On the beach

 Wordle 315 4/6

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Yesterday was an okay work day. After work we went to Assateague State Park. On the beach, and camped out. Writing this in a tent.

Busy with non-work stuff

Wordle 314 5/6

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Now that was the correct use of a random guess.

Yesterday I biked the kid to school in the morning, even though it was a bit cold. Work was fine. One meeting, not particularly hard. I got to another milestone on that big messy SOP, although I still have a lot to do...

I finished the "pathfinder" achievement for the new WoW zone. (That's not what it's called, but that's what several similar achievements were called.) Definitely faster and more straightforward than its predecessors.

I went jogging in the afternoon. I used this route and it went better than expected. It was fine that time, on a Sunday morning, but my main concern about it is that it seemed likely to have more traffic, both foot and vehicle. But that wasn't the case yesterday at what seems like it should be peak for the neighborhood. So maybe that's my new route? 

Dinner was a cucumber salad, baked potatoes, and pork chops.

A great day for ME, but...

Wordle 313 X/6

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Ugh. I should have thought harder. I shouldn't have used the 4th guess for random letters, I should have kept thinking until I found a word that fit the information I already had. Lazy.

T. is going to have to start working in the office once a week going forward, and yesterday was the first day of that. So we drove the kid to school, and then kept going and dropped T. off at work (they're only like four blocks apart), and then I had the house to myself. Woo hoo! Party!

Kidding. But I took the best seat in the house, which I normally let her have, and spread out over the whole dining room table, and I didn't worry about the volume of my music or other things. 

I had one meeting in the morning. It was moderately productive. In the afternoon I had an errand to run, dropping off some gourmet chocolates with another parent at our school for a teacher appreciation event. I incorporated that into jogging. Running carrying several pounds of chocolate is awkward, and the detour was inconvenient, but still, points for experimentation and stuff. Unfortunately I'm running out of variations to try on my route. I think the best viable way to make it longer or harder is to double up the main loop of it, but doing that in one fell swoop is intimidating.

After work, I dropped the kid's guitar off at the music studio, because we all had evening plans. The kid's after-school care nanny would walk her to music class. T. would walk over to meet her there. They'd both get takeout for dinner because I was going to a work happy hour. 

It was fun. My office used to have these regularly. I'd go when it was downtown, roughly half the time. This one was in Virginia, but not far out and was definitely worth it. In addition to being the first one in two years, it was a retirement party for my team lead. (Her co-lead has been around for several months now in a gradual transition process.) Some statistics:

• I had met the outgoing team lead in person on only one occasion, before the contract actually started.
• I saw two people I knew fairly well from the Before Time, and two more people I didn't know well but was acquainted with.
• I met in person for the first time at least six people who I've exchanged many emails with and shared many meetings with, including my other soon-to-be-only team lead.
• I had two beers, and basically a full dinner of hors d'oeuvres. 

Unfortunately while I was on the way there, the kid was with playing with her friends or on the way to the music lesson, and apparently they witnessed some kind of street violence. I'm hearing about this secondhand. The kid is not very communicative about anything remotely stressful. A horrible day for it, the first day ever there wasn't a warm handoff between the nanny and us. She seemed fine at first and I gather dinner went OK, but getting her to go to bed was very hard. Ultimately she went to bed with us and I put her in her own bed around 1 AM.

More or less normal day

 Wordle 312 3/6

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Biked the kid to school yesterday and did a little shopping on the way home. 

Work was fine. Four meetings, but they were all only scheduled for half an hour and three of them wound up being shorter. Finally finished a SOP that had been in progress for a long time (over a damn year!), so that was nice. We learned that our office's budget troubles had been improved, so hiring was on the table, and there was a discussion about how (if at all) it could help our team. (Tentative conclusion: we don't need more people so much as we need other teams to devote more man-hours to us.)

Yesterday afternoon I reactivated my World of Warcraft account. A week had passed since this, for whatever it's worth, and in that time I made meaningful progress on several boring/annoying things at work. Could have been worse. Let's see if I stay subscribed until the new expansion or not. I doubt it but can't be sure.

The kid had swim class after school yesterday and I jogged in the gym. I'm already spending the full swim class in there so I can't spend more time, so instead I decided to push myself a bit by going faster. 

Dinner was spaghetti and sauteed broccoli. A new recipe for the broccoli that came out well despite a few problems. The kid technically, barely, helped.

A slow day

 Wordle 311 4/6

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As I said, we were all tired yesterday morning. We drove the kid to school yesterday. The weather would have been fine to bike, but she didn't want to, and we didn't want to fight over it. 

I went jogging a little before lunch. It wasn't a great time for it, but I didn't think any other time would be any better, so I got it over with and didn't worry about not setting records or anything.

Work wasn't too busy. Chipped away at that big SOP with big formatting problems in the source document. Only one meeting yesterday.

Dinner was a vegetarian paella. Eggplant was in the recipe but left out, as well as one or two other things, so it was just beans, tomato, rice, and bell peppers. T. liked it, and even the kid cleaned her plate without too much complaining. Ironically, I didn't like it that much. It wasn't flavorful enough. If I do it again, I'm including more spices. I'm sure the kid will object to that, though...

Tired

 Wordle 310 5/6

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I'm tired. There was one wrong letter in that third guess, unintentionally. Oh well, 5 guesses isn't bad for me.

Went jogging yesterday morning. Added a couple blocks to the route. Good for me for trying something new, but the new route is probably less practical overall so it probably won't become the routine. On Sundays I usually make scrambled eggs and  home fries, but there are always leftovers and I wanted to try something new, so I tried a "Spanish tortilla" recipe I found in a vegetarian cookbook I've been using a lot lately - basically scrambled eggs and potatoes together. It turned out OK. After getting cleaned up I took the kid to the park for a few minutes and watched her climb around the jungle gym. 

In the afternoon, the wedding. It was a lot of fun, and the most formal event we've been to in the past two years, which isn't saying much - held in the bride and groom's backyard, the bride's dress had a rainbow pattern. But still, I had to get out my fancy black leather shoes and polish them, or rather dust them, and T. had to get the right jewelry out of the safe, and it all took longer than expected. The kid was the ring bearer and it went fine. The couple wrote their own vows but the ceremony had a few traditional elements as well. And then, the party. The kid was the ring bearer and had fun playing with the flower girls after the ceremony. Then they killed it on the dance floor. "I think I just became famous!" she told the bride. 

She got to bed around 10, well after her bedtime. I didn't sleep well due to T. snoring. This morning the kid wasn't actually badly behaved, but was very tired. We all are.

Long day

 Wordle 309 3/6

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Yesterday I went jogging in the morning. Then we had just coffee and toast for breakfast before a neighborhood cleanup event. We filled one and a half trash bags from the streets of a couple boxes. After that, the usual pancakes and bacon for brunch. 

Lots of laundry yesterday, since we we won't be able to do much today. 

The kid got on our nerves. While I did laundry in the kitchen and cleaned and T. gardened, the kid didn't want to help either of us. She only wanted to watch TV or do gymnastics directly in my way. A tantrum was thrown. T. got her to have a little quiet time. I also spent a lot of time picking and planning two new recipes for dinner. When we got to a good stopping point on the kitchen stuff and gardening, we all went shopping. As soon as T. saw the shopping list, she declared she didn't like eggplant (I knew it wasn't her favorite, but I thought there were some recipes with it she'd put up with), so one of those recipes will have to be revised... 

Fortunately, the kid's friend was able to come over and play with her a little after we got back. Very fortunately, they kept out of our hair. Dinner was the other of those new recipes: Mexican pizza, designed to imitate a Taco Bell recipe I guess. It was better than it sounds, but still messy and a lot of work.

Socializing

 Wordle 308 4/6

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Yesterday was fine. Biked the kid to school. I "pulled over" for an ambulance (I wasn't in the street, but I waited longer at an intersection than I would have due to it), and traffic was so bad that I managed to keep up with it for three blocks. At a major intersection we saw two cars badly damaged due to a huge accident and getting ready to be towed, and the ambulance we were stuck behind kept going, so I guess there was another accident in that direction. 

Work was fine. I snuck out in the morning to go jogging instead of the afternoon because we had plans then. I took notes at a meeting, had only one follow-up question, and got them finished by close of business. I finished my training for the year and kept on digging away at that SOP with messy formatting. 

I logged off a bit early to get the kid. There was an Earth Day celebration at her school, which was fun to see, but that's not why we were there. She'll be the ring bearer at the wedding of a friend of ours this weekend, and last night was the rehearsal. 

Dinner after the rehearsal was at a nominally French place in northern Virginia. I was a bit grumpy, or maybe even elitist, although I don't think I was actually rude to anyone. The bride's family are winemakers from California, so they had their own wine preferences. I drink a fair amount of wine but am not actually a connoisseur. I do, on the other hand, have opinions about Belgian beer, speak French, and really like two French or Belgian restaurants in my neighborhood. (One just closed. I was sad.) This place seemed less authentic and had no Belgian beers. I ordered a 1664, because it's what I had the last time I was in France. I'll admit the food was great, but it just didn't taste the same when served by a waiter without a French accent.

But despite that, dinner was fun. The kid wanted to sit next to the bride, and so did lots of other people, and I didn't fight for that myself. Instead I hung out with the one person I knew there and some of the various cousins and other family. I was probably the most outgoing I've been in two years, if not longer. Being introverted is part of my self-image, and I'm objectively less sociable than T. if that means anything, but the past two years proved that there are limits. I lost track of time until the kid told me at 9:45 that it was time to go. She got to stay up way past her bedtime.

Simple day

 Wordle 307 3/6

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Yesterday I biked the kid to school. At work I got through a little more training and worked on that new SOP that came in over my vacation. By page count I've just barely started, but the source document we got was a huge mess of formatting, and I got through a major step of fixing that yesterday. 

I also spent some time on some personal fiction yesterday and went jogging. (Not putting the exercise label on this because I think simply biking the kid to school and jogging one loop has become unremarkable, or soon will. Woo hoo.) The kid had her music lesson in the evening. Dinner was tortellini and broccoli. Her favorite, except we're insisting on adding cheese to get some protein into her, and she didn't like the cheese. I'm certainly putting work into this diet...

Woo hoo

 Wordle 306 5/6

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Yesterday I biked the kid to work and did a little grocery shopping on the way home. At 10:30, I finished The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I'll say I can see why it's a classic. Anything else would be a spoiler. 

In the late morning I biked to the barber's to get a long-overdue haircut. Work today around those events was productive but uneventful. I didn't make all that much progress on the actual SOP with SME interest that I'm working on. However, I contributed in a meeting, made progress on a couple other documents, and got through two of the trainings I'm due for in the next month. (I was fairly proud of getting them done a month in advance! And I got a perfect score on the test of one of them!) Late in the day we got a request for a new document. What the SME might be the most polished thing we've ever got. I had very minor edits and one question, which were resolved in time to complete it yesterday. I logged off around 4 and went jogging. 

I did all this thinking I was entitled to restart World of Warcraft, but I wanted to get a few things taken care of first. I was so responsible it scares me.

Traffic was a bit bad when we went to get the kid, but we've seen worse. Dinner was a new casserole-type recipe. The kid helped make it. It was an assignment but she genuinely helped and wasn't too difficult about it. 

If not for burning the new recipe, and the kid making bedtime difficult, it would have been a perfect day.

Exercise

This was the first time I thought of using the app while biking the kid to school, in addition to jogging. The distance seems to be 1.25 miles. The app automatically pauses while stopped. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's better as a measure of distance but worse as a matter of time, and I use my bike for errands and actually getting around often enough that the latter is also relevant. Also, the low numbers for time and calories are a reminder that biking really isn't all that much exercise, at least on city streets, when compared to running.

Standards almost met

Wordle 305 2/6

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Woo hoo.

Yesterday I biked the kid to school. I stayed for a few minutes to help hand out PTA fliers.

Work was fine. A little progress on that new task, a couple easy meetings, a lot of dealing with more longstanding tasks. Remember when I did detective work about the source of an unusual request? A few days after that I was told that my deduction was wrong, so I moved on, tried to revise my assumptions, and proceeded with the task. Yesterday afternoon I sent an email reminding the SME that I had a few questions. Then, right before I was about to log off, she responded to say that she had been wrong weeks ago and the task did come from where I thought it came from. Hah! I was right! I kept the gloating to a minimum. 

I logged off a little earlier and more quickly than usual because we went to help hand out more fliers for the PTA after school. Then, the kid's swim class. I jogged. 3.65 miles in 35 minutes - more/better than usual but not a record. Dinner was fried rice from a bag - easy enough for a late night.

Musing

Over a month ago, I mentioned goals to meet before restarting World of Warcraft. One of them was catching up on my reading. I've alluded to a reading list before, mostly books I had bought or been given and was interested in but just didn't get around to, but never fully listed it until now. What I've read since I started keeping track and where they came from:

1. Sixth Watch, the last book of a series we had around the house
   
2. The Wheel of Time series, if a reread counts
   
3. Project Hail Mary, a Christmas present
4. The Good, the Bad, and the Smug, from a gift certificate
5. Volumes 6-9 of Transmetropolitan, discussed here
   
6. Old Man's War - I don't remember if it was a present itself or from a gift certificate
7. A Deadly Education, a Christmas present
8. The Last Graduate - I liked the previous book so much I went out and bought its sequel
9. All the Marvels, a Christmas present, the one nonfiction on the list
10. The Escape Artist, which a book I bought impulsively was a sequel to
11. And, as of this minute, all but the last 40 pages of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 

I'd say I'll be done by tonight, if not lunchtime. It doesn't have the book I bought, but seven novels and one nonfiction in four months, plus graphic novels and rereads, seems like a decent number. I've got my backlog of books down to one. (Two if you count the last Transmetropolitan book, but I don't own it yet.) 

And as for World of Warcraft, yesterday they started hyping the new expansion. Among the information was a feature I've wanted for years. (I could prove it if I had to, but I'd have to link to Reddit comments I made and I'd rather not de-anonymize myself like that just out of general paranoia...) I'd say I've met those goals... for better or for worse.

Back to work

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Mother fucker. I even used the fourth guess to eliminate as many possibilities as I could think of and it didn't help. I guess I should have done so with the fifth guess too?

Yesterday was fine, despite being tired. The weather forecast was bad, so we didn't want to bike the kid to school in case we'd get rained on, but traffic was good, and as it turned out it was dry until around noon anyway. I went shopping around then. This week we are continuing to experiment with the kid's request for vegetarianism. I spent most of my time at work just digging my way out of my inbox and getting details on a new task for me that came in while I was gone.

The kid didn't behave terribly when we asked her to help fold the laundry. Dinner was brussels sprouts (a little underdone, not my finest work) and a new bean salad sort of recipe.

Getting back into things

 Wordle 303 3/6

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Heh, seems like a weird word progression, but I can't complain.

Yesterday I woke up around 7:30. After writing yesterday's post and doing a few other things I went jogging. Apparently my usual route here is exactly 2.35 miles. After that I walked to the store for milk, because of course we didn't have any. I had the house to myself until around 11, due to jet lag hitting the ladies harder than me. 

Our first meal of the day was brunch at noon at a local restaurant. On the way back from that we dropped off Easter presents (chocolates of course) with two of the kid's friends. In the afternoon I did a lot of laundry and a little cleaning, T. did a little laundry and a lot of cleaning, and the kid played with her friends. Dinner was simple: spaghetti and glazed carrots. 

Last night was rough. The kid apparently got to bed surprisingly early, at 9:30 or so. (Late in normal times, but surprising due to the night before last and general jet lag expectations.) We went to bed at 10:30; a bit earlier than we really needed to, but T. had worked hard and I had got up almost on time. For some reason I was freezing when getting ready for bed. I'm not sure if it was a drug interaction or something else but I felt fine by the time we turned the lights out. However, the kid woke us up around midnight, and continued to do so off and on until 3. Jet lag plus nightmares or something.

Back home

Wordle 302 3/6

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Good for me. Based on the numbers before and after I left, skipping days doesn't count as a loss, but does reset any streak. In hindsight I wouldn't expect otherwise, but I didn't know it before I left.

Didn't exercise yesterday, because we had to leave the in-laws' house by 7 to catch our plane. Even then we barely made it. The San Francisco airport was frantic. T. is in that TSA pre-check system and I'm not and I really do need to fix that. Not that the security line was the main problem but it's still frustrating to get separated like that. But, in the end, we got on the planes as scheduled and had seats together, so it worked out. Barely. 

I forgot to mention it earlier but on Thursday I finished The Escape Artist, the book I borrowed from the library. So I can start the book I got at the signing event whenever I feel like it. On the plane I read more than half of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I also watched Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It was fun. I also watched half of the Venom sequel, but got distracted by dealing with the kid. She got bored with the movies and TV shows we had downloaded for her and frustrated with her games and refused to read any of the books. In the end we played Mad Libs and that wasn't too bad. I'm not sure if we should have prepared better - better choices of shows and games? A new book just for the flight? - or if there was no way to keep her from getting frustrated after six hours in a plane. 

The flight landed around 9. Dinner was pizza leftover from lunch, and a risotto from the freezer. Due to jet lag, the kid didn't get to sleep until after midnight. Ugh.

Packing is hard

Wordle 301 4/6

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Went jogging yesterday. The morning was fine until a little after 10, when we got texts saying that our flight from Seattle to DC was canceled. The airline's alternative was to out us on a flight THE FOLLOWING DAY. It didn't take all that much time on the phone to get us a different route home on the same day, but still, it was stressful. We met an old friend of T.'s for lunch and made a quick stop by a local chocolate store for gifts for people back home. After that we had planned to meet the in-laws and the kid at T.'s great-aunt's place, but there was a miscommunication, so we had about an hour to kill. We went shopping. After we got home, we packed and cleaned frantically, since the new flight had us leaving earlier. I had a lot to drink with dinner, to celebrate, use up that beer no one else would like, and blow off steam.

Sacramento

 Wordle 300 5/6

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I went for the sure win, instead of risking four more rows that looked like the second one.

Yesterday I went jogging first thing. Good thing I did, because it rained again. Good for the farms in the area, not good for tourists like us.

After lunch we went to Sacramento, for shopping and general sightseeing in the old town. We got a book for the kid and a ton of candy. The sheltered boardwalks there were very convenient in the rain. We went to dinner at some fancy place in the area. 

Two days in a row

 Wordle 299 4/6

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Yesterday morning I went jogging again. The morning was leisurely enough. Lunch was mostly leftovers. After that, all of us except the FIL went to a winery for a tasting. Then we went to another winery. T., the MIL, and Madonna enjoyed themselves there while the FIL joined us and took me and the kid to see Sonic 2 in a nearby theater. It was fun. I appreciate the kid getting to the age where we can enjoy stuff like this together. (Albeit for different reasons. She's familiar with the character from cartoons, me from games.) We all met up back at the house for dinner, along with G., another visiting friend. 

Calorie intake aside, I'm definitely getting my alcohol in. In addition to the wine, Madonna brought some beer with her, and they're porters and stouts. No one else here likes them besides me, and I'm leaving in just a few days, so...

Good movie

 Wordle 298 6/6

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Yesterday morning I went jogging. At 10, T. and the kid got pedicures. I accompanied the MIL on a couple errands, then hung out and read while the foot treatments finished. The day before yesterday I interrupted my reading list by getting a Brad Meltzer book from the library, because it's the prequel to that signed book I got, so I have to finish that before we go home. After the pedicures we went to In-N-Out for burgers for lunch.

In the afternoon we sat around and read for a bit. The in-laws took the kid to a library event and dinner. T. and I drove to the train station to pick up our friend Madonna. (Not her real name, but there are similarities.) Then we went out to dinner at this great Thai place the in-laws had recommended, and then the three of us went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once. Great movie. 

Musing

As good as I've been about exercise, I have to admit, calorie intake is a big factor in fitness. I snack at random, eat till I'm full at mealtimes, finish off the kid's meal, and then have dessert. It's always a problem but is more noticeable now, as a guest and eating out so much.

Good for me

 Wordle 297 4/6

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Yesterday morning was dreary. We drove to run some errands and meet some friends of the in-laws for lunch at a diner. We got back around 4:30, and it was finally sunny then, so I went jogging. 

Dinner plans changed on short notice due to the weather. It was a four-course meal and leftovers. It's amazing what the MIL will throw together. 

It's not supposed to rain here

Wordle 296 5/6

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That drove me nuts. 

My usual jogging loop here is apparently 3.1 or so miles, and yesterday I did it in 32:46. Now that I've found that app. I'll probably keep less exact records here.

Yesterday T.'s aunt visited for lunch. (Not the one in a nursing home, the one in a nursing home is her great-aunt or something like that but we see more of her than any actual aunt.) And the MIL's co-worker and her family visited for dinner. In between I did a lot of reading and played with the kid a bit. Finished All the Marvels.

I would have gone jogging before now but it's raining. Ugh. Good for the area but this is a problem for my fitness I hadn't anticipated having here.

Vacationing

 Wordle 295 3/6

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Went jogging yesterday morning. I found a fitness tracker app on my phone. Unfortunately, those things happened in that order. Oh well, the second best time...

Spent a lot of time reading yesterday. The five of us went to lunch at a winery. Then we went to visit T.'s aunt in the nursing home. Then a little grocery shopping, then the mother-in-law (MIL) made manicotti for dinner. 

We made it

Wordle 294 3/6

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Doing this on my phone, so it doesn't count for the usual statistics... unfortunately. 

Yesterday I didn't plan to bike the kid to school, but the weather was good and T. was unexpectedly busy in the morning, so that's how it worked out. Breakfast was bagels and lox from a local deli. My morning was fairly relaxing. I listened in on a school meeting, and did my final packing and cleaning and general prep, and some reading. I logged on for my one meeting for work a little before 11. It went better than expected.

Around 12:30 we both logged out of work and started packing frantically. We didn't put things off, but there's always stuff that can't be done until the last minute, that sort of thing. We got the kid around 2, called a Lyft, and got through airport security around 3:30. We have an early dinner at Qdoba. The flight was supposed to take off around 5:10 but was almost an hour late due to overbooking. We got to the in-laws' house by 11 pm PST. 

A latchkey kid in 2022

 Wordle 293 2/6

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Woo hoo.

Yesterday it was once again too wet to bike the kid to school. My being-in-shape is declining.

At work I did my last bit of work on a certain SOP that had been in my inbox (so to speak) for a couple weeks and sent that out for review, and otherwise did cleanup and got ready for the vacation. Our flight is at 5 tonight. I'm planning to attend a one- or two-hour meeting later this morning, but other than that I'm taking today off.

The kid's music lesson was fine. Dinner was supposed to be a frozen risotto from a bag and a small salad, but T. suggested ordering pizza, and I did the math and figured we could use up everything perishable either way, so, yay, the kid got dinner she liked more.

We also had to pick up dry cleaning, right next door to the pizzeria, just two blocks away. It was several sweaters and a seasonal comforter, so carrying that, plus pizza, would be awkward for one person. The kid refused to go with me there, I assume because she was too impatient to walk two blocks or just wanted to be contrary. So I planned out leaving her home alone for the first time ever. I told her not to do any gymnastics and not to eat anything (at the time I was thinking because dinner was ready, but in hindsight, choking is bad too), but she could watch TV. Because this is 2022, I set a timer on our Alexa for 20 minutes and told her that if we weren't back by the time it went off for some reason, she should go to our neighbor on the corner or something.

T. had already got the pizza and dry cleaning and was just waiting for me to help carry. By the time we got back, we found the kid on our front porch, red-faced, with a different neighbor keeping her company. She had got scared and gone after me. There were still 12 minutes left on the timer. I shouldn't be mean, doing anything for the first time is hard, she didn't do anything wrong, maybe I should have prepared better... but still I thought it was funny she didn't even last 8 minutes home alone.

Musing

I was almost surprised to realize yesterday that this will be my longest vacation in more than two years. I'm not sure how I'd check this, but probably a lot more. We had a vacation planned for April 2020, so I was probably saving up time to get ready for that. Over the past two years we spent a lot of time with T.'s and my parents to cope with the pandemic, but we were still working. I've taken a lot of sick days or half-days, because a 6-year-old (or younger) can't look after herself when she's home sick for school and any little cough or sniffle has been a reason to stay home, but that's not vacation. 

I took a day or two off here and there for travel, or side trips for fun during those stays with our parents, but a whole week? Not since Christmas 2019, if that. Wow. And all this when I'm still taking a sabbatical from World of Warcraft - I don't know what I'm going to do with myself! (Jog because there will actually be good weather, go to wineries, go to at least one movie in theaters and probably two, read, play with the kid...)

Organization is productivity

 Wordle 292 4/6

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Yesterday, once again, the weather was too bad to bike the kid to school. It's been a weird spring. But then again I have to admit that rain and temperature highs in the 50s is normal for spring and warm and sunny February and March days was the weird thing.

We had one meeting yesterday about getting a bunch of old documents updated. No edits were made, but we identified ~10 that could be retired and not worried about any more, and identified a subject matter expert for 39 more, all of this problematic teams' documents from 2019 or older. That's a pretty big deal. We also had one meeting that was missing the principal invitee, but at least I wrote a very good email about it and she apologized as soon as getting it. 

I finished The Last Graduate yesterday. It was great. Looking forward to the third of the trilogy. At this point I'm confident I'll finish my reading list over the upcoming vacation (we leave tomorrow). 

Dinner was tortellini (the kid's favorite) and a recipe for green beans I haven't tried in a while, if ever. The kid didn't like them. Oh well. We're working to use up perishable stuff. Lunch tomorrow will probably only be leftovers from today's dinner.

Technically leadership

 Wordle 291 5/6

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This time I used the fourth guess to try three random as-yet-unknown letters. In hindsight I should only do that when I have something like *IGHT and a lot of possibilities for the missing letters. In this case I couldn't think of anything at all for that space. Wasting a guess got me the answer in less real time, but maybe not in fewer guesses. Maybe I shouldn't do this until after I've had my coffee. 

Yesterday I couldn't put it off any longer. I thought carefully about what I was going to say, made it as simple and specific as possible, came up with a suggestion to improve things but tried to keep things open-ended, and asked J. if it was a good time to talk about communication problems. It immediately got off to a bad start because it wasn't a good time because his kid was having some kind of health issue. Oh well. We connected again later. It wasn't fun. The call about communication problems, which I had said would take 5-10 minutes, actually took over 20. He made his suggestion before I could get mine out. When I made mine, he said he wasn't interested and expounded at length about how we had different opinions and his were better. For what it's worth he made it clear that he'd take a hierarchical view of things and follow any actual instructions, just not "advice". I admit his suggestion would help with some of the problems, so we went with it, I reassured him that I wasn't going to set word count limits or time limits on his speech, and I also privately resolved to be more assertive about cutting him off when he was holding forth orally. 

I thought it went badly. But 20 minutes later I called S. to follow up about a minor point I hadn't found a good way to bring up specifically, and she said that 10 minutes earlier J. had called her to apologize for it, so I guess the message got across implicitly? I underestimated my abilities in this area? It's unpleasant and difficult but doable if I try? I dunno.

Other than that, work yesterday was just trying to get some old stuff moving, and getting ready for the upcoming vacation. 

It was Tuesday, so the kid had swim class, so I got my jogging in then. 3 miles in 28 minutes 10 seconds, 3.12 miles in 30 minutes. Not a record or if it is, only by mere seconds. I'm not sure how bad I should feel about that. (One possible answer, of course, is not at all! I can't go on improving it linearly forever, and any exercise at all is good compared to 3 months ago and amazing compared to one year ago!) I didn't have the time to go for 40 minutes, but I also didn't have the stamina. Maybe I could have handled another minute or two but I really felt like I would have collapsed in less than 10. 

Dinner was leftovers. Has to be easy on Tuesdays and want to use stuff up. 

After the kid was in bed there were two overlapping school-related meetings. T. was involved in the one about teacher appreciation week events. I attended one about Earth Day events, but didn't have much to say since there was a previous meeting I hadn't known about and I won't be available on Earth Day itself. I guess I could make posters to help if they asked or something? People are actually accomplishing stuff, and I'm trying to help, but I'm not sure how much it matters...

Easy enough day

 Wordle 290 5/6

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I feel like I should have done something differently there, but I'm not sure what. Try words with five letters I don't already have to eliminate more, I guess. 

Yesterday it seemed a bit too cold to bike the kid to school, so we drove. We've started renting our neighbor's extra parking space, so that made getting back home a tiny bit easier. We only really need it because we're going on vacation later this month and renting his space for the month is cheaper than renting an airport space for a week, but it'll be nice not to have to guess where we'll be able to park before turning onto our block and things like that.

Work wasn't too busy. I put it off as long as I could, but eventually made time to call S. about J. I will try to talk to him today about his communication style and stuff. After that I went biking to run one quick errand, to get coffee and a birthday card for my mother. It turned into two errands because the store I went to for the coffee had several cards, but birthday cards weren't among them, so I went to another. But I still managed to get back before I got disconnected from the network, so that was nice.

Yesterday afternoon I went jogging. 2.4 miles in 23 minutes, yay. At some point I should use the stopwatch app. So far, when discussing times in the neighborhood, I've just been noting the time I start and the time I get back and doing the math. Eventually I'll start to care about the difference between 23 minutes 50 seconds and 24 minutes 5 seconds, if I haven't already.

Dinner was pork chops, a frozen biryani meal for the vegetarian (on the one hand, vegetarianism is respectable, I want to support her stated preference for it. On the other hand, there are still so many vegetables she won't eat, whipping up interesting vegetarian meals is harder than throwing a slab of meat in a pan, and shopping is weird this week), and cauliflower.

Weekends are tough

 Wordle 289 5/6

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The kid's preference for weekend TV has shifted to YouTube videos. I don't like this. I'd much rather police the gender roles of mainstream cartoons than try to keep her away from bad stuff in that cyberpunk dystopia. Funny animals, ASMR, cake decoration, and sand painting are acceptable. Horror game playthroughs are not.

Yesterday breakfast was eggs and toast. T. slept in late, until almost 9:30. A friend of the kid's came over to play a little after 11, so we supervised that. We had a couple hours free before going to a makeup music lesson - she had missed one a couple weeks ago due to illness. She was very difficult about it. We're used to her being difficult about anything like practice but it seems like she enjoys herself fairly well in the lessons. Her being difficult about going to the lessons is new and worrisome. But when we actually were in the studio she seemed cheerful enough.

Shortly after that we had the monthly scout meeting. It was in the den leader's backyard, which is just a couple blocks away - I have to appreciate the convenience. It was cold but otherwise went well. The kid's friend in the den came over to our house afterwards and played. They got on my nerves a bit more than usual but it wasn't all that bad. Lasagna and green beans for dinner. 

The evening was a bit frantic, planning a potential trip to a family reunion this summer. We technically had some warning of it but it seemed like it came up out of the blue. We aren't sure if we'll make it, or if we do, how. Talking about that made me also think about longer-term plans, so that wasn't fun.

Good thing I burned off all those calories

 Wordle 288 5/6

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Yesterday morning we had a big but quick breakfast (pancakes and bacon). It was quick because the kid had plans to see a friend she hadn't seen in a while at 10, and it was at the playground near where she has her swim class. So while the girls were running and climbing around the jungle gyms and the moms were catching up, I decided to go to the gym myself. I didn't track how far I got in 30 minutes because I kept going for longer and went for 4.18 miles in 40 minutes. Woo hoo. 

Definitely my longest workout in a year. Maybe longest in much longer than that; I don't have records of what I was doing back in 2019 or earlier but I think I rarely spent that long jogging. If nothing else, this makes me think about another way to improve my route: do my usual loop, and instead of finding a good detour, just do it twice. This also makes me wonder a bit about non-jogging exercise. Eventually I'll hit the limits of how much running I have time for; how else should I get exercise?

Anyways, we spent over 2 hours at that park. After I got out of the shower, the girls were still happy to climb and play. A little after noon they had to go, so we did too. We went home, got the laundry started, had lunch, and then I took the kid to the park by our house for almost another hour. After that she had music practice and helped me make her bed (grudgingly).

At 4:30 we went to a friends' small, casual party in Bethesda. In fact, it was the tail end of an all-day brunch event. We basically had a second breakfast - croissants, muffins, bagels, fruit, parfait, and in my case a Bloody Mary - for dinner. The kid was the hit of the party. She liked almost all the food they had and there was a shuffleboard table she beat almost everyone at.

A good Friday is rare

 Wordle 287 4/6

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Yesterday we drove the kid to school, but the traffic was so good, I almost didn't regret not getting exercise. T. had the day off; maybe a lot of other people did too? But it was a normal workday for me, so we dropped the kid off at school, she dropped me off at home and went to get herself breakfast and run an errand or two. 

The rest of the team at work yesterday was unimpressed by my eureka moment the day before yesterday. I'm not actually sure if they should have been or not, but I couldn't dwell on it, because it was the biweekly report day. The new system and template for them seems good overall. Minor problems with a part of it that was new this week. If we could actually get the submissions by close of business Thursday when they're due, one person could finish this whole job by noon. As it is we got the last two reports a little after 11 AM, and I was in a meeting at the time, and I think a peer review is still valuable anyways. 

I took care of some minor stuff in the afternoon after finishing my work on that, and logged off early to go with T. to see The Lost City. It was fun. We had the theater to ourselves. Obviously the past two years haven't been great for movies, and I guess a 2 PM showing on a weekday would be a particularly unpopular time. After that we stopped by a bookstore on the way home and picked up a book T. had ordered, and I found the sequel to A Deadly Education. I logged back in at work for a few minutes just to make it a full day and follow up on a couple things. Then we went to get the kid. We were a couple minutes late for that, and a couple minutes late for getting her to gymnastics class. Oh well; she didn't miss that much. Today's class had a bit of a show for parents at the start before the actual class began. T. and I went to the nearby bookstore during the actual class. T. got herself something plus a few books for the kid that would be a bit more challenging. After class ended, burritos for dinner.

This fucking game

 Wordle 286 X/6

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WTF? English has too many words like that. In hindsight I should have used my 4th or 5th guess to eliminate a bunch of possible letters, but I thought I was already scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

I biked the kid to school yesterday. The weather was better than it looked.

Work was nuts. In the morning, I logged on thinking we'd get started on the first of a few tasks resulting from this meeting. Team discussion quickly revealed confusion about how to get started (and that was my fault if anyone's so I'm mad at myself for laziness/disorganization), or even if it was several little tasks or one big one. My teammate J. was voluminous about both parts of that. The biggest reason I'm glad I'm the team leader and not him is that he can write thousands of words on random trivial topics. It's easier to ignore or gloss over that when I'm his leader than it would be if the reverse were true, but instead of doing either of those I should really try to shut him down more. In the end I'm tempted to give him the one big task, for several reasons but mainly just because I don't care about it enough to argue any more. The main reason I haven't is that that our other teammate S. called dibs on certain parts back when it seemed like several little tasks. If she actually wants it even though it might be one big task instead of several little ones, J. shouldn't get it just because he's louder/pushier. In the end I just put the decision off until next week.

That was the morning. In the late morning and early afternoon I worked on two documentation tasks. One was fine. For the other one, the actual changes to the text turned out to be simple and minimal, but formatting was a huge mess. I got something from the subject matter expert with unnecessary changes, not tracked, and I found two different types of wrongness in the document I had sent to her, and inconsistencies between our source documents... ugh.

Later I tried to answer a simple question someone had about how we handle obsolete documents. It proved very complicated because it wasn't set up exactly the way I expected. This misunderstanding might have been entirely on my end or maybe only partially, I'm not sure. Once again, J. just couldn't shut up. I went jogging around 3 (24 minutes, matching my current record) and had a eureka moment while I was out there and figured out the main issue. I was able to resolve the essentials by the end of the day, with follow-ups that will hopefully only be minor.

The kid had her music lesson at the usual time. I didn't even bother bringing a book to read. I've finished A Deadly Education (it was great and I'm thinking about going out and getting the sequel soon) and didn't have the mental energy to start anything new, so I just browsed Reddit and Facebook on my phone during the lesson. 

While cooking dinner (orange chicken from a bag, with veggies added so it's somewhat healthy), I attended a Scout leadership committee meeting online. Very little input needed or offered from me but I figured I should show up just in case our den's main leader couldn't make it.