This year our family is having Thanksgiving dinner at my mother’s house in Schenectady, NY.  She will celebrate her 90th birthday next year and can still run circles around the rest of us. The three hour car ride was a great opportunity to learn more about what each of the kids are up to. We were joined by my sister Alissa and her family for the holiday feast and later connected with my brother Mark and his family over FaceTime and briefly with my other sister Mayela by phone.

Nico encouraged the group to learn the card game of Canasta and despite its complexity, the group picked it up fairly quickly.

Having never really enjoyed card games of any type, I spent my time taking photographs of the family.

Cold weather and an outdoor location afforded me exactly two attempts to snap a family portrait. Given the constraints, I should be pleased with the outcome, but all I see are the opportunities to have done a better job. Those regrets aside, however, I have come to recognize how increasingly less frequent these opportunities are becoming and to make the best of them. 

Rare it is these days when all three kids are in the same place at the same time. Rarer still when they allow me to rope them in for a portrait. My goal for this holiday week is to get one good family portrait and one good photo of all three children.

As part of our effort to free up more space at Superpedestrian headquarters, we managed to fill a van with bicycles that will be donated to Bikes Not Bombs. Bikes Not Bombs uses the bicycle as a vehicle for social change.

Nala enjoyed some canine companionship while Jeanine hosted close friend Irene and her mother. Kobe is a big, handsome, and very gentle fellow. Still, Nala was not the least bit receptive to his amorous advances.

Fiona is the daughter of one of my soccer teammates and a very close friend of Maya. She is studying nursing at UMass and is back in town for the Thanksgiving break. Her parents have just sold their home and are looking for one in Rhode Island where they are moving to be closer to family and work. We have offered to let her stay with us during the transition and hope she will take us up on the offer.

Maya is back for the holiday break although we have to share her time with Caleb. She genuinely seems to be enjoying her college experience and it was nice to hear about her various projects and classes. I completed my third week at Superpedestrian feeling very good about my choice to return to work. I was able to orchestrate a shift in product strategy which I am confident will pay huge dividends down the road. Next week I will be busy helping the team to organize around our new direction.

Jeanine treated me to two of my favorite foods this evening. Meatballs in marinara sauce and brussel sprouts with bacon, onions, and maple syrup. Admittedly this might sound like a strange combination to some but trust me when I say that it was a delicious meal. I am a very lucky man to have a wife with such amazing culinary talent.

Superpedestrian is located just a few blocks away from MIT. As has become my habit, I drive into Cambridge very early to beat the traffic and walk from the office to one of many cafe options for breakfast. This morning I made a little detour and discovered Arcturus, a recent MIT solar car, well hidden behind a fence. I reached over the top and got a nice shot with Simmons Hall in the background.

I facilitated my first all-hands meeting of the Engineering team at work today. I challenged participants to design an award-winning new product in one hour.  They rose to the challenge and I was pleased to see such good collaborative and engineering skills at play.

This distinctive bit of artwork can be found on the facade of the Cambridge Public Library, located a 5-minute walk from the Superpedestrian office. Had I taken a wide-angle photo you would have seen two homeless individuals sleeping on the concrete sidewalk below.

Motivated by a 30% discount on custom holiday cards, I completed this year’s design before the promotion ended at midnight.  For someone who takes so many photos, I was amazed at how few of the family I had from this past year and resolved to take more. Here is one of Kyle preparing dinner. He trains at the gym every morning before working on his programming course and is looking mighty strong these days.

Jeanine and I went out for lunch today and caught owner Steve Verrill cooking up a massive pan of beef stew at Verrill Farm.  Jeanine gets very excited any time she sees large cooking utensils being put to good use. She will take a break from her Executive Director role at Open Table next week to be head chef for one of their community dinners.

Nala is aging gracefully and has now surpassed Jeanine and me in relative age. It is somewhat disconcerting to see changes in her that are just around the corner for us. She remains as dumb and cute as ever but has now developed an acute aversion to being photographed.