TMonk

Glad to hear the bike suggestion went well. On the MTB front, I'll be most likely heading to the "Mount Laguna Trail Fest" an annual SDMBA event. They book out two of the large group campsites and have music, food, beer, demos from several MFG's and guided rides/events. It's an all around good time. That's where I've demo'd the Ripley and a couple of their other models as well.

I say "most likely", because my dad suffered a stroke early in the week. I've taken some half-days at work to visit last night and again this morning. His balance and speech is screwed up, throat paralyzed as well so he can't swallow. The doc ordered a feeding tube that they put in this morning while I was there. Nutrition will help. Still, he didn't die, unlike his father did at his age (also from stroke). Also he is coherent and his personality is in tact, he is quite conversational and I don't have to attenuate my speech at all - his cognition is there. Still, it's rough to see him in such poor shape. He is someone I look to for mentorship, guidance, and friendship. As I've grown into adulthood he's also been a companion of mine and well. Music, hiking/bikes, beers, the occasional joint, that sort of stuff. He was healthy, was blockage/stenosis of an artery that had probably been there a long time, potentially since birth. My feeling about this whole thing have been all over the place from worried, to relieved and back again x1,000.

They are only allowing two unique visitors per day so with my mom going every morning and with other family in rotation over the weekend, I would not be able to see him until early next week. If things look stable tonite after my call with my mom, I may still go on my trip and try my best to have some fun and take a load off up the hill at the trail fest. I will drive separately and have daily scheduled calls so I can jet out of there if there are medical or logistical complications with his care.

In other news, my company just went through an acquisition as well. Things are different on the sales/mkt, operations and C-level side, but for a lowly scientist like myself things are fairly insulated from change. My boss (director level) is the same, which I like. There was a 4x valuation in share price and my wife and I had both been accumulating for 10 or more years each, so that put is in a much more mobile position regarding home purchase or other capital moves. It was obvious they were interested in our diagnostic division (which I am not a part of), so time will tell what this means for me. They just switched me over from gsuite to Outlook so hey, it's getting real haha. They have the sales and marketing engine so if they chose to drive the nanoparticle sales and development portion (the original portion) of the business, it could be really good for me. If not and I get bored, there are retention bonuses in place the next two Decembers and I'd at least "collect and pass go" for the first one. But that is an incentive and I do like my job so we'll see how this plays out.

My wife on the other hand had planned on switching gears, doing some skills/trade schooling (data scientist coding bootcamp) since she's always had an interest and does some of our back end commercial ops web stuff already. So she quit and gave a strategically long notice - like 2+ months, knowing about the acquisition. She had more shares than me too. But, she was immediately courted by the parent company and now works for them for a higher salary! I'm sure the CEO had good things to say about her as she was a confidant of his for anything sales and finance related since the early days. She's doing salesforce admin type stuff, which she preferred over being customer facing in the first place. So that's like the best possible outcome for her!

Sorry for the essay, there is a lot going on. Some bad, some good. Days are going by quickly!