April 26, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Dogs, Chicks & Horses

April vacation is over. Junior year home stretch begins. Buckle up.

There will be work. There will be decisions. There will be eye rolls, and if I’m being honest, probably some friction from both sides of the table.

So I was glad when I came across this recently. Jerry Seinfeld used to pin photos from the Hubble Space Telescope up on the wall of the show’s writing room.

“It would calm me when I would start to think that what I was doing was important,” he said. “You look at some pictures from the Hubble Telescope and you snap out of it.”

I’m filing this away for the next few months.

Because yes, this stuff is real and it matters. But it’s also not life or death. It’s a grind. It’s important. And it’s also okay if we finish this tomorrow instead of today.

The universe is a pretty good perspective device, if you let it.

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April 20, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Tours & More

Did I think these Saturday posts would one day include a recap of college tours? Absolutely not. Is that what happened yesterday? Absolutely. We’ve spent the past few days of spring break touring schools, scrutinizing dining hall buffets, and telling Ce we never had it this good when we were freshman.

It remains to be seen where this all eventually ends up, but right now I’m just trying to enjoy the trip, not let my own emotions, and pay attention to the small, fleeting moments. Those 18 summers are almost over.

I’m also doing a pretty job of ignoring the ‘cost of attending’ slide in every presentation. It’s strange, I tend to black out every time that one flashes onscreen.

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April 12, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Soles & Solos

“An idea arises spontaneously, just like any other thought… a concept is built deliberately through a series of choices and constraints.” Penny Lane was talking about documentaries but I thought this was one of the better descriptions of the realites of writing a book. You have the what-if idea, but then the book eventually develops through the choices after that initial spark.

I officially kick-off Max #9 next week. I’ve got the idea. We’ll see how the concept develops.

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March 29, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Food & Fashion

If you need a little reminder that spring is indeed here, baseball season started this week.

Just remember, baseball is “designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.” That’s a quote from the late, former MLB commissioner Bart Giamatti.

He also said, “Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need.” That thought has been driving stories and experiences for centuries.

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March 22, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Pizza & Pickle

Two reminders for myself this week. These are the types of things that I would repeat to Cecilia before she could drive and she was sometimes trapped in my car. She would give the obligatory eyeroll and hashtag #dadlessons but we’re planting seeds here.

First, 90% of success is not getting distracted. This is quickly becoming a define-able and hire-able skill. The average adult can no longer go six minutes without being distracted. Yikes. Deep work is rare. Consistent work is rare. But you can do it.

Second, so many advantages in life come from being willing to look like an idiot in the short term. I still struggle with this but feel as if I’ve gotten much better about this in the last five to ten years. When studies show your satisfaction and quality of life improve in middle age, I’m convinced not giving a f*ck so much is a major reason.

Good luck convincing teenagers of this.

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March 15, 2026

Scenes from Saturday + Comps & Cards

Two things collided this week in an unexpected way: daylight savings time and Ally’s upcoming history test on the fall of Rome.

Turns out the Romans had their own version of daylight savings, but they took it further. Instead of nudging the clock an hour, they adjusted the length of the hour itself. Summer hours stretched to 75 minutes. Winter hours shrunk to as little as 45.

Time really was relative.

The logic was simple: if the sun was up, it was daytime and you worked. If it went down, leisure time. No ambiguity. No arguing about when to stop looking at email.

It makes for a great flash card. I’m just not sure I’d love the practical implications. A 75-minute hour in July sounds like a lot of extra Tuesday afternoon meetings.

Still, there’s something almost appealing about a world where the day’s length bent around human experience rather than the other way around.

I could potentially get behind a calendar that admitted December and July are not, in fact, the same.

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