So, I fell off the blogging train, but I’m back now, at least until things get wild again. In my defense, it’s been the busiest six months of my entire career, culminating in the shipment of the world’s largest digital camera from California to a mountaintop in Chile.

I promise to talk more about the camera and its treacherous intercontinental journey in a future post, but for now here are some stats from the year that explain the blogging hiatus.

Number of international flights taken so far this year: 9

That includes four within a two-week period, and I have at least six more before the end of the year. RIP to my back and neck from sleeping in an economy seat.

Number of nights spent in a Marriott hotel: 49

And that’s all within a 5-month period from mid-February through mid-July. I had to spend a lot of time at SLAC prepping for the aforementioned shipment and the Residence Inn front desk staff and I may or may not be on a first-name basis.

Number of words I learned in Japanese: 4

Kon’nichiwa (hello). Sumimasen (excuse me). Kudasai (please). Onsen (hot spring). That’s all I got after a week and a half in Japan, which is frankly embarrassing. Can you tell I was a little mentally frazzled going into that trip?

Percentage of days in 2024 spent at home in Lake Tahoe: 30%

I’ve been saying to people that I’ve been home less than half the days in 2024 and after studying my calendar for a bit it’s honestly depressing to find that the real number is even less than that. I don’t even think I’ll get to 50% by the end of the year but I’m sure you’ll get an update at that time. (Calculated to be accurate on the day of this post, Tuesday August 20th.)

Number of blog posts I’ve missed this year: 2

My official goal for the year was to blog twice a month, on average. Since I decided to be an overachiever and blog once a week for the first couple of months, I posted a total of 12 times in 2024 (not including this post). So that counts through the end of June and I’m really only missing two posts from July. I would have preferred to continue with the weekly or biweekly cadence, but at least I’m not as far behind on this one as I expected which is a bonus.

So there you have it. It’s been a wild year so far and probably won’t calm down until next calendar year, but luckily at this point I’m swinging the work/fun pendulum more towards the fun side. And now I have more fun stories for the (hopefully weekly) blog. I admit that this seemly ridiculous lifestyle is mostly by design, but I do plan to significantly cut back on travel next year. After I spend all of January traveling, of course. Because that’s what I do best.