Weeknotes 23:25
August 13, 2023
Week of August 6–12
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Moving my son back to Murray State
The big event of the week was moving my son back to Murray State. I took off the whole week (love that unlimited PTO policy of LGND). We packed up on Monday (the first year I didn’t take a picture of our packed van) and then pulled out late Tuesday morning to head up to Kentucky.
We had a nice sunny day of travel. I listened to Eric Meyer and Estelle Weyl talk about the 5th edition of their book, CSS: The Definitive Guide on the ShopTalk Show podcast. I also listened to some CDs my wife left in the car from her recent road trip to Nashville.
We pulled into Murray around 3:00 PM CDT. We checked into the hotel and then visited the storage unit I rented for the summer to add some boxes to our load in the van. Then we stopped at Culver’s (my new favorite fast food place) and I got a mushroom and Swiss butter burger to go.
We hung out at the hotel for the rest of the afternoon and then enjoyed dinner at Don Sol Mexican Grill before retiring back to the hotel for the night. We had a great conversation at dinner about what my son was looking forward to in the upcoming school year. We also gratefully reflected on what he had gained from his summer internship.
We were a little bit concerned about the forecast as thunderstorms were predicted to start around the time that we were slotted to move him into his residence hall. We were excited when the forecast had been updated in the morning predicting that the rain would come later in the day. But an hour later, the forecast was updated again for the rain to start sooner.
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Armed with a tarp and a Walmart shopping cart, we were able to move him in over the course of two and a half hours. We managed to keep all of his stuff dry. I made several trips carrying items that were wrapped in garbage bags as my son waited his turn to use one of two elevators.
Everyone was in pretty good spirits despite the foul weather. It was a steady rain but never a torrential downpour. That came later after we had retrieved everything from the van and grabbed a late lunch. Slowly, my son’s room came back together to how it was three months ago when we were last here and packing it up.
We unpacked and waited out the rain to move in his refrigerator and shelving unit. About an hour later we got the break we were waiting for and we didn’t have to compete with anyone to use the elevator.
I finally got to the point where my exhaustion outweighed my desire to stay with him and help out. I was not looking forward to saying goodbye and it helped that we decided to meet up the next day before I left town. I gave him a big hug and left campus.
I stopped at Culver’s to get another mushroom and Swiss butter burger and a small turtle sundae. Then I retired to the hotel where I watched The Amazing Spiderman 2 and The Last Dance.
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I met up with my son on Thursday morning and we looked around the bookstore and ate lunch at Chick-Fil-A at the Curris Center. After we said our last goodbyes, I took a walk around campus before heading to Nashville to visit my daughter. I spent time praying for my son and for God’s blessing on his studies this year.
Nashville
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One of the blessings I have is that I can visit both of my kids that live away from home on the same trip. Nashville is about halfway between Chattanooga and Murray. I spent the night in Nashville on the way back from Murray so that I could enjoy some time with my daughter.
I met her at her school and got a tour of her classroom. Being a visual person, I like being able to visit these places and then visualize them later when I am thinking about both of them. After visiting her school, we went to dinner at Chili’s. She caught me up on her day and her first week of school. I was encouraged by how much support she has at her new school. It makes a big difference in dealing with all the other things that come with middle school.
After dinner, I got to be the dad by helping her by changing out a burned-out headlight and helping her set up a new printer. We had a really good conversation and I enjoyed getting to connect with her on a deeper level than I have in a while. We also had some goofy moments like we had many times while she was growing up in our home. I am really glad that we got to spend some quality time together (my primary love language).
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Articles I read
Taking time off this week afforded me more time to catch up on articles that I had saved in Pocket. Sitting around a hotel room in Murray the night before we moved in my son also gave me the space.
- Greenberg: Tim Anderson’s nightmare season takes a José Ramírez KO in Cleveland (The Athletic)
- Padres’ Joe Musgrove shut down for 3 weeks with shoulder inflammation: Who fills in? (The Athletic)
- Could Patrick Mahomes’ behind-the-back pass be unveiled this season? (The Athletic) – It wouldn’t surprise me if he did.
- Post by post. (Ethan Marcotte) – I was thinking about giving up on my idea to write a post about what the demise of Twitter has meant to me. But Ethan’s thoughts have inspired me to keep the idea in the hopper.
- Centerless (Eric Bailey) – This article was referenced in Ethan’s. Eric shares his thoughts on the loss of community.
- The Next Generation of Web Layouts (Zeldman)
- A Family Update for an Especially Noteworthy Week (Tim Challies)
- Relative times (Jeremy Keith)
- Vulnerable Visibility (Jason Beaird) – An interesting idea on increasing the visibility of your work.
- What Grows in the Local Church (Tim Challies)
- CSS And Accessibility: Inclusion Through User Choice (Smashing Magazine) – This is a great overview of tools we have in CSS to increase the accessibility of our work.
- Opportunity (Jeremy Keith)
- How to Package Multiple Custom Blocks Together and Curate the Editing Experience in WordPress – The latest tutorial on the WordPress Block Creator series I have been working through.
- A Deeply Human Experience You’ll Never Have on Your Couch (New York Times) – I love this reflection about the movie house experience. My kids would much rather see a movie on the first day because there is more chance of the audience getting into it and having this community experience.
- Why You Need More Silence in Your Life (Kevin Eikenberry) – I enjoyed some silence and journaled this afternoon reflecting on a couple of different things I have been thinking about over the past two weeks.
- United States of Abortion (Desiring God)
- Dot-com (History of the Web)
- When the wizards of the web met (History of the Web)
- The case against self-closing tags in HTML – I am convinced. But I will probably keep self-closing out of habit.
- A Short Treatise on Slavery (Gentle Reformation)
- How have you stayed motivated to work on the same thing in the same space? (Chris Coyier) – I confess there are days when I wonder how much longer I will “want” to do this (web development). But for the most part, I am still very motivated and really enjoy what I do. Plus, like Chris, I need to provide for my family and I have no idea what I would do instead.
- Tick TOC. (Ethan Marcotte) – Ethan shared the table of contents for his new book, You Deserve a Tech Union which releases this coming week.
- With Michael Lorenzen’s no-hitter, skateboard culture crosses over into MLB (The Athletic)
- Premier League roundtable: Will City win four in a row? Which teams should fear drop? Who’s heading back from Saudi Arabia? (The Athletic)
- My Coldest Night and Warmest Truth (Tim Challies) – Tim’s youngest daughter wrote an essay about the night of her brother’s death as a school assignment.
- Coding prototypes (Jeremy Keith)
- Automation (Jeremy Keith) – Thinking about tasks that learning models could do well.
- If Web Components are so great, why am I not using them? (Dave Rupert)
- The Art Of Looking Back: A Critical Reflection For Individual Contributors (Smashing Magazine) – I enjoyed this challenge to critically reflect on projects. I wish the author had spent a bit more time on the very last part of the article in practicing a daily reflection. I would have liked more tracks to run on in considering a daily reflection.
- Finding freedom from freedom – This fits well with what I have been reading in Making Sense of God by Timothy Keller.
What I watched
- The Last Dance (Netflix) – I finished this late on Saturday night.
- Sweet Magnolias (Netflix)
- Spiderman 3 (F/X) – I saw the first half of the movie at the hotel.
- Spiderman 2 (F/X) – I saw about 2/3 of the movie at the hotel and watched the other 1/3 on Disney+ when I got home on Friday.
- The Amazing Spiderman 2 (F/X) – I watched this at the hotel after a long day of helping my son move in on Wednesday.
- Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (TV at the hotel) – I watched about an hour of this movie after hanging out with my daughter in Nashville.
What I listened to
- Estelle & Eric on CSS The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition (Shop Talk Show #574)
- The Horse and His Boy (Focus on the Family Radio Theatre) – It has been way too long since I have listened to the Chronicles of Narnia in this dramatized performance. The Horse and His Boy is one, if not my favorite book in the series.
Books I am reading
- True to His Word
- Making Sense of God
- Athanasius of Alexandria: His Life and Impact (Early Church Fathers) – I started this one on Friday night.
What I played
- MLB The Show 23 (Rays) – I played two games on Sunday. I won the first one and lost the second one. I played about 6 innings of a game on Monday and decided to quit after being down 7-0. I was getting frustrated and decided it was best to turn it off.