I developed a small leak during soccer practice this evening. Jeanine patched me up and I am as good as new. In the future. I will save diving headers for league matches.

An earlier post this week featured the main ingredient in a pie Jeanine baked today. The memoir cookbook she is writing is composed of a series of short stories, each centered around a particular dish. Over the coming months, she will be recreating these recipes so they can be photographed for the book. In order to maintain the integrity of my work, I insist on sampling my subjects to ensure that my photographic interpretation is consistent with the gastronomic essence of the food. It is difficult work, but someone has to do it.

Five minutes into the first game of the soccer season, Maya rolled her ankle and was sidelined for the rest of the game. The injury does not appear to be severe but will probably keep her off the pitch for a week or two. The CCHS girls dominated play against Boston Latin with a 10-0 final score. Maya started the game as a striker, a change from her center midfield assignment last season.

My BMW is not offered with a roof rack or towing hitch option which precludes most available bike carrying systems. The body panels are made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic which contributes to energy efficiency but does not offer any structural strength. For some time now I have been working on a design for a bicycle carrier which does not attach to the body. I fashioned a system that employs two industrial strength suction clamps and some custom brackets I printed at work to secure the bike’s handlebars to the rear window while the seat rests against the rear of the car. Gravity holds the bike in the brackets and a safety strap provides a measure of insurance if something lets go. Followers of this blog may recall that the safety strap prevented a disaster when one of my prototype plywood brackets delaminated during a test drive. The same was true today when one of the suction cups popped off when I hit a big pothole. It has been fun working on this project, but I am officially abandoning this design concept. The leverage provided by the seat as a fulcrum translates every bump in the road into a huge force acting on the suction cups and brackets. I will either come up with a different design approach or use my Audi when I need to transport my bike.

Jeanine requested that I photograph some peaches for her. She plans to use the image in her memoir cookbook which is largely written now. My desire to try different compositions was not as strong as my desire to sample one of my subjects. There are few things sweeter than a perfectly ripe peach. I think I’ll have another.

Jeanine, Maya, and I dined at the Rapscallion Table & Tap Restaurant this evening. It was a fine summer day with just a hint of autumn in the air. Despite the fine weather, I spent the bulk of the day indoors designing parts that I will print at work next week.

August was a record month for carbon fiber production at MarkForged. My team more than tripled output from the prior month and we will be celebrating the accomplishment with an ice cream social tomorrow.

Earlier this week I sold my 300-800mm telephoto zoom lens after 8 years of ownership. At 13 pounds, I found myself using it less and less frequently. Today my Canon 6D went up for sale on Craig’s List. Whenever, I find myself with more than 5 or 6 cameras, the least used has to go. The current line-up includes a Canon 5DS full frame for landscapes, portraiture, and product photography; a Canon 7DM2 crop frame for sports and wildlife; a Canon G7X which is always with me, a Nikon AW120 for underwater and snow; and a Panasonic FZ1000 for mountain climbing and trekking.

I was pressed into photographic service at work for some glamor shots of the parts we print. These are examples of a motor cycle brake lever. One is made entirely of nylon and the other with embedded stands of carbon fiber. The latter is as strong as aluminum and lighter.

Jeanine forwarded this picture to me from her bike ride to the deCordova Sculpture Park. I wish I could say that I have been putting my new bike to as much good use. Work is still taking up all of my daylight hours.

My over-50 soccer team opened our fall season in fine form with a 3-0 win over the Mariners. My sister Alissa and Maya were both in the stands watching, Maya with a camera in hand. I am still miserably out of shape but managed to play a reasonable game. Afterwards, Maya joined me for an after game pool party at the Morrison’s before we returned home to prepare for a party of our own.

We hosted a gathering of my direct reports and their significant others to welcome our new Director of Hardware Engineering to the company.  Jeanine prepared an exquisite menu, Maya was a great conversationalist (she is fluent in nerd) and I successfully brewed my first cup of coffee (ever) with the aid of a new Nespresso machine. I am very lucky to be wed to such a great cook and the father of such a socially confident child.

The rising full moon was particularly beautiful this evening and I arrived home (a few minutes before 8 PM) just in time to capture it while still low on the horizon.

For the fourth time in as many days, I have spent a good portion of the day performing a failure analysis on a returned printer. I find it very satisfying to identify root cause for a failure mechanism and trace the sequence of events that led up to it. Using macro photography, I am able to “see” better than with my woefully inadequate eyes plus glasses.

I took a break this afternoon to join Maya and her cousin John on a tour of MIT. She visited Dartmouth College yesterday with her mother. Maya goes back to school next Tuesday to begin her junior year and is putting her last week of vacation to good use by getting a leg up on college visits.