First published: March 3, 2024 | Permalink | RSS

A dithered photo of people walking down a street of the medina in Assilah, Morocco

Excited to see that the sunlight is just starting to stick around after 6pm lately. A few hours of extra sunlight really makes a difference to my mood. Weirdly enough the snow in Philadelphia the past few weeks has had a similar effect. Ruby and I have been taking the time to go hiking or walking on some good local trails and walking over snow and seeing the snowdrops peeking out of the ground has been a big boost against our winter dreading. (Also I recently found out are poisonous if ingested!)

Ruby and I just spent a week in Morocco visiting a friend who has been living there. It was delightful to visit our friends, walk around some ancient cities, and exercise our language skills (I retained more conversational French than I thought!). We were very happy to have a friend who has been living as a local as out guide since there were some serious cultural differences around tipping for services, shopping, and police state activity than Ruby and I were used to. Plus she was great at picking out interesting places to visit, like the Caves of Hercules and Tangier's Phoenician Tombs!

Now recovering from some post-travel sickness (not COVID, just yucky) we're both diving back into our respective works. In particular work is ramping up for me as an organizer of the Social Justice Hackathon coming up this April 5-7. Besides that main event, we'll also be hosting weekly hack nights starting with our first one this Thursday! We are still looking for volunteers for the event as well, especially volunteers who can serve as project leads. For that role, ideal volunteers have project, product, or volunteer management experience, especially in tech settings.

As spring creeps closer and snowdrops give way to daffodils over the next few weeks, I have a lot of work ahead of me. Between the above hackathon, Code for Philly, and my work at Community Legal Services. But also I gotta keep riding and exercising when I can because I am still planning to ride a 70-mile gravel ride in June. I promise I am not becoming one of those hustle-culture tech bros, I just have a busy March ahead of me. Just have to keep reminding myself to keep it moving one day at a time.

Despite it being so busy, I am really looking forward to spring and especially our neighborhood starting to wake up from its sleepy winter mode. As much as I can, I am looking to get social and outside as much as possible!

Thank you for reading!