Thursday, August 22 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning everyone! I got a lot done yesterday. The morning was filled with meetings, then we went out to lunch with the interns. I had a hot bowl of ramen, which put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. I bounced around different rooms to do some writing, taking a break at 2 PM for a Ki Gong session. When I got to the fitness room, there was a little sign on the door noting that class would be held on the capital lawn. When I got there, it was just the instructor Justin, but I stayed to do some Ki Gong with him and it was really relaxing. It was a lot easier to focus on my breathing outside feeling the grass on my feet. There were a lot of bugs in the lawn, and occasionally a fly or a few ants would wander of my ankles, testing my concentration.

After the session, we chatted about Ki Gong for a bit. I shared with him that I think it might be helping with my anger. The anger was caused by other things, but it's always worsened with stress, and I have a much less stressful day whenever I make time for Ki Gong at work. The slow breathing and smooth movements usually take my mind out of whatever I was working on and give me a chance to reset my brain. It feels good to not think about anything, and just practice breathing.

After Ki Gong, I wrapped up the blog post and met back with the interns for a quick sync up. I got to see some of their slides, as well as the video showing off their new easy button. I was pretty blown away, I think it's going to be a really big deal at the company. And honestly I feel like I spent most of the time just watching them work from the sidelines. As our time together this summer is coming to a close, I spent a lot of time yesterday reflecting on how cool it's been to work alongside them.

After work, I took Rodney to Hy-Vee to pick up a few things to make Carbonara. Before leaving, while I was changing him, Rod got all excited about busses, and I thought he was talking about them in the abstract, so I joined in. "Yeah, dude, the bus? Sweet, busses ARE sweet, you got that right." But after he put his backpack on and wandered to the end of the driveway, it became clear to me that he thought we were going to take the bus somewhere instead of our usual Hy-Vee car ride. I was pretty crushed, and what made it worse was that he was pretty mature about the miscommunication. He just let out a quick whimper, then climbed into his car seat and asked to listen to his favorite album.

So whatever we're doing this weekend, you can be sure it will be involved taking the bus somewhere. We're thinking about taking the bus downtown on Saturday to go to the Farmer's market.

The Carbonara turned out great. Rod wanted to help, so I put him on basil-ripping duty, but he kept wandering away from his workstation and eating cheese off the cutting board.

Marissa put Rod to bed while I played chess on our dining room computer. I hadn't checked in on my chess skills in a while, and I'm sad to report that the computer absolutely kicked my butt. I guess I don't have the best strategy. I don't know much about chess strategy, but I'm guessing there is never a time where you are allowed to just move a piece and say "eh, let's see what happens now". You know how the measure of a good chess player is how many moves ahead they are, mentally? I think when I play, I'm -1 moves, meaning I don't even understand the last move I made.

After giving up on chess for the night, I did some chores. On Wednesdays, I clean the microwave, the stove, and the fridge. Marissa had a new water heater installed, and she discovered that you can set how hot the water gets. As a result of tweaking the setting, the water in the kitchen sink was hotter, and it was way easier to get grime off of the stove.

After chores, I tidied up my upstairs computer. It was long overdue, I still had parts strewn about after stripping down the file server, and to pass the time I reinstalled my OS. I was running out of disk space, and now that we have a dining room computer, I don't have any use for games and kids stuff upstairs, so I did without all of that and just set up the basics needed for journaling, notes, and email.

Today should be a good day. On Thursdays, we take a break from cooking and eat out while running errands - it's usually Portillo's. I think I'm getting fitted for a suit, so definitely looking forward to having someone wrap a tape measure around my legs and waist after a heavy, greasy Portillo's dinner.

Hope you all have a wonderful Thursday today. Go out somewhere for dinner today - you earned it.