Apparently all my kids are naughty! In the online world, dealing with bullies and hate speech is constantly a topic. It’s very easy in an anonymized world to pop off to people in ways that you might not if you were in the same room. Quinton has shown us that for years, though he was pretty inventive about it. At one point, I think he had 5 or 6 different free email addresses that he would use to sign back up for services that he got banned from because he was bullying or harassing people. I never in my life thought that my demure, perfect little daughter would be up to the same shenanigans…

Jenny’s been looking at robot vacuum cleaners for awhile. Strangely, I’ve been against them. I’m not sure what it was about them, but I didn’t think they would be able to handle our floors. Our first floor has a mixture of wood and high pile carpet along with rugs and the like - I just figured a robot vacuum would struggle.

Then my brother bought one. Rocky, his robot’s name, is a fixture in his house now, and from what I can tell, is doing a serviceable job on his new hard floors! So I started to soften and do some research to see what the big deal was.

One of the best parts of being a parent, in my estimation, is watching my kids’ sense of humor develop. Early on, it’s at once fun and annoying to watch them try new things out and see what type of reaction they get. The annoying part comes with things like the constant use of the word “diarhea” that Mireille currently thinks is funny. The fun part, though, is seeing Ethan tell his grandmother, who had recently burst a blood vessel in her eye, that she could potentially remediate it with a quick trip to the Halloween Store.

Today we parted ways with our furry friends Zazu and Odin (or as Mireille would spell it, Oddainn - I don’t know why). They were fun little pets that kept me company while I worked with their squeals, foot falls, and very much so their smell…

Zazu joined us I think 5 years ago already. Quinton really wanted a pet - he wanted a dog. We convinced him that a guinea pig would be better. He was young enough at the time that he believed us! And for awhile, they were buddies.

Hair is really important to my daughter. This is something I learned early on in her life with us. When she came to us from Congo, she had extensions in her hair and, though she coudln’t say anything in English, she conveyed very clearly that she liked them. She wasn’t very happy when we took them out a few days later (well, she wasn’t very happy about anything, really).

Over the years, she has been very vocal about wanting long hair and the types of things she would do with it. Jenny has done wonders caring for Mireille’s hair, but there’s just not much you can do with hair as curly as hers to make it long like she wanted it!

It’s been a minute…

Today, Bryce introduced me to a friend of his that is planning an RV trip. Rather than just answering a bunch of questions, I pointed him to this blog, which caused me to go back and re-read it, which reminded me how much fun it was to have these things written down. So here we are.

Well, what’s happened… Oh, I got laid off! Yeah, the great startup experiment didn’t go the way I had hoped. I mean, I really enjoyed working there, and the pace of work was a lot of fun and all, but the downturn in the market along with the introduction of ChatGPT, as well as ALL of the tech companies laying people off, combined for the perfect storm to mean that I got to experience my very first layoff from the being layed off perspective. I have to say, not a fan. Anyway, after 87 interviews with more than 20 companies, I finally landed at Tempo Software and I couldn’t be happier. The product mix is really quite interesting to me - they deal in Agile planning and tracking tools, which are things that I really enjoy working with!

And, that’s a wrap! We managed to get out of there a little before 8:00 on Friday morning and traveled straight back to where we came from. The drive was gloriously boring and uneventful. We stopped one time to get food at a Burger King near Topeka, but other than that, it was a more or less straight shot west on 70. Strangely, the winds of Kansas seemed to switch direction in the week we were gone, so they were in our face the whole way back just like the trip there. Kansas is weird.

Two of the families had to leave on Friday morning, so it was just the Chovanecs and Gradys for Friday! Given the smaller group, we decided to do some excursions since logistics would be easier. Of course, we still couldn’t all fit in a single car… Damn big families!

After seeing off the other two families, and after some breakfast leftovers, we headed out towards Bridal Cave, a cave about 15 miles away. The drive was nice. Along the way we saw lots of interesting signs, including one for a bar called the “Glory Hole,” one for a mini-golf course called “Putt Pirates” who asked you to “put your balls in our puttholes,” and yet another one for a sausage place that bragged that “nobody beats our meat.” The realization came all at once that the Ozarks had a thing for double entendres. And they weren’t bad, honestly! Sadly we weren’t able to visit any of these classy establishments..

Thursday! The last full day for some as they were leaving for various weekend commitments. It also happened to be Jenny’s birthday! There was nothing much on the docket for Thursday, so you guessed it, we did a bit of swimming, drinking, and eating.

The week was punishingly hot and muggy for those of us that live in the high desert in Colorado, so we did take plenty of breaks in the very cold, air conditioned house to play games. Pool was a big hit! Quinton played tons of it, probably in no small part due to the fact that he didn’t have a phone! Foosball was also quite popular. We did play some Jenga, Scrabble, and other board games as well. There was no lack of downtime activities at this house.

Wednesday (I think, it started to get fuzzy in the middle there) was more of the same. We needed to get the boat back to Pirate Petes by 9:00 AM, so Micky, Jenny, and I took off around 7:30 to transist the 27 miles of water between our cabin and there. It was a lovely drive and we really didn’t see a boat to speak of! I think I had to deal with a wake one time when we passed a pontoon going the opposite direction.