Life moves quickly – it’s been a month since our second child was born. I’m taking a two-month leave of absence and will sprinkle remaining “parental bonding” over the next month or two. Jan/Feb always feels like a general business hard reset although as a hardware program manager it usually falls near the beginning or end of usual 18+ month hardware program launch sprints.
At work, this year is a happy business snap to established roadmap progress with the US Department of Defense and the Primes I work with delivering hardware, as well as newly won separate multi-year contracts with regional US DoD centers of excellence for technology innovation/execution. I co-wrote our bid for the latter work and lead the PMO for the former.
In my personal life, it is happy reset to re-prioritize showing up for family and reflecting on my personal/professional goals, hobbies, and accomplishments. January 15th is always a sobering reminder of a motorcycle accident for me years ago, changing my life and that of my family.
Hobby interests of late are, as usual, entirely eclectic – I designed and built my first 3D printed camera, as well as modified and 3D printed/finished four more using a combination of 35/120 film magazines, Mamiya Press lenses and modular kit like shutters and lens mounts. I have bought my daughter about four different cameras and she was gifted a point and shoot 35mm camera by Shot On Film as well. Her favorite photography activities are 1) using my cumbersome-but-light Really Right Stuff pro tripod for taking Instax pictures of random parts of the house 2) going on photo walks of the neighborhood and 3) printing endless 4×6 photos from my phone on our Canon Selphy printer.
As to my own photography, I’ve continued collecting Minolta/adjacent equipment including a Minolta XK and a 35 model II I’ve refurbished. I still prefer shooting on the (superior) clone of my dad’s Minolta SRT-101 I use, which is a Minolta SR-T Super in black I found locally and serviced the shutter curtains on. In the interest of keeping up with a toddler and now a newborn, I converged a lot of extraneous gear into a large trade for a Sony A7Cii with some core functional (pro) lenses – F1.4 85mm GMii, F1.4 35mm GM, F2.8 24-70mm GMii, F2.8 70-200 GMii, and I still have an extra F2.8 24-70 GMi I got at a garage sale (!) for $100 that I started with. I still utilize a Yashica Mat 124-G TLR as my main medium format travel camera – big thanks to a former boss/mentor I followed from Chicago to Seattle. I also splurged as a result of that large trade on a Ricoh GRiii, and I’m in the midst of trying out a Toyo View 45-CX that I’ll 3D print a full frame (Sony A7Cii) body adapter on for stitching.
Gardening, landscaping, and houseplants is another focal area 🤦♂️for all my free time. Every two years I significantly push the long-term plan for our yard and garden. If you were to measure the weight of the boulders, stone, retaining wall, dirt, compost, chips, garbage, plants and other materials in and out of our yard it would start to rival the weight of our entire house. Each year the yard is much more functional for our family and guests, and each year I impose a new level of fastidious slope/grade requirements, or playground goals for the kids. My most significant other is absolutely thrilled with my time management in this area (narrator: “She was not”).
Our first child is at a point where her main areas of fun outside of the home professional sports of puzzles, singing, drawing and photography are spent in the pool, at the local gymnasium, and at the park in a kid’s soccer field. She’s excited to take the plunge into a pedal-powered bike this year, and loves both riding on my electric bike for errands/school/fun as well as riding together around the neighborhood on our respective steeds.
This year I’m hopeful to take her out to more sporting events that she likes (women’s basketball and hockey currently) and maybe some music shows. Working up taking her to dad’s basement DIY punk gigs all over the world