July 2023 – March 2024

June 7, 2025

It's been another long interval since my last one of these updates. Instead of trying to cover everything between July 2023 and now (June 2025), I'm going to chip away at the backlog.

July 2023

My sister stays with my wife and me for a few months starting in July. The three of us go to the SF Art Book Fair. It's a madhouse, lines stretch around the block. Another weekend we watch Barbie (fun but a sloppy script) in the theater with some friends.

It's a bike-heavy month. I finish my parts list for a bike build, and I order everything. I've heard other people accumulate parts over the course of many months; I don't have that kind of patience. I ride a lot while I wait for my parts to show up. I watch Crust Bikes Chapter IV, which is the coolest bicycle video I've ever seen, many times.

My wife and I stay with some friends in Calistoga. In the pool there, I read The Making of Prince of Persia in a day or two, and I like it. I also get a nasty sunburn.

Songs of the month: "High speed calm air tonight" by ML Buch (also my song of the year) and "Edo" by Maxime Denuc.

August 2023

I visit Las Vegas to see some friends who are there for a fighting game tournament. They stay in the Mandalay Bay where the event is; I stay in Excalibur where rooms are cheap. While my friends compete, I work and meet up with a colleague who happens to be in Vegas for a bachelorette party. On the last night, we all go to the dinner-and-jousting thing in Excalibur's basement; I'm impressed, the performers give it their all and put on a heck of a show.

Before I leave for the airport, I get lunch with two of my friends, people I've known since first and seventh grade respectively. We talk about plans to have kids and what our general timelines are.

I catch my flight back to SFO, and my wife picks me up from the airport. In her car in the parking garage, she tells me she's pregnant. We're both nervous and excited.

My wife and I go to Hopkins, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis for a wedding. I am totally charmed by the town – it has a nice main street, incredibly high-quality bike infrastructure, and a soon-to-be-operational light rail station. The wedding itself is lovely.

At the end of the month, my wife and I go to her first ultrasound.

September 2023

My wife and I finally go on our honeymoon to London and Dorchester. We stay in Tufnell Park in London, a quiet, family-friendly neighborhood that is exactly our pace. Her morning sickness is helped primarily by eating and walking; fortunately, there is plenty of opportunity to eat and walk in London.

Quick notes on the UK:

• The divide between public/private is much less stark than in the US. There are little pedestrian cut-throughs everywhere that would not be open in the US; people work on their laptops in sit-down restaurants; publicly-designated countryside paths take you through private land.
• London's buses have great ride quality, much better than any I've ridden in the US. The top levels give great views. Tourists would do well to ride the bus more than the Underground.
• Sometimes London feels more American than America; burgers, pizza, wings are everywhere.
• Road noise is significantly louder in the UK than the US despite lower prevailing speeds. I think this is a combination of generally rougher road surfaces and noisy motors.
• The Barbican is incredible. Photos don't do it justice – I think you need to visit to appreciate how carefully-designed it is. I particularly appreciate the sensitivity in their choice of materials, e.g., the wood-framed windows and doors.
• Unlike US buildings which are typically made to look good only when new or fastidiously maintained, much of London looks better with age and patina.

My wife and I celebrate 9 years together in Dorchester by walking to and touring Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's home. Another day we walk through the countryside to Thomas Hardy's Cottage where he was born. On our walk back to our hotel, we stop at the church where his heart is buried.

October 2023

October marks one year of marriage between my wife and me. We celebrate by going out to the same restaurant we held our wedding reception at.

We both catch up at work.

I ride the new bicycle a lot. I wake up early and ride from San Mateo down to Los Gatos and catch a train home from San Jose Diridon Station; it's my longest ride to date, but I stay comfortable.

Songs of the month: "Blue Car" by Joanne Robertson and "Jumping Seeds" by Otto Benson.

November 2023

When I ride the train to work, I'll see a random person, and I'll be struck by the realization that they're somebody's child, that their parents very likely wanted them as much as I want my own. The last time I had such visceral affection for strangers was when I was a child.

My wife and I go to Virginia to spend Thanksgiving with my family. I work out of my company's Washington, DC office, which is very nice and has a view of the Capitol building. I enjoy my commute on the Metro.

We're considering moving to the DC area to be closer to family. We feel out different areas: we walk down the Arlington Metro corridor from Ballston to Rosslyn with a friend, visit Capitol Hill (our favorite neighborhood we saw) and Navy Yard, walk from Old Town Alexandria to Potomac Yard, and explore Metro's Red Line from Dupont Circle to Friendship Heights.

My wife and I tell my extended family that we're expecting a child, and they're all very excited for us.

Song of the month: "Sacrificial Code I" by Kali Malone.

December 2023

I go with my wife to another ultrasound appointment, this time at a specialized facility. We see the baby – at this point, he really does look like a baby – moving and kicking an enormous amount. The images are clearer and more fluid than I expect.

The ultrasound technician operates the device with skill. She's doing everything – hitting buttons, typing, turning knobs – at speed. All this generates substantial visual feedback; images scroll, zoom, freeze, loop, get 3D overlays. I'm reminded of the scene from Blade Runner where Harrison Ford uses a computer to enhance an image, but this is much faster and more impressive.

At the end of the session, we get to see a 3D image of the baby's face. The printout is still on our fridge today.

We go to a park in Oakland for our friend's birthday party. She and her husband have a very cute toddler. It's perhaps a glimpse of our future – it seems nice.

My wife and I visit her family in Phoenix for Christmas. I do a good amount of mountain biking with her brother and father. We also visit Sun City, a census-designated place with around 40000 residents, only 0.4% of whom are under the age of 18. I find the place magnificent in its desolation. Its wide streets, uniform architecture, sparse vegetation, and general cleanliness make it surreal.

Songs of the month: "Lady Burning Sky" by Neutron 9000 and "Kendo" by Subsided.

January 2024

I buy a Brompton, a fancy folding bicycle, for commuting. Some months ago I was assigned to a different office farther from the train station, and now my commute takes too long, around an hour on each end. I do the math on how many hours I'd save in 6 months of ownership, and it pencils out very easily.

Trying to take advantage of our last few months alone together, my wife and I do more local trips. We stay at the Berkeley City Club and visit many of the bookstores in Berkeley.

My wife and I pick up a stroller and car seat combo from a Facebook Marketplace seller in the East Bay. So begins our accumulation of baby stuff.

I want to make sure that my cameras are in working order, so I run some rolls through my cameras and drop them at a local lab. They do a truly bad job: the medium format film and the scans are filthy. This is the straw that breaks the camel's back; I resolve to buy a digital camera.

Appointments ramp up. We're averaging 1 a week.

Songs of the month: "In Mind (Reload Remix - The 147 Take)" by Slowdive, Tom Middleton, Mark Pritchard and "Litanic Cloth Wrung" by Kali Malone.

February 2024

I ride up over the Golden Gate Bridge to Hawk Hill and Marin from San Mateo. I feel great until I'm on the Golden Gate Bridge on my way home, and I bonk hard. I limp my way to Fisherman's Wharf and eat an overpriced churro and corndog to recover.

By chance, I meet someone I follow on Instagram on the train. I don't actually know what he looks like beforehand, but just based on the conversation he's having, I have a feeling it's the same person. I butt in and find out that he is indeed who I thought. I tell him I've read his blog post I only ride my bike for aesthetics; he seems shocked to meet someone in real life who has read it. We run into each other a few more times in later months.

My wife and I go to a birthing class in San Francisco. It's OK. The instructor makes the whole thing sound scary. The infant CPR segment is excellent, though.

On a Monday evening, my parents tell me my grandfather isn't doing well. With my wife's encouragement, I make a flight for that night and arrive in Virginia on Tuesday morning. I spend the week at my grandparents' house with my parents and my dad's siblings and their kids. On the second or third day when he seems more lucid, I tell him that my wife and I are expecting a child. He seems very happy, and I think he says something about kids growing up fast. I'm grateful I get this moment with him. I return to California after a week.

Some time after I leave, my grandfather dies (obituary). I fly out for the funeral on the 29th.

Songs of the month: "Cup Noodle" by The Black Dog and "Stockholm" by Baba Stiltz. My wife and I quote lines from "Stockholm" to each other frequently, e.g., "HBO shows and older dudes".

March 2024

I start the month in Virginia for my grandfather's funeral. A close friend of my grandparents, now a Catholic cardinal, celebrates the funeral Mass. My cousins and I are the pallbearers. After Mass and the burial, there's a nice reception at a restaurant my grandfather frequented.

I return, and the next week my wife and I have family and friends over for a get-together, a not-baby-shower.

One evening after work, I install the car seat we bought in January. It's all feeling very real.

My wife and I take BART up to San Francisco so I can try some new glasses on. We get off BART and onto an absolutely packed bus to Pac Heights. It's not a pleasant ride. I stand next to a guy who's spilling coffee everywhere, and I really have to ask people to let my 36-week-pregnant wife sit down. On the way back, we decide not to ride the bus; instead, we take a Waymo. It's our first time riding in a driverless car, and it's great. It's a substantially better driver than the overwhelming majority of traffic in San Francisco, and it feels like science fiction. The Waymo drops us off in an alley near Civic Center BART. As we walk to the station, we see a bunch of police and police cars in an intersection. People are shouting and pointing at a stopped trolleybus. One policeman advances on the trolleybus with a shotgun; he evidently sees something because he racks his gun, points it, and starts yelling "hands! hands!". We walk the other direction and take a roundabout way to the BART station, catch a train back to San Bruno, and get our car from the parking garage. As we drive home, I am hit with overwhelming gratitude. I don't deserve to live this well. I'm trying to deserve it – I'm not trying my hardest, but I'm trying.

Songs of the month: "Junkie" by Urika's Bedroom, "Basic Needs" by Heathered Pearls and Nick Murphy.