Add weeknote for March 21-27, 2026; update now and upcoming pages

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

.claude/settings.local.json

@@ -1,23 +0,0 @@
-{
-  "permissions": {
-    "allow": [
-      "Bash(hugo:*)",
-      "Bash(find:*)",
-      "Bash(cat:*)",
-      "Read(//Users/ericwagoner/Downloads/**)",
-      "Bash(mysql:*)",
-      "Read(//Users/ericwagoner/Sites/ericwagoner.com/**)",
-      "Bash(curl:*)",
-      "Bash(ssh:*)",
-      "Bash(git add:*)",
-      "Bash(git commit:*)",
-      "Bash(./deploy)",
-      "Bash(mkdir:*)",
-      "Bash(chmod:*)",
-      "Bash(ls:*)",
-      "Bash(pkill:*)"
-    ],
-    "deny": [],
-    "ask": []
-  }
-}

.gitignore

@@ -17,3 +17,6 @@ hugo.linux
 /.hugo_build.lock
 
 # End of https://www.toptal.com/developers/gitignore/api/hugo
+
+# Local Claude Code settings
+.claude/settings.local.json

content/now.md

@@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ title: Eric in the Present
 [locallygrown]: /posts/locallygrown-origin-story/
 [randomrecipe]: https://www.youtube.com/@RandomRecipeProject
 
-This page is all about what I am doing *now*. It was last updated on March 7, 2026, and will be edited as things change.
+This page is all about what I am doing *now*. It was last updated on March 29, 2026, and will be edited as things change.
 
 ## Where I am now
 
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ I just joined [Natera](https://www.natera.com) as a Staff Software Engineer. Nat
 
 ## What I am reading now
 
-Currently a few chapters into *Service Model* by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
+Nearly finished with *Service Model* by Adrian Tchaikovsky — staying up too late every night because I can't put it down.
 
 ## What I am playing now
 
@@ -55,11 +55,11 @@ After months of silence, I'm writing regularly again. The words are flowing.
 
 ### Upcoming Events
 
-Nothing on the calendar yet — just getting settled into the new role.
+- **Natera lab on-sites** — Started a series of visits to labs in San Carlos and Austin to meet the teams and see the environments the software needs to work in.
 
 ## Where my head is
 
-Week one at Natera is behind me. The firehose is real, but the familiar faces help—several colleagues are people I've worked alongside at previous companies. I'm absorbing everything I can while looking for the places where I can start to make my mark. The creative projects that feed my soul are still in motion. Writing is happening. Gloomhaven is happening. Life is good.
+Two months into Natera. The learning curve is still steep but the work is clicking — I just shipped observability dashboards for a system going live for testing next week, and I'm about to fly to San Carlos to meet the team and see the lab in person. The creative projects that feed my soul are still in motion. Writing is happening. Gloomhaven is happening. New game stores are being discovered. Life is good.
 
 ---
 

content/posts/2026-02-06-weeknotes/index.md

@@ -4,11 +4,10 @@ date: 2026-02-06T12:00:00-05:00
 draft: false
 description: A joyful stress — managing everything necessary, letting go of the things I wanted to do but couldn't, and looking forward to being around people I love who I only see once a year.
 tags:
-  - weeknote
   - weeknotes
   - CONpossible
   - conventions
-lastmod: 2026-02-17T04:45:40.235Z
+lastmod: 2026-03-24T15:14:34.275Z
 ---
 
 *A joyful stress — managing everything necessary, letting go of the things I wanted to do but couldn't, and looking forward to being around people I love who I only see once a year.*

content/posts/2026-03-14-weeknotes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,54 @@
+---
+title: "Weeknotes: March 7–13, 2026"
+date: 2026-03-14T09:00:00-04:00
+draft: false
+tags:
+  - weeknotes
+  - work
+  - cooking
+description: Week two at Natera, jumping into a launch sprint, Service Model robots, chasing apple fritters, OysterFest, Costco initiation, and upcoming travel Tetris.
+---
+
+*Settling in as well as I can in my second week, and being proactive in setting my route forward.*
+
+## Shipped
+
+The original plan was reasonable enough: explore the code, ask questions, meet the immediate team one-on-one, expand outward to stakeholders, and then start contributing. Instead, at the end of last week there was a pivot. I was put on the team about to launch a new internal application across several labs in two states, and they were scrambling to meet the deadline. They're the first team to launch an application on a new platform built entirely in-house, and there's a lot riding on its success.
+
+So the previous plan went out the window. I rolled up my sleeves and jumped in to start smashing bugs, adding a few late-breaking features, and smoothing out the infrastructure. My git activity heat map is already glowing white-hot. I think I successfully grabbed that baton and took off at full speed.
+
+## Read
+
+Code, Jira tickets, wiki pages, HR policies, and more code. It will be a while before my pace *reading* that stuff slows down, and even then it will just be replaced with *writing* it all.
+
+I have made it a point to dive back into *Service Model* by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I'd been slow getting into it, not because of anything wrong with the book itself but maybe just my own wariness about how the story was starting to play out. I finally got past that and now I'm having a hard time putting it down. This is the second book by Tchaikovsky I've read that features an all-too-relatable mentally ill robot, and I'm starting to wonder how he knows the inside of my head so well.
+
+## Played
+
+We had plans Saturday to go to the Firefly Lantern Festival, an event at a city park along the river downtown where people make and wear light-up costumes and puppets. Unfortunately, it got rained out.
+
+That morning, though, it was beautiful. We drove to a neighboring town where an old-fashioned doughnut shop sits on the town square. They were out of my favorite item, apple fritters as good as my gold standard from an even older bakery in Union, Missouri that my buddy Scott and I would stop at before our college classes at the county community college our senior year of high school. I've been chasing fritters that good for thirty-five years and finally found them in Jefferson, Georgia. Have to get there earlier than we did, apparently.
+
+We took our coffee and doughnuts to a nearby cemetery that goes back to at least the early 1800s, full of giant gothic memorials with names of families still present in the area. I love looking at the stonework, especially when it is covered with a couple centuries of moss and lichen.
+
+## Cooked
+
+We swung by a local brewery for OysterFest, mostly an excuse for my favorite local restaurant, Seabear, to bring out their mobile oyster truck. I had a dozen, raw on the half shell, while my bemused daughter watched. Also had a pint or two of a lovely oyster-themed stout they made for the occasion, which I do not think contained any actual oyster. Went quite well with them, though.
+
+## Noticed
+
+While looking through the company savings benefits at the new job, I noticed a discount for Costco. One opened up in Athens a year or so ago, but I never bothered to get a membership. With the discount, though, it was a no-brainer, so Sunday Juniper and I picked up my card and she got to experience her first Costco and, of course, the obligatory $1.50 hot dog. I am hoping I can wean myself off the bulk subscriptions I have set up through Amazon in favor of a more responsible retailer.
+
+## Thinking About
+
+Upcoming travel. As part of the software launch, I will be traveling on-site to San Carlos, California and Austin, Texas. Most of a week in San Carlos for testing, then two weeks later the same in Austin, then two weeks later back to San Carlos for the real launch, and then two weeks later the final deployment in Austin. I enjoy travel, even if the act of traveling is pretty terrible. And it has been ages since I had done anything at this frequency. It required changing around custody schedules, working around some important events, and a fair bit of calendar Tetris, but I think it will all work out.
+
+I did notice that my passport expires in four days. Not essential for domestic travel, but I am glad I caught it when I did because online renewal was painless.
+
+## What's Next
+
+My eldest graduates from college in a month, with a shiny new degree in computer game design. Super proud of Vivian and all the work they have put in, the challenges they have overcome, and the accomplishments they have achieved. Almost to the finish line.
+
+## Vibe Check
+
+Baton grabbed. Sprinting.

content/posts/2026-03-21-weeknotes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+---
+title: "Weeknotes: March 14–20, 2026"
+date: 2026-03-21T10:00:00-04:00
+draft: false
+tags:
+  - weeknotes
+  - work
+  - music
+  - games
+  - cooking
+description: Week three at Natera, Camper Van Beethoven at the 40 Watt, Gloomhaven retirements, a brewery renn faire, avocado ice cream three times, and gearing up for on-site travel.
+lastmod: 2026-03-29T02:03:52.380Z
+---
+
+*Three weeks at Natera under my belt, and it totally feels like I belong.*
+
+## Shipped
+
+Another full-speed week. I've moved past the bug fixes and last-minute features from the previous two weeks and started expanding into the larger ecosystem of services surrounding our application. Getting comfortable with the whole system, not just the piece I've been focused on. Three weeks in now, and I'm eager to meet everyone in person — the first on-site test run in San Carlos is in two weeks.
+
+## Played
+
+The weekend started at the 40 Watt for a Camper Van Beethoven show. One of the band's founders, David Lowery, went on to found Cracker and lives here in Athens, where he teaches at UGA as his day job. A friend and former co-worker, Bryan Howard, plays bass for them, and a chance encounter while grocery shopping led to him putting me on the guest list. Their album *Key Lime Pie* came out my freshman year of college and became one of those deeply affecting records that lodged itself into my identity. Seeing them live, with my friend playing bass for half the show, was sublime. I cried a little. I'll admit it.
+
+Another Gloomhaven session, and we won two more scenarios in the most clutch way possible. Two of our four players retired their mercenaries, so next time we play half the party will be brand new. We started the session with our third player bringing in a new mercenary to replace one she retired last session, which means I'm now the senior party member. I've still got a while before retirement, though, and the next session might be delayed by my upcoming travel.
+
+The local brewery hosted a one-day renn faire, and Carol and I went. I enjoy the brewery, but their events are hit and miss. This one turned out to be fantastic — more artisans set up than I've seen at any of their previous events. We dressed up in low-effort garb (my expectations were low) and ended up spending a good chunk of the afternoon drinking barleywine and browsing wares.
+
+## Cooked
+
+There is a boba place in the shopping center on our street, and our go-to item is their coffee, chocolate, and avocado smoothie. It could easily be a meal replacement, since each one contains an entire fresh avocado. For Christmas I got the house an ice cream machine with a built-in freezer — the kind where you can make ice cream any time without having to pre-freeze the container — and this week Carol had the idea of making avocado ice cream. I found a recipe that uses three whole avocados, Greek yogurt, dark chocolate, and heavy cream. We made it three times this week. It is that good.
+
+## Thinking About
+
+The realities of travel during the TSA shutdown the current administration has orchestrated. I'll be flying to San Carlos in two weeks, and the logistics of navigating a deliberately hobbled system add an unwelcome layer of stress to what should be straightforward.
+
+## What's Next
+
+Next week I transition from bug fixes and feature tweaks to preparing observability tooling for the production deployment. A big reason for us going on site is to provide quick in-person support if things go sideways, even in small ways. Being able to monitor application logs, server metrics, and performance data will be essential in helping us help them.

content/posts/2026-03-28-weeknotes/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+---
+title: "Weeknotes: March 21–27, 2026"
+date: 2026-03-28T09:00:00-04:00
+draft: false
+description: "A flurry of last-minute code changes and travel preparations, mixed with meaningful local outings, before flying off into the unknown next week."
+tags:
+  - weeknotes
+  - work
+  - music
+  - games
+  - cooking
+  - art
+---
+
+*A flurry of last-minute code changes and travel preparations, mixed with meaningful local outings, before flying off into the unknown next week.*
+
+## Shipped
+
+Code freeze hit at end of day Monday, which meant a morning of squeezing in quality-of-life features right up to the wire. Once the gate came down I shifted focus entirely to building out performance and logging dashboards — the kind of observability tooling that will let us actually see what's happening when we go live for testing next week. All of it was new tooling to me, which meant more of the steep learning curve I've been living on since I started, but by the end of the week I was genuinely happy with what I'd pulled together. I'm as ready as I can be for the trip to San Carlos. I'm going in with very little idea of what to expect on the ground, and I've made my peace with that.
+
+## Read
+
+*Service Model* keeps pulling me in. I've carved out a few chapters every night before bed even when that means staying up until 2am, because I can't not. At my current pace I'll finish it on the plane to San Francisco, which feels appropriate.
+
+## Played
+
+Saturday Juniper and I went to the grand opening of [The Painted Heretic](https://www.facebook.com/ThePaintedHeretic/), a new game store on our side of town. It's a good mix — tabletop miniatures, RPGs, card games — and the vibe was welcoming in that particular way that good local game stores manage. We bought a few things, entered the raffles, and left feeling like we'd found a new spot to paint minis and be among our people.
+
+On the way to drop Vivian off at Georgia State after spring break, we stopped at [Level Up Games](https://www.levelupgamesco.com/) in Duluth. The place is massive, stocked like a warehouse, with seemingly every board game, RPG supplement, mini, and trading card in existence. I'd been hunting for the new Gloomhaven mercenary packs — sold out on the Cephalofair website — and Level Up had all four, at retail. More options as our party continues to retire characters and rebuild.
+
+After dropping Viv off, Juniper and I made one more stop: a ska festival at [Outrun Brewing Company](https://www.outrunbrewing.com/) near Stone Mountain, which I'd never been to before. It's 80s-themed in a way that's earnest rather than gimmicky, and ska has been my first musical love since high school, so this required no convincing. I caught the second half of Left Hand Hotdog's set and then stayed for Space Mutiny — an 80s neon karate science fiction ska band, and they delivered exactly that. They were fantastic. The smash burger truck outside and a very odd but very good beer from the brewery were a bonus.
+
+![Space Mutiny performing in the Outrun Brewing Company parking lot, with a movie projected on the building wall behind them](IMG_3333.JPG "Space Mutiny performing in the Outrun Brewing Company parking lot, with a movie projected on the building wall behind them.")
+
+## Cooked
+
+Hot pot in Decatur on the way into Atlanta with the kids. We always go to the same place even though there are at least a dozen to choose from, and it's never not worth it.
+
+Outrun had a beer on tap I couldn't walk past: Echo of Harvest, a graf — half apple cider, half Belgian saison — brewed with smoked malt and fermented with fresh apples. Notes of smoke, tart apple, and a crisp mineral finish. I took a crowler home.
+
+## Noticed
+
+Outside Level Up, tucked into the concrete shopping center landscape, was a nesting Canada Goose pair. The male was sitting on a narrow strip of dirt between the parking lot and one of the buildings. Around the corner, up on a brick wall alongside a staircase, the female was on her nest. A deeply impractical place to lay eggs, but she'd committed. It was unusually hot for March and she was panting visibly. We walked into a nearby boba shop and asked if we could have a container of water for a goose outside, which apparently caused quite a stir — nobody had realized she was there, just a few dozen feet from their back door. They filled a to-go container, we carried it over, and the goose clearly knew what it was. She let us set it right next to her before offering a perfunctory hiss, then spent the next several minutes drinking.
+
+![A Canada Goose on her nest in a Duluth shopping center, drinking from a plastic container of water we brought her](IMG_3319.JPG "A Canada Goose on her nest in a Duluth shopping center, drinking from a plastic container of water we brought her.")
+
+## Thinking About
+
+Thursday evening, while Juniper was teaching swimming lessons at the Y, I went to the [Lyndon House Arts Center](https://www.accgov.com/lyndonhouse) for a presentation by [Peter Loose](https://www.peterlooseart.com/) on the mountain dulcimers he's made and collected over the years. I've known Peter for a long time — he's a quiet fixture in the Athens arts community, the kind of person who doesn't announce himself, despite having paintings in museums around the world. I had no idea until that evening that he also makes dulcimers, in his own sculptural style, and that they're highly sought after by collectors. He showed a snake-shaped one, then a blue jay, then unveiled an enormous one shaped like a lobster.
+
+![The snake dulcimer, painted with dense dot-work patterns and the words "we could all be dazed" along its body, displayed on a wooden pedestal](IMG_3374.JPG "The snake dulcimer, painted with dense dot-work patterns and the words 'we could all be dazed' along its body.")
+
+![Peter Loose holds up his blue jay dulcimer at the Lyndon House Arts Center presentation. The instrument is nearly as tall as he is.](IMG_3370.JPG "Peter Loose holds up his blue jay dulcimer. The instrument is nearly as tall as he is.")
+
+![The lobster dulcimer, leaning against a table at the Lyndon House Arts Center. It stands nearly five feet tall.](IMG_3371.JPG "The lobster dulcimer. It stands nearly five feet tall.")
+
+Unusual shapes, but they all sounded beautiful.
+
+I made a dulcimer once, years ago, in the traditional teardrop shape. For the sound holes I carved the coat of arms of my SCA kingdom. I barely knew how to play it, but I learned enough to carry it around at events and earn as much mead as I could drink by singing songs and telling stories at campfires. It was cheaply made and didn't survive the years. My parents, though, bought and played two beautiful dulcimers later in their lives, and I have both of them now, cases closed, sitting on a shelf in my office. After seeing Peter and his work that evening I brought them down and showed them to Juniper. I keep meaning to re-learn enough to play them. Maybe someday they'll be instruments again instead of artifacts.
+
+## What's Next
+
+My first on-site visit to a Natera lab in San Carlos. I'm genuinely eager — to meet my teammates face to face, to see the scientists who will actually be using the software I've been helping build, and to get a felt sense of the environment these tools need to work in. Specs and tickets tell me the *what*. Meeting the people tells me the *why*, and that shapes the *how* in ways that are hard to get any other way.

content/upcoming.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 title: Eric Yet To Come
 ---
 
-This page is all about what I am planning on doing in the not too distant future. As I get to them, they'll leave here and appear on my [now page](/now). It was last updated on February 28, 2026.
+This page is all about what I am planning on doing in the not too distant future. As I get to them, they'll leave here and appear on my [now page](/now). It was last updated on March 29, 2026.
 
 ## Where I will be
 
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ Nothing on the calendar yet.
 
 ## What I will be building
 
-- **LocallyGrown.net features** — Now that the massive Rails-to-SvelteKit migration is complete, the real work is ongoing: new features, better tools for market managers, and growing the platform that serves 70+ farmers markets.
+- **LocallyGrown.net features** — New features, better tools for market managers, and continued growth of the platform.
 - **More tiny apps** — The pantry inventory app reminded me how satisfying it is to build small, focused tools that solve specific household problems. More of those are coming.
 
 ## What I will be making
@@ -22,13 +22,12 @@ Nothing on the calendar yet.
 
 ## What I will be reading
 
-- Currently a few chapters into *Service Model* by Adrian Tchaikovsky. After that, the stack awaits.
+- Several John Scalzi books queued up — might just grab one at random when *Service Model* is done.
 
 ## What I will be exploring
 
-- **Natera onboarding** — A new codebase, a new team, a new domain. The ramp-up will be steep and I'm here for it.
-- **n8n automations** — The standup prep workflow opened my eyes to what's possible. I keep noticing small friction points that could be automated away.
-- **Claude Code workflows** — Finding new ways to collaborate with AI on rapid prototyping. The two-hour pantry app was an example of what's possible when you're sculpting code instead of typing it.
+- **n8n automations** — Keep noticing small friction points that could be automated away. More workflows coming.
+- **Claude Code workflows** — Finding new ways to collaborate with AI on rapid prototyping. More of that ahead.
 
 ## Where my head is going