Frenetic Friday — The Tugboat

I really pushed groceries to the limit this time. I have been buying them the day of the family feast day, which is every two weeks, generally on a Friday night. This time I’d meant to get after it on my day off but that went sideways and then Thursday was too intense to trifle with so here I am, at the proverbial eleventh hour. It was like a scavenger hunt to try and find all the exotic items. Many of them I’m sure I’ll only use for this recipe and then they’ll sit in the cupboard for the next three years. Natural rice vinegar, toasted sesame oil? C’mon! You’ll see what we were up to later. I got a McBreakfast, as part of the grocing ritual and that would stand up as breakfast. I was in there early this time, nearly at the time of opening. My respect for the elders policy has been lost, if it was even still a thing. I’ll go back to my pre-pandemic timing of 7am start for groceries. Here is a photo of the whole gang.

I had to hustle back too, I had full day, even with afternoon meetings, which aren’t supposed to be allowed. I had another one with the critical team to try and find out what happened Wednesday morning. My first meeting when well, as did the second. I was off and running. I got asked to have a meeting over lunch. I had been getting a few emails stacking up from the same person and I asked to talk through it. Much more efficient than fifteen emails for this particular topic. Because of this, the time for lunch came and went. I jumped on a quick call with the soybean breeder to level set and align. Then I had a matching short call with the corn breeder. We talked over the time, we always do, I guess that comes from me being a corn guy for a much longer time. I had that critical call and the critical person with the update was a no show. So I pressed the panic button and ran the issue to the top of our Canadian leadership, then I did the same on the US side. I’m not going to sit around letting someone else decide my fate, I’ll go down swinging for my customers and if that’s not right then I’ve been trained wrong my entire life. I was feeling pretty defeated by the end of the business day at half five. Luckily I had the Family Feast night to prepare for and to occupy my mind. We made Korean Glazed Chicken wings. It was funny because the recipe called for the wings to be marinaded for one hour up to overnight and not one of us did that. We all looked at the ingredients and didn’t read the recipe before. None of us had all the correct ingredients either. For me, I skipped the onion and the scallion, out of spite to onions in general. I also had to get a chili paste rather than the Gochujang sauce. I didn’t get chicken wings but chicken drumsticks. The meal itself was straight forward. The marinade took the most effort and after letting them soak for fifteen minutes or so I put them in the air fryer and worked on the glaze, also simple. Here are the requisite photos.

Parents used chicken thighs and had rice and slaw

Sudbury sister had most complete version

We had a really nice time making the meal and laughing it up. They asked for a tour of my plants afterwards to I showed them what I had and we ended up chatting until nearly eight. That is on the long side of these encounters. I checked my phone after I hung up from the video call and saw a customer email. I found it distressing. I tried to play HomeScapes but had a difficult time focusing. I was reeling a bit, which I shouldn’t have been. I couldn’t get to sleep until midnight from the stress of it. There was nothing personal about it, but I take it personally when we can’t exceed expectations. It is maybe a flaw. I passed the anxious hours with YouTube and podcasts to try and lull my brain to sleep. It wasn’t good.