Family Day

Despite the struggle to start sleeping sooner I was still up at a decent hour. It was eight when I leaped from my bed with such a clatter I’m sure the neighbours wondered what was the matter. The ones that live there normally, the ones who come and go all week, sleeping next door half the nights and their guests who stayed over last night. People are not even close to respecting the stay at home order. I’ll continue to do my part and try to lead by example. Just the way that this tangent has led me back around to talk about breaking my fast. Because I’d had such a weak dinner my tummy was hungry today and I started making a meal like a hungry person. Bacon was fried, so were three eggs. Cheese is in there and so was some sriracha ranch dipping sauce which quickly got lost in the fray. Not as lost as the sausage patties though. I started cooking them in the microwave and completely forgot about them for over an hour after I finished knocking back these two beauty breakfast bundles. I was going to have some avocado too but when I opened the last one I saw it was rotten and brown all the way through. It was actually firm again. It was all kinds of gross.

I kept up my strong momentum and started another item from the list, chicken soup. I carefully washed and chopped up a mound of celery and carrots. Good thing, because half the celery was rotting. It was two weeks older than the avocado so that made sense to me. While the stock, water, and vegetables were hanging out in the pot I slipped away to clean all the elements of the powder room by the front door. I carefully carved up some radish to encourage its usage. I had to buy an entire bag for just one. It was not worth it. When the rice went into the soup I darter downstairs to give the basement bathroom the same treatment. If you’re keeping score you’ll know that I have seen to all four of my four bathrooms in the last day or so. It’s a nice feeling. Shortly after the soup was done I got in contact with the Meat Man, because the young Prince really wanted to see me play Super Mario on my NES classic. I boxed up the considerable volume of soup and we were off.

I had the tripod already setup for that from previously in the week and easily took the time to play that for 40 minutes or so. I learned that I’m terrible at Nintendo and also that FaceTime sucks. It kept freezing and lagging. Couldn’t have been much fun to watch. He wanted to show me his Mario Lego and then it was time to do other things. I fired up my computer and started into the next item on my list, Musings. Well, I took care of two days of MSC challenges first. After posting a few Musings I decided to take a break and found myself feeding my troublesome addiction instead. Scene missing. Hours passed and it was half six by the time the iPad died this time. I’m in deep now, probably $35-40 deep. I need to stop! I broke it off to eat. I had a very large bowl of soup for my second meal. I realized that it had been nearly ten hours between meals. I doubt that is good, not as good as the soup anyways.

I overcooked the rice and added some radish garnish for crunch but it wasn’t very noticeable. It was a bit bland again too, I’ll have to spice it up next time. After eating I finished my Musings catch up while listening to the Leaf game on the “radio”. TSN has the game so I can’t watch and have to listen online to their radio feed. That’s fine since it is Joe Bowen. When the game wrapped up, so did I, in my covers.

List Driven

I figured that I would be sleeping in late after having stupidly stayed up late. This was not the case, I was out of bed and in the kitchen as the clock struck nine. While I was dressing my mind started racing with ideas of what I should get done in the coming days. I decided to write it down. I learned years ago that I gain huge satisfaction from crossing things off lists and that that can drive me. My completionist nature also feels compelled to finish all the items. The whiteboard in the kitchen was my destination for this list. I loaded it up with numerous small tasks and elements of the larger ones. It was a healthy list and I decided to clear it in the next 48 hours. That would help resurrect my productivity. Before I started though, I slowed down to enjoy the ritual of cooking a nice breakfast for myself. To celebrate the one I love most, me. I cooked some bacon and browned off some chorizo. I didn’t crumble the bacon back in this time when I added the scrambled eggs. Another change I made today is that I put the cheese on the bottom then scooped the scramble mixture on that. I also warmed up some spinach in the pan and out that in too. That added a lot. As you can see from the cross section, it was awesome.

With my guts filled all the way up and the dish mess sorted it was time to start working on the list. First item of business was the driveway. I wanted to get a little exercise and get my heart pumping to help digest that sizeable breakfast. Next up was to work on my painting from the work activity last week. It went okay for the first time painting something like this. I do heavily regret tracing around the eyes. It severely ruins it for me. But I can take solace in the fact that I mixed all the colours myself. That aspect looks interesting if nothing else. And it is distinguishable as a tiger, another good sign. I put it wide by each with the professional version and ignoring the stupid eyes, I prefer my color palette.

I kept on trucking once this was done and moved along down the list with some laundry and some cleaning. I found myself still working away at a bathroom at nine in fact. Tomorrow being a holiday I was in good shape to finish the list. I also played that infernal game for a few hours. I am making too many in-game purchases and playing right into their hands. I’m going to have to find a way out of it. There was a second meal into the evening. I felt obligated to eat again because I was starting to feel weird and uncomfortable in the brain. It was a light meal because it was late. At the end of the day this is where I had progressed to.

Sloppy Saturday

Getting out of bed was a process, a slow process. Motivation was low. The mindset was there wasn’t anything substantial to accomplish so I tucked into some nonsense on YouTube. By the time I’d showered and dressed it was mid morning. Next I sought to break my fast and I did just that with a nice, filling meal that only takes a couple minutes to make. I’ve gotten so lazy that I can’t even stand ten minutes of preparation, needing it to be instantaneous now. These sausage rounds aren’t as good as past batches, hurts the overall greatness of a breakfast like this. It was nearly noon by the time I’d inhaled the food and cleaned up the mess.

My intention was to finish painting my tiger from earlier in the week but instead I found myself heading up to take on my MSC challenges. I knew I had some Musings to get caught up on too but after I finished the challenges I did my French lessons on Duolingo and saw the same ad for a cheap, stupid game called HomeScapes. It looks like a puzzle game. I’ve seen this ad for more than a year and I figured what the heck. I grabbed the mini ans downloaded it. Mistake. It is not about puzzles but some kind of candy crush looking deal. I know it’s set up to get me and I knew that going in and it got me. It got me hooked up good and deep. I started playing at two or so and next thing I knew it was six. And worst of all I’d spent probably $10 on in game purchases. That is how they get you. I realized it had been hours since I was at the trough and was finally able to put it down because the mini was nearly dead. I went down to make my second meal of the day. But it just turned into ketchup chips and a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, Turkey Club. It was smaller than my guts wanted but I needed water more than food. I watched the Leafs lose to their forever rival Montreal and that was about enough time to charge up the mini. I was back after it from ten until past one. Big time hold on me!

Feel-good Friday

The day started at a normal hour and I got myself cleaned, primped and proper but there was no breakfast. As a punishment for the terrible dinner choices made the previous night I decided to skip over breakfast. I filled a bottle of water, not the thermos and started my workday much earlier than normal. I had a call early and that was followed by another with my “US boss”, our monthly chat. We had some good back and forth and used the entire hour, which was unexpected. There was only a short jump after those two calls until lunch. Without breakfast I decided that I could probably start lunch a tad early so at quarter to noon I dumped a full basket of chicken bites into the air fryer and selected three dipping sauces. I went with the garlic aioli, chipotle mayo, and of course the sriracha ranch. I took turns dumping each on my full plate of bites and sopping them up with the bites. By the end of it I was completely full. I waddled back upstairs with a full thermos of water to wash that stuff through my system and went back to work. I had cleared my podcast queue and my audiobook was done so I decided that I’d just rock tunes. I had scheduled a customer meeting from three to four to accomodate their schedule and naturally my phone was incapable of stopping ringing leading up to that lone call of the afternoon. I chatted with a couple colleagues and cleared up lingering items before having a super constructive meeting with that customer. We went over time by a bit but had some really open discussion. I had a couple of action items on my end and immediately dove into those, mostly updating files and databases. I got my last soybean order and updated things there. The work day ended with pretty high spirits. I got a call from BDP as I was powering down and he was out to pick up some thai food takeout. We chatted about work and continued our discussion about some of the stocks he’s trading in now. He seems to have more cash to invest than the others in the group chat. After a general catch-up we got into some less savoury territory. It started to become apparent that he and I were not on the same page around the pandemic and the measures that are in place to try and reduce it’s impact. We’ve known each other a long time so we were able to have a civil discussion but we’re on opposite sides of it. It was nice to be able to disagree with someone amicably. It has become a rare thing nowadays. I knocked out my MSC challenges then went down and decided to call an audible on dinner. Aparently I didn’t have any ground meat thawed so it made the planned soft taco bake kit less appealing. I chose instead to fire up some Our Finest pad thai and hammer that down with a can of Sprite and a pint or two of water.

There wasn’t much going on after dinner, the clean up was quick and easy. Most of the evening was spent reading things online, researching future purchases, and watching YouTube. There was a noticeable blip in there that I got a call from a colleague. He wanted to ask me something time sensitive about which applications he should be trying to install on his work computer. The window that he had admin rights was quickly closing and I’d told him previously in the day that I didn’t have much in the way of plans, being locked down and all. We chatted away for an hour or so after his initial question were answered. I went back to what I was doing for another hour so and then I tried to go to sleep early but it dragged on past eleven or so.

Quick and Quiet

Thursday turned out to be a fairly unremarkable day as I look back. I started things normally with some breakfast. The normal breakfast was enough to tide me over and abolish my fast. While I was preparing it I nearly witnessed an unprovoked disaster. I was standing the kitchen when without warning my much beleaguered cactus slowly slumped over. I’m not sure what caused this but my theory is that I fed it some 20-30-20 a few days back and it started to put on some growth and that made it top heavy. I carefully shimmied it over against the wall for now to get some proper support. I could try and find a bigger stick but honestly the pot wouldn’t be able to support it. I should have moved it to a larger pot ten years ago. The wall will have to do, hopefully the closed register doesn’t mess it up further. I got that in March 2006, not long after returning from SB06.

After that troubling start to the day I set about my work business. With only one meeting on the books for the day I found myself with some spare time. There is a low priority task that I should have done already drifting in the background but when I tried to take it on I found that there was an error I couldn’t resolve on my own. I’m going to reach out next week during office hours for this application and try and get things cooking. It is low priority, it can wait a bit longer. It’s the classic function of trying to shoehorn Canada into something built with only the US in mind, it happens more than you’d think in big companies. Undeterred I set about updating other files and queries that I’ll need after the seed order is over. I kept working through things on the seed order front also. I’ve got corn plot seed all squared away and it was entered into the system. Now we have to make sure everything works and play a bit of the waiting game. There is more work to be done with corn, probably the bulk of it, but I’m in limbo for a few days. The soybean side is moving along quickly as well. I’ve got most of that figured out. I’ll have to confirm a few things more and then I’ll be wrapped there. I’m well ahead of last year on that front. Turns out that going through a season lets you learn quite a bit, much more than the legends do. Either way, only I’ll get that one and since I’m the only one reading most of these I’m leaving it in. Lunch was unremarkable too. I loaded up with some soup and a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini - Mozzerella and Meatball. The afternoon was more of the say, a few calls mixed in to keep it fresh. The next thing I knew it was after five and I hung it up for the day. Dinner was not what was on the whiteboard but instead a combination of chips, Dr Pepper and a granola bar. The picture of health. I did my MSC challenges and then wandered a bit, looking for something constructive to do. Finding nothing I crawled into my bed and watched some YouTube and finished off some podcasts while dozing in and out of consciousness until closer to eleven when sleep took the wheel.

Strategic Hump

The days started ahead of six bells. Not sure why, hoping it was an early to bed situation. After watching sports for a spell I ventured out to quietly clean part of the driveway. The part needing scraping would have to wait until everyone was awake. I probably made a few enemies as it was. I tossed the shovel back inside and struck off for a morning constitutional. It was nice, the sun being up earlier played a role, as well being up earlier myself. I got back and whipped up my normal breakfast. It was eight when I got into work and I’d already received a couple emails. I don’t succumb to their siren song, especially when I’m eating, they had to wait. I plugged away for a couple hours until the start of day two of our national meeting. It was solid content coming across but not much I hadn’t heard before. I think they wanted a chance to bring the group together in some fashion. We’ll see how well it worked. I was getting hungry after noon and saw that lunch was going to be on mountain time today. I noped that pretty quick and hustled down to the kitchen during a break. I warmed up the leftovers from the previous night’s dinner and realized there was leftover fish from last week still. I warmed it up and made a sort of plastic bento box for myself. The food really woke me back up.

The fun continued into the afternoon. When the real lunch break came I went out and finished the driveway for real, did the dishes and added some soil to all the potted plants. Somehow the levels seemed to have decreased slightly. The additional soil was bone dry so I hope it evens things out in some pots. I’m supposed to try perlite but I don’t want to repot anything right now. I mixed up some 20-30-20 and fed everything again. The meeting ended with a keynote speaker with an inspirational tale. Chris Koch is a farmer in the West who was born without arms and legs. Wild story and he tells it well. That was a nice way to end off the meeting, just a great guy with an unreal attitude. A few emails and calls got tossed around and I was at the MSC challenges by half five. Dinner was done by half six and it was time to settle into the Leafs. The cardboard pizza and ketchup chips weren’t the greatest meal but that’s what was on the big board for the night. The Leafs looked different but so was their opponent, a 1-2 matchup tonight, the real measuring stick for both squads. The game was fairly lackluster until the Leafs got two quick goals and held on for a 3-2 victory. The third was more wide open and entertaining. It was an interesting match, I think the Leafs at full strength have a decent shot at winning a round this year. But I’ve been disappoint often. I was all over my phone throughout the game and went straight to bed upon its completion.

Tunes-day

This Tuesday started off like countless others. Woke up, fooled in time until half seven and then scrambled to get to work for eight. I made it, traffic was quiet. I had an hour to get my affairs in order before the start of our national strategy meeting. It is the virtual version of last year’s trip to Lake Louise. Lots of general knowledge material. Some higher up folks showing support for our business, that kind of thing. It made the morning go by really quickly and I got to sit in my comfy chair so I was happy. Lunch was later than usual with so many time zones involved in the meeting. I warmed up four sausage rounds and combined them with some jalapeño havarti cheese between a couple of cheese bagels. It sounds delicious on paper but it sat like a lead balloon in my guts and generally made me feel unsettled. We had a short presentation that I tried to watch on the iPad but the sound didn’t work for most of it. After that was a team building activity. I signed up for painting. My logic was that I wanted to have something tangible at the end of it. I’d already done mixology and cheese making sounded like a process. I was asked to name my favourite animal suspecting that’s what I’d be painting. I got a package last week with a small canvas and some paints and brushes. I had to cover the back of the tracing page with graphite from a pencil then trace the lines to get a rough outline. Then I had to learn to mix colours. That aspect I am not good at. It was Zoom based and being in the iPad in the kitchen meant I couldn’t see everyone outside of the break out rooms. It was of no matter. I was fully consumed by the task at hand. It was fun and challenging. Turns out the tiger I selected is one of the harder ones to paint, lion being the other because of the detail in the mane. We are supposed to email in a picture before Feb 16 for some grand purpose. I hope I finish by then. For now I’m partially done and worried I’m slowly ruining it. Here is the progress so far.

After that harrowing experience I did my best to clean up properly and avoid any permanent messes. I checked the whiteboard for my meal and it was sausage burrito bowl. I took two hot Italian sausages and opened them up to be browned off. While that was happening some minute rice enjoyed the microwave. I had some leftover corn and black beans from last weeks burrito efforts. These things I combined in a bowl when they were cooked along with some smashed bacon that I’d cooked last week. Salsa to taste and top with some cilantro and cheese. Looks good but tastes better. I ate one portion and stored the other for later. Next I did my MSC challenges and general interneting before switching to YouTube and my bed. I crawled into it at eight and last saw 10:20pm before waking hours later. Pretty sure there was dozing ahead of the main event too. Not a bad day.

Moderate Monday

I was up good and early for a Monday. There was extra time so I lounged for a few minutes before getting a move on. I’m pretty sure I inadvertently wore the same shirt as the previous Monday. Pizza for breakfast like the good old days when I could do whatever I wanted. I learned a valuable lesson about that today. That unexpected Christmas gift is one that keeps on giving. For those keeping score I took down half for dinner and ate a quarter more for breakfast leaving a quarter remaining. Math.

I was at the helm ahead of eight and got myself ready for the day. I had five meetings on the docket and got my note files set up for each one. When meetings flow into each it pays to take a few minutes to get throngs prepared. It was a short while into the first meeting when I learned that lesson I alluded to. Pizza for breakfast on the twilight side of your thirties causes heartburn. Or perhaps I’ve just entered the heartburn era of my existence and the pizza was simply an innocent bystander. Either way, any little burp was unpleasant. Maybe I’ll stick to breakfast food. The morning flew by though, thankfully. I completed a safety training right at twelve and moved to lunch. I thought it fitting that I eat a can of Leafs soup on game day. Well, you can see it is actually Campbell’s Chunky Beef but you get the idea. I had the last of the pizza with it. May as well take it down, no use waiting. It was a sizeable feed.

The afternoon zipped by pretty quickly too today. I had a call with my team to kick it off and that was actually fun. We had some banter and shared a lot of detailed info. I had a short window to prepare things for my next engagement. I had to look up a number of items quickly and finished seconds before the call. That call was also fairly enjoyable. It was with my US team and despite some tough decisions being made it was fun. I jumped into another one in progress and then the last one right after. By the time I answered some email it was half five and dinner time. With no real plan I warmed a Stouffer’s Bistro crustini Turkey Club and started into a task. At breakfast I’d marked where the kitchen whiteboard would hang and marked the screw holes at lunch. I only had to drill, hang the hardware and mount it. It wasn’t perfect, I broke a bit in the process, but overall it was much smoother than I would have guessed. I washed the wall, swept the floor, washed the board and put out the markers. Finally I’ve got both the boards in play.

After unexpectedly getting that done today, and done well, there was nothing to do but head down to watch my beloved Leafs play. They have some injuries to some veteran imports but started the game strong.

Super Sunday Surprise

I was up quite early this cold Sunday morning. I had a hot shower and found myself cleaned up and enthusiastic to start the day. I had all kinds of ideas of things to do. First stop was the kitchen and that turned into some of the Tugboat’s breakfast burritos. I really enjoyed the process of making them. The ritual of it. When they were done I almost didn’t want to eat them. But I did. I was quite full, they felt heavier today, you can see from the photo that they also seemed to be greasier today. I put a table spoon of leftover guacamole in them without thinking what the cooking process would do to that normally served cold dish. As it happens, nothing detrimental happened, it was neat to have it as part of the equation today.

Once the fast was suitably broken I found myself at the computer working through the daily MSC challenges once again. I got myself caught up there and then did some other computing and browsing. I got an idea for a gift to present to GRP & KJMH’s child and thought I should pull the trigger before I forgot. To earn free shipping I got something for their furry baby too. I hope all involved enjoy my offerings. When I felt I’d caught up on what I needed to handle I reviewed some boring mail that nobody likely reads. The bank warned me about some changes they were making to various account types. In every possible way they can charge fees they are, and now they are raising those fees across the board. Not a good sign of things to come. If the banks are having a hard time then it means nothing good for our economic position. I’m sure they’ll tell me not to worry and that it is a regularly scheduled thing. Except I don’t recall a previous rendition of these types of changes. If my life savings gets wiped out there will be rage. While I was in my office I took some time and sorted my tickle truck of company swag, took a couple items for me, made a pile to give away, I was shipped a box of items previously in the week and finally organized things. I moved things forward on my laundry and decided to sweep all the floors in the house. I started in the basement but soon realized that dusting would be required as well. After doing a thorough job down there I took on the living room as well. The kitchen was next but I lost interest in the task shortly after. I’ll have to find a way to proceed with the other areas, maybe one a day if I schedule it. I used to sweep, mop, and dust every Sunday for the first year or so that I lived here. Then I stopped and now I need a professional to come and deep clean to get me back to square one. All that cleaning worked up some hunger by two bells, or I guess fourteen bells. I made a nice little lunch out of some spinach (from the new box), some previously cooked bacon slices, some smoked gouda hunks and an avocado. I figured that it would be all the sauce I’d need. The spinach was the more time consuming of the greens as this container appears to be very “stemmy.” The two avocados I’ve dealt with this week have both been easy to work with. I have memories of them being as difficult to peel as a hard boiled egg. If they are going to be amenable then perhaps I’ll make them more of a regular player in my lunch productions.

Some time was spent after eating just simply sitting and looking out the window. It was then that I noticed that a bird had found my feeder. It picked away while I watched and seemed to be accessing the food. It cleared out a corner of the feeder then nestled down in there to get out of the wind a bit more while it continued to peck away for seeds. I had thought to dung it out some when I went to clean the snow but as it happened, I never did. Instead I moved the laundry along, folding and stowing the weekly load and moving the bedding over. I’m washing the duvet again, this is the most frequent I’ve done that task in my life. It’s only been a couple of weeks! With that done I came back to watch the bird some more but found myself playing some NES Classic instead. I tried a few games until I heard a knock at the door.

I should also mention that I got a text from the Meat Man while I was watching the bird telling me my Christmas gift was going to arrive by five. We have slipped into a pattern of not getting gifts promptly since we don’t see each other anymore. Usually you aim for the front half of the year, last year I missed that mark. I usually just combine his bday and Christmas gift now, for efficiency and value. Anyways, knock at the door is the pizza man. I’m very confused. I’ve been watching for Amazon all day then the pizza man leaves something on the porch and knocks and walks away. It looks like my last order. I often will re-order my last order but I didn’t do that today. I grab the Mini and check my account to see if I’ve somehow placed an order. I’m wondering if this is Super Bowl related, maybe a thank you to loyal customers? A quick scan shows it’s what I have been getting the last few times out. Large meal deal with a regular dough pizza with bacon crumble, ham and pineapple. Creamy sriracha garlic and creamy garlic dipping sauces, ten chicken bites and four pops. I texted the Meat Man to ask if he did it and got a FaceTime immediately from him and the little Prince. He was excited that I got it, this was the Christmas gift in case you haven’t pieced that together. I asked him how he’d gotten into my account, I was concerned at this point. He was confused. I told him this was my last order. I ripped open the pop sack and noticed that instead of a Barq’s there was a Coke Zero. Apparently he’d conferred with my parents to get my address and with the Chef for order suggestions. Somehow he’d manage to get almost the entire thing perfect. I don’t advertise what I order or how often so this was quite a feat. Imagine ordering a pizza order for someone and perfectly matching it to their last order, nearly every detail! Very crazy. We told Fraunce and then I entertained the young Prince briefly with Wheel of Fortune and Super Spike V’Ball on my NES Classic. He said he could seed the screen when I put my phone in my pocket but after testing it later I doubt it. He wants me to play Mario next, I’ll have to get my tripod out so he can see the screen better. That pizza surprise was very welcome but did change the trajectory of my day.

I had not plans to watch the big game today. I hadn’t watched a minute of coverage all season so it didn’t feel right to watch the Super Bowl. I ate the bites and half the pizza then realized even that partial portion was too much, it must have been the short window between lunch and dinner. I didn’t want to lie around though. I took the electrical stuff into the garage and realized I had the front of the boat cranked way up in the air for no reason, I lowered it down and now have an easier time getting in and out of the garage, for months I’d been squeezing through and stepping over the high tongue. Fool. I went back to the computer to write up this and start working on another project. The duvet needed a second round, if that doesn’t do it then I’ll sleep in the guest bed then wash it. I’m on a laundry tear. I should have hung the whiteboard but chickened out. I checked if I could do it with 3M velcro but it won’t work the way the board and frame are designed. I’ll have to man up this week at some point.

Full Relaxation

I was a bit slow out of the starting block today, instead opting to linger in the comfort of my warm bed for an extra hour or so. Mostly I was trying to get back to sleep after a so-so performance in that department. To totally smash my fast I felt like I’d partake of the alternative to yesterday’s lunch decision. You remember right? Maybe the picture just below will be a hint, you guessed it, perogies! I ate a healthy dose of those and put the rest in the fridge. Then as icing on the cake I snogged a drumstick, vanilla and caramel.

With a full to the top belly and a satisfied feeling I wandered to the computer to take down a few days of MSC challenges. I knocked that off and still wasn’t feeling very productive at all. I went back to make the bed and there on the nightstand was the same book that had been sitting there untouched for a couple weeks now. I decided that today was the day to tackle it. I started reading Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. The edition I got as a gift for Christmas 2019 has some author commentary through the book. I’m not sure if that heightened my experience but I know it didn’t dampen it. The font was bigger, probably for kids or something. I got about twelve pages in and my face hit the pillow. I had a deep nap for just under an hour, it was beautiful and topped me to my sleep goal for the night. Minutes after waking there was a vigourous knock at the front door. Who knocks when there is a doorbell? I sleepily sauntered down and found that my previous week’s order of boat parts had arrived. A few expensive electrical items. I’m going to do an overkill job on the electrical in the boat.

That was the only interuption in another otherwise cover to cover reading of the entire novel. In the author’s notes he talked about writing in on the trail and reading what he’d written back to his sled dogs. That affected the pacing of the book, and I noticed, it was fast paced and I didn’t consider putting it down. I ripped through all 188 pages in a few hours, done before dinner. It was a very interesting story. I can tell when I liked something when it alters my emotional state and takes me to a different pattern of thinking. I like something substantial like that. I started feeling like there is an ending to things and that we need to learn to survive. It was good and I found a lot of the story relevant to our situation in the pandemic. I’ve bery glad I didn’t read this as a boy and got to experience it now, in the pandemic, really adds a different dimension to the story. Because of the enjoyment garnered from the novel I’d skipped lunch. As a result, I was starting to feel peckish around dinner time, despite the earlier feed. I kept it respectable with a Stouffer’s Bistro BBQ Chicken Crustini and a Dr Pepper. While that was settling in my guts I played some NES Classic. I still find it very difficult for the most part. I struggled at the basketball game in particular. I lost Wheel of Fortune twice on the last puzzle. I did okay at Gunsmoke and enjoyed it. I crushed WWF King of the Ring. It was a bit too easy. Next thing I knew it was time for the Leaf game. I wanted to start the feed ahead of time and not change it, just in case they tried the same garbage as Thursday. I found myself eating some ketchup chips in the second period and enjoying another can of Dr Pepper. When the game ended, so did my day. I again had trouble falling asleep, likely the late food and drink. It was half eleven when I finally checked out.

Physical Friday Feast

A grotesque sleep in the night and an early morning really set the course for the day to begin with. I slept until half seven as a result and was fearing the next phase when I suddenly found myself having a shower and preparing. I knew breakfast didn’t a lot into the timing because I needed to round up the trash and recycling. Added bonus is that I needed to shovel. I’m a real stickler when I shovel. I paid $4000 in 2014 for a concrete driveway and I intend to scrape it clean. I don’t like walking over the snow or driving over the snow cause that makes it harder. Sure, call me a weirdo. This meant that to put the trash out I had to clear a path. You can see where I landed in the photo below. I couldn’t finish it off as I had to be on a call at half eight for a couple hours. This looked dumb so I memorialized it with the photo. It was a good twenty minutes of vigourous activity to start the day. That little burst seemed to energize me and my lack of sleep seemed to be a non-issue as I hurtled into the workday.

The call I was on started with two negative announcements and after discussing and digesting that we joked that the rest of the call needed to be positive. That wasn’t the case. This experience reinforced my view that everyone in the world is leaning too far to the negative sphere. The Dark side is winning, we need the Chosen One to come rebalance things at some point. After the call ended I had a few missed calls to see to. Then I went and shoveled the remainder of the driveway and answered some more emails. Next up was lunch. With no breakfast I felt that breakfast food was an option. I debated burritos or perogies. Theodore Complete helped me land on burritos. I made them the same as last night but blasted them in the air fryer. Adds something. It reminded me I forgot to include cheese again. In the interim time while it cooked I forgot I’d put pesto in them. That was an interesting surprise.

I had a call during my meeting free afternoon and afterwards started preparing some things for next week. I got some feedback from a few colleagues on outstanding issues and got all of my orders in by the end of the day. Feeling I was in good shape for the week and I’d worked over my forty hours I decided to shut it down at four. I had a headache from something so took to blowing my nose incessantly incase it was congestion and not the changing weather or stress. I started playing some Wheel of Fortune on my NES classic when I got a barrage of questions around my seed orders. Mostly confirming details as they were being entered into the system. I was able to answer them all without getting up. Then I got a call with questions about a message I’d sent a few hours before. That turned into a chat. I shut off the game and took a couple of Tylenol to handle the headache before things kicked off. Afterall, it was family feast night. Tonight it was Big T’s birthday choice of beach fish tacos (or some combination of those words). My parents had started before the call again, Big T claiming he was hungry, I say impatient. I purposely bucked that trend and only laid out my ingredients. My fish wasn’t completed thawed, this would be costly later.

Big T and Mother’s offering. Looks very close to the photo, but lacked radish.

Sudbury sister’s version. She added a heap of hot sauce after.

STL sister didn’t have the red cabbage, they got sent an expired supply of it from their grocer, still solid.

We managed to get everyone in the picture this time, even Tia the dog. I’ll have to coach STL sister on getting the options to disappear for taking a screenshot in the future but a nice picture nonetheless. I ate more than I should have but the first three had fish that was mostly cooked and not hot. I also forgot to put lime on the first plate. It was a long cleanup process, I’d made a bigger than normal mess but not being prepared as well beforehand. I’ll have some leftovers to make a couple more tomorrow, if it all keeps. Afterwards I did my French lessons and worked on Musings until it was nearly bedtime. Then I watched some YouTube and shut it down.

Unusual Thursday

After going to bed at a decent hour I was up like a shot at half six this day. I showered up and worked on my grocery list before heading out. Luckily I didn’t have to clean the driveway this time but I did have to clean the truck off, including an extra thorough windown scrape to give ample time for the vehicle to warm up. Not starting it but every two weeks likely isn’t ideal in the winter. I was early so decided to swing by McDonald’s on the way and got myself a proper McBreakfast. I sat in my truck and ate it while I respected the seniors hour. I am growing more and more convinced that it is no longer a thing around here. Based on the clientele coming and going out of the store while I slowly consumed my prize breakfast I’d say it’s not. Either that or the majority of people are selfish and disrespectful. Tough call to be sure on that one. Since I don’t get out much I took the long way around to get to the food and ended up doing a circuit of the whole perimeter of the store. Not many people around at eight on a Thursday so I had plenty of elbow room to mozy up to the trough. In the end it was a regular shop, under $200 despite my nice donation to the local food bank being tacked on. I grabbed several bags of the same kind of chips and that might turn into something I’ll talk about later. When the bill was paid, I went straight home with my bounty and got it sorted and stowed quickly so I could make it to work by nine. I worked contentedly for a couple of hours before having to head back out into the dangerous wilds.

This time it was to pickup my pork patties. I ordered another case of them a few days back to enable my breakfast samidge obsession. I drove over there and parked, called the prescribed contact with my order number and a gentleman bought it out and placed it in my truck. Pretty slick. As I was driving home I noticed that not many of the businesses I passed were shuttered. I was pretty intrigued that the stone working place and the landscaping company were in full swing. I’m not sure what the term essential business means during a stay at home order anymore but I’m guessing your mulch needs in February are minimal. Aw well, not my business, my business was to get those tasty patties. I got them home and counted, there were 99 of them, pretty close. I split them into two sacks and painstakingly jammed them into the already full freezer.

In the end I decided that I had to cook some chicken bites to make room in the freezer. It’s rammed full again. Since it was close enough to lunch I tucked in. It was a pretty big feed so I thought I should get some exercise of some kind. I decided that I would change the plates on my truck. The company was switching me officially over to a Bayer vehicle to the point that I needed a new gas card, plates and ownership. The card was already in play so I had to put the new plates on to complete the process, well that and mail my old ones back but I have no intention of doing that anytime soon. It was a lot easier than I thought so to keep things moving I walked to the back and brought the birdfeeder in to thaw and then refilled it once I was able to clean it out. In the meantime I tidied up a bit in the garage. I was bringing it back out for the birds when I dropped it on the floor. Luckily it didn’t smash into a thousand pieces but it did make an awful mess. Neat to be outside when the sun was out, feels like a foreign concept to me now, which might not be ideal. I left the mess and hung it up and got back to work for a few more hours to round out the day. For dinner I used some of my leftover ground pork taco meat and cooked up some corn niblets, rice and black beans to mix in a bowl with salsa. I wrapped that up and enjoyed two burritos for dinner with plenty leftover for future use. One somewhat strange move I made when preparing the burritos is that I put a healthy tablespoon of leftover pesto on the wrap. This gave the meal a very different and quite unique taste. I liked it, so much pesto gave it a healthy zip. I’d do it again.

I was in a rush to get downstairs for the first Leaf game since Saturday. I had finished eating and cleaned up in time to start watching about fifteen minutes before puckdrop. The game was on the SN Pacific feed, I thought that odd since the game was in Toronto. The SN team covering the game was different but I attributed that to it being on the other feed. I settled in, the first was entertaining, decent back and forth but the Leafs were the stronger team coming out of it ahead a goal. I had heard that the Habs were wearing their reverse retro (whatever that means) uniforms and switched over to another feed to see if they looked as good as I was hearing. I tried to flip back to the Leafs when I realized I didn’t have access to the Habs and got stonewalled. Apparently I wasn’t in the right region. I was pretty confused and very frustrated. I hadn’t moved. If I was able to watch the first period from my couch, why not the rest. TSN was carrying the game and likely had the regional rights for the game but that didn’t explain how I was able to watch the first. I took to Twitter to whine again. I got a handful of people replying, most to tell me the game was on TSN, not helpful when I don’t get TSN. This time I took things a step further and emailed the address given on the screen for assistance and/or an explanation. I didn’t get any reply on Twitter or email (not even several days later) so I had no choice but to watch more Superstore. I’m not sure I even like this show. I have no clue what happened while I was watching, I was all consumed by my rage, frustration and feeling of helplessness. I can only imagine that if I didn’t leave the feed to check the Habs I’d have been able to watch it all. The Leafs lit it up, crushing the Canucks and Spezza got a hattrick. I tried to go to sleep but with that much vitreole boiling in my veins I wasn’t able to get to sleep. In fact, it was after midnight when finally I got a reprieve. What a strange evening.

Wonderous Wednesday

Slept deep into the morning. Work at 8:30, directly from bed. No camera day. Attended breakout sessions and participated in some discussions. Side call to help a colleague shore up his stuff. He’s in a different schedule with a broken leg and in 14 day quarantine. Lunch was late and consisted of chicken and rice soup and a meatball and mozzarella bistro crustini. And water, so much water. Was feeling the lack from the morning. Afternoon zipped by. Went after some customers for information. Ahead of 2020 schedule but need to be with how I project things to go. Got into some file cleanup and turnover towards the end of the days. It was half five when I switched computers. Did three days of MSC challenges before rising. Dinner was three pieces of bacon and another crustini around seven. I watched Superstore until shortly after nine. Bed followed but sleep made me work for it. Was half ten by the time I faded away feeling pretty good. I didn’t get photo for today so will share the one that Mother sent us. Dog gets hives from something, we don’t know what, usually disipates in a couple hours, like it did here.

Photo courtesy of Mother

Groundhog Day Meal

It has been a couple month now since I got a 5kg box of bacon and I’ve been patiently waiting for the right moment to unleash it. I woke up fairly early and got cleaned up. Without any sausage rounds to make my usual samidges and noticing two week old bagels I knew it was the right moment. I had been lazy with the bacon mostly, it was in a huge sack and I didn’t want to break it down into reasonable portions so it stayed dormant. I had moved the massive pile into the fridge a couple days back to let it thaw enough to be handled and today it was handled, handled real good. It cooked up nicely and was followed in the pan by two scrambled eggs. I went back to the well and found some Kraft singles in the deli drawer and that topped the innards of the bagels. It was just this side of too much. The workday started at eight with some email clean up, I seem to get a handful through the night regularly now. It was day two of AgTech and that consisted of four modular sessions that consumed most of my work day. The first two sessions ate the entire morning and led me right up into lunch.

Lunch today stayed on the same theme as breakfast. The pan was sitting right there in the drying rack so it made sense to me. I cooked up four more slices and combined these with my last slices of smoked gouda on top of a bed of spinach with a squeeze of yellow mustard. Not quite a BLT but it made for a nice quick, light lunch. Something green and appropriate portion size, this is a new move.

After lunch I joined the next two modules. After those were the awards and banquet portion of the program but I didn’t join. Instead I had a very constructive and positive call with a customer. We got a bunch of stuff figured out and ended up on the same page. It was uplifting and rejuvenating. That took me right up to the end of the day. I sauntered down to the kitchen to dream up supper. Before settling on an idea I instinctively started cooking bacon. I crammed five slices in the pan this time. It wasn’t for dinner, I was just thinking I’d cook off a couple pan fulls and have some bacon on hand for quick meals. I decided that I would cook a bag of fries with the same idea, have something ready for a quick side to a meal. The Chef called and we got to chatting. As we chatted I inadvertedly dumped all the cooked fries in a bowl and topped with shredded cheese, salsa, and a crumbled strip of bacon. I meant to portion out half for later. Mistakes were made, I ate it all.

I felt terrible. So terrible that I felt obligated to go for a walk, for my own well being. I even made it past the mail this time. When I got back from my walk and fetching the mail I noticed that the house was very smokey. I guess that is what you get when you cook bacon three times in one day. I hope it doesn’t poison me somehow. It was probably less lethal than having bacon at three consecutive meals. I put my mail away and thought I’d read my book. Instead I found myself downstairs watching Netflix. Tonight was a few episodes of Superstore. I don’t even really like it. But I’m too scared to go back to Outlander. I feel obligated to finish one or both before moving on, I’m a completionist sometimes. Towards bedtime I wandered upstairs and tried to watch some YouTube videos but fell asleep at a decent hour.

Full On Monday

New week, new month but mostly everything remains the same. The schedule was full for this one to be sure. To exacerbate things I slept in a bit. Breakfast was normal. I did dress up a touch, including one of my newly branded golf shirts. Because it was new I took it off to eat breakfast, somehow that made me feel like a criminal to eat breakfast in just an undershirt. First meeting flew by and ended early. That lead to extra time that I used to call into an option Ask Me Anything with leadership. I asked them nothing and also learned nothing. From there it was into AgTech, an internal conference normally held in STL at great expense and ceremony. Virtual now. But they did send out some snacks for people to enjoy. It was even gift wrapped!

I enjoyed the general session into lunch, where I moved to my beleaguered iPad while I ate. I had to hop off to attend another meeting in the afternoon where a group of us met with a NA contact for an hour then had our regular meeting for ninety minutes behind that. The finish off I had a regular meeting with my boss. We ran long, almost until five. Then I got a call from a co-worker I work close with and we chatted until six. Long day. Because it was late I didn’t want to have a heavy meal and ruin my pending sleep further. I elected to have a Stouffers Bistro panini, the usual kind. The evening was pretty tame. I watched my YouTube videos for a bit and listened to some podcasts. Very low energy leading to an early bedtime.

Double Birthdays

Got the real sleep into me this time. Solid doze from head hitting the pillow until half six. Really nice change from the debacle on Friday night. I did lounge a bit in bed before scrambling downstairs to the kitchen. The image I had of my breakfast was to make an omelette with monterey jack cheese and spinach. The non-non-stick condition of my key frying pan prevented that from happening so it turned into a chorizo, spinach, scrambled egg and monterey jack wrap. The name rolls right off the tongue. Despite overcooking the eggs it was still very, very good. A nice start to the day that didn’t weigh me down. And it would appear that since I needed to buy that spinach for the family feast over a week ago, I’m eating more greens. Trending in the right direction.

After eating and cleaning up I jaunted upstairs to take care of the rest of my MSC daily challenges. I’ve mentioned them many times because they are a bit of a daily thing for me, even though I often will accumulate a few days to work through. I figured I’d give a bit better of an idea of what I’m talking about. Here is what a perfect month looks like. I’ve had perfect months since October 2019. I completely cleared all of 2020 and I’m off to a good start in 2021 now too. So what is it? Well you are given a challenge each day for five different games. It is always the same games but the skill level varies between Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert. I sort of dread Expert most of the time, even though it’s becoming less of an issue. Within each skill level there are also different types of puzzles. Those can be to reach a certain score or clear a number of stacks or a specific card. The variety of the puzzles definitely keep it interesting. Generally it takes me between fifteen and twenty minutes to clear the five unless I get stuck on a Hard or Expert challenge, which does happen. It’s a fun little exercise for my brain to work through and the completionist in me keeps me coming back to complete the month.

When I was done my MSC challenges and had updated some Musings I moved on to the next task of doing a load of laundry. I got some new shirts last week with our team’s new logo on it. I’ve heard some harsh reviews on it from internal folks so I’ll be selective in wearing the shirts now, more-so than I would have been otherwise. I don’t love the way they put the logo on, it’s just pressed on, doesn’t feel right on a very expensive shirt. I’m still waiting for the hat, hopefully they look good because I got some input on those. The other task I wanted to wait until after eleven to tackle was the birthday call home to the Big T. He’s got quite a little birthday party setup, Mother is making him turkey dinner with cake. Just the two of them this year because of the pandemic but he was in good spirits when he answered the phone. He was working on a presentation to give to some University kids, I hope he does well at it. The other birthday on this day is STL sister’s husband. I don’t know the protocol as well for him so I sent a text with some specific instructions. Reports are that he got some time to do some things he enjoys during the day coupled with a meal out of their apartment so it sounded like a decently exciting day down there as well. Pretty cool that they have a joint birthday, of all the days of the year. With the calls made and the laundry changed over it was time to tackle something that was a week in the making.

As it turned out my dread and delay in doing this task was well founded. Hanging a whiteboard sounds like a simple task. I have all the tools to do it properly and the time. But I did find ways to mess it up. I marked the walls extensively and centered it on the section of wall that suited it best. I marked the spots for holes very carefully. Tape measures and levels were used extensively. Not even close to level initially. So I made a second hole and destroyed a plastic anchor in the process but got the top mounts in and it was level. Then it was on to the bottom mounts. I’m not sure what abyss I hit when drilling the pilot hole for the anchor but when I put it in it just shot right into the wall. So the same bit that was perfect for the other four holes I made somehow opened a chasm into another dimension that eats plastic anchors. I was confused at why there were six for four holes, now I know. Next, I realized that to drill the holes to secure it underneath would mean going through the shelf and the frame. This was not addressed in the instructions, which favour the horizontal layout. So after some improvisation I got it to go. In the process of securing the bottom I somehow loosened the top, it’s still secure and level but not as solid as I was hoping. The moral of the story is that it took way longer than it should have and I’m glad I got the kinks out hanging the garage one before I tackle the one in the kitchen. Speaking of the kitchen, I went there next and had some fries with cheese and too much hot sauce. I got my clothes folded and stowed and then decided I could have a nap. I listened to my audiobook and I think caught a quick twenty minutes of partial nap. No drool so it wasn’t a great one but decent rest. I woke up and cleaned the main floor toilet and sink up out of the blue. Eventually I found my way back to the kitchen to make some dinner. I had a package of ground pork that was starting to look grey and pull the plastic covering down to the meat. That needed to be cooked. So I fried it up with a lot of taco seasoning. I went back to the monterey jack cheese and spinach base layer of a wrap and put a few spoonfuls of the meat in there. I also added a dollop of sriracha ranch dipping sauce across the spinach. It was a tasty treat and left me with most of the ground meat in reserve for my next adventure. I took down a can of Sprite with the meal as well.

With nothing pressing to tackle I went downstairs after eating and fired up NHL20. I’m not sure why but I felt I needed to make some changes to my team and finish the off-season. The next thing I knew I’d made a some signings and trades and had picked up a sixth first round pick and promoted a minor league guy up to the big club. I’m still waiting on my draft players to finish junior and join my AHL team, maybe I’m missing a step in forcing that to happen but I’ve got three or four players that need to be in that lineup. I also signed some late 20’s veterans to fill out the roster. I think both teams would win their respective titles again with ease. I’m supposed to move on to NHL21 but I’m not sure what I’m going to do now. Maybe I’ll simulate the whole year? I’m not sure I’m capable of that without jumping in to make sure my guys get big numbers. I had the thought that I’d play until my guy retires, I made him my actual age like an idiot so he’s well into his thirties. Who knows? After that I went back upstairs and finished my second pass of Warbreaker, did some background reading about the characters and then watched a bit of YouTube before going to sleep. A nice relaxing Sunday, mostly.

Glacial Start

I wanted to be able to add something about a torrid finish to the title but as you’ll see in this short one, it won’t be the case. I came alive somewhere between eight and nine. I dozed in and out for most of the hour so I can’t tell you specifically that I got up. I did use the bathroom a couple times but otherwise I didn’t really get up per se. I watched YouTube in my bed, not even sure what. I was a daze. I think it was the terrible night that wrecked my morning. I didn’t even bother setting any goals today. Around half noon I showered, it sort of knocked me down a peg and I had to lie down. I’m not sure what was the matter but decided that I need to get some water into me and have some food. I wandered down to the kitchen and spent a long time gazing into the fridge. I decided at once that I’d use the last two bacon and cheddar sausages as the focal point of the dish but I wasn’t certain on what I’d do with them. I have been buying more fancy cheese these past months after getting berated by Sassy Girl for my love of Kraft Singles. I had a package of smoked gouda slices and one of monterey jack. I picked the smoked gouda and rather than using a wrap, which felt excessive for an intact sausage (since I didn’t feel like cutting these up), I opted for a type of bun. In this case, it was a pizze bun. I threw some spinach in there because I need to use it up and also eat more greens and voila. It was great, very flavourful. I should apologize for the cross section photo, but I won’t. I feel it is important to show how it sort of melted together.

I didn’t feel ghastly full afterwards but I was still lacking any kind of drive for the day. I’m not sure what happened to me. Instead I slinked down to my basement lair and turned on the tube. By this time it was mid-afternoon and after watching several clips of it on YouTube I decided to watch Gladiator. It was as good as I remember. I always get a surge of adrenaline when he reveals his name to the emperor. I got a little emotional at the end also when the figuines of his wife and child are buried. The movie ended around dinner time so I warmed up a Stouffer’s Bistro panini, mozzarella and meatball. I also pocketed three granola bars and along with two full pints of water that was my meager dinner. Later I’d graze on two cookies and two more pints of water. I watched Superstore until the Leafs came on. That game was like it was on fast forward. So fast paced! In the end it was disappointing but well fought and worth a point. I made my way upstairs and didn’t have any issue passing out shortly after ten.

Mailed In Friday

I woke up early, much too early. No shower today, made the start even earlier. Breakfast samidges for breakfast. While enjoying the beautiful shy and ghoshing I was messaging with Theodore Complete and showed him my morning glory plant. He is interested in trying some and we talked about mailing some seed. But without stamps and in a full lockdown I was a loss. He shared that I could have some shipped to me so I used my extra morning time to set up a Canada Post account and ordered stamps. Using a stamp to ship them was not an option, only costly expedited shipments. Naturally.

The earliness continued with work’s start time. I didn’t have anything incredibily pressing coming at me this morning, I’ve sent out my order forms and I’m waiting for those numbers to come back in before I get busy with them. So I started knocking off little things that were deemed lower priority previously. It made the morning drag out at a slow pace for some reason. I’m guessing the low priority was in lockstep with a low desire to do these things and that’s why time slowed down. Like Cheese’s theory of time slowing during exercise. Imagine if we could adjust our perception of time by selecting tasks. Although it would be a cheerier thought if it were in reverse where the enjoyable things in life passed the slowest, what would the world be like then? All the more reason for people to try to “be present” when they know something is enjoyable. I think that is more about slowing things down and trying to enjoy life than anything else. What do you think? Regardless of all that stuff the morning slowly trudged on and when lunch arrived I found myself not overly hungry and very much not inspired. I keep something for these moments, that being Mr Noodle. I boiled up two packs, one regular and one spicy and tucked in to my noodle feast. I found a part bag of dill pickle rice cake mini’s in the cupboard and ate those too. I think that maxxed out my daily sodium intake by a factor of seven.

I checked the rewards catalogue to see if a fish finder had resurfaced but it hasn’t yet. I think I will be patient on that one. The afternoon zipped by in contrast to the morning and by four I decided that I’d had enough for the day. One of the things I tackled was to start a new page in my Excel file that tracks my hours and non-existent overtime. I’ve been using the same file since I started fulltime in 2010 and having never been paid overtime, I have a lot of it “banked”, a few thousand hours or so. I just do it for fun and to make sure I’m putting in hours I feel are appropriate. Even with a shorter day on Friday I was at 42h for the week. I did some reading before ordering a pizza from Pizza Pizza. It was again disappointing. I am not sure I’ll know what good pizza is when I have it. I’ve been only eating that garbage and cardboard pizzas from Walmart. That’s the name my parents use for oven pizza and I’m adopting it. I ate most of the pizza and the bites that came with it. I was full and it was stupid. I definitely regret my decision. Speaking of bad choices, I started watching the show Outlander on Netflix since I’d read the books. It was well done and followed the books closely so what happened shouldn’t have been a shock but it turned into a pretty aggressive soft core porn very quickly. I enjoyed the historical aspect up until that point but that was a bit much. It made Game of Thrones look like a children’s cartoon. I’m not sure I’ll carry on, especially since I know what happens. That was all I did for the evening. I went to bed around ten. I didn’t go to sleep though. The pizza worked against me and I couldn’t get to sleep until well after midnight. I’m not even sure of the time myself. Definitely regret my decision, yet I will do it again, no question.

Enjoyable Thursday

I came to naturally and did my French lessons before emerging from my chambers. I was cleaned and spruced up this morning. I had an interesting first meeting of the day. After crushing some yum I settled into the helm. I joined a meeting put on by a customer and as it happened both the Big T and Jacko joined this meeting. It was kind of neat, probably the first time we’ve all been to the same meeting. We learned about root rots and soil borne pests for over an hour. Neither the T nor myself deigned to start our video but Jacko did, I capture a quick picture of him on camera. Towards the end of the meeting they addressed the questions left in the chat and it turns out the Big T had asked a question about nematode movement in soil, it was addressed smartly. But, as it turns out, the Big T likely didn’t hear the answer because he’d bailed to go to another call. That means he also meant that he missed when the sponsors were recognized and I was mentioned by name. Classic, no idea if Jacko was still on by that time.

After letting the Big T know what he missed I carried on with my own work. I got a few things cleaned up and caught up and got my inbox/to-do list down to eight items. Things were going great for the day, so I wondered what was coming to ruin it. I managed to do my HR goals for the year, a process I don’t relish at all. I don’t love trying to assess myself. I generally sandbag and end up being quite modest. I’m not built to be cocky, it’s not in my nature. I got all those posted up and then a colleague (former close teammate) reached for help on VLOOKUP. Having not yet learned that magic myself we decided to try and struggle through it. It has been something I should have learned a few years but never took the time. Today I took the time. I read a few things online, I tried a few things myself and by the end I think I have a very tenuous grasp on how to use it. My biggest issue was trying to learn how to have the one look up populate multiple columns rather than customizing several for each new column. I really enjoyed solving that puzzle and enjoyed the rich scent of today’s candle. Also, I like my little Nutcracker man. His devious look cracks me up. I bought that when I went on a school trip to see the Nutcracker ballet in public school. I’m not sure exactly which girl I sat with on the bus ride but I do recall it was pleasant.

Once I had an idea of how to tackle the issue I called my colleague back and we figured it out, we pulled in a third we knew had experience with the function and liked solving problems. I stayed on the line after to discuss other items with that third person and after that it was only a short haul until quitting time. I fooled in about a half hour before deciding I should make a meal and then get the driveway done. The two older neighbours on either side of me were simultaneously doing their drives so I felt a bit guilted into it. Dinner was first though, I didn’t want all three of us to be out there at once, we’d have to talk or something. So I opened the fridge and saw a package of bacon and cheddar butcher style sausages. This would be the centrepiece of the meal. I had the leftover mushrooms I fried on Sunday and loads of spinach from the family feast. I cooked the sausage, warmed up the fungus while I sprinkled some nacho blend cheese on a wrap and layered in the spinach. It says it is prewashed so I’m going to trust them this time. I sprinkled on the last of my Ring of Fire hot sauce and then added the warm elements. It was more delicious than you’re imagining. A flavourful treat. I used approximately one sausage for each and a small handful of the mushrooms. After eating I didn’t feel excessively full, which has become rare for me. But still I decided to go clean my driveway out.

It’s true that the Leafs are on the schedule tonight but not until bedtime so instead I fired up NHL20. I had one game left to win to secure the Calder Cup and did that. Usually I let the AHL team handle their business but for some reason I decided to intervene and guide them to victory. Then I switched back to the main club and won their last two games required to secure the top prize in sports. I navigated the draft right after and made my five first round selections (23, 24, 25, 29, 32) and then did some arean improvements. My contract as GM was up and I had offers. First time I’ve ever got to this point in the game. The Leafs had the most money, budget, term, etc. on the table so it was an easy choice. I did have over ten offers though, which is nice. I started into the free agent phase with a focus on getting a few veterans for the AHL team to mix with all the young talent I’ve got coming. I’ve been getting several first round picks every year and have a glut of young talent coming in. It’s sad to let it go but I’ll probably switch over to NHL21 now to be able to play with my buddies. For interest sake, you can see my own player and the infamous Irmen in the top right of the picture below. There wasn’t much done after this, I pretty much went to bed early, asleep before ten.

Bump the Hump

Pretty natural wake up for a weekday despite the later night. But motivation was low from an apparent lack of sleep. Wasn’t feeling breakfast but talked myself into slipping a couple cheese slices with a sausage round into some cheese bagels. When I finished wolfing it down it felt like I’d swallowed a brick. I didn’t feel great about it. To combat that I upped my morning water intake. For the second straight day I’d need more than one thermos full.

Work started slow. I put on the replay of our North American townhall and read through the whole first season of Tent-Venture since season two has begun. Very interesting saga that yielded better than expected. I should push Theodore Complete to pull together costs again and show that against yield to track break even again. He’s basically ignored that part once we got past the bucket. Once the townhall ended things seemed to ramp up. Email started burbling to life then became a torrent for a time. By the time noon arrived I was looking for a break, but no, someone scheduled a meeting over the noon hour. Not cool. But I knew that going in, that’s why I forced myself to make a breakfast. I had another salad kit and pizza buns for lunch today. This time nothing was expired. It was very good and filling. It really seemed to light a fire under me and I tackled my to-do list. I had a quarterly meeting from half two until six and in the spirit of multitasking I worked away diligently on my other screen while still taking some notes and listening. By the end of the day I felt like I’ve about caught up with the most pressing things for the first time since early November. To celebrate I made a whole mess of chicken bites, starting a new bag, the last good one. Not the last, but the last of my favourite kind. With a very full gut I put on a coat and shoes and hiked up to the mail. I was planning to keep going but I had a parcel and a lot more mail than expected. Maybe mail on the way home next time. I got back and did my MSC challenges. I also worked on the site a bit before catching up on Musings. I had a text chat with a couple of work contacts. One invested heavy into one of the Reddit stocks being pushed up. It will interesting to see how he does. That lead me into bedtime.