Messed up Saturday

I woke up shortly after four in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I haven’t been in this situation for a long time. I might have dozed off for a few minutes between half five and half six but it wasn’t good enough. I had a wicked headache and felt terrible all over. I didn’t have the capacity to make breakfast. I swallowed some Tylenol Extra Strength and drank a serious amount of water and found my way to the basement. I put on the Avengers: End Game movie. I’ve been meaning to see it for a second time since I watched it when it came out. For “breakfast” I ate my tube of Baconator flavoured pringles and a small handful of Doritos 3D washed back with a lot of water while I watched the film. I could mostly taste the ketchup and mayo but got hits of burger grease and cheese in the mix too. It was an interesting experience for sure. I definitely shouldn’t have eaten the entire tube at once, that was my mistake. Not sure I’d buy them again because of that.

The movie was long but enjoyable. I’m not sure what it says about my emotional state but I was started crying when the Avengers assembled and then off and on again through the last part of the movie. It put me in a completely different head space, which I needed. I wrote a reply to the email from the previous night and took two more Tylenol. I’m not sure if it was the combination or sheer exhaustion but I fell asleep again at quarter to one and slept until quarter to four, a three hour nap. I felt a lot more normal after that. I was also feeling a bit peckish. I played HomeScapes until I couldn’t anymore, I don’t spend money in it anymore, rather let time elapse for me to get the ability to play again. I decided to make some tots. Easy and efficient. It was then that I discovered my greivous error. I’d purchased regular tots rather than cheesy tots. A critical mistake. To address this folly I made a plan to dress them up. I sprinkled on some sriracha powder after the last turning over. When they came out of the air fryer they were plied with tex mex cheese in layers. This addressed the cheesy requirement for my tots and the powder added some kick. Less than I’m used to but overall it was a nice flavour to go with my tot pile. Let’s call that lunch.

To amuse myself for the small amount of afternoon that remained I watched Honest Thief on Netflix. It was a good mindless action movie with Liam Neeson. I noticed while I was in there that Nate Bargatze has a new special on Netflix. I sunk my teeth into that which caused me to start up the Leaf game part way into the first. The game seemed to be pretty even, a see-saw battle. I mixed myself a Crown and Fever Tree cocktail during the intermission since the boys were celebrating some national whisk(e)y day. I didn’t want to be left out of it. I was thinking to make another after the second but the Leafs went down by two goals heading into the third so I powered it down instead. My supper was just the one drink. I felt I needed to get to bed early. It was midnight by the time sleep finally took me down. Things are not well.

Frenetic Friday

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

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

STL sister didn’t have any garnish

Parents used chicken thighs and had rice and slaw

Sudbury sister had most complete version

I was lacking scallions

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

Continuous Thursday

Again my day started with no breakfast. I chose to start work early instead, firing up my command center at half seven. I had some time before the first meeting and used it efficiently. I got caught up with customers and started pushing things forward where I could, there was some promising news in one area but deathly silence from the one I want to know more about. First meeting was a small group and I found I had more of a voice than normal. I made some calls and got caught up on some things ahead of lunch. Lunch was pretty quick. I combined two packs of Our Finest pad thai in a bowl. They have a new film on the package now, more user friendly.

Then I sat in on a couple of calls after lunch and again asserted myself on an issue. It was small and unnoticeable but made me realize I’m being more direct today. Strange for me lately, I must be getting more comfortable in my role, or giving less of a hoot about what people think, or both. Next meeting I kept it going and had a good exchange of ideas. And I spoke up in the next one to push back on some ideas being tossed about. I did a rambly speech to tell a group they can’t do what they were planning and why. The day finished in a customer meeting after that I found myself being direct again, sharing some unfavourable info. It was a long day at the helm, ending after six. For dinner I was supposed to make burger wraps. I wanted to start using up the fancy burger seasoning I got, times two, at Christmas. I wasn’t feeling it as I trudged downstairs but I’d left the meat in the sink at lunch, forgetting about it, so I was forced to make a move. I mixed a tablespoon of seasoning into my not quite a pound of extra lean ground pork and shaped it into wrap friendly shapes. I added some monterey jack cheese towards the end and steamed it to melt it. I made one with garlic aioli and the others with chipotle mayo spread. They all had baby spinach too. Very tasty.

After dinner I went to see if the Leafs were on. They were, but not on a station I get. I started to watch Falcon and Winter Soldier instead but realized I was more interested in Promising Young Woman. I rented it. It was the best movie I’ve seen in a really long time. No spoilers but I really enjoyed it. Watching it alone in the quiet basement may have helped, I suggest one sitting, not broken up. After that I watched a YouTube show to cleanse the palete and went to bed early.

Teenage Wednesday

Today was a bad day. As I mentioned, I was planning to take the day off. There was a call that I forgot about as it wasn’t in my calendar, just in my email. Without showering or eating I jumped on my work computer at half eight to join the call, partially to be seen, partially because there were a couple topics I needed to know more about. Close on the heels of that call was our country engagement survey results call. The leadership reviewed the results and introduced their next plan to try and improve engagement, which is the new HR word for morale. Based on the Q&A, they’ve got work to do for some groups. It was an interesting call and some of what was discussed didn’t resonate with me. I’ll leave it there, cause frankly, it’s probably none of your business. When the dust settled it was nearly one. I was tired, frustrated, and in a bad place mentally. I switched computers and did my MSC challenges to some upbeat music. That didn’t really help me much so I started playing HomeScapes again. This is the game that has been problematic for me, that one that I accidentally racked up $50 of in-app purchases over a weekend.

I realized as I got up to two that I had eaten or drank anything all day. I ordered a meal from Pizza Pizza. Four pop, large pizza with ham, pineapple and bacon crumble, and ten chicken bites. I gorged. Then played more of that game while recovering. I was also listening to my current audiobook while playing. I didn’t know when it was recommended to me that it was D&D related, specifically to the campaign we’re in now. I also found out it isn’t a trilogy but rather 9 trilogies! Don’t think I’ll rip through all of those, at least not in a row. After fooling around for most of the afternoon I finished off the pizza and then trudged around in pain trying to walk it off. Next I cleaned up some piled up YouTube videos and then I spent some time getting into the right headspace for our D&D session. That took on the entire evening and it was awesome!

Disappointing Tuesday

Tuesday was a strange day. I was up a bit earlier and was feeling the lack of sleep going into the day. I missed breakfast and got right into work instead after a hot shower. I had a lot of short meetings and some calls lined up for the day. The biggest of which was at the end of the day. I had some time to work first thing in the morning and powered through a few things before preparing for my upcoming meetings. It was busy but didn’t feel like I was getting ahead of things, that seems to be the way of it now. I had a meeting over lunch but took a break afterwards to consume some soup. It was a meagre feeling lunch but I was more focused on hydrating than eating. I wanted to replenish my reserves after a dry weekend. I had fairly long call after lunch to talk about seed supply with my US colleagues. I think next time we’re going to be getting into more of my order than the later stuff and I’m ready for that. The last item scheduled was a critical meeting to learn about what was holding up a critical process. The news wasn’t good. It was disappointing. We suggested some ideas and the team tried to come up with a way around the difficulty. I pulled in other people afterwards. No aspect of overly positive. There is a meeting happening tomorrow morning and the key contacts are slated to check in with me right after. I am getting really frustrated by my fate being controlled by others or by systems that I have no access to. It makes me feel both angry and helpless. And also guilty and anxious because I can’t give the customer a good answer to their question because I don’t know. I’m going to have to hold some feet to flames this week to get this done. I finished at half five after another call to keep a teammate informed and then I fired up dinner. Tonight it consisted of chili and rice. I described this meal last week so I won’t take the time here. After eating I fooled in some time with a game on the Mini while ripping through podcasts before finishing my evening watching some YouTube. Some people watch trash on cable, I do it online. I was in bed and managed to get to sleep before eleven, a good start to restfulness. I booked tomorrow off and it’s one of the days I plan to actually take.

Manic Monday

I slept deeply and filled with dreams. I also slept late. I still had time for breakfast but it was going to be tight and as it turned out it was weird. The eggs didn’t behave like I expected. They were from the same dozen as previous efforts. I captured a photo to save myself writing a thousand words about it. See how they sheet out the sides? They tasted great and were otherwise fine, not sure what happened.

I forgot to factor in the time to do the dishes so I was at work between eight and half eight. The day was a classic Monday. I’m not sure if that explains it properly but that’s how it felt, use your own interpretation. Everything started normal, prepping for various meetings. Answering customer concerns. Normal stuff. First meeting happened and it was pleasant, even productive if I dare say. Next one was going to be small and short. It started a couple minutes early and only lasted eight minutes total. That’s either really good or really bad normally. This was mixed, some hope for a stuck process to get unstuck. After a call with a colleague it was lunch time. The lunch consisted of Campbell’s Vegetable soup and a Stouffer Bistro Crustini, Mozzarella and Meatball Panini. It was good, not fancy at all. I prepared, ate and cleaned it up in short order to ensure that I was prepared for the afternoon. First up was a team meeting that was followed up by a big beast of a meeting. The day was rounded out by returning a couple calls and wrapping up a lingering issue. It was nearly six when I powered down and decided to dial the Big T. I had called him last week with a question and he never called me back. He was in a tough mood as it turned out. He’d made a mistake with some inventory at the home farm and it resulted in a bit of a mess to sort out. I saw the solution and shared what I’d do. I think he was started down that path already but was pretty bummed and shaken by it. I shared with him that I put out bigger fires than that a few times a week and that it would work out. I’m not sure he heard me. While we were chatting I started dinner. It consisted of cardboard pizza, Great Value Four Meat, that I added extra cheese and Cholula to, and a small amount of McCain’s Tater Chips that were left over from the weekend. The evening was spent watching YouTube and setting my lineup for fantasy hockey. It was a short evening with the late dinner and an early bedtime. I need to try and force things back to an appropriate sleep schedule.

Many Sunday Options

I would have appreciated sleeping in but instead I was up close to seven, weaving in and out of sleep until closer to eight. At that time I started up the small playlist of podcasts explaining what non-fungible tokens are. I was impressed at my ability to grasp the main swaths of the concept with no real background knowledge of blockchain and tenuous grasp on cryptocurrency in general. I have thoughts on this new rage but I’ll save them for now. Instead I’ll say that I found myself in the shower at some point and then getting dressed to tackle the day. I knew in my heart that I was going to have a breakfast experiment today. I needed to put up a better effort than what I made yesterday. A somewhat tasty mess. I had higher hopes for today. Firstly, I put the sausage in first with a spritz of olive oil spray. That didn’t help much. I knew that I could ‘deglaze” with the egg. I scrambled three eggs up with some milk, salt, and pepper. The pan must have been too hot, despite me turning it way down. I’ve been using my copper bottom, stainless pan from PC since the stir fry and it’s a different beast than non-stick. I got everything nicely cooked and wrapped it up with some cheese and toasted both sides in the pan. Made for a pretty sad looking breakfast.

But on the side, I preheated the oven to 375F and pulled out a tube of Pilsbury Grands. I put two tablespoons of my egg filling onto the wide end and started rolling them up, being careful to tuck in the sides of the wide end as I went to close in the filling. I baked it all for seventeen minutes. I forgot to add cheese, which was a factor. I will say that flavour wise, this is much closer to what STL Kolache is doing. But from a texture standpoint I took a step away. These were much flakier. They were a delight but not the bullseye. From an effort standpoint these can’t be beat for ease. I think I will do this again, with cheese, and experiment more. I also got a tube of the regular sized Pilsbury Crescents to play with at some point this week.

I realized at some point while eating these that they are definitly filling the hole left by pizza pockets in my life. The Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini was doing it but this is combining my love of pizza pockets with my love of breakfast food. I believe that is why I am continuing to pursue this so regularly. I’m keep to see what I can do with the regular sized ones. These were big, I saved two for later, hoping I can reheat in the air fryer.

After the painful cleanup process I nipped upstairs to work on my MSC challenges that I’ve fallen behind on. I also did some work on the website. I was able to get both things up to date, many challenges were completed and it allowed me to take down my podcast queue and clear it right up. I found some more interesting ones from Vance Crowe to tide me over. I went into the yard to start cleaning up. I aired out the main floor while I was at it. Laundry kept me busy until lunch at two. I air fried some chicken strips and got some green beans cooked. I added some tater chips to fill out the plate. Slowly adding appropriate things to my plate.

After lunch my plan was to head out to rake the lawn. I even had my coat on. But while changing the Landry over, I stubbed my right big toe really hard and lost all interest. There was swearing. I folded the finished laundry then elevated my sore toe. At this point I also fired up FS19. I used my new truck and trailer to haul a couple loads to sell. I’m definitely in a different scenario now with the returns! Check out how much I’ve grown my empire from the two tiny fields I started with. Which I’ve now combined into one medium field.

After a few hours of bringing in the harvest I stopped to eat up some of the leftovers from the day. Some of the breakfast and the lunch combined to become the dinner. I ate around six and started preparing for a session of Dungeons and Dragons with the boys. It was rife with connectivity issues and one guy getting dragged away so it got cut short. Neighbours are testing the power of their bass so I guess I get to sleep in the freshly laundered guest room. What a day!

Flaturday

Strange to have two days off but a work day in between. Stranger still to have had some human interaction this week. I’m starting to get that feeling like something is building and the end of it is near. I can’t tell if it is the pending end of winter, or the vaccines bringing down the virus, or seeing the potential end of the seed order phase of the year at work. I’m starting to feel like a high school kid who can see the end of the semester and just has exams to get through and then you’re free for the summer. I think the summer of 2021 could bring that back to many people for the reasons I said, mostly the first two. Either way, I’m getting an air of anticipation for whatever reason and I don’t abjectly hate it. On to the daily update. I didn’t get up immediately. My sleep wasn’t marvelous and I didn’t have anything driving me out of bed so I there I lay. I watched way too many 8 out of 10 cats does countdown clips. Way too many entirely. When I did spring forth [wink] I threw three eggs in a buttered pan and made a mess before following it up with a chorizo sausage out of it’s skin. Fantastic mess. I rolled that up in a wrap with some smoked gouda and called it a meal. It was tasty and didn’t break my guts. Next was a mission I’ve been avoiding. I got caught up on Musings. I’ve been drafting bullets and photos daily but skipped the write up and post steps. I had a week’s worth to tackle and get them all up. I started that before noon and it was nearly two before I was done. I then trimmed my beard. Another mess to clean up. Both the beard and also the sink when I was done. I used the 12mm guard to bring it down a couple of notches. If my beard every tried being thicker I could go tighter but this is the hand I was dealt and I’m going to play it. I did a deep clean to the clippers and then tried to read my new book. The Never Army. I got through the prologue and read about six words of chapter one and realized I have no clue what happened in the middle book of this trilogy. I should probably go back and read both the first two books but I’ll definitely have to review the second. I tried to find a summary online but this author is lesser known and as such nothing exists. Just a general teaser summary that was not helpful. So rather than start the second book I slipped down to the kitchen, feeling some heavier than normal thirst. I checked my meal board for success and saw that I did better this week on making the planned meals but poorly on the adventurous-ness of the those meals.

While I was in the kitchen and seeing it had been over five hours since my last meal I tossed a sack of cheesy tots into the air fryer and took down about 2/3 of the harvest from that effort. I used some sriracha ranch dipping sauce to provide some zest to them. I also drank three pints of water to quench that thirst. When I’d done the dishes up, I headed to the basement. I decided not to fire up FS19 and relinquish the remainder of my day to it but instead I finally watched the second season of the Mandalorian. I chugged it. I’ve been telling people that I did it in one sitting but I did get up to pee before episode six, probably from all that water I hammered. The fun part of it, for those that like to visualize, was that while I was absolutely bingeing this show I had the iPad Mini on the side of the couch with the Leafs on, just to check on them. They won in a well played 2-0 shutout courtesy of their recent returned backup goalie. He’s now 4-0 with two shutouts. I got the summit of mount Mando around ten thirty and trudged up to my bed. I was too jacked to sleep so I watched more clips on YouTube. It was around twenty to high noon when I faded to black. Not an ideal situation.

Full-on Friday

Woke up at half five and my brain started spinning with negative thoughts. It was all work related and annoying. I tried to distract the bastard with some podcasts but it was no use. I faded in and out for a bit and finally got up a little after seven. I got showered, dressed and filled my thermos to be at work for eight. No breakfast or walk. My guest was slumbering away still. I donned headphones to be a good host and had a long call to start the day. I replied to a few emails from customers with answers I wouldn’t want to get and some of my dread started to melt away. She woke up and after ten and decided to buy me a McBreakfast as a thank you. I was in favour for sure. I called a couple more customers and got rid of the dread. Turns out it was all for naught. We ate breakfast (bascially brunch) and topped it with the donuts. I’ve avoided the McDonuts until now. They were okay at best. I called one a bit woody tasting for my liking. I don’t usually buy donuts and this wouldn’t change that. She played her animal crossing until it was almost too late for her to go to the funeral. She departed and I got back to work in a big way. I got my inbox trimmed back down to ten or so after it exploded through the week. I had a candid catchup with a colleague to explain how important having some timelines for customers was and he will try to get me something better than “soon” and we talked through some other issues. Good thing we did because he had some very different information and if we hadn’t covered it there would have been trouble later. I then set about trying to hold somebody accountable for my corn questions but the individual pointedly ignored me. It won’t be so funny next week when I start pulling my levers and engaging upper leadership for support. I will not be ignored where my customers are concerned. Unacceptable move. I flitted around a few tasks and sent some requests for next week. It was five by the time I decided to hang things up for the day. I switched machines and threw on some YouTube. She stopped in to grab her bag and say goodbye and I started dinner. Tonight was scheduled to be stir fry. I decided it was going to empty the fridge stir fry so I grabbed everything that was potentially going to turn and chucked it into a pan.

I started with some likely rancid olive oil and then added in some sliced green and red peppers leftover from last weekend. Once those had softened some I fired into some already fried mushrooms. They had a lot of residual bacon fat left on them which was good. I sliced up a chicken breast with my super sharp knife and added it with a third of a container of spinach that was on the cusp. Then I added in two full jalapeno peppers that I sliced up, including seeds and ribs. Next the leftover ground pork with taco seasoning from Tuesday’s wrap hopped in, also coated in bacon fat. I stirred this up until the spinach was wilted and then added a few ounces of spicy tomato sauce just to use it up. It added some extra flavour, otherwise I added no spice, letting the original flavours of the elements meld and mix together.

I was very happy with the resultant meal. I dumped a splotch of sriracha on it for some reason, that turned out to be unnecessary. As I was tucking in, I got a call from BDP. He was shooting by on the 401 and joked that he was going to stop in. I had just enough for a small second portion but when he found out it was spicy for me he decided to keep on ripping down the road. I had a Molson alongside to emulate the Big T’s choice of beverage with his dinner. I ate the second portion and did up the dishes before descending. The Leafs were finally playing again, first time since Sunday and they had most of their injured players back. I was expecting the team to return to February form. They didn’t though. They are now 3-6 in March. Not great and their lead is slipping big time. My confidence in them winning is slipping along with it. I switched them to my phone and fired up FS19 which I played until ten thirty. In the last two days I’ve purchased two more fields, a fancy truck and trailer and reaped two crops. I’m getting to the point that the amount I get from harvest is substantial. I think the next upgrade will be to get a corn head and a planter before looking at more land. I’m still enjoying it but not feeling the pull as hard. It’s filling my boredom hours more than all my hours.

Nefarious Secret

Today was one of the days that I booked off and actually plan to take. I was on the fence about it until I woke up and realized that I needed to elevate my cleaning game. I got showered up and got into it. I started off by putting some laundry in and cleaning the basement powder room. I came upstairs and swept the main floor up. The kitchen and living room were fairly clean, at least the main aspects. I still ran a duster over most things on the main floor though. I ducked at around this point and got myself a late McBreakfast that I ate consipicously as all hell outside of the hair place. I proceeded in when I knew there wasn’t going to be a wait and instantly got my shaggy locks trimmed up for the first time since before leaving for Christmas. They were becoming problematic and I am was seeing numbers rise locally and feared we could be thrust into a more restrictive condition any day so wanted to strike the hot iron. With that done I returned to the Harbour just in time to change loads. Then I grabbed a magic eraser to clean up the banister going upstairs, something I’ve never done in 8 years. It was quite the transformation. I felt the eraser had more life so started to work on the myriad of scuff marks on the walls. I’ve never really looked I guess but holy moly is there a lot of them. I don’t know where they came from or how I have so many. I’m not often carrying anything but myself up the stairs so this is a mystery to me. Equally mysterious was how well the magic eraser worked. Mr Clean just added a layer of mystery to his already shady backstory. I decided to do this test on the small area on the left at the top of the stairs. What an amazing transformation. The picture does nothing to convey the clean look.

When the magic eraser had dissolved to nothing essentially I set about doing the vacuuming. The last major piece of the cleaning puzzle. This would man that all bathrooms and floors were serviced. I fired it up and she screamed. I do not know what the issue is but I know there is one. Everyone says belt immediately but I’m not convinced. This thing sounds like a train horn. I took a short video and shared it around, I’ve embedded it here too for no good reason.

I went pretty quickly through the whole house to get this done as fast as possible. It was around eleven when I started into this task so I assumed most people would be awake by that point. It was tough. Afterwards I emptied all the garbages and took the bag on the deck with the vacuum and tried to clean it up. There was a solid breeze going so I clapped out all the filters and started to check how I could open up the engine portion to see what was happening in there. I found a foam filter I’d never seen before. Oops. I cleaned it well and started the unit up, sounded much better. When I put the tray and filter back in, back to the train horn. So I guess I’ll have to just get a Dyson. That’s the only solution here. I actually dread vacuuming for the only reason that I hate unwinding and winding the cord up and managing it while I work. I think I’d get a cordless one. I’ll start the slow selection process and make a move in the future, I’ve got weeks of clean rugs ahead of me to decide. With trash out, the floors cleaned I’d gotten through the dire components of the project. I next took a little paint touchup product I got for the guest bedroom and used it on the now clean upstairs banister. I covered up a number of little nicks whose origin are a mystery still. While that was drying I got the laundry folded and stowed. Now I was onto the detail work. I dusted some blinds, fluffed pillows and got wild with Febreze. I did the blanket on the basement couch which was smelling a bit dingy these past weeks. I dusted quickly down there too, just a touchup from my efforts a couple weeks back. I cleaned up my office and dusted the upstairs rooms. The house was basically clean at this point, other than the rest of the walls and trim needing attention. To celebrate I had lunch, Cambell’s vegetable soup, the one I ate everyday in high school and the last two pizza buns. I cleaned up and admired my efforts, pretty strong day off. I had a call at half two that I wanted to be on so I brought my iPad downstairs and fired up FS19. I played into one addiction while listening to another. It was a good thing I did call in as I was recognized along with pretty much everyone else as demonstrating the company’s LIFE goals. The I stands for Integrity, I got two shout-outs for that. About the time the call wrapped up is about the time when my nefarious secret I hinted at yesterday came into being. I was having a house guest. My friend She had lost a friend earlier in the week and was planning to come down to send them off. She told me she was going to attend the visitation. It’s now done as a few people moving through at a time and greeting the family before conveying last wishes. She mentioned she was going to drive down and back in the same day and I offered that she could sleep here for the night, assuming she was virus free and was safe while here. She agreed and arrived late afternoon to quickly change and drop her things before heading to the visitation. I just kept on going on FS19. I wasn’t sure what was happening for supper or how long she’d be so I didn’t eat anything. She met up with some of her craft beer friends after apparently for one beer. It was close to nine when she returned and started to work on a short paper she had to complete before midnight. She hadn’t eaten either. It was too late to do anything about it at this point. I just kept on going on FS19. We sat apart and had some broken conversation. I wasn’t my normal self I was noticing. Some of the email traffic I should have ignored in the afternoon had planted a seed of dread in me and I could feel it blooming into waves of shame and anxiety. I won’t get into the detail but it was a serious distraction. I powered down at half ten and we retired to our rooms. I found out later she worked until after midnight then played her Animal Crossing until late into the night. I was asleep by eleven and slept like a corpse, which was a relief.

St Patrick's Day

Today is St Patrick’s Day. Long past are the day when you’d go out drinking and have fun with other people. Now it’s about quietly putting on some green and sharing the pictures with your friends and family and maybe having a couple of drinks on a video call later in the day. That’s more or less what it was for me this year. I think last year we were all still in shock over what was transpiring and sort of missed the holiday completely. I think I wore my shirt, the one I wear only on this day every year because of how ill fitting it is. The part above about sharing pictures is true, that happened. Here are the photos to prove it. I’m sharing these without the knowledge or consent of my family but they’ll be fine with it, or mildly annoyed. Remeber family, barely anyone outside of us looks at this, relax. The first pair are obviously my parents, then my STL sister and her husband followed by my Sudbury sister and her partner and then the Tugboat himself. All sporting the green.

There is a good deal of Irish blood in the mix of our ancestry so we wear the green and enjoy the pagentry of the day, not getting too swept up in. Just casual fun, heck Mother and my BIL didn’t even have green on initially until the rest of us mercilessly shamed them into it. It’s a fun community activity. After the photos and the shaming I had some breakfast and got about my day, it was a busy one. I had another half dozen meetings on the calendar to tackle and again most were of my doing. I’m trying to stay connected on items and for some of my major concerns I need to have meetings to check on things and try to have a bit of accountability as well as an opportunity for discourse. Most of these are scheduled for thirty minutes and last for fifteen or twenty. Hopefully blocking some extra time in the lives of others to either attend to the task at hand or catch up on something else before their next hour long time suck meeting that isn’t with me. The morning was a rocket ship that blasted by and stopped in for a late lunch. Today’s fare was pizza buns with Campbell’s Chunky Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. The soup supply is starting to dwindle already. After this filling repaste I decided to slip in some cleaning. My big project this week is to tackle some cleaning and get my house into some kind of shape. Maybe with spring looming I’m driven to this, or maybe for some other nefarious reason I’m not sharing yet. Either way, I cleaned all three toilets above ground and swept and mopped the bathroom floors. A nice start to the project. Meetings consumed most of the afternoon. I was late to jump into the work happy hour and only stayed on a few minutes before deciding that since it was half five I should go and get into some dinner. The problem was that I didn’t really want to make anything requiring effort. I hadn’t put anything on the board for today, not knowing my plans. I saw Eggos in the freezer and decided that was going to be it. I made a short stack of four but wasn’t satisfied so returned for two addtional ones. That was enough sugar to start my engine. By the time I was done eating and cleaning I didn’t have much extra time before the session of Dungeons and Dragons, my second full time in the adventure. I did some reading and studying before we started. I needed to learn more about my options and my abilities before starting again. I should have a notebook nearby when we play to keep track of things not tracked in the character sheet. Tonight I had a caramel drumstick and a ginger ale while we played. I think the others were consuming other, more nefarious substances and beverages. We had a fun time and it was after eleven when I cozied up under the covers. Guess we’re not getting the sleep train on the tracks tonight. It was just as well, I was still amped after our session and playing through a lot in my head.

Too Fast Tuesday

With another late night came another sluggish morning. What is happening to me, I used to be up at 5:30am ready to wrassle the day. I’m blaming the time shift, you figure out your business before you come at me. At least this day I was able to make it down to the kitchen and whip up something to eat before starting the day. I wasn’t particularly hungry, with a brick of chili and rice still playing havoc on my insides. In fact, I had to spend almost fifteen minutes laying across the end of my bed lamenting my choices in life. The weather matched my mood, there was a dusting of snow lazily drifting down from the heavens. That surely made the propects of a walk seem unlikely and as such I barely made it to work on time anyway. I was in the chair just minutes after eight, this time with a thermos full of ice water. I had a jam packed Tuesday on the books and spent the time before the day really got firing to prepare for several of the meetings. I find it useful to do some prep work for meetings and to be prepared. Lots of people just pop in and consume time getting up to speed or covering ground that was covered before. I make a point to read the notes from the last meeting on a topic and if possible, start to list out items that should be covered during the allotted time. Once the onslaught started it was one meeting bleeding into the next until sudden it was lunchtime. I had some Campbell’s Chunky Butter Chicken and Vegetables with a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, Meatball and Mozzarella panini. That combo was very filling and caused me to waddle to my first afternoon call just in time. This was a one on one with my manager. I had a list of things to discuss or ask about and ate up twenty five of the thirty minutes we had. Maybe I over did it on the prep work? I grabbed a vanilla drumstick afterwards as a reward for nothing. Next up was a meeting with my US colleagues to cover off some corn seed business. Last year during these meetings I was trying to keep up with the flow and understand what was happening. It’s amazing how much more relaxed you are when you know what is happening and are ready for the discussions. After that I scrambled to work on the issues that popped up today. I’ve got a list of four ongoing now. It was shortly after five that I’d had enough and switched machines and finished my second thermos of water. I played the MSC challenges and ordered Kisses & Nugs print MeUndies. I need a couple more pairs and thought this might be fun. I went down for dinner after that, it was half six by then. I looked around in the fridge for things to add to the ground pork I was planning to wrap up. I was also looking for the source of mild odour emanating from the fridge and tried to use things that could be a culprit. I’ll call these meat wraps. They are comprised of smoked Gouda cheese, baby spinach, bacon, ground pork seasoned with taco mix and some chipotle mayo spread.

These wraps were tasty and filling, not dangerously filling, just nice. I had a backlog of Musings to process so set about that after the dishes. That led to an early bedtime again. Another vain attempt to try and adjust to the new time. I did better this time, only staying up until half ten. A slow improvement is better than no improvement.

Time Shifted

Late to bed, late to rise. The old addage stands true. It was a serious struggle to wake up and get moving. My fool body thought it was ahead of six and refused to operate normally. I barely made it to work on time. No walk and no food. My walk streak is officially snapped and I’m scared I won’t get it back on track. This is what I do, this is what happens. I make a little progress and do some good things and then it doesn’t happen once and my mind give up completely on it. I hate it. The day started really rough. Meeting initially and then a bunch of emails from people asking me questions I don’t have the answer to and the people that do won’t respond or can’t possibly, I don’t even know. I hate being in the middle on things like this but I guess that’s why I get paid the big bucks. I didn’t bring any water up with me, mostly cause I never went down to get it. I basically powered through things until a colleague called to vent on some items and move a couple issues forward. He’s more frustrated than I am with the challenges facing him and that sucks. I got some work done and then my old assistant Gerbs called me up out of the blue. He announced that he’d just got a house and wanted to ask my advice on a number of issues. It was reassuring and nice to have someone that you haven’t worked with or interacted with much over the last few years reach out with news like that and to seek some advice on things. We had a good chat that led into lunch. I had a nice lunch of pizza buns and Campbell’s Chunky Chicken and Wild rice soup. While I was in the kitchen I noticed the board hadn’t been updated for the week. Here is where I landed last week, not very successful at actually making the meals I planned, even the easy ones.

After lunch was a series of meetings until half four. When they wrapped up and my OneNote was brimming with notes I tackled a few issues with immediate importance and wrapped things up at half five. I’d put in a gruelling nine hours on a day when I lacked a considerable amount of vim and vigour. I was feeling down and a little bit sorry for myself. That is not a recipe for a dinner requiring much in the way of effort. As such I made two cups of Minute Rice in my microwaveable pot (added a dash of salt, pepper, pepper flakes, and butter) and dumped a can of chili (cooked) on top and mixed it all together. It takes less than ten minutes to make (lied about the minute rice eh) and it comforting, filling and all the things a bummed out dude like me needed. I gorged on that and proceeded to do nothing of consequence. I more or less went to bed. There were clothes in the dryer still from the weekend that I meant to fold but didn’t have the jam to do it. This time because of the heavy gut more than the lack of sleep. I finished my audiobook in the dark and dabbled in some Musings before the big event. A couple former colleagues that didn’t make the transition to the new company had organized a bit of a reunion. The former marketing lead has her own outfit now and she wanted to test some digital tools and had been playing with this idea for a long time apparently, and then she chatted with a sales rep that now works for one of my customers and they made it happen. They rented a massive digital hall and we had ninety people join the reunion. You could flit from virtual table to table and catch up with people and chat. It took me a few tries to get my camera and audio working once I got on the platform. I eventually had to open a new browser but got settled and caught up with a colleague I haven’t interacted with in a year. He wasn’t keen on being a social butterfly and that’s not my style either so we made small talk about the pandemic and changes in our lives, the usual. We got pulled into a presentation to the entire group and we played some Jeopardy games. It was super competitive and quite fun. The trivia covered a lot of years. There were people on the call who were with the company back in the seventies all the way through to current employees. It was a great mix, and very well organized and executed. They will likely do it again due to the overwhelming success of the event. It was all based in Central Time which felt appropriate for a number of reasons, so it ended late in the evening for me. I tried to burrow into my blankets at half ten but that didn’t take and it was nearly eleven when I winked out. I really need to get my sleep cycle back on track.

Sloppy Sunday

It was a slog to get out of bed and going this day. I tossed and turned in my sheets for over an hour with some hopes of going back to sleep. I passed on showering today and set about the task of resetting the clocks and testing the smoke alarms. The time changed at some point in the night. I didn’t see it, again. I once thought it would be cool to stare down the clock of a device into the night and see it go from 2:59am to 2am or which ever hour gets the distinction in my timezone but sleep robbed me of this gift once again. All the while the gift was robbing me of sleep. Of course in the spring we “spring ahead” and thus lose an hour. I have a feeling that this will be the end of it, the last daylight savings time. I feel a little bit sad about it but at the same time I’m overly indifferent. I get my back up a bit because the time was initially shifted to have an extra hour of light in the evening so farmers could continue to work after supper. Or so the legend goes. I say legend because I quite possibly made that up entirely, I don’t know and refuse to look because I prefer that version of reality now. If we can do that with everything else then I can damn well do it for this. Irregardless (hi She), I associate the necessity for this change of time that we’ve all agreed to with agriculture and as such I don’t like the overwhelming wave of negativity that pours down on the concept these past couple years. It’s obvious why it has started, people are farther and farther away from the farm now. Less than 2% of the population work in agriculture, and less in America. Many people are so disconnected that they don’t know a farmer anymore. When I was a child there was still a good chance that most people in the city had some far flung relative involved in agriculture and thusly had a bit of an idea where their food came from. Those people had kids, and now they’ve had kids and the connection withered like a plant with a good case of white mold. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Thanks for proving my point. Anyways, I have grown more ambivelent to the whole construct over the last few years and many of the voices demanding abolishment are those from the small pool that is the ag community. That doesn’t bolster my commitment to the concept. So I changed the clocks, possibly for the last time and lamented over that scenario. Then I went to make breakfast. That’s where things got weird. I had the leftover egg roll wrappers and knew I was going to fill them with breakfast delights. I whipped up my usual concoction for a Sunday and went about it, even measuring out the quantity (1/4 cup) for each wrapper. I had loads left, despite dialling back my proportions considerably. I figured I’d wrap that up and give a whirl in the air fryer. When I’d taken the breakfast egg rolls out and idea started to form. I put the big lad in and grabbed a radish and set to work. I still have leftover radishes from the fish taco Family Feast. Turns out they keep well. I had some matchsticked ones and some discs. I must have been feeling whimsical cause I came up with this.

I referred to it as a breakfast beast and sent it to several dads I know to show them that I’m more fun and whimsical than they are. This is brilliant, it is breakfast for you and two kids, maybe three and they’d get a real charge out of it. Instead of eating it with kids I just dummied the whole thing. I was all kinds of full after. I think because I deliberately slowed up my mastication. This is something I’ve tried to do, when I think of it, which is not often. It was tasty. The wrappers weren’t as good the next day, or maybe I cooked them less or something. I would do it again though. The tart sweetness of the juice helped to cut through the very savoury filling. If you don’t know the filling is, read on, I’m sure I’ve got it described a half dozen times already. I did up the dishes and went to take down some MSC challenges. When that was done I didn’t have anything else that I needed or wanted to do. I can be a bit lazy when I’m tired. My ambition and drive need a full tank of sleep to run on. So I did what any normal addicted fool would do and descended into my lair and fired up FS19. That was the rest of the morning and afternoon gone. Making good progress though. I broke it off to have some dinner and loads of water. I had a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, Mozzarella and Meatball for dinner with some Viva Puffs. After that I tried watching the Leafs but they let me down quickly so I flipped back to FS19 until ten, then I tried to go to sleep. Finally fizzling out after eleven. Not a productive day overall but made a fun memory at breakfast.

Family Feast Saturday

It wasn’t an explosion out of bed today, it was a slow, lingering start. But I was trying to pace myself, there was excitement coming. I did make sure that rather than lounge in bed I got myself showered and dressed right away, then lounged. I was killing time until I got word from the Chef that it was on. Today was the big day, the first time we’d try to meet up for breakfast since the previous summer. It really was a long time. We figured that it had been since December 12, 2020 since we’d seen each other. You can go back and try and figure out the circumstances of that. We’d opted to meet at the greasy spoon near my house. I checked on the availability and we both reviewed the rules set out by the government before locking it in. He arrived ahead of nine. While I was waiting for him I went to the gas station and used $2 to pump some air into my low pressure tire on the truck. I balanced out a couple others before my time ran out. The first one has more air than the other three but that will show me if it’s leaking or was just cold and angry from a long winter of under usage. We met up and I was pretty excited for a couple of reasons, one was obviously to see my friend. Another was to eat at restaurant for the first time in many months. The third and maybe largest was that I was finally going to present the Chef with his Christmas gift. I went out on a limb with it and was anxious to see what he thought. So much so in fact that I forced it to happen before we went in. He gave me a packet of egg roll wrappers that he’d grabbed for me (I couldn’t find any where I looked) and I gave him his gift.

It is a replica of a 2017 MLS championship ring that his beloved TFC won that year. It’s got fake diamonds but it still weighs quite a bit. I chose the version that comes with a nice wooden box for him to store it when he’s not wearing it. I took a shot on the size, of which options were quite limited. He immediately dropped it on the pavement and I thought it might be damaged but not enough that it matters if it was. He seemed to enjoy it, wearing it throughout the meal. He says he’ll wear it to games when he’s allowed to go again. I thought it was a pretty unique item that he’d enjoy. He can chose to wear it or display it, whatever is the more pleasing form of enjoying it. He ordered his meal first and as it turned out, it was my exact order. The only order I’ve every made at this spot. Triple pork eggs benedict. It was good, maybe from the nostalgia or maybe from the different taste from my now usual flavours, either way I loved it. We stayed for quite awhile after the cheque was settled and talked and caught up. We stay in touch but it’s a different animal in person. Eventually we had to shut it down and move on with our days. For my part, I decided to do something productive when I got home, likely inspired by the fun morning thus far.

I finally started some of the work on the boat that I had planned. I needed to replace the carpet and wanted to get a feel for what was in the benches. There are two benches like this on either side at the back of the boat and a little spot that is used for storage with a lock. I was able to cut away the carpet easily and learned that they tried to weatherproof the wood with plastic. It appears to have held up alright. Recall that the boat sat in the elements for over five years before I took it over. The wood was still solid but should be replaced. The screws were all rusted out and filled in with dirt and dust. I had to use a knife to open up the slots to remove them. This was a very tedious task and eventually I had to enlist the aid of a flat screwdriver to destructively dig them out of the wood to get a red robertson on them. I had the drill but found that most of the work had to be done by hand. When finally I got the board off I discovered a foamy mess inside. Here was that concept again of foam inside a boat. I’d debated with GRP previously on this concept and it just didn’t compute for either of us. The neighbour was literally making a stink and it, combined with the effort of the task, were making me lose interest in further investigation. I felt I’d better go in and do some research on why this foam is important. At least before I painstakingly removed it. While I was on my computer I decided to listen to some podcasts and rip through a backlog of MSC challenges. I nearly got myself caught up when I noticed that it was past lunch. Because of the upcoming Family Feast I knew I needed to space my meals out appropriately. Breakfast was recent so I went small for lunch, finishing the last of the chips from the previous night and a pair of Viva Puffs with a couple glasses of water. After that I made my descent and fired up FS19. I felt safe playing it today with a hard stop on the horizon. I played it from half one to five and then started to prepare for the family fest scheduled for six. The meal was Philly Cheesesteak Egg Rolls. I had my ingredients lined up and ready when I checked my phone, I had several missed calls. Apparently it was decided between my STL sister and Mother that it would start at half five instead, so I was late out of the blocks. I quickly caught up, cooking my sirloin steak lightly on both sides and prepping my peppers. They went in the air fryer too for a spell. I hate onions so instead substituted in some mushrooms. Everything got a healthy chop and then combined in a bowl with a cup of cheese. I didn’t know that sharp cheddar is apparently the same as old cheddar so I went with shredded Tex Mex. Also I know I’ll have more uses for the majority of the bag that would be leftover. It was a fairly simple meal in the end, just took some time. Once your mixture is satisfactory you spoon out a 1/4 cup on the egg roll wrapper and make it like an evelope and roll, sealing with water. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it and when the dust settled I had fourteen little morsels to cook in two batches. I’ve included more photos than normal for you.

Parents had some chicken fried rice with their’s

STL sister had well rolled version and ranch dip

After the feast was done, the dishes were washed, and the conversation waned it was time for the Leafs. I shuffled back downstairs to watch the rubber match with the Jets, the third in a row this week. The game was entertaining with back and forth action and scoring until the third. The Leafs laid an egg and when they went down by two goals I dejectedly turned it off and trudged to my bed. I was able to get to sleep at a decent hour. That was good considering that the time changed in the night.

No Photo Friday

Woke up with a start ahead of seven and got showered up. Dressed up a bit more than normal today to shake things up. Breakfast won the battle with my walk. Nice forecast led me to believe that I could get a walk in at some point in the afternoon or evening, never did. One issue after another once work started. Tried to reach folks for answers before making a move on an issue. Without confirmations I couldn’t move things ahead. Being in the middle is frustrating. Lunch was potato bacon soup and pizza buns. Afternoon was more of the same. I sent half closed issues off and was able to close off a number of open items before the weekend. Not very exciting. I missed the mark on dinner again. Knocking back a big part of a bag of spicy wing great value chips and a sprite. Not sure that counts against my five a day. The evening was similarly disappointing. Mentioned the no walk. Instead just read some articles and watched some YouTube. Nothing of consequence. Early to bed.

Silly Thursday

I started my day by bolting awake early, was up at half six and jumped out of bed with a huge sleep behind me. After getting showered and dressed I hit the streets before anything else. Wore runners again and there was dry pavement today. As I got going I decided to push the pace today. You can see I got a nice improvement over last time.

When I got back home, there was time for breakfast yet. I had some options with the full fridge but ultimately opted for the usual fare. I very narrowly avoided a castastrophe at the last second during the preparation phase of the meal. The bottom of the english muffin on the right side was too slim and maybe some of the sliced cheese got extra hot and runny and leaked out only to burn or cook against the bottom ring. When I pulled it up the bottom of the sandwich stuck to it and wouldn’t let go. I tried a few moves to get it to release. There was swearing and nearly some flesh burning involved but I got away with my sandwich.

After a more lengthy clean-up process I had to hustle up to my desk to get ready for the day’s meetings. Two started concurrently and I attended the one on one rather than the group meeting that ran the whole morning. I was able to make a quick update to my “US boss” before diving into the Canadian Corn Pest Coalition meeting. It seems like each time I attend there is some extra discussion and fireworks. I should have had some popped corn. In the end amicable solutions were reached and the group moved ahead doing the right thing for the world at large. It ended after one and I took some time for lunch. It was a bowl of Campbell’s Chunky Pepper Steak soup and a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini - BBQ chicken panini. The whole affair was very filling on this day. Had to literally walk it off after eating with some pacing and moaning around the house. The afternoon was pretty nuts. I’m not sure, after some reflection, if it was the amount of stuff flooding in or just the mood that I found myself in but I was feeling very defeated and overwhelmed by the end of the day. Normally I feel pretty whelmed but this was over the top. And it went on and on. Eventually I hung up and turned off my computer at seven to discover that we were going ahead with our D&D game that didn’t happen the previous night. I was the last one to confirm and I had just enough time to slam down the leftover spicy pasta and get myself oriented. I was pretty excited and brimming with manic energy that I needed to curtail before this game. I ate part of a bag of Doritos 3D and sipped away at some Dr Pepper leading up to the session. I’ve taken to calling it a session, whether that is correct or not. It was different than I expected and I made a number of mistakes and there was some awkward pauses that I’m sure I contributed to but it was a lot of fun. Hopefully none of my missteps have lasting impact and we can move onwards and upwards. If you want I can tell you more but I’m sure it’s one of those things (like many I share) that you’re not interested in at all. So I’ll say that when the session concluded I wasn’t able to sleep immediately and tossed and turned until after eleven.

Nearly Three

This was an early one. I got up well ahead of an appropriate time and started my preparations to face the day. I cleaned myself, dressed and went to the kitchen to start my grocery list. Today being the big day where I venture out and get myself some groceries to restock my larders. If it wasn’t for the pending Family Feast event in the next few days I probably would have kept on going but I need the ingredients to make the prescribed dish and as such went to get food. We delayed a week on the Feast this time to accomodate Sudbury sister’s schedule so that’s why I’m stretching things out to three weeks, it has been since February 18, 2021, check the back catalogue of posts. Once the list was prepared I warmed the truck up and grabbed a McBreakfast to celebrate. I rolled up just ahead of eight and got to business, no meandering, strictly business. I brought home a solid haul, not the biggest, more average. With the donation to the food bank it rounded out to $230.00. Here is a photo.

I started work around 9 and got to it quick. Had a one on one call with a US colleague to pick her brain. I followed that up with a meeting my key contacts involved in the success of my seed order. With that wrapped up I did some follow up and with what I learned and continued on a long term project. Trying to nudge it ahead. It has become one of those two steps forward, one step back deals. I met with a former teammate to share some intel and cool ideas. I found myself a bit excited and slightly nervous to share the info. I was politely dismissed. Pretty typical for any interaction I’ve had with the marketing team. The fun part now is that I have other avenues with which to share my ideas and I will do just that. I called it a day shortly after five and took some time to make a very nice dinner. I planned to have a spicy pasta and did just that. The pasta was rotini and I mixed it with spicy sauce and added a deluge of pepper flakes and some dried basil as well. It was very good. After cleaning up I got on my computer to prepare for my first ever Dungeons and Dragons session but one of the guys had to work late so we pushed it off. I had ordered the Player’s Handbook previously and it arrived in the afternoon so I did some reading instead. I have a lot to learn. There was YouTube before fading out near ten.

Turbulent Tuesday

Today was a shaky start. I started to come to about half six and flipped SN on to learn about sports and such. I drifted in and out until seven then determined to get up and start the day. Still no eggs and my family was chirping me so I donned a pair of running shoes today, and hit the streets. The weather is warmer this week for a spell but runners were slippery as all get out. I don’t think it slowed me down. I used the tracking functionality of my FitBit app for the first time today. Had this unit since 2014, first time. It uses Apple Maps (which I hate) and I stuck with miles as the units. Conversion says that I was just over 2km. Another reason I prefer Google who said I was closer to 2.5km. I wasn’t feeling great after the walk. I jumped in the truck and zipped over for a McBreakfast. First frivolous outing in months. I wore a mask the whole time and sanitized after each window of the drive-thru. I ate it at my desk to be at work for 8am. Pretty good start to the day. AND I found out later in the afternoon that my constant haranging got Ronny Ronks out for a walk today too. Bonus!

I didn’t have anything vital scheduled early in the day, good thing too. I got a call from a colleague and we talked way too long. He wanted to do some venting and we talked about a lot of things. He showed me some pay scale stuff that I was unaware of. Naturally we’re all underpaid. I came to terms with that years ago and I’m able to eek out a comfortable living so I don’t get too up in arms about it. Anyways, that call consumed a big chunk of my morning but we did get some important things covered and revealed some blind spots in my plans for a project. I moved from that in a call with my close teammates in Licensing to catch-up and share information. I had a short window for lunch before my actual team meeting with my boss and co-worker. We had some lively discussion and shared some ideas. Immediately following that one was a meeting to talk about corn seed supply. It is on these calls that I defend the numbers my customers asked for, it’s critical to their business that I’m fully engaged and I was. I was feeding off the energy and thrummed with more confidence than I’ve felt in weeks. I guess that is what being prepared or ahead on stuff will get you. I had a customer to call back and while his news wasn’t great it certainly wasn’t the worst. I finished the bulk of my day combing over language in a document with a guy over the phone. Not the most exciting but good to be included. After reviewing emails and getting some things done for tomorrow I powered off and shot downstairs to make a different meal than what was on the board. I decided to go with a pair of Knorr Sidekicks, Fetticine Alfredo. I dumped in the milk and water and then turned my back, critical error.

The white liquid exploded upwards and blew the lid off the pot. In seconds it burned to the stovetop. I tried to quickly sop it up with paper towel but there was too much and it was too hot. I removed the pot and turned off the stove and tried to sop it up, the paper caught on fire briefly. There was swearing. I moved the pot to the other big element and continued the cooking process. The noodle never really got past al dente no matter how long or how hot I boiled them. I was frustrated and that turned to outright rage. The noodles were okay in the end but it was not my best rendition of this one. That’s likely why I don’t attempt this one often. I will have a mission to clean that stove later. I tried once things cooled and it did nothing. I’ll have to find my special cleaner for this task. After doing the dishes and scrubbing violently I made my way to my computer. I had to check on my fantasy team lineup. I’m still in first place and I had some folks wrap up their injuries and return to the lineup, had to deal with that. I don’t expect I’ll be in first for long now, the gap has tightened considerably. I was on the machine mostly to have a Zero Session with the Dungeon Master. Essentially a friend from home was going to teach me how to play the game and make sure my character is appropriate. He was a bit late having to work but I wasn’t in a rush, the Leafs game was unavailable to me.

Moveable Monday

Up and at them ahead of seven. Got cleaned up and ready to rock. No eggs to be had so in lieu of breakfast I consumed a walk. It was the same route that I started last week. I pulled on my cowboy boots for today’s effort and I’m not sure that was the best idea. I had some singing blisters by the end of it. The other regret I created was not wearing a toque. My hair was still damp and I didn’t want to muss it up so I brought the toque in case but never put it on. Later in the day I worried I’d caught a chill. I didn’t feel amazing after the walk this time but I’m glad that I did it. I think it’s something I have to stick to for it to be more enjoyable. Currently it’s more of a chore than something I look forward to. Without breakfast I was able to get to the helm before eight and be ripping along. It was my week to chair our Monday meeting and I rushed the team through that process. Next up was a panel discussion for International Women’s Day. That was interesting. Nothing shocking came to light but rather reinforced what we’re trying to do already. That got me up to lunch. My first thought was for soup but without a sandwich component I lost interest and my eyes shifted to another part of the cupboard.

Because I hadn’t eaten breakfast I grabbed two regular chicken and one spicy chicken and made a mega batch. The term voracious isn’t extreme enough to describe how fiercely I attacked this mound. I refilled my empty thermos and trudged back upstairs. It was around half one and I started to feel sluggish. I started going harder on the water but it wasn’t helping. I didn’t have anything scheduled so I looked for a low impact activity I could do. I found a replay of an IT discussion and put that on and vegged in my chair. Secretly I was hoping to slip into a power nap. Never happened. I forced myself into the work and scheduled a few things for the week but was starting to get a headache. Everything was becoming unfavourable. I got an email I’d been looking for and that gave me something critical to cover off until the final gun of the day. I moved on to dinner. With a headache and not wanting to do anything pertinent I chucked some chicken bites in the air fryer. I’m confident that they were undercooked or something when I ate them. There was a reaction. After eating and cleaning up I went down to play FS19 and enjoyed it well enough. Headache was partially subsided and I got all my harvest done and was working on the next crop. It was shortly after nine that I felt too tired to go on, and the headache was coming back on. I knocked back some Tylenol and hit the sack. It wasn’t long before sleep took me.