Sunday, April 18 2021

2019-06-06 Thursday french toast, ale asylum, and excitement

Good Morning Journal!

Yesterday was an interesting day. I had to go into the office, which always throws off my sense of time when I do that on a Wednesday. I also ate out twice - once at DELUX and again at the Ale Asylum, so I feel like I've been low grade poisoned. Man, the Ale Asylum has really gone down in quality. Their "OG Flatbread" was pretty much a few slices of a frozen pizza, only I paid 10 dollars for it. Still, it was fun hanging out with Alex and Cassie, even if the food was a little crappy.

After dinner, Marissa and I were both feeling queasy, so I just worked through the pain and cleaned the kitchen... which worked out well. While I was cleaning I felt inspired to try making classic French toast (the actual French way), and it turned out so well that I think it was the highlight of my day. Then we watched King of the Hill. I rubbed Marissa's back and spaced out until it was time for bed. So it ended up being a pretty good night, especially now that I have a great French Toast recipe under my belt now. I'm going to bust that out with no warning on a Saturday morning. I can imagine how exciting it would be to be woken up with a hot cup of coffee and warm french toast sprinkled with sugar. Man, maybe I should make more desserts. I almost never make desserts, but it never hurts to broaden your horizons.

Well it's Thursday. We've almost made it - we're in the endgame now. I'm going to finish up some chores this evening, then Friday we're going to make a sfincione and pack for vacation. I'm looking forward to the Friday pre-vacation energy. I'm also just flat out excited to travel. I think we're gonna get to try some amazing food and see some cool things in Vancouver. We're even taking a cooking class. It's just a week filled with things that, by themselves, would be the highlight of my week. So I feel lucky.

Today at work I'm just wrapping up some lingering tickets and getting ready to disappear for all of next week. I'm doing a study session with the interns in the afternoon and messing around with template variables the rest of the day. Oh, and we're going out to lunch with the interns. I ate lunch with them yesterday, but today is with the entire team, which should be pretty exciting.

So let's do it! Let's have a Thursday - the /last/ Thursday before vacation.

2019-06-07 Friday burnout and travel

Good Morning Journal!

Well we made it. It's Friday, and everyone is leaving the house tomorrow. I get a week and a day off of work, and I feel like it didn't come a day too soon. Burnout has been on my mind. Mornings have been very hard to get through. Even though I've had little things here or there to help me get through the day - learning to meditate, finding a good meal to try, cleaning, listening to music, skating - the burnout has been real and it's been a struggle. So I decided to, rather than pretending it's not there, why not face it head on?

Yeah, the burnout has been real. It felt like I had a lot of momentum and energy through the spring. Marissa and I were just absolutely killing projects around the house. We completely gutted the kitchen and I was editing videos for her.

I even picked up journaling again. Heading into the summer, things are starting to stagnate. If I were optimistic, I'd say that the only problem is I haven't taken any time off work in a while. And work has been a real grind lately. Our team is at a very painful part of our project where every day is just a grind: pulling configuration out of old, shitty services and putting them somewhere else.

Ah, I think it's official. I'm ready for a vacation. I had better make this week count. I think the things I'm looking to get out of this trip are:

• connecting with Marissa
• food inspiration
• peace

I'll be journaling throughout the trip too. Marissa graciously agreed to let me use her tiny keyboard, so I'll be doing a mobile version of this little morning routine of ours.

So let's see what I have left today. I have my 1-on-1 with the boss, then we have a team demo. I'm going to sneak away for a quiet lunch comprised of last night's leftovers, then we have a demo for the interns and finally our team's retro. Afterwards, I'm taking the bus home, Marissa and I are going to make a sfincione, then all we have to do is pack everyone for vacation.

Ah, you know what? I felt it. Just that last sentence there made it feel like some of the burnout might peel away. I believe travel is the anecdote. This Friday, let's prepare for an adventure. Let's be the most prepared we've ever been to leave home and explore.

To Friday!

2019-06-21 Friday patience, weekend, laptop, and ribs

Good Morning Journal!

And a happy Friday. For a short week, it felt pretty long. And I suppose coming back to an on call shift didn't help either - the days sort of bleed together when I can't break up the week with a bit of weed on Wednesday night. I slept like shit last night, and I got a bit of a headache, but I'm slowly waking up.

Yesterday, Marissa and I talked about my lack of patience over some Portillo's. She agreed with my assessment of things, and we had quite a bit of fun pointing out other examples from my life that back things up. And it was fun - I can really lose myself in reminiscing, especially through a new lens like this one. A lot of stories from childhood, high school, college, and even our early marriage make a lot more sense if you consider I've always had a severe lack of patience. I afforded myself the embellished trip down memory lane, considering it a victory lap. It was a pretty big breakthrough for me.

But now I guess begins the harder part. How do I grow patience? Marissa asked me last night what my plan was, and to be honest I don't have a plan besides just writing about it. Usually when I have a question, I just turn to the Internet, but I don't think I'm going to find very good answers by googling "how do I become more patient?". I'm not looking for lifehacks and mommy blogs. Ha - you know I say that I'm not going to google it, but later I totally am just to see what will come up. And it will probably be good, I'm selling the Internet short.

Let's put in a pin in patience for now. Nothing is coming to mind at the moment, and I've got a fun weekend ahead and I'd like to recap it. We're making sfincione tonight, then I'm smoking a slab of ribs tomorrow. I haven't made ribs in a while, but since I've never quite been happy with by ribs recipe, it's a good opportunity to start from scratch and make them a lot simpler. I'm only going to use brown sugar, pepper, paprika, and maybe some cumin. And since I usually just cake the rub onto the ribs and they always turn out a little gummy on the outside, I'm going to kind of skimp on the rub this time. I'm also taking the buttermilk cornbread recipe for another spin. Then on Sunday, Marissa has a painting class, I'm hanging out with the Rodman, then we're meeting up with Alex and Cassie at Karben 4 for dinner.

I'm also hoping to finally finish Kelly's computer. I fixed up the software on it, just need to open it up, give it a quick cleaning, then make it cute with cable ties, etc. I don't know if I mentioned this in the ol' journal, but a long time ago she gave me her old Macbook Pro to fix up, and I'm not letting myself take on any new fun tech projects before I deliver on what I said. Upgrading it was a pain in the ass, but definitely worth it. It's a ten year old laptop running a five year old OS, but the thing honestly runs better than my work laptop on some days.

Alright journal, I'm going to head to work. This Friday... eh, we'll call this week a practice week. Next week is my official, first, full week back from work, so we'll go with that. Here's to practice weeks.