The Edwardian Ball

San Francisco hosted the 25th annual Edwardian Ball this past weekend—Edwardian as in Edward Gorey the fantastical author and illustrator, as opposed to the English era. It was a place for people watching, a host to surreal and interactive art (including animated taxidermy and performances by circus artists I’m starting to recognize!), and an evening for the Burning Man types to enjoy a much cushier setting—the Regency Ballroom. After years of hearing the hype, it was a pleasure to finally gown up and experience the Edwardian Ball first hand.

Edwardian Ball 2026

A tropical start to the new year

Our new year has kicked off with a decidedly tropical flare. On the 2nd we jetted off for a few days in Hawaii — Nico's first visit, and more than two decades since my last. We didn't bother planning much in advance, as life has been keeping us on our toes, but we figured things out on the fly and had a decidedly enjoyable five day adventure.

We stayed in Waikiki, a beach neighborhood in Hawaii. On our first full day, we ventured out to Hanauma Bay for snorkling all saw all sorts of exotic fish mere feet from the shore.

The food scene wasn't half bad. As a cacao producer, we found plenty of decadently rich dark chocolate treats. I discovered I am a big fan of salmon belly. And Aloha Beer's In-POG-nito Wit (a witbier with notes of pineapple, orange, and guava) and their furikake crispy rice salmon bombs (oven-roasted miso salmon belly on crispy rice topped with garlic aioli, furikake, teri glaze, and jalapenos) were so good they earned a second visit.

We reserved the rainiest day for a trip to Pearl Harbor, a stop for my history buff of a husband. It was chilling, in the wake of our country's unprovoked invasion into and kidnapping of a foreign leader, to be reminded of just how long it's been since we've been properly on the "just" side of a military conflict.

We ventured across the island to hike at Diamond Head and Makapu'u lighthouse, to visit to the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park (where we saw some of the world's most socialized goldfish), to admire the surfers at Pupukea Beach where the wild chickens entertained us, and to conquer the pineapple maze at the Dole plantation, where we discovered how well dark chocolate pairs with fresh pineapple.

On our final night, we embraced our nature as tourists and hit up a luau. Aiming for something less painfully commercial, we found one where a dance troupe performed traditional dances with costume changes for each of the Polynesian islands. We learned that Tonga is the only Polynesian island kingdom to have never been colonized. And of course, we got a taste of some fire dancing after dark, the perfect way to cap off our brief escape into paradise.

Guess I'm a resolutions person now

My NYE 2026 look positively sparkled

I've been adamantly anti-resolution. The new year is such an arbitrary time point. Why wait until then to start changing things, exploring new interests, and becoming the person you want to be? But the resolutions I made a year ago worked surprisingly well. I gave myself quarterly check-ins and actually made progress to varying degrees on all of them. I guess that makes me a resolution person now? While I'm not entirely convinced, I won't throw away something effective just to stick to my principles, so here's some thoughts on another year of trying to progress as a human:

1. Be more present. This is a really hard one to measure or concretely act on, but it's one of my biggest issues. I'm so focused on the next ten steps that I often struggle to experience the moment. I've been to a few parties over the past year that helped me focus on this, but there's a lot of work to do.
2. Compose a choreography. I followed up on last year's circus fitness goal and am absolutely in shape for this. Unfortunately, it's already looking unlikely my schedule will align to actually perform something this year, but I'd still like to fully compose an act. Still working on picking an apparatus.
3. Develop some work friendships. I've done a decent job of reconnecting at work, but it can often feel lonely. Towards the latter half of the last year, I began building some connections with mixed success. This year, I'd love to see myself really have a place in the office not based just on my skillset but also my connection with the folks I see on the daily. It would be especially lovely to have some folks who I'd properly call friends even if we no longer share an employer.

They're not exactly as sweeping or ambitious as last year. I suppose I don't really need to find myself as much as I did a year ago. But they're some decent goals for a new year.

The real Christmas

Having ticked off the holiday travels back east over Thanksgiving this year, we were free to enjoy a relaxing holiday on the best coast this year. We'd just warmed back up to hosting with our first games night of 2025 a few weeks prior, and we were on a roll. A quick negotiation with Wolfgang and Steph earned us the Dec. 25 hosting time slot (the real Christmas) to their Christmas Eve. (I still can't get over how some Europeans think Dec. 24 is the day for celebrations.) Steph and Wolfgang hosted the perfect pre-game on Christmas Eve, where we broke out day one of two of our signature non-alcoholic mulled wine. In parallel, our own small guest list slowly expanded as we swallowed up more Christmas orphans until a few hours before we warmed up the oven on Christmas morning. Somehow the mishmash crew of guests came together quite nicely, and our evening rode out until nearly 2am, with one guest claiming our newly freed up guest room for an overnight. We enjoyed such a lovely and warm evening filled with love and zero drama, a proper Christmas-edition Friendsgiving.

Managed a family photo of the fur kiddos, and shot pics from both Steph & Wolfgang's and our meals, but failed to snap a single shot of the wonderful humans who added flavor to our delectable Christmas celebrations.

I'm really loving life in this moment between the hellscape of embryo creation and the reality of parenthood. The buttery smoothness of foie gras with armagnac, the sweet pop of a candied cranberry stolen between elaborate high-fives with an Oakland native, and the crisp effervescence of a non-alcoholic La Chouffe, all swirled up in laughter and a late night with friends: I'd have had a hard time drawing up a better Christmas.

Understood the assignment

One of my post-fertility-treatment resolutions was to reconnect at work. Yes, that mostly meant diving in deep again, pulling the late nights as needed, and checking back in to the tech. But reconnecting has taken several forms over the year, from my weekly afterwork runs to the company-sponsored charity rides to, over this past month, preparing the most on point holiday party outfit. Theme? Arcade.

In the emotional stew simmering after we'd said goodbye to Chat, I bit off a bit more than I could chew in my first vision: a hand-embroidered, neon arcade-inspired vision in periwinkle trimmed with shimmery magenta, sparkling teal, and glowing yellow. A few weeks in, I accepted defeat and sourced a rich red blank slate to begin holiday inspo 2.0: PacMan edition.

A PacMan dress project for an arcade-themed holiday party

The starting piece, a Poshmark find, was beautiful and made for someone decidedly curvier than myself. I had my work cut out for me if I was going to turn this into my arcade outfit in three weeks’ time. Out came the seam ripper, the fabric scissors, and the collection of matching spools and bobbins It felt good to get in there, rip apart seams, and lose myself between the sewing machine and the fabric and the pins jutting out in odd directions, pricking me as I tugged and stretched and held together the material, willing an idea into a reality.

I pulled off a total resize while awaiting the PacMan ribbon, which shipped just before the Thanksgiving holiday. The trim was fully secured in time for the PacMan pillowcase, which arrived the weekend before the big day. (No other PacMan fabrics were available for sale within the States in sufficient area to cover the lace trim on the bottom of the dress, and international shippers couldn't guarantee delivery in my time window, so the pillowcase was my only way to source PacMan material.) My dress, complete with Velcro-attached PacMan appliqué and cozy brushed fiber PacMan lower tier, was finalized all of three days before it was time to slay.

A PacMan dress, the same muppet fur coat that's made an appearance at every Neuralink holiday party since we took them off-site, and some friends new and old to round off an evening capping off the year I've most belonged at this company since joining nearly 8 years prior.

A year ago, I barely survived an hour at the let-down of a holiday party hosted just a day after my final egg retrieval. I loved the contrast of showing up last night having fully understood the assignment (theme), and with enough work friends to ride out socializing and dancing through the last song of the night. It's not always obvious to find my place in a company where the default employee is a Gen Z white guy just a few years out of his undergrad in engineering. Most days I feel a million years old and, as a fairly effeminate married woman, I can struggle to connect with coworkers. But between the running, the new team, and my reclaimed position as a company cheerleader (the one who's finally making Neuraladies swag happen), I've been feeling like I just might belong at Neuralink.

18 years later

Last time I'd done an Aloia family Thanksgiving, the year was 2007. The next year, I was off in Italy and hosting my first expat extravaganza. Since then, I've picked up several degrees, an extra nationality, some thoroughly stamped passports, a husband, a dog, several cats, and a dream career in neurotechnology. We've also watched the world spiral as the nascent technology called social media brainwashed the world and led to the rise of ultra-right movements across continents. Needless to say, a few things have changed.

The impetus for the grand return? The Black Friday Eagles game. The extra layers and heat pads stuffed into our socks were hardly worth it: not only did the Birds lose, but they did so in record-setting style. The Eagles gave up the most rushing yards of any game in the past decade, and tying for the 9th most rushing yards given up in the entire team franchise history.

Thanksgiving 2025: the Birds, the food, one giant Hindu temple, and an American Hogwarts

The trip back east had its sweeter moments: We toasted Grandpa at our first Thanksgiving without him and played a recording of his (in)famous grace before chowing down around the table that's been hosting Aloia Thanksgiving perhaps as long as I've been missing. We explored America's largest Hindu temple over in Robbinsville, New Jersey. We toured Nico around America's best answer to Hogwarts in Princeton. We trekked up to New York where we squeezed in a meal of real New York pizza chez Sharon before catching our Monday morning flight out of JFK. And, surprisingly enough, we boarded the plane back home without any moments of drama to report, ticking off the obligatory annual holiday season family trip earlier than normal this year.

A little less lost, and maybe more fabulous

I may have been supporting my friend this past summer when I went to a boudoir open house for which she was managing the PR, but I can't pin the blame on her this time. Maybe the wheels started turning when another client I met at the open house talked to me about how her sessions in front of the camera were more effective than any of the hundreds she'd spent on therapy. I came to understand that, as utterly absurd as it sounds even to me, a boudoir session was something I needed.

My life flipped on its head these past couple of years. Even before the chaos of fostering and fertility treatments, over the past decade I‘ve spent a lot of time carefully flying under the radar, conforming and avoiding attention, and making some compromises that really hurt. In the midst of it all, I lost the mental model of myself that my photographer teased out: someone strong, beautiful on my own terms - without having to apologize for the lack of hourglass figure or feminine curves - and most importantly, joyful in my weird, wonderful skin.

This is me, who I want to be and who I am.

Looking at these photos makes me feel a little more brave. Even if the person that exists in my head can’t (yet) do something, surely that badass casually wrapped around her pole could. And oh, right, that's me! I’m hoping seeing myself from the photographer's angle takes me one step closer to reclaiming my sense of self and feeling a little less lost - and perhaps as fabulous as I deserve to feel.