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My giant bucket of personal stuff.
2024
Another pivotal year.
Mom passed (MomMartin.com and Call Your Mom).
I had to evaluate what I wanted to do professionally. Even this late in my career, I found I want to do Growth (vs Core). I'm pursing that focus as part of a team vs independently (it surprised me that I found joining a big corp advantageous). Interestingly, I'm with the company that I worked with when Dash was a baby.
It was great to have Dash home for the whole summer.
He's back at school now. It's been a lot easier as he's living on campus with three roommates he chose. Sending us frequent photos of the meals he and his roommates cook...
2023b
The year 2023 must be broken in two. A huge life milestone for Leigh and me and Dash as Dash gets his second address ever. He's now at Cal Poly SLO as an Industrial Engineering Major.
Empty Nest.
A milestone in my life unlike any other. The great joy and pride with each of his accomplishments (sweet!) is accompanied, apparently forever, by the melancholy of his absence. Sweetancholy ("bittersweet" is wrong (sweet is first, and it's not a bitter ache)).
But "Launch a bird, gain a flock". The Cal Poly Mustang Parents group on Facebook kept me sane. An amazingly supportive group. I've got excerpts of my posts here: JeffPen.net/launch (Note: the responses were the best part, but they belong to the responders, not to me.)
2023a
2023a - Dash At Home - was highlighted by the capstone of Dash's amazing two-year volleyball career. Leading his UCHS Indoor Volleyball team. He was expected to carry the team, but he great exceeded the high expectations.
(Eighteen months later, these memories remain very moving. I think it's because once he started driving, we just didn't see that much of him. But we knew where he'd be during volleyball matches).
He finished the season with 61 Aces (1st in the League) and 357 Kills (2nd in the League).
- Goodies at UCVolley.com
- Dash highlights at UCVolley.com/dash
2023 Coach's Remarks and Awards
2022
A great indoor High School Volleyball Season:
Christmas 2021: Christmas-2021
August 27, 2021
For the first time in two years, UCHS had a Sand Volleyball Match. Then, Dash was a new player paired with a new player. Way down in the JV pecking order.
This year, he and his friend Trevor started the our first match as our Varsity #1 Team. They swept Parker's #1 Team in true Dash fashion, by the scantest of margins (by 3 and by 2).
full-story: Sand VB v Parker 210827
March 2021
Just got back from SpaceX Boca Chica to hear the Starship SN11 Launch.
Detail Pages: Cusco Area Photos | 2019 Peru: Trekking the Salkantay Trail | Amazon Jungle - Peru
2017
August: Eclipse 2017 - Totality in Oregon
December:
The Loop of Betrayal (2012)
Congrats alex !
My giant bucket of Dash Stuff (dashpotato.com)
I'm posting Photo Dumps of Dash at: Dash Stash
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Jeff's Stuff
2022
This is a big milestone.
A great indoor High School Volleyball Season:
Goodies at UCVolley.com
Dash highlights at UCVolley.com/dash
2019: Peru!
Click here for Peru 2019
2017 was a slow weird year but ended really well:
- The "Great American 2017 Eclipse" - Totality in Oregon!
- Australia 2017, Diving the GBR, and Beijing.
June 2016
Did a quick one-day up to Snow Summit to take advantage of the miracle of chairlifts. That's Leigh and Dash in the background and the Jekyll in the foreground.
(2015 Jekyll 3: Fox Dyad Rt2, Rockshocks Pike RCT3 160mm fork, Mavic CrossMax wheels. Bikemag's review.)
| Sunset Soaring |  |
Had some cool solar observations: May '12 Eclipse and June '12 Venus Transit
Note: I have an "Learn to Observe" web at GoOutLookUp.net. I don't know much, but I compulsively share what I do know.
| Fun astro gadget: I have one of these Yes Watches and love it (I always know where the moon is now (as well as sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, moon phase) without having even to touch any buttons.
I liked it enough to a write up on it on my astronomy site.
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| 11/11/29: Interesting experience with a hawk today. |  |
Out of Date Stuff
Random Musings (the blogjam)
I learned today that I unexpectedly lost a friend today (well, Monday). There aren't a LOT of people that I admire and love. Fewer that I consider role models.
I've been working out of the house for 12 of the past 15 years and the last seven. I am happy to do so and am still reasonably okay. I don't do a lot of things outside the family, Dash's friends families, school dropoff and the volleyball group. It works well for the most part. Days like this are harder.
I wrote about it here.
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Observing
Astro Log
They say it's a good idea to keep a log. All right, here's the log home.
Observing home
Great Conjunction - Dec 21, 2020
Comet NeoWise - July 11, 2020
Eclipse 2017 - Totality in Oregon
Had some cool solar observations: Log: 120520 - Partial Solar Eclipse and Log: 120605 - Venus Transit
I have a website on Observing and Library Telescope Programs here: GoOutLookup.net
Favorite Targets
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sinead
Perhaps the greatest insight of maturity (well, at least my maturity) is understanding that we ALL struggle.
To different degrees, in different ways, in varying degrees of awareness, and in varying visibility. And to different degrees of resolution.
Do any of us ever fully heal? (ask your intimates, they know best (perhaps they're the only ones who know)).
Sinead O'Connor's long deep struggle she shared so explicitly and beautifully with us is over. While we all struggle, must of us deliberately build and maintain a veneer of togetherness to protect or impress. Some of us lead with it. We're deep and active in our struggle and we grasp widely for support. Sinead's pain, struggle, and cries for help were foremost in her life and prominent in her art. Struggle, healing, setback - all in the limelight. When she lost her son two years ago, I think those paying attention knew this would be too much to bear for long.
Upon hearing the news of her passing, I think my thought was, "so, it's now." Shortly afterward I watched an early video of her in a concert in Chile. It captured the Force of Nature she could be. Bold, powerful, totally in control. A marvel. I did not grieve her then.
The raw power and vigor of youth. Perhaps all our damage has been wrought by then, the pain fresh, the understanding incomplete. And yet there is power, there is resilience. There is defiance, strength. There is still so much hope.
I did not cry for the 25-year old Sinead.
A couple of days later, I watched Sinead twenty-years older. Fifty-year old Sinead broke me.
By then we knew the young firebrand had not exorcised her demons, had not found nirvana, that she would remain haunted by her ghosts. Like all of us, her radiant intensity, the hard power of youth had softened, the weight of the years wore on her face, her manner, her bearing. Wearing the weariness of the complexity of decades.
In youth we have vigor, a burstingness of energy we can seldom contain. We radiate. Power. Possibility.
With age we lose that. Perhaps I miss that the most. The loss of the vigor leaves a void.
But, it doesn't stay empty. Radiation is a one-way thing. It's outward. It pushes. It pushes away. It's hard to sail a heart into a headwind.
The loss of "hard" makes room for "soft".
"I'm hurt and angry". In youth, the vigor of defiance - the anger - eclipses the hurt. Your heart, protective, recoils from the yell. It recognizes the pain, but in the power recognizes danger.
In maturity, the diminishment of power yields to vulnerability. We instinctively, reflexively, inescapably are drawn to vulnerability.
And, perhaps, with experience we learn that regardless of our trauma, it is not unique to "me". There are many. There is community. There is "we". A lived and practiced compassion becomes unsuppressable.
"I'm singing about me" is now understood as "I'm singing for us."
And while in 1987 we feared Sinead's pain - this unknown young firebrand was killing dragons and burning Troy. In her maturity and ours, we grieve her. We knew her, her anger was ours, her pain is ours. Her strength and resilience, especially her resilience, we wish was ours.
Her dragons kept coming, but she stood, scarred, bent, wailing, but never yielding.
May she sing with the angels. Rather than hymns of praise, she'll surely singing for justice for the hurting.
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