week of 9/7-9/14

my friend jenn has been doing these weekly retros for a lot of weeks, and i've seen more people starting to do them too.

part of my ~ process ~ is taking notes through the week and sometime over the weekend compiling those into my obsidian as a weekly overview of what went on and what i was proud of. at the end of the month i compile those into a monthly overview, and then use that at the end of the year to give myself a little pat on the back. this has been really important to my career, because it gives me something concrete to point at when i'm thinking about where to go next, how to advocate for myself in leveling conversations, etc. it's the first piece of advice i give to reports.

so now i'm going to try and turn those weekly notes into a somewhat funny roundup.

the big news

wow, this was.... a week! there was obviously a big news item that dominated the week, and i have really tried to avoid the topic on social media.

but at least i get the experience of trying to explain to the 16 year old keith in my brain that Bill Kristol is now one of our best posters on the left.

i don't want to get into the rest of it too much in this space, which should be ✨ fun ✨ but i've spent the week becoming more and more afraid for all of my trans friends. your lives matter, and it's disgusting how the right won't quit until they've can blame this on a trans person, somehow. i spend a lot of time not knowing what to say other than i love you, my trans friends, and i'm so sorry.

new job!

on monday i started a new job, which i still can't talk about 🤫 i'm doing software engineering on a very small team, and have been hitting the research on HR1 (i will not be referring to it as the "BBB") and the impact it will have on Medicaid and SNAP - specifically the changes in work requirements and the state error rates.

i'm back in civic tech, and 🤞 the announcement goes out this week and i'll be able to be more public about what i'm up to!

how am i still so bad at calendars in 2025

we were supposed to see the reservoir at the berkeley rep on thursday, but got invited to trivia so i moved to tuesday.

but i put it on the calendar for 8pm instead of 7pm so when we got up from dinner to head to the theatre i looked at the pdf and realized.... we missed the first hour.

i'm still hoping to see the show, its getting great reviews! so bummed and annoyed at myself :|

good escape room branches out into trivia

if you're in the bay area and like escape rooms, trivium games in emeryville is one of the best!

👀 how do i know? i've done over 80 escape rooms in the bay area, and now my friends and i have to travel to at least sunnyvale (we've got two left at omniscape.... then even further)

the team behind that escape room have been doing pub trivia in berkely, and we went on tuesday. it's not like regular pub trivia with general knowledge questions,

party girl party

i've been having a small Parker Posey Movie Marathon over the summer, and this week it was time for my favorite parker posey movie: Party Girl! It's so 1995 and has aged beautifully. entire scenes are out of focus, it was filmed on a $150,000 budget and done in like three weeks. we used to be a society that could make things.

flower pianos at the botanical garden

it feels like extortion that i have to pay $20 to enter the botanical gardens in SF, but SF residents get in for free! i live right across the bridge, and lived in SF for 10 years 😭

either way, the flower piano week is always beautiful and a ton of fun. they set up pianos throughout the gardens, with players throughout the day. there was a chorus. there was a muppet playing evanescence and now i've been listening to evanescence all day.

things i liked

this CMAT cover of Tate McRae - Sports Car is something i've put on at least 3 times every day this week. her album EURO-COUNTRY is on my top album list this year for sure

this incredible list of 100+ new CSS features to explore. i'm gonna try to grab a few things off this list over the next few weeks to learn

jenn wrote a list of places you can get images for free and not use generative AI for