A tiring day

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I hate games like that, when the difference between 3 guesses and 5 or 6 is pure luck. I don't know if my strategy should be any different or it's just that the game is too luck-based.

Yesterday I woke up around 6:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. I went jogging early. I started by running by a friend's house to drop off a toy the kid had borrowed, which added half a mile to the usual route. Good for me.

Breakfast was simple instead of the usual weekend brunches because the kid had a playdate with school friends at 10. We were a little late to that but spent a long time there. T. socialized, or maybe networked considering how much work the parents' group needs. I did a little of that but mostly watched the kid and read stuff on my phone. 

We finally left there around 2 PM. After a quick lunch at home, the kid's "BFF" from across the street came over to play. They haven't seen each other in weeks due to summer vacation/travel plans, so we're glad they got to spend time together. T. and I relaxed and had a little downtime before a friend of ours came over. At 7, the kid got to go to her friend's house in turn for pizza and a movie. Then I made dinner for T. our friend, and I. After that, to a bar nearby for cocktails and dessert. Not a date, with a friend and in only about an hour before the kid's movie was over, but still, it was fun.

After the movie, the kid and her friend hung out a bit more. She did something rude to me and her punishment was not getting read to at bedtime. It was tough, but I stuck with it if only to not let her win.

A slow day

Wordle 406 5/6

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Yesterday we let the kid sleep in a bit, since we had kept her up late the night before, but I got her to camp around 10. On the way we had a nice talk about it. It doesn't sound like there's anything horrifying or traumatizing going on there, it's just that some of the counselors can be too demanding about cleaning up or something. On the way home I got coffee, which I hadn't thought of when we went shopping the day before. Over lunch I realized I also should have got mustard. Oh well.

Work was fine. Not much going on. I didn't get a few things done that I should have, but on a slow Friday, who cares.

We drove to pick up the kid around 5. On the way, we arranged for her to go play at a friend's house, and that grew into a dinner date at the neighborhood Indian place for the three of us, her friend, and her mother. Cool.

After the kid was in bed, T. and I watched an old Poirot movie instead of just an episode or two of TV. We didn't get to bed until 11:30, but hey, it's a weekend.

A long day

Wordle 405 4/6

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Yesterday the kid said she didn't want to go to the YMCA camp. Then, after that, she said she had a sore throat. We were skeptical, but we have to take that kind of thing seriously these days, and we made it clear that we had to work and she couldn't just watch TV all day and she wanted to stay home anyways, so we let her. (We also offered her medication and she accepted, which lends credibility to it. She normally hates Tylenol and similar stuff.)

She only watched a little more TV than usual. Maybe drew a little or did some activities in activity books, I'm not sure, but she definitely read a lot. She bothered us a little bit, but not too much. A little after noon I went to the grocery store and took her with me, more to get her out of the house than to actually have the help. I took her to the park for a few minutes, maybe up to half an hour, but she didn't see any friends there and wasn't interested in more.

Meanwhile T. and I worked. I had two meetings. T. had more than that. I got a few little things done, both in work and in WoW, but nothing big, due to unpredictable interruptions.

Dinner was carne asada and salad. The easiest things in the house and not completely disgusting to the kid.

After dinner, we went to a concert. Iron and Wine and a couple other bands at the Wolf Trap, an outdoor venue in a park nearby. Getting there took a little longer than planned due to a Google Maps glitch or something - I have no idea why the default directions took us to the farthest access point in the park from the actual venue, in a residential neighborhood. We got to the amphitheater just a few minutes before the music started. Just a few minutes after that, it started raining. We had very intelligently brought a lot of rain gear and left it in the car. Whoops. So we found shelter under a tree and tried to make the best of it until the downpour ended. The concert itself was fine. It was our first time going to one of these with the kid. She behaved herself (since we had brought her iPad, it was easy) but was wild and wired for a while. Too little activity earlier in the day, I'll bet. 

We got home around 11, I got the kid ready for bed while T. got the stuff unloaded and spread out to dry, and we all went to bed pretty quickly.

Jumping back into things

Wordle 404 6/6

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And then there's this. I forgot about that first yellow letter in the second guess until the end. Definitely human error there.

Yesterday we left my parent's house around 9. We stopped for a bathroom break around 11, in a dingy out-of-the-way truck stop in upstate New York. It was the kind of place that caters to truckers specifically rather than commuters or families on trips, with shower facilities and construction tools by the snacks. We wouldn't have encountered it if we had planned better - T. and I had a miscommunication about how urgently a bathroom break was needed. After that I started driving again. I wish I hadn't, because I didn't want to stop in New Jersey due to the gas system there. I just barely made it through that state and T. took over at the next stop.

For dinner, we scrounged. We had dumplings from a big Costco bag and a paneer tikka masala (?) from Trader Joe's, split three ways. Lazy, but we were tired and needed to go shopping, but on the other hand weren't hungry enough to need/want takeout.

Three covid tests after we got home came back negative. A pleasant surprise considering our exposure. 

Bedtime for the kid was hard. It was my turn. After sitting with her for over 20 minutes, I decided it was time to try her going to sleep without us in the room. I like to think I could have handled the tears, but T. couldn't, and I went back up to sit with her rather than not handle my "turn."

Alone time

Wordle 403 3/6

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Oh yeah baby.

Yesterday, after a little work in the morning, I went jogging. I didn't think I'd do the whole loop from two days before, but when I got to the high point a little less than halfway, I found I wasn't too tired, so I kept going. Yay me. For the record it was 5.88 miles, and I did it in 1 hour, 4 minutes. If that doesn't sound impressive, it's still a personal record and very hilly.

In the morning I worked a little more to deal with a task I was able to close out unexpectedly and make it an even half-day. Then T. and I went to a restaurant, and then a couple breweries we hadn't been to before. At each one we got a flight, and then a six-pack or more of beers we liked to bring back with us. The second was in Burlington, so we also did a little shopping nearby, but didn't buy anything. 

Meanwhile the kid was playing with her cousin and her grandparents. A good time was had by all.

Dinner was lamb cooked by my dad, mashed potatoes made by my uncle, and a salad made by I don't know whom. It was good.

This morning we left my parent's place. We started driving by 9, right on target. Good for us. Got home by 6:30. It was tiring but uneventful.

Family day

Wordle 402 6/6

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One of those words...

Yesterday the weather was bad. Couldn't have gone running first thing if I had wanted to; it was raining. It rained off and on through the morning and early afternoon too. The kids got a fair amount of screen time. But eventually it cleared up enough for my dad's oldest sister to rehearse this presentation she has been working on about our family history, of interest to this community in Canada.

In the afternoon most of the family went golfing at some informal event my dad suggested. Meanwhile T. and I took the kid and her cousin to the local pool. It started raining again just as we left so we had to wait a few minutes to actually get into the pool, but when we finally did, they had fun. After the public pool was closed, her cousin had a swimming lesson. Then we did a little shopping on the way back to my parent's house. We still got home well before the golfers did; rain had delayed them too. 

Dinner started after 8. The kids were wild by the time bedtime came. 

Need a NYT account for Wordle records

Wordle 401 3/6

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Yesterday morning me, my sister, and two of my cousins went jogging. My sister led us on a loop that I've biked and maybe walked a long time ago but never jogged. It was roughly 6 miles, longer than I've done before, and hillier than where I jog in the city. I made it. I was bringing up the rear the whole time, but I made it. Unfortunately, I didn't think to use my phone's app until about a mile in, so my phone doesn't think it's a record. (Oh well, I know it was a record in my heart of hearts...) I was exhausted for quite a while afterwards and I'm still sore now (and to be just a bit positive for once, I'm not as sore as I thought I might be), but hey, I made it. 

After that we basically just relaxed. The kid played with her cousin. We all had a buffet-style breakfast. 

We are spending as much time outside as possible because two people here have tested positive for covid. My parents called us in the late morning Saturday to let us know that my dad's youngest sister's husband had tested positive. My dad's other sister and her boyfriend had also tested positive and weren't coming because of that. When we got the call, we were already in NJ, and we figured we might as well keep going. We wish they had let us know earlier but apparently they tried and it didn't go through. Yesterday morning my dad's younger sister also tested positive. T. and I talked about what to do but ultimately decided to stay. We didn't feel up for driving home Sunday and hotels in the area seem pricey, so we'd live with the risk. 

In the early afternoon we took the kids swimming. My sister said the local pool would be open but it wasn't, so instead we went to a good swimming hole in the river. It was cool. I rarely went there myself as a kid, actually. I had others I liked more, but a flood 10 years ago had changed things and now this was apparently the best.

Afterwards there was a little concert in my parent's backyard. After that, my dad's oldest sister's boyfriend played chess against all comers. He beat my youngest cousin, my second-youngest cousin's boyfriend, and me. 

Dinner was pizza. It was OK. We went to bed earlyish by our standards, although roughly the same as everyone else here. It had been a long day.

Driving

Wordle 400 6/6

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Spent yesterday in the road driving to my parent's house in Vermont. Left right at 8 AM, after a light breakfast. Stopped right away at Dunkin Donuts. Our original ETA was 4:30. Due to a longer than planned lunch, a detour due to a car accident, and a quick errand, we got in at 5:45. Not too bad. We're getting better at this. 

An average Friday?

Yesterday I biked the kid to camp. She was reluctant to go because it wasn't a swimming day, but that's an inadequate reason for our purposes. T. had taken the day off but I got her up around the usual time anyway to help me with the kid.

It was the day for that biweekly report, so that dominated my day. The reports' timeliness was average, maybe a bit worse than average, and a couple of them were harder to edit than usual. Criticizing other people aside, I dropped a ball a few times myself in communicating with the other tech writer. Oh well. We were still done with the substantial part by 2. Could be worse.

Meanwhile T. ran a few errands. I had the house to myself most of that time. In the afternoon she seemed kind of grumpy. I assume it was mostly stress. We certainly have plenty of reason for it.

On the way to getting the kid we stopped by the library to get a book I had put on hold. 

Dinner was oven-fryer chicken and brussels sprouts.

Teamwork

Wordle 398 4/6

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Yesterday I biked the kid to camp. It went better than the day before. 

At work I spent most of the day working on the crazy mess I mentioned two days ago. Basically, I took a turn reviewing a 60-page urgent document. It's a deliverable, which means it's unusually important. The tech writer assigned to it was supposed to get it two weeks ago today, work on it for a few days, and take it to another team for review, so it can be absolutely perfect before submitting it to the client at the end of the month. She didn't actually get anything until the Monday or even Tuesday after it was due, and what she got wasn't what she expected at all. The subject matter expert had misunderstood the instructions or something and worked on something completely different. So he and his team lead scrambled to get a rough version of what they were supposed to have ready for us, and the tech writer assigned to it scrambled to review it. I spent yesterday giving it a fresh set of eyes.

Also playing WoW, of course. It was fruitless but easily could have been fruitful if things had gone just a bit better. I was distracted and could have been more helpful with lunch and laundry. Whoops. 

After getting the kid, we went out to dinner at Gypsy Kitchen, a place near U St. we had never been to before. T. and I liked it. The kid wouldn't say it was more than OK. 

We're getting behind on our TV, because we watched some of the Jan. 6 hearings after the kid was in bed.

Work wasn't busy, everything else was

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Yesterday I biked the kid to camp. Camp is at the YMCA we used to go to for swimming class and general gym use, way back before the pandemic, but it's been a while and the best bike routes have changed. Getting there was OK. Getting back was rough. A route Google Maps recommended wasn't great.

Work was fine. I had the house to myself. Not much going on. Around the house I cleaned the kitchen. I kind of wish I had got more done than that, but it was enough.

Around 4 I went to REI to get new shoes, in hopes that it'll help with the foot problems I've been having. I thought I had gained a shoe size due to wearing them so little over the past year, but the salesman measured my feet and didn't think so, so in the end I went with the same size as before but a different brand and shape. Let's hope they work out. I also tried on cargo shorts. They had at least two styles, but they both had pockets too small for my sunglasses case. I feel like a woman looking for practical pants. 

T. met me there and then we drove to get the kid. We had 10 minutes to spare, unlike yesterday. After we got home, she got to play with her friend across the street while I cooked and T. relaxed. She took a bit of a nap, or almost did. I guess she didn't sleep well last night. 

Dinner was lobster ravioli, this quinoa recipe, and a cucumber salad. The kid ate enough of the latter two to qualify for dessert. We watched no TV due to a late call with T.'s dad. He had input to offer on our home renovation plans.

Foot issues

Wordle 396 X/6

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This fucking game. I don't think it should even have accepted my last two guesses...

Yesterday I had a meeting in the morning with my team. The meeting itself was fine. The issues we discussed are stressful and concerning. My team supports me in spirit on my recent urgent task, not that it matters all that much, but another of the team has a task that's a crazy mess.

In the late morning, it wasn't quite as hot as the day before, so I went jogging for the first time in a while. It was still hot, though.

Other than that morning meeting, work for me was fine. Not too busy.

We went to get the kid at the last minute. Partly because there was a problem with our travel plans and we got sucked into customer support, partly just because we underestimated rush hour. But we weren't late, so, good enough.

Dinner was chicken and brussels sprouts. It was my turn to put the kid to bed. It was better than the night before. We made alternate travel plans at the last minute. Good for me (for once; T. does 90+ percent of the travel planning). 

I didn't sleep well, though, because I kept getting waked up by foot cramps, of all things. Maybe I should have bought bigger shoes?

The first circle of hell

Wordle 395 5/6

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Yesterday we let the kid sleep in. She was kind of grumpy after getting the shot the day before, but it didn't seem like adequate reason to keep her home all day, so we stuck to our plan. We dropped her off at YMCA camp, where she'll spend most of the next two weeks, and then I drove T. and her mother downtown to see some exhibit at the Hirshhorn. Then I had the house to myself for a couple hours and I tried to work.

It was only a couple hours, though. The YMCA called us around 11. The kid had a headache and was tired. Side effects of the shot. So I picked her up and brought her home. When she slept, I worked. When she was in too much pain from flu-like symptoms, I didn't.

We've reached the time of summer when it's impossible to be comfortable in DC. When standing directly in front of an air conditioner, it's cold. Any other time, it's muggy and oppressive. I didn't get any exercise yesterday and I don't feel bad about it. (Then again, I've been desensitized after spending most of the past two summers away. And it was particularly bad while T.'s mother was here. We don't have enough air conditioners for all three bedrooms and the downstairs, so we had windows open a lot.) 

Work wasn't great even when I was able to do it. Some of the feedback I got on this urgent task was particularly inane. I wasted valuable time figuring out how to politely refuse to implement it. I got the document up to my standards of ready to review by the right person by around 4 PM on the due date. (As of this minute, no answer to the request for approval, and I just got a response I haven't finished reading from the guy who provided the feedback. Oh well...) 

Dinner was lobster ravioli and salad. We didn't want the kid's illness to result in hours and hours of TV, so instead we suggested she read. I dug out several old Tintin and Asterix comic books. She went to bed at the usual time, but when we went to bed about an hour later, she joined us. Apparently all those hours of sleeping earlier in the day was catching up to her now. I gave up on getting her to sleep by midnight and took the couch, and later, the kid's bed. The kid and T. spent the night in bed together.

Swimming

Wordle 394 5/6

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Yesterday we had the usual Sunday brunch, eggs and home fries. Instead of getting dressed in the morning we just put swimsuits on because we went to meet friends of the kid at a pool around 11. 

It was fun. She's a good swimmer and so are her friends. I haven't been jogging since this, but I wanted to get some kind of exercise, so I tried to go to the deep end and just tread water whenever the kids didn't actively need attention. Maybe I would have swum laps, but difficulty aside, others were there, and it would have me on the other end of the pool from everyone else, somewhat antisocial and neglectful, whereas I could tread water 10 feet from them. Treading water is better than nothing, but it's hard to tell exactly how much. We were there for about 2 hours. Exercise aside, I got a bit of a sunburn. Should have put the sunscreen on better.

After that, home for lunch and a little relaxation. Around 4 we went out again to get a covid booster for the kid and second boosters for T. and I. Although it turned out that I wasn't eligible. Oh well. The kid was very afraid of it. Afterwards, we went to the library, and then Dick's for some sportswear. It started out with T. looking for a new swimsuit, but I got socks, and the kid wound up seeing stuff she liked.

I had planned to cook, but it was almost 6 by the time we stopped shopping, so instead we got fried chicken sandwiches. I read to the kid at bedtime. She was up late. Jet lag.

Some else's party

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Yesterday I made the usual brunch, but smaller than usual because the kid's friend had a birthday party in the morning. It was fun. It was the same place as her party, but I wasn't the host, so that was nice. I wound up doing a lot of walking around anyway, because our house is closer to the park than theirs and to help out in general, but it was a lot less than if it was our kid.

In the afternoon she got to play with that friend a bit. T. and her mother went shopping while I hung out around the house, did laundry, and played WoW. 

Dinner was at Brine. There was a downpour so bad there were leaks in the restaurant, but the food itself was fine. The kid was up late. I guess jet lag has kicked in.

I hate Fridays

Wordle 392 4/6

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Yesterday the kid got up at around the usual time, which was itself a bit surprising due to jet lag. She watched TV in the morning (of course) and I worked a little bit. After we all had breakfast, we took her to her annual checkup. Getting there was a pain because it was downtown so we didn't want to deal with parking, but a Lyft took too long to arrive, so we drove after all. The checkup itself was fine. 

Then, back to work. This wasn't a WAR day. However, I had been given an urgent task on short notice. On the 7th the SME let me know in general terms that it was coming up. They sent it to me on the 14th. I had to ask about the deadline; they are starting the program this describes on the 19th. Yes, that's brief. So I said I'd have my draft to them for review by the morning of the 18th, Monday. Yesterday morning my boss asked if we could have it done by close of business yesterday. She acknowledged how unrealistic this was.

So I was working a lot more than planned or expected yesterday, although realistically it was only a tiny bit worse than I would have guessed Thursday afternoon. I also finished the transcript of the April school board meeting, which had taken us way too long to get. Yay.

Dinner was steak and corn, grilled, and a green bean dish. Not my finest work but it was OK.

I read to the kid at bedtime for the first time in weeks. We were both tired.

Big WoW news, I got the fifth Mage Tower challenge done, after way too many tries. On to the sixth and seventh...

Reparenting

Wordle 391 6/6

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Yesterday I had the house to myself for the second day in a row because T. had an in-person event. Work was fine. A couple meetings. Not too difficult. A new task on relatively short notice but we've had worse. I finished my draft of this document where the subject matter expert is my own boss, which is a bit unusual. 

At 3:30 I finished some minor tasks and drove down to get T., and then to the airport. Traffic was bad - what a surprise - but we didn't actually get lost or anything. Their flight was good. The kid seems happy enough to be home.

Dinner was salmon (a recipe I haven't made in a while, but the kid refused it anyway), roast cauliflower, and a risotto, the last of three kits T. had bought on this shopping trip.

Being so tired WITHOUT a kid is a bad sign

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Ugh. 

I didn't sleep well the night before last for some weird reason. Yesterday my right foot hurt as soon as I woke up. It felt like I was footsore despite just getting up, or like I somehow got a bruise on the sole of my foot. I wasn't sure if there was some injury (bad shoes? Bad posture? A bad running route?) or just generally overdoing it, so I didn't go jogging. I was going to get enough steps in anyway...

At 10 in the morning I took the bus to get my hair cut. After that I did a little grocery shopping. I splurged and got myself a salad for lunch. 

Work around that stuff was fine. No meetings. Minor emails and documentation work.

In the afternoon we had a date planned. Around 4 I did a little work around the house at the last minute. Then I walked to T.'s office to meet her and we took the metro together to  Dupont Circle. We went to the comic book shop first. (How romantic, right? But it's in the area and it's always nice to browse.) Then we had dinner at a Turkish place we've been to only once before. Then the actual event, a flamenco show on the roof of a hotel. Fancy (I was dressed more warmly than I'd like, with pants and shoes, but I don't mind getting dressed up for a date and I didn't see any men in sandals), weather-appropriate, and covid-appropriate. We skipped the end, a brief class, but the show was fun anyways. 

Didn't sleep well last night either. There was a little snoring, but I think the weather was a bigger problem. A low of 70 and muggy is hard to deal with, with or without air conditioning.

A tiring day

Wordle 389 4/6

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Yesterday I went jogging in the mid-morning, right before a meeting, so I had to take it sweaty and shirtless. The benefits of working from home! I really do want to cut back on that, though. Professionalism aside, I don't want to get my headphones sweaty, which means I can't do it while T. had a meeting. She didn't have one scheduled but one actually came unexpectedly so she had to put the headphones on.

I had two other meetings yesterday, too. I wasn't the primary tech writer on either one, but I listened to both for general awareness, and I had a contribution to make on one of them. I also had a few personal chores to deal with too, PTA stuff and corresponding with an architect about the I mentioned here we're hoping to do. (It's still in the early planning stages.) So I was busy. And the weather was hot and muggy, and turned to a storm around 6. In brief, it was tiring.

But we had evening plans and our childlessness is nearing its end and we wanted to take advantage of it, so we kept the evening plans. I dropped T. off at a bar on 14th Street where she met some other parents at our school for a going-away party for one (the family is moving to Germany for work or something like that). Then I drove to another bar where I met our former neighbor J. for a happy hour. It was OK. The bar itself wasn't great. Decent beer but nothing special and kind of expensive, and we didn't want to get wasted anyway, since we both happened to drive. But it was nice catching up with him. I haven't done something like that in a while. I rarely see him without both of our spouses, and other than seeing this guy I don't know if I've gone out for fun without T. since before the pandemic.

What I don't talk about

Wordle 388 5/6

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I made a mistake, but even so I don't feel bad about getting it in 5 guesses, because it was one of those words with eight different possibilities for a certain letter.

Yesterday was fine. I ultimately did go jogging in the later morning. Not too busy at work. Meetings, but they weren't directly for/about me or my tasks; I was just there for my awareness and just in case I had a contribution. I finally got to a couple minor but annoying tasks I had been putting off for a while.

Dinner was pork chops, leftover salad, and mashed potatoes because we had to use them up. 

Musing

There's a lot I don't write about here, but that doesn't mean it's not important or a big part of my time. Other stuff I do:

• Nothing about sex appears here, or only very obliquely. 
• I spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft, but only discuss the major victories and other highlights. Not mentioned here are interminable Mage Tower attempts, Mythic+ dungeon runs that incrementally increase my score or pickup raids where I don't get anything interesting in particular, or doing random quest chains to level alts or unlock some cosmetic feature... even though those are the vast majority of the time I spend in the game.
• In addition to the novels I have mentioned reading here (see the label), I also read some political news and articles and fan fiction here and there, especially when I was talking a few months off from the game. 
• I mention actual outings to see people or prearranged visits from friends to see us. I don't usually mention chatting with people on the street or while taking the kid to the park. This seems fair in terms of total planning for and time spent in a given interaction, but it may mean the difference between catching up with a certain neighbor every week or every 3 months, or no human interaction at all outside the house in a given day or brief chats with 3 different people.
  
• I rarely go into detail about TV or movies we watch, but that's at least an hour most days, often more than three.
• I discuss the brief highlights of work, heavily anonymized. In 5 years I hope I can piece together which team member was which, if it matters.
  

There's probably nothing to do about this. (In some cases I can't imagine it mattering. In other cases, I'd probably want to start over and maybe even have separate blogs for each topic to anonymize it. I actually did this in the past about an old job...) I just don't want to mislead the hypothetical reader, or myself if I review this years later, about how I'm actually spending my time.

Overdoing it

Wordle 387 5/6

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Should have got that in four...

Yesterday I almost felt recovered from that cold, so I went jogging in the morning. I shortened the usual route a bit. We were going to meet a friend for brunch, but he twisted his ankle Saturday (on our steps - whoops!) so he cancelled. So instead it was just T. and I. The place was nice. The bloody marys and mimosas were good and cheap and we had some time to kill before the agreed-upon time to drop something off at a friend's house nearby, so we each had two drinks. 

We took the bus there, but the app said there would be a long wait for a bus back, so we walked back. It was 1.7 miles, which is a reasonable walk by itself. 

At home in the early afternoon we did the laundry and a couple other odd jobs around the house. Around 3 we went to Lowe's to get new blinds for our bedroom, since our cheap plastic ones were falling apart. Then we went to a local brewery we liked for its going-out-of-business sale. Sad. Parking was hard to find and we stocked up on on their beer we liked or were willing to try.

Dinner was orange chicken from Trader Joe's with some vegetables added as a stir-fry. Easy enough. I had one of those new beers with it, which was unusually strong.

Between all the time on my feet, and the carrying beer and other odd jobs, my feet were killing me by bedtime. On the other hand, with all the alcohol, I was feeling fairly numb! This morning conditions would have been perfect to jog, in the 60s and a bit breezy, but I wanted to give my feet a break. Maybe I'll do it a bit later, maybe I'll do get exercise some other way, maybe I'll take the day off, I don't know.

Quiet except for the heavy metal

 Wordle 386 4/6

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Yesterday we took it easy. Breakfast was egg and sausage sandwiches from the farmer's market, which we had to go to anyway, and a muffin for me. It was more businesslike than usual because it was raining off and on. 

In the early afternoon we went to see the new Thor movie. It was fun. He could be called the god of heavy metal album covers. After that we did a little more grocery shopping. We only had three items on the list, and I'd expect to think of one or two more things we'd need while in the moment, but somehow we filled up two bags. This is why I like to shop alone...

Dinner was andouille sausages and a salad. Easy enough.

Murphy's Law

Wordle 385 4/6

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It never fails. Getting sick on a vacation. Or, in the more specific case, when the kid is out of town. I'm pretty sure I got whatever T. has. We've both tested negative for covid, but yesterday I just had a sore throat and no energy all day. 

Work was OK. The biweekly report wasn't done as early as two weeks ago, but I think it was still better than average for recent months. I have a to-do list with several items on it I've put off, but Monday morning is a much better time to get to them than Friday afternoon, right?

The only food we had in the house for a proper dinner was pasta, so we got takeout. T. had to work until after 6 due to some report. Not that she was busy, she was just waiting for someone else to approve something so she could officially send it out. I was incredulous they'd do that on a Friday. When she was finally more or less done, we watched Ms. Marvel and some other TV and got to bed early.

That's enough office for now

Wordle 384 3/6

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Again, writing a lot of this Thursday during the day.

I took the bus to work. Partly to see if there were any changes there, but mostly because I'm meeting a friend for a happy hour after work and would feel irresponsible biking home after drinking. 

I used to bike more often than I took the bus, but yesterday felt more typical than Tuesday. The bus requires less preparation and there was more certainty to it. I just got up, got dressed, packed my bag, had breakfast, brushed my teeth, checked the schedule, and left. Simple. It could have been any day from 2016-2019 if I was assured that T. could get the kid to daycare or school alone, or any day at all from before the kid was born. 

The bus ride had changed. The view was a bit different. Franklin Park was redesigned and MacPherson Square had more homeless camps (and ducks, oddly) than I remember. Also, the bus turned near the end a couple blocks later than it used to, probably because the new Black Lives Matter Plaza is too narrow for it. And I guess the bus was less crowded than usual, but it's hard to say. 

I had one meeting in the morning, but it was fully remote and I would probably have preferred it that way even if there was an in-person option because I like my note-taking system.  

The magic has worn off going to work. The office setup is better than at home, but it's not a massive, breathtaking difference, it's just a second monitor and a faster connection to the network. Maybe I could just go in once a week on a day with nothing scheduled and archive my email then? Maybe just once a month? I was lazy about some things but I made it a point to get that done before leaving today. I'm afraid I can't think of a way to replicate the second monitor, though. I mean, literally, I could just go out and buy one, we might have something that would work in the basement, but when I think about how I work in multiple places at home and none of them are very roomy, two monitors at home would have to wait for that addition to the house we've been talking about. 

My time-killers are more safe for work here than they are at home, because even though there's literally zero risk of someone looking over my shoulder, I'm still physically in the office using a government-owned computer. Obviously I'm going into more detail here than usual, and there's Unfogged and the more SFW parts of Reddit and similar sites. For my career, this is neutral or maybe good. Personally it's boring. 

Back in the old days, there were perennial complaints and running jokes about a mysterious smell in the office. Mold in some wall or some part of the ventilation system? Who knows. I rarely or never noticed it at the time but I'm noticing it now. 

When getting lunch, I walked by a cafe and thought I saw someone I recognized from the old days. I haven't seen him personally since the pandemic started, and considering how quiet Tuesday was, this would be the closest contact with anyone from the old days since April. However, that wasn't enough incentive for me to actually go inside the place and find out for sure. I went to another cafe I like more instead. 

I resisted getting a pastry with breakfast or lunch. (I had a soda in the afternoon but I feel like that doesn't count. Sugar aside, the caffeine helps in a slow afternoon.) I only have so much willpower, though. They're so tempting. In the short term, maybe I really should have indulged because after all this is a temporary thing. In the long term, it's a good thing it's temporary or it really would be bad for my waistline. 

I find I'm paranoid about misplacing my ID card. In the old days it would have been a momentary annoyance. If I do it now, with so few people around and not knowing any of them, I'm screwed. 

The happy hour was fun. It was just me and this 40-year-old, so it's not like I haven't seen him in a while, but his office is near mine and we haven't met during or after work in a while, so that was nice. It was in a pseudo-British pub, so there were a lot of beer choices. I had a fish and chips.

My phone thinks I'm lazy

Wordle 383 4/6

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Yesterday was fine. T. still wasn't feeling well, so she didn't go to the office, so I had company. Work wasn't too busy. I went jogging in the late morning and wish I had done it earlier; it was humid all day. Unfortunately my app didn't track the run properly due to a badly timed update. 

I spent a lot of time playing WoW, working on the raid achievements (I just realized I probably missed the chance to finish these today; it's not technically impossible in the future but it'll be much, much harder) and the Mage Tower, but still managed to get some stuff done at work. 

Dinner was tilapia and green beans. After that we watched the Stranger Things finale. It was good.

As for the title, Tuesday I biked to work but I forgot to record the return trip. Yesterday, as I said, I screwed up tracking it when I went jogging. And now I'm in the office, and I took the bus here, so I won't get much exercise today...

I'm back, baby!

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Oh come on. I actually thought of the fifth word before the fourth, but didn't guess it because it seemed objectively worse!

Writing most of this Tuesday afternoon...

Getting up in the morning was easier than I expected, given that I slept badly and most going to the office for the first time in a while sounds daunting. Packing was harder than usual but that wasn't really a surprise since I hadn't done it in two years. I left right on time. This would be unfeasible if the kid was around.

The commute was a bit better than I remember overall but it's hard to say. I appreciated a new bike lane. Unfortunately it's already old enough that a stretch is damaged by construction. I don't mean trucks parked in it or whatever; I mean, the bike markings on it are illegible, and the flexible posts intended to keep cars out of it have been moved to the middle of the bike lane itself. I guess to give trucks going in and out of a certain building more room?

In the morning, shortly after cleaning up and dropping my stuff in the office, I got coffee at the coffee shop on the corner (and an apple strudel, an indulgence). I'm glad it's still there. Then I went up to the third floor to sign in at office's front desk, a post-pandemic rule, apparently needed to keep track of people since they're around so unpredictably. Then, settling in. 

Work has been fine. Minor technical difficulties on computers and phones I haven't used in a while. Having two monitors is awesome. (Maybe I need a better setup at home, but it would be no easier now than two years ago.) 

In between sending emails and editing a document, I explored the building a bit. The third floor was quiet. At most every fourth cubicle occupied and the people there didn't seem to be working too hard. At 1 PM on a Tuesday it looked like I'd expect at 4 PM on a Friday. That feels far more normal than the basement where I was, though, which was not merely quiet but fucking creepy. There are still signs on the cubicles with the name of the old contract on them, which ended a month after the pandemic started. I saw just enough people to reassure me that it was safe to be here. I didn't know any of them. When I walked through the old contract's main room, I saw no people. Some cubicles were not equipped for use, while others looked like they might have been occupied the day before, but a few... I found one cubicle with a newspaper in it, dated, not last week or just before the pandemic, but September 10, 2018. I found one with a network diagram poster on the wall that would look useful and relevant to the work we do if it wasn't upside down. What Lovecraftian nightmare did I stumble into? 

Lunch was pizza from a cafe around the corner. I resisted the urge to have even more junk food there. Maybe Thursday. 

I started the day at the computer that had been mine in the old days. I found that its phone wasn't working so I moved to another one, partly for the phone, partly for the better vantage point. Not that I have any reason to worry about people looking over my shoulder... 

As for how I used my time, my performance was average at best. I started out with a to-do list partly related to being in the office but mostly just existing tasks I hadn't got around to last week. Of seven items on it (not that they all represent the same time commitment, difficulty, or importance, but anyway), I finished four and made real progress on a fifth. Can't complain too much I guess. But I still found a lot of downtime for this and certain other Web sites... 

On the way home I got NyQuil and DayQuil. T. still wasn't feeling well and we were low on them at home, and/or they were expired. For dinner we had spaghetti and the leftover salad - easy enough. Watched a little TV and then T. was in bed by 9.

The Fourth

Wordle 381 4/6

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Yesterday I went jogging in the morning. Breakfast was simple: cereal for me, a muffin for T. Also not very social; she had just discovered a problem with a credit card payment and was too busy sorting it out to relax.

We planned to go to brunch around 11, and/or the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, but T. wasn't feeling well. Probably an allergy attack caused by all the dust kicked up cleaning, and/or a sinus infection resulting from it. A covid test came back negative. One session of lying down turned into another until it was after noon, when we officially decided to take it easy. I spent some time cleaning the basement. I got some stuff organized and some stuff thrown out. (Not nearly as much of the latter as I would have liked, some day T. is going to have to be willing to give or throw away stuff we haven't used in years, but at least it's more organized.) 

I'm not much of a party animal in general and I'm not feeling very patriotic these days, but I wanted to see the fireworks. We haven't in years. For the last two years, we were in Vermont or California on the 4th and it was easy to do nothing on the fourth. Before that, the kid was 4 or younger and we tried to observe bedtime. If nothing else came up, I was prepared to walk a few blocks to a hill that I thought would have a good vantage point. 

Around 5 in the afternoon, we heard our new next-door neighbors hosting a party. T. told me that we had been invited. By the time I stepped outside, it seemed that the neighbor's party had died down a bit (it was clearly still going on but was no longer on their front porch), while our neighbor across the street, who we already know and like, was just getting one started. So I walked across the street first. I hung out with people there who I've known for a long time. One of them invited us to their roof deck to see the fireworks. How convenient! I also got a call from my dad, but obviously couldn't chat then, so scheduled a follow-up later. 

Then I went home to T. and reported on all this. She encouraged me to go next door, and I admit I should get to know the new neighbors, so I went. It was nice, sort of. In their house and talking to their friends, we saw a lot of circumstantial evidence that they're Republican activists, which is scary. T. joined me there for a bit. We politely said our goodbyes around 7:15 and went home to chat with my parents. Then I went back to our neighbor across the street. His party was just getting started. T. joined me briefly. We didn't linger too long, though, because we went to the roof deck.

The view of the official fireworks was worse than I expected. I don't know if a new building since the last time I was there blocked the view or what. But there are tons of neighborhood fireworks. We got some so close it was scary.

The neighborhood fireworks also continued late. T. couldn't sleep until after 11 and I'm not sure when I got to sleep myself. We went to bed worried about broken windows because it actually happened last year. 

This morning I got up at the usual time. No damage to our place but our neighbor's window was broken. That sucks. Then I biked to work for the first regular work day at the office in over two years. It probably won't be a regular thing, but it's an experiment I'm doing a few times while the kid is gone. 

Cleaning and stuff

Wordle 380 6/6

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Ugh. One of those words. 

Jogged yesterday morning, then made eggs and home fries for breakfast, with T.'s help. Once again we ate while watching TV. This time it was finishing The Umbrella Academy. 

After breakfast we walked to the farmer's market. Then we spent most of the day doing the laundry (less than usual, because last week's was later than usual) and cleaning. We organized the kid's room. We threw away (recycled, etc.) a few things we're confident she doesn't need or want, and put together a much bigger bin of things we thought she could probably get rid of but wanted to give her a choice about.

Then T. moved on to organizing the spare bedroom/office, while I inflated a kiddie pool for our own use. It was a pain. Our mechanical pump's battery wasn't charged. Our bike pump doesn't have a nozzle that fits the pool neatly - it works, but I had to hold it on tightly manually. The whole effort took more than half an hour. But it was worth it. We relaxed decadently in the pool. With certain neighbors gone and the umbrella positioned carefully, we had basically complete privacy.

Dinner was pork chops and salad.

A matinee

Wordle 379 6/6

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That was tough. No errors, unless giving up on thinking of words that used the letters I had counts, it just took a while.

Yesterday I went jogging in the morning and made pancakes and bacon when I got back. T. helped, since she got up a bit earlier than usual. She also found a movie called The Princess on Hulu and we watched that over breakfast. Decadent. After that we went to the farmer's market and did a little shopping. Then we thought about our options and decided to go see Mr. Malcolm's List. The best showtime we could find was in Georgetown, so we took a bus as opposed to dealing with parking. We had time to kill, so we walked around the park. 

The movie was fun. Afterwards, we had planned to make dinner at home. But we stopped at Sovereign, a bar we liked and hadn't been to in a while, and drinks turned into dinner. Oh well. Can't complain.

A good day

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Made a mistake in the third guess. Oh well...

Yesterday was slow at work. I had one meeting and it was fairly quick. There are lots of things I could theoretically have done, but most of them involve getting input from other people, and I thought the chances were low that anyone else would think too hard about these issues on the Friday before a three-day weekend. So instead I organized my inbox and put together a meticulous to-do list for Tuesday.

I tried to do T.'s online exercise class through work but couldn't get in. Either it was cancelled with no notice (maybe due to the holiday?) or they've taken steps to keep people outside their office from getting in. So instead I went jogging. I went the usual distance but longer than the usual time, to take it easy. It was already hot by then.

For dinner we went to Brine and met a friend. It was nice catching up with her and enjoying their happy hour stuff. After that, we went back to our place for more drinks, and ice cream, and weed. Wow. Hedonistic evening. (I'm surprised I wasn't hung over.)

Cool

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It was really hard making the second guess, given the letters I had from my first one. 

Yesterday was good. (Every time I say that, the qualifier "personally and professionally" is implicit unless stated otherwise because the news is horrifying.) 

• Work wasn't too busy. Got a few longstanding tasks moving again. Completed some, although in these cases it doesn't mean creating some useful product, it just means determining more or less definitively that I can close out the task and clean things up. 
• I went jogging for the first time in almost a week. I took it easy, just the most minimal loop around the college, and I'm glad. It's hard to know what my limits are until I overdo them, and when that happens it's too late. I didn't overdo it yesterday, but I think it was pretty close. 
• In World of Warcraft I got Ahead of the Curve. It took several hours, but we made it in the end. Woo hoo. Also, it wasn't with a completely random group; I sort of found a community. The reason I haven't stuck with a guild in years is that I couldn't (or didn't want to) stick to the usual schedule, but Wednesday and Thursday I found a cross-faction community that fits my schedule. This might be an ongoing thing. 

Dinner was rosemary beef tips and sauteed zucchini. Not my finest work but it was edible. Afterwards we walked to Rita's for dessert. Not the healthiest, but what the hell, it's summer.