spacefem

last year I was talking about how tricky it is for our kid to get her assigned 20 hours of community service done every year. it's a school program. the kids have to complete hours for an actual non-profit organization, not just picking up random trash or babysitting their cousins. Someone from an organization has to sign for them.

this year it's going better because I finally realized something. when your child is assigned 20 hours of community service, you must accept the fact that YOU have been assigned 20 hours of community service.

so the question is not "what organizations will take a middle schooler for 20 hours?" because that answer will always be the thinnest book in the world.

the question is "what organizations can I volunteer at, and they'll let me bring my kid along?" much different question! it truly opens the door.

Some organizations require a kid to be some age and that's fine. habitat for humanity is doing CONSTRUCTION so you have to be 16. Makes sense. Avoid anything that sounds dangerous.

I feel like everybody thinks of feeding the homeless first, but I feel like those "constant" activities have a stream of reliable volunteers and they're not really looking to add anybody. So I started avoiding anything that looked like a steady stream of volunteer time in favor of events.

The WORST gig we tried to get into was the local animal shelter! Everybody wants to play with puppies, so they set up a volunteer gauntlet of training, prerequisites, and minimum commitments to scare away the weak at heart. I have no hard feelings towards them about this, it's a supply and demand issue and they're using it to their benefit, but we'd put in about 10 hours of system navigating and still weren't eligible for any actual service hours so we gave up.

On the other hand, a local film festival might need box movers for an afternoon and that can be you! Every year at a certain time they start spooling up the volunteer machine looking for anybody who can help. Festivals, races, contests... see what's going on in your town and find out how to jump in. I've also always said that events are my favorite because you work hard, and then the thing ends and you get an obvious break.

I still think that these kids are more a burden on their community than a service to it, but we're going to somehow get through this last year on the good side of the school administration, and I'm proud of that.

I used to keep a coin sorter at my desk and use it for exact change at the company cafeteria, but the cafeteria stopped taking cash this year! They used to give a discount FOR cash, but no more.

So I moved the coins to my car. I still like to have some cash around and use it for small things. Sometimes I run into places that don't take cards. Life is complicated.

Here are my uses for coins:

1) Pennies and nickels - these go into the coin well at Exploration Place. I'll bring a pocket full of coins, give my kids a bunch, have some for any other kid that passes by. It's one of those big circular funnels where the coins roll around and around and around in a show that is worth a LOT more than 5 cents of enjoyment. When I put nickels in that thing people thing I am RICH. I even put a quarter in once. I felt like Elvis.

2) Quarters - there's a car wash on west street that still takes quarters! One of those "wash the car yourself" things, with the special foamy brush and dial to turn the sprayer from soap to water? The others are all $5 swipe a card, but the west street one I can get my car washed for $2.

3) Other use for quarters - the ski ball game at Skate South. I don't know what's more fun, roller skating or 25 cent ski ball. We get free roller skating once a month through the company, so I kind of feel obligated to give them a few cents for ski ball.

4) Dimes - I decided that since dimes are the smallest, lightest coin, they can stay in my bag or wallet and be used to make change on the rare occasions that I'm using cash. Usually at the boba tea place that gives me a discount for cash, or charges a fee for cards, whatever your perspective. I get a half-sweet matcha latte with boba. I got crystal boba once and that was a real mistake because it blends in with the ice and when I thought I was done I dumped it out, and there was still boba left, I was sad about that. Black boba is easier to hunt down and spot.

I have 3D printed coin organizers, one in my car and one in my office, to help me channel all the coins towards their designated purposes.

I miss this blog. I don't type in here enough. I still think about it! I think about entries all the time, I think IN "how would I explain this to dw", etc... but then for some reason it goes away and I don't type. I'm too involved in other websites.

The inability to schedule posts out on here is a really buzz kill. I thrived on lj doing that. I'd write like ten entries in a spurt, schedule them out every other day, then it wasn't such a big deal to come back after a break because I never really left! I was robot-posting. It was great.

Topics I should record, for the sake of recording them:

- flying, both recreationally and the instrument training
- work. new role since march.
- kids are doing better
- travel.
- work travel, university recruiting
- finances
- pets
- makerspace projects

My sister and I took our 3rd "sister trip". This was an idea we had a few years back, to go someplace every year to get away from the kids around mother's day. we went to denver, then after covid it was Austin. This year I picked boston because it's listed as a good place for public transportation, and jetblue flies out of KC for pretty cheap. hotels were very expensive but I used points for half our trip to alleviate that some.

first I asked chat GPT what we should do and got some ideas, it'll give you an itinerary for a three day trip. I asked some friends to help supplement.

day 1 - arrived around 5pm. We were staying at the airport hyatt because it was close to the logan airport, I figured it'd be easy to get to subways. it was not! there was an airport bus that'd pick you up sometimes and take you ALL AROUND EVERY TERMINAL before you got to the subway station and that sucked. the hotel had a shuttle driver you could use, we'd tip him $5 and he was sometimes out on a run. but it was definitely not a "jump out and you're in the world" kind of situation. the ferry from there cost $9 to get across the water but only went a couple times a day, there's a "water taxi" for $15. we were just far from everything. but we had a nice evening at a restaurant by the harbor, suffered terrible service but eventually ate our first lobster rolls and walked around downtown.

day 2 - Faneuil Hall, even better lobster rolls for lunch at the Bell In Hand Tavern near the boston public market, walked to south boston for a tour of the boston children's museum since my sister is in the industry. we hit up the boston contemporary museum of art. it has a great gift shop but it's an oddly huge building with only one floor of a few small exhibits, I though the ticket was too expensive for just a few rooms. we left and got the last sam adams brewery tour. sam adams makes most of their beer elsewhere now so this operation is small and historical, there was a fantastic tour guide who was engaging and entertaining and the highlight of the visit, because there's not much there, no bottling facilities which are always my favorite thing to see on a brewery tour. We were in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood and there was an Ethiopian Cafe - something we love but don't have in our home towns, there's no ethiopian restaurants in wichita or topeka which is sad because it's SO GOOD and this place was amazing!

day 3 - we split up, we always like to have an afternoon to go our separate ways. she gets a spa appointment. I went to the bunker hill monument - which was a hell of a walk from a subway station and uphill. We ended up getting like 20,000 steps a day on this trip. Then I walked down to the USS constitution which was REALLY cool. I went through it too fast to catch a ferry back to downtown boston for lunch. the ferry from there was $4 and had a rooftop deck, it was my favorite boat by far. once downtown I went back to the public market area for lunch and had clam chowder at an irish pub. I'd wanted it the whole time but my sister is lactose intolerant so I didn't want to flaunt it with her too much. then we met up at the harvard art museums because they were having a free day. harvard was quite a campus but it's so full of tourists, I can't imagine going to school there. I wasn't allowed in the library, tourists aren't allowed to just check out harvard buildings, that's okay I understand. but the museum was such an impressive collection. we went to Newberry Street for a trendy dinner, then to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because they were advertising Adult Lego Night. It was $27 and lego night was a bust - a huge line to sit at a table for five minutes, build a small guided lego ocean wave, and move on. I thought it'd be a chance to sit around and just play with lego. We checked out the museum collections instead and that was definitely worth it because again, it was a huge collection I could have spent a day with.

that's the museum mystery I have from boston - how could the contemporary museum just be a few rooms, when there's the harvard and fine arts museums in town that are 10x the size charging just a little more admission?

boston advice: research museum free days. we really lucked out with that harvard thing.

day 4: we love science so we went to the boston science museums and watched a planetarium show about going to mars. honestly, we were trying to get out of the way a bit, stop just walking streets and stay in the same building for a few hours to relax. it was a good choice. we returned to back bay/newberry street for dinner at an italian sidewalk cafe. went to boston common park and saw a million prom kids all dressed up having photos, then called our parents from outside the cheers bar so they could facetime and see where we were but we felt no need to go into cheers for a drink, it's tiny and loud. instead I googled some facebook events and found this place lily's that had a karaoke night on fridays and that was an absolute blast, mostly women in a bar singing 90s songs and I got a few turns. we bought a drink for the best singer and she was so appreciative, my sister says women don't buy each other drinks often enough.

got back to kc on jetblue the next day.

this is definitely one of the best cities i've been to! the locals complain about the traffic and random subways going out of service, but we got where we needed to. my sister did try to take a lyft to meet me at harvard after our split up day, it was slower than my subway journeys, she was stuck for an hour! so don't drive, don't park, just stay close and have good walking shoes.

Why do people end emails with "let me know if you have any more questions!"

Like... dude. I will. It's email. I will hit reply, I know how to do that.

I especially love the people who close with that when there will DEFINITELY BE QUESTIONS, like this kind of exchange:

Me: We're going to need 20 feet of material by the end of May, is that possible?

Person: I'll have 3 by next Friday. Let me know if you have any more questions!

I guess with that one "more questions" is a bit of a stretch, since it's not really MORE questions when I'm just going to re-ask my first one. But it's always the people who send the weirdest incomplete responses who love to sign off their emails with "let me know if you have any more questions"

Dear Spacefem, yes we have a few shirts left but we're out of some sizes. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Dear Spacefem, there's a certain door on one side of the building that you should use to exit in case of emergency. Don't use the other doors. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Dear Spacefem, Hope you're doing well. We found a child in Kentucky claiming to be yours. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Yup, I have now been to south america. three countries in one week, lots of late work nights but I can say I've been there!

These cities were HUGE. I was taken off guard, I just don't think about it much. To put these numbers in perspective... the top two cities in the US are NYC (8M) and LA (4M).

Bogota Colombia (population: 7M) - It's a gorgeous city, covered in art, my favorite graffiti. But I didn't sleep well. It's at 8000 feet! Altitude-induced insomnia is apparently a thing. We took a Funicular up to to the gorgeous Sanctuary of Monserrate and had dinner at a restaurant on top of the mountain overlooking the city. I wouldn't want to drive there, motorcyclists are zooming in between cars and tucking in front of you at every light.

Santiago Chile (population: 5.6M) - We were only there for one night, barely got our feet under us and couldn't see the mountains because they're having terrible issues with wildfires right now. The city was hazy. Customs took forever. But the wine and sea bass was still excellent.

Sao Paulo Brazil (population: 12M) - The WORST traffic, it took hours to get to the airport. But we were prepared and warned! Houses are either gorgeous, or crowded into flavelas, brick and corrugated metal structures that look like they were built by residents. We drank caipirinhas - lots of limes and sugar, and ate so much meat and cheese. Buildings have helicopter pads so people can just skip over the traffic. There were crowded trains. Every business meeting had fruit and orange juice in addition to coffee and water and cake, everyone was so hospitable. Their airport was easy to get in and out of once we dealt with the roads.

Most trips I take, I love exploring public transportation, but I didn't have time on this one.

I'd love to take my family to south america now. My daughter is learning spanish, so if we went to a spanish-speaking country we could all warm up on it and learn some more. Unlike Europe, it's a 5 hour flight across the Caribbean. It's a foreign enough experience that I feel like we'd be feeling something really different. I felt safe. There's this reputation about it, but every country is different and everywhere we went we were fine. I would have felt great walking around by myself outside our hotels if I'd had the time.

The point of our trip was visiting airport maintenance shops. south america LOVES airplanes. We met the coolest, most excited people, and even when I see airplanes every day it never gets old to meet someone new and hear them say "let's see the hangar!"

It's nice to be back, but this was one of my favorite work trips ever.

January's weather has been MUCH better than December!

I have a new instructor and we've gone on two flights now. The first one I was so nervous I was shocked if ANYTHING went okay... but some things went okay. I can remember how to do steep turns and stalls and slow flying and almost landed by myself, with a little help from the instructor on some post-touchdown handling. Rough but I got it down.

The second flight, I really DID land by myself. I had a few rough landings but it's all coming back to me.

I need to demonstrate the ability to properly manage what airspeed and altitude in an approach even with engine out. my instructor would tell me to pull power to idle and land from where we were at, and I say great but then didn't get to the right speed for best glide distance quite fast enough, added flaps too soon, got too low, had to add power to make the runway. this is not deal. plus we still have some other takeoffs to demonstrate like short field, soft field. so training continues.

I'm technically working on a biennial flight review - the check out that every pilot needs from an instructor, every two years, in order to legally fly. our pilot's licenses never expire, but since I haven't flown since 2015 I am WAY outside that biennial, and since I need practice it's going to take me a few flights to demonstrate the things I need to demonstrate.

technically a biennial isn't a thing you "pass" or "fail". but I heard a rule of thumb that for every year you've been away from the airplane, you need 1-2 hours of practicing to get it all back. I can see that. 7 years. I've now logged 2.7 hours. I can see that it won't take me 10 more flights, but I'm in no hurry either.

I also finished instrument ground school and am on to practice tests. I'll have to do another post on what all that entails... it's been fascinating, learning to read approach procedures and enroute charts like big airplanes use.

I'm happy that a lot of people left their christmas lights up for me to fly over this month. I fly at the last bit of daylight, land shortly after sunset, and it's been beautiful.

Merry Christmas dreamwidth friends!

We've had a relaxing week. We had family christmas last weekend at mom's, with my sister and her family. This week I took Thursday-Friday off, traded it for working next Thursday-Friday and covering with the team over break. Thursday was freezing with horrible weather so we didn't leave the house, but Friday we went to the mall for our annual people watch-a-thon. Barely bought anything, but we were there. Josie got some running shoes so she can get in shape for track season, and Olive got a magic wand from claires she loved that we'd put in her stocking.

On friday night, marc and I went roller skating. there's a place here that does adult skate night starting at 9pm on fridays. last time we went skating as a family the kids were kind of punks about it, and I joked with marc that we should just ditch them so I can do as many laps as I want. We did. it was great. I'm learning to skate backwards.

For Christmas the girls got Tamagotchi keychains. Olive got a shark puppet and a Barbie she wanted, Josie got a calligraphy set and a new hoodie.

we had marc's dad over for christmas dinner and marc made a nice roast with carrots and potatoes and green beans. they made sopapillas together.

tomorrow I have a flying lesson, weather pending. I've cancelled everything in december because it's been absolute garbage. either completely foggy, like 1/8 mile visibility, or 40 knot winds, I can't get anything reasonable in between. I am a non-current private pilot and at the rate we're going, that is what I will always be.

Last year I read "The Art of Showing Up: On Friendship in the Age of Flakiness" with hopes that it would teach me good things to say to friends who are going through hard times. I never know what to say. I wasn't sure if I liked the book or not. HALF of it was about showing up for one's self, setting boundaries etc and I didn't think I needed help with that. There's one later chapter that really breaks down a bunch of situations, along with how to respond for each, and it was great. Loss of a loved one got two pages. I'd hoped it would have a chapter.

Anyway after the week I've had I skimmed it again and I'm really not sure I agree with some of the advice.

The book says

1) Send something besides flowers - disagree, flowers were lovely

2) Do send a card - agree. I'm not normally a card person but I appreciated cards last week.

2) Ask "how can I support you?" I disagree, questions were stressful, especially in text messages. Even "how are you doing" made me want to just say "fine" and get on with it because the answer was too complicated to text, and it frustrated me because it's like... they're doing no work and I'm doing work. I didn't want to think up some creative thing for them to do. I felt like they were just asking to ask. I was tired.

3) Don't ask how they died - but I was fine with these questions.

4) Don't share your own experiences - disagree, sharing helped. It says to avoid the "I understand what you're going through" and that part I agree with because every experience is different, but hearing "I had a relative in the ICU" or "I sat with a friend in hospice" got us talking and it was really good. The best day I had was one where I went into the office and went to an in-person meeting and a couple guys just hung out with me and we chatted until we lost the conference room. They'd dealt with people in hospitals and all the emotional/logistical terribleness it brings.

5) Go to the funeral - eh

I might be weird because I am REALLY used to talking on the phone, I work in customer service. So the most helpful thing for me was for people to talk, send a text like "hey I'm not doing a damn thing until 2pm today want to talk on the phone?"

I realize everybody is different, and there's some buzz about how neurodivergent types are more likely to embrace "experience sharing" than others, or is that an everybody thing? I do not consider myself neurodivergent but the theme comes up in my world sometimes. I'm sure there's no one right answer. But as someone who'd like advice navigating these situations, I was hoping the book would have SOME right answers. It had a few.

Due to some unfortunate travel delays I spent one week in Australia instead of 9 days. But it was a great trip!

As foreign countries go, I have to say Australia didn't feel very foreign. Maybe it's because I was on the east coast and it's touristy areas. I spent two days in sydney, four in gold coast, last day in brisbane.

I learned to drive on the opposite side of the road. not that huge a deal, once I got the hang of just following other cars! I messed up and turned on the windshield wipers the first 100 times I had to signal, and roundabouts can be confusing, but we survived.

the first day we landed at 7am, were picked up by work colleagues and went off to visit customers. we had a little time in the afternoon to kill so we went to a petting zoo and met australian animals... little kangaroos, wallabies, koala bears and quokkas.

the second day was mostly work but in the evening we walked around the harbor in sydney to see the opera house and have a nice seafood dinner. I had a silly moment feeling late for dinner because it was so dark, I'm used to the sun setting around 8pm. but we're in the southern hemisphere, if the sun sets in kansas at 8pm, it sets in sydney at 5. took me a second there! but I was so jet lagged those first couple days everything took me a second.

we took a short flight to brisbane on saturday and drove to gold coast for our conference. gold coast is the tourist land. it's like I took a 16 hour flight to atlantic city, miami or vegas. there was a hard rock cafe. you could get your hand made out of wax, your hair braided, your name on a grain of rice. the beach was gorgeous but the daily high temp was around 70 and the water was chilly, so we walked around on the beach but only one tolerant person in our group went swimming.

Sunday I set off on my own. When I'm in a new city one of my favorite things to do is learn to use the public transportation and see where the routes take me. I spent $10 AUD, about $7 USD, on a day pass so I could go wherever I wanted all day. I went to an art gallery and a nice shopping mall then back to meet my colleagues for dinner.

monday and tuesday were work conference days without much time for anything else. wednesday we had some meetings with our coworkers. thursday we drove to brisbane, walked around a bunch then flew out. I did make time on thursday to visit the brisbane makerspace. my coworkers were good sports about it, they're always nice and flexible about that sort of thing. I tend to be the planner/thinker in the group, sometimes it annoys me that I'm the decision maker but then I get some idea and they're so cool with it, I guess that is the benefit. I can now brag that i'm an international makerspace traveler! brisbane is like wichita, like five different makerspaces but they all know a LOT about each other and serve different purposes and I got some cool ideas talking with them.

every difference I could find was such a small difference. the power outlets all have their own switches so you can turn them off, I actually really like that. they don't like it if you just ask for "coffee", they ask what kind. in europe you can get an "american coffee" (espresso and water) but in australia a "long black" is two espressos and water, neither are ever good but I can't describe why. always nice to get home to the coffee I'm used to.

if there are birds on the beach accosting you while you're trying to have a nice meal, they're like 5x bigger than our seagulls. they're white ibis, and Australians call them bin chickens. they're beautiful but everywhere and a real pest.

they have these fabulous chocolate cookies called tim tams that come in lots of varieties. they're light and crispy and covered in chocolate and you can bite off the opposite corners so they're like a straw, slurp your coffee right into them and then slam the whole delicious thing into your mouth in one bite. allegedly these might be at world market here or trader joes, i'm going to go on a hunt.

I am now safely back home. We left brisbane thursday night, flew 12 hours to LAX and landed around midnight. left LAX at 5am, left Dallas at 8AM, arrived in Wichita at 10AM Friday. The international dateline math is a real blast, so you don't even bother with what day it is you just go with it. I'm in jetlag recovery mode this weekend but last night was night three and I slept almost all night so things are looking up here.