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Hello!

This is The Girl, writing to you for the DC Rainmaker weekly newsletter. If you are a new to the DCR newsletter, you can catch up with newsletter archives here. If you are reading this newsletter and wondering why/how you’re receiving it, please don’t get mad at me. I promise I did nothing to try to recruit your email address, you likely checked a box on a blog comment somewhere unknowingly or you haven since forgotten. Have no fear, you can just unsubscribe at the bottom of the page. Easy peasy. On ward, the way I structure the newsletter is to give you the latest and greatest of the DCR weekly-ish round up, followed by the In-Depth thoughts of The Girl, found below the fold!

What’s happened lately in the tech blogosphere? Lets see:

Ray has been having a rough go of the office space search. However, we are starting to see some light at the end of that tunnel. Fingers crossed. But why should you care? Well, Ray working out of “my house” greatly reduces his productivity levels. Partly because he spends a lot of time just trying to find things in our enormous mound of boxes! Then, usually I end up finding the said thing, to which he now “owes me” for my find. You know like a finder’s fee. At the moment that payment is in the form of hanging shelves! You can see where this is going. The blog was a little light last week.  

He did manage an in-depth review of the new Garmin inReach Mini Satellite Communicator. A product that he was pretty impressed with. Myself as well, as I’m always happy with a new device that allows me to keep tabs on him when he’s on a solo bike ride!

Also making an appearance is the Week in Review post. I really like these posts as well. They kind of keep me on top of what Ray is reading about in his spare(?) time. Maybe if we ever get to have another lunch date this decade, I’ll have something in common to talk to him about! If you enjoyed following our adventures on the Velibs during our time in Paris, check that post out for an interesting article.

Last but not least, there’s sort of a tech round up of items that were announced, changed, updated, etc. Basically stuff Ray wanted to post about, but couldn’t really stretch any one item into it’s own post. I think…

As always, if you’re not really into reading, and you’ve had your fill of words today, head over to Ray’s YouTube channel. He posts lots of good stuff over there, and this week included a video from his in-depth review of the Garmin inReach mini satellite thingamajig.

Now is the part of the newsletter where I send you to “below the fold” to read the In-Depth Thoughts from The Girl. As I have to head off to the wonderful world of Amazon to buy more foam playmats for P2 as she’s moving and shaking a little too far these days!

image Tech Tidbits: Withings becomes Withings again, Favero’s Assioma 1% Update, AIRhub Core, and FirstBeat HRV Summit
image Week in Review – May 6th, 2018
image Garmin inReach Mini Satellite Communicator In-Depth Review
image First Ride: Everysight Raptor Cycling Heads-Up Display
image 5 Random Things I Did This Weekend

In-Depth Thoughts from The Girl

Hey there, thanks for making your way past all the tech talk, and down here to my part of the world. I first of all want to say thanks to everyone for the emails from last week! WHAT A RESPONSE!

It seems a lot of you enjoy the newsletter simply for the general goings on of the Maker household. It’s just a reminder to you that we really are just human, well the girls and I are… Ray is still questionable. And Lucy is just Lucy.

This past weekend was absolutely beautiful here in Amsterdam. With the exception of naps (adults included), all bodies were outdoors playing, getting fresh air, and absorbing sunshine for the entirety of the weekend. To kick off the weekend, the Maker clan set out for a “fun” adventure Saturday morning. The plan was made on Friday night to load up the kiddos and head out to the Tulip gardens at Keukenhof bright and early the next day. I should back up a little here, just to paint the whole picture. We woke up unreasonably early on Saturday morning, 5:40am early, which was not the plan. The Peanut decided she had enough of this sleeping regime, and that was that.

There was no reasoning with her that sleep is a privilege that she should not waste, so Ray took one for the team. They headed off to the living room where a couch, warm milk bottle, coffee, and the newest fascination of “The Gruffalo” were consumed. P2 wasn’t long to follow and soon enough the whole Fam-Jam was up partying on Saturday morning. It wasn’t hard to tell that The Peanut was in one of her wonderful toddler moods (Guuurl is a tween already), but Ray and I stuck to the plan of going to the gardens for some family “fun”. Surely she’ll come around?

All of you seasoned parents out there are grinning at your screens right now. You know, this is not going down the way we envisioned. I picked out sweet little outfits for the both the girls, made sure Ray was wearing something other than a cycling t-shirt, and I found something that wasn’t leftover maternity related. I packed snacks, and bottles, and water, and diapers, and wipes…you name it. But when you have a non-compliant toddler for the day, you might as well have tried to pack a unicorn… Family photos were not going to happen. The Peanut has a million dollar smile, and nowadays when she sees the camera or phone, it’s 90-10 that she will look away, run away, or purposefully frown? I have to stress that she was in a grumpy mood, just a mood of her own. Doing her own thing, and don’t bug me. Akin to “talk the to hand” from back in the 90’s. I’m just so glad Ray recently surprised me with a new iPhone, specifically so I can use that beautiful portrait camera mode to take pictures of the back of The Peanut’s head.   

Have no fear. Ray and I try to take it all in stride. We took a selfie of just the two of us, a rarity these days. Then we took a family photo whether she liked it or not!!

After the camera was put away, we strolled the gardens for a few hours, checked out the petting zoo animals, and hopped the shuttle bus back to Schiphol, and eventually back to our new humble abode. Circling back to that thing I was talking about in the beginning… naps! And sunshine! Life is really good here in Amsterdam, we are looking forward to seeing how the summer shapes up!

Ciao

~The Girl.

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