What I’m Doing Right Now

General

  • Annie and I celebrated 25 years of marriage last month.

  • We’re slowly getting unpacked from the huge home remodel we did this year. It’s a ridiculous amount of work.

  • My office/library is almost complete. I’ll post some pictures when I finally get it all put together. Until then, here’s a list of books.

  • Sadly, Sioux Falls and the surrounding area suffered quite a bit of flooding in June. Annie and I escaped unscathed, but many neighbors had water damage, and several neighboring communities were devastated. We made the NY Times for all the wrong reasons…

Family

  • Big news: we’re going to be grandparents! Alec (29) got married last June, and they are expecting a baby in November. He and his wife Taylor are living in Tennessee while she completes her medical residency there.

  • Gabrielle (22) just passed her nursing exams. She starts work at the local hospital this month.

  • Isabella (20) is working for the summer before starting her junior year at the University of Sioux Falls.

  • My Dad and I will be seeing our New Zealand All Blacks play in San Diego in July.

Professional

  • I have resigned from Episerver/Optimizely after five years. I start a new job in July.

  • I’m still teaching in the Content Strategy program at a university in Austria. My co-instructor, Carrie Hane, and I will teach both the basic and advanced courses from December through February.

  • Some colleagues and I are slowly working on a plan for an industry organization for content management professionals.

I have also published a more lengthy resume, which includes several areas of research I’m interested in.

Reading

Here’s my complete reading list with reviews.

Watching

  • Disney+ has the six-part docuseries on The Imagineering Story, which was apparently the source project of the book.

  • I finished the entire series of Babylon 5, the sci-fi TV show from the 90s. It was quite good. The CGI was a little cheesy, but it had a nice story-arc.

  • I watched the entire series of Moonlighting earlier this year. I read an oral history of it and discussed aspects of the show quite a bit in that review.

  • I’m loving Derry Girls right now. Only 18 short episodes, so it’s low-commitment and high-value.

  • I watched the Shogun TV series. It’s absolutely compelling, though I did not like the book at all. The show is easier to follow, but I still think I missed some nuance.

  • Haven’t watched this yet, but I just heard that Neuromancer is becoming a TV series. I read it this year (twice!), and listened to the BBC radio production. I’m really looking forward to this.

Listening

Other Hobbies

  • My fitness goal for the summer is to break my personal best for the 1,000m row, which is currently 3:22. That PR is fully eight years old, so I set it when I was a much younger man (relatively). To break it, I’ll need to hold a 1:40 500m split pace. I’m working on holding that for as long as I can (I’m at 700m now; I can hold a 1:43 for 800m). When I can hold it for 900m, I’ll take a run at my PR.

  • For my summer project, I’m hoping to build a Free Little Library, which will be the first one in our neighborhood. I’ve picked out a kit.

  • Annie and I visited Omaha for a weekend to see Nate Bargatze (again). While we were there, we went to the Lauritzen Gardens, which are just lovely. We also visited The Durham Museum and saw a wonderful traveling exhibit about the life and work of Jane Goodall.

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