Our new home has a long fence that has been increasingly hidden by unruly grape vines this summer. This week, the grapes are ripe enough to eat! What a treat.
We used to make the road trip between Flagstaff and northern Utah several times a year. We’ve done the drive so many times for so many years; I know every turn, and I know how far I am from my destination at every point along the way. Maybe it’s something about the season that’s making me think of it now — it was frequently and end-of-summer ritual, so late August feels like the time to be packing and driving through that long stretch of central to southern Utah highway, across the Grand Staircase and the descent from the north rim of the Grand Canyon, to finally cross the Kaibab plateau.
We’ve moved, so I don’t know when or even if I’ll ever make that trip again, but those highways and vistas are like smooth, familiar grooves in my memory, a very specific part of many years of my story.
Important update: The cappuccino at Anchorhead is transformatively delicious. I stopped for this breakfast each day I was downtown for posit::conf this week.
I posted yesterday that I’m happy and excited to be presenting a talk at posit::conf right here in my own new hometown next week.
Captain America chair sit
Covid numbers in Seattle are bad right now! I’ll be wearing a mask most of the time at the conf and “testing in” daily. I certainly don’t want to get sick again, or bring it home, and I believe that making events safer is a shared responsibility, not a solely individual decision about risk.
You’ll still know I’m smiling underneath because my eyes get all wrinkly NO THAT’S NOT JUST BECAUSE I’M OLD.
The week is almost here! I’m giving a talk at posit::conf(2024) about some of the challenges leading a data science team. Am I ready? I will be! I’m looking forward to meeting and learning throughout the week.