While updating my expired ssl certificate, I realized I haven’t posted here since just after the first of the year. What have I been doing in all that time?
Travel
According to TripIt, I’ve traveled 30 out of 78 days of 2013 to 9 cities and 2 countries. That’s 38% of my time spent away from home. Most of it has been work travel, including trips to Mozilla Mt. View and SF offices as well as Madrid to meet with Geeksphone and Telefonica. While I was in Spain, I was able to wander a bit and take some photos, including of the Angel Caido:
Mother Daughter Vacation
Early in March, Sherri and I took our mothers to Hawaii. This was extremely special for me and I’m so grateful we were able to make it happen. Those of you who know me well know that my mother and I have had a long journey together, one during which we have not always been close. What I learned on this trip is that love is less about staying connected 100% of the time and more about doing the hard work to find each other again when connection is lost.
If you want to see photos from the trip, here are mine and here are Sherri’s.
Mozilla, Conferences and Other Community Work
Life at Mozilla continues to be hectic as we work on launching Firefox OS. I’m thrilled that we’ll developer phones will soon be available for us to distribute (and for the public to buy).
Another key reason I’ve been quiet here is that January and February was consumed with a lot of Syndicate tasks. Kirsten and I worked to finish transitioning the role of treasurer from me to her and we also completed and submitted our IRS 1023 form (application for tax-exempt status) and other tax paperwork. I can’t express what a relief it is to finally be caught up on many of these tasks.
At the same time, I’ve been helping to plan Barcamp Portland, the Open Source Day at this year’s Grace Hopper conference as well as Open Source Bridge.
In the middle of all that, I managed to re-work our OSCON tutorial on event planning into a 30 minute talk for this year’s PyCon US (video). I had a great time giving the talk and attending the conference in general. PyCon organizers and volunteers do a great job making their speakers feel welcome and prepared. Thank you!
Health, Home and Caretaker Duties
Sherri and I are still struggling to stay on top of all the duties caring for ourself, her mom, our six animals and two houses entail.
Maintaining Mom’s health requires constant attention and frequent medical appointments. We are taking her for bloodwork and a port flush every two weeks (but not at the same time). Despite therapy, she continues to need blood transfusions about every six weeks (and this is an all day affair). And then there are her regular medical checkups.
When you combine this with the bodywork Sherri needs to manage her chronic pain, and my weekly allergy clinic visits, I feel like one or the other of us is nearly always running off to an appointment. Meanwhile, I feel guilty every time I realize that all six of the pets are behind with their own annual medical check-ups.
However, slowly we are figuring out how to make things work. This includes learning when and how to call in and build extra support and when to take breaks and practice self-care. Even thought it’s difficult, I don’t regret where we are now.
Next Couple of Months
It’s not going to get any less busy until at least late summer. Barcamp is less than two weeks away. By the time that event concludes, we’ll be in full planning for Open Source Bridge. I’ll have some more work travel coming up, although I’m still working out the details. Events that I am planning to attend are Write the Docs (April), AdaCamp and Open Source Bridge (both June), World Domination Summit and OSCON (both July), and Grace Hopper (October). If you’re planning to attend any of these, let me know so we can meet up!
Oh, and if I can managed to get in to the allergy clinic on time I might actually finish the building phase of my immunotherapy.