Referring to any recent time period as the “best ever” feels a little weird, mostly because that pandemic thing is still, well, a thing. However, I think it’s warranted for me to call Summer 2021 as the best Summer of my life. Before this I definitely would have called Summer 2001 as the best ever because that’s when my Mom took me on a 3 week trip to Europe, which included a visit with our relatives in Italy, followed by a trip with her and Uncle Bob to Las Vegas for my 21st birthday. That will always be a really special memory for me, but everything that went down this Summer is much bigger than me and I still can’t believe how it has all worked out.
Obviously buying our new house was the biggest individual thing that happened this Summer, but some other things that really stand out to me include:
- My Mom and the kids so much regular time together
- Jessica and I having the most free time together since becoming parents
- New school for the kids
- More time hanging out with friends
- Swimming, swimming, swimming!
- Home improvement projects
It’s been such an incredible, life changing year, and it all came together so quickly. It was only 6 months ago that the idea of us moving to Nevada even became a thing, and as I write this, we’ve already been here for 3 months. It’s been a whirlwind but I’m proud of us for sticking with the plan and following through.
School update
As expected the kids are making friends at school, and some of them have turned out to be our neighbors, so we’re starting to meet more people. Now that the 100+ degree days are behind us, people are starting to get outside more and more. It’s weird to think of Summer as the season where you stay inside, but the rules are a bit skewed here in the desert.
Each of the kids really likes their teacher and classroom, but when I ask them about their day, they tend to respond about lunch, recess, and P.E. more than anything else. Regardless, we’ve been impressed with the school and it’s obvious that our kids are enjoying being around other kids again.
Visitors
One of the cool things about living in the Vegas area is that people are always coming here for quick vacations, so you never know who you’re going to get as a visitor. Just recently we’ve started getting visitors regularly; I had dinner last weekend with a friend from Microsoft and his wife, then Kallan made his first visit to Las Vegas with friends that weekend, so he came to the house on Monday and spent the day with us. This weekend Jessica has several friends in town for a birthday celebration, so she’s been out spending time with them, and we just found out we’re getting a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Martin next week. Hopefully we can get some more visits on the calendar soon.
Railing update
Now that our family room is complete, the railing project is the only one remaining. At this point the sanding is done (we finished that part a couple weeks ago), and we’re focused on installing all the metal bars. We started upstairs at the end next to our bedroom and worked down towards the entry of the house. There were 52 posts in the railing needing to be replaced, and as of today we are down to 13. The process became more complicated today though, because I’ve reached the section where the staircase begins to curve, and the downward angle of the railing becomes more severe.
The metal shoes that go at each end of the bar normally just need to be glued with epoxy, but now in addition to fabrication work on the bar to get it exactly the right length, I also have fabrication work needed on the top shoe. I’m basically boring the shoe out from the inside to give the bar some more room to maneuver. This makes it easier to align the shoe with the railing while still keeping the bar vertically straight.
Once these next 13 bars are done we can start focusing on what we’re going to do with staining and painting. Here’s a pic of how it was looking today.
MP Work Update
Back on August 30th I started working with my new team at Microsoft, which is the Teams Experimentation team. I’ve now survived three full weeks on the team and I’m really enjoying it. It’s also been challenging because it’s an area of software engineering that I’m not as familiar with. My background has always been based on web development, but the work I’m doing now is all about big data analysis, statistics, and machine learning.
There have been times where it’s felt overwhelming because there’s so much new stuff to learn, but I’m still glad I made the switch and feel like it’s definitely a better fit for me at this point in my career. This is a rapidly growing space in the tech industry so it’s a good area to build expertise, and I’m humbled to be a part of Teams development.
Coming soon
The kids are very excited to see Grandma and Grandpa next week, and overall we’re always happy to get visitors. We’ve got room so please, if you’re thinking about coming for a visit, do so. In the meantime, we’re very excited for Halloween, and already even have our costumes ready to go (thank you Nana). Ava’s 10th birthday is on Thanksgiving this year so it’s definitely a big one for our family. Hopefully I don’t screw anything up for Thanksgiving dinner…
Here’s a few recent pics.
