home we stopped for dinner at Four Brothers in Amenia.  Only problem is it snowed the whole way home, so it was slow and slippery, and at one point the road was closed (presumably because of an accident), so we had to detour on some country back roads.

A Long Winter’s Nap

We just finished a nice long winter holidays.  Jeannie and I had two full weeks off from work, and Michelle had off alot of those days too.  Nice to relax and wind down and let your mind go back to its natural shape without a whole day to day pressures.  And it’s a good thing too, I was getting pretty run down.

Of the course the holidays are busy in their own way.  We did lots of baking, and hosted first and engagement party for Lizzy and Josh, and then Christmas dinner with Mary and Lou and family.  On boxing day we went up to Buffalo and visited with my parents, Kathleen and all the kids, and Lizzy and Josh.  While we were up there we also got together with Larry and Jackie for an evening of dinner and drinks and catching up on things.  Apparently Larry is into improvising jazz on the vibes these days.  Good to know if I ever move back there and want to start a new jazz group.  He also gave me some tips to improve my drumming.  On New Year’s Eve we went out to visit Nick and Lisa and played a bunch of games and watched the ball drop.  Fun time.

This was one of the worst winter drives up and back in years.  It was freezing rain both ways, slippery and poor visibility.  Also, on the drive up, part of the exhaust system went kaput and started making an awful noise for the rest of the trip.

It was a very Lego Christmas in our house this year.  Everyone got legos, including all Kathleen’s kids.  Also, a few months ago I got a fancy lego castle as a spiff from some bonus points at work, the kind you have to spend on one of a handful of stores.  It was Schloss Neuschwanstein, the famous castle in the Bavarian Alps.  Part of the Architecture series, it’s a really big model, with several thousand pieces.  I started building it sometime after Thanksgiving and finished the last day of winter break.  I must say it looks really cool.  Next time I play with legos it will be attacked by spaceships and dinosaurs.

We thought of going skiing last Saturday, but there’s not enough snow yet in the places we go in the Catskills and Berkshires.  Our favorite mountain, Catamount, had only three lifts and a handful of trails open, less then half the mountain.  Ah well, let’s hope for snow. 

Meanwhile I got out on my bike twice already in the new year.  If the weather is above freezing and it’s not too windy I can bike comfortably.  So hopefully I can keep at it semi-regularly thru the winter.  I’m happy to say I’m back to a full weightlifting workout too, and feeling good, which is not always the case this time of year.

I also worked a lot on my forthcoming album Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter.  More on that next post.

Today we’re back to work and so far so good.

Rollin’ and Foldin’

The weather continues to get colder and darker and stormier.  Once it gets below forty degrees of so, biking gets more difficult, especially if it’s windy.  So now I’m down to biking every other day or so, and when I go I gotta bundle up.  A week ago I did my longest ride of the season, indeed my longest ride in quite a few years. Over twenty-eight miles in just a little over two hours.  I’m hoping I’ll get another long ride or two in before winter arrives, but if that’s my longest this year I’m satisfied.  The days are short and it’s dark alot, so next time I’ll go for speed to see how far I can go in ninety minutes.

Last Friday Jeannie and I went to see Branford Marsalis playing with his quartet at SUNY Purchase.  They have a very nice concert hall there, although lots of little things about it are weird, including the entrance to the venue being in a tunnel, and the lack of a center aisle of doors in back means the entrance to the hall from the lobby is a little made of side hallways.  Anyway the show was great.  Branford is one of my favorite sax players around today.  The piano player was Joey Calderazzo, who is amazing, and so were the rhythm section.  The mainly band played an interoperation of the Keith Jarret album Belonging and to to some really great places. 

Saturday we went up to Boston for the OrigaMIT convention.  The special guest was my friend John Montroll, who had never attended an OrigaMIT convention before, so that was a fun surprise.  I also met his sister and nephew, who is a professor of mathematics and computer science.  John gave a talk on his approach to origami design, which was very cool.  His style of delivery is pretty breezy and laid back, so if you’re not paying attention you’ll miss how deep what alot of what he has to say is.

I folded several new models for my exhibit.  I taught my Platypus, so I did a new rendition of that out of purple tissue foil; it came out very nice.  I also had a new version of my Lizard and Turtle, both folded out a sheet of beautiful hand-painted paper I bought in Venice, Italy when we were there a few years back.  The other model I’ve been working on is a Dimpled Dodecahedron.  I came up with a layout folded from a decagon that has polar symmetry.  Back in July at the OUSA convention John helped me refine the layout to make the 3-D folding phase more tractable.  It turns out to be a very difficult model to fold because as it accumulates layers inside that zigzag in strange ways and tend to push the model open like a budding flower.  So most of the work I’ve been doing has been to manage the layers and make them organized and flat to mitigate that tendency.  I got thru most of the southern hemisphere and am up to the lock at the south pole, where three tabs are supposed to go together in a pinwheel.  Unfortunately, I didn’t quite have the worked out in time for the convention.  I’m sort of in the Zeno’s paradox phase: every time I try, I get half the remaining distance to the finish line.

Turn Turn Turn

Another season of cold and darkness arrives.  Days growing shorter, nights growing colder.  Hallowe’en has come and gone, but at least I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving and the holidays.  Been trying to make the best of playing outside while there’s time.  Sunday was sunny and at least warm-ish, and we got up early since they changed the clocks.  I went for a 26 mile bike ride, the longest of the season so far, in two hours even.  Still hoping to get a 30 mile ride in this fall.  But I think ought to bring something to eat.  By the end of the ride I was starting to slow down but noticed I was also getting pretty hungry.

Last weekend Jeannie and I went for a quick mini-vacation getaway up to the Catskill mountains.  We rented a ski lodge cabin condo type place with a fireplace and a hot tub.  On Monday we went for a big hike up Mt. Windham. 1700 feet vertical and eight-mile round trip, in about five and a half hours.  Peaceful woody trail with fall colors on the trees.  Nice view at the top of the Mohawk River valley.  Ended up watching PBS travel channel at the end of the night.  Lots of shows on the Alps and Italy.  Now we want to go back.  Also visited Kathleen and the kids, hung out and played a bunch of games.

Last Saturday, the night before we left, Spacecats played another gig at the Green Growler.  This was our best on yet.  The band continues to get tighter and more spontaneous.  Good crowd too, everyone enjoyed it.  We played sixteen originals and eight covers or standards.  Highlights include two new songs from Rick, Underutilized and Where Has the Sun Gone?, as well as Son of the Sun continues to rise to new epic heights.  Some of the new covers include Lithium, which has a really interesting quirky chord progression, and our closer Giant Steps played as a samba.

Now we’re bringing a bunch more new tunes.  We’re planning to do a record this winter, and I have three or four partially written songs I’m trying to finish.  I brought in the first of these last week.  It’s working title is Cream of Confusion, which might or might not be better than it’s original title Downward Thing over Pedal.

Almost a year ago, last Thanksgiving, I needed to clear the dining room table of work-in-progress origami because we needed to use the dining room to have dinner.  I brought a bunch of stuff downstairs to my studio, but it turned out I had run out of space to put things away.  This lead to a huge project of turning out my closer and desk drawers and all the other storage space and throwing away alot of old useless things and organizing what was left.  I ended up getting a set of slide-out shelves to put into my Ikea storage closet so I could inventory and organize all my origami paper.  Well I finally got the project done, clearing the way for upgrading my recoding studio and plugging in the DAC for my drum mics so I can finally start recording with them.  Woo-hoo!

Been making lots of great progress on the Spellbound songs too, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post.

Meanwhile at work I completed my first major project since joining the experimental engineering group in the springtime.  I integrate cars brands knowledge base into AskCR, our AI chatbot for product recommendations and all things Consumer Reports.  Along the way I learned the whole technology stack, which, despite so many huge and obvious problems with the whole LLM AI thing, is pretty fascinating.  Up next I have several more integrations teed up including car videos and advocacy stuff.

And as for the Global Jukebox, the style refresh is nearing completion and looking really sharp.  Along the way I cleaned up and refactored alot of the css and UI code, clarifying and simplifying things.  This next release is going to be a big one, and we still have alot to do with new data sets and visualizations.  Nick has been working to integrate new taxonomies for languages and people in addition to the current geography ones.  He’s out having hip surgery right now, but hopefully he’ll be back in action soon.

The Marvelous Sauce

Summer is turning into fall quickly these days.  Soon it will be Hallowe’en and then the holidays and then the winter.  But for now the days are mainly sunny and pleasant, although they’ve already gotten much shorter.  Still another month or two left in biking season.

Last week I had a bit of a scare with my car, trouble with the transmission.  It’s an older car, from the year 2011 and with almost 140,000 miles on it.  So I was wondering if it would be worth it if I had to do an expensive transmission repair, or better to just replace it, and so I started doing some research on a replacement vehicle.  I’m looking for another three-row SUV and something that’s good in the winter and the snow.  As look would have it, my day job these days is adding a car brands dataframe to Consumer Reports’ conversational chatbot product, AskCR and improving its knowledge about cars overall.  I’m up to final testing, so I spent the bulk of my time last week asking questions about the kinds of cars I’m interested in.  The tool is actually quite good and I learned alot. I’ve pretty much narrowed it down to the Audi Q7, the Subaru Ascent, or the Volvo XC90, with a few other dark horse candidates in the running.  But then luckily it turned out my transmission trouble was just a leaky hose that was easily replaced.  So now I’m hoping to get another two or three years out of the car with no more major repairs, and I’ll revisit the question of replacing it next time it needs tires.

Jeannie and I just got back from a road trip up to Buffalo, putting another thousand miles on said car.  The motivating excuse was to attend the wedding of our friend Scott’s daughter Madeleine and her new husband Christian.  While we were there we spent some time helping out my parents, getting my bike worked on, visiting with Lizzy and doing some sightseeing. 

I had mentioned in a past post that my mum had lost her driver’s license last winter after getting in accident and subsequently having to take a mandatory road test on account of being old. She had been feeling rather down and anxious about the whole thing for some time.  But she persevered and re-applied for her permit, signed up to take and driving lesson and then re-take her road test.  This time she passed, on the day we were coming up.  This was a huge load lifted off of everyone’s mind and soul.  Her attitude immediately improved and in just a few days she’s most of the way back to her usual confident self again.  She’ll be able to get around and get things done for the foreseeable future, which is huge.  While we were there we also helped them get a new computer and a replacement television, and did a bunch of random tasks around the house.  My dad gave us a basketful of peppers from his garden.

We drove up Friday night after work and arrived pretty late.  But Saturday we had the whole day there.  In the afternoon Jeannie and I went up to the Albright-Knox art gallery, now called the AKG Gallery after the completion of a new wing named after its benefactor Mr. K.  I haven’t been there in many years and although it’s a world-class art museum, I had forgotten what a great modern collection they have.  (I spent alot of time there in collage when I was an art and design student.)  The new wing is an impressive piece of architecture and gives them alot more space.  Currently its upper floors house alot of newer stuff plus some stuff moved from the Knox hall.  The lower floors were closed for the setup of an upcoming exhibit that’s opening in another week or two.  Meanwhile, the Knox building has been reinvented with a semi-enclosed atrium, a really nice casual space.  I should mention my favorite painting there is called The Marvelous Sauce, which lent its name to a local band around the time I was living there and trying to be a musician.  After the art gallery we took a walk around Delaware Park and ended up at the old casino, which is now a restaurant called the Terrace, where we enjoyed some drinks on a really nice veranda overlooking the lake.  There were wedding parties all around the the gallery and park taking pictures.  Saturday night we took Lizzy and Josh out to dinner downtown.

We had brought our bikes up with us, and Sunday Jeannie and I went for a bike ride.  We had heard there was a new rail trail in Orchard Park, but only a mile or so of it had a surface good for biking.  The rest was rather stony and rough going, so we ended up zigzagging around the streets of the local subdivisions and country roads.  Lizzy came over for lunch at my parents house, and after that we were off to the wedding.  It was very nice, and the bride was beautiful and the groom seemed like a swell guy, and there was dancing and food and speeches and toasts and old friends, all in all a very good time.

Monday Jeannie and I both worked; we had brought our computers up with us.  For me Monday is my day of wall-to-wall meetings.  I did manage to drop of my bike at Bert’s Bikes, right across the street from where they’re building the Bills stadium, for its 90-day tune up and some other adjustments.  I’ve gone about 900 mile since I got that bike back in April.  I had them put new tires on them which are more standard light-duty off road tires than the ones it came with.  The original tires were kind of a radical hybrid design.  They had offroadish knobs and nubs along the side, with a strip of basically no tread right down the middle, which was supposed to help with smooth rolling on paved roads.  Unfortunately the strip became worn smooth and was prone to slipping on gravel, water or light trail conditions.  Hopefully the new tires are better balanced overall for the kind of terrain I ride on. 

Monday night we went to trivia with Lizzy and Josh and their friends Nora and Will, who are getting married in less than two weeks down here on Long Island.

Tuesday we worked again, and I took my bike out for a good long ride at lunchtime, and everything seems good.  We drove home Tuesday evening.  Jeannie took her 4pm meeting in the car so we could get a jump on the trip.

In other news, Spacecats has a gig coming up on October, and more in the offing, and we’re starting to plan the recording of our second album, which ought to happen sometime this winter.  So stay tuned for future announcements.

I Want to Ride My Bicycle

A quick update as we slide around the long backside of summer.  The weather has been great and I’ve been having a good summer for biking.  Last Friday I took an epic ride up to Scarsdale on a combination of roads and trail, over thirteen miles.  They have some nice houses on the shore of Lake Isle.  Sunday I took a ride for twenty-six miles, which is a long as a marathon.  It was my longest ride so far this summer, and I did it in an hour and fifty minutes.  My goal is to get up to thirty miles sometime this fall.  I’ve gone over 500 miles now this season, and the only counts the rides I’ve measured.  I often forget to turn on the app or to bring my phone, especially for the shorter rides.   I’m averaging 50 or more miles a week these days, usually six days a week. So I’m probably closer or 800 miles by now.  Hoping to hit a thousand before the end of the season.

Halfway Up and Halfway Down

Well the year is half over.  I guess I’ve done about half the things I wanted to this year.  I certainly got alot of stuff done, and there’s certainly still alot of stuff to do. 

One thing in the last half of June is finally stopped raining and went straight up to 100 degrees.  It’s been above ninety most days the last week and a half.  Last Saturday, right at the start of the heat wave, we had a barbecue and a party, but everyone stayed indoors until early evening when it was time to light the grill.  Luckily (or by good planning) we put in the front air conditioner the night before.  Kathleen and the kids came down, and so did Lizzy and Josh.  Nick and Lisa and Geo and Sara came out from Long Island, and a couple of Lizzy’s friends and their boyfriends turned up too.  Burgers, dogs, chicken, salads and desserts, beer and booze.  Built a fire once if got dark.  A great time.

Jeannie and I both had last Friday off, and it turned out to be the one cool day, so we got back into doing long bike rides.  I did my usual sixteen miles, and for the first time this season broke 14mph as my average speed to reach 14.1!  Probably because it was less crowded than on a weekend, so I didn’t have to slow down as often.  Overall I’ve been feeling good physically.  I don’t know if it’s because of the heat, or massive doses of vitamin D every time I go outside, but I’ll take it.  For the last year or so I’ve been having low-grade pain in the joints of my shoulders, elbows and fingers, and that’s suddenly gone away.  I think part of the reason is the handlebars on my new bike are better ergonomically.  Anyway, I’m back up to 115 lbs. on my free weight dumbbells and 196  on bench press.  Hoping to reach 120/200 by the end of the year.

Sunday we finally got a beach day after a couple times when the situation wasn’t right.  Jeannie and I took our bikes with us and Michelle came along but mostly worked on her tan.  We went to Robert Moses State Park on Fire Island.  We wanted to go East from the bridge and check out the inlet, but there was no way to get there by bike, only by car on the highway or walking several miles on the beach.  So we went to opposite way, past the lighthouse and biked around Kismet, a cute little beach town where they don’t have cars.  Fun and interesting perceptive.

Now we’re well into summer and trying to make our plans for July and August and beyond.  This weekend I made the schedule for the upcoming OUSA convention, using software I wrote with Robert Lang a few years back.  I think we pretty much have all the kinks worked out by now, and everything went smoothly.

Bungle in the Jungle

Been busy.  The rain continues.  I went for another long bike ride last weekend despite the rain.  This time I did 16 miles in an hour and 8 minutes, which is two minutes better than last week, and an average speed of 14 mph.  Also got around to trimming the neighbor’s willow tree that hangs over into our yard.  I swear that thing gets bigger every year.

Saturday I taught an Origami Connect event.  I taught my model Gladys the Platypus, which uses my hex base.  It went well and was alot of fun.  Also helping me get my head in gear for the upcoming OUSA convention in July, thinking about what to teach, what to exhibit, and try to get some new stuff finished.  On a related note, I’m down to my last two boxes of old origami to consolidate.

Got my performance review at work: “Exceeds expectations”.  Man, I really overshot the mark.  I was hoping to get laid off with a nice fat severance package so I can get an early start on retirement (just kidding!). In a way I’m a bit surprised because last fall when I was deep in my grief, it felt like there were lots of days when it was pretty hard to focus and function at all, let alone be all creative and innovative and super sharp and tech leadership-y.  On the other hand, I did kinda lean into work as something to do to keep me going.  Anyway, I guess that’s mostly behind me now.  And on the plus side, Data Rights Protocol 1.0 has shipped, and that was my main project since I started this job.  Then I successfully transitioned over to a new project on the Experimental Engineering group, and that’s going well so far.  Using AI software to write AI software, such irony!

Our D&D campaign has been very entertaining lately.  We’re playing The Isle of Dread, which an Expert D&D module from the 80’s that I’m running using 5th edition rules.  There’s alot of trekking thru the jungle on the way to central plateau, where there’s an ancient evil temple on an island in a lake in a crater of a dormant volcano.  Along the way the party befriend a tribe of flying monkeys and fought a next of evil, magic-using spiders, where they gained a cache or strange magic items.

More recently the party had to cross a river to get to the plateau, and chose a shallow swampy location.  Safy and Bart decided to hop across on a chain of small grassy patches sticking up out of the water.  Nyx flew across with Skrill on her broomstick as a passenger, left him on the northern shore, and returned to ferry the others.  I rolled a Hydra as the wandering monster encounter.  I didn’t realize it, but the 5th Edition Hydra is alot more powerful than the old version, and I feared the party might have met its match.  Midway on her way back, Nyx was attacked by a five-headed hydra, but she was able to fly away in the nick of time.  Combat ensued.  Skrill, alone on the far shore, was attacked and  almost immediately incapacitated.  The Hydra lost two of its heads but regenerated them next round.  The party rallied and cut off several more of its heads, although still more grew back. In the end, Aliana the sorceress found a Fireball spell on a scroll and used it to inflict massive damage and finish the beast off.

The party decided to try and ascend to the central plateau by crossing a rope bridge high over the gorge, when they were approached by three pteranodons, a kind of flying relative of the dinosaurs.  Bart charmed and befriended one, while Skrill attacked another.  The friendly one landed on the bridge, causing Luna, Aliana and Safy to loose their balance and get thrown over the side.  Ali and Safy hung on, but Luna plummeted.  Nyx threw her broomstick to Luna, who caught it and was able to fly away safely and avoid getting smashed up on the rocks far below.  Safy climbed back onto the bridge but Aliana remained hanging.  Two pteranodons attacked Skrill, while the 3rd one let Bart and the rabbit climb on its back.  Next round, one of the pteranodons attacked Ali, and she fell, but was saved by Luna, after casting magic missile.  Safy finished off one of the flying dinosaurs with some holy damage spell.  Now we’re at the bottom of the round, with one pteranadon flying away with Bart on its back and Nxy in its claws.  Luna and Ali are flying around on a broomstick.  Skrill has hooked the last remaining winged beast with his fishing rod and is attempting to reel it in.  Safy is hanging out on the rope bridge, looking cool for the moment.  I wonder how this will all end.