Personal Day

After a long week of meetings all I wanted to do was have a nice quiet Saturday. The first step was to prepare a lovely breakfast. I’ve quite taken to the ritualistic manner of preparing these breakfast burritos and the experience eating them is also very satisifying. I was set on not doing any work this day, needing to have a brief unplug for my mental health and such. After laying about for a few hours after waking I did the breakfast and cleaned up my mess, as is also custom. I descended for a few hours while some laundry spun. I played some NHL and got caught up on some podcast backlog. A nice, quiet morning. Still being filled, I didn’t bother with a lunch but instead climbed to my office and worked on catching up on a backlog of Musings and also worked through a week of MSC challenges. The very work heavy week had not given me much opportunity to keep on these two things. I have another such week coming then I’m left to my own schedule, we’ll see if I do better job then.

Catching up on my personal enterprises did take up the majority of the afternoon. I supplemented my time following that with some more episodes of the Office (US). I am breezing through it end to end as I’ve mentioned previously and hope in the next few weeks to get it done and start looking for the next big binge. When it became time to eat again I decided to take down the wings that had been thawing in the fridge all week. I’ve settled into a bit of a routine where I have ten wings thawing for a couple of days (2-3) then eat them and start the next batch to thawing. The air fryer allows me to make fantastic wings in relatively short order. I went with the same sauce configuration as weeks past. The darker coloured ones are Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet and Spicy BBQ sauce. The lighter coloured wings are treated with Hotel Oscar Tango hot sauce. All the wings get some salt and pepper before cooking. These were quite good, better than the last batch for sure if you’re keeping track of my progress at home.

On a normal Saturday that would be the end of caloric intake. I’d settle back into the couch and rip off a few more hours of my binge then crawl into my bed and that would be the end of it. But not this night. For a few months there was a plan brewing to throw a secret, virtual Diaper Party for GRP. They are expecting to be parents on the same day of Booj’s birth. The Meat Man arranged some of the finer points and the ambush. He also got all the diapers assembled and paid for remotely. In total I think the pile was some 1732 diapers strong. Those were hidden in GRP’s house without his knowledge, with the assistance of the Mayor. They feigned a trip to the LCBO but went and did the deed as well. GRP was at his in-laws for dinner, that was how they got him out of the house. There was to be a bonfire as well. Meat Man lured GRP back to GRP’s home via an excuse to light the fire and get it blazing before everyone else came over. What he didn’t know was that he was going to be greeted by a mountain of diapers and a gaggle of buddies and family on a virtual experience. Because time was short and we weren’t going to have a whole weekend to get him lit up, we had to dust off an older, classic drinking game, Short Bus. It’s a variation of Ride the Bus that is much more expedient and gets the participants to drink more in a shorter period of time. It is dangerous and caution should be exercised when participating. I will lay out the general concept with brief detail here. There is a dealer (The Tugboat) who has the cards, just regular playing cards, the whole deck, and asks the questions. There are five rounds of play and if the participant answers the question correctly they give a corresponding number of drinks to the round out to another player of their choosing. If they get it wrong, they have to take that many drinks. For example, in round one, a mistake results in one drink either being taken or given but in round four, there are four drinks on the line. If you are giving drinks you can split them amongst a number of people when multiple are being given. For instance, player one gets the question right in round three and can give two drinks to player four and one to player two. No half drinks. As for the questions, round one is simply red or black. The player guesses the colour then the dealer lays the card. The drinks are settled and the dealer moves to the next player and so on, ending with themself. The second round is higher or lower. If the same card is laid then the player had to finish their entire drink. In the third round, the player is asked by the dealer if the next card will be inside or outside the cards they have already been dealt in the first two rounds. Same rules apply, if they are dealt a card that is the same as either of the other two then they have to finish their entire drink. The fourth round is the hardest, the player has to guess the suit of the next card and there are four drinks on the line. The fifth and final round has no question, the dealer simply lays a fifth card for each player to give them five total. The player with the best poker hand wins and gives out five drinks. The player with the worst poker hand has to finish their entire drink and should be immune from receiving any of the five drinks from the winner but some people play that aspect differently. It is advisable to have at least two drinks on hand at the start of any round. After the round the person to the dealer’s left should take on mantle of dealer and the game goes on.

On this night, we played five rounds. The dealer never changed and we forgot that they were supposed to be dealt in also so I missed the first couple of rounds. Luckily I was still sipping on the side after each round. In the end, I took down a casual twelve, first time since March that I did anything even close to that. A final surprise was that Booj was actually in town to visit family and secretly showed up at GRP’s once they started the fire. They spread themselves out and things got silly after that. The call itself started up about half seven and was over shortly after ten. The next couple hours were spent drinking water and watching a few more episodes of the Office. I crawled into my bed just ahead of high noon, good and drunk.

Short Friday

Another good start to the day and I was back at the helm ahead of eight with a couple of breakfast bullets in my belly showered clean body. I had a pair of calls that would consume my entire morning then nothing scheduled for the afternoon. I got a surprise message from the Chef asking if I could help with something. He wasn’t sure if he’d need me but I was on call until further notice. Since he was so good as to abandon his plans a week ago I was more than happy to repay the favour. The morning flew by. The second of the two calls was to review data but I wasn’t really involved directly, more in a supporting role, which I was happy to help with. For lunch I thought about having some chicken wings but they weren’t quite thawed enough from whenever I pulled them out of the freezer, maybe tomorrow. Instead I took my time and made a chicken parmesan Stouffer’s bistro and a can of Texas style BBQ Beef Chunky soup. I started lunch around ten to two and finished up closer to three. I was in no rush, unlike the rest of the week. I almost took the time to have a quick nap but thought better of it. Instead I got back to it. It was half five when I finished things up. I had a bit of a list going into the “afternoon” and was able to clear up or advance almost all the items. That should give me the chance to take some time off over the weekend and still start the week in a decent spot. I didn’t have a lot of energy left but I also wasn’t famished due to the last lunch so I opted to fire up an oven pizza. I went the Great Value Four Meat pizza. I put it in and then turned off the super bright kitchen light and saw this cool view below and thought to share it with you. I spent the time waiting for dinner listening to podcasts, my queue was getting down to a reasonable level and I wanted to try and clear it before the weekend.

The pizza came out well, I let it go the full time and a touch extra this time. I’m not sure why I was worried about it being undercooked but it certainly wasn’t. I doused it in Cholula hot sauce but I guess I’m getting immune or that bottle has been in the fridge too long cause I barely noticed it. Maybe my spice tolerance has creeped up a notch, to notch one. I had a can of Sprite with dinner too and put just sprinkle of white lightning in it. I could barely sense it but it loosened me up a tick. After doing the dishes and finishing the podcast episode I was consuming I descended and put on the Office. I’m into season four now. I put in a couple hours watching that and then lumbered up to bed around ten to get a decent sleep.

Canada Corn - Day 2

Even with a rocky sleep I was up around five and raring to go. Well, my brain was fired up. My body was looking for a few more hours of sleep. I didn’t lollygag but got right to it. I was done getting ready and eating breakfast around six so I put in a load of laundry. I fired up my computer early and cleaned up my inbox. I’m trying to keep it to under twenty active items cooking away. With full day calls the last two weeks that require full engagement it’s been hard to keep all the little items that pop up at bay. It’s making me realize the constant flow of questions, concerns, requests, that flow in weekly for me in this role. I can still remember riding a tractor for five hours straight and have a half dozen total emails. I got a few phone calls as we got closer to the start time of the call from folks on the call. Just a few questions for me before we got into a larger audience. I ran down and changed loads a few minutes ahead of the start so that I was well ready for the call when it started at eight and we picked up exactly where we left off. There was no delay in establishing a routine today, it was right into a quick rhthym and we were off. It helped the speed per product when we came across products that weren’t available and we could just jump right past it. That’s important because with what was left to cover we calculated the time per product we’d need to maintain as around five minutes per in order to be done under nine hours. As it happened, we didn’t take nearly that long. Ahead of lunch a couple higher ups jumped on and myself and a colleague mixed in a couple innocuous comments to the group about the direction we were seeing overall. When we broke for lunch he called me right away and we giggled like school girls about what we felt was a clever ploy. At his recommendation I decided upon some pad thai for lunch. It was going to be a much quicker preparation and consumption than the day previous. Around three in the afternoon was when we finished our conversation and parted ways. That gave me a couple hours back and I needed them to tackle some things before a bonus call that was slated to run from five until seven. Towards the last minute I decided showing my file wasn’t going to be good enough and that I should pull together some slides. This naturally is when a couple customers called with questions and addtional requests. I was down to the last twenty minutes when the Big T called to chat, unfortunately I couldn’t give him the focus and had to jump off. We were presenting our corn needs for the Canadian marketplace to some of our breeders and some leadership within the North American product management group. The call actually took the entire two hours and was rife with good discussion and lots of good questions from their end. I felt that it was a great use of my time, unfortunate that it was into the evening but tis the season as they say. A colleague called to review some of that call and it was during that conversation that I made a can of chicken and sausage gumbo soup from Campbell’s Chunky. It was fantastic. After doing the dishes I went and refreshed my laundry for a few minutes in the dryer and hauled it up, folded it and stowed it before bed. It was nice to get that domestic chore done while putting in a full day. I need to do more of that to keep up with my homeownership duties. I’ve fallen well behind on my cleaning and it’s a good thing I’m not allowed to have guests. There wasn’t much left of the evening left after that but I deigned to spend it all away from screens and got to bed at a much better hour.

Canada Corn - Day 1

Despite a strong sleep, I found myself in a crunch for time. I wanted to pull my comments together in a different way that I had planned for and found myself rushing through a shower to be at the helm for half seven to do so. The meeting was scheduled to start at 8am. It is the annual Canada corn meeting that I used to run. We go across the nation and everyone who grew the experiment gives their impressions on the new products. It is a long and ardous process. We talked about different corn hybrids for hours. There was a brief hiccup where the software we use for the visualization crapped out for a few minutes but overall the new guy who took the reins from me handled himself well. He settled into a rhthym after the first little bit. We had spent some time the previous evening walking through what he needed and what he had. I showed him how I’d used the tools in the past and shared what we were trying to get out of the meeting. I gave him waaaay more assistance than I ever got when I took over. There are reasons why but I have always been of the mind that I don’t want to leave someone in the lurch. Our company is historically awful at onboarding people and it generally takes three years of them being in the job before they are comfortable that they are doing it properly. That is across all functions of the company. It’s an embarrassing fact of the industry and I’m not willing to let it be acceptable so I have spent hours and hours over the last eighteen months helping him get into it faster and easier than I did. The corn talk went on until after one, we had some time zone issues and that made lunch later and much shorter than usual. We were given thirty minutes to eat, take a break, answer the phone, emails, etc. I chose to make tots. They take twenty two minutes to cook. I’m not sure why I thought this was a smart plan. I was able to make a large batch and had them out and drizzled with sriracha ranch dipping sauce before we resumed. I crushed them in spurts while the corn talk continued. It went until shortly after five. That’s when our note taking phenom had to leave the meeting so we decided to stop as well, rather than forge ahead without her. She offered to type up a recording if we made one but we all decided that it had been a long enough day talking corn and decided to continue on the second planned day of the meeting. I didn’t stop working though. I continued to review my soybean puzzle and make sure that I had the right choices made. I made a couple more swaps of products and reported this to those needing to know. Eventually I shut things down at 8:30pm and had myself a Stouffer’s bistro and some chips. The food was a major mistake. I felt like I had a brick in my guts as I started to prepare for bed. Oprah was right, you shouldn’t eat that close to bed time. I predictably had issues falling asleep and I’m sure the night was filled with tossing and turning I wasn’t awake for. Should have slammed two pints of water and become a fountain in the night instead maybe. Seems like I was damned if I did, and damned if I didn’t.

Election Day

I passed out at 9:28pm last night. Intentionally. I set everything up to induce that result, I effectively manipulated myself into it. I woke up at 10:15pm. Luckily I was back asleep in short order but that could have been frustrating. I slept like a corpse for most of the night afterwards until 5am. I turned on a podcast and luckily drifted off until 6:30am in a dream riddled sleep. I’m lucky and thankful for that. With the stress and deadlines I’m under currently and the absolute requirement to deliver and make the right choices it’s a wonder I can sleep more than a few winks. I’m in the thick of it now. I got up feeling good, did a few stretches to lumber up. That might be a new thing, I’ll see how it works. I made my traditional fare for breakfast and decided to toss in a picture for anyone not familiar. In the back you can see a second glass. Speaking of new things, I’ve started taking a juice glass with breakfast. I had some blueberry lemonade yesterday and the contrast of the sweet and sour of the juice with the powerful savoury notes of the sandwiches created a high powered symphony of flavour in my mouth and electrified my experience. I’ll be chasing that particular dragon for weeks to come I’m sure.

With such an amazing start to the day, how could things be expected to go any higher, after all, what goes up, must come down. I had some meeting scheduled and a lot to do in order to prepare for the rest of the week. Soybean meetings were winding down for Canada but that means that corn is about to flare up. I had my note files to pull and prepare. I spent most of the day battling to tie up loose ends that lingered from the previous week. I was also working on proofing my puzzle to make sure I hadn’t missed any major mistakes. I had multiple conversations and had to navigate a new calibration for maturity but I think it is locked down. I communicated any changes to those that need them and that was it. Lunch was again late and today I decided that I want to make something to allow me to sample this garlic aioli from Heinz that I’d purchased on a whim. I went with fries and elected the air fryer as my instrument of preparation. I should have pulled these fries out about ninety seconds earlier than I did but they were still fantastic. The garlic sauce was very, very potent. It is a good thing I didn’t have to share a space with anyone or wear a mask at any point or I would have found myself in an unpleasant scenario.

By the time the day ended it was after 7pm. I turned off my computer and made some soup. I cleaned up my room and filled the clothes basket, laundry is in the future. I spent some time catching up on Musings and watching YouTube nonsense after I cleaned up my dinner mess. I had a mild urge to go for a walk but decided against it for no substanial reason. I was feeling a bit nervous and stressed about where I was at in the process and I know the next month and a bit are going to be crazy so being at the onset makes me anxious. Eventually I got to sleep, still at a decent hour.

Mundane-eh

Today was phenomenal out of the blocks. Full, satisfying sleep can be a real game changer. I felt worlds better off the hop today than yesterday. Ready to seize the world by the tail. I’ve started putting together my big puzzle but know I’ll be revisiting and double checking my selections over the next few days. I’ve got all kinds of things floating around also that I’m hoping to continue to drive during a busy week. It’s amazing how the emails pile up when you ignore them for a few hours. Not much of note happened today, it was just a long game of trying to work on my file while answering many side questions along the way. I had a later lunch of soup and pizza buns before heading back to the puzzle. I called into a couple of day long calls I didn’t need to be on for a stretch just to see how the process they were working on transpired. It was after six by the time I finally got to the end of my rope. I am still working on the leftover components of the Family Feast and much like the previous night I tried to make some kind of pizza taco. This time I used hot italian sausages and put a cheese slice under the whole thing. I’m not sure why, I think I was confused. My brain was starting to get a bit fuzzy by the end of the day and I started making something else before pivoting to this. I warmed some marinara sauce in the microwave, uncovered and then had to thoroughly clean the microwave. Fuzzy brain was affecting my choices for sure. I didn’t bother to chop the pepperoni and that wasn’t ideal either. I wanted to heat things as much as possible this time. I put both wraps into the now clean microwave and warmed everything enough to get the cheese starting to melt. You can see I pulled them out before things melted proper. I was concerned about the wraps hardening and they were starting to, so I think I hit the happy medium. Leaving the sausages whole was another backward step. Overall, I did this much lazier with more effort in the end. You have to take into account the warming of everything then again together and the cleaning of the microwave as additional effort. There was some thought put into the assembly but those thoughts were stupid as it turns out. It was tasty enough though. There is still more sauce, pepperoni and cheese left so we’ll see what happens for tomorrow’s dinner. The rest of the night was spend away from the computer doing nothing of consequence.

Sunday, No Fun Day

After staying up most of the night you’d think I’d sleep in and recover but I was up and at them by eight bells. Well, I was up and showered. I had a load of laundry still to tackle and an ambitious plan to catchup on the work I’d missed out on during the previous day’s debacle. But I got a crazy idea first and decided to procrastinate. I’d meant to do it the night before but was disheveled and out of sorts. I made a short video. Find it below.

After filming this much simpler video compared to the last one, which I have yet to embed in the Musings for you. Maybe I won’t, maybe I’ll just leave that link. I don’t think I get any precious views from embedded videos, but who cares. Even with it being simpler it still took me over an hour to edit. So instead of starting my workday at nine or ten on a Sunday it was going to be later. Then as I was uploading the finished product I glanced out my window and saw an ambulance pull up. A beautiful blonde EMT hopped out and started gearing up. I couldn’t start work now, I had to see what was happening, I wouldn’t be much of a nosey neighbour if I didn’t. They went in and came out with the husband. They walked him out so didn’t need the cart, which raises and lowers with electric motors now and can be operated by one person. Never a dull moment at the Harbour.

That’s not entirely true of course. The next nine hours or so were very dull. I ended up starting work around eleven and continued steady until five. I started with the most frustrating bit and then had the more defined smaller portion to cover in the middle and the fun and easy bit for the finale. So it was in the middle of the middle that I took a meal break. I took just over an hour of time off to make the dish pictured below. You could call it inspired by or in reaction to the Friday Family Feast meal. I had a bunch of cheese, pepperoni and sauce in the fridge with no other specific purpose. I cooked up another sausage in the air fryer according the directions from the recipe and I chopped two stacks of pepperoni into quarters. When they are full sized I find that when you get an edge of them in a bite they pull cheese off and make a bit of a mess so I hacked them into smaller chunks. I knew I was going to use the tortilla and wasn’t planning to make ultra thin crust pizzas but rather to make a pizza burrito type meal. I was at a loss how to cook the sauce and cheese but not solidify the tortilla. I ended up putting them under the broiler at 400F for seven minutes. It definitely stiffened them but they were just barely pliable enough that I could fold them into a wrap. A better idea would have been to heat the sloppy middle up on a baking sheet and scoop it into the tortilla immediately after ejecting from the oven like a chef with a flat top at a diner. Or the other alternative would have been to make the pizza and use one wrap for the bottom and quesadilla it into a pizza quesadilla. Live and learn I guess. This was pretty tasty but had to be gripped and ripped. You couldn’t put it down once you started lest it disintegrate.

I got back to work after cleaning up and it wasn’t until around half eight that I powered down and tried to wind down into bed. I was asleep around half nine I think, maybe a touch later. I went from my computer screen to apologizing to my family that I didn’t do the Christmas list they wanted to my bed and YouTube until the lights went out. Long day.

Chilly Hallowe’en

The day started pretty early as has been the recent trend. There was no big push to get going and to get out of bed so I didn’t. After the torrid pace I’d set this past week I was in the mood to relax. I had big plans for the day. I wanted to get the next load of laundry done, make a video for my playlist, cut the lawn and do roughly half of my work. I figured I’d be done the video by noon and then I could work a few hours and use the lawn as a reason for a break and get back to work after. The day went much differently. The video and breakfast intertwined as I made my breakfast burritos for the playlist. I used three different cameras so the editing took a bit longer. I do it all on my phone still but I’m getting a bit more precise each time. I had to go on the computer to change the thumbnail and by the time I’d finished learning and customizing it was two! I decided to cut the grass at this point since that was about when I visualized doing it anyways. I figured I’d have the laundry done by then but hadn’t started it. I grabbed my charged headphones and phone and did the lawn. I’ve gotten into the habit of using the keypad on the garage as my means of egress to the overall home and not bother with keys when doing yard work. I also tend to close the garage door when I’m in back of the house. Partly because someone stole my socket at and entirely because I don’t trust people anymore. I finished the lawn, cleaned the mower’s under carriage off and removed the dying petunias from the various planters. No use dragging out the existence of those failing annuals. I went back to open the garage and nothing. I tried a couple more times and nothing. Didn’t seem like the lights were illuminating the buttons or anything. I wasn’t sure what happened. I often will open the back door when outside in the yard as a backup. I had opened the screen but apparently, upon checking, hadn’t lifted the lock latch enough to unlock the door. No amount of jostling could free it up. I tried for too long. So the garage is inaccessible, apparently the keypad is run off a battery and not wired like I assumed. After more than eight years it finally died. The front door was never unlocked and the back door is not opening. I was completely locked out with no keys, no wallet, no mask. It was luckily I decided to bring my phone to listen to.

My spare key that is hidden on the property is in the garage. I never thought that the keypad would fail me like this. I had pinned all my hope on it working forever. My other spare was with the Chef. After trying to gently persuade all the doors, including prying the garage door with my gardening shears, I had to suck it up and call for help. I either needed the spare key or a new 9V battery and I wasn’t sure if changing the battery affected the code or not. If I’d known and had money and a mask I’d have walked to the nearest store. But I didn’t know and I had to risk ruining their holiday plans to get back into the house. It was getting colder by the minute and by this point I’d been outside for nearly two hours. It took him over an hour to call me back and when he did they dropped everything and started heading towards my rescue. It was going to take them another ninety minutes or so to get to me. He called back minutes later with suggestions to get in but I’d tried all those things and more. I decided to while away the time with podcasts and trying to warm the battery. Sometimes if you get a battery warm enough it can access a bit more power that wasn’t there in the cold. I alternatively rotated it from armpit to armpit and to my crotch. Those are the warmest points! This went on for about an hour and it was feeling warm. I put it on the contacts and quickly entered the code and sure enough, it opened. I called the Chef and he’d made it back to his place but no further thankfully. I felt bad for interrupting their plans like that but also happy that I have such a good friend who would drop everything in a heartbeat to help a friend in need. In the end I didn’t need the help but it’s good to know there are people who have your back. I’ve bailed a few folks out over the years myself like that but still feels good.

Once in the house I dressed warmer and had a long overdue lunch. It was about six when I finally got in and eating so I was outside for around four hours. Those were the hours I’d planned to do my work in so now I’d have to go extra hard tomorrow to catch-up. After eating and cleaning up it was nearly seven so I decided to descend. I crawled under my warmest blanket and turned on the Office. The next thing I knew it was after midnight. But I knew that the time changes so we’d fall back and gain an hour so I kept on. I didn’t realize that the time changed and it was actually 2:30am on the “new” time when I went to bed and not 1:30am like I expected. Oops, slight miscalculation. Like getting locked out of your own house on a brisk fall afternoon. On the bright side, the lawn looks a lot better.

Friday Family Feast

My fall busy season seems to have snuck up on me. With no trip to STL there isn’t the same process and suddenly I’m in the thick of it with little fanfare. Soybean meetings all week and now switching over to corn in the near future. Things are getting hectic. I’ve been trying and succeeding to be an early to bed, early to rise person. It seems the company systems work faster early in the morning than later in the evening. Early to rise means I have time to do a few things before work which is different. I’ve deflated some of the breakfast ritual when I bother to make it. I’m trying for maximum efficiency and minimum savouring. Today I created and crushed two breakfast bullets. Still off coffee but fearing in the coming weeks I’ll slink back to that cruel mistress. Work started ahead of eight again and I was grumpy to start the day. Started off with an important call then a short one with a smaller team to confirm that proper direction was being taken. Then the big corn call started. It was scheduled to run from eleven until seven. The plan was to discuss all the product between the 105RM test and the 70RM test. That is hundreds of hybrids. After the first RM set we stopped for a thirty minute lunch and then hammered through the rest. Luckily we finished early, just ahead of six, the time scheduled for our fortnightly family feast. This week was the recipe I chose. Meat Lovers Stuffed Peppers. Sausage, pepperoni, marinara sauce and mozzarella. Well that was the recipe anyways…..

You can see that some people are cheese on the bottom pizza makers and some are cheese on the top. Parents used the blue and beige stone plate. Sister in America used the dark blue plate. Norther Ontario sister used a black plate and made four and my own was four peppers on a white plate. Just so we all can see who is who. Some of ya did dishes right after and we kept on chatting and then all moved to other rooms and kept on chatting more. The Big T had a few cocktails in him and was chattier than usual. The call lasted two full hours. I started playing my MSC challenges while we talked. I was able to stream them on Twitch again with no issue. I told my family I was doing that and they thought I was a fool of some sort. Once I wrapped that up I retired for the evening with some YouTube. Asleep ahead of ten again.

Life Day

This wasn’t the fabled holiday. I just needed to get something completed to live my life. I needed food and clean clothes. Luckily I was able to fall asleep early the previous evening. It is appearing as if king calls with frantic note collection can be quite tiring. They have really knocked me out come evening. It’s been great. I won’t say when I awoke but it was quite early. I got a load of laundry done and folded and cleaned a bathroom before getting cleaned up and heading to groce. Since I was right by it and spending money, I did a McBreakfast again. My spoils were all hauled home and stowed before the work day started.

Luckily for my larders, the days started a bit later and it involved a bit more passion from the smaller team working on this next step. Technically I am not a direct member of this group but was invited to be part of the discussion. I think it ended in a spot I was expecting. The discussion took too long so there will be an additional chapter to close things out then the real work begins for me. I got loose from the call around one and fired up a can of soup for lunch. It was hard to choose since I’ve got so many kinds now. I settled on split pea and ham. I ate it fast and expected some degree of flatus accumulation but that never came to fruition. Instead I helped my replacement navigate some difficulties in the processes required to prepare for the upcoming Canada corn meetings that I used to organize and run. That took several hours of the afternoon. Eventually I just ended up doing it for them. That took another ninety minutes or so. It was half six when I powered down and closer to seven when I’d wrapped for the day. Dinner was a piecemeal of Halloween candy, a sprite and rice puffs. Not a healthy combo, especially that deep into the evening. Sleep didn’t hesitate again and found me early. I listened to a “local” band’s weekly cover song once and passed out during the second rendition. Solid.

Soybean - Day Two

Today was fairly similar to yesterday as you might have imagined. The biggest difference is that we covered the early material at one point today and brought in our Western colleagues for a few hours. I woke up earlier so I had time to eat my McBreakfast away from my computer today. I didn’t need as long to eat it because they only gave me one of my ordered and paid for sandwiches. I guess the universe was balancing out something nice. Maybe accounting for some times where I felt good. I ate it at the table today, like an adult. I was at the helm a good half hour before the start time. I had my email cleaned down, most pressing issues abated before the call started. I spent my ten minute break on the phone then the call fired up again until after one when we got a lunch break. I had a Stouffer’s bistro thing and a can of soup. I did eat it at my desk though, which wasn’t good. I was done before the call in any event and the next several hours zoomed by. Things wrapped up around half four then a few of us stayed on and chatted idly. I got a few emails out and closed a few requests before a colleague called to chat further. I finally powered it down at half six. Supper was next and I didn’t know what to have. Nothing fancy in the fridge or freezer, nothing fast to make anyways. I settled on some sausage patties and cheese in English muffins. Quick, easy and few dishes. I watched some YouTube on the living room TV, a rare move these days. I transitioned upstairs to enjoy a podcast and wind the day down. As near as I can figure I faded to sleep shortly after 9pm.

Soybean - Day One

The day was here. The soybean review day for Canada. The day when we sit as a team and discuss every product we tested. Line by line. Since we essentially had two pipelines with our new trait, there are a lot of lines. Personally I walked around one thousand plots for this purpose. I should have something constructive to share for everything. There is a buttload of preparation that goes into it. The data has to be collected all year and entered into our database. Then it is all quality checked with statistical analysis to make sure it is valid and representative. All the data is then pulled and loaded into tools and checked for accuracy again and put into easy to digest visualizations. Then the discussion happens. The group has to determine if the product is commercially viable, identify the strengths and weaknesses and characterize it. It’s a long process. Some products are done in minutes and some take more discussion and analysis. I’m not sure farmers are aware of the rigour behind the products they buy. Ah well, it’s our job to try and get only the elite material into their hands. So that was the day. I ran out at seven in the morning, after showering and dressing, to grab a McBreakfast. I am out of eggs. I stopped to grab the mail and discovered my new webcam that Amazon told me was delayed was in the mailbox. I guess Canada Post and Amazon aren’t talking. I’ll have that to setup up later when I get free time again. I was at the helm at half past seven, eating breakfast and polishing a file. The call started at eight and was done at five. We had two ten minute bio breaks and a twenty minute lunch. Like I said, lots of material to cover this year. I was lucky that I had some pasta left. I chortled it down at my desk with a Stouffer’s bistro thing. The meatball kind is my favourite. After the call I worked on catching up my email and getting some files ready for day two. The Chef made an unexpected pop-in. These have become very rare during the COVID-era. We chatted for a few minutes. There was a traffic snarl in the highway and he needed to go to the Home Depot so he took his shot. Upon his departure I boiled some Mr Noodle and pounded that back before retiring to my chambers. I worked on some overdue Musings and did some reading. It was a perfect wind down.

My Kinda Monday

My sleep was disrupted around six in the morning and never really got back on track. I can’t say that I was overly tired but this kind of pattern won’t bode well for my physical health if it continues. Late on Friday afternoon a colleague asked if I’d switch weeks with her for chairing the weekly Monday morning call. I accepted. It was for this reason that I out in some effort on getting my day started and skipped breakfast to be at my desk sooner. Several people had posted their updates in absentia so I had to read them to the class. Without elaboration and many missing voices the call ended early for the first time in weeks. Hopefully it was productive for all. I spent some time helping our admin pick hats out for the team. Since I appeared the most passionate on the subject I was asked to do the lifting. I asked for feedback on the colour because I didn’t want to be held completely responsible if the hats sucked. In the old days there might have been samples to try on, not anymore. Our order had to be in immediately so I took a full 15-20 minutes to do this task. It was fun. Before I knew it, lunch was upon me. I took one of the breaded chicken breasts leftover from Saturday’s fancier meal and sliced it up into two wraps with some cheese and the last of my three cheese ranch. This was accompanied by some chicken and sausage gumbo soup. I chortled that down at my desk just ahead of my bi-weekly team meeting. It went a lot smoother. The not so new anymore boss is starting to get more comfortable with us. Our Friday adventure a few weeks ago probably helped. Or maybe we were all in a good mood. We talked about a litany of items before returning to our tasks. I touched base with a couple of Quebec guys before the end of the day and walked some customers through some processes. The moral is that I was on the horn a lot. I ended up being at the helm until six or so as a result. I trudged to the fridge in search of sustenance immediately after. It was a quick and unremarkable dinner. Before, during and after which My family group chat was lighting up. Mother and the Big T were doing some cleaning it seemed and had gotten into my old closet. They were looking for ownership of old items and more or less making us kids aware of what they were tossing out. This reminded us of other things they’d rid themselves of from our respective childhoods and we started lobbing accusations at them. Mother was trying, unsuccessfully to deflect blame on such crucial items as the Esso set, the He-man toys, and most egregiously, the LEGO. In the end I only spoke up for my childhood teddy bear. I’m 37 and not willing to let go of that one.

The rest of the evening was more lackluster than you can imagine. Nothing productive got done. There was YouTube. There was French lessons and there was reading the news and Twitter. I got to bed early, knowing that the next couple of days are going to be killers.

The Day that Wasn’t

I woke up with good intentions. There was that lawn problem still lurking and my clothes were still in the dryer. Groceries needed to be purchased too. But here is a rare glimpse inside my terrible logic. Since my clothes were in the dryer I didn’t have my jeans close at hand so decided that for that reason I would go out. That I should stay home in sweatpants. Except for eggs I reasoned that I had enough food on hand to get me deep into the week. So I didn’t go. Instead I made an alternative version of my Sunday breakfast. I used hot Italian sausage rather than chorizo. I had some requests to make a video of that so maybe on Sunday I’ll tackle that. I didn’t have the right juice so instead drank the mix that I was thinking I’d make a Tropical Tugboat out of. The breakfast burritos were pretty good but not as flavourful as the other version.

With breakfast cleaned up I descended to the basement and watched the Office. I didn’t move for many, many hours. In the middle of the afternoon I prepared some leftovers from the night before and went back down. I watched more office. Then in the evening I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and went back down to watch more Office. Then it was bedtime. I watched a season and a half. Now I’m half done season three.

Saturated Saturday

I awoke with good intentions to cut my lawn and go tour a plot. Spoiler, I did neither. But it wasn’t a squandered day either. There was a great, hot shower to start things off and that was followed by no breakfast. That’s right, none. This seems to be something I keep coming back to. My entire life I was told that breakfast is the most important meal of the day but then I see that most people basically have nothing. A handful of blueberries and a coffee. Two pieces of toast with butter. A small bowl of Cap’n Crunch. That feels like nothing to me, next to nothing at least. I have skipped it a few times without consequence when I was short on time or lazy so I thought maybe I would trying being deliberate about skipping it. So this is that. Instead I went to my computer and streamed my MSC challenges to the world then I decided to finish up that campaign on Command & Conquer. It was the last of the four main ones. I’ve definitely gotten my money out of that game. When I started to hunger, around one thirty, I ventured down to the galley and started a new dish. I’ve never made brussel sprouts in my air fryer before. The bacon I needed was about to turn. It always seems like I let stuff get to the brink of rotting then eat it. The brussel sprouts were no exception. I actually had to discard a couple of them. I made one error by not reading the instructions carefully and that was adding the bacon back to be cooked more with the greens. Luckily it didn’t burn and ai got away with it. The crispy, brown leaves that peeled off should have been tossed. Although delicious, they left me feeling strange in my tummy. This was a calculated lunch choice. For many people brussel sprouts produce excessive flatus which can cause an odourous aftermath. This was definitely one of those times. Luckily I live alone and this experienced very few side effects.

To recover from this fried meal I descended down to my lair. I played some NHL20 to pass the time and listen to my audiobook. It’s one of the few activities I can do while still enjoying the audio aspect. I played for an hour or so while my clothes dried. I watched a film after the NHL20 bored me and then I forgot about my clothes. I decided at this point to make a fancier dinner than I’d normally bother with. I breaded some chicken and cooked it in the air fryer and then made a pasta sauce and for some reason a mixture of shells and rotini. I added some sauce and cheese to the chicken to make it a chicken parm. I promise you, it was amazing! I started watching the Office US on Netflix sometime later and did that until sleep took me.

TGIF

I slept in. Or tried to sleep in. I kept hoping I’d fall back asleep but couldn’t manage. I skipped breakfast and jumped directly into the saddle from my bed. No shower for this hombre. I had an early meeting and then set about cleaning up lower priority tasks and making sure I was as ready for the big meetings next week as possible. The morning flew by and before I knew it was noon. I’d had a soybean related call then helped a colleague in a new role navigate some of the newer software that I was familiar with. He’s a super guy so I was happy to help. I think I enjoy teaching or demo’ing stuff like that and I find myself doing it somewhat regularly. Especially when it comes to IT stuff. Lunch consisted of soup and the last pizza buns. Very pedestrian. The afternoon went by faster than the morning. I spent most of my time tying up loose ends and trying to push a couple projects along. When quitting time arrived I didn’t get up but switched computers and proceeded to complete my MSC challenges on Twitch. I wasn’t satisfied. They had gone by too quickly so I fired up Steam and loaded Command & Conquer. I played a handful of skirmishes while streaming and didn’t have any glitches. Maybe that is something I can do. I pulled the trigger on the webcam and did some more shopping too. Mostly for myself but I have to start considering Christmas gifts now. I had a small snack around seven and then YouTubed most of the last hour and a bit before bed away.

Thunderous Thursday

The late start to sleep translated into a late stop to sleep. Since I don’t operate with alarms unless required I slept all the way to eight. That is unprecented on a work day. The last interuption was around five and I’ve very glad I was able to get back to sleep and enjoy those last two hours. I’ll be working to avoid this situation tonight. I had enough time to shower and clean myself up but not enough time to have breakfast. I went straight from the bedroom to the office. I got going ahead of 8:30am. I tackled my spreadsheet and by the end of the day the nuts and bolts of it were finished. I had also consumed all the podcasts in my queue, which is good because I got the third Bobiverse book with my monthly Audible credit. Now I’ll have all weekend to polish that off and then I’ll have to wait a whole month for the next credit to get the fourth and most recent book. I unexpectedly got pulled into a call before I got very far into my workday and listened along to it while I hammered down on my spreadsheet. I had to jump directly to another call and then came back. I hate doing that but I did say it was unexpected. I think I can see the finish line of this long running seed treatment issue that I was push uphill. The product is ready to go and should be delivered early next week. The customer was looking for it in the front half of September and we are in the back half of October so that is mildly upsetting. As it turns out, they aren’t entirely ready for it due to other delays in other areas of their process so I’m mostly off the hook. Or maybe just lucky this time. Lunch came up fast with all this happening and I found myself with a growling tummy but not desperate. I ate a normal lunch of soup and pizza buns. I got a call right after chugging that and flitted from one things to another all afternoon. When the dust settled my inbox was back under control and I’ve mostly just got Tuesday’s mess to work on. This is good because we’re getting into the meat of my fall next week then it’s a sprint until Christmas. At least I’ve run through the flames once now and know how hot they can get. The pandemic will put a different flavour on everything so I’m doubly glad I got the experiences I did last year. I’ll leave all of that as cryptic as I hope it landed. I worked past six thirty again but I’m feeling less under the gun twenty four hours later. I wanted to do a quick supper again so I could get back to the office for some evening entertainment. Tonight I took a Great Value brand four meat pizza and added some extra cheese and some of the Hotel Oscar Tango sauce before cooking and some Cholula hot sauce after. I don’t find it hot at all anymore, that’s why I doubled down. The eating aspect of this meal was incredibly disappointing. I think I added too much extra cheese. It was pretty gross to slug back. Maybe my palette is finally maturing.

After dinner entertainment again focused on streaming my MSC challenges on Twitch. I got through them very quickly though and had some more time. I decided to pull the trigger on the Amazon order I’d setup the previous night. It should arrive next week and then we’ll see if that purchase made any sense. Eventually I’m going to have to upgrade my setup to have access to both monitors with both computers. Currently I’ve given my work machine the priority and it gets three screens to allow me to navigate several Excel files at once or take notes on one screen while presenting on the others. I’m not entirely sure how I’ll pull that off with one keyboard and mouse. I’m sure it will take time and research. Or maybe someone can let me know and save me the effort. In the meantime I moved along to playing some Command & Conquer and streaming it. I actually checked my stream on the iPad mini to make sure it was still working. It all worked and it didn’t glitch the game out for once. I might try that again at some point to make sure it still goes. It had been awhile since I tried that. The rest of the night was wound down with some YouTube.

Monsoon Day

The day started off as terrible as the weather. There was a violent monsoon going on outside. That isn’t good news for anyone. The whipping wind was doing all kinds of weird stuff to the rain. Nothing perverse, just regular weird. I had slept in a smidge and had to hustle things along to get some grub in my mug; mug being face in this instance, not inside a ceramic mug. Although…… Today is my younger sister’s birthday, we all wished her happy birthday, one after the other in our family group chat and that is apparently sufficient in today’s world. It used to be a phone call but we’ve gotten so efficient and lazy that a simple text does the trick. It takes only seconds to do and is somewhat meaningless to the receiver. The absence of it is more critical. Interesting social norm we’ve developed there. Maybe something to think about if you took time to ruminate on such issues as people once did, before the advent of smartphones and electronic designed to monopolize our thoughts and time. That’s getting too heavy and I need you to stay focused on reading on to the end of the post. Work started itself off with three consecutive conference calls of increasing exclusivity. By the third one, it was just me and two customers on the line. That one went about thirty minutes over as I managed to get them to do what I was hoping for. This lead into a later lunch. I ate the last of the soup, a much smaller bowl and had a couple of pizza buns. They had the yellow sticker of expedience on them so I needed to get them sooner rather than later. There wasn’t much nutritious about the experience, more about shutting my guts up. My innards must have been done with dealing with that soup because they got a bit angry. The afternoon moved by at a fair clip. There were a number of phone calls with colleagues, partly for business, partly to stay connected to other parts of the business. I got to return to my glorious spreadsheet and should have it wrapped up by the end of the week which I believe is faster than I did last year. I kept working past the quitting bell and it was half six when I finally powered down, truthfully it was closer to seven. This was going to mean a late meal which can be dangerous on a number of fronts. I decided that I would hit the easy button and mircrowaved a couple of patties and slapped them into an english muffin with some Kraft singles. Not my finest hour but I was zapped of drive to do anything more and wanted to eat before I got too far into the night.

After such a dinner my guts really started to roil. I returned to my office where I spent my entire day and set about beating my MSC challenges. As I often do, I streamed the affair on my Twitch channel. As I rarely do, I told someone about it. Theodore Complete tuned in for a few minutes allegedly. It was a useful activity as I was able to confirm that the microphone was operating with that software. I played some music and said something at the end. I will continue to dabble in this. I might try recording and posting a video at some point to fill out the channel some more. I really do think that Twitch will replace some of the platforms we have now. I spent way too long searching for a webcam to buy after that. I’ve been thinking of buying one for about a year now and never bothered to do the research. After looking at a number of them of varying prices I decided that I wanted sixty frames per second, autofocus, and a privacy screen. I was trying to get weird with the video output but it didn’t seem important. The champion of the field is Logitech but they got really expensive and hard to find at the start of the pandemic. There are many brands at reasonable prices that seem to do the job for most people. I am shooting for something a step up from normal with those specs and so I’m paying a bit more. We’ll see how this experiement turns out. It’s in my cart on Amazon but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I’ll sleep on this one. Sleep is the next topic, it came late. It was nearly midnight by the time I got it. I wasn’t tired and couldn’t get tired. The late dinner apparently came back to haunt me afterall.

Turbulent Tuesday

A great sleep in the heated house set the day on the right path from the start. Breakfast was the traditional fare but came out totally smoking hot, just piping hot. It was such a visual that I posted it on my Snap story. I was done with the cleansing, feeding and washing in such a time that I was able to take down my MSC challenges before work. The first hour of so of work was productive, happy and enjoyable. Just a man and his elaborate spreadsheet, times where good. Then an email came that smashed momentum and effectively drove the day into the ditch. I can’t and won’t go into the details but it sucked up the rest of the morning which put me well behind on my afternoon plans so I had to remove a trip to the field as a result. The field visit would have been nice, despite the rain in the early morning resulting in muddy dirt, there was a stiff breeze and sunshine to dry the tops of the corn plants to enable a probably peaceful walk in the corn. That email also exposed/reminded me to/of a few gaps in our systems that will have to be corrected. All in all it turned my delightful morning into a stressful conflagration of nonsense. I kicked a hornets nest and a lot came out to attack initially but then it got quiet. Lunch was later so I decided to make it count.

These thawed wings were becoming pretty fragrant in the fridge and I needed a win. Admittedly they weren’t as spectacular as the first batches I made with the tiny wings. I’m fairly certain I put them in too long but after the other chicken incident I’m leaving nothing to chance. I used the same sauces, Hotel Oscar Tango sauce and Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet and Spicy. They were good but didn’t fix my difficulties. Later in the day I was able to circle back around to my lovely spreadsheet but I’ve worn a big rut in the smooth road to the promise land and now I’m going to have to get it repaired. Dinner came next after work, as it often does. It was quick and simple, a healing bowl of my soup. It looked a heckuva lot like yesterday’s lunch. I scampered downstairs and played some Battlefront II to try and shake things up. There was a smaller secondary campaign that needed completing so I took it down. What a downer of an ending though. My eyes welled up but I didn’t shed any tears. That whole endeavour wrapped up in pretty good time and I did some YouTube watching until it was time to bed. Might have been a good time to take a walk but that wasn’t on my mind. Sleep was and I got after it. Cause when you’re asleep you don’t have to be stressed, it’s just dreams! Anyways, that was the day.

Chilly Monday

It was outright cold in my bed through the night. I woke up to pee and the sheets and blankets were cold by the time I got back. That isn’t right. I have been holding off turning the heat on for a week or two. I don’t want to start contributing to the asinine carbon tax any sooner than I have to. I set my household temperature a pace or two into the uncomfortable for each season. Warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter than most folks. Why am I being penalized for this good behaviour with a made up tax? Anyways, I could go on but will shift gears to tell you about my breakfast. I had the same amount of breakfast as good things I could have said about that tax. Nothing. I’m not sure why, I was up in good time but just didn’t feel like eating. Strange. I did my MSC challenge instead and then got into work. After a long call to start the week I checked in with a colleague and started my big fall file that I’ll need for the next three months. By lunch I had added slippers to my wool socks and a second sweater. It was time, I can’t risk getting sick at this juncture, I turned on the heat. My aim was to warm the house two degrees from 17C to 19C. What a difference! To break my fast finally I had a huge bowl of my soup. It seems to have absorbed all the liquid and become a somewhat bland but nutritious mush.

Now energized by a warmer atmosphere and mushy soup power, I dove into that file with considerably more zeal than before. I got almost all of the corn half of it done. I’ll do the soybean side later in the week. I’m still planning to walk some corn locations in the rain tomorrow and possibly Friday. I don’t think I’ll do as much as I’ve previously planned. I fielded a couple of calls and answered a few requests over the course of the afternoon but things quieted down and by half four I was able to slip away to go see the Chef. As you’ll recall from yesterday, I had a growing pile of stuff to bring him. I was feeling great so I brought him the sausage rounds, the juiceless pickles and a sample of the soup for him to critique. He showed me the considerable progress he’d made on his landscaping. He now has three distinct tiers constructed and most of the retaining walls built.

It’s somewhat hard to see but there will be a concrete pad against the house then three steps into the enclosed area that will be a vast ocean of interlocking stone. Then in lieu of those temporary boards, there will be large stones piled two high across that edge. He is bringing in fill to level the bottom tier then putting in a proper lawn. He might get a hot tub off to the right of the photo for the middle tier and there will be a nice stone fire pit on the third tier to the right of those temporary steps he tore off the house. He is really moving along with that project these days. He is also progressing inside, down to putting trim on to complete his projects. He will have the bathroom and kitchen left. Both have been demolished already. He has come up with some creative ideas to keep it liveable in the interim.

After the tour we went out to one of his restaurants to eat. Choosing the Pickle Barrel was an apt choice, considering the purpose of my journey. I had never been so following my rule I ordered the clubhouse and it was exquisite. I remembered to get it untoasted. Oddly, there was no cheese or mayo on it so I asked to add my own mayo, strong move. We had no appetizers and both had water. This was a much more reasonable total compared to our last meal out. I dropped the Chef at home and scuttled back to the Harbour. I mused and caught up on some of my fave YouTube channels before bed.