Building and Visiting

Morning routine. Rack install. Birthday lunch at Pastini with Sydne and Deaken. Ulta and Guardian Games. A visit with Sage and Tree at The Wheel. A nap. Walked to Suds for pizza and Antarctica planning with Tim. Set up a shared Antarctica calendar. More Spy Game.

A rack settles down, a birthday lunch, and Antarctica comes into focus

Events and activities that occurred on Thursday, October 22, 2026

The morning belonged to the equipment rack. After a week of shuffling power cords and replacing a storage unit that had quietly died, the new pieces finally settled into place. There is a particular satisfaction in infrastructure that stops asking for attention, and the rack is getting close to that point. The real test came afterward, when a backup job that had faltered during the migration recovered on its own overnight, which is exactly what a well-built system should do.

Midday turned to family. Sydne and Deaken picked me up for a birthday outing that started with lunch at Pastini. We shared fried artichoke hearts and fried cheese, I settled into lasagna and soup with a glass of pinot noir, and Deaken finished with a tiramisu for his birthday dessert. From there the afternoon wandered wherever it led. We browsed makeup at Ulta, then went to Guardian Games so Deaken could choose a birthday present. On the way back we stopped at The Wheel to visit with Sage and Tree before they brought me home. Sydne's note that evening, thanking me for helping make Deaken's birthday special, was the best kind of receipt for an afternoon given freely.

Back home, the rehearsal for Sunday's Philomath Salon talk gave way to a nap. After a full afternoon out, rest won the argument, and the talk would have to wait a day.

In the late afternoon I walked to Suds to meet Tim, with Maddie behind the bar, and we kept the Antarctica trip moving over a Woodstock's pizza and a beer. When I walked home, I set up a shared Antarctica calendar so the two of us can see the itinerary in one place, and Tim soon wrote back approving of the calendar. He has been methodical about gear, and by evening he had shared a spreadsheet of everything he has bought so far, from merino base layers to the rain pants the expedition requires for every shore landing. The list reads like a field guide to staying warm and dry at the bottom of the world, with notes on which bargains came from Facebook Marketplace and which purchases were pure desire. He also raised the idea of adding a night to the hotel booking, a small decision that makes the trip feel suddenly real.

The evening closed with a little more of Spy Game, picked up on Netflix after the rental elsewhere ran out before I finished it. The National Weather Service posted a freeze warning for the night, a fitting coda to a day spent planning for colder places. The birthday glow lingered, and the evening settled into the quiet that comes after a day of both building and visiting.