Thoroughly Thursday

Another slow start today. I was up before seven but tried my darnest to get back to sleep for another hour. I wanted to make sure I had enough sleep to nuke whatever happened yesterday. No extra sleep came so I just wished the Meat Man a happy birthday and then chatted with Admiral Bonesaw briefly before starting my day. I went back to my usual breakfast this morning and it was well received. I had a lot more pep in my step and my brain wasn’t in agony. Both good signs. I fired up my machine at eight and got to work. Things were strangely quiet for most of the morning. I checked in on a few things, shared some details. Spent time on the phone with FedEx trying to go above and beyond for customers. There is a task I could start but it’s not critical so I focused on other things until my first meeting of the day at eleven. It went fairly quickly and I found myself done what I needed to do at about quarter to twelve. I went for lunch. While my Campbell’s Chunky Chicken and Wild Rice was rotating in the microwave I went out and moved my patio table to the middle of the deck. It is in pretty good shape for spending its first winter outside. I got some paper towel and cleaner and wiped the top and bottom of the surface. I did the one chair that wouldn’t fit in the shed also and then had my lunch outside. It is a warm spring day today, much warmer than it has any right being. As I dined and looked at the lawn I started to get the itch to do something about it. I was done eating and cleaned up by quarter after and decided I’d work on the lawn until one. I went and got my crocs, the rake and some gloves and set to work.

I started along the fence in the shade, the worst part of the lawn by far. I pulled a good sized wad of dead grass out of that area. I started to do the dead patch before moving back to the fence. In the end I didn’t finish it during this session but had to stop at one as I planned. It was a good thing too because I was gassed and ready to collapse after only 35-40 minutes of physical activity. It’s been a long year of doing very little I suppose. I’ll have another go later on. I got done two widths of the rake all the way around except in front of the shed I did that width. Hopefully I’m recovered by then. I’d like to get it raked and spin on some fertilizer before the rain starts the next few days, help wash it in. It was nice to be outside, too hot for jeans though.

After the “me” time I got back to work with a few meetings stacked up in the afternoon. I had someone dropping off some seed for me too during that span. Back to back meetings made the afternoon breeze by. I checked in again on a few on-going items and actually closed my machine at 4:55pm. Naturally I got a call on Teams from a colleague at 4:58pm. Not sure why he’s wait until five to try me. I grabbed my crocs and my gloves and went out to finish the yard. That went so well that I did the front too. It made quite a difference to the look of the front. Next I grabbed some 6-24-24 that Big T brought on that lawn murdering trip and used my terrible hand spreader to put a fairly light coat of fertilizer on the lawns. In the defense of the spreader it actually worked much better than I remembered. I washed the spreader and worked on a grocery list. Tomorrow is a family feast night and I need spring roll wrappers, but not not the fresh kind. Only one grocery store in town sells them, Food Basics on the other side of town. I was planning to do my bi-weekly shop in the morning but with a series of meeting starting at half eight I wasn’t sure how I’d get to both stores. Why not go to just Food Basics you’re thinking? They don’t have the shrimp I need, I checked. I decided to try an evening shop. It’s a lockdown, can’t be that busy. And it wasn’t. But the people there gave me a stern reminder why I don’t cross the tracks to shop up there. I won’t go into detail but arrows on the floor are apparently meaningless on that side of town. I found my key ingredient and got a few other items I don’t normally see. I was nearly home when I thought, Walmart is open until eleven, might as well get two birds stoned at once while I’m out. So I turned around and entered my usual store. It was very different. The items you can buy now is the food and pharmacy. The rest of the store is roped off. They have plastic wrapped all the clothes, the shoes are shutdown, electronics is barricaded. I think it’s to level the playing field. But if all other stores are closed in the full lockdown then those items are now just unavailable? Amazon is going to get richer I suppose. It’s a very confusing situation. Anyways, here is my combined haul.

I got home around nine and stowed all my loot. It was still around 20C outside and much warmer in the house. I hope I can get to sleep easily. I read a few pages of my book and drifted into the night. It was a pretty busy day, here is the final tally, that includes eight and a half hours at my desk.