Checking In

A catch-all, catch-up post

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Growing In Place Symposium

Friday’s Growing In Place Symposium was about how cities could be designed for not only adults but kids as well. There were many discussions which focused on city parks – a topic near and dear to my heart as a Parks board member. The takeaway is that playgrounds should not engineer all the fun out in an effort to eliminate all risk. There were also some cities mentioned which do a good job of making themselves kid-friendly. I loved seeing these approaches.

I spent quite a bit of time chatting with the speakers after their talks, picking their brains about these ideas and collecting their presentation slides when I could. I also tried to make note of all the books mentioned so that I could become more informed.

It was a long day in one room but I appreciated all the new ideas I discovered. Hopefully I can help put them to use here in Raleigh.

End of a busy, busy, busy week

The third week of the month is typically busy for me, but this one was especially so. I led a boisterous East CAC meeting Monday, bringing me home around 10 PM. I had Tuesday night “off.” Wednesday night was the Raleigh CAC meeting, which began at 7 (allowing me to eat supper with the family) and got me home about 10 PM.

Upon returning home Wednesday night I discovered my home computer server was wheezing and apparently on its last legs, so I spent another three hours moving it all to a new server. Bedtime was at 1:15 AM.

Thursday evening was my Parks board meeting, beginning at 5:30 PM and ending around 6:45 PM. That night, I spent over an hour picking through and explaining some new zoning issues for a nearby neighborhood, an effort which went largely unappreciated, sorry to say.

I took the day off of work Friday to spend it at the Growing In Place Symposium. Friday followed by the Healthy Cities presentations most of Saturday. Oh, and we also squeezed in a visit to Rolesville to visit our friends and former neighbors for dinner.

Now I feel sleepy. Is it any wonder?

Healthy Cities Symposium

I’m at the NCSU College of Design’s Healthy Cities symposium, co-sponsored by the Raleigh Planning Department. Its a two-day conference on such topics as making sure kids have the chance to get outside time as well as how to design cities for a healthy population. Should be good stuff, and apropos to my service as East CAC chair and Raleigh Parks board member.

Being a geek, I’m also busy hacking the network here at Marbles Kids Museum, naturally.

Sleep? What’s that?

It was a busy day yesterday. I awoke before 6, worked until 5, had dinner with the family, and headed back out to my RCAC meeting. I got home at 10 to realize our home fileserver was about to croak. Fortunately, I just upgraded the server I’d hoped to replace it with, so I spent the rest of the evening decommissioning the old server and setting up the new one. Bedtime was after 1 AM.

Ain’t life grand?

No kidding

Poor Richard said “early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” I say “sleeping late makes me stupid.”

This morning I can’t seem to get my brain in gear.

Sea breezes

Walking between buildings today I could’ve sworn I smelled the sea in the air. It immediately made me wish I was out on the water, maybe doing some fishing.

I don’t realize how much I miss the ocean until I smell it again.

Peace

It was a long night messing with webservers (and being awakened twice by Travis). It was also a challenging day at work. I’m now in the easy chair with an empty wine glass next to me, a sleeping dog nearby, and sleeping kids in the other room.

It is quite peaceful, and a good time to crack a book and relax a bit more.

Coolest. Wife. Evar.

I’ve got the coolest wife ever. This afternoon Kelly helped me move 8 12-foot-long sheets of drywall from our garage, through two turns, and up the stairs to the attic. While it was hard work, she was right there, step by step.

I love a woman who knows her way around construction materials!