This message has been rewritten for formatting and flow on July 5th, 2024.
Happy 4th of July! Slept horribly on account of sleeping late at 1:15am and the nighttime heat — I woke up around 9, or so, and by the time I had finished getting ready at 10 I could feel the heat in the house. We were closed today so we had a full house. My mom made fried garlic chicken, my oldest uncle prepped some lobster, and my two younger uncles went to buy some extra sodas and drinks. Uncle Mike and Aunt Kun from Stockton came over around 2 or 3, around the time I was eating, and I greeted them after I had finished lunch outside in the hot shade with the rest of my family (garlic chicken, lobster, quinoa salad, rice).
I spent most of my computer time continuing to evaluate autofocusing zoom lenses (if I'm spending $300+ I might as well get a good zoom than "just" another prime lens). I was about to drop $330 total on a sweet EF 24-105mm(!) f/4 and adapter after hearing that 24-105mm was a more versatile zoom focal length, but the originating source of that comment actually described the ~$320 native RF 24-105mm f/4*-7.1*, a kit/entry-level zoom sharp enough across the range to give the older L a run for its money. I do lose 1.7 stops at the telephoto side, but it's much lighter and I don't mind my Canon RP's luminance noise. If I'm pressed for light collection ability, I can go back to my vintage prime lenses.
Still, I didn't make the purchase because I soon after had to help Aunt Kun (unsuccessfully) try to reformat her manuscript to fit a Kindle layout/template. I got pretty frustrated with it, but we sent an email and so we're hoping for a response. (July 5th edit: We got a response and it does seem like we can import and reformat according to the template, though it'll naturally take up a little bit of time.)
I had dinner around 9:00 and when I got back to my computer around half an hour later I heard about this screaming deal on a ThinkPad P14s AMD Gen 5 that drops the price from $2289 to $969 ($1066 after tax I think). The specs are comparable to the Framework Laptop 13 and what I'm planning to add in — namely 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD — if not a bit better since the P14s comes with a Ryzen 7 than a Ryzen 5. I do worry about battery life, but I'll have to test it and see for myself. The savings are compounded even further because my intended budget is ~$1300 after tax, so I'm at least saving ~$234.