One new book – A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus – menus and stories by Renee Erickson (with Jess Thomson) 

I bought this beautiful book for myself this week after having it on my wishlist for years. It’s filled with stories and recipes from Seattle chef Erickson who owns several restaurants I’ve been wanting to try – also for years. This week, it’s a plan! Until I eat in one of Erickson’s restaurants, I’m loving her book for the writing, the photographs, and the recipes. It’s worth having just as a beautiful book.

A Boat, a Whale & a Walrus: Menus and Stories

One incredible space advancement — SpaceX launch of the Falcon Heavy

There’s a Tesla car and Starman headed toward Mars and the Asteroid Belt where it’ll float around for just something like a billion years. How’d it get there? That’s what you have to watch. My younger sons, husband and I watched the launch with my 20-year-old and me as excited as kids at the gates of Disneyland. Be sure to watch the launch, then the separation of the side cores, and for me, the most exciting part of all was the landing of the side cores. We have some exciting space advancements ahead including seeing man head to Mars!

One good thing to return to – Spelling 

My 6-year-old daughter Lily is going to the district level spelling bee today. She’s a very driven girl for age 6 and wants to study her words all the time. I was not a good speller growing up, but I’ve worked on it a lot over the years. But practicing words with Lily has been interesting at my time in life. It’s been interesting analyzing the phonics and breakdown of syllables which has carried over into me thinking about the components of language and words and phrases. I already think of some of that in writing, building tension and rhythm in sentence structure and wording. But just take a few minutes to learn a few new spelling words and see how you view words differently.

One band I keep listening to – Avett Brothers

Ever since watching the HBO documentary on these guys, I’m hooked. This song is one to hold.

One thing to try keeping up — Microsoft Research Podcast on AI (Artificial Intelligence)

This was an easy to understand discussion on AI coming into our lives, and it not looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a gun out to kill us all.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/life-at-intersection-of-ai-society-ece-kamar/

One career discussion – with a four-year-old

Mid-morning while I was in the middle of wrapping up some work, this conversation:  

Griff: Mommy, will you play Connect Four with me?
Me: I can in just a little bit after I get some work done.
Griff: Why do you have to do work?
Me: Cause I have a job to finish.
Griff: How come you don’t have, you know, a real job?
Me: Um, I do have a real job. What kind of job do you mean?
Griff: You know, like a job at a hot dog place, or something like that.

I guess a real job includes hot dogs. I’m such a disappointment. Ha!

Have a great Valentine’s week! It’s my birthday week as well, which I take very seriously. I’m doing a few things I haven’t done before – will reveal next week.