Aborted All Plans

The sleep was a powerhouse. Barely any interruptions and kept dragging on. A true weekend morning. A blip at five led to a blip at six thirty which led to waking up at half seven. The ability to just roll over and get the sleep you want is a treat that I recognize as special. I spent another hour lazing about and listening to podcasts before showering my day into existence. Since I’d forgotten to get chorizo sausage for the weekly scramble, I had to settle for some sliced up sausage patties this week. I also had some smoked Gouda with it. That added a very new element and I was glad I had the tartness of the blueberry lemonade to cut the richness of the dish overall. It was a great start to the day.

You may recall me promising the pickles to the Chef, I was supposed to deliver them in the afternoon but when the time came I was worried about a cough that had started after breakfast. I think it was the juice that got me coughing a bit, the sweetness sticking to the back of my throat maybe. In these times, I didn’t want to risk anything so postponed a day. I took the next step of making some chicken and rice soup. Really I was using up some stuff I had on hand and flying without a recipe. I used way more stock this time to try and keep it liquidy. I simmered it to perfection and after a bit of trial and error I got the seasoning closer to appropriate. You can see the change from the first bowl to the dumping of the pot. I think the rice melted. Something odd happened and I was left with a very thick paste going into the fridge.

I played a bit of NHL20 and finished book two of the Bobiverse. I can wait for my October credit or jump ahead and get three in sale. Then I spent most of the pm hours watching films again. Escaping from the day again. I watched a quirky family tale called Stuck in Love. Then I watched a less well done picture called Carrie Pimbly. The actress playing the lead role had too much of a transition in a short period. I couldn’t find it believable. The last movie was Sergio. It was an intense drama/thriller about the UN. It is heavily based on true events and people. I found it fairly profound and intense. The time jumps got less well documented as the film moved along but was easy enough to follow. It elicited a powerful emotional response which I see as the mark of a good film. It ended close enough to bedtime that I used my screens briefly and retired for the evening.

Escaping Saturday

It was a great sleep and lovely start to a day off. I decided to take this weekend off and recharge my batteries. I’ve been going at moderate speed for about three or four weeks, maybe longer now. I say moderate because it doesn’t feel near as taxing as when I had a field program to run and the stress of worrying when you’d get your trials off and would the equipment fail you, or the weather, or both in concert. Would you get it off in time to matter for critical decision making or did you essentially run the trial for nothing. Yes, this year feels much more moderate compared to that. I miss the competition aspect and the rush but I’m pretty comfortable missing that. To express my mood in the morning I wiped up a couple of my usual breakfast bullets then I warmed up a few tots from the prevous night, those that were left, and showed how I was feeling. The blueberry lemonade was the capstone to a scrumptious breakfast.

I had told my friends that I was hoping to do as little as possible in the way of anything productive for the day and having a belly busting breakfast like that was a great first step. Before I got to that step I did take on my daily Microsoft Solitaire Collection challenge and get Musings updated. So I guess I was accidentally productive from that perspective, nothing major though. When I’d cleaned up the opening meal I descended, for real this time, into my lair. My plan was to play some NHL20 and finish the podcasts I had queued up and then start into the second Bobiverse audiobook. I’d finished the first one at breakfast. That would be my criticism of it, it was only nine hours. The previous book I’d consumed, Outlander, was thirty hours to give you some perspective. I’m sure their cost would be relative but since I pay with my “free” monthly credit, I don’t worry about the cost. I achieved the goal of playing it for an hour and tucking into the start of book 2 in the Bobiverse. When I’d had my ever shortening fill of NHL20 I changed inputs and threw on some Netflix. I’ve been amassing a few titles in the My List function and went about clearing some of them. Most that stay in there are shows that sometimes update with new episodes and it saves me from hunting them down again. I’m sitting here the next morning preparing this update for you and for the life of me I cannot recall any of the titles. I know that I watched Inheritance and considered it to be a hidden gem. I’ve never heard of it in any case and thought it was enjoyable. I think I started with Hubie Halloween because Paul Scheer on How Did This Get Made said it was goofy, fun and near Airplane level for the pace and insanity of the gags. There were many WTF moments and I in no way believed the love story but it was a nice way to mentally check out for a couple of hours. Then it was Inheritance. Then I think I watched Lawless again, fuelled by the clips popping up in YouTube. I guess I’m a slave to the algorithm. There might have been something else but I did stop to pull together a meal late in the day. I was lazy and wanted to get back to the screen so I just microwaved four sausage patties (now that I’m flush with them again) and stacked them with some cheese. Why doubles? Why not?! I put on Letters from Juliet or something like that and that brought me close to bed time so I called it a day. A day where I escaped into my lair and forgot my world and any troubles. I used to do that all the time but it has been awhile since I pulled a stunt like this.

Frantic Friday

I woke up quite early to a very chilly bed. I scrambled to the thermostat and it displayed seventeen Celsius. That’s pushing the limits. I’m risking catching a night chill at this rate! I might have to consider turning the heat on. I’m holding out as long as I can to avoid having to pay the exorbitant taxes to heat my home. While I was up I checked my washed hat and was pleasantly surprised by the results. Not perfectly new but pretty close. From the sweat stained and dirty beginnings it is just needed some extra care on the “bill” to be excellent. I’m going to try it with another hat as a second repetition to this experiment.

With all the pre-dawn excitement igniting me I quickly made, consumed, and cleaned up my traditional breakfast. It feels like this no coffee thing has taken pretty well. Before I left the kitchen I had one more task to complete though. I butchered two thick chicken breasts down into chicken tenders. I had consulted with the Chef the previous day to inquire about methodology. I packed my trimmed down breasts into a container and added enough pickle juice to cover them. I was supposed to brine the chicken for at least eight hours so early in the morning was best. I’m not fond enough of pickles to have started this process the previous night. I’ll get to why in a few jumps down the page. For now you are probably concerned about the nearly dry pickles still in the jar. Don’t be, they will be delivered to the Chef as recompense for his advice in the coming days, well before they dry out. And between us, if they dried out and never met a human mouth, all the better. You’ll recall that I exceptionally hate pickles, almost as much as I hate onions. Same rationale, the slimy feel but crisp texture. The tangy taste from the actual pickle does not please me either. And maybe a bit of stretch reason is that I’ve often encountered them in sandwiches or burgers as a most unpleasant surprise. Oddly, I love dill pickle chips. I’m a complicated man with many layers, like and onion. See what I did there…..

This Friday morning progressed like many do. Calls, emails, trying to tie up loose ends. I’ve been keeping my inbox (ie to-do list) fairly tight through the pre-harvest season. I’ve got a couple of fairly large files to generate in the next week but otherwise I’m keeping on top of most things. There is that frustrating, lingering issue that began early September that is still on-going. I don’t like things like that where I’m the one at fault and the face to the customer, but I really have no control over the deliverable aspect of the issue. This one has gone global with teams in Asia working on parts of it. I’m not sure how that happened but I will continue to increasingly rudely request updates. The customer is getting increasingly pissed off and as a result so am I. Either way, compartmentalizing that stressful issue, I had a personal errand to run on my lunch hour. I had placed another Sysco at Home order. The Chef and I needed a restock on the sausage rounds for breakfast samidges and with my new found propencity for air fryer chicken wings I decided to get a supply, that being the 10lb box pictured below. They are classified as jumbo which doesn’t do them justice. Fun that I got jumbo wings on the same day that the Leafs signed Jumbo Joe. Happily, everything was able to be broken down and stowed in the freezer.

The remainder of the afternoon went by fairly quickly. I had a couple of calls with folks and got caught up on most of the things in my inbox, getting the count to under ten again. I shared some information with customers and tried to give status reports on everything lingering. Towards the end of the day I set about reverse engineering a data file that was made annually until 2018. I had some numbers and wanted to generate data for the last two years to bring the file up to date. Some things got left behind during the transition and we don’t have the same resources we had to cover everything off so that is the result. Slowly but surely we’re getting back up to speed. I sort of got lost in that last Excel puzzle and the next thing I knew it was nearly six bells and time for the family meal. We were doing our second air fryer meal together. As I mentioned a fortnight ago, we all have the same air fryer and cookbook so someone picks a recipe and we get two weeks to gather the required ingredients to prepare it together on a video chat. I was the last to the party and everyone had started without me, typical. I was still two minutes ahead of the agreed upon start time if anyone wonders where I got my penchant for being early from. As you may have guessed, we made pickle brined chicken tenders. The hint was in the brining of chicken tenders earlier. Some of players had full meals built around this. I did not. Although I did make some tots to enjoy at breakfast tomorrow, since I was in the mood to cook. I could have ignored copyright law and posted the recipe but basically you brine then bread then fry. It’s not super complicated. I managed to get an action shot of that process.

This will show up differently in mobile than on a computer but I’ll try and give a rundown of who made which version. My parents showed their dip and they use stone plates with blue on them. Maybe they cooked theirs a bit less. The sister in Sudbury has round plates with a pattern and she cooked her tenders all the way through. My plate is round with no pattern and I garnished with some parsley flakes. The sister in America has square plates with a pattern and made salad with her tenders. I snapped a quick picture of the McCain’s cheesy tots I made. I couldn’t help myself and had a few. They were magnificent, crisp outer shell and soft, comforting innards. Those ones are probably the best I’ve ever had, no joke. The rest of my night was spent listening that audiobook Theodore Complete put me on in the dark mostly. I fell victim to sleep just after nine and slept like a corpse for most of the night.

Hot from the Blocks

This no coffee thing seems be doing wonders for my sleep now. I notched another big one. I had an odd and uncomfortable dream at dawn wherein I had to arrest an old friend that I haven’t talked to in a decade. Fun when you get to remember your dreams. Cherish it. Today was both grocery day and laundry day. Basically my typical Sunday but because of a forecast rife with rain, it would be a full indoor workday as well. What can I say, I’ve become more delicate. But before we cover that, there was something of note that happened in the shower today. I attempted wearing a hat you want cleaned into the shower. I used a bar of soap and washed it on my head. At the time of writing it wasn’t completely dry yet. Hopefully by tomorrow it will be. If not dry, it is fully clean. I included the before photo for your viewing pleasure. After that, I threw a very full load of laundry in the washer and headed out into the new day din.

First stop was to fuel the truck then I got my McBreakfast. I decided to get weird with it today and ordered a combination of items that I could convert into a McBreakfast BigMac. The bottom is a number two and you eat the bottom bun off a number three. At least that’s what I did, I think. Either way, only three bun sections are required. It was as magnificent as it looks. There was also no coffee ordered again. I think you get the idea now. I’m buzzing without coffee.

The fortnightly shop took place next. I got toilet paper on a whim and bought some specific ingredients for air fryer recipes. Including the first ever jar of pickles I’ve ever purchased. I need the juice for a brine, I will not eat the actual pickles. I’m leery of this brine idea too but it’s all in good fun. The other recipes include a lot more vegetables than my usually plans too. Hopefully I can make them all before things turn. That is a weakness of mine. Once I got home and stowed all the food it was about the time to start my workday.

The rest of the day went by in a flash. The only interruption was a very quick lunch of a pre-made South-West salad kit and the last Stouffer’s bistro thing. I spent the entire time on the phone with a colleague. At one point when I was trying to dispose of some recyclable material my phone slipped from my hand as it has countless times. The difference this time was that it landed partially on the metal between the house and garage when I had that door open. The screen protector took some damage and now sports an impressive crack. I suppose it will have to be replaced. That will become problematic later.

The afternoon went by quickly and things were relatively productive. I was out of the chair by half five and down into the kitchen. With my fresh haul, the choices for dinner were legion. I decided to go for an easy gut filler. I found a pair of butter and herb Knorr sidekicks and whipped up a double batch. It was very good. I had Viva Puffs for dessert. After washing up I touched up my dry clothes and then folded them and stowed them. I knocked off the current day of Microsoft Solitaire Collection then settled in for a bout of Musings. I was admittedly a couple days behind turning drafts into posts. That took my up to the present time which is when I turned off the motor. Just after nine thirty.

Bottom of the World

The sleep that started early continued, straight through the night. It’s so nice to get back to these full scale slumbers after the trash nights I’d had in August and September. I actually overslept a touch and dawdled a bit on the kickoff of the day. I left the Harbour about a half hour latter than planned. I stopped to fuel the truck and my face with gasoline and a McBreakfast (no coffee) respectively. Today was the long haul tour. Heading to Harrow, a two hour and twenty two minute voyage. That’s a lot of podcast coverage. Unfortunately, my queue was clear. I was caught up. I had a couple Audible credits hanging around so I decided to spend one. Theodore Complete has been on me to try this series so I went for it. We are Many, Bobiverse got purchased and I chewed off a couple hours on the trip down there. My purpose, if you hadn’t guessed was to walk some soybean trials.

The soybean plot tours are quickly nearing an end. Partly because I’ve seen what I needed to and mostly because they were quickly being harvested. This was a spot I was dreading going to, partly because of the distance and mostly because thought everything would look the same, a bunch of sticks. They had subtle differences and I noted them all. By the time I covered what I needed to at that location it was midday. I checked the map and saw that I was only five minutes from Lake Erie so I took a slight detour and found a dead end road that ended at the lake. I stopped for a few minutes to take a couple pictures and enjoy the waves before reversing back from whence I came. There was another site not far off but in the interest of time I elected to skip it and find some grub. That came from a gas station and featured BBQ flavoured Fritos, a Crunchie bar, and some teriyaki flavoured Jack Links. A true gas station meal. Luckily I had my water to enjoy with these choice cuts.

I had a couple of calls in the way but eventually I arrived at the next location and it was harvested. Honestly, I expected if not hoped for that. I struck a course for home and fielded a few more calls on the way. Upon arriving home I took on email for an hour. I quit before dark and with a belly full of trash and being tuckered out I opted to make a quick and easy dinner in the microwave. I nuked a Stouffer’s Bistro box and ate the last of the Fritos and jerky. Not a prize winning choice. I’m feeling like I’ve lost a lot of my culinary momentum that inspired my daily posts. With the washing done I went to check on the place I order meat from. It was still going and had given me a promo code. I used that when buying a box of chicken wings and a box of sausage patties. I tried to check if the Chef needed another round of them as we’d been splitting them but he didn’t answer his phone. With my meat sorted out, I caught up the rest of the way on Microsoft Solitaire Collection. For the first time since before my August vacation, I’m doing them day by day. With my computing complete I turned to YouTube to wind down my day. It was ahead of ten again that my breathing leveled out into a peaceful slumber.

Inside Tuesday

Tuesday after the long weekend is never an enjoyable thing. This one was no different. The weather had been somewhat inclement on the holiday Monday so it was wet enough that I didn’t relish being in the field. I also had enough backlog of issues to clear up from my alternating field days the previous week so I elected to make it an office day. It’s fun to have the ability to make that distinction again, rather than the default to inside times. Let’s revisit the start of the day quickly before we begins though. Breakfast naturally consisted of breakfast bullets on the heels of a hot shower. No coffee was imbibed though. I’m still off it. The headache of the previous day was nearly vestigal at this point. I think my body was finally changing gears to rewire itself in the absence of caffeine. Once I was at the helm I started to simply soar. I had done an okay job of managing my emails through the week and over the weekend so the fat had been trimmed so to speak. I dove into the items needing my attention and if not snooping them clear I definitely moved the needle. It’s a slow process with some of this stuff. Most of it is completely out of my grasp. Stuff that I can control directly gets done within hours, out it on others and it can drag for weeks. Even with belligerent pestering. Anyways, lunch eventually arrived and I destroyed a can of soup and one of the few bistro microwave dealys I had left in my arsenal. It was a quick lunch then back to work. I had a team meeting and that gave me some action items. I got lost at the end of the day formatting a report in Business Objects. Next thing I knew it was six and I had dinner plans. I used some lean ground pork to make a soft taco bake kit from Old El Paso. It was stupendously terrific. It’s like a taco cake essentially. It says ready in 30 minutes but also have 35 minutes of instructions. The moral is that dinner felt a bit late for my taste. After washing up I caught up on Microsoft Solitaire Collection and looked a few things up online. YouTube preceded an early bedtime. I fell fast asleep quickly.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. At least I think it is. I’m not sure when the day is actually celebrated, only that we get the Monday off. I’ve heard of people having their turkey dinner on the Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. I guess it’s one of the more flexible holidays out there. I got the day started with my normal workday routine and then dove into my book. I had read about half of it the previous day with a relatively late start and felt like I could take down this book and get started on the next and final edition in the series that I’ve been consuming. Once I’m done with these I have a two or three lone books to polish off then I’ll be back to square one. I’m hoping to clean the slate before Christmas. If I was as voracious as I used to be I’d have re-read the Stormlight books leading up to the release of the next one in November but who has the time. The book carried me into late morning before I realized I need food and water. The water was probably more nagging. I was getting a headache that started slowly and built over time. I decided the previous day that I’d go off coffee again to break it’s hold over me. This was the result. I was probably also dehydrated from the previous adventures and spending a whole day reading. Thus, I prepared some breakfast bullets like a normal day but since I was now quite hungry from the lack of food the previous day I supplemented those with a box of Stouffers Bistro things, the pepperoni kind. It made me wonder if I was backsliding into pizza pockets but I realized it’s not even close to what I’d done in the past. The book occupied me until mid-afternoon when I had a bowl of soup to quell my hunger. As I read I consumed a few large marshmallows. I’m confident that is not good for you. I finished the book and moved on to the next one as planned. Around half six I got peckish again and saited my hunger with two turkey and cheese wraps. It was at that this point that I realized that this would have to suffice for my turkey dinner this year. Normally I would get some ground turkey and do a soft taco bake kit from Old El Paso but I skipped the groceries the previous day to focus on sleeping in. The wraps were tasty enough and would hold me over. I felt like I probably shouldn’t dive back into the book so I did some cleaning for an hour or so and then was basically ready for bed at eight. I couldn’t fall asleep so I watched some YouTube randomness until half night and fell asleep. My slumber was interupted but the blaring bass from the new neighbours. It only last a few minutes before they turned it down or cleared whatever entry screen that causes such outbursts. We haven’t talked yet and I’m not sure we’re going to the way they are playing it. The interuption only lasted a few minutes starting at 10:27pm. Nothing else from then on.

Slowdown Sunday

Not a lot to report on this day. I wasn’t what you’d call hung out but I did sleep very poorly. I can say that I know what 2am until 5am looks like now. I skipped my weekly groce and slept in more than normal. I topped that up with some videos in bed rather than getting up. Eventually I rustled myself out of bed and cleaned off in the shower. I wasn’t exactly starving but felt like I needed to put something delicious into my system after the abuse I submitted it to the day before. I whipped up a couple of almost traditional Sunday morning breakfast burritos. These features chorizo, bacon, eggs and cheese. They were beautiful and delicious. They were also pretty heavy so by the time I finished them off it was closing in on noon and a nooner nap was in my sights. I decided to read my book in an attempt to make me sleepy. The plan backfired spectacularly. Not only did I not fall asleep but I was so engrossed in the book that I read it for most of the rest of the day. I did take a short break to make some generic microwaved frozen bistro stuff to eat as a lunch/supper before diving back into the book. Too bad, it was a very nice day outside, if not a bit chilly. In hopes of righting the ship in terms of sleep I did force myself to slip under earlier than normal, around nine.

Slippery Saturday

Because Saturday isn’t exactly considered a workday in most circles I felt like I was entitled to sleep in a bit. My body wasn’t feeling overly compliant to that suggestion. Perhaps a sign of things to come. I started my non-workday the same way I start the others. Fuel for the truck, McBreakfast, program a GPS coordinate in and set sail. Today brought me into more unfamiliar waters to the southwest of London if you are familiar with my part of the globe. I haven’t explored down that way much in the past and ended up visiting two sites down that way. Well, really just one site, the other one was a re-visit from the previous day. I decided to push the time limit I had to squeeze one more site in today rather than going after it tomorrow. It was actually only ten minutes from my house so worked out to nip it on the way back. I got back home around half noon and that is when all the poor choices started.

Because it is the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, the baby shower for GRP and his wife KJMH was scheduled. The pandemic forced it to be a virtual affair. Normally such events are planned for the traditional family gathering weekends to catch as many participants as possible. That aspect worked out the same, most immediate families had gathered. But for the most part we were remote. Before the party started I ordered a large pizza from Pizza Pizza with some chicken bites. I gorged on some of that leading up to the call and was feeling somewhat off at the start. After a little IT hiccup that was quickly overcome we got to it. Most of us had to mute so it resulted in the happy couple basically presenting to us. There was a quiz that was handled fairly well considering the medium. About halfway through the call I noticed a few folks were imbibing in some alcoholic beverages, I decided to join in. I fetched my unopened bottle of Pink Whitney from the liquor cabinet and poured it over plenty of ice and diluted it mildly with some flat tap. I was on my third glass by the time the call ended and was feeling pretty good. It was at this point that the Chef asked me over for a turkey dinner. I was in no condition to drive but called to entertain with my now drunk antics. I thought I was hilarious.

My next move was to descend to my lair with the dregs of that third glass and start watching Netflix. I had never seen Boogie Nights and since it was referenced a couple times during the week I decided to see what it was about. Partway through I refilled my glass and grabbed the last of the pizza. To follow-up that somewhat depressing and morose picture I chose Funny People. Not exactly the palate cleanser I was hoping for. I’m sure I’d seen it way back but definitely forgot the ending. When it wrapped so did my day. I struggled up the stairs and crawled into bed for hopefully a wonderful, restful sleep.

Friday Fellowship

The routine has become quite familiar now. Clean up and get dressed. Fill the water thermos. Get fuel. Get a McBreakfast. Program directions into the phone and giddy up. Today would have some different elements to it though. For starters Brack and I would have our boss joining us for the day. Second we’d be meeting with some other colleagues to look at some very interesting corn. We all arrived on time at the first location that had seven different soybean trials to walk. I was on a conference call for the first hour or so then had to drop off to focus on what I was doing. The two of us showed the boss what we were doing and the kind of data and information we were gathering and how. He took turns between the two of us as we made our way through the trials. We had to leave around midday to have time to reach our afternoon location. I was sure we wouldn’t get through all the material and need to return. I was right but we got notes taken on all but one of the seven tests. I was impressed with our speed and efficiency. We met at a Subway near the next location and took our food with us. We had a nice catchup on the tailgates and engaged in some important discussion.

Our corn breeder joined us after awhile and so did BDP, a member of my former team. We walked in the corn and chatted with the breeder. He showed us some interesting things and we had a lot more critical discussion as a group. It had been a long time since we all got together and longer since we had such frank discussions. It was very productive.

When the dust settled, there was just Brack and I and it was the end of the day. He invited me to stop off at his place on the way home for a beer. I had no reason to say no so I did. He showed me his expansive urban property and toured me through his new shop that’d he’d put up in the last few years. It was very impressive. Something to strive for. I thanked he and his partner for their hospitality, she said I’m welcome anytime since I’d inadvertently sided with her on several ongoing disputes. Next stop was the haircut place. I’d been procrastinating on getting it trimmed for a week or more. I arrived at half six not realizing they closed down at seven bells. They were able to squeeze me in. It was a longer process than normal but I ended with the expected result. Dinner was courtesy of Wendy while I was out. I got a baconator and a poutine to complete my restaurant meal trifecta for the day. I trimmed my beard when I got home to match my trimmed head. This hair removal precipitated an evening shower. Not much else followed, a bit of screen time then I curled up into the cloud for the night.

On the Road Again

After a nice productive day of office work it was back to the grind. The day started with the usual morning routine then a stop for fuel and another stop for fuel. One for the truck and one for me. The latter being out of sheer laziness. The day’s adventure started back down near Chatham with my colleague and tour partner Brack. We reviewed all the soybean genetics at that location then I crossed the road and walked a third party location while he busked himself in his truck with a call or emails or both. We moved along to another third party location to the North. I ate my lunch on the way, two pizza buns and three granola bars. We took our notes once there and started debating what else we should try to see. Half the location we stood at was harvested before we arrived so we picked the next most robust location and went to see if it was intact. It was there so we set about capture our comments on the new genetics. He decided to tap out after the first two trials and moved on. I felt like I’d come all that way and I had something extra to see there also so stayed and keep going. I feel like I was starting to see thing by the end.

You can see in the photo that it looks like two different colours in that product. I had to look from different angles and directions to decide that I wasn’t crazy and it was a mixture. Towards the end, as the sun sunk closer to the horizon some creature was disturbed and took off running through the crop a hundred feet or so from me. Didn’t see it but I know that it scared the dickens out of me. I wrapped up my notes and started the nearly two hour return trip. It was late when I got home so I made a fairly meager dinner of spring mix salad kit with some air fryer chicken chopped up into it. I was in bed an hour later, reaching for a thick sleep.

Office Day Island

The nights around the Harbour continue to be weird. No annoying noise anymore since the parents moved in next door but I found a way to get weird. Sleep snuck up and tackled me early. I was fast asleep by nine bells as suggested. I awoke close to 1am and was in a state of doze until nearly five. I can’t say that I was awake but for sure was not asleep either. I’m not sure what happened there. A leisurely, deliberate execution of the morning routine seemed to bring me around and the traditional breakfast kicked off the day right.

The start of work overlapped with the end of breakfast. One of the rare times I didn’t sprint to my desk. Today started with a call that I like to be on to be connected to some big processes. I don’t need to engage but just listen and learn. So I did that over a coffee and it was fantastic. Towards the end I transitioned to the usual routine. With no desperate task on the calendar I dove into my second call. I had to scramble downstairs minutes before though to move the laundry I’d started before breakfast over. If it is going to be a rare office day I figured I’d better refresh my wardrobe to be ready for the next stretch of days walking plots. After the second video call I’d accumulated a handful of missed calls and other questions so I spent the next ninety minutes on the phone while getting my OneNote updated on the side. One call was spent helping a colleague with some IT learnings. That all wrapped up and signaled the lunch was due.

Rather than waste much time and text on what I ate I decided to let my photo represent a thousand words. I will say that this completely processed lunch was delicious and filling. Not debilitating but nice. I also cooked off a partial package of chicken balls in the air fryer for future use and to open up some real estate in the freeze. I used the last of my lunch break to quickly fold and stow my now dry laundry. I was happy with how efficiently I was able to wrap that task. It happened very quickly and quietly in the background for once. The afternoon progressed quickly and I was able to get after a number of things that I’ve been saving for just such a day. Others must have been in the same spot as a number of requests trickled in all day and I did what I could to sate them as them emerged. Before I realized it was the end of the day and time to make supper.

There is a chicken dish that my Mother had described to me that I wanted to attempt. It is simple, a chicken breast slathered in mayo and rolled in breadcrumbs then cooked in the air fryer. I even called her to confirm all the details since it had been so long since she’d told me about it. It was slippery and slimes to prepare but I did it and put two breasts in at the same time. They were opened but not hammered thin. The two were big enough to mostly fill the basket. I let the meat rest and then cut open a thick spot to check it. You can see above that things weren’t exactly cooked. I’m not sure what happened there as I’ve used her suggestion of twelve minutes at four hundred Fahrenheit, which matches the cookbook and user guides. I let it preheat too. It’s the first disappointment with my new toy. I put it back in for another eight minutes and it seemed to only just cook it enough. Not sure what is happening with it.

I got about halfway through the meal before I realized I should snap a photo to have a picture of all my meals for the day. After eating and cleaning up I descended to my lair to play NHL20 briefly. I quickly switched over to NetFlix and decided to watch Coach Carter. It was too long to fit in before bedtime so I fast forwarded some of the boring parts around their tournament win and some of the lockout to fit it in. A few tears were shed during Cruz’s speech, again. It’s an impressive film and has some deeper seeded messages about how the education system is broken. That was from 2005. Bedtime swiftly followed the film.

The Final Tour

The sleep went fairly smooth but still felt shorter than desired. I ran the same morning errands this day as last and got my tanks filled up in the same way as the previous day. I arrived a few minutes ahead of the previous day’s schedule and ended up being just on time for my own tour. This event was to feature three stops that allowed my customers to see everything we’d have to offer this fall for Eastern Canada. The middle stop wasn’t going to have anyone to guide my chums so I was going to have to leave one location before everyone would be done with the first wave of people to make sure they had direction on where stuff was at the middle. The final stop was just corn based and was easy to locate. It all went off without a hitch as far as I could tell. We started with the latest material for both crops and I departed with the fastest group while mingling and leaving direction for the second and third groups. I was able to be more engaging at this event than at my Quebec event. I also wasn’t on an all day conference call. I’d also taken notes on most of the plots on the tour. I want to revisit some of the soybean plots but that will be for later in the week at this point. I didn’t get any pictures of the day as it unfolded but when I arrived at the final location I snapped a picture of the wheat they planted after they harvested the soybean trials I was planning to tour through. That would have made it a two stop tour. The soybean only brands were all wrapped up and heading home by half past two and the corn guys were at the last stop by half three. I ran into my colleague Woody at the last stop which was my old research farm and I sat and quizzed him on his thoughts on his lineups. I also like to get candid feedback from him on what he is seeing. He knows the products inside and out after a couple years and can tell me objectively what they are like. We hadn’t had a chance to catch up since pre-COVID so while my last customer was enjoying a self guided tour we did just that. Another colleague was in the area and popped in also. That was fun.

When the excitement died down and everyone realized it was after five and my last customer had satisfiedly departed I got to head home. Brack was the the other guy that popped by and he had gotten a call from his significant other asking what he was wanting for dinner and after the call we had a chat about meal planning. When I got home I was inspired by that conversation and decided I had a bunch of easy and quick components that I could slam into a meal. I had the tots that I cooked in the air fyer. I adjusted things and they came out even more perfect this time. While they were becoming perfect I nuked that fold-over steak and cheese flatbread thing and then a can of green beans. The Pepsi was unnecessary but I find that if I’m going to stoop to eat tots then it feels appropriate to consume other junk too. The meal was fantastic. I slathered on some sriracha ranch dipping sauce and a few pinches of parmesan cheese for no good reason and it was completed. I crushed this meal and then felt fatigue creeping in. I was able to pull together some missing Musings before my mind closed off. I found that it was mostly my body that was exhausted and pulled my mind into it’s realm of doziness. Either way, fingers crossed there isn’t a belated, bombastic barrage of bass once I shut it down.

Crusty from Corn

After an unpleasant start to my slumber I was able to keep my momentum going until half six the next day when a full bladder demanded some attention. I scrambled to quickly prepare myself for the outside world because I would be heading southwest to tackle some notes a larger corn site. I ran a couple of errands before starting the one hour and twenty four minute journey to the field. I filled both my fuel tanks, the one for the truck and the one for my brain. The drive was uneventful and I arrived ahead of nine. I walked the plots with my successor of the corn king title. His job will be to support our commercial team with some in depth corn characterization. I wanted to take some time to pass on some of my learnings and knowledge to the new guy so arranged this meeting in the field.

I’m going to need to be a little nerdy here in order for you to appreciate my title of today’s post. We walked the 100RM corn set and saw some pretty interesting things. We saw some nice differentiation for disease tolerance, specifically Northern Corn Leaf Blight and for an infuriating ear mould. This particular mould, Giberella Ear Rot or GER leads to the development of mycotoxins on the ear of corn that can get into animal feed and cause major issues with monogastrics like pigs and ruminants such as cows. It is a dirty business. It’s presence is ofter predicated by number of conditions including the critical disease triangle. The host is obviously present since it’s a corn plot, the pathogen is always in the our environment in Eastern Canada so it’s just the third leg of the tripod that is variable, the conditions. The summer of 2018 was the worst I’ve ever seen this affliction and I felt like in August we were getting some of the same conditions, mainly prolonged moisture in the canopy of the crop at a sensitive time, silking. This means that the mould spores can get on the silk and follow them up into the ear and develop. It’s especially bad when the hybrid has a long, tight husk that traps moisture inside and creates a perfect environment for a localized infection to develop. Then that husk might dry down some and seal shut to finish off a perfect incubation chamber for the disease. Why am I bringing all this up? Well, when I got into the 105RM set it was well polluted. The hybrids in this maturity seemed to all have long husks. I’m talking two to three inches longer than the end of the ear. More husk than I am comfortable looking at. And with that much excess, it created a great spot for GER to get cracking. The more I saw, the more annoyed and angry I began to get. By the time I was on the last section of the test I was near furious. How can I sell any of this stuff?! I mean, I’ll find a way but it’s not going to be easy at all. This was getting me hot.

At least it was a beautiful day. You can see from the sky in the above photo that it was lovely. We finished the 100RM set together and then split up to do the 105RM set, glad he didn’t see my building frustration, after we had a quick break for lunch and short tutorial on soybean notes. During the course of the day when I’m using my phone to gather my notes I generally place it in airplane mode to conserve battery. After several hours of work I switched it back on and got a pair of disconcerting emails. One was around a pending reorganization of a core division and the other was around a colleague on my team resigning to seek an alternative opportunity. On my long drive home I was able to make a few calls to address both of these things. I called the departing colleague to wish them luck on their next chapter and get the skinny on what was the motivation and also talked to other around that re-org. I returned a few other calls as well. I was able to make back home before six bells and had no concrete plans for dinner.

Upon looking in the freezer I spied this little treat I’d got myself when grocing. I used a slightly lower temp than the oven instructions and cut the time in half and launched these into the air fryer. You’re seeing some sriracha ranch dipping sauce that I finally got to use for the intended purpose. These were perfectly cooked and tasted amazing. I nailed it on the modified cooking instructions. When it was all cleaned up and I’d settled in for the evening the onslaught of bass started again. This time it was much earlier in the evening and I hadn’t fully committed to my bed yet. I did some recon around the house to see if my bed was the worst spot or if things were equally disruptive elsewhere. I checked the other rooms upstairs and they were marginally better. The main floor was appreciably better, as was the lower levels. I decided to take my probe a step further and ventured onto the front step which wasn’t as loud. When I got between our homes it was awful, almost felt magnified. The research showed that it was the absolute worst where it was the worst for it to be that way. Conceding to worry about it later I moved my operation to the guest bedroom. But after merely a half hour or so of the needlessly obnoxious bass it was stopped. At that time I returned to my usual nighttime post. I am suspicious that this noise is the intro to a video game or movie. I can’t say for certain if it is the same each night but it is similar enough to lead me to this suspicion. I had to be up very early to go back to the southwest in the morning for my last Genetic Field Day of the year. The last of my series of customer events. It was good that I was able to get right to sleep, even if it was at half ten.

Sultry Sunday

I’m not sure if it is the finish of Saturday or the start of Sunday that has me angry. I told you in the last installment that I was able to find some sleep around ten bells. As it turns out, that was a fairly short lived phenomenon. I was awoken about quarter past high noon to the sound of some shouting outside. At the sound of the clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. There was an older Indian couple arguing with a younger man on the lawn of the new neighbours. That seemed odd to me. Then the music started. A very bass heavy ensemble blared out incessantly for the next forty five minutes. I suspected that perhaps my new neighbour moonlighted as an amateur disc jockey. My level of satisfaction for how the night was progressing took a fairly negative turn at this juncture. After boiling my internal pot of rage to a consistent rolling boil then rationally deciding that it was their first night in the house and they were in a celebratory mood that I would find some ear plugs to wear in my own home and let it slide. I was able to snooze again for a bit and woke around 1:30am to the booming bass and then again around 2:15am before finally finding quiet shortly after 3am. I assumed I would sleep in and we’d put the whole affair behind us. Nay-nay. Up at 7:30am and ready for the day. I was not impressed. I forced myself up around nine in the morning and decided to prepare my now traditional Sunday special. The cheesey chorizo and bacon scramble wraps.

With my guts jam packed with gooey goodness I descended to my lair. I played some NHL20 to calm my nerves then I ascended to work on previous Musings and my Microsoft Solitaire Collection. Having got everything caught up on those fronts I was in a better mood. I decided that I need to spend some time on the book that has been adorning my nightstand for the last month or so. I picked it up and didn’t put it down until it was finished. I read for a large portion of the late afternoon and evening. I was able to finish it off just after nine at night. We’ve covered off a twelve hours span in only a few short sentences. Dinner was in there but it only consisted of some dill pickle mini rice cakes from Quaker and a Pepsi. Not over nutritious but definitely delicious. The main advantage is that I could consume that using only one hand so that I could hold the book steady with the other. I was all nestled in and ready for bed at quarter to ten and then the bass started again. I was not happy. I donned my ear phones immediately and with some difficulty I was able to slink away to the land of Nod but some rage was present. I resurfaced closer to eleven and the ruckus had subsided. I really hope this isn’t a tread with these new neighbours.

Five Hour Adventure

In the night, I got a good sleep and a solid start. I went from my bed to groce. It had been some time since I’ve last done it and it was a cheaper, maintenance trip more than a full restocking. My plan was to load up and then make a stop on the way home to grab a McBreakfast. I got close and saw there was a huge lineup of cars. There were two or three cars stacked up in three directions waiting to get into the lineup. I pulled into a parking spot a little further back as I normally do in this situation to wait a few minutes for things to settle out. They did not. It got to the point that there were so many cars in queue that I couldn’t leave the area if I wanted to. Eventually I got free and noticed on the short drive home that it was the same situation at Starbucks, Tim Hortons and Burger King. I’ve never seen anything like it. Then again, I am not usually in the area at 9am on a Saturday, I’m usually in and out before that but because I’m not sure if we’re still giving the first hour of business to the seniors I have been pushed back a bit. It was apparent that I wasn’t going to get a quick and easy meal like I wanted so I made breakfast bullets when at home, taking down three this time in anticipation of a long day. I stowed the groceries and grabbed my plot walking gear and set off on an adventure. I had about a 105 minute drive to the first location. I was going up to check out two somewhat isolated Northern spots. The trip didn’t start out smooth. You can see in the distance of the below photo that there is a train. I’ve never seen one going slower. It was moving at a walking pace. We did keep moving up as people bailed from the lineup and turned to go the other way. I’m not sure why because these tracks are a barrier no matter what road you choose and the train was all kinds of long. If they gave up on their excurision and returned home I’d have some serious questions why they’d left in the first place.

The next forty five minutes were filled with Siri jogging back and forth every mile or two. I was ready to lose my mind completely when I hit a long stretch of nice road and calmed down. I got the first location and it was all short, standing sticks that looked relatively the same. It’s not the greatest for what I was trying to do. But I did see a helicopter rip by as I was getting started. You can see below that the sun even found it’s way through the cloud cover by the time I was getting towards the back of the trial.

When I got back home after a leisurely five hour drive and hour and a bit of plots I was getting quite hungry. I had a handful of shrimp remaining and had purchased some of the “requires milk” dishes from my past that I wanted to relive. I decided to try the one pictured below. The last time I made it, I didn’t cook the pasta as soft as I like it and it sort of ruined it for me, for the last 15 years. I’m finally willing to try it again. I’ll say it now, it was delicious. The shrimp didn’t really mix in well with it’s sweet coconut breading and soggy microwave finish but it was a tasty meal and I found that it filled me up nicely. I will keep this one in the game now. I think I missed sprinkling some parsley flakes over the top of the final photo but taste outweighed aesthetic.

I had some Cool Ranch Doritos and Pepsi later in the evening as a snack in lieu of supper. At half eight we had a video chat scheduled for the boys. Only a couple made it on and all were late. We had a few beers and more laughs. I took the call into my bed after 9:30pm and listened in for a bit before sliding out when they said they couldn’t hear me aways. I managed to fall asleep not too long after ten I think.

Family Experiment

Not the greatest sleep for those keeping track at home but a very smooth morning. I’ve never felt so smooth while making my breakfast samidges, it was like no wasted movements. I was able to recognize this and savour the moment. I had a bit of thinking to do before starting work. I needed to meet a colleague at a field and I had a call scheduled for part of that time. The figuring was on when to leave to start the forty five minute drive to the site but also be on the call. I decided to leave at the start of the call and be thirty minutes early for the field walk. I have done an awful job explaining this all and I did an awful job planning it out at the time. I’m generally good at logisitics and timing but for some reason I’m unable to sort that one out. Either way, the call ended about the time he arrived so we started walking the soybean plots. It rained on and off like it does. I’d marked down two and half hours to walk through the site but in the end it took me nearly four. There was extra experiment that I didn’t realize was there and two of them were much larger than anticipated. That and I was slowed down a couple of times but getting other things sorted out. I made a stop at the Dirty Bird on the way home and got their fancy chicken sandwich that the Chef had been talking about. I had to fudge the recipe to avoid pickles but it was decent at best. That is two chicken sandwiches that have fallen below expectations. I guess since I can’t do the spicy McChicken challenge, the next one up would be the infamous Popeye’s sandwich that caused riots in the US last year. I’ll have to wrap my lips around it at some point and see what all the hoopla is about. Another reason I brought up the Dirty Bird is to mention that instead of ordering and leaving, I took a call in the parking lot and ended up sitting talking business for the next forty minutes. I managed to shovel some food into my gob since it was well after lunch but didn’t get much in during the call. Afterwards I took a few moments to cram some food into my face before heading out. It started to pour at one point so I pulled into a parking lot and decided to eat the poutine that came with my meal. The song Drift Away by Uncle Kracker came on and with the heat going in the truck and my big, thick sweater on I’m not sure that I’ve ever been in a moment more dedicated to comfort. Crushing a warm, melty poutine while being embraced by comfort itself and listening to the familiar, dulcent tones of a singalong song was something I won’t soon forget. I might have almost felt happy in that moment. The rain died down and I navigated around a closed road through some side streets and made it home in time to clean up my inbox. I talked to a colleague in Quebec on his way moose hunting to share any lingering items from the last week and to make sure I had things covered for the upcoming week that he’d be enjoying in the woods with his buddies. That call lasted right up almost six bells. The pre-arranged time that my siblings, parents and I were going to try something new. We all have the same air fryer and the same cookbook now so we were told a page number and had two weeks to obtain the requisite ingredients.

At six o’clock Eastern time (5pm CDT) we started making coconut crusted shrimp together but apart. Everyone had their own methods and tools that they used and most had a helper to make the process go faster, despite it not being a race. It was all good natured fun. My sister in St Louis who organized the effort took a few screen captures during the process and I’ve shared one below.

There was also a sharing of photos of our finished products. My youngest sister wasn’t able to get a photo of her dish because she was busy at the time of cooking. She had some contractors still working on the boiler system of their new house. They were upgrading some equipment and the job was going longer than anticipated. On the left, my parents used their blue plate to facilitate their shrimp with some white rice and soya sauce. They opted to dump the dipping sauce across the top of the shrimp rather than dip them. On the right with the white plate, my middle sister displayed her shrimp with some instant chicken rice and a salad. Below I put my shrimp in a bowl with other shrimp. I dipped mine in a sriracha mayo dip that I made instead of the proper sauce. I also had a nice Patina irish red ale from Storm Saved Brewing Co. It was not a good pairing for the meal but good in its own right. I did nothing the rest of the evening and went to bed at a decent hour.

More Soybean

I slept in. Almost until eight bells. It was a fantastic sleep from start until finish. I only broke it off because we had an emergency webcast from our Global Head Office that I didn’t want to miss. Naturally it wasn’t good news. They are planning to accelerate and expand their four year coat saving initiative. So instead of analysis and investigation, I assume we’re skipping right to hack and slash. They don’t know what they are going to do yet but wanted to put us all on alert that they are going to do something. The focus seems to be on generating cash. Probably in debt already from purchase and settlements and can’t let the shareholders away with some money. We did learn that they cut dividends and are examining executive compensation. That’s nice, it’s sickening to struggle so shareholders get their profits on time while fat cat millionaires flit around in private jets to glad hand each other. Think that is a jaded outlook? That’s what happened in the last iteration of the company. They literally sold us out, all the executives that orchestrated the company’s sale for massive bonuses and buyout packages. The CEO got close to $100 million!!!! Anyways, I’ll calm down. I kept working on my computer to prepare a file to share with customers later in the day. Then I was finally able to hit the road and tour some sites. I was at the first location when I got an invite for a call at the end of the day that I should be on. This meant that I’d only get to two locations. Which is fine cause the other two are far the other direction. As you can see, I had a beautiful day to tour. Heading back south from the second location, it started to rain. And it kept on raining until I got back to my desk. I had that call then another. Then I sent that beautiful file out along with a dozen other emails. I’m trying to keep the plates spinning while I’m out all day. I even have an out of office to keep the lions at bay. Work ended close to eight bells. The day will end with only two meals. A McBreakfast happened around ten when I hit the road. Lunch came from Wendy around 4:30pm. It was their BBQ chicken sandwich. I asked for the “tanglers” to be removed by asking for noble onions. The girl was confused, telling me there weren’t onions on that one. Unfortunately I discovered pickles under the bun when I got home. They basically tried to turn a chicken sandwich into a burger. I think there was ketchup too to complete the unholy trinity of disgusting burger flamboyance. Don’t contaminate a perfectly good chicken sandwich with that garbage. Gross! My short evening has consisted of a torrent of texts and then this. I’m guessing that’s it.

Orange Shirt Day

Morning started odd here and I won’t share any more detail than that. The shower was very hot and refreshing though. I had to make a rare trip to the dryer to fetch some clean clothes. Specifically I needed my orange shirt. Today is a new celebration to commemorate the closing of residential schools in Canada. The last one closed in 1996 so it was probably overdue for such recognition but I’m not running the country so it is what it is. While I was at it, I pulled all the clothes out and folded them while my breakfast samidges were cooling. My bedding all got stuffed in the laundry after this too, as if I just remembered I had the ability to launder things. I crushed a few tasks at the start of the workday then settled in for a pair of two hour long calls. This was capped off by another pair of calls to close out the day. I managed to eat some Our Finest brand pad thai for lunch between calls. I ate it with chopsticks. Why is that relevant? Because for dinner I made three packages of Mr Noodle. Another dish that I eat with chopsticks. What a conundrum! I had to quickly wash my stainless steel sticks for the next round. The pile of “ramen” was tasty and filling. I supplemented it with a fist full of marshmallows. That may have been the highlight of the day. After eating I found my clean bed and watched YouTube until nearly ten before passing out completely.

Soybean a slow one

Today started like the rest, with me waking up. It happened that I did it later today. I had a full sleep but must be in a deficit because I keep hammering out more after a brief moment of wakefulness at half six. Breakfast was the usual fare and I spent some time on my computer getting some work taken care of. My plan was to work a couple hours to let thing dry some from the overnight showers before trudging into a soybean field. I am going to be going wild at soybean sites this week, speeding to get notes before sites get harvested. That is the beauty of needing to wait until full maturity to get the best notes. As it happened, I didn’t leave the house until nearly eleven so I stopped for fuel and a snack on my way to the field. My plan was to visit two sites today. One soybean site near the Harbour and one an hour towards the sunset. I hope you appreciate the clever title now.

I got invited to an important call at four though and had to postpone the second site. I have accepted the fact that I will be working the weekend. Likely in the rain. This is unfortunate because I was hoping to get the boat in the water this weekend to drain the motor of fuel. I’ll have to find a better time for that now. A time when I have a helper. Anyhow, I got home in time for a special pre-orange day event to discuss aboriginal situations and systems. It was interesting. Then came a short call to discuss the EU approval of our latest soybean trait, XtendFlex. It was followed by the aforementioned call that changed the course of my day. An action for me was to follow up with breeding on some things and as a result I spent an hour on the phone. I had a Stouffer’s bistro and some fries for supper. I ate it too fast for a picture. My evening was spent on catching myself up on Microsoft Solitaire Collection and Musings. I’m nearly a week behind from the trip. That took me right up until bedtime. I’m starting to notice the lack of me-time now. A lost weekend will do that I guess.