Welcome Home
Sometimes, you’re wrong. I was so wrong.
I thought the kitchen and the BNH would be a race to the finish, and then the world had other plans. After a routine pre-natal testing on the Thursday following my last post, the medical team decided that the 👶 needed to to come out and began the induction process. Dominic showed up eighteen hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, kicking and screaming, tracking on the very low end of the weight distribution, but an otherwise healthy and happy baby. Welcome to the world, petit Dom. You were born on Good Friday, during the Ramadan, on the beginning of Passover, and on tax day. Hopefully none of these are omens of how you’re going to turn out.
On the other hand, the contractors had to burn the midnight oil in order to meet even their most conservative deadlines — and even then, they failed. The refinishing of the floors only began on the very last day we had in our temporary AirBnb. Give it another 24 hours to cure and we were looking at a situation where we’d be temporarily with a new born and without a roof over our heads. We ended up negotiating with our host to extend the rental by another day, and then Molly went to spend a couple of nights at her mother’s in Santa Rosa. This created a narrow window of time for me to finish packing our stuff and hire movers to haul it back to our place.
As I’m typing this, we’re moved back and in the process of unpacking. The kitchen is ~done. Everything is set except for two appliances: the dishwasher and the hood. We can live without the latter but caring for a newborn without the former is an interesting challenge, especially since we can’t use the kitchen sink yet: the garbage disposal is “leaky” since the plug to the dishwasher is missing. Other than that, the kitchen looks swell. In spite of the layout being largely the same as our previous kitchen, the storage is organized slightly differently and we’ve spent the last two days trying to make it make sense. Not everything can fit in it and we’re resorting to tossing out some of our things.
I got myself a new, satisfying spice rack.
Dominic himself turns out to be quite a chill kid and easy to debug thus far: he’s either in need of milk, of a clean diaper, of a blanket, or just passing a fart. He’s been on a pretty intensive feeding schedule and his weight is finally tracking up and to the right, which is very nice. As he spends most of his time sleeping soundly, this has created some time for us to catch up on life a bit. I’ve spent some time sorting through my Google Drive, which had been left unorganized since forever. I’ve also been working on pictures from last year, which I should have published soon. I was also online and without distractions when I got a notification that Sony was about to open the queue for purchasing a PS5.
I’d been on the prowl for a console since the launch but never got lucky: in most cases, retailers are trying to tie the purchase to a subscription service, or a bundle that contains extra stuff I didn’t want. On the other hand, the grey market for PS5s has been thriving with scalpers. I’m still baffled that Sony doesn’t have a simple always-on global queue directly fed from the production line. This drop looked legit and as close as possible to what I was after: a direct sale from Sony, for either model of console, with no PSN subscription required. I entered the queue and, just 25 minutes later, I was poorer by $557. Three days later, the package was delivered and I was poorer by another $69, i.e. the price of a Horizon Forbidden West license.
Other memorable things from the last couple of weeks:
- JFK is car-free: it’s unbelievable that this was ever a controversial proposition. I think we’ll look back on this in 40 years with the same awe as we do the project to build a freeway on the Panhandle: how was this ever up for discussion? It’s great that people are starting to claw some ground back from cars — and that when they can’t nature does it for us. Shame on the supes that tried to map this proposal onto racial and social dividing lines: being a pedestrian or a cyclist is seen as a privilege of the elite, while leasing a gas guzzler is seen as a necessity for the poor? Gimme a break — we need more parks and fewer roads.
- Macron was reelected president of France, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. Marine Le Pen improved on her result from 2017 by just over 7%, which is exactly the percentage of votes that the other fascist candidate got in the first round. That’s right, France is so messed up right now that it’s got two distinct fascist parties. Macron spent his first term toying with the far right and I see no reason to rejoice over his victory: he’s missed the mark on most of everything he promised to deliver in 2017, and managed to antagonize a large fraction of the people, either against him or against each another.
- Ukraine continues to valiantly resist against the Russian invasion. More horrid stories of rapes and summary executions and blind bombings are coming out every day. Western democracies continue to do the absolute bare minimum, be it in military or economic terms: supplying arms and increasing sanctions, whatever the hell that means at this time. Rand Paul is on full display as a Russian asset
- Elon Musk bought Twitter. It’s supposedly in the name of democracy, or free speech or something like that. Though no one can predict what exactly lies ahead, I anticipate three things happening: an exodus of employees, a rise in valuation (Musk is, after all, a master speculator) and a return of the far right trolls and bots on the platform. I’m personally ready for a post-social internet and a return to blogs & RSS.