Forgotten Feast

Friday started late again. There was MSF involved and long shower to try and shake the chill from my bones. The nights are getting chilly and in classic fashion, because I’m inherently cheap I’ve refused to turn on the heat. I usually set the target at December first and then cave at some point in November but this year it is feeling like it is going to be even sooner. When I got the kitchen time was tight. I decided to call an audible and just nuke four slabs of sausage and ram them between a lightly nuked set of English muffins and some Kraft singles, or Black Diamond singles, I’m not sure that has the same ring, cheese slices….ugh. This provided a very quick meal and a short cleanup, needing only to wash two plates and bread knife.

I was at work for eight and the time before the first call disappeared alarmingly fast. The next thing I knew I was into it. I had my regular weekly Friday morning call with my US team, one that I generally sit on mute with my camera off and listen. It was good, lots of exciting news and general excitement around a pair of personnel announcements from the day before. A couple of veterans returning to the team. Next up I had a one on one with my US boss, the leader of the previous call. I was pretty chatty on that and we had a very productive call for thirty minutes. Immediately after that I had an hour with my boss to talk about development. This was a subject that I think had been avoided previously but I called it out in one of our team meetings and now I was getting my come upp’ins. It’s fine, it’s a conversation that should happen a couple times a year to let you know how you’re tracking and areas you can improve in. It’s been a couple years since I got such feedback and haven’t really known how I was doing. Apparently I’m doing a good job. About halfway through this call I started to feel a burn in the back of my throat, a bit more than a tickle, there was something there. I tried to drown it with water but it wasn’t relenting. I didn’t have anything on the docket for afterwards and started to notice a steady decline in my well being. I was starting to feel achy and run down. It felt like the humble beginnings of a cold. I recalled that Booj and I had stayed well apart outside when I saw him but he’d had similar symptoms. A cold isn’t a big deal, a man cold is survivable mostly, but a cold in the COVID pandemic is bound to bring it’s own set of problems. I was planning to slip out at half four to go get some last minute groceries to be prepared for the scheduled Family Feast that I’d forgotten about for most of the week (hence the last minute grocery dilemma) but I was feeling like I wouldn’t have the gumption to do that. My condition declined more until I told my family I would be able to participate that night. They graciously moved things a day for me to allow me to recover some. This was a big relief, I didn’t realize that I was stressing over this. I don’t like to let my family down. With that stress I didn’t know I was carrying gone I settled in for the last few minutes of work. I was filing some emails when I came across a video training from back in August call Tomato Tuesday. It had been presented the week I was off for my birthday. The girl on the thumbnail looked pretty familiar and it being about our vegetable business, I started to wonder. There was a girl in grad school that I used to hang around with who went ot work for us in California in the vegetable business. The boys eventually dubbed her the XPFG. We’ve been in touch a few times over the years but hadn’t spoken in a long time, over five years I guess. I put on the replay of the video and sure enough it was her doing a high profile training session on different crops we breed for our vegetable business. I sent her a note with a link to the article and we emailed back and forth for a bit. I told a few others from our friend group about it. I watched the hour long video and that took me up until five. At that point, I pulled together a very meager dinner and descended to the basement. I brought two warm blankets with me and cuddled up on the couch with a big crock of water. I put on Black Widow via Apple rental and watched that film. It was fun and entertaining. To follow that up I put on something that was much more raw and hard. I’m forgetting the title at the time of writing but it will come to me. During this film I got a call from my old buddy Duffman. We’d texted a bit on me seeing the XPFG video and he got tired of the thumb workout and dialled me. We chatted for eighty minutes. I finished up the film and went to bed. With some light MSF leading up to sleep.