2019-04-26 Friday

Good Morning Journal!

It was a different kind of morning. My boss moved a meeting to 8AM, so I had to rearrange some things a bit. As a result, I'm journaling from work, which feels a little strange. I'm not sure how I feel about informally pouring my heart out while my other teammates are already working on (well maybe they're just warming up too, I'm not one to eavesdrop but I see a lot of web browsers open). But let's give it a try. As usual, I'm listening to Endless so that should at least help tune things about a bit.

Speaking of which, I need to work on my focus at work. It's funny, the more I have gotten into tracking tasks and productivity, the harder it is to find the motivation to work on big things for a long amount of time. I guess back in the wild west of working on whatever I wanted whenever I felt like it, I had momentum on my side. If I sat down to work on something, I would just absolutely binge the work until I didn't feel like working on it. That's how I would clean the kitchen for hours or work on the same coding project for an entire weekend.

Now in a more adult, sustainable workflow, I work on a variety of things in small manageable portions. The tasks require less emotional support. Whether I'm feeling like I'm on top of the world or completely hungover, sick and on the verge of yakking my guts out, taking out every garbage in the house every Monday night doesn't take that long.

I think it takes time. I'm finding a balance between committing to working on things and still being able to capitalize on those extemporaneous flashes of inspiration.

Not much context in this one, but I've already been awake for over two hours and I did most of my small thinking on the bus ride in. Hey, it's Friday. We made it. Here's to a well-deserved, long anticipated weekend.

2019-04-27 Saturday

Good Morning Journal!

It's a beautiful Saturday. Well, truth be told it's very dreary outside, and a bit chilly. But it's beautiful to me, because today I'm going to take another stab at Chicago deep dish pizza. We tried it once already, and I have some thoughts for how I can improve upon it. Namely:

1. I put way to much work into the dough last time (work in both senses of the word actually, I didn't realize pretty much any dough with corn meal would work, and I kneaded it for too long, making it very bready).
2. I didn't roll out the crust thin enough. Even though the pan is deep, it should be mostly cheese and sauce, the crust should only be less than a half inch.
3. I was afraid to trim the excess crust. Not wanting to waste crust, I just balled up the excess around the top, which produce a hilariously thick crust.
4. I attempted to make pizza sauce, which did not work. It was too watery and looked like marinara, which leaked out of the pizza as soon as the first slice was cut.

But I'm feeling good about this attempt. Now I know where all the effort should actually be spent. Later I'm going to walk Rodney over to the Jenny St. market to pick up sausage, cheese, and other things. I didn't realize that grocery store was only a 20 minute walk away. I feel quite silly because I'm been complaining about how there is no walkable grocery store and it's been under my nose this whole time. Maybe I should check it out first before declaring it is my new favorite, I've only been there once with Rob, and I was a few beers deep so I wasn't thoroughly profiling it.

So what else is going on today - I'm still on my best behavior this weekend because I'm on-call for work. I didn't get paged all week, but I still need to be sober enough to fix something if needed. I don't mind so much because I'm also getting paid for it - that's a new thing.

Well Rod is probably going to get up soon, I better get as much R&R in before that happens. Let's have a great day!

2019-04-28 Sunday

Good Morning Journal!

It's a wonderful Sunday morning. The weather is actually pretty beautiful despite most forecasts. Rodney and I were going to walk to the grocery store in hell or high water, but it helps that we'll have neither to face.

Yesterday's deep dish pizza was a smashing success. I was a little short on sauce, but that hardly mattered as we all know it's all about the crust anyway. I posted it on Instagram and got a lot of love, which always feels good. But we don't do it for the instagram likes, do we? We just do it because we feel the need to make pizza and share it with people.

Had a great day with Rodney yesterday. We had planned on eating breakfast at Monty's, but the wait was a half hour long, so we just went across the street to this place called... I forget what it's actually called but I've just been calling it dobis. So we went across the street to dobis, which looked like some kind of Indian food place, but they served a really mean breakfast and were really nice to Rodney.

Afterwards we braved the snow (yes it was snowing in April) and walked to Jenny Street. It's a fantastic grocery store. It was a similar layout to the Willy Street Co-Op, but it had fewer hippies wandering around. It was a little more down to earth, and not too expensive! We picked up all the stuff we needed for pizza toppings and some other odds and ends for only $30! Not bad, considering we got some fresh produce too.

When we got home, Rodney was pretty exhausted, so he took a nap while I prepped dinner. I was so delighted to see the pizza come together. Honestly I don't remember the last time I was so proud of something I made. Not counting my son, I mead I helped make him but it was not as much work as a deep dish pizza.

Today the Rodman and I have a pretty busy day planned. Since it's nicer outside, I'm hoping to pack some sandwiches and eat them at Goodman. Then we're going to walk to the grocery store again and pick up a chicken.

Alright, I'm going to slam another cup of coffee before we hop in the shower. Let's have a great Sunday!