The last year has been beautiful

The last year has been beautiful.

I figured out how to better split domestic responsibilities with Michael and adopted the life-changing weekly spousal one-on-one meeting. I relished no longer having dinner be my problem. I went on daily walks with Maggie and Michael and marveled at the beauty of our home in the San Francisco Bay Area. I biked around San Francisco and enjoyed excellent food with Michael and Maggie, our very good girl. I took a multitude of pictures of Maggie and cut and threw endless pieces of carrots and green beans and radishes for her. I expanded the "foods dogs can eat" list on the fridge. I picked up trash and Maggie's and other dogs' poop at the park. I discovered a great new hike we can enjoy with Maggie. I comforted and distracted Maggie during thunderstorms and fireworks. I had Wellness Wednesdays workouts, dinner, and learning with Michael, Claire, and Maggie.

I took drastic measures to eliminate invasive weeds, built new garden beds, and coaxed the garden to be more like my vision, with strawberries, raspberries, passion fruit, olallieberries, lavender, snapdragons, carnations, blueberries, corn, onions, tomatoes, garlic, green beans, radishes, carrots, potatoes, lemons, limes, pomegranates, plums, apples, avocadoes, peppers, tree dahlias, lettuce, bok choy, nasturtium, cala lilies, camellias, hydrangeas, and more. I sorted a ridiculous amount of objects, mostly trash, dug up in the yard.

I created a baking calendar to make and enjoy my favorite goodies over the course of each year. After Reading How Not to Die, I adopted a vegetarian diet and developed a really healthy and delicious smoothie recipe. I had a delightful conversation with the person in the painting I inherited from my artist grandfather. I meditated and savored my bed. I mourned the decline of Twitter. I set app limits and loved it. I became overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to do. I drew boundaries. I finally processed an email that had been in my inbox for years. I paid someone else to take the headache of taxes for the first time this year and was ecstatic when we filed a few days ago.

I grew as an empathetic manager and cheered on many people at Techtonica. I was censured for advocating for inclusion. I received a raise. I lost a job. I learned about negotiating severance and shared what I learned. Layoffs caused hiring partners to back out of their agreements, so I negotiated contract terminations and found solutions for unplaced grads and launched a new Techtonica program to support past grads looking for jobs. I said goodbye to Techtonica's Partnerships Manager of three years and interviewed and negotiated with job candidates before hiring someone amazing who starts next week. I became the resident feedback expert. I learned about and advised and played Gartic Phone with Techtonica participants. I gathered feedback, implemented changes at Techtonica, and had the satisfaction of seeing participants and staff members thrive. I learned to stop working in the evenings.

I picked up antique woodwork and furniture restoration. I figured out how to safely and effectively strip lead paint through a lot of trial and error while devouring audio books at 2.5x. I acquired a foosball table, Eastlake furniture, and a barrister bookcase. I dusted off my piano skills and the perfect 1895 piano built in San Francisco and learned a song I've liked since I heard a friend play it in Leipzig. I visited lovely historic houses and joined an old house community. I saw a tiny Buddhist temple and learned about the history of Chinese people in Mendocino County. I installed rope caulk, bronze weatherstripping, and portières to make the winter less miserable for us.

After years of mostly business writing, I started writing for me again. I researched my great uncle who died the year I was born and found out some fascinating things about him from past students and schools he worked at, then wrote about him and my grandma. I received a letter in shorthand from my grandma to treasure forever.

I continued to learn about and try to be a better advocate of anti-racism. I managed not to suffer too much from allergies with a dog in the house, but was sick and had a mysterious skin bump and weird allergic reactions to stuff outside. I started having my prescriptions mailed, and was relieved that my doctor could prescribe the restricted daily allergy medicine, Allegra D, that I'd been buying every two weeks for years. I discovered the best non-fogging, sanitizable, breathable mask, Airgami. I lost my keys. I bought two of the most comfortable Duluth coveralls for projects but then couldn't stand to make them dirty.

I appreciated over 100 books, especially A Little Life, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, and Ejaculate Responsibly. I was in charge of the monthly family book club, mostly so I could talk to my family each month. I donated to organizations planting trees every month in hopes of curbing climate change. I grumbled about cars and smoke and noisy motorcycles and junk mail and sexism and people painting woodwork and more.

I enjoyed visits and email and text and cute and funny video exchanges with friends and family.

I'm pleased with the life I've built and who I've become and I hope to grow and experience like this over the next year, too.

Tl;dr: Life has been very full in the last year and I'm looking forward to more.

I'm Launching a Nonprofit Called Techtonica

I finally publicly announced the reason I've been so busy for the last while . . . I'm launching a nonprofit! Techtonica offers low-income women and non-binary adults free tech training, along with living and childcare stipends, then places them in positions at sponsoring companies that are ready to support more diverse teams. Read more here.

The Last Two Months of 2014

What special things (besides Kitchit and Thanksgiving and job stuff) did we do in November and December? I'm glad that you asked . . .



Michael participated in Hult Prize again, this time with an idea to incentivize early childhood education in slums.




We made wine-less Ryan's Bolognese Sauce and declared it a winner.




We finally met our friends' baby, Gavin.




Michael crashed his bike in the Broadway Tunnel. It took some persuasion each day for him to let me put Neosporin and bandages all over his knees.




I got my new ring (made of white gold this time) on the same day that I woke up with sore, swollen finger joints for some unknown reason, so it took me a few days of turmeric ginger tea and Ibuprofen to get the new ring on.







I went to LinkedIn's DevelopHer Hack Day in Sunnyvale.




Then we went to see the San Jose State Warriors Sica at San Jose State. It was so cute to see Amos go straight to Michael to stay warm.




Sica looks great in that shade of blue and watching her every move during the game was really fun (and easy, since her hair makes her so visible). She even let us go back to her office for a bit after the game.




This is the final result of Michael growing out his facial hair for Movember.




While our friends missed a very windy, very rainy week in San Francisco, we checked in on their cat, Mimi.




Since we'd never been to the Christmas Creche exhibit in Palo Alto, we took Caltrain down to see it and were glad to see these smiling faces there for a bit as well.




The latest Hackbright Demo Night was fabulously inspiring, as usual. It's so great to see what ideas women have and how far they get with their projects in just five weeks.




I've been trying out some Thai recipes and the Christmas colors in this pepper basil tofu recipe made me happy (as did the delicious taste thereof).




I was so excited to see Christmas candy at the store, because these mint chocolate truffle kisses are amazing (and I don't say that lightly, because I don't really like most Hershey's products).




Here's one view of our Christmas-ready apartment.




When our fridge looked like this, it was time for our Christmas vacation.

Our San Francisco City Garden Before and After

When Michael and I got a tour of the place in San Francisco where we ended up living and managing, the owner showed us the back of the building, where there was an overgrown, unloved bit of land. I told him I would love to clean it up and make a garden back there. He replied, "Yeah, others have said that." Little did he know that those words were great motivators for me. It took me several months, but I really got into the project and loved it.



This is what we saw that first day.




When the landlord decided to accept us as managers, he asked us to please trim back the ivy near the building. Once the ivy was trimmed, though, I couldn't stop.

The ground was littered with pieces of glass and plastic, and the mess was never-ending. Every scrape of the shovel revealed more garbage from 100+ years of people living in our building and in buildings nearby. I probably should have used a mask, because our building lived through a time when the neighborhood was pretty iffy, but I was too mesmerized cleaning up the dirt.

I soon decided that I should first focus on the back part of yard rather than the alleyway walkway. I spent more than 12 hours cleaning the gunk out of that dirt. One resident I'd told about my dream joined me for a couple of hours one afternoon. I filled buckets and boxes with coins, spoons, broken terracotta pieces, plastic of every kind, cigarettes, and most of all, glass. I got so I could spot the shine of light off a piece of glass from the other side of the yard and would dream of searching through dirt. Wouldn't that be awesome if there were some kind of glass magnet? I bought a colander purely for use of cleaning out the dirt, but there were so many rocks in the garden that it was faster without it. I started a pile of rocks on the side, thinking maybe they could be re-used somehow. Several times, I even found fresh-looking produce. There was sooo much garbage.

During the clean-up process, I also pulled out weeds and softened up the rock-hard dirt. Sometimes I get a little too focused on things. One day, I was loosening up dirt and asked Michael to help me out. He chipped away at a rocky area and finally concluded, "This can't be softened, it's rock." Feeling annoyed, I walked over, placed the shovel, and jumped with all my might. The shovel slid into the "rock," and I continued until there wasn't any rock left. My back hurt after that, but wow was it satisfying to get physical work like that done. After all the dirt had been turned and cleaned out, it was quite the task to even out levels so the whole yard wasn't on so much of an incline.

One day I asked Michael if he could pick some stuff up from my work for me. I don't think he was too happy when I showed him three metal chairs that the office was getting rid of. When I told him that I was going to use them in the yard, he seemed doubtful that the area would ever be nice enough for anyone to want to sit back there, but he found a way to get them in the car and put them in the yard for me. I bought some anti-rust spray the same color as the chairs and gave them a good dose of it.

Then one day when the landlord said he was going to be at the building, I asked if I could show him something. I was so nervous, because I wanted to ask him for permission and funding to build a garden. I had even measured, researched the best plants for little sun in San Francisco, mapped out a possible layout, and listed likely costs on a spreadsheet. It turned out that I didn't even have to ask. He saw what I'd done and said, "Great. Let's get some nice plants back here." Our united goal and love for gardening and improving things about the wonderful old building really united us after that.



My rough draft of garden plans.




The landlord had a handrail put in so people wouldn't struggle so much to get up the steep stairs.




He also had a carpenter cut the tall fence down a little and put in a lattice to let in some more light while still allowing some privacy.

There was a weird-shaped tree branch invading the yard from under the fence. I planned on cutting off the whole thing, but when the landlord saw that Michael had cut off all of its little branches, he defended it. I wasn't sure how we'd work around such a weird branch, but one day I showed up and the landlord had decided I was right and sawed it off himself.




Michael and I met the landlord at his favorite garden supply store, and together we picked up soil prep, wood chips, fertilizer, and plants. We had a few differences of opinion on which plants to get, but I was just happy that we were getting anything.




I had found a few bricks in the yard and thought of building some kind of patio or at least borders for the plants  (which, as you can see, I ended up doing with rocks I found in the dirt). When I shared the patio idea with the landlord, he gave us some more bricks from his yard. Then I went online and found people in Oakland giving away bricks, so Michael was again called upon to help me out with transporting stuff he didn't think we needed. We ended up getting 116 bricks and Michael's car was riding very low on the way back to San Francisco. Getting all of the plaster off of those bricks was quite the chore, though we got the hang of it after a while. Interestingly, the plaster turned the sidewalk below white when I tried to wash it off, and the landlord was happily amazed at how clean it looked. He picked us up some paving stones as well.



It turned out that Michael was really good at putting the bricks together and he enjoyed doing that (I think), so I'd flatten the ground and separate bricks into piles by size and color and he'd spread the sand and get the bricks positioned just right.




The patio turned out beautifully and we had enough bricks left for me to build a small retaining wall for the plant beds on both sides.




The hill outside of the little yard was one of the toughest feats because the soil was so hard, the ivy roots were really stubborn, and there were a million little weeds that kept coming back. I ended up putting down some of that gardening material and adding a lot more wood chips than shown here in hopes that they would hold back the weeds. Though you see some rosemary and basil here, I'm not sure I would trust the soil for quality, safe herbs just yet.




Though Michael joined the project somewhat begrudgingly, I think in the end he loved it (nearly) as much as I did.

I spent hours and hours trying to find some garden lights that we could string back and forth over the garden, but without an outlet nearby, they needed to be solar-powered and yet still able to be turned off in case the neighbors didn't like them, and none of the ones I found on Amazon were long enough or had good reviews about the strength of the lights. Maybe some day.

 



The little cubbies around the door to the yard were perfect places for little plants. We had a get-together to show the residents the new yard and say goodbye, and some of them contributed more plants.




Here are the before and after pictures of the backyard at 821 Leavenworth.

What do you think?

Congratulations to Michael's HULT Prize Team, Revive

After many, many, many hours of hard work outside of normal homework, class, and leadership hours, Michael's team won the intra-campus HULT Prize competition today, meaning Team Revive will be going on to represent HULT Shanghai at the regional level (in Shanghai with other MBA schools).

Team Revive's basic idea is to provide better access to early detection of non-communicable diseases in slums. The presentation they gave in front of judges was polished, professional, and perfectly timed. I'm so glad I was able to be there and I am so proud of them. Wish Michael, Federico, Audrey, Gunjan, and Simone good luck in the next level.

HyperFair and Joe Career Fair Video

I know it's goofy (and I know it's fast and I know I should have tried harder to get someone with a stronger voice), but this video about HyperFair's career fairs has taken up a lot of time in my life recently, so be nice to my brain child, okay?



Note: "Joe" is my generous cousin Kameron Smith. (Thanks, Kam!)

Another note: it was originally a slide presentation in Sliderocket, which I screen recorded using QuickTime, then I imported it into iMovie, where I added voiceover, music, and sound effects that I'd mixed in GarageBand before converting them using Media.io. Each time, something was too slow or too fast, there were problems with getting all the sounds to work, uploading, quality, format, etc., etc., etc. I know it's not the most professional thing in the world, but HyperFair needed fun social media content. I am so glad I'm finished with this project.

4th Grade Poetry Book

(I remember my teacher wanting me to change "tinny" to "tiny" in the above poem. I felt mad, because I knew the difference, and I didn't want "tiny." I really meant "tinny.")

Satisfying, Though Seemingly Worthless, Projects

I put my enormous music, movies, and books lists in spreadsheets showing availability at libraries and online sources.

Then I finally got around to finding album covers for every album in my iTunes (the program was able to find a lot, but I had to manually find about 500 of them).

Finally, I took a whole Saturday to go through my folders and files. I merged file backups and deleted and created files and folders with four or five Finder windows open at a time so I could drag things to where I wanted them.

The number of items in the Trash after the project? 34,000.

Even the pain in my wrists was worth it for the satisfaction of seeing a clean desktop and having an organization process that enables me to know where everything is without having to search.

Michelle Glauser, Discount Landscaper

Paul to me: "You should start a landscaping company."

Time for yet another shift in career?

By procuring root barriers, trees, weed cover, and workers (myself included), and by finding a cheaper garden supplies place for the bark and rocks, the total cost of a recent yard project for Paul and Amy was at least $4125 cheaper than the estimated price. How happy to accomplish such a huge task so successfully. :D

New trees that will eventually provide shade to a window-filled kitchen:




A cited-by-the-city park strip before I worked on it:




Same park strip after, with weed barrier, landscaping rocks, a cleaned-up weedy hill, and bark chips:




Weed-surrounded, empty garden boxes (this picture is actually from 2010, so it's not quite true to the pre-project situation):




Turned into this, with weed barrier, bark chips, landscaping gravel, and a thriving and varied crop:




Yay!