Family Rhythms and Burnt Fingers
Morning ritual. Leland's egg-in-a-hole breakfast collaboration. Dakota's birthday celebration with finger foods and conversations about generational intelligence. Family time with Loni, Sam, and the boys. Pizza, 102 Dalmatians, bedtime stories, Minecraft in the Cassia world.
Bridging generations through food, play, and conversation
Events and activities that occurred on Saturday, January 17, 2026
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| Random peacock from Mexico |
Preparation for Dakota's birthday involved a stop at Hallmark for a card, then Grocery Outlet for snacks. The latter proved more interesting than expected, with its rotating inventory of surplus and discounted items creating a treasure-hunt atmosphere worth returning to.
The celebration at Sydne and Dakota's house centered on finger foods and conversation. Les and I discussed whether younger generations are genuinely less capable intellectually—a premise I remained skeptical of—and what drives Les's artistic process. The conversation sparked the possibility of collaborating on one of the photographs of Joey, translating it through Les's visual language.
Between hosting duties, I retrieved the propane fire pit from my house for the evening's outdoor gathering. The logistics of family events always involve these small practical considerations, moving equipment and supplies to where they're needed. I left the fire pit at Sydne's overnight during the time non-family guests came to celebrate, a minor gamble on whether it would survive unscathed.
Debi and John reported back on the gymnastics meet from the previous evening. I had shared tickets to the event with them, and their account suggested the evening had gone well. These secondhand connections to events maintain threads in the social fabric even when direct attendance isn't possible.
Loni, Sam, Amy, and the boys arrived later in the afternoon. The adults and children naturally separated—Loni and Amy gravitating toward the playground while supervising the boys' play there. The afternoon blurred into early evening, and I returned home for a brief nap before the family reconvened at my house.
The evening settled into familiar rhythms. Leland and I explored the Cassia world in Minecraft, building and problem-solving in the game's blocky universe. Sam ordered pizza. We did family cheers—a ritual that marks these gatherings. Loni, exhausted, slept through much of the evening. The rest of us watched 102 Dalmatians, and I capped the night reading one book each to Wolfe and Leland, which brought genuine pleasure.
I woke in the middle of the night concerned about Loni, but she was simply up getting water. She was fine, just tired from the demands of travel and parenting young children.
Throughout the day, I squeezed in work on personal workflows, particularly email summarization. The results proved unsatisfying. The approach needs resetting, starting fresh rather than iterating on a flawed foundation. The challenge remains the same: chat-style AIs operate intelligently within their working context, but that context window remains too small for some tasks. Token-efficient approaches help, but they require deliberate architectural guidance. The systems aren't yet adept at knowing when to fetch information from deeper memory or when to reach externally for information or assistance. Claude and Gemini exhibit distinct personalities in how they approach problems and interpret guidance—both helpful, but in different ways.
The hot tub would have been the natural end to the evening, but family visiting shifts the usual rhythms. Instead, the day closed with the quiet satisfaction of bedtime stories and the sound of children settling into sleep. These visiting days compress weeks of ordinary life into concentrated hours—teaching moments, celebrations, technical frustrations, and the simple pleasure of reading aloud all folding into a single Saturday.
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