Survival Mode to Full Speed

Past Tugboat is a real prick. The morning came way too quickly. It was twenty to eight when the world came back on. The sleep had been solid but it was too little. I was groggy to start. I had to pass over the shower and meal to start the day and get right to the hard stuff. Work, not booze. I had a ninety minute call that wasn’t incredibly relevant to me this week. Then there was a break of an hour before two concurrent calls. I went to the kitchen and warmed up some leftovers from the previous day’s lunch. To shake it up some I used a spinach wrap. Another discovery from the alternative grocery store. They were much thicker than I bargained for, not ideal for me. I chortled back these two delightful logs of flavour and my brain started to clear out the fog and the cobwebs. Good thing too. My second meeting required a fair amount of input from me thoroughout the call. The other one was longer and I switched over to it. I didn’t greet anyone as I’d joined partway. I didn’t say a word, most of it was also irrelvant for me. When the call ended I just hung up, having not gone off mute for the entire time. That’s business baby! I reached out to a colleague to discuss an issue he was having, we talked through it. I then reached out to my close colleague to see if there was anything I was missing from the last couple of days and to let him know what I’d learned or saw in that time. It was a short call. After some final emails going out, and turning on my auto reply I went to enjoy the rest of the afternoon off, that started after two.

First move was to try and nap. That didn’t take at all so I started watching YouTube clips. I had a few days of videos to catch up on from channels I’m subscribed to. I then ordered lunch from Pizza Pizza. I did the repeat last order function and about an hour later I had a dish of breaded and sauced cauliflower, popcorn chicken, ten chicken bites and dip with a small order of wedges. The wedges I put in the fridge and hammered back the rest with a Dr Pepper and mug of water. Those cauliflower bites are phenomenal. I walked through the easy cleanup and made my way downstairs into my lair. I fired up some FS19 and that was that. I matured and harvested a crop then got the next one in the ground. I bought a second Ideal 9T combine with both headers. Now I can move through the cycle faster. I’m getting into a good rhythm now. I powered it off and was in my bed at half nine. It was nearly eleven though by the time the lights went out.

Free Formed

I woke at a respectable hour but didn’t feel particularly rested on this day. I dreamed the night away with vivid dreams of my D&D character. With the near gear gained I’m pretty excited to get him back into action. But we’re a week out from that experience so it was better to focus on getting cleaned up and fed. I made my usual breakfast and had some runny cheese. You’ll note in the photo that the eggs reacted somewhat weird. I took a photo of breakfast cause I’m on a bit of run of doing that this week and felt I should keep the good times going. They are only large sized eggs as is prescribed in the unit’s user manual but these must have been pushing it or the amount of muffin in the top ring consumed any available space. They look odd but they sure tasted great. I had a glass of raspberry lemonade alongside to bring some lovely, contrasting sweetness to the experience. With the food eaten and the washing up done I was arriving at work just around eight when the opening bell sounded.

There was nothing on the docket for today. I think for all the planning meetings we’re in the limbo between 2021 and 2022 right now. The field staff are busy getting ready and everything else was just quiet. I had one little information call to listen in on and relax my mind and soul for an hour, otherwise I was free to tackle my tasks and start on my summer projects. That is just what I did. But first I felt like I needed to get something done that has been languishing in the background for many months now. I needed to flip the year over. I’ve got my filing cabinet and I file all my paperwork in there for during the year. At the end of it, I pull out all the relevant documents for the year gone past and I used to scan them for tax reasons but now I just bundle them up, along with all my other receipts and the family calendar to tell the year and I store them in my records area. I went and got the 2019 folder so I could be filing 2020 consistently to past years. It’s all very organized and has come in handy in the past. You are thinking I’m a nut or a fool but let me assure you, once the system is running it is very easy to work with. It took me a bit to make the labels for the hanging files in the cabinet back in 2013 but now I just pull out the documents for the specific category, like Hydro, Credit Card, Water, etc. and I put them in the correct sleeve in the storage file and we’re laughing. It costs about nine dollars a year for the storage folder and takes me less than an hour a year to flip. Just one hour in nearly 8800 available for use.

Lunch was the next interesting thing that popped up during the day. I cooked some sandwich steaks in a pan with a pat of butter and then warmed up the last of the leftover corn and black beans with some rice and salsa. I used some monterrey jack cheese slices and wraps to deliver it into my mouth. It was pretty dense but incredibily flavourful. I wasn’t slowed down at all by this scrumptious meal.

The afternoon went much like the morning. I just worked away, made a couple of phone calls to push ahead specific issues and try to fight to resolve things. The first wave of corn seed was delivered now so I could focus on driving other things ahead. It’s all a very slow process. I often feel like I’ve got myself into a bathtub filled with molasses and I’m trying to step out of it. Meanwhile the rest of the world hums by like it’s the best of times. It grows more frustrating by the day. I’m definitely feeling the pandemic fatigue which I think was exacerbated by these work issues. But I digress, let’s talk about what I rammed into my pie-hole around six shall we? It was perogies again. This time it was the Cheemo branded Heritage Aged White Cheddar Cheese Perogies as the base of the meal. I sprinkled on some Great Value branded Tex Mex shredded cheese, some Great Value branded sriracha ranch dipping sauce and some Great Value branded dried parsley. These have been my favourite flavour of perogy for a long time and I can’t find them at my usual grocer. It was only when I crossed town for the spring roll wrappers that I found them again. Good thing I wandered around the store in an attempt to make the journey worthwhile. Ooey, gooey goodness.

After knocking back this relatively heavy repaste I slipped into the garage to try and keep upright for a bit, to let the food digest. I cleaned up the trash and then the recycling to get things ready for the morning. I tided the bench and did some measuring in the boat. Since I didn’t record anything I doubt I’ll remember the dimensions and will likely repeat all those actions. They were really a means to an end though, keeping myself from laying or sitting directly after the meal. After that though…. I stretched out on my extra comfy cloud and took a run at the end of my book. There were about 220 pages remaining and I thought I could knock out half of those and then have a quick sprint to the finish. Well I was wrong, painfully wrong. As things started to pop off I found I couldn’t put the book down. In my mind I felt like maybe I’d be out of it by midnight. I reasoned that I was taking the afternoon off tomorrow so I only needed to survive the morning and it would be fine. Sometimes I take Future Tugboat for granted. It was friggin one when I finished it. I won’t give my impressions in case Cheese or Rek stumble in here as I know they are looking to find out what I thought before they start their read. I want them to go in fresh. It was at this point that I got a message from She. She was having trouble sleeping and wanted to leave a message for me to find in the morning but I surprised her by being awake. We messaged back and forth briefly before the night closed in and I passed out into a full, drooling slumber.

Heralded Hump Day

Naturally awoke at half six then languished in the covers for nearly twenty minutes, enjoying not having to jump out of bed. Hot shower and an unusually large breakfast followed. The majority of the tots were held in reserve for a future meal. I got it in my head that I wanted to make a better smiley face and I’ve had a hankering for tots for a couple of days so it kind of just happened. It was excruciatingly good. The tots were the correct, Cheesy Tots by McCain this time, I made sure. There is a huge difference.

I tucked into work. Today was sort of like yesterday were I didn’t have an overly encumbered schedule. I was able to formulate a list of tasks to cover off and a list of items that needed prodding. I worked away at those things for most of the morning. The last of my plot seed orders got delivered today, now we’re officially onto the big stuff. I had a short meeting with the key players in making that process successful. The meeting was not overly positive. I laid out my expectations and timelines for things so I hope we can get things back on track. Everything has been frustrating this year. When that ended I had a call with a co-worker to refine some strategic stuff together. It was funny, we both had the thought that we hoped we weren’t the only ones thinking about this item for Canada. I fear that we might be. When we’d wrapped that up after a long discussion I decided I was going to have my lunch outside. There was a bit of a breeze but it looked sunny and bright. I made a can of Campbell’s Everyday Gourmet Creamy Thai Chicken & Rice Soup and warmed up those reserved tots. The soup was a very different colour than previous, I didn’t care for the change.

In the distance of that food photo you can see an inflatable Santa. Later he was followed up Frosty. The neighbours over there set them up and sprayed them down with a hose for a seeminly excessive amount of time before letting them dry in the breeze and taking them down. I got a good view of the washing portion of the event. While I was outside I thought I would snap a picture of the lawn. I posted a photo last year on September 6 of the damaged area that Big T caused from a similar vantage point, possibly higher up. Here they are side by side for comparison. This was an excuse to fly the drone for a short flight. Basically I went up and took the picture before quickly descending. You can maybe see that the middle is filling in with grass. There are also some thistles coming back. Turns out the Big T method was less effective than suspected and also destroyed the lawn. It is a neat shot as it clearly shows weak spots in the turf.

When I came in the house I noticed that my new morning glory had started to bloom and grabbed a picture. The old, viney one from last year is also in bloom again so I got a photo of each to share. Interesting to note the difference. The newer plant (on the left) grew out of a seed that was harvested from the plant on the right. I didn’t intentionally do any cross pollinating to it but the flower type definitely is looking different and sporting a different colour to the mother plant. Genetics are neat.

The afternoon was primarily unstructured but I took full advantage to get things cleared up. I continued working on my list and stirred a few pots to try and get some people moving on stuff. I’m getting more and more frustrated by the lack of follow through on stuff. I am getting tired of being the squeaky wheel all the time. It would be nice if somebody just anticipated the needs and did something without having to be asked a dozen times. As you maybe can tell, I was getting more frustrated as the day went on. I sent tightened up lists to some folks, considering that if I broke my requests into smaller chunks they’d be more likely to do them. Time will tell I guess. With no meetings I was able to clear the podcast queue today. I’m going in fresh to Thursday now. I listened to some rocking tunes on my old mixed CDs instead, that was a fun experience. Some of them I really remember making them and the mood I was in and what I was trying to accomplish with my mix. I finished working at half five and switched over to my personal computer. There were some fantasy hockey items that needed my attention. Several trade offers to reject with rationale. I slipped into Musings after that to make sure some photos were lining up nicely and then it was down to the kitchen for a quick snack before the main event. More and more these sessions are something that I really look forward to. It is nice that they are in the middle of the week, breaks things up a bit. I was all set up and ready to rock earlier than I should have been.

Session was really good. We got to go wild shopping and got a lot of free stuff from our reputation and exploits. Really exciting night. I could have been more prepared for this but I’m still learning. I did upgrade all my stuff, added a bunch of neat things and upgraded some skills. I’m excited, can you tell. That excitement didn’t let me drop off to sleep immediately. It was somewhat close to high noon before I faded into unconsciousness.

Two Tuesdays

Weak sleep meant a late morning. I had nothing scheduled before noon so wasn’t too concerned about it. I skipped my shower and breakfast, going straight to the office. There were things to do and questions to answer for a couple hours. I tackled a conversation I’ve been hoping to not have, it went okay, more to come I guess. Around half ten I was feeling hungry and didn’t have anything critical happening. I sent out some emails hoping I’d have answers when I return. It was time for a weekday brunch. With meetings all afternoon starting at noon eating early was going to be a requirement. In truth I had started making my usualy breakfast and then got a fancy to fire up some perogies. The fact that I was able to source some of the classic kinds I used to get and the ease of making them with the air fryer is likely the driver behind this development. That is what my brunch consisted of. I believe the perogies were Cheemo Heritage - Cream Cheese and Dill flavour and they were great. Enjoy my attempt at an artsy plating.

The meetings came fast and furious after that. It was the no fun zone for sure. Way different than the pace of the morning. Made it feel like a entirely different day. During one call I was able to check Twitter briefly but otherwise it was locked in, focused engagement the entire time. Five straight hours of it. I started to pull away at five and my mind was becoming my own. It was closer to half five when I powered down and walked away. I needed to have some more water, not bringing my thermos today left me parched. I warmed up the remainder of the perogies and gobbled them down for supper. It felt meager so I grabbed a bag of Miss Vickies Jalapeno chips and trekked down to my lair. I had almost decided to read my book and have the Leafs on my Mini but in the end I wanted the real experience, well as real as we can get nowadays. I also had a can of Sprite with me. I got all nestled into the couch, very comfortable and the internet starting acting up. I was doing the speed check with the router’s app and it was about 1/3 of what it should have been. I scrambled upstairs, both angry that I was missing the game and that I had to get up, to give the router and modem a very stern talking to and pulling their power cords out for a ten count before replacing them. I went back downstairs to find that nothing had improved. I guess the universe just hates me enjoying the Leafs. I found that if I went out of the stream and back in every whistle it was mostly a crisp and continuous broadcast. If it went too long between then it turned into worse than SD reception. Gross! I watched the first two periods like that, and ate half the chips, before packing it in and heading back up to my bed. I lounged on the cloud and watched the third on the Mini and read my book as planned. I feel asleep immediately after they gave up the winner in overtime. At least they got one point and I had chips on a week night.

Moderate Monday

Woke up in good time, beauty shower, relaxed usual breakfast, a lovely start to the day. Got organized at eight, laid out my plans for the day. Checked back for unresolved items, updated lingering items, prepared for light-ish load of meetings. Still enjoyable. First meeting ran short. Mostly just inane updates, no heated discussions. After the meeting I tackled a couple items but had a gap in my schedule for a bit. I packaged up some mail that needed to go out, sending stuff to three sources, one knows about, one won’t be surprised and third will be a shock. I went and mailed them once they were packaged. Probably should have done that task two weeks ago. Did a bit more communicating and that was the end of the morning. I looked at the board from last week, still hadn’t updated it yet. I did very poorly on the meal side but all the items on the to-do list are done now. Most got nailed in one fell swoop. For the meals I had the planned meal on Monday and Friday but missed the mark for the middle three days. Need to get more successful at this game.

Lunch was next, as you can see, I had a can of Campbell’s Chunky Beef soup. I picked the Leaf can to help support them in their efforts later in the day. I won’t be able to watch the game as I don’t get the feed so I thought I’d support them in this fashion. I paired this with a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, Mozzarella and Meatball panini. I had water and a couple maple cookies too. It was a filling and invigorating meal.

The afternoon was not exciting. I had a productive meeting with my manager. He was supposed to be on vacation for April break but was doing an hour or two of work. We went over time a bit with our discussion. Next we had a task force meeting. It only took up half the time so I had a discussion with customer and got their plans lined up. After that I reached out to a few people to push things along but was pretty unfocused after half four. I made it to five but then started reading the Player’s Handbook for D&D and stopped paying attention. I powered down at half five and ready until almost six. I went down and reheated those rancid chicken drumsticks and combined them with quickly turning slaw from the family feast. I had some All Dressed Crispers as a palette cleanser to those gross items.

After this unpleasant meal I went to the basement. I realized I didn’t really spend any time down there on the weekend. I fired up FS19 for a few hours. The Chef called but our chat ended abruptly when his phone suddenly died. Neither one of us called back. Most of the evening I spent in silence, which is unusual for me. All I did in the game is take off my crop and partially plant the next one. It is quite an ordeal now to manage my holdings. It was around ten when I marched up to bed. I couldn’t find any purchase on sleep though. I lingered on into the dark, well past high noon. It was like I was trapped between waking and sleep. I had some weird half dreams and thoughts. I did see before sleep that the soup didn’t help the Leafs, they lost.

Incredibly Quiet Sunday

I woke up at five and decided that wasn’t appropriate. I was pretty glad I was mixing in glasses of water throughout the evening and then before bed and in the night. My brain felt normal sized but my muscles are sore, I feel like a did a full body workout. The other side effect of drinking last night is that my room stinks. The sheets already needed to be washed but between the booze and the very unseasonably warm day yesterday, I got all kinds of sweaty. So the day started with a very hot shower and then some laundry. After plunking the wash in, I warmed up the last of the little nuggets. I’m very happy with how they turned out. I think I might go with this size in the future, the smaller size allows you to adjust portion easier and also bite size is whimsical. Those with a couple pints of water have set me on a course for a productive day. I ate them while knocking out the latest MSC challenges. I wish I could start everyday like this, minus the tired muscle feeling.

I washed up and started what would be come a long line of loads of laundry. My bed was already on the list for a good cleaning. That meant that I would finally implement the new mattress cover I got for Christmas. And that I would have to get my train horn vacuum to clean up the mess left by the old cover. Should also result in a boxsprings and mattress rotation. First was a load of clothing though. While I waited I worked on some homework/research I’d set out for myself. The Big T called to give me an update on the spring so far. I was also starting back into my book. Turns out it is over 700 pages, so the two hundred I chugged last week was only a start. I was setting a timer on my phone for one hour to be promptly changing loads. By two I was done most of the laundry and was thick into my book. I stopped at this point to consume a few leftover chicken nuggets and some nacho cheese flavoured Bugles, which were much better than I remembered. I watered myself generously as well, all whilst reading my book. I carried in reading into the evening, only stopping to finish the Bugles, drink water and crush a couple Selection branded Creamy Maple cookies. Even then I was reading. It was half ten when I reached page 550 of the book and that was enough for the day. I was asleep shortly after. Again I slept in the guest bedroom as the Sunday night cinema celebration carried on.

Blinked and It Was Gone

I woke up at four today. I had a pee and was going back to sleep when I felt a very strange relaxing feeling settle over my shoulders and chest. It was familiar but I can’t remember feeling it before. I started to worry after a short while and got up and moved around until I felt it had gone. It was too early to be up so I went to the bathroom again and then tried to get back to sleep. When I faded off it was into a very deep sleep. I had put on SN with low volume and it was still playing when I woke up at eight. I felt like I could go back under. Very strange start. My guts still don’t feel quite right so I’m in no hurry to go eat. Instead I did the last MSC challenges left uncompleted and some other interneting before heading down to eat at half ten. I did a fair bit of cooking today while I was in the kitchen, actually ninety minutes of effort. My first dish, and one that is the thru-line for the others is that I skinned and cooked two chorizo sausages, when that was sufficiently browned off I poured in four eggs that I had scrambled with milk, salt and pepper. The key was to have this on aggressively low heat. That low temperature allows me to add some cheese, in this case shredded Tex Mex, into the mix. Once I have enough of a “skin” I can create a lumpy omelette. I generally cut it up but like to practice that omelette step, just in case. Meanwhile, I painstakingly popped a tube of Pilsbury Grands and a tube of Pilsbury Crescents. I rolled out the big ones first and to each of those, at the wide end of the triangle, I scooped on a 1/4 cup of filling. The rolling is tricky to get down, you have to fold the sides over while delicately stretching the dough, then you fold the end up and roll, trying to make sure the ends are sufficiently sealed. They aren’t as picture perfect as the tube shows but they are much better with the filling. The same concept applies to the smaller ones, but I used a teaspoon of filling instead. Follow the baking instructions on the package and you have a fluffy, rich, tasty breakfast.

There was plenty of filling leftover so I dumped it on a wrap with some cheese and put it in the air fryer for eight minutes at 385F, flipping once. Made for a filling and terrific breakfast. I sampled one of each of the crescents and my burrito. The rest of the little pastry surprises went into the fridge for later. I will have to use the air fryer to reheat them, settings unknown for that process.

That wasn’t all that I did though, I had four chicken breasts that had been languishing all week in the fridge, probably longer if I’m honest. I salted, peppered, and cooked them in the air fryer. They were in there for eighteen minutes at 400F, flipped once and they came out terrific. I let them rest on a cutting board for about fifteen minutes before putting them in the fridge for later use. I think two will become soup and the other might be in a pasta or some kind of wrap. The other item that I think was stinking up my fridge horrendously were the four leftover chicken drumsticks from two week previous. They did smell terrible. I dumped a couple glugs of VH’s General Tao sauce in and shook it all up. In the process I exacerbated a crack in my oldest and most favourite leftover container. It had to be “taken care of” afterwards. It is currently in the trash but I’m trying to justify using some super glue to fix it, though I don’t think that would keep it food safe. Anyways, I cooked the rancid drumsticks for twenty minutes at 400F in the air fryer and let them rest before putting them in the fridge. The moral of the story is that I have a lot of leftovers now. All of my containers are in use actually. I started the afternoon with some D&D research as I need to get ready for some critical junctures in my character’s life. I also need to start to develop my next character, in case the worst happens. This carried on in several spurts. I also took some time to read but in general was overcome with a general malaise and felt tired most of the afternoon for no good reason. I moved down to the living room and fired up the TV there and watched some YouTube, mostly a British quiz show. Before I realized it was time for dinner. I reheated a couple of the grand versions of breakfast and most of the small spring rolls from the previous night. I picked out a stunning amount of shrimp shell from them, and seeing the ratio of roll to skin I can now understand why I feel the way I do. My poor guts are trying like mad to break those things down, and there is so much of it. By the time I finished eating and cleaning and the program ended it was Leaf game time. There was some pretty significant excitement and news that came from my STL sister around this time. I won’t go into the detail but it’s really cool and we’re very excited for them.

Towards the halfway point I called into a beer tasting for the Meat Man’s birthday party. It was their entire family and me, I assumed I was included to provide some entertainment. They were tasting their beers, I was drinking mine. I dispatched with the first two tall boys before starting to feel a little lighter. My third didn’t match theirs, I wasn’t able to find the porter (rats….) so I had a lighter beer. Then I had my wildcard entry, a cider. I assumed there would be other ciders but nobody else had a wild card entry at all. I was tipsy by then so I decided I’d go for it and made myself a glass of White Lightning. Wray & Nephew overproof Jamaican rum at 63% and Sprite in a short glass. They are less potent when you measure one shot into it, I used to free pour all my drinks, it’s more exciting. There was about a shot and a half left in the bottle so I had another and used the rest of the can of Sprite up too. The call ended at about quarter to eleven and my FB buddy from San Fran asked if anyone was up. I was but I needed to get some sleep so I tucked myself in and was out around half eleven from what I can tell. I texted back and forth with him and he confirmed that I’m in the 1% of people who were able to create a Messenger account without having a Facebook account, I was pretty pumped that is real. I was nicely drunk by then, the lightning had struck.

Fresh Friday

It was another frantic Friday from a work perspective. I was more than glad that I had done my shopping the night before when the book closed on the day. I was up before seven and at my desk before eight having taken a leisurely path through the morning routine. Showered and had my now classic breakfast. I was in meetings non-stop from half eight until after one thirty. I missed lunch again, which will factor into things later in the day. I had a couple more meetings then a few phone calls. My meeting free afternoon was shorter than planned but I made good use of the time. I cleaned up my email a lot and fired off some updates and shared information. It was very good use of time. I powered down at half five and started to gather all the ingredients for the Family feast meal. It was at this point that I remembered why I should have had a proper lunch. (I snacked on Doritos 3D Crunch in the early afternoon) I was supposed to take my shrimp, pork and spring roll pastry out of the freezer at lunch for them to defrost through the afternoon hours. So that didn’t happen. Instead, I spent the half hour leading up to the video call frantically trying to defrost them with the microwave. It worked well on the meat but it didn’t make the wraps great. The other little issue I discovered is that I bought the wrong shrimp. In my rush to get home from the grocer’s, with the haul from one store already warming in the truck, I had grabbed a sack of shrimp that said peel on it, believing it said Peeled and Deveined. But what it actually said was easy to peel. Meaning that it was peeled, which also implies that it was not deveined. True to form, they were easy to peel, as far as shrimp peeling goes. They were not easy to devein though. And since I’d already minced up about 6-7 shrimp before I noticed this issue, thinking that the resistance and sharpnel was residual ice from the hasty defrost, I had myself a debacle in the making. My family talked me into ignoring the “vein” aspect of it all and I tried to pick out the shrimp skin. I don’t know the proper term to use so I’m going with that. I think I got the most of it, only the smallest hunks would be left. I was planning to mince the entire sack, a pound, and use double for everything else since I had a lot of pastries but I was put off by the shrimp. It was also 26C in my house at that point so I wasn’t feeling very good, having not adjusted to this kind of heat yet. I was queasy on two fronts. I mixed the ingredients and started making my rolls. My pastry was ten inch by ten inch, the recipe was talking about five inch by five inch versions and I was worried that portioning and cook time were based on that so I tried to cut my sheets in quarters to approximate the size. That didn’t work either, the ten inches were more like eight so I ended up with too small wrappers and had trouble rolling. I threw caution to the wind again here and used the full sized ones and hoped for the best. Here are what they all looked like.

Parents version

Sudbury sister

STL sister

The Tugboat

My Sudbury sister and parents couldn’t find spring roll pastry and used egg roll wrappers instead. I mentioned yesterday I had to travel to get mine. My STL sister accidently procured fresh spring roll wrappers, not realizing there was a difference. They did some experimenting before using leftover egg roll wrappers. You can see how red my face is in the group photo, I was not feeling well. The food was delicious but I am worried my larger wraps didn’t cook enough and I’m going to fear I got a parasite from the undercooked pork or shrimp, or from the shrimp poop. Another terrible part of the experience for me was that on the very last bite I took I got a small hunk of shrimp skin caught in the back of my throat. I started to gag a little and nearly puked. I was able to rid myself of that chunk but it left me feeling uneasy. We chatted on for extra time. Sudbury sister’s phone died first again. I played my MSC challenges as we chatted, sharing stories and memories. It was a really nice visit and I enjoyed it very much. We shut it down between half eight and nine. I marched around the house trying to shake loose the uneasiness in my guts but eventually started preparing for bed. I gave the kitchen another quick wipe down, brushed my teeth twice to make sure there wasn’t more shrimp skin hiding anywhere and settled into some YouTube before bed. I was able to get to sleep about ten or half ten, not sure.

Thoroughly Thursday

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

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

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

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

Under the Weather

The late night produced the consequence of a late morning. I slept until nearly eight and that put me off kilter from the start. It took me longer than usual to get ready. It is hard to explain what was happening to me. I had a sore neck and left shoulder which I attributed to sleeping improperly. I had a pressure, sinus headache that no amount of vigourous nose blowing could abate. Overall was feeling rough. That’s where I started my day. I thought I could supercharge things with a high sugar breakfast, doesn’t sugar solve most issues? I had four blueberry eggos with butter and syrup. I think it gave me a small rush but didn’t fix anything for me. I crawled to my office and started work just ahead of nine (*gasp, I know). I spent the first part of the morning reviewing some files and creating a list of things I needed done from others to ensure success. I had my weekly check-in call with the key contacts who hold the fate of my ability to do my job in their capable hands. The meeting was less negative news filled than normal. Things may be looking up. I see a major issue on the horizon and I’m think it’s going to be up to me to try and steer to calmer waters but for the systems involved in the process I don’t know how to drive the boat at all. We’ll see what yelling and stamping my feet does for me. I started to feel worse after this meeting. Something strange was happening in my tummy and the other things were heating up, literally. I could feel a warmth on the sides of my dome and could almost feel like the more water I drank the less the pressure of my headache was. It was very strange. I started to feel pretty loopy and figured that I was fighting something off in a serious way and needed to feed the furnace to keep things going. I literally stumbled down to the kitchen and made a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, BBQ chicken panini (the last of the stockpile). I struggled to eat it. My body was really going through something. I managed to coax it down with some water and felt overly unwell at that point. I went to lay down. I had a meeting at one and got myself upright and in the chair for it. I wasn’t feeling great at all for this. I nipped back a couple of Tylenol extra strength and guzzled some water. The meeting only took half the time and when it ended I found the toilet for a bit. I had told my team on the call that I wasn’t feeling great and needed to take a break. Luckily email traffic was super light. I had a nap for about twenty minutes and then stayed in the blankets for another half hour. I was starting to come back to life. I went and made a bowl of Campbell’s Thai Chicken and Rice soup and that helped a bunch. I was back in the chair unitl the close out of the day at half five. I had just eaten a couple hours before but made a big bowl of perogies. The fuel helped power me through the rest of the day. I also polished off my second thermos of water during this meal.

The rest of my water would be by the glass for today. But it was nearly another full thermos worth. After eating dinner and laying down for a bit to recover more I had to start getting ready for the regular D&D session. I got some water in position, got my notebook and player’s handbook beside the computer. Loaded some pages on my Mini for quick reference. As an added step I listened to a motivational theme while prepping. I was on the line right at half seven and there was even more music to get us fired up. If you recall, we were in a heated battle at the end of the last session and things were looking dire. I won’t go into detail on what happened but I learned a few lessons the hard way, rolled poorly, and had a killer time. We finished up around half ten and I was asleep by eleven. I sported my winter pajamas this night, hopefully that will help add an element of fullness to my slumber.

Triple Header Tuesday

I woke up late again after a short blip of opening my eyes at an appropriate time and got myself moving. I decided that I didn’t need to wear socks today and was enjoying that freedom. I had eggos for breakfast instead of my usual fare in an effort to expedite the entire process and get things moving. I had two meetings starting at nine and should be in both of them. I had to carefully choose one, in this case picking soybean over corn, a rare outcome. These meetings ran most of the day, only happening once a year. For the broader teams, nobody crosses over crops, but Canada being a smaller market, we cover both. So we often have to divide and conquer. There was a Canada update in the soybean meeting on this day so I felt that was the place for me to be. I haven’t turned my back on corn though. I put that meeting on my iPad with the audio off so I’d be able to see the slides and could switch which I was listening to if it seemed like the topic was more relevant for me over the other meeting. I had a critical meeting at eleven. So in the triple booking I had to take the shorter option. I still kept the other meetings on, corn on the iPad and soybean on my phone. Three meetings at once is outright disgusting and the grossest professional move I’ve done in the pandemic. The short call ended around half noon and the other two also took a break around this time so I found myself with an unexpected lunch break and was happy to have it. I took a moment to enjoy the beautiful afternoon that was shaping up.

It’s a shame my lawn isn’t beautiful anymore. Part of my issue is that I haven’t done anything to it since the snow left. Haven’t raked it or rolled it. Oh and the enormous dead spot that Big T caused is still quite prevalent. It is trying to fill back in. I think I’ll have to get some seed and soil and try to help it along. Raking would maybe help too, and fertilizing. I’ll have to find time to do those things. But anyways, most of my short lunch was spent making and eating food. I had a can of Campbell’s Chunky Potato and Bacon soup and a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, Mozzerella and Meatball panini to fill the tank. I didn’t have time to savour it though, I had to get back to the meeting! I started my afternoon in the corn meeting and then had to move to my regular meeting with the US team to talk about seed supply. While that was happening a third meeting I was supposed to be in fired up and I navigated my second triple header of the day. The soybean meeting had ended and I just had corn on the iPad and my seed meeting on the computer but I did switch back and forth much more often. I was pretty gassed by the end of the day. It was half five when I powered down and went looking for supper. The board said I was supposed to have salad but I didn’t want to do that. Instead I had a big old plate of chicken bites. The supply that the Chef doled out in October is finally starting to run thin. He has been threatening to do another round, his reserves have built up to a level that he has to remove some stocks. We’ll see how that goes with another major lockdown looming. After eating my bites and cleaning up I took my overloaded gut upstairs and started playing HomeScapes on the Mini. I didn’t stop. I got a big bundle of rewards for some reason and just hammered down on such a winning streak. It was eleven by the time my luck ran out. I didn’t want to stop while I was crushing it so I didn’t. It was close to half eleven when I dwindled out. I was sporting just my drawers and a shirt. I woke up slightly chilled a few times before one. Not good.

Monday of Meetings

Monday was fast and furious from the start. I think I slept well but didn’t feel very refreshed. I didn’t want to shed the cocoon of the guest bed. The newer duvet in there seems to be much, much warmer than the one on my own bed. I moved my life back into my own bedroom and got ready for work. I was late getting to my usual breakfast but ate it piping hot to save to time. I felt like a dog trying to eat sh!t out of long grass but it saved me ten minutes and I got to work at the appropriate time. It was non-stop meetings, there was maybe an hour of the day I wasn’t in various meetings. One big one dominated the afternoon, it’s an annual thing but with all the regularly occuring ones that have popped up in the last year it was a balancing act. At least they were all consecutive and not concurrent. I didn’t have much of a break for lunch. One meeting around noon ended ten minutes early so I shuffled down to the fridge and warmed up the leftover Kraft Dinner and three chicken fingers left from the Young Prince breakfast adventure. I filled the water back up and skipped back to my desk to ravage that food. There was a part of the afternoon meeting that I had to present a couple of slides. I visualized myself doing a better job than I actually did. I was trying to be consciously of my “ummm”s but had a few trickle in. There was a part where somone started speaking to their spouse in a different language loudly that threw me off for a second. I was able to recover. My boss led off our section and had some sharing difficulties, slides wouldn’t advance and I don’t think he liked that. In the end our message was delivered very clearly and across all segments of our business. Later in the week I would hear our points being brought up repeatedly in other discussions so I’m thinking we were heard. That meeting ended very late in the day and I didn’t have a plan on the board. The lunch I’d crushed wasn’t very large and I was over six hours away from that when the time came for dinner. I ordered some items from Pizza Pizza. While I waited for it to arrive my parents shared that they were having their first fire of their year. They’d collected a number of sticks while cleaning up the yard. Mostly that job is cleaning up dog poop but I guess sticks were an issue this year.

Photo credit: Mother

I ordered a small dish of breaded and sauced cauliflower bites, the sauce was buffalo wing sauce. I also got ten chicken bites, a small order of wedges and I tried their popcorn chicken. The bites and the cauliflower were fantastic, the rest was less good. Of the less good aspects, I packaged up some leftovers for Future Tugboat. The rest of the short evening was spent watching YouTube, setting lineups for fantasy sports and doing some quick research for D&D. I was able to get to sleep around half ten to prepare for another meeting filled day.

Lazy Easter Sunday

Sunday morning featured waking up from a great sleep and lounging around. There was no fanfare, chocolate or revelry. It was a fairly lonely Easter that was treated more or less like any other weekend day. I started to get a bit peckish around nine so I went and made up a bowl of cereal for myself. The nearly full thing of milk was expired by seven days but I wasn’t too worried, I have a decently strong constitution. The cereal was good but hardly filling. Too bad was what I thought. I moved to my computer and tackled a lot of MSC challenges that had accumulated over the last week. I’ve gotten out of the habit of Musing and MSC challenge completing on a daily basis lately and I don’t especially like it. I blame the incessant pace at work. It’s actually not that intense but the stakes are pretty high right now, lots of people counting on me to deliver while I count on others to do their job so I can deliver. It doesn’t always go smooth and makes me realize I hate having to take ownership of something while relying on others. Maybe I should run my own business. While I cleaned up my latent challenges I was consuming an audiobook, specifically I was listening to The Never Paradox by T. Ellery Hodges. I’ve read the actual book previously, it’s the second of the trilogy. The Never Army was released recently and I wanted to refresh myself before consuming the pentultimate edition. When my challegenges were bested I did some online shopping. I had been texting with the Meat Man for part of the previous morning and we’d discussed some things that warranted some research on my part. I didn’t make any purchases so I guess it was more research than online shopping. When I was done with that I went back to bed and listened to my audiobook. I didn’t have the motivation to do anything else. Around halfway through the noon hour I wrapped up my burrito guts leftovers and inhaled them. I really liked that combination. I decided to walk it off but not with a walk, just wandering around the house looking at my stuff with my headphones on. Headphones were required because I did a lap of my house and inspected things. I didn’t see anything of note but started some ideas percolating. I grabbed the stagnant laundry from the dryer to fold and stow it. Next I resorted to playing HomeScapes on my Mini until I ran out of resources on a hard level and put it down rather than make in-app purchases to continue. I wandered a bit more and tidied up some cluttered spaces in my office until the book was done. I had chugged a twenty hour book in just over a day, thanks to 1.3x speed. It was around four when this happened so I transitioned into reading the last book, which was in physical form. Around six I mosied down to the kitchen and cooked two boxes of Kraft Dinner. There had been some chatter in one of my group chats about different macaroni and cheese brands this week and it reminded me I hadn’t had KD in a long time. I used the expired milk again. When it was done and mixed to perfection I separated not quite half into the fridge for later and sat down to feast on the roughly box and a quarter pile in my bowl. It was glorious and I wolfed it down like a starving man. I posted a picture of my Easter dinner on SnapChat and shortly after got a FaceTime from my parents. They were not happy about my choice. They also shamed me about my beard. Some people….

Basically that was my entire day, I kept reading until it was time for sleep. I’ve gotten through the first couple hundred pages of the book now. I did have to sleep in the guest bedroom. The noisy neighbour was having a bass fiesta again. Now sure what they were doing but it was loud. I happened to wake up to pee around three and I could hear it still blaring. Seems that guy is a bit of a dick. I could go on about what has been happening over there lately but I won’t bother. I’m just hoping it is a purchase for purpose of flipping quickly.

Suddenly Saturday

I woke up at six again and was excited about the new regularity of this, but being that I was up late, I rolled back over and sought out more sleep. I fluttered my eyes at half seven but it was truly eight when I checked my phone. I remembered something I had said I would do the night before. The Meat Man had promised the Young Prince that he could have chicken strips (also known as chicken fingers) for his dinner. The Meat Man failed to deliver and they said he could have them for his breakfast. I thought that was hilarious so said I would also have chicken fingers for breakfast. I have a couple sacks to use up and had thought about a plate of them a couple of times during the week. This would be perfect. I bolted out of bed and scrambled to start things up. I was hoping I wasn’t too far behind and could cook them quick and eat at the same time as them. I turned out to be about twenty minutes late on that front, he was finishing up as I was putting mine in the air fryer. As they cooked I thought it might be interesting to have a runny egg on top, in my mind it was going to be sunny side up but I forgot that at some point. I went with two fried eggs, I made a proper mess of them, not enough butter in the pan to lube my flip. The eggs were salt and peppered but I garnished the plate, which I’d added the chicken fingers to, with dried parsley and some sriracha powder. It looks decent.

Taste wise it was interesting. This is not the first time I’ve tried to answer the age old question, what came first, the chicken or the egg. Previously I put a sunny side up egg on top of a broiled chicken breast. It was not good. The flavour and consistency of the egg white does not jive with the dried out husk or broiled chicken. This round, the chicken fingers and their breading combined better with the egg. The garnish I added brought some serious game. It was still a strange dish but it was enjoyable. I maybe should have added some cheese under the egg or something. I had some sriracha ranch dipping sauce ready to use but ate the whole thing rather quickly and didn’t deploy it. Fun little experiment. I didn’t get a reaction from the Young Prince on my combination.

I was tempted to sneak down to my lair and continue my pursuit of a successful farm but knew that I had neglected my Musings long enough. I hadn’t actually posted since last Sunday, just drafting new posts for each day and adding some bullets. I wrote them all up and published the whole week this morning. And then I went and uploaded my draft of Episode 5 of Tent-Venture. Between the late start and the amount of time and effort I put into those tasks, it was noon by the time I finished. Time to eat again? Not on the weekend, I’m only doing two meals a day on those days. I was texting with Meat Man throughout the morning and might try to find a way to get him his Christmas and birthday gift combo sooner rather than later to help him realize his dreams of a fishing kayak. Late in the afternoon I put together a fairly elaborate burrito meal. No fresh cilantro this time and it showed. But we’ve got spicy rice, black beans, corn niblets, chicken slices and some salsa. I was very happy with the results of my labour. I ate three of these and needed to take time to recover.

The Leafs didn’t play on this night oddly so I spent my time internetting across random topics.

The Good Friday

Today I woke up at half six, I’m definitely getting back into a rhythm now. I don’t know why I didn’t set my alarm for six immediately to try and force the adjustment. A tool, improperly used. When I was showering I started into a moral debate with myself. Today is Good Friday. I’m not overly religious, defintely not a strict Catholic but I was raised, for my early years, as a Christian. On Good Friday, the Catholics don’t eat meat. They eat fish, but not meat. I guess fish didn’t make the cut for being in the meat gang. Mother was raised Catholic but let it drop off as she became an adult. Grandma was raised Catholic until Grandpa put an end to that, different times. Two strong female influences in my life had followed their old ways and respected Good Friday. They ran their respective households so growing up we respected the no meat on Good Friday tradition. We would have tuna casserole (my favourite) or tuna burgers. I didn’t love the tuna burgers as they usually had relish or pickles in them (yuck!). Over the years I’ve been all over the map on this subject. I recall some years eating bacon on purpose and remarking it. Other years I followed the challenge of creating something new to celebrate. I decided I would try to follow the tradition and made a mess of perogies in the air fryer. It is a good thing my STL sister shared that secret with me. I guess some things happen for a reason.

In Canada, we have the day off. My US counterparts didn’t. I joined in their weekly call for an hour and then got into some emails about my big issue. I was free of it around ten and made my way down to the lair. I had brought a couple granola bars and a big mug of icy water. I powered up FS19 and immediately sold some crop and bought two more farms. Now I own a big chunk of the map. It is insanity to get my crop in and out now. It’s constant, there is no downtime. In the game my dude hasn’t slept for three or four days. He must be hard on some kind of drug. Even with the biggest equipment it’s a challenge. I’m thinking I need another decent sized tractor and I should run two fertilizer spreaders. You are supposed to apply twice for maximum yield. I’ve been going then cultivating, planting and going again. Moving my stuff from field to field is a frantic situation now. I don’t hate it. I paused a few times in the afternoon to message some people back on Teams. Dangerously, I’ve been using it on my phone this week. That means I’m more available and it threatens my work-life barrier that I’d constructed. We’ll have to see what this does for me. I kept pushing on a couple of things into the afternoon and it sounds like I’ve got people moving. It is about two weeks later than I’d hoped to be getting this process done but with the errors, misses, and mistakes out of the way, we’re still ahead of the normal schedule. I didn’t stop for lunch, relying on the granola bars and water to keep me from developing a headache. It was late in the day when I finally realized I needed to eat and prepare for a bonus session of D&D. I choose the meatless option of tots. I layered in some Tex Mex shredded cheese blend and some Cholula hot sauce. I ate about 2/3 of the bag. I was filled to capacity. I also drank several pints of water to replenish myself.

I filled my thermos and grabbed a granola bar for the road before cleaning up my mess. Since it was a holiday and I’m thinking we were still excited we decided to get back into it for a couple hours. The DM was ready for this so we planned it out. We had a be celebration and then hit the road for the next part of the adventure. We ended up in a fierce battle and several of us are in a position where we might die. I’m not sure what is going to happen but I know it was stressful. We went longer than normal. A couple of the guys were apparently quite drunk by the end of it. I didn’t notice in the play but I felt like we weren’t firing on all cylinders. Likely because of the strength of the enemy or the damage we took early on. I’m guessing something dramatic is going to happen to kick-off the second half of the campaign. Either way, I watched a few 618 Fishing YouTube videos that Meat Man suggested before getting to sleep somwhere around half eleven. It was a big day of doing what I wanted to do, with a sprinkle of work. Made me think about what people who can’t work do in a lockdown. Wild times we’re in eh?

Fool Day

I made a critical error this morning. I set my alarm for quarter after six to make sure that I was up early enough to get to ready for an outing. Today I am going to my old farm to drop off some stuff, borrow a vacuum and generally catch up with Gerbs. I am used to getting there at eight to start the day so set my alarm to accomodate that plan. But I recalled that they don’t start until later and even then they aren’t going there regularly in the winter so we could have picked anytime at all. I also forgot that the alarm was set so it suprised me. Essentially I could have slept an extra hour than I got. I’ll survive. I tried to delay to time my arrival for half eight. I got myself a McBreakfast, something apparently I do each time I leave the house now. I was there first and discovered that they had started construction on their second coverall. I brought the drone with me, hoping for a chance to fly it. There was quite a breeze but I put it up anyways. I was able to snap a couple pictures before the wind started to blow it away. Actually! I had to get it down near the ground before I could get control back. Having an ultra light version is good for the lack of regulations but not great if there is a breeze. The coverall is only part of the signficant upgrades that have been happening since I left. They are installing a new seed packager, they are taking over the house which has been transformed by the landlord into offices and boardrooms. They are getting a new, state of the art, planter. They are getting a serious new sprayer. And the list goes on. These upgrades are to bring the equipment up closer to what our US colleagues are working with. I guess the disparity between the two groups was getting so wide that it was screaming out on some spreadsheets somewhere. Makes me realize how much we were accomplishing with the equipment we had. Our workload in that team was always the highest in the company and we had out of date gear to deliver it with. And we did. Makes one kinda proud of the effort while being kinda jealous of all the new toys. My former boss happened by when stopping to review progress on the offices so we caught up with him briefly, from a distance.

Next I took a quick side trip to specific LCBO to get some specific items. They didn’t have the bonus item I wanted and I didn’t have athe right date for when I needed these items. Turns out I was a week too soon. It was good that I arrived when I did as there was a lineup of ten or more trying to get into the store when I left. I went home from there and started to deal with the fire of the morning and to fan the flames of the fires I started. I had used the delay delivery function of Outlook to send some messages during the time that I knew I would be out. I didn’t want to miss my three hour annoyance timeline. It was only a short while before I ducked out for lunch. That consisted of Campbell’s Chunky Beef soup and pizza buns while being on the phone the whole time. After lunch I had some time blocked to work on building two slides for the big NA meeting on Monday. Then I had a call with a wholesaler and a couple check-in’s with colleagues. The day ended with a long call to review engagement results within my small Canadian functional team. There are eight of us but we’ve only all met once before, for the same purpose previously. It was an open dialogue and we all jumped in at least once. Scrambled for a few minutes afterwards to close out my week but my IT systems stroked out for a few hours so I called it shortly after five. I went to the kitchen and combed through my original morning glory plant looking for seed pods. I got a decent little harvest.

I didn’t eat the seeds for dinner, instead I made a Stouffer’s Bistro Crustini, Steak and Cheese panini and had two granola bars for dessert. It felt like half a meal but that’s all I wanted to do. I need to knock back my portions anyways. I was lacking the motivation to have a proper meal, didn’t want to put in the effort and there was nothing on the meal board to drive me. After cleaning up I started watching an hour long video and before the end I found myself in my bed. I closed everything down at eight and fell asleep watching the next video only minutes after eight. I woke up briefly at ten to pee and then was out.

Only Remember the Ending

Wednesday was a big day so I started it in a big way. I was up early and starting to feel like my sleep is getting back on track. Getting to sleep ahead of eleven, closer to ten and waking up ahead of seven is what I’m after and we’re slowly tracking that way. Hot shower seemed to wash away some of the stress I’ve been carrying. Breakfast helped. More eating of my emothions here but my usual breakfast supplemented with some of the leftover breakfast potatoes and some raspberry lemonade. It’s been a month since they’ve had blueberry lemonade, my preferred drink. I do miss it.

Work got going and I had a couple of hours to get my affairs in order before starting. I was at it early again and cleaned up some big database changes before getting into a patch of meetings. I met with a small group to discuss some messaging for our country and outlined some slides for a big NA meeting coming up. Next was my big meeting with the German participants. It was super awkward. Essentially there is one dude who wouldn’t try the solution that was proposed and was deadset against it. We made him try it on the call and it worked, and will work. He apologized but that doesn’t get me time back. In the process he discovered a couple more things that were wrong and now we have to wait for that to get fixed. I’ve never been so frustrated with a colleague. We asked for this process to be tested in February but instead we’re in the heat of the battle and still troubleshooting these mistakes. I can’t and won’t say more. I had a follow-up call from a few folks on the call asking where they could help and suggesting other things to push on. It was an intense morning. I didn’t have time for much of a lunch so grabbed a couple pizza buns and hustled back to work. Had another meeting in the afternoon and then had to pull and organize data to make figures for my slides. That part of the day went fairly well. I sent emails every three hours to the team that have my fate in their hands. I’m going to be so difficult to deal with that they’ll do my piece just to get rid of me. Hopefully next year they are proactive so they don’t have to suffer me. I powered down close to six and made a cardboard pizza for dinner. Adding some nacho blend shredded cheese and Cholula really made it into something much better.

I watched some YouTube and then started getting prepped for the big night ahead. This was going to be an escape I’ve been looking foward to for a few days now. Wednesday is D&D night and if you recall from last week, we’re in the midst of a big battle. I spent about a half hour getting ready for the call. I got water, opened a few pages on the Mini for quick reference. Got my book with some bookmarks on key sections and re-wrote my notes from the previous session into something more neat and tidy. I’d love to have another screen with a OneNote situation to gather my notes, that would be ideal. I took my pre-game dump and tested my system before signing in at half seven. We started in earnest at eight. Afterwards, we were told that this is the halfway point of the campaign so it’s a boss level type encounter. The session was a success and we all had fun. We hassled the DM quite a bit but in good fun. It was awesome. My character stuck the killing blow. I was not aware that I was required to describe the scene and had to wing it. I’ll have to be more ready in the future. This was my first time killing anything in the game so it was a pretty memorable encounter. I was pretty jacked when we finished at ten so I couldn’t get to sleep until after eleven. No regrets about that though.

Intense Tuesday

I woke up close to seven and get ready to rock. Today had a hot waffle iron full of meetings on the docket. I made my usual breakfast fare. I was heavily considering the walk, even had the shoes in my had but I bailed on it like a coward. I do really hate myself for that. I had such nice momentum going a couple of weeks ago then I stopped suddenly one day because it rained and that’s been it. Frustrating. I was at work extra early today, at half seven I was in the saddle. I scheduled a larger meeting with some key players to help smash my professional hurdle, it will be tomorrow as I had to account for German time zones. Let the anticipation begin. For the day at hand I had a meeting with my team and needed to bring them up to speed. I wrote out a good amount ahead of time of what I needed to cover. There were notifications going out to my contacts about seed and with each that went out I got about three questions. I was buzzing for most of the morning, I felt like a hummingbird, just ripping around getting after it. I’d sent and received a mountain of emails and calls before reading my speech to the team. For lunch I had a Campbell’s vegetable soup with two pizza buns. It was unremarkable but effective. The afternoon I did some preparation for an upcoming request and worked through some other issues before a long, crucial meeting. I spent some time sorting and prioritizing smaller issues with a colleague afterwards. The list isn’t getting much shorter and I’ve got a lot of balls in the air right now. It’s definitely a stressful time of year. The fall and deployment are busy and intense but I have control of things and I’m quite comfortable handling the process. The spring is a different animal. I have control over almost nothing and mainly act as a middle man. Getting ragged from one side and having to continually rag the other. It’s not my favourite part of the job. When it goes smooth or close to that then it can be sorta fun. Last year had a lot of issues with COVID, this year is systems issues. Either way, my tenure has been rife with issues. By the end of the day I was feeling pretty gassed, nervous and frustrated. I felt a little defeated again too. I feel like I’m letting my customers down and I know that not everyone else is feeling that. With little energy to cook and a still blank meal board I went weird with it. I microwaved four sausage patties and a pair of english muffins. I made a couple of stackers out of that with a generous portion of sriracha ranch dipping sauce and some sliced cheese. On the side I put in a sack of breakfast potatoes in the air fryer. I took half now and put the other half in the fridge for later use. I plated it up and cracked a Dr Pepper alongside my water. It was a lot. I think for this meal in particular I was definitely eating my feelings. When I look back now at that time a few hours ago, emotionally I was not in a healthy place and that meal was the result. I think I was looking to eat so much it felt like I was getting a hug for my stomach. That makes no sense but it isn’t a good habit. Most people would exercise to squash those feelings, I eat. It’s part of my problem.

After destroying this meal and using the pop as dessert I made my way to my lair and started up FS19. Today I went for extra stimulation and had the Mini propped up on the side rolling through YouTube videos as I played. I’ve got the biggest tractor and cultivator in the game. I also bought a huge sprayer to pull but it’s a bit of a bugger as you have to keep an eye on it to do a good job. Left alone the helper is bound to hit things or only do half the field to avoid hitting things. It’s a trifle annoying. My operation is getting big now, I’ll have to consider consolidating fields to make it manageable. I kept at that until nearly ten, when I cashed in for the day.

Fast Monday

Monday started better than most Mondays. I woke up naturally from a long, thick sleep. I debated but eventually chose to follow my shower with a breakfast over a walk. I was still feeling a touch full from the previous night but for some reason I felt this was the proper decision. It allow me to start work promptly at eight. I suspect that if I could get myself waking up earlier I got eat and walk and still start at eight. That is my goal, let’s call it long term. In regards to work, things were very quiet on Monday morning, much too quiet for me having slammed the panic button on Friday afternoon. It was definitely too quiet for what I needed so I started mixing it up and making sure that I was heard. I’m trying to overcome a big hurdle in my professional world and I’m not convinced I’m getting the support I need. The morning was mostly meetings and so was the afternoon but where I had little holes in the schedule I blasted out emails all over the place. I did take an early break for lunch with some scheduled over my usual dining time. I scarfed down a bowl of Campbell’s Chunky Pepper Steak and Potato soup with a BBQ Chicken Crustini from Stouffers. It was more filling than I bargained for. By the end of the day, seed was starting to move to customers, finally I was able to get some started. It has been a really frustrating start to the growing season for me. I capped off my day by checking the meal board and only seeing last week’s list. I guess nobody updated it for me. I needed something quick and easy and settled on another Crustini, Mozzarella and Meatball. A very lame dinner. I hustled down to the lair to get a move on FS19. That was what happened for the remainder of the evening. Admittedly I’ve started to regress to former habits. The one other note is that I watched the Leafs on the Mini while I was playing, they lost in OT to the Oilers, just to add to my disappointment for the day.

Satisfying Sunday

I woke up naturally at seven this morning. I was feeling worlds better than yesterday when I got up. That feeling was enhanced greatly when I checked the scores from the previous night. A couple weeks ago I told the boys just once I’d like to wake up Sunday morning and see that the Leafs had come back in a game I’d given up on and pulled out a victory. Well, they must have been listening. They came back late in teh third and ended up winning in overtime. Must have been exciting to watch! Anyways, I was down in the kitchen by eight. My STL sister had indicated that she was making her perogies in the air fryer now. Putting them in for eight minutes at 400F and flipping them once halfway through. I’m always looking for a new way to spin a classic so I tried it out. It worked very well. I dumped part of the frozen bag in the basked after preheating. There were some blow outs but they looked good and were soft and supple on the inside while being hot and fluffy inside. I added some nacho blend cheese and sriracha ranch dipping sauce. I garnished with some dried parsley for effect. The were tastier than they looked, and they looked damn tasty!

My next move was laundry and to watch Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I’ve only seen it once since it came out and wanted to have another go. Again, tears were shed during the final battle. I even yelled out at one point. I guess I can’t watch movies in public anymore. When it had ended I put on the Kylo Ren theme and got myself pretty pumped up walking around with a hood on. I took some time to work on Musings and get the drafts that had piled up over the course of this past stupid week published for everyone to see. Next I got myself caught up all the way on my MSC challenges. I had a few days to cover. While I played I listened to some epic music from some iconic films. Really relaxing ambient music. When I finished that it was nearly three. I ate some Jalapeno and Cheese Doritos and a Dr Pepper as a snack. I took a run at HomeScapes and got through a number of levels before hitting a wall. I went for a walk at this point. On the way back I stopped at the mail and found my newest pair of drawers waiting for me. The print is called Nugs and Kisses from MeUndies. I thought it was pretty funny and needed a new pair.

Too bad I didn’t get them sooner I could have included them in this round of laundry and wear them this week. I didn’t feel like having at the boat or reading so I sparked up FS19 to continue my quest to get the biggest tractor and cultivator available. In the end I pulled it off. Biggest of most iron now. Guess I need more fields to justify it. I was in bed shortly after ten.