Crushing Charging Challenges: Why Every EV Driver Needs a J1772 Extension Cord Hey fellow electric adventurers!
Living the electric vehicle (EV) life is fantastic! From the quiet hum of the motors to the instant torque that shoves you back in your seat, there’s no denying the thrill. But let’s face it, sometimes charging your EV can be a logistical puzzle. Parking garages might have stations tucked away in corners, campsites often lack dedicated charging spots, and even home garages might have outlets in less-than-ideal locations.
Conquering Range Anxiety on Your Next Family Adventure: Why Every EV Driver Needs a Tesla to J1772 Adapter Hey fellow Electric Adventurers!
It’s my favorite time of the year for electric adventures like a family roadtrip or camping in our EVs. Our new Chevy Equinox EV and our incredible Rivian R1S have both been amazing for us to hit the roads and trails this year. While DC Fast Charging on Tesla’s NACS Superchargers gets most of the attention right now as the network opens to more manufacturers like Rivian and GM, I’ve found that the ability to charge at even more locations on AC Level 2 chargers can dramatically improve a trip.
What’s going on with the battery in the Chevy Equinox EV? No one seems to be able to figure out how much capacity there is in the new Chevy Equinox EV and GM isn’t exactly helping.
We got our Chevrolet Equinox EV 2RS AWD a few weeks ago and have loved it so far. We haven’t done any long trips yet and have barely charged it, but I had noticed that it seemed to squeeze out more range than expected.
Rivian’s brand new referral program is here! Use my link when ordering a Rivian vehicle from the inventory in the store to receive 750 Rivian Referral points worth $750 on Rivian gear, accessories, and vehicles like the R1S and R1T, discounts for us both as well as 6 months of free RAN Charging!
This program changes after 12/31/2024, so make sure to take advantage now!
[More details] (https://rivian.com/support/article/what-are-rivian-rewards)
When someone uses an owner’s referral code during checkout of a qualifying R1 Shop vehicle, then takes delivery – both the original owner (referrer) and new owner (referee) get rewards!
Charging as a Tesla driver has always been pretty straightforward. You drive around until your battery is low, and then you either charge at home or follow the in car navigation to a nearby SuperCharger. You don’t mess with an app or credit card readers since the chargers know how to bill you once the car is plugged in. In fact, I’ve essentially stopped planning charging stops ahead of time on road trips now because it’s just so easy.
As a Tesla Model Y owner, I am always on the lookout for the latest and greatest gadgets and accessories to enhance my driving experience and personalize my car. One of the most important parts of any car is the dashboard, and the Tesla Model Y and 3 have a sleek and minimalist design that I absolutely love. There is no dashboard where you’d traditionally find one in front of the steering wheel, and instead all details are shown on the massive touch screen in the center of the dashboard instead.
Tesla is in a fantastic position in the market, recently lower the cost of it’s cars and offering several great options at competitive price points that are bringing more and more buyers to the Model 3, Y, and even S and X. As the market leader for electric vehicles, many new owners are coming to Tesla for the first time and may find that there are many differences from gasoline powered cars they’ve previously owned.
Everyone knows that kids are incredibly resilient and can be very elastic with adapting to changes and learning, but recently my kids have really demonstrated to me just how much they learn and how fast they can pick things up. This fall, my kids, the 6 year old twins and the two and a half year old, showed me just how fast they can adapt to other cultures and experiences on our trip to Europe as well as a long road trip and hiking in Acadia National Park, all while starting back up at school.
Kids are hell on a car. Ever since we moved to a Tesla Model Y from the 3, we’ve been using the car far more as a family and taking trips with all three of our young boys almost non-stop. But that means they drop drinks, crush goldfish into dust, and generally touch every single bit of the car with sticky fingers. I finally have a way to prevent these from destroying my car thanks to Tesla Shields’ floor mats.
For the last several years, owning an Electric Vehicle has been about as good as it can get. Sure, there are headaches still between the pain of ordering and actually getting one, the cost, and the availability of chargers everywhere you might want to go, but for the most part, it was a Golden Age where you could order and get a car fairly quickly, tax credits were widely available and simple, chargers were plentiful enough but never packed, and each car seemed unique and different.
I’m sitting in our apartment in Bergen, Norway and out the window, parked on the street, I can see a full range of electric cars. There’s a Kia Niro, Hyundai Ioniq 5, two BMW i3s, and both a Tesla Model 3 and Model Y. This is what the future looks like and it’s fully electric. With demand in the US growing, and now California banning the sale of internal combustion (ICE) cars by 2035, the US might look a lot like Norway in a few years.
It’s been almost two months since I last posted a blog. I’ve done a pretty decent job of writing most weeks since I started this project back in 2014, posting almost weekly for 8 years. But lately things have been hectic, I’ve been occupied with other hobbies and running the kids around, and I just didn’t know what to write about, so I stopped. In the meantime, several people have told me how much they enjoy reading my posts and I feel bad letting them down, so I’m pledging to get back to it now.
In 2019, I had just started working in New York City again, reducing my driving from around 60 miles a day to under 5. In a world pre-COVID and where I was in the office almost every day, my choice in car felt incredibly important. Tesla had finally become established enough that it didn’t feel like a huge risk for me to order one, and with my BMW 3 Series lease ending, it was time to try going electric.
Thanks to COVID, I’ve spent a lot of time with my youngest son over the last two weeks. My two year old had a COVID outbreak in his preschool class and ended up spending two weeks at home. Since I ended up getting it from him - at least he’s starting to learn to share - I ended up spending a lot of time with him to try to minimize his time with the rest of the family.
So picture this. I’m riding my brand new bike, must have been a birthday present because it’s the summer and I’m drenched because we live in Maryland, and learning to balance it as I coast down the sidewalk of a hill in our development. I never make it more than a few feet without touching the training wheels on the pavement, perhaps why it will take me a to this day still embarrassing near decade later to actually get to the point I can ride under full pedal power which I’m forced to do racing home from a friends’ house just down the street in our new neighborhood in PA during a rain storm.
There are simply too many interesting electric car options now, and all of them have way too long of a wait. There has never been a more interesting time to buy a car, and with my Tesla Model 3 lease about to end, I can’t make up my mind with what to get next. So instead, I ended up with four orders somehow between Tesla, Ford, and Rivian. After all of that, I’m still not even sure I don’t want to place an order for the Hyndai Ioniq too.
For years, I’ve been dreaming of the perfect family ski trip. Once we had our twins, I yearned for the chance to travel to the mountains and head out on the slopes with family. I pictured cozy evenings back in a cabin and warming meals in lodges together retelling our favorite parts of the day. We’d discuss our favorite trails and the best slopes. Of course we’d apres off of the slope together too.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise; there’s no right or wrong way to parent. It’s a common refrain that there is no parenting instruction manual, usually told to soon to be or brand new parents. But as our third child gets older, I’ve realized that even the things that worked for the first ones, the twins, don’t apply to the youngest, and we have to just make it up as we go.
My boys take hockey lessons and swim lessons weekly and we ski every single weekend. They’ve definitely skied more before they turn six than I had until they were born. The have probably skated a couple hundred hours now and played a few friendly games of hockey during their learn to play clinic. They’ve told me they want to be soccer and hockey players after just a few games. They’re already skiing Black Diamonds (though NJ ones).
Everyone understands that the past two years of the COVID pandemic have been tough on parents. For those with kids born right at the start of it, it’s been especially hard managing little kids without the normal help from family and other sources especially in the early days. It’s also hard not having the ability to see friends and fellow parents as often or to be able to get away for a break.
Back in 2019, a year before COVID turned the world on its head and before the EV renaissance kicked into high gear, I took my then six month old Tesla Model 3 (standard range) up to Vermont for our annual guys’ ski trip. At that time, it was the longest road trip I’d taken with the car, the coldest it had been, and there was still a lot I was figuring out with driving an electric car.
My heart is heavy this week with the news coming out of Ukraine. A war the people there didn’t not want and did nothing to deserve. A war, or rather an invasion by a tyrannical despot who is responsible for deaths, destruction, and suffering of the population of an entire country all to stoke his ego. It’s especially disheartening to see that the rest of the world is doing so little to protect the history, culture, and sovereignty of a democracy in Europe while the people suffer.
Over Presidents’ Day Weekend, we took a family trip to Stowe, Vermont to meet up with our friends and take in some winter activities with our kids. We took a similar trip last year, but with the boys a year older and the twins massively improving in ski ability, we spent even more time on the slopes and exploring the whole mountain. We also had the extra time to get around town and the Village for some skating and of course hanging out at our VRBO while sledding and relaxing.
Two years into the pandemic, and it feels like despite, or maybe because of the Omicron wave, we’re just giving up on protecting the kids and it has a huge toll on parents. There are unique challenges and stressors for kids of different ages, but with kindergarteners and a toddler, the past couple of months have been full of anxiety about health, testing, school closures, and work. Nearly every parent I know is going through the same thing with their kids, the schools, and their jobs, but it doesn’t seem like we are doing anything about it collectively.
When The Long Way Up first came out on Apple TV a year or so ago, I noted that it looked interesting, but passed it over because I wasn’t very interested in motorcycles. I completely missed the point though and didn’t realize it’s more of a buddy travel show featuring electric vehicles and how interesting that in turn would be. On top of that, it features Ewan McGregor who on top of being a good actor, is fairly funny and seems like a genuinely nice guy interested in making the world a better place on several levels.
Now, I’m not a big one for New Year’s Resolutions or even one to put too much stock in one yar being all that different from the preceding one, but I do think that a new year means it’s a good time to look forward to the upcoming year and what might be coming. While I don’t think 2022 will be massively different than 2021, there are a few things on the horizon in the world and for me personally that I’m looking forward to.
I have been taking the twins skiing since they were three and a half years old. This year, we not only got season passes to the local mountain, but have a couple of family trips planned both up to Vermont and out to Colorado to ski with friends. They’re starting to get pretty good at it, and I no longer need to take them on leashes or pick them up every ten seconds.
Another Christmas, another year of canceled plans and school anxiety. Thanks to Omicron, we’re in yet another surge of COVID in 2021 and there’s nothing yet to indicate that next year will be all that different. If anything, things are starting to look more like March of 2020 again than like Christmas last year when we had hope for the vaccines coming out, a slowing wave before Delta, and more businesses reopening.
My second ever marathon, and I think my worst one, was the Philadelphia Marathon in 2015. A year after my first marathon, the New York City Marathon, Philadelphia was a huge struggle for me. Pacing was a major issue. I got too excited by the energy of the crowds in the first half through downtown and the historic areas, and really suffered in the out and back for the second half out to Manayunk and back.
Ever since the pandemic started, we’ve been waiting and hoping that the next thing would be enough to get us “back to normal”. Remember “flatten the curve”? Then vaccines came around and we thought it would be a summer back to normal before delta came. Now, with kids as young as five getting vaccinated, boosters, and anti-viral drugs, it seemed like we were just a winter away from a return to normalcy, before the latest variant started cropping up around the world.
Yes, it can be done. While the back seat of a Model 3 isn’t the largest, at least not compared to our other car, a three row Buick Enclave, it’ still a usable option with all three kids in car seats while we run some errands, like picking up our Christmas Tree. While I’m excited for a few more inches of width, especially in the middle seat in the back with our upcoming Model Y, for the next six months while we wait for it to get delivered, we’ll be using the Model 3 more and more for our activities and weekend trips.
I’ve been a proud Tesla Model 3 owner for 2.5 years, but have followed the company long before that. Before that, I had been a bit of a gearhead, though nothing approaching the people who mod their cars for track days and the like (though I did once do a track day with my Mini and raced a Ferrari too). From the time I first drove my first EV, I knew the world was going to change because the thrill and performance of driving an electric motor can’t be beat.
I’m typing this on what is unquestionably the best computer I’ve ever used, and the one I’ve quickly come to prefer over just about every other device in our home. As great as my new iPhone is, especially for taking pictures, and despite the amount of hours I’ve spent running with my Powerbeats Pro, it’s our MacBook that I keep turning back to these days. It’s the perfect device for both consuming music and video as well as getting stuff done.
Yes, that’s a Justin Bieber reference and yes, it’s too late now to say sorry. When you’re sitting poolside in Palm Springs, it’s hard not to channel some Biebs. The same circumstances also make it the perfect way to rest, recover, and restore after nearly two years locked down with three kids. Just as we hoped, a few days away from home on our first getaway since the start of the COVID pandemic and away with our kids in California turned out to be just the break we needed.
Somewhere between my childhood and my kids’, I forgot how much fun a family camping trip can be. I wouldn’t say it was a regular event in my family growing up, but we camped often enough to enjoy it, but it was only this fall that I finally got my kids out camping and remembered just how much fun it can be for a family. After a night out under the stars (and of course the planets which the boys identified), roasting marshmallows and broccoli (I swear they requested it), I realized it would be the kind of trip we’d make sure to do more regularly.
Our kids have been in pre-school since they were six months old. While the first few years were mostly like daycare, as they started pre-k last year, the experience became more like what I expected from public school. Their assignments, daily curriculum, and activities started to look more like what I thought they’d be doing in Kindergarten. So when they started public kindergarten this year, I figured I knew pretty much what we’d be getting into.
For as many things as the pandemic took from us like traveling and in person events, it did provide an incredible transformative opportunity for us to reimagine work and rethink some of the basic foundations of how we get things done. No longer tethered to our offices and commutes, many of us got to reconsider what actually makes for productive work and how we can best balance our work and home life.
I’ve had my new iPhone 13 less than a month now, but I absolutely love it so far. Not only is the overall design great, and the battery better than my two year old iPhone 11, the camera is outstanding and has already enabled a ton of great photos I couldn’t take before. After finally making it more than a year between phone upgrades, I’m glad I waited for the 13 and really feel the big upgrade.
My last flight was in January of 2020 to Seattle for work. Two months later, while we were actually in Washington DC (we took the train there interestingly), our offices began shutting down, work was moved remote, and shortly after, daycare even closed down for the next several months. A month later we would welcome our third child in the hospital in the midst of pandemic uncertainty and likely the height of the early pandemic anxiety.
At the start of the year, I made a resolution to switch at least the majority of my diet to vegetarian, and even try to make vegan choices as often as possible. Three quarters through the year now, it’s been mixed, but there have been some major wins to balance out from the slip ups and misses. At this point, I have a pretty good sense of where the biggest challenges lay and what goals will be feasible for the next year and beyond.
With this week’s news that Pfizer’s vaccination trials on kids 5-11 has shown positive results and that they will request FDA emergency approval soon, there is finally some cause for optimism for parents after a long year and a half. However, every time I tell people how excited I am to get them the shot, they ask if we are really going to do it right away. Here’s the thing, yeah, we are.
The Jersey Shore has a lot of connotations, mostly negative ones about clubs and wild night life. However, for the second year in a row, we’ve found that the shore town of Cape May, and even the surrounding areas we branched out more to this time, like Wildwood, are more down to earth, relaxed, and family-friendly than just about any other beach town. For our second annual trip with the whole family for the end of summer, we fell in love with the town and the other families that visit Cape May and the beaches.
A decade ago, I had only just recently been married, bought a house, and got our dog together. We also had exactly zero children, so life was pretty different then. I doubt I could have predicted any of these big changes in my life, but actually the thing that I thought was probably least likely was that I’d still be in the same company ten years later. Leaving the financial industry and joining Audible / Amazon, I knew it would be different and more to my liking, but I didn’t expect to still be at Amazon over a decade later.
We moved to Florham Park less than six months ago, and yet I feel like I already know more about the area and the history of the town better than I did after ten years in Wanaque. Maybe it’s running around a far more accessible town, seeing more of it, maybe it’s the tighter sense of community, or maybe it’s the pride the town has in its history through volunteer clubs and a historical society.
When we moved, I had no idea that we would be completely changing our lifestyle thanks to an actual community around us. It turns out that having tons of families in similar positions around town, a walkable town, and one that actually runs events to encourage the community makes a huge difference when raising a family. In the few short months we’ve lived here, we’ve started to feel like we belong thanks to the incredible support from all around.
It’s become impossible to ignore some of the worst aspects of the olympics, like the arbitrary and inconsistently enforced rules, the blatant nationalism it encourages, and the attempt to silence athletes voices while doing absolutely nothing about rampant doping. Yet, in spite of all of this, I still find myself more and more drawn to the games each time. I’ve become even more invested in the stories of the athletes, far more into the track and swimming to the point that we watch the trials, and devoutly tuned in every single night of the whole games this year to watch any event that was on (except I would read when diving came on).
It was supposed to be a hot vax summer, but with the Delta variant spreading throughout the country and cases spiking again, it looks like this summer may have been an outlier and this winter will feel just like last year. Just when it was starting to feel normal to hang out with friends and family again, travel a bit, and sit at a bar or restaurant, it seems like we are going to be forced back to choosing between those things and the risk to our health, especially parents with kids too young to get vaccinated.
I’m sitting on a Coach bus at 100% capacity with about 50 other humans at 8:20 in the morning at the gray entrance to one of the barrels of the Lincoln Tunnel when the bus was supposed to be in New York City by 8:00 and it feels like the walls of the tunnel are closing in. It’s my first day heading back into the office since March, 2020, and my first time heading into a new building from our new house.
I’m in a bit of a writer’s block phase right now. I haven’t been able to think of anything interesting to write about for the past few weeks, and completely cleared my queue of posts. I really don’t want to lose momentum on writing though, so I figured maybe the best think I could do was just write about what a fun but crazy weekend we had, especially since that’s a major reason I didn’t have any time to write something else.
Last week’s post seemed pretty popular, so here I am again with an update on some stuff we did as a family this weekend. It may not have involved downloading iTunes for the first time in a decade to get an iPod working, but the music I listened to on it definitely helped while I got some work done. This weekend involved much more time out in the sun, and I’m still paying the price in exhaustion from it.
There are a ton of incredible books to read in 2021. 2020 changed my reading habits considerably. I now read almost entirely from actual paper books from the library, unlike before when the bulk of my reading was on audiobooks. Moving closer to a library, and the recent reopening of the library meant that I could get just about any book I wanted fairly quickly, so I’ve been tearing through books from the library ever since.
The pademic hasn’t been great for so many people’s health and fitness. Many are staying home, living more sedentary lives than before, on top of lives that were already probably pretty sedentary. That’s exactly why, now, over a year into it, it’s time to invest in our fitness again. If not now, then when?
I’ve actually been able to get far more into fitness over the past several months than I ever had before.
For the last year, we haven’t been able to travel as a family the way we loved to before the pandemic. While we did take a few short road trips to get a change of scenery, we weren’t able to go out and see and do things because of safety concerns for ourselves and children. This Memorial Day weekend, since we were fully vaccinated and could find plenty to do outside, we were finally able to start feeling like we could have a normal family vacation up in Martha’s Vineyard.
Vaccination rates in much of the country are rising, the summer is here, and it finally feels like the pandemic is loosening it’s grip on our lives. The last two weeks, especially around Memorial Day, have really started to feel like there is an end in sight for the virus’ grasp over our lives. After getting fully vaccinated, with much of the country doing the same, and with the summer in full swing starting to open things up again, there are several reasons to be hopeful about getting back to life from before the pandemic.
When we moved to our new house a little over two months ago, I knew a little bit about the neighborhood, but it’s only through two months of running the sidewalks and main streets of the town and surrounding ones that I really have come to feel like I know the area. At this point I’ve largely mapped out the potential routes around here, but each time I find a new path, I learn a little more about the neighbors and the towns around us.
Where did the last year go? We’re all a year older, spending most of it in our bubbles during the pandemic and quarantine. While we may have become amateur bakers, picked up new skills, and learned to adapt to remote work and social distancing, we also lost an entire year with friends, family, and notably experiences. When we finally begin emerging from the pandemic, we may realize that we lost over an entire year’s worth of experiences.
I couldn’t believe how different our identical twin boys are sometimes. For two kids raised exactly the same, they absolutely have different personalities. But then our third child turned out completely different too, and I realized it can’t just be us. I looked into it, and not only is this fairly common in twins, but science may actually have an explanation for this phenomenon.
Our three kids have numerous similarities like general silliness and a penchant for cucumbers.
After a few years living on Wordpress, it’s time to take some more control over my blog platform. Moving to my own set up with Hugo and AWS wasn’t incredibly easy, but honestly afer a few quick steps, I mostly had it working again. Between S3, Cloudfront, and a little scripting duck tape, I am running my own stack for this blog which will scale better, be far easier to maintain, and hopefully will result in far less Russian spam to my email.
Much of India is currently suffering through an intense uptick in COVID cases and hospitalizations right now. As cases rise, hospitals are struggling with providing essential services for those affected. Oxygen is in short supply and they can use our help to get necessary supplies like Oxygen canisters, concentrators, and PPE. As things relatively improve in the US with vaccination rates climbing (please, go get vaccinated if you haven’t yet), I wanted to find some ways to offer my support and assistance.
Surviving the pandemic with three kids under five and two fairly demanding jobs wasn’t enough for us. We needed to move too, in the middle of what would be a year-long pandemic by the time we moved as well as the height of the housing crunch. But it was absolutely time to move on from our home for the last ten years and into something that worked better for the way our lives had evolved.
We’ve spent just about the last 400 days with our kids non-stop, with maybe two total nights away from them since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. A large chunk of that last summer was with them home while we tried to work while their daycare was closed. We’re incredibly lucky that daycare has remained open since then, and stayed very safe, but it’s still a tremendous amount of time to spend with two soon to be five years olds with boundless energy and trouble expressing their emotions while also dealing with a one year old who likes to get into and explore everything.
Throughout COVID, so many things have moved to more advanced technology. There are video calls, online ordering, and contact tracing apps that we now rely on. However, one of the most important resources I’ve found in this time goes back in time to my local public library. Though I use the apps for ebooks and managing requests, I actually find browsing the shelves and grabbing physical copies of the books to bring me the most enjoyment.
The promise of remote work and electronic communication isn’t new, but it certainly ramped up and grew to so many new industries during the pandemic. When everyone went remote last year, the use of Zoom, Slack, and Teams all skyrocketed and we were promised that this new era of productivity software would result in flexibility and increased productivity. But in the end, are our lives actually better for it, and are we better able to enjoy our personal lives?
It’s been a year and I can no longer keep track of the days. We’re nearly a full year into the COVID pandemic lockdown and while I’ve adapted to it in numerous ways, merely coping with our reality means that there are days I can’t distinguish from others. Through this, we’re all just about running on empty and grasping on to any positive signs of change to recharge the batteries a bit.
Last weekend, over two feet of snow fell in Northern NJ, blanketing the region for the first time this year. With the fresh feet of powder, possibilities of outdoor activities with the boys opened up for me. Normally in the winter, we’re cooped up inside because of the cold. This year, when it’s been below freezing and incredibly windy what feels like every day, and obviously with COVID, the only real thing we do on weekends is stay around the house.
Let’s face it, COVID sucks. It’s destroyed the health and lives of millions, and disrupted nearly everyone’s life this year. For all of the terrible parts though, there are a few things that 2020 brought us that I hope we keep beyond the pandemic. The necessity of social distancing and staying outdoor has introduced several meaningful changes to our lives that I have enjoyed and want to keep.
I can’t complain entirely about 2020.
Back in October, which in the year 2020 feels like a year ago, we got a bit crazy for Prime Day. It came at the perfect time after seven months working from home with at least about the same left remaining, so we knew what our days would be like for the foreseeable future and what things would most impact our daily lives. As always, we went electronics heavy, though ended up with fewer Amazon devices than in years past.
‘Tis the season for stuff. With the holidays coming up, my kids are already asking for presents from Santa and expecting to have a ton of things to do while we are at home. While it’s easy to just load them up with tons of new stuff, we’re trying to continue our practice of teaching them to appreciate things and value experience and the things they already have rather than just grabbing for new things.
Bigger than recycling, or an electric car, or minimizing impact through reuse, reducing meat consumption is the biggest thing an individual can do to reduce their impact on the environment and aid sustainability. Meat production, specifically the agriculture needed to maintain livestock, accounts for as much greenhouse gas production as the entire transportation industry, including cars, trucks, planes, and ships. That’s why the advances in plant based food and even lab grown meat are so exciting, they may be able to remove a huge portion of the most destructive industries we rely on.
Thanks for nothing. After a spring of COVID lockdowns, closings, and distancing, we went back to doing nothing this summer, and now we are going to pay for it this winter. After hunkering down and going nowhere, doing basically nothing, and inventing countless hours of basement games, it looks like we’ll be doing it long into 2021, and even more, we will have nearly two full weeks with school closed before the end of the year.
Small business Saturday is not a new concept this year, but in a time when so many small business are either disappearing or at a huge risk due to COVID, it feels especially important to find ways to give them our help where we can. As so many larger companies continue to grow among the pandemic, it’s the smaller shops, retailers, and restaurants that are hurting the most. While it’s important to find ways to patronize these businesses more than one day a year, Small Business Saturday can be a good reminder or jumping off point to discover some of the excellent options around.
I love our kids’ school. Since the day they started as infants four years ago, we’ve loved the teachers, administrative staff, and the curriculum that has grown along with them. Even during COVID, they’ve done a good job, better than what I’ve seen elsewhere, of keeping everyone there safe and cared for. So it’s hard to say it, but we’re considering keeping our kids home from school at least for a little while after Thanksgiving.
Every year we hold Thanksgiving at our house for both my family and my wife’s. Every single year since we moved in to this house in 2010. We have an entire dining room and set of tables, chairs, and serving dishes that only come out once a year for it. Yet this year, we’re shutting the doors and shelving Thanksgiving so that everyone is actually around the table when we can hopefully do it again next year.
Coming back from parental leave and getting up to speed with a new team is harder than I expected thanks to remote work. I knew before that it couldn’t be an easy situation for people trying to learn something new and onboard while there is no one around them, but it took going through the experience myself to really understand just what a challenge it is. Without the ability to walk around and ask questions, it’s really so much harder to understand what’s going on and become productive.
Before 2020, I loved working from home. I thought I would want to do it all the time. When it was a periodic treat rather than an every day necessity, it felt fun and like a privilege. Now that I have to do it daily, it doesn’t feel so special and I’ve needed to adapt to the situation to establish a workable daily office at home so I can actually get work done.
Every single year since the first Motorola Droid came out in 2007, I’ve bought a new phone. I’m a habitual upgrader, always wanting the latest and greatest in electronics. Every year before, that’s meant grabbing the newest phone at least once a year, and even going through three last year before settling on the iPhone 11. This year, the upgrades just aren’t enough to get me to upgrade.
Phones were the most exciting part of consumer tech to me for a while.
This week marks the final week of my parental leave from work. Again, I know how exceptionally privileged I am to even have the option to take paid leave as a father, but I’m already saddened that it’s ending. Like my parental leave back when the twins were born, I had grand schemes of what I would accomplish while on leave. I figured with one child instead of two, I’d actually have time this time to get some house work or personal projects done.
While I’m on parental leave, I’ve begun an experiment to see how often I can use my iPad as my primary computer. I don’t have much need for my laptop while I’m not doing work, so I found myself reaching for the iPad to do quick tasks more often. In fact, I’m even writing this on it. By doing this, I’ve found that there are many places an iPad is just as good as a dedicated computer for getting things done, a few where it’s even better, and of course some major times I have to run to grab the laptop.
I ordered my wife a Peloton Bike for her birthday and I’ve been on it pretty much every day since. I figured I would get marginal use out of it and maybe use it once or twice a week to supplement my running. However, I’ve discovered the great suite of exercise programs that come with the membership, and I’ve used it a ton already. I really didn’t think I’d buy into the religion of Peloton, but a week in and I’m hooked.
This year has involved a bit more running than I originally expected. I aimed to run my first ultramarathon in April, but thanks to COVID, it moved back to September. That meant training up to peak mileage with 50+ mile weeks not just once, but twice. It meant many more weekends spent out on the trails than I expected with a newborn, but it also meant I got to field test a ton of running gear to figure out what is truly critical for me.
On Saturday September 12, after five and a half hours of running through the trails and roads of Sussex County Fairgrounds, the same place I first got a medal for one of my homebrewed beers, I officially became an ultramarathoner, completing my first ever 50K. While it wasn’t easy, I actually felt pretty good after, and I’m already considering how I can go longer or faster, though of course in due time so I can at least recover my weekends for a little while.
For a family that thrives on vacations and travel around the world, one of the worst parts of the pandemic in 2020 is not being able to go anywhere safely. Airplanes are completely out for the risk-adverse like us, and we certainly aren’t heading out on a cruise ship any time soon. But a short road trip to the shore at Cape May seemed like a relatively safe way to get out of the house and spend some time together as a family without exposing ourselves to the risk associated with other forms of vacation.
Four years ago, when our twins were born, I was able to take the full six weeks of parental leave offered by my company to get to bond with them and share a great part of their childhood together. Now, with our nearly five month old, I’m starting six weeks of parental leave again with the hope of spending more time together with him that I’ve had a chance so far and getting to know him a bit better.
This summer, during COVID distancing, I decided to run 1000 km as part of the Great Virtual Run Across Tennessee. Over the past three months, I ran 665 miles, traversing virtually the distance from west to east across Tennessee. I’m now heading back across TN, though I will likely not make it much further as the event ends on August 31. It’s still a pretty major accomplishment, and by far the furthest I’ve run in a three month period.
Four years may not seem like a long time, in parenting years, it’s a lifetime. Parents adapt a remarkable ability to forget and move on from early parenting challenges. From the late nights, the tantrums, and the teething, there are numerous things that are easy to forget after kids move from newborns to infants to toddlers. With our third child, we’ve had a stark reminder of all of these challenges.
Last week, the Northeast got knocked out by Tropical Storm Isaias and we were left without power for five days and internet for six. While we waited for restoration, I still had to work, so after a day of difficult working situations, we decided to head out to my grandmother’s house in PA for a little visit and to have the benefit of air conditioning and internet for a few days.
I was originally supposed to run my first ever 50K in April with the New Jersey Trail Series. COVID interrupted that, like so many other things. Instead of completing my run before our baby was born, and right after completing my months of long runs involving the sacrifice of numerous weekends, my race was delayed to the fall. Throughout the summer, while on lockdown, I looked for opportunities to do long trail runs to prepare for the race in September.
Recently, my company announced that employees like myself who can work from home, should continue to do so until at least Jan 2021. While it’s difficult to anticipate how the course of COVID will continue to run and what work will actually look like after that, it’s enough of a change to mean accepting remote work as a certainty for the time being. It’s time to make some changes to how we work and how teams operate to remain productive and happy.
COVID and the ensuing lockdown has seen me spending more time in nature, especially around our house, than in a long time. In the mornings, I like to sit out on the deck before it gets too hot, and have enjoyed the serenity that comes with watching the birds and whatever other animals make their way through the yard. The extra time at home and in the yard has made me appreciate the connection to nature we have and want to take several steps to protect and encourage more of it.
Bringing a baby into the world during a global pandemic and lockdown certainly wasn’t part of the plan. Neither was spending the first two months with that baby at home while our older twins were home from daycare. On the positive side, I’ve had more time at home with all three kids than I expected and I haven’t been at work during the first two months of our baby’s life. However, it’s not like I’m actually spending that time bonding with my child, and the time I do have outside of working is primarily going to devoting attention to the twins.
After three months locked in the house with three feral children who were perfectly described as “drunken penguins”, we’ve been anxious to start getting out of the house again. With numerous business reopenings in the past few weeks, from parks to beaches, to amusement parks, zoos, and restaurants, we were finally starting to make plans to leave the house again. But the coronavirus had other plans. Even though we can go out, we’re largely choosing not to.
Along Spain’s southern coast, the perfect stopping point on a drive between Marbella and Granada, is Nerja. Nerja doesn’t get the same top billing recognition as Marbella or Malaga, but this smaller town gets just as much sun and arguably has even better food along the beach. Paella, the traditional food of choice in this region, doesn’t come any fresher. It’s literally cooked in massive skillets right on the sand of the beach.
Sending kids back to daycare in the midst of a pandemic isn’t a decision I take lightly. But for every parent, the question will come of when to send kids back as daycares and other care opens back up. It will be a complex calculus to weigh risks versus benefits for each parent, and the decision shouldn’t come lightly. Every parent needs to evaluate what makes most sense for them. For us, we believe it makes sense to get the back soon and feel the risks are controllable enough to be made up for by the benefits of getting them back.
2020 had to be the longest year in history. Each week feels like a year and they are getting longer and worse. This week alone has to have set a record for the most terrible news crammed into a 7 day period ever. It’s getting harder and harder to focus on anything other than the dreadful news day after day. Optimism is especially tough to come by in this country right now, and I, like many others am having a difficult time focusing on work, family, and anything else right now.
Back at the beginning of March, my wife and I took the Amtrak down to D.C. - and what would be one of the last regular Acela trains back up to Newark, just before the Corona virus started moving into the mainstream. It was a strange experience because most people weren’t reacting to it yet, though there was a sense of some danger in the air. The following week my office closed down and my wife’s followed the week after.
Austin has somehow become like a third home to us over the last few years. Starting with our first visit for the Formula One race in 2012, then proceeding with two more trips for work, and finally followed by a recent trip for our third child’s babymoon, we’ve seen our fair share of the incredible Texas State Capital. From running the banks of Lady Bird Lake to hanging out on Rainey Street to a relaxed weekend day beneath the shade of trees at a local brewery in Hill Country, it feels like we’ve received a great sample of what makes the city great.
By no means am I bored at home during the COVID pandemic lockdown like many others seem to be. With three kids under four, there aren’t a lot of down moments to get bored. I’m not looking for the next Netflix binge recommendation or a knitting project. However, I have needed an outlet for some of my home time and I’ve largely found baking and experimenting with new types of coffee to be best for me.
The hospital where we welcomed our third child began a shift to a “baby friendly” hospital in the time between when we had the twins and our third. While we absolutely love the hospital - enough to go back for our third - and the nurses and other staff there, I’m not sure I’m completely down with the changes we noticed as part of this transition. While I applaud the ability for mothers to chose their preferred methods of bonding with their children and appreciate the support, I actually found a few of the changes to present less choice for parents and it made me worry about how our experience would have differed with the twins had they done it earlier.
To say my family has the travel bug might qualify as the understatement of the century. I’ve been to every continent save Antarctica, our not-yet-four-year-olds have been to a half dozen countries, across the country, and above the arctic circle, and my wife and I have been to over 30 countries together in 15 years of being together. Getting away and experiencing different cultures and places has been our escape for years, and 2020 seems to be the year that will finally buck that trend thanks to the stay at home orders, massive disruption to the travel industry, and lack of safe feelings about travel in general at the moment.
While everyone else was staying home, keeping as far away from others as possible, and staying away from hospitals to prevent the spread of COVID-19, my wife and I had to head into the hospital to bring our third son into the world in the middle of the pandemic. Donned in masks, we arrived at the hospital knowing we wouldn’t have any visitors and that we’d be in for an interesting experience over the next several days.