I keep thinking I shouldn’t post here until I’ve processed more of my photos and videos, updated my apps so I’ll look better for potential future employers, etc, but if I did that, the post would be absurdly long and late. This situation is of course fractal — I keep thinking I shouldn’t release my apps until I’ve fixed all those bugs, got everything working in VoiceOver, etc., but if I did that (as I have, many times in the past) the apps would simply never get released.

So, today I’ll write a blog post, and tomorrow I’ll either put my new macOS app on TestFlight, or submit new versions of NastyWriter and NiceWriter (which don’t work very well in the latest iOS, and also will fail to show ads because I’m halfway through moving my ad accounts to a new country.) Bug me if I don’t, and let me know if you want to test the apps. I should decide which one to release already so that I can focus on one thing at a time, but right now I’m focussing on writing this blog post, not on deciding which apps I can realistically get ready. See what I did there?

First things third: I made it to my new home in the Seattle area! I’m busy se(a)ttling in, changing all my online accounts to the new country (I’ll write a separate post about which hoops have to be jumped through for which accounts), and casually looking for work.

My lovely husband Joey Marianer came to Vienna to help with the moving, and many of my friends helped by taking my furniture and other things I didn’t need to keep. Then Joey and I took a train to Hamburg, the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner to New York City, and a road trip to our home in the Seattle area. It was of course in a pool on the Queen Mary 2 that I swam while we were halfway across the ocean.

Here’s a chart of all the days Joey and I have known each other, with appropriate emojis for the days we were together in person, and black squares for the days we weren’t. It was made by the aforementioned new app, which I started writing in an airport lounge one time when Joey’s flight left several hours before mine. This chart ends on September 6, 2024, because that way it would make a nice 49×56 rectangle. It also shows our first 256 days together, which is a nice round number in binary.

I’d never been to New York City before, so (after the no-longer-obligatory trip to Ellis Island the day I immigrated) we stayed for a few days before continuing. High on our list was visiting MoMath, the National Museum of Mathematics. I have a few videos from that, but here’s the one I’ve uploaded, of Joey riding a square-wheeled tricycle on a circular track made of inverted catenary curves:

Also in New York, we visited Liberty Island, Central Park, the Oculus, a few Sabrett’s hot dog stands, an annex of the Transit Museum, and the Apple Store on 5th avenue. I tried a rainbow bagel, some poorly-configured hot dogs (a friend from New York had recommended a particular combination of toppings, which neither stand gave us), and an Apple Vision Pro — I’d tried a friend’s one before, but without corrective lenses.

On the way home we stopped to meet friends in Toledo, Chicago, and Minneapolis. We visited Tony Packo’s (which has a large collection of autographed hot dog buns), Portillo’s (which has trays with deep recesses for cups, making it much easier to carry drinks around), American Science and Surplus (which has amusing signs and muzak) and the Minnesota State Fair (which has food on a stick).

Here’s a playlist of videos and podcasts that Joey and I showed each other because of things we saw during the trip:

There’s obviously a lot more to say and show about all of this, but I have to go finish some apps, so here’s a picture of the Statue of Liberty that I took from the Queen Mary 2 (previously posted on X and mathstodon).