We handled it OK

 Wordle 285 5/6

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Yesterday morning as we were getting ready, our after-school care, a nanny/babysitter who watches the kid and some others, called to cancel due to emergency. This is a particularly bad day for it because the kid's school ends early on Wednesday.

The morning at work was normal enough. One meeting, productive. A few emails and discussion after it. Then T. and I went to pick up the kid. We left at the last minute. She dropped me off at a grocery store halfway home and took the kid to the Tidal Basin for kite-flying and cherry-blossom-admiring. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack the kite string. Whoops! (In my defense, for the new kite, it the kite and the string were separate. For our old one, the string lived inside the kite's bag, but that kite was blown out to sea last year. Also whoops.) I gather that they still had fun, and I know T. got a lot of good pictures. Meanwhile I went grocery shopping, then walked home and worked for another couple hours. Then I went jogging. (2.4 miles in 25 minutes. Oh well, I can't go on setting personal records indefinitely.) 

T. and the kid got back just a few minutes after I came in, sweaty. I took a shower and then took the kid, the kite, and the kite string to the park across the street. The field was occupied for a while, but we got the kite up in the air for a few minutes before we had to go. T. and I had a meeting online with the school administration and parents. It wound up being 90 minutes of meet-and-greet and discussion of principles, with nothing actually decided or announced, nor even a schedule of when we can expect things to be decided or announced. 

I made dinner, with the cooking overlapping with the end of that meeting.

Rough day

 Wordle 284 5/6

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Yesterday we drove the kid to school. We made it a point to leave the house earlier. I'm not sure we were any faster from start to finish, i.e. traffic was better, but at least we had more leeway for the dropoff.

I had five meetings scheduled for yesterday for work. By the standards of what I normally have to deal with, that's horrible. Three of them overlapped with each other (which is a mixed blessing!), and the first ended early because so many people had the same conflict as me, but still, it was a busyish day. 

But T. had it even worse than me by most measures, so I don't want to complain. The last meeting for both of us was school-related. There's a meeting tonight about problems with the school administration and there was a pre-meeting phone call to prep about our concerns. We were kind of stepping on each others' toes during that and while getting ready to get the kid.

While the kid had her swimming lesson, I jogged, so that was nice. (3 miles in 28 minutes, 10 seconds, 3.11 miles in 30 minutes - better again!) I had recently got some advice about breathing while working out and wasn't able to apply it, but I also wasn't exactly having problems in that area, so can't complain. One thing was frustrating, though. After forgetting things over and over again (example one, example two, and I'm not sure I've mentioned it but I've also forgot a water bottle and some other things), today I was very careful to get everything I needed, and jogging went fine. But when I went to get cleaned up, I found that of the three showers, the one I usually used was occupied, the second one had no body wash, and the third had no shower! The fixture was missing! I saw exposed wiring nearby, maybe they took it out to prevent an electrocution hazard? So I rinsed off but couldn't wash until I got home. It's annoying that I can do everything right and still have problems, I guess...

Dinner was salad and chimichurri rice from the freezer. Weird and boring, but big enough, and easy, and it uses up some stuff we've had for a while. 

I slept through the night last night. The cat spent the night out. This is probably not a coincidence. This morning I found him in a hissing match with a stray/outside cat. I had to shoo the other cat away to get my cat to come in and have breakfast.

What reading means to me

 Wordle 283 5/6

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We drove the kid to school yesterday because it was so cold. Today we're really going to try to do so earlier in hopes that it helps with traffic, because it has just been terrible for a while.

Work was slow yesterday. Can't complain. I had two meetings, but one was relatively simple, just us meeting with a team about getting some documents started, and the other was more simple than that, at least from my perspective. In my free time I wrote a lot of the post below.

The kids with the nanny came over to our house after school while waiting for the other parents to pick them up. Listening to them play was hilarious at one point. Background: we've recently let our daughter play with an old iPod. Its battery is dead, it only works when plugged in, and only has the games on it that T. downloaded 5+ years ago, but she has fun with those games. Yesterday afternoon she was bragging to her friends. "Want to see my phone? I have a real phone!" she said.

"How do you have a phone? You're not even 16!" was the reply. 

That was an impressive amount of wrongness in 20 words.

Musing

Well, isn't that a pretentious title...

Inspired by this little sitcom event, and reading this FAQ by/about an author I've enjoyed in the past, and nearing the end of my reading list, have all got me thinking about what books and reading mean to me. 

Reading was my biggest single hobby until I was 19, probably. For most of the following 20 years, computer games and/or Magic: the Gathering replaced it. I'd read when the latest installment of a series I liked came out, or when stuck commuting by bus, and entertain myself by playing games otherwise. About 10 weeks ago I quit a computer game without an adequate replacement. Since then I've been reading more. What am I getting out of it? 

As for the books themselves, since the new year I've read Sixth Watch, Project Hail Mary, The Good, the Bad, and the Smug, Old Man's War, and books six through nine of Transmetropolitan. Plus most of WoT, although those were a lot faster to reread than they were to read. I'm currently halfway through A Deadly Education. (I'm loving it so far.) All the Marvels is waiting for me, the only nonfiction book on the list. Since starting this effort I've bought The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Lightning Rod. I think the last will be the only one I don't finish by April 19, and I wouldn't count it anyway under the circumstances.

But other than specific books checked off a list, what am I getting out of it?

Honestly, not all that much. I enjoyed the books I'm reading/have read, but so what? There are lots of ways to pass the time. I enjoyed browsing the bookstore. It's fun to play free-association with tomes, find something that carries the promise of novelty, and leave with one book or six purely at random. For me it's a lot more fun to get books that way than by downloading them. I don't like trying to figure out which ads can be ignored and which are helpful, or dealing with decision paralysis because there's too much information online about any book, or using the finicky interface of an e-reader. Unfortunately I don't like clutter, which paper books contribute to and e-readers don't. If I keep reading at this pace after I finish my current list, I'll have to dust off my Kindle, or start going to the library a lot, or start giving books away aggressively. 

Also, I'm taking stuff in, but I'm not creating anything, not putting anything out there. (I'm writing here and doing a little elsewhere but it's stuff that's definitely not for publication.) What I'm reading is entertaining, but it's not edifying, thought-provoking, etc. Nor even an exercise of creativity or mental challenge on my part. Maybe I should try books like that a bit but I know what I like. I read The Big Sort with a book club in 2018 and it was a struggle. I don't exactly feel bad about not reading stuff like that, I have a job and a family and don't see anything wrong with a hobby that's merely fun... but it does mean I'd feel less bad going back to Warcraft. If reading is essentially just a waste of time, why not waste time in a different way? 

Maybe I should be writing more, or writing things of more general interest? I'm definitely not trying to make a career of it, but it's possible to do creative stuff for fun.

I need a rest after the weekend

 Wordle 282 6/6

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Ugh. One of those words. 

Yesterday we ordered bagel sandwiches from Bullfrog Bagels instead of making anything for lunch. (This is three weekend days in a row now without something fancy. Wow.)

Once again, we just hung out around the house in the morning except for walking over to get the bagels, did minor cleaning, and played with the kid. In the afternoon the kid had another friend's birthday party, at coincidentally the same place as the previous one. Today the weather was even colder. In addition to that, her roller skates were digging into her skin somehow. (Bad fit? Cheap construction? Overuse? At this point I'm going with the second option, I think I've fixed the problem with a pair of scissors, but who knows.) We were the first to leave. 

After that, we dropped her off at a friend's house for a couple hours. T. and I cleaned a little bit and relaxed. I got started on dinner around 4:30 because we were expecting company around 5. Dinner was chicken roasted with olives and tomatoes, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. Easy recipes individually and good to scale up. They turned out OK, I guess. 

Sleep Issues

I didn't mention it at the time, but the night before last, the cat asked to go out at around 2 in the morning. I kicked him out quickly. Yesterday morning I found cat pee on the dining room floor. (Still better than any rug, but worse than the tub would have been.) His litter box was pristine. Maybe he refused to use the box I bought a couple weeks ago because it came with a lid? Who knows. We removed the lid and made sure he was aware of it.

Last night he got up at a little before 5 AM. I let him out, and as a reward for waiting so late, let him eat first. I haven't seen any signs of cat pee anywhere it shouldn't be and it looks like the litter box might even have been used, although I haven't checked yet this morning. So I guess taking the lid off is what did it. (I hope.) Woo hoo.

The kid has a busy social calendar

 Wordle 281 4/6

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That was crazy. In hindsight there are some common letters in it, and I made a mistake in my third guess and included a letter I already knew was wrong, but still, to have absolutely no letters in the first two...

Yesterday's breakfast was easier than usual on the weekends. I do pancakes and bacon pretty regularly on Saturdays and scrambled eggs and home fries on Sunday, but yesterday we had some coffee cake to use up, so I just friend eggs to go with it. (Then again, last week we did something similar, and we don't always have potatoes lying around. Not that regularly.)

In the morning we did some laundry and other chores around the house. The kid threw a tantrum when we asked her to help out, but we explained that growing up means helping out, and threatened her with missing the events planned for later in the day, and in the end we got some useful participation out of her. 

A little after noon, we walked a bunch of stuff over to the dry cleaners. It was only a walk either way, but we got to scout out traffic, which was horrible due to the Rock and Roll Marathon, among other events going on yesterday. Despite that, we drove to a playdate for the kid's classmates at the Field at RFK. She had fun, and we got to meet some of her classmates' parents for the first time in person, which was nice. Then, to a belated birthday part of a friend of the kid's. It was at a roller skating rink. The kid is getting good on them. I was miserably gold during all this, it was 50 degrees, cloudy, and very windy, but the kid was having fun. 

After that, a friend of the kid's came over to play for about an hour while I made dinner. Pork chops and broccoli for me, and because want to respect the kid's vegetarianism for now but I didn't think of anything else for her, a microwavable paneer tikka masala.

I'm going to have to stop fearing Fridays

 Wordle 280 3/6

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Yesterday I biked the kid to school. We were fine but there are still a lot of crazy drivers out there. Work was simple enough. I finally got around to the security refresher training I had been sitting on for a few weeks. That second weekly project review meeting was fine. In the afternoon someone reached out to me about the task I did all that detective work on. I'm glad I was able to respond that I had started working on it. 

In the afternoon I went jogging. In addition to the usual route I scouted out a few ways to add to the workout, two athletic fields where I hoped I might be able to lengthen my run by running a few laps. The second one also has calisthenics equipment set up between it and a children's playground nearby. Unfortunately neither athletic field looks good. The first seemed to be locked up, the second was in use by a school at the time. I can still think about calisthenics, I guess.

We tried to pick up the kid from school earlier than usual so we could take her to the library before gymnastics, but between traffic, and a fun talent show going on at the school that the kid didn't want to leave, there was only about 5 minutes to spare. So T. took the kid to class while I parked. Then we went to the bookstore. We got a present for the kid's friend who's having a birthday party tomorrow, and also Bunnicula for the kid (she's ambivalent about chapter books; I have fond memories of this one) and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (a classic I've never read; this doesn't count as part of my backlog of books but I wouldn't be surprised if I finish it in the next month anyway). After we had picked those out and T. was still browsing, I noticed the time and that we still had other plans. "Why don't I go grocery shopping, and you can browse more?" I said.

"No, I'm ready, I'll come with you," she replied. 

So we headed to the register. I noticed we had books for me, the kid, and the kid's friend, but not her. So I pointed out that it was a bit weird to put it on the joint account if we weren't getting something for everyone. "Well, I might have got myself something, but you were rushing me!" she said. 

In the end I went to the grocery store ahead of her and she kept browsing. I found almost everything on our list before she caught up to me. She didn't get anything, she just wanted to browse. We got out of there right on time for the end of the kid's class. She had hurt her knee in a fall. (Not doing a gymnastics move: she was running for her water bottle and tripped.) So she asked me to carry her to dinner. We went to a fast casual burger place in the neighborhood. At bedtime it was my turn to read to her but she wasn't interested in Bunnicula. Oh well, maybe next time.

Not as busy as it looked

 Wordle 279 3/6

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Yesterday morning it was a bit cold and looked wet, like it had rained recently and might again soon, so we drove the kid to school. I wish we had biked. Traffic was terrible both ways, and it didn't actually rain at all. We would have been fine biking through a puddle. 

I had four meetings for work yesterday, which sounds horrifying to me but really wasn't that bad. At the first, I was only taking notes (another iteration of this), and narrowly focused on action items, which wasn't too demanding. At the second I was just listening. Another team member was doing all the talking; I was just providing backup. At the third, I actually did have to do some talking, but it wasn't hard, it was just explaining the usual documentation process and trying to get it started for a document that was stalled a long time ago. And the fourth was just an all hands. I chimed in to say "thanks" for something but that was it. 

I also went jogging between the 3rd and 4th meeting. Good for me. 

The kid had her weekly music class. I brought A Deadly Education and started it for real. (I had just barely started the night before, at bedtime, but I was tired and it was a weird intro, I basically absorbed nothing.) Fun book so far. A little bit like Harry Potter from the perspective of a Slytherin. Back here I mentioned a reading list, a backlog of books I had got somehow and meant to read but hadn't got around to them yet, and this was the last fiction book on that list at the time. I'm not sure if I should also count one nonfiction book I had then, or the Brad Meltzer book I bought here. (I'm leaning towards yes to the first and no to the second, since the Meltzer book is the second in a series, but it doesn't really matter until April 19...)

I normally call my parents on the weekend, but yesterday was my dad's birthday, so we talked by video chat after dinner. Nice to catch up. They're doing well. Didn't sound like a party but a generally good day. The kid had fun doing gymnastics and similar stuff to put on a show while we talked.

Dinner was chili (from a can, boring but easy) and the rest of the salad from the night before. T. put the kid to bed. During and after that there was a meeting with a parent group about how the PTA-like group could do to be more inclusive than usual, or than it used to be.

What a mess

 Wordle 278 2/6

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Yesterday I biked the kid to school. It was uneventful for us.

My team had a monthly team process improvement meeting scheduled for 10 yesterday. Right before I took the kid to school, we decided to push it back a week because there was nothing really urgent to discuss, and some confusion/disagreement over when it "should" be scheduled for. Around 9, the subject matter expert for a document I was destined to work on reached out to me about a meeting, which was scheduled for 10. How convenient! ... but soon he reached out again to say that there was some confusion, the 10 AM meeting wasn't the one that would make sense for me to be at (although it was related?), I should go to one from 1 to 3 PM instead. And then at 1 he let us know that it was pushed back to 2. From 2 to 3 or from 2 to 4? I never found out, because at 2 I was told it was cancelled. He's doing all this with Teams chat and a phone call rather than actually updating a calendar invite. I wonder about this guy.

In between I got some exercise. It was in the low 50s and rainy outside, so I didn't want to go jogging, but after missing it yesterday I wanted to do something. So instead I joined T. on her work's Zoom exercise class, at 11. I tried it once last summer but yesterday's was more exercise than that. In hindsight I shouldn't be surprised; there are many types of classes. Less aerobic than jogging, but more hips and abs workout. I'm still a bit sore now. Good for me/us. 

I also finished the ninth Transmetropolitan collection. Years ago I had read most of the series but got sidetracked and stalled. A few months ago - November, maybe? - I saw the seventh, eighth, and ninth, in a used bookstore and thought, hey, I liked that, I might as well finish the series. They were sitting by my bedside from then until now, under other parts of my backlog. Yesterday in the middle of the afternoon I finished the ninth... and found a cliffhanger. There was a 10th collection all along! Aargh!

We expected the kids to come to our place at around 1, but there was a mix-up with the nanny, so they went to a different kid's house. 

Dinner was a salad, and a pasta with a new garlic/chickpea recipe. It wasn't bad. 

Once again the kid was in a snit most of the time. I'm not sure why.

I'm stupid

 Wordle 277 3/6

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Yesterday I biked the kid to school. We got there with 5 minutes to spare.

Work was fine. Two meetings, neither one too busy. Still trying to finish existing tasks but no big new ones coming in and still don't have what we need to close most existing ones out. Not great, not terrible. 

I posted something on Reddit that became surprisingly popular. ("Surprisingly": 24 hours ago I was at about 62,000, from about eight years of discussions of World of Warcraft, comic books, and movies. After that yesterday's popular comment I'm at about 75,000.) Nothing you'll see on Buzzfeed, let alone the news, and I won't link to it because I like to keep this stuff separate, but it was a new feeling. Kind of weird.

The weather was nice. I considered going jogging in the afternoon, but I decided against it because I'd be able to do so while the kid was in swim class. We left for that around 5. I brought a change of clothes, of course. I also brought my towel, shower sandals, and a water bottle, each of which I've forgotten in the past but got by without. I forgot my fucking sneakers. Those, I really do need. So I didn't go jogging then. Ugh. I still went biking so it's not like I got zero exercise yesterday, but still, whoops.

After we got home the kid was kind of difficult. The trigger was apparently her being unable to do certain gymnastics moves, either because she was freshly cleaned at the pool shower or because the air was cooler or drier than usual. That got her frustrated. I did less emotional labor to comfort or divert her than I normally might because I was busy making dinner (had to be faster than usual, of course, because we get home later than usual on swimming nights). T. was listening to a parent group meeting about a teacher appreciation event, so she didn't have much patience for the kid either. Oh well. There was no full-blown tantrum, she got to bed roughly on time, and we didn't even let her get away with too much bad behavior. Can't complain.

Not much to say

 Wordle 276 5/6

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Biked the kid to school yesterday. I did a little grocery shopping on the way home and the whole thing still took less than an hour. Yay, biking.

Work was fine. Lots of emails about existing tasks and last week's new reporting system, no new problems worth mentioning. Two meetings but little participation required in either. My inbox is getting away from me again due to those new tasks that the requestor called urgent but isn't treating that way, but so far it's still below 300.

Around 3:30 I went jogging. I wouldn't normally think of rush hour starting that early but I definitely had to wait for traffic to cross streets more often than usual. (Despite that, I did it in 24 minutes. Woo hoo.) We got the kid around 5 and traffic seemed worse than usual then as well, although it's harder to be sure, because it's always bad then. Time to start picking her up by bike too!

After getting home, the kid played with her friend around the corner for about an hour. Dinner was tortellini (her favorite) and Brussels sprouts (she'll put up with them). But I grated some cheese to put on them and she objected to that. Ugh, kids.

Incongruous nostalgia

 Wordle 275 2/6

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Woo hoo. The hardest part was thinking of any word at all that fit the letter pattern I had at the start.

Yesterday I left the house at the crack of 9 to get eggs. Breakfast was much simpler than usual on weekends: fried eggs and the last of biscuits from a kit that T. and the kid made Thursday.

Later in the morning I took the kid to the park. She practiced with her new roller skates some more. She's taking to them fast - not actually setting speed records, but enjoying them and more comfortable with them than with ice skates or her bike, for whatever it's worth. Meanwhile I called my parents and sister. (Thursday was my sister's birthday and I didn't call her. I suck. I can only blame how rough it was.) No big news but it was nice to catch up. 

We had a quick lunch at home. In the early afternoon we went to the Because concert at the Kennedy Center. We drove there and looked for parking within walking distance. It took a little driving in circles but we found something eventually. It was a good show, although it taxed the kid's attention span. After that we walked around a light show/photography exhibit they had, juxtaposing global warming scenes with scenes of working in the fossil fuel industry. E.g. a melange of images of rivers running through glaciers which would look pretty if not for the fact that it indicates that they're melting, and tropical storms and wildfires in progress and their aftermath, and workmen incredibly dirty because they're covered in coal dust. The kid is already aware of environmental issues in some sense. I wasn't sure how much I had to explain to her about capitalism, developing economies, and other stuff. 

Then we drove to Arlington to see our friend C. (Maybe I'll edit this later and make up pseudonyms instead of all the initials I've used, since they aren't specific enough.) Driving there I made something like three wrong turns in a row. Directions were unclear and it's an unfamiliar route to us, but still, ugh. I felt like I needed a drink more than usual after we got there. We got there a little after 4 and hung out at her place for a couple hours. The kid drew in multiple activity books/sheets while the three grownups chatted. We had dinner reservations at Bangkok 54 at 6:30. The last two members of our party joined us about an hour late, but we didn't wait for them to start eating.

The kid got to bed more than an hour after bedtime. 

Sleep issues

The cat went to bed with us last night, and asked to go out around 1:45 this morning, like clockwork. At least he's learning that he doesn't get to have a snack between waking us up and going out. I don't know what he's going to do when next winter comes. I also don't know what the problem is; his litter box is pristine. (The simple solution is, put him in the litter box when he wakes us up instead of putting him outside.) Something to ask about at his next vet appointment I guess. That reminds me, he's due for one soonish.

Musing

I enjoyed going to the Kennedy Center partly because it's near my old office. Coincidentally, I wore my black leather loafers, which I've worn maybe as little as three times in the past year. (Too warm for boots but too cold for sandals, and I didn't think my sneakers would be comfortable for ~6 hours either, so...) I feel nostalgic and weird about feeling nostalgic. My desk in that old office was in a cubicle in the basement. The building was a faceless concrete office building owned by or on a long-term lease to the government. The neighborhood is a mix of similar buildings, George Washington University buildings, and the sort of eatery that caters to college students and office workers. A soulless, boring place by most definitions. Just to make it even worse, walking between the Kennedy Center and where we happened to find parking, we passed a dozen homeless camps. 

But I miss it! It was my soulless boring place! For eight hours a day, four days a week, I could be either focused on technical documents or an anonymous face in a boring crowd. The modern rat race, with food trucks, smartphones, and support for commuting by bike. Then when I left that neighborhood I'd go back to being a husband, father, and neighbor. Now I have to switch back and forth between those roles and mentalities every five minutes.

Light errands

 Wordle 274 4/6

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Yesterday's breakfast was pancakes, as is our usual routine. Lazy Saturday morning, also like usual. 

We had plans for the kid to see a friend she hadn't seen in a while, but her friend was sick so we had to cancel. Instead we ran some errands. T. returned some shoes she bought that didn't fit, stopped by the Apple store in the Pentagon City mall for some troubleshooting, and the kid has expressed interest in roller skating so we went to get her some of those. That's not a lot of errands in raw numbers, but the kid and I basically wound up walking around the whole mall, looking for roller skates and killing time while T. was in the Apple store. (Never found roller skates there. We went to the Target in Alexandria instead.) It was interesting to see the mall. Was it really the first time we had been there in 2 years? I'm not sure. Things looked surprisingly normal there.

For some crazy reason we chose to do all this in Virginia, instead of DC. Traffic was worsened by those "people's convoy" right-wing nuts. Luckily only worsened by about 10 minutes or so in each direction. Good thing this batch is incompetent.

We got home around 5. The kid met a friend at the park. (She had to wear her new roller skates, of course, never mind that she had no idea how to use them and her friend didn't have them on... She took them off and put normal shoes on 2 minutes after getting there.) T. supervised the kid and chatted with the friend's mom while I went back home. I managed to cut myself on a piece of broken plastic in an old card holder (this sort of thing). I moved the laundry around and got started on dinner with a bandage on my thumb. Then I brought some snacks to the girls in the park. We all left together around 6. T., the kid, and I went to our neighbor's mother's birthday party to say hi. Then I got back to cooking while T. gave the kid a little more practice skating. Dinner wound up taking a while; it wasn't on the table until after 7:15. Chicken with a vermouth caper sauce, and fried eggplant. I thought the eggplant turned out really well but the kid didn't. What a surprise. (In fact, she spat it out. We probably should have been madder about that.)

Friday was easy because Thursday was hard

 Wordle 273 5/6

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Yesterday morning the kid was still coughing, but seemed fine otherwise, so we drove her to school. Work was fine. The biweekly report was easy, if only because we did most of the work the day before. We had fewer problems or follow-ups for our team lead than I expected. Yay us, taking advantage of the extra time we asked for, I guess? Still just a tiny bit nervous. 

Around 1:30 I logged off. I went jogging soon after. Same time as two days ago but it definitely felt harder. I was wheezing by the time I got home. Maybe because the weather was a bit warmer? It was definitely in the 70s. By the time summer actually comes, I'm going to have to do this before 7 AM or not at all. Meanwhile T. worked until around 3:30. There are several problems with her job and the fact that she often has meetings Friday afternoon seems high among them.

We went to pick up the kid around 5, and then took her to gymnastics. We ran a few errands and read during her class. Afterwards we went out to dinner at Matchbox. It was warm enough to eat outside. It wasn't our very first time eating there in the past 2 years, and of course we've been eating out or getting takeout after gymnastics regularly for a while, but even so it felt overdue. Grilled cheese and fries for the kid, salad and a fig and prosciutto pizza for T. and me. Despite how healthy it might sound, I was stuffed by the time we finished. I felt like the service was slow, but then again the place was fairly busy, and maybe my expectations need to be recalibrated for this sort of thing?

Nine and a half hours

 Wordle 272 3/6

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The kid spent yesterday at home. We gave her a covid test and it was negative, but her cough and runny nose was bad enough that we felt like we couldn't send her to school. 

I mostly worked yesterday on the biweekly reports. Normally we work on that on Friday, but we asked for them a day early this week because this is when the new format of the reports go into effect. It was OK. They didn't all come in by the revised deadline (and one of them didn't even come in by the usual deadline, ugh), but they were early enough that we were able to be productive. Bad that it coincided with the kid being sick, though. I was sending emails in between playing with Star Wars figurines with her and helping her do math homework. (She normally doesn't have it, it was just because of the sick day.) T. was home too and worked less than usual due to the kid. They baked biscuits from a kit in the afternoon. 

Around 4, T. went to a political event. I got the kid in the bath and checked my email one last time. In addition to minor stuff about the reports, there was a follow-up on this card stock request. That guy had apparently missed our last email stating fairly clearly that we don't do this kind of thing at all, and asked for 900 copies, urgently. Crazy! I can say with a clear conscience that it's not our team's problem. He's in the same organization as us so I don't want to get him in trouble with his/our own management too much, but trying to find a polite way to say "this isn't our problem" was one bit of stress too much. I almost had an anxiety attack getting things done.

Dinner was beef tips (one of Trader Joe's many pre-seasoned entrees) and Italian-style zucchini (some improvisation in the recipe but my plan A would have taken too long). Then T. went to another gathering of parents at our school. The kid and I watched some Megamind before I put her to bed.

Sleep issues

No issues! Last night I put the kid to bed a bit early for obvious reasons. I think she was out by 8:15. I cleaned up a bit and went to bed myself by 8:30 or 8:45. I woke up when T. got home a little after 10, and around 4 AM due to a little snoring, but in each case I got back to sleep quickly enough. This morning I felt more rested than I had in weeks. A total of nine and a half hours in bed more than made up for a couple minor interruptions.

Yay, it's not just me?

 Wordle 271 5/6

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Day one of playing with hard mode off. Not sure if it was actually better.

Yesterday the kid was a bit sniffly in the morning, but she said she felt fine and the thermometer said she didn't have a fever, so I biked the kid to school. No problems worth mentioning with the travel. 

Work was OK overall. I sent a reminder about finishing that "urgent" task that is now over a week late and the people responsible for it don't apparently care. It generated new tasks for my teammate but no resolution to my request. This is ridiculous. I also finished reviewing this disorganized wiki space. Hopefully we can get it cleaned up and some documents in it into the library.

The kid's school has a half-day every Wednesday. Normally she just has extra childcare Wednesday afternoon, but yesterday T. left work around 1 and spent the afternoon with her. A little after 2:30 I went for a jog. 2.4 miles in 24 minutes. Yay me. Later I went to the store for some quick grocery shopping. (I thought about biking, which would push my limits of physical activity, but I had to move the car anyway due to street sweeping.)

Dinner was a cauliflower/potato bake. I screwed up the recipe a bit but it came out edible anyway.

Sleep issues

At 4:30 this morning, snoring woke me up. I put earplugs in. At 5:07, the kid came into bed with us, coughing and sniffling. She's staying home from school today. At 5:20 a car alarm went off.

Two years in

Starting to write this on 2/6 and worked on in it in several sessions between then and now.

The Summary

The Start

For us, everything changed on Monday, March 16, 2020. The kid's school had a teacher in-service day scheduled for that day, so we had her scheduled for a sort-of-day-camp childcare at the YMCA where we regularly had swimming lessons. We felt a bit bad about that, given the pandemic all over the news, but we both thought we'd have to go to work Monday, so we felt we had no choice. But Monday morning I got word from my office that I and most other people should work from home until further notice. If I remember correctly I got that notice while on the bus to drop the kid off at the YMCA, so I just did so and went home. That night, we found that the kid had been the only kid at the YMCA. I felt bad about that but she had fun. The school had recently announced that they would moved the upcoming spring break from some time in April to that week so they could plan, so the kids would be out all week instead of just that day. That grew into remote school for the rest of that school year. 

Year One

See posts throughout 2020 for most of this. I worked a lot of half-days that spring and T. took some time off too so we could parent without just parking the kid in front of the TV. For the rest of the 2019-2020 school year, the kid's school was worksheets, YouTube videos, and a video chat or two. Pretty weird for anyone, especially for pre-K. We spent most of that summer out of town, with T.'s parents and mine. There was a roughly two-week gap in between. We tried to hunker down and socially distance intensely, something like a proper quarantine between trips. The kid spent the 2020-2021 school year in a pod. 

T. and I basically always worked in the same place unless we had to participate in meetings at the same time. When the pod wasn't in the house, we'd be at the dining room table. When it was, we'd be in the guest bedroom, on folding tables. I went into the office two or three times for a few errands but other than that have worked fully from home.

A bunch of stuff about my job changed in April 2020, which is related to the pandemic only coincidentally but feels related because of that coincidence. A bunch more changed in October.

I got the first shot of the vaccine January 4, 2021. I was lucky. My office had extra and gave them out on a first-come, first-served basis. I felt guilty taking it when so many people needed it more than me, but I figured if the people in charge were giving it out on that basis, who was I to argue? The more shots in arms, the better, I told myself. Life changed little at that point, though, because T. and the kid couldn't get theirs for months yet.

Year Two

By the spring of 2021, some kids at our school got the option to go into school some days, but we chose to stay fully remote. The pod was working better for us than the alternative at that point. The summer of 2021 was similar to the summer of 2020 with minor differences. (We visited the grandparents in reverse order, we did more fun stuff while out of the DC area than we did in in 2020, and the kid had a day camp while we were in DC instead of just playing with us.) 

I began putting more effort into exercising this spring or early summer. More on this later. 

This school year, she has been going to school in person, but masked when not eating, with testing and quarantine protocols. Parents have basically no access to the building so I know a lot less about her school this year than I did in pre-K. The kid has had probably a dozen covid tests due to exposures or suspected exposures, all negative. Despite those precautions we have missed one or two weeks due to quarantine and some friends have missed a lot more. Childcare after school in first grade has taken more planning and money than it did in pre-K because childcare is a nanny shared with another family or two rather than something hosted and supported by the school.

Around January, I started working in the guest bedroom most days, leaving the dining room table to T. Overlapping meetings and the pod are no longer problems. I have to walk a little farther to get to the kitchen, which is a mixed blessing.

What it all Means

This mess has had lots of little unpredictable effects on life.

Certain everyday items aren't everyday. 

I have a messenger bag I used to like to use, a man-purse, big enough to easily hold lunch and a novel, or hold a whole change of clothes for biking to work with only a little difficulty. I don't even know where it is at the moment, probably buried in a box at the bottom of the closet. For Christmas of 2019 T. gave me a sun lamp for my office, since my office was in the basement. The light is now in our basement, still in the box. Why would I need it around here? On the other hand, I always know where the closest mask and hand sanitizer bottles are. And the car is now an everyday item. (Although that's partly because I didn't have a bike from December through the beginning of March. As of today I have biked the kid to school at least five times in March.)

Clothes and shoes wear out more slowly. 

In the before time I had two nice button-down shirts that were formal until I ripped the sleeves on a chain-link fence. Pant cuffs get damaged easily by bike chains and shoes. I wore socks daily, of course, two pairs on days when I'd bike to work and change clothes there, and socks get holes. But these days I bike less. In the summer I don't even wear socks or shoes except when working out, just sandals.

I've become nihilistic about clothing. 

This is separate from the actual quality of my clothing. If "nihilistic" is too depressing, I could say I have freed myself from arbitrary social expectations. In the before time I'd try to save time and water by wearing button-down shirts or slacks two or three times before washing them, assuming they weren't soiled at all, but I'd never wear the same clothes two days in a row. Instead I kept track of what had been worn since last washed and tried to mix it up from one day or week to the next. 

Now? Obviously I change my t-shirt, underpants, and socks (if relevant) every day, and I don't wear anything that's noticeably dirty. But it's surprising how much following those rules permits wearing clothes multiple days between washing. Over the summer of 2021 I gave myself a rule that I'd wear a shirt with a collar every workday in the summer, because I feared how grungy I'd get otherwise. 

I'm out of shape. 

I've discussed this in detail here and in passing in many posts. Snacking is easy these days and exercise is hard. I started putting effort into getting exercise over the summer of 2021, by jogging, and in the fall of 2021 I biked the kid to school until the accident, and when it has been warm enough in February and March I've jogged again. I'm still definitely far from my peak fitness though. Even all through this time I still never found a good way to work out indoors, other than going to the gym and I can't do that often.

My social life is almost nonexistent. 

First observed here. Two years ago I had one current co-worker I was fairly close with and several others I could chat with at the water cooler, figuratively speaking. I had befriended three former co-workers. How much we saw each other depended on convenience, but still, "friends" feels accurate. T. had several friends who were basically mutual friends but she knew them before me and was closer with them than I was. I also had at least three friends that were "mine", not T.'s, and not co-workers. We had grown apart in recent years, we all had our own lives, but still, in theory we could pick it up with just a week's notice to plan something. 

Now? Picking it up with any of those three would be a lot harder. All my current co-workers are a lot more distant, literally and figuratively. I see certain parents of friends of the kid often, but at most we just exchange small talk while the kids are having fun and often do less than that. 

The cumulative effect of this adds up to almost no socializing. It's been striking as T. went to a political group event or two in early 2022, or a school parent happy hour, and I didn't.

I'm getting sick of computers.

Maybe "sick of" is putting it too strongly. I'm distressingly close to resubscribing to World of Warcraft. But I spend even more time on computers than I used to and have even more problems with them. 

At the office, I remember things working the way they're supposed to, more or less. Log in, use office programs, log out. Here I have one technical difficulty after another. This is fresh in my mind (see here for details about how bad it was), and before that it was taking 20 minutes to log on to my corporate computer, and before that I finished a massive effort to organize emails because AutoArchive doesn't work, and before that it was something else. Connecting to meetings through Teams depends on a complex relationship of ways to do it. I got a new personal computer in June 2021. It's better than the old one in most respects but the built-in microphone doesn't work well. Not just a problem for the job, also for PTA and similar meetings.

This seems worse than what my two teammates go through. I guess it might be because I work from two different rooms (therefore changing wi-fi connections) on two different computers, three if you count the current and previous personal computer, but who knows. 

Work-life balance is gone, or at least, a lot more complicated.

In the before time, on the days I went to the office, I'd go to work in the morning, stay for the allotted time (8 hours and 15-30 minutes at my current job), and go home. If one day it took me 10 minutes to get lunch and the next day it took me 20, or if I read some article in between meetings, who cares? Literally every office job has stuff like that. I've worked from home one day a week at my current job and that was a bit more fluid, but (a) that was only once a week, and (b) I still tried to stay by the computer and accessible to work for eight consecutive hours. The kid's school was just a block away, and earlier her daycare was just 5 blocks or so, so those were easy walks in the morning. Work in the evenings or weekends was a big deal. Sounds pretty healthy by American standards in my opinion.

In the past two years? Hah! Right now my routine is something like this: log in at 6:30, try to tackle something simple in the morning before or during breakfast, step away from the computer for 40-60 minutes to get the kid to school, and work and do stuff around the house until 4:30 or 5, when I'd actually log off and start parenting duties. Sounds like 9.5 hours of work or even more, right? I'm doing all this in the same house as a bunch of books, sometimes on the same computer as World of Warcraft. Sometimes I'd leave early to run errands or get some exercise and return to work afterwards. Work after 6 PM is still rare but has happened at least once this month. In the first year it was even more complicated, with the pod and health scares and before the pod even formed. I could be logged in for 11 hours and actually work 10 hours or 3.

Politics has gone from depressing to horrifying.

This is obviously not due to either the pandemic or the contract transition at work. And hey, Biden's better than Trump, so it's progress in that sense. And I've handled things better than T. And I'm not quite as despondent about our democracy as a lot of my friends are.

All that being said, living in DC on January 6 was pretty scary. Same for seeing what America's fascists are getting or have got away with.

What's next?

I think I could make things basically back to normal for me by now, if I really pushed.

Virus numbers are down. Masks are coming off, at least for the grownups. It's been weeks since the kid last was kept home from school due to covid issues. The kid's school has announced that things are going to loosen up soonish. I'm not sure I could go back to the office if I wanted but everything else seems normal. T. is making plans to go to the office in person once a week, starting in a few weeks. 

But getting back to the office now would be selfish because it would force T. to take care of the kid more without me. And commuting would take more time. And there's no regaining the people lost; most of my previous co-workers are gone and not coming back. And it would mean curtailing lots of not-work-related things I do during the workday, which I'm ambivalent about. And it's not like I actually enjoyed keeping my closet sorted, or most office chitchat, or lots of other things about the old days. 

(EDIT 3/21: I couldn't go back to the office even if I wanted to. I'm not totally sure why, I'm a bit surprised that the old space isn't available, but it's not and there's no ETA on that.) 

I miss the feeling of normalcy. The actual facts of the old days, some I miss more than others, and some of them I can get back and some I can't.

Maybe I just don't need much sleep

 Wordle 270 X/6*

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WTF. In hindsight, two or three of my guesses were less likely than the actual word, but still, those were a bad 4 letters to get stuck on early. I've turned off hard mode. 

Yesterday I biked the kid to school. It was fine. I'm still getting used to how wobbly the new bike is with her on it - not when biking, exactly, but when getting her on and off it. 

Not too much happened at work. Two meetings, both moderately productive with brief follow-ups I took care of quickly. I have one task where the ball is in my court, I chipped away at it yesterday, and I probably should have done more. Other than that I'm just waiting to hear back from people after varying numbers of reminders. 

In the middle of the afternoon I went for a walk to do a little shopping. A new cat litter box, a birthday card for my sister, and a few groceries that didn't require going into an actual grocery store. The weather was warm enough that I could do so in a t-shirt and sandals.

The kid had swim class and I jogged. 3 miles in 28 minutes, 30 seconds (10 seconds faster than last time, not that a difference that small matters). When we got home, the kid ran into a friend, and it was still light out so we shrugged and said they could play for a bit. Dinner was vegetarian fried rice from Trader Joe's. 

Sleep issues

The cat spent last night outside, so that wasn't a problem. I woke up at 4 or 4:30 for no apparent reason at all. Hot, maybe? I took my pajama top off and dozed a bit. The kid came into bed with us around 5:30, much later than usual. She managed to stay asleep when I got up.

A good Wordle score

 Wordle 269 3/6*

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Yesterday I considered biking the kid to school, but it was cold enough that we drove. I got back to find that I had a performance review in 15 minutes. It went well despite that. Not much to say. I'm doing well, or at least my supervisor thinks so. 

Work was fine otherwise. Not busy, not completely unproductive. I had a meeting at 3 and then right after that an impromptu phone call. Someone else wants us to do yet another random thing. After that I went jogging. 2.4 miles in 26 minutes. Exactly the same as last time. This is a very convenient route, with only one problematic crossing, but I wish it were a little longer. I have some friends who jog more seriously than I do, I guess I could ask them for advice...

For dinner I planned to make pasta with shrimp and tomato sauce almost homemade from scratch, but I bought the wrong thing in the store, so the sauce wasn't exactly from scratch. But it came out tasting OK.

Sleep issues

Last night we left the cat outside. I might have slept through the night if the kid didn't get up and come into bed with us around 4. I put her back into her own bed at 5. I'm not sure if I got back to sleep at all after that.

I don't want to make too much of this. No one gets a good night's sleep with a newborn, and plenty of people have multiple babies. On the other hand, we're talking about T. snoring, the kid's nightmares, and the cat, and none of those will get better on their own.

So tired

 Wordle 268 6/6*

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I'm getting sick of our cat. I don't think I've slept through the night in the past week and he's the reason more than half the time. When it's below freezing, we can't really make him stay outside, but when he's inside he wakes us up at 2 in the morning to go out. He's ostensibly nice about it, climbing up top of us and purring, but the request is unmistakable. If we ignore it, he pees in the tub. That's better than most places he could pee, I guess, but it's not great. He has a litter box, but he'll only use it if it's totally clean. Maybe it's time for me to change the litter. 

Cat aside, the kid often comes into our room at night. (It happened the night before last, in other words at around 2 AM on the 12th, and probably contributed to me being tired yesterday, and also around the same time on the 10th.) If she has a nightmare, she joins us. Hopefully it's early enough that I can just put her back to her bed after she falls asleep, or at least relaxes. If not, then I try to wake up a few minutes before my alarm goes off, so she and T. can sleep more or less peacefully for another hour.

Yesterday was tiring for other reasons too. It's funny, days with nothing planned are supposed to be relaxing, but stuck in a house with a six-year-old? At best, she plays teacher and gives us math lessons. At neutral she watches TV, which is easy, but not good parenting to let her do it indefinitely. At worst, she tries to entertain herself and throws something when she gets frustrated in a game or with an art project. Two friends of hers came over around 2, so at least they were entertaining each other, even if they were loud and frequently snacking. The last of them was here until around 5:30. A quite long playdate by our standards. 

For dinner I made a risotto with eggplant and zucchini. Experimenting with vegetarian meals. It was OK. I think it could have been spicier but the kid is opposed to flavor.

Just to make things worse, the night before last something started beeping at like 3 AM. It sounded like a low-battery alert on a smoke or CO alarm, but we couldn't pinpoint it. Last night it happened again. It kept beeping until around 6:45 in the morning - long enough to bother us, ending just in time to keep us from investigating. 

As good as any unstructured day

 Wordle 267 5/6*

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Yesterday was fine. The kid was well-behaved despite how much of it was unstructured. There was a freak snowstorm. Only about an inch, but anything is remarkable in mid-March in this area, especially after how warm it has been for the past few weeks. In the late morning, T. took the kid to the park to play in the snow while I did the laundry. I might have joined them when things were ready but they didn't last long out there. The kid drew a little in the early afternoon and we made a fort with blankets and pillows upstairs.

A friend of hers had a birthday party planned for yesterday in a park, but due to the weather it was pushed back a little bit and moved indoors. T. and I dropped the kid off, then we went to Costco. We only had a shopping list of two items (pasta and pancake mix), so naturally we got over a dozen (a little fruit, some gardening tools, cat flea treatment...). We had a little downtime between dropping that stuff off at home and getting the kid. Dinner was shrimp alfredo pasta and peas. Not the fanciest but simple and easy.

A good Friday is rare

 Wordle 266 5/6*

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Work yesterday was fine. No new craziness. No resolution to that task I did all the detective work on, unfortunately. It can sit there until I get answers. Me and one of my two teammates chatted a lot in the Teams chat yesterday morning.  I was very talkative by my standards. It began with talking about the Brad Meltzer event, and grew into talking about former co-workers and jobs. I had two meetings, but both went well enough. The first was taking notes at the all-too-regular follow-up of that new weekly meeting. (It's basically a two-part thing. Part one scheduled for Thursday, follow-up Friday if necessary, and it has always been necessary so far. Last mentioned here.) The second was training on the new system for one of the biweekly reports. This is the one I'm less involved with, but I had a contribution to make anyway. I finished the meeting minutes before logging off for the day for the first time.

After work the weather was nice and I had a little time, so I went jogging. I've come up with a loop in the neighborhood that's 2.4 miles, and only has one really bad street to cross. I did it in 26 minutes. (Not as good as on the treadmill Thursday in terms of either distance or speed, but it's apples to oranges anyway.) Then we went to pick up the kid, then took her to gymnastics. While she was in there, T. and I went grocery shopping. More vegetables than usual, including squash and eggplant. The kid has claimed vegetarianism. I'll try to accommodate that, it's a respectable lifestyle, but she'll have to be better about eating certain vegetables. For dinner we got pizza. The kid had Hawaiian pizza. I didn't point out the contradiction.

Why I like living in a city

 Wordle 265 4/6*

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Yesterday morning we dropped the kid off at school by car because it was cold. Due to traffic, T. and the kid got out a block from school and walked the rest of the way while I parked. When I was alone, I switched the radio from NPR to a rock station. But it wasn't playing rock, it was some guy talking about recent book bans. The main book was I am Rosa Parks, by Brad Meltzer. We don't have that one, but we have about a dozen more in that series. The kid loves them. I listened a bit more and sure enough, they were talking to the author. In addition to that series and similar kids' books, and involvement in a kids' TV show, he also writes some mysteries/political thrillers for adults, and was having a book signing event to promote one tonight, in the suburbs. (The Barnes & Noble in Tyson's Corner, specifically, if anyone cares.)

Work didn't add to the craziness, and I got on top of addressing stuff from recent days, more or less. This involved a lot of detective work about where a certain document came from. Going from file metadata and general analysis of the text, to clues stored in the Global Address List, to searching for names in combination with document types in several different places and piecing together what it all means, until I was 90 percent certain that a document came from outside our contract. In theory I could have just asked the subject matter expert a simple yes or no question to get a definite answer. I'm not sure if the detective work was an irrational avoidance of conflict and personal distaste for that SME, or a rational reaction to the fact that she's hard to get useful information out of. After work I meant to go grocery shopping but got squeezed for time. The kid had music lessons, like usual. And then, instead of going home, we went to the book signing.

Getting there was aggravating. There's no good way to get from DC to Virginia during rush hour. And we got there at an awkward time, about half an hour before it was supposed to start - too late to get really good seats or have a proper meal first, but early enough that we still had to wait quite a while. And T. was distracted because it coincided with a school board meeting. (Sounds very messy.) She was on the phone the whole time listening in. 

The talk was good. A little discussion of the new novel, a little discussion of book bans (modern politics is scary), a little discussion of his general process. After the talk we had to wait for about an hour to actually get the signatures. Just to make things a little crazier, somehow the kid lost the book she most wanted to get signed. Luckily she had a spare. (Long story.) She was sitting up front with other kids, our of my direct sight, and halfway through the talk she came back to me, crawling under store shelves, to ask for my help. We never found it. My best guess is that it wound up in another kid's pile by mistake. While waiting for our books to get signed, in addition to dealing with that, T. and I took turns holding our space in line while we took the kid to the bathroom, got her some juice, and just watched her run around, hopefully not bothering other people too much. 

In the end we got 5 books of hers personally signed, probably 3 new and 2 we already had, and I bought the book he was hyping, signed but not personalized. After that we went to dinner at a restaurant we've been to before around the corner in the mall. It was fine. Looks fancier than the food justifies but the food certainly isn't bad. The kid got to bed almost 2 hours late and we went to bed right after that ourselves. 

Musing

Despite all the waiting and hassle and multitasking, and how late we were out, I'm glad we went. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing but the kid got to meet one of her favorite authors and learn a little more about how books are made. Aside from the kid, I think I'll enjoy the book I got, when I finally get around to it. 

Early in the pandemic I mentioned how lots of features of city life had become problematic or just vanished. This is the kind of thing I missed. If we lived in the suburbs, doing something like that would have been a lot harder (if we lived closer to Tyson's Corner specifically, going to that specific event would have been easier, but that's a gamble). If we lived where my parents or T.'s parents lived it would have been just impossible.

I need standards

 Wordle 264 4/6*

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Yesterday was fine. We drove the kid to school because it was cold and rainy. Work was crazy in the same way Tuesday was, but productive enough. 

After work the kids came here, which is a problem in some sense, but does save us time, at least. For dinner T. made enchiladas and it happened to be her turn to put the kid to bed as well. It would have been a very rare amount of relaxation for me, if not for the fact that there was a sort-of school board meeting at 8:30. Still, can't complain. 

Sleeping through the night is too rare these days. Last night the kid came into bed with us (the first time in probably over a week, so, progress). T. snores and that's sometimes a problem. If the cat spends the night inside, he usually asks to go outside between 2 and 4 PM. ("Asks...") I need to do something about this but I'm not sure what.

Musing

I won't restart playing World of Warcraft until the following:

1. I've got some feedback about the state of the gameplay in the current patch.
   
2. I've caught up on my reading. That's The Good, the Bad, and the Smug, two other books that were gifts, and several graphic novels I bought myself months ago and still haven't actually opened.
3. April 19 has come and gone, because the company is announcing the next expansion then. It's not exactly a priority to me that the next expansion must feature X character or Y location or whatever, but I want something to hope for. I haven't hated the current expansion as much as most people active online, but I'd agree it's not great. For me to quit, especially at a time when I otherwise have lots of free time, is a bad sign. 

Just putting those in writing so I don't forget about this in two weeks and resubscribe on the spur of the moment.

I earned the label this time

 Wordle 263 3/6*

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Woo hoo.

Yesterday morning I biked the kid to school. I wore jeans and a hoodie and it was cold enough that I wish I had worn my coat, but it was fine otherwise. 

Work was crazy. Not crazy busy by my standards - productive, but not one big task that was either urgent or important; instead a bunch of relatively small random things. Preparing for the new biweekly report formats. Working on a one-pager about where we keep documents. Planning what would be logical metrics to use for our team in the next biannual evaluation. That led into planning (brainstorming, really) how to make progress on the most out-of-date documents we're responsible for. In the afternoon I got a request from a new team that was triggered by the same sort of policy change as this "urgent" request. The two teams are very different, but the second one isn't really any better, so this bodes ill. Then there was a request to made a guide to returning from telework, also supposedly urgent. At first glance it seemed straightforward. On second thought, they didn't want something in one of our usual templates, they wanted something that could be printed out on card stock and left on peoples' desks. Who would put them on desks? Where is a printer that can handle card stock? How many should be printed out? Who would hand them out? my job didn't produce paper before going fully remote! We (to be clear, my teammate J. did most of this) gave them a Word document that should help someone else that can answer all those questions, and clarified that we can't.

After work, the kid had swim class and I went to the gym. 3 miles in 28 minutes, 40 seconds. Yes, I biked in the morning and jogged in the afternoon. Boo yah. 

Dinner was tortellini and leftovers. Easy and not bad. After that the kid finished painting a birdhouse, a project that was started this weekend.

"Denouément" is a fun word

 Wordle 262 5/6*

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Yesterday morning the weather was nice so I biked the kid to school. (In a month, I hope that won't qualify the post for the "exercise" label, but today I feel like it can still count.)

Work was fine yesterday. Not too busy or productive. I attended three meetings that didn't require too much input from me, got those "urgent" documents to the point where they only need approval because yesterday was the deadline. 

I also wrote a lot of a two-year check-in post I've been working on for a few weeks. I also read a lot. I finished the 13th Wheel of Time book. That was published in 2010, "only" 12 years ago, the second one of the "current" stage of my life (in DC, with T., etc.). It's also well into the denouément of the series. More plot threads getting wrapped up than getting started. When I thought back on the earlier books before and during this reread, my memories were primarily of how they tied in to later books, or commentary on sites like this (ahhh, the old Internet) or Usenet as fans tried to puzzle out the mysteries of the series, rather than the early books themselves. But this book I have more direct memories of. It's easier to rush through, which is a mixed blessing. Like I said, it's more climactic, which is fun.

Time to start something else, I guess. Or restart; I'm enjoying The Good, the Bad, and the Smug, it's just not gripping. 

We picked the kid up at the usual time. There's another kid in the pod, another classmate of theirs who also hasn't got off the aftercare waiting list. Dinner was going to be just pork chops and cauliflower, but the kid refused meat because she's going for vegetarianism. I'm not saying vegetarianism is bad but it's a hassle for me... but if she's willing to try it, I'll try to oblige, so I also threw in some beets we had, and she ate them instead of pork. Fair enough.

Fun is bad

 Wordle 261 6/6*

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Ugh. Six is better than failing, but still, I'm not proud. Both my third and fourth guesses included letters I knew were wrong, I just couldn't think of anything else.

Also ugh. Yesterday was nothing but free time - a little laundry and the kid had a planned playdate with her friend M., and we called my parents, but other than that we could do whatever we wanted. It wasn't nearly as much fun as it sounds. As I said, the night before last, the kid was up late, and yesterday morning she happened to get up a little before 7, earlier than usual. By 10:30 AM breakfast (scrambled eggs and home fries) was over and the kid had already hit her TV limit for the day, and the playdate was scheduled for 2, a yawning gulf of more than 3 hours to fill. We tried two or three arts and crafts activities. With each one, she got a little frustrated quickly, and when she did, she started throwing things. Bad. 

Earlier it has rained, but by around noon it had cleared up, so we went to the park across the street with both T.'s new electric bike, and the kid's bike. T. could practice the new bike and I could help the kid learn to bike, with a handle similar in effect to training wheels. I'm not sure how much progress we actually made but it was fun enough. When we (really, the kid) got tired with that (really, frustrated), she noticed some friends nearby. She got frustrated when we told her we had to take the bikes home first, but we didn't want to leave either her or the bikes unattended. At least she didn't have a tantrum about that. We went home, she changed clothes, we had a snack, and we went back to the park. And we were basically there for the rest of the day. Her friend joined them and another more kids we knew came along too. T. and I and other grownups took turns coming and going for snacks or various other errands. It wrapped up by 5. When we went to give the kids a warning that it was wrapping up, we found that M. had hurt her ankle and been abandoned by the other girls, so the grownups were a little worried and I was a little mad that none of the other girls had let us know about this. 

In the evening, I made dinner (corn and spaghetti; weird combination but easy enough), the kid had a shower, we FaceTimed with my parents, and then she had music practice. Instead of guitar it wound up being karaoke, with Disney songs on YouTube. She did surprisingly well in my opinion for a first attempt at something like this.

While talking with my parents we discussed summer plans, among other things. We have several vacations and camps planned for the kid. Have to do something like that; we work full-time and she's 6 (will turn 7 this summer, but either way, too young to be unattended). My parents suggested giving her unstructured free time with them up in Vermont. On second thought, she can play outside freely in the country instead of being supervised in a park, and my parents are retired so they can spend time with her easily, so that might be fine. But my first reaction was abject horror, considering what yesterday was like.

A good fun day

 Wordle 260 4/6*

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Yesterday was busier than planned.

The morning was the usual relaxing weekend morning. TV and other games for the kid, reading and computer stuff for me, pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Around 11 we finally got busy. We did the laundry (a little less this week than usual, since last week we did it later than usual, since we were traveling), and I brought my old damaged bike to donate to a nonprofit nearby. That took longer than expected. While I was doing that, the kid met a friend on short notice to play in the park. 

After that, there was the scout meeting in the same park; it's a neighborhood organization. I don't know what to do about how shy the kid is. The one time she actually tried to speak up in the discussion, someone else made her point first, and she was sulking and nearly crying for a while after. But the activity was making and painting birdhouses and that went fine. 

After that, the original plan was to leave the kid with our friend P., who she gets along with well, while T. and I ran errands and had some downtime. But we lingered in the park. There was an event for a local political candidate, and also a birthday party for a friend of the kid. (We hadn't been invited but they said we were welcome to stay.) We got to P.'s place over an hour late. We had less downtime than expected after our errands but it was fine. Then we went to P.'s place for dinner. She's a good cook. We got back late, after 9, well after the kid's bedtime.

Better than expected

 Wordle 259 5/6*

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 Yesterday it was cold enough that we drove the kid to school. Having a bike doesn't solve everything... At work, in addition to the stuff in yesterday's post, it was the biweekly report day. (For what it's worth, that went better than last time, but still not as good as I would have expected two or three months ago.) It was also the second week of taking minutes at this weekly meeting. 

But despite all that, it wasn't too bad? I was done with most if not all of my share of the biweekly report by noon. I multitasked a bit, editing the reports while listening to the meeting with only one ear, so to speak. Three of those four short-notice requests truly were minor. I got mine to a point where I only had questions for the subject matter expert and helped out with the less-minor one. That self-assessment really did only take 20 minutes or so. I felt good about logging off by 3 or so and relaxing for the rest of the afternoon. 

The kid got home at almost 5, along with the boy from the aftercare pod and their nanny, and we had to leave for gymnastics class at 5:30. We also brought a friend of hers who was in the class but her parents were too busy to get her there. While they were doing handstands - apparently the kid is getting good at them - we went grocery shopping. The four of us had dinner at District Taco. 

All day, T. had been... stressed? Tired? Having a minor headache, she said, among other things. So I put the kid to bed last night. We got to bed a bit earlier than usual. I was feeling fine but I was sorry she wasn't.

Structured procrastination doesn't work

 Wordle 258 4/6*

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On Wednesday one more thing happened, which seemed beneath notice when writing the last post. Around 3:30 we got a new task, to update four documents. There was little information about who would work on it with us or when it was needed by, so I responded a little after 4 to ask.

Yesterday morning we discussed those four documents among the team. There were several weird things about them. I also continued to deal with a few low-level tasks and otherwise procrastinate on the self-assessment. Then, a little after noon, we got the answer to my question: they want it done by Monday. This would be unrealistic even if we didn't have other things going on, which we do. (In their defense, two of the tasks are individually minor, maybe even three depending on how you count them. But still, this is ridiculous.) So now, between yesterday afternoon and close of business Friday I'm trying to do the usual WAR stuff, plus the corporate self-assessment, plus my share of those new high-priority tasks so I don't leave all that to the last minute. Nice going, genius.

After work the kid had a guitar lesson. We've agreed to de-emphasize guitar; if she wants to spend her time focusing on voice or some other music discipline, okay. After that there was a scout committee meeting. The kid has enjoyed going camping and she has some friends in the local troop, so we joined. Unfortunately she doesn't enjoy much other than the camping. Oh well, at least it's not too demanding.

After the kid was in bed, I went downstairs and worked a bit more on that document update. Then I got to bed almost an hour earlier than usual. I was tired.

Structured procrastination works

 Wordle 257 4/6*

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Yesterday traffic was better than usual, in terms of total time to get the kid to school and back, but we still had to watch someone pull a three-point turn in the middle of the street in front of us. Better than usual is still pretty bad.

Yesterday at work I planned to do the annual corporate self-assessment, which is due this week. I have been assured it is an easy rubber-stamp thing, but it's still not fun or easy to figure out what they're actually looking for. I also planned to call the insurance company about the settlement from the bike accident. 

In the morning before taking care of either of those I watched the kid's school activity via Zoom, the sort of show they would have invited parents to in person if it were a normal year. I also closed out two long-standing documentation tasks I was responsible for myself, and reached out about two or three more I was waiting for input on. Shortly after noon I went to the bike store. I tried three bikes out and bought one. I have minor concerns about it but it's good enough, and comes with all the extras attached unlike that first one I looked at. Nice to have finally got this over with. After that, and after lunch, I did a little more work. I also bought T. a sort of belated birthday present. (I had meant to get her a facial appointment, but there was a problem or confusion with the credit card, so she had to pay for it herself, so this time I got her a gift certificate and I definitely will have paid for it next time.) The mail included... a check from the insurance company, but it doesn't exactly match the amount I apparently was supposed to get in the phone/app based payment. So I still need to call to straighten this out and it's a good thing I didn't do it earlier, because the fact that the check was on the way was valuable information I didn't have.

So my day was productive, but not the ways I expected or wanted. It turned out okay but only in hindsight. Yay?

Around 5 we went to pick up the kid. The three of us had no plans for the evening besides her guitar practice, but when she got home she ran into a friend, and she spent almost an hour at her place. After that she practiced the guitar, but fought every minute of it. She enjoys the guitar lessons but definitely not practicing. T. and I discussed letting her change instruments or quit but didn't come to firm conclusions. We'll bring it up with her teacher. 

Late at night we video chatted with a nascent PTA. Maybe I should have had more to say but I'm not much of the leader type. Putting in time at a volunteer event is one thing; organizing it is something very different. After that we got frustrated trying to make summer plans. We have vacation and family visits planned, but we also need child care for when we're here, and summer camps are filling up already. We got something for most of the time we didn't already have scheduled, so that's nice to have over with. I say "we" - it was T. doing most of the work. She's far more on top of things like this than I am.

This morning I biked the kid to school, so that was nice to restart. It was harder than I remember. I'm not sure if the issue is the bike - like I said, minor concerns - or simply me being out of shape.

Whew

 Wordle 256 3/6*

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Work was fine yesterday. Two regular weekly meetings and one impromptu one, but they were all productive enough. After work, though, things got exciting...

The plan was to go to Costco, get gas, look at the in-person store options for dashboard cameras because T. has been pricing them online (supposedly because of the crazy drivers in our area, but I also think she just enjoys watching videos like that on Tiktok or Facebook reels or whatever and imagines creating some of her own), then to pick up the kid, then swimming lessons for her. Dinner at home would be an easy frozen chicken masala dish. I thought we'd have a little time to kill between Costco and picking up the kid or picking up the kid and swimming lessons, but we could cross that bridge when we came to it.

That was the plan. In the Costco parking lot I nearly got in a car accident due to listening to T. too much. I had my eye on a parking space around the corner, she pointed out one that was a tiny bit closer, I swerved to go for it without thinking of the car behind me. Whoops. I was the crazy driver there. Also, my concern about having time to kill was based on the assumption that we were just going to walk into Costco, look at one type of thing, and walk out. Silly me. Even knowing that we didn't want to get anything perishable because we weren't going home for a couple hours, we still managed to get several non-perishable things. Then to pick up the kid. No real problems there, although I'm impressed with just how many crackers she'll eat as a snack if we let her. Then to the rec center. I did 3 miles on a treadmill in 29 minutes, 30ish seconds. Probably not my best ever but definitely my best time in the past year. I gather that the swimming lesson went well. It took longer than usual because the kid now has friends in it and it's hard to get 6-year-olds dressed communally. 

After we got home, I found out that that frozen chicken masala dish wasn't supposed to be frozen. Whoops. So it wasn't easy and took longer to make and didn't come out as well as it probably would have otherwise, but it was edible.

Musing

I've used the "musing" tag as appropriate for posts like this. I've used the "reading" tag a little and just now am going back in and adding it to a few relevant posts. I'm going to start using the "exercise" tag too, and try to add it retroactively to the relevant ones. Hopefully I'll get to the point where I get some kind of exercise daily or almost, and it'll only be needed on noteworthy days, but these days, any exercise at all is noteworthy.

Bleh

Wordle 255 4/6*

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That word was hard.

Traffic yesterday morning getting the kid to school was truly horrible. I could literally have walked to the school faster. One more bit of incentive to get the bike or bikes working, I guess.

Yesterday it was a struggle to do anything other than reread The Wheel of Time. (Over halfway through book 11, for what it's worth.) Over the weekend I started The Good, the Bad, and the Smug, and it seems fun so far, but it's just another novel. I managed to get the essentials done at work, and there were few personal chores other than laundry, but still, the day dragged.

At first glance I felt worried or just guilty about this. A Monday morning, especially after a weekend that was a half-day longer than usual, I should be more invigorated, right? Rested and ready to face the week? But on second thought, of course not. We spent that half-day Friday driving, and there wasn't anything relaxing about the weekend for me. T. said she had fun and I'm glad, but that doesn't mean I could or would have had fun. I kept the kid out of trouble while T. shopped Saturday and packed Sunday. The beach was too cold to really be fun. The kid loved the hotel pool, and playing with her there is fun, but not relaxing. 

I find myself missing World of Warcraft. I quit for four reasons: because there had been no new content of the game for a while, because what content there was, was a bit less fun to me than in years past, because I wanted to protest the company's policies and working environment, and to be brutally honest, to verify that I still could. What's the joke about addicts? "I'm not addicted! I can quit any time I want. I've quit dozens of times!" As for the status of those four reasons...

1. There's new content, as of the 22nd, but 
2. It's too early to say if it's good. Not just because it takes time to evaluate, but because it's not even all available yet. The changes to dungeons kick in tomorrow. The new raid only partially unlocks tomorrow; some of it doesn't unlock for a week or two after that. I kind of want to see and collect the new stuff on principle. I've seen everything in the game, except some stuff at the end of Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, and got almost everything time-limited, except the very oldest stuff and the very hardest recent stuff. (Never got Cutting Edge, the award for the hardest difficulty of raids while they're current, but I've got the past nine Ahead of the Curves, the award for the second-hardest.) If I rejoin in let's say three months, it'll be a bit different for me, but I should still be able to get the essentials if I try. Including some stuff that's genuinely new, like cross-faction raiding.
   
3. No change on that front worth mentioning as far as I know. I can't boycott everything with shady business practices, but Blizzard's were a bit too bad for something I was tied to quite so closely. Unfortunately I'm not sure I can expect changes in time for the new time-limited stuff. And of course...
4. It hasn't even been two months. If I'm going to quit, there's definitely no point in rejoining that quickly.

So I'm not rejoining today, or this week, probably not even in March. But I have to admit I'm getting bored with reading fiction and just working.