Blockchain Man

I tried my best to get to bed at a decent hour last night, but couldn’t fall asleep. Then when I did, I got woke up twice, once by Younger trying to sneak into the bed, and a second time by Elder, who had an accident in bed and wanted help doing her laundry. I told her to get her but back to bed. So when the time came to rise and shine, I got Younger to school without any problems, but came back to find Missus and Elder arguing. Elder was having a breakdown. I offered to let her stay home, but she wanted to go.

Yesterday was our daddy-daughter day, our quarterly board meeting, if you will. It was a bit abbreviated because Missus didn’t get back with the car until after four, but we managed to make the best of it. She spent fifty dollars of her allowance at the clothing store, then we spent an hour at the local trampoline park, then finished up with a late dinner at Golden Corral where we both ate ourselves sick.

The trampoline park is a bit of a mixed bag. I’m not sure how long the place has been open, but they use these 6″ foam cubes for the pits that you fall into that are disintegrating, so you wind up with these small pieces all over you when using the rock wall and landing pits. I can only imagine how much sweat and grime they hold. The place was crowded as hell, which tons of people enjoying pizza — it’s not a gym, obviously, but it was understaffed as well, with one only one person patrolling the actual trampoline area. Elder tried to use the bathroom and came back and said that every toilet was unusable. Me personally I like the place since it’s the only place I know of with obstacle courses and rock climbing gear. I need to find a training place. (What I really need is better hand and upper body strength… that place is tough.)

(Goes off to find rock climbing gyms in the area)

I was so tired when Missus left this morning that I went back to bed and slept for another hour and a half. Now I’m slowly caffinating and planning my day out. This weekend was not very productive. I did absolute zero on the tax stuff that I need to do, it’s making me despair.

Younger has been a cookie thief, I found another empty box of Girls Scout cookies in her bedroom Saturday, and then Sunday after she came back from church she tried to sneak another box over to the neighbors house. So that’s it, all cookies are gone. As punishment I made her do chores all afternoon. We did both bathrooms, her laundry and her bed, which took most of the afternoon. Then I made her wait for Missus to get back, by which time her friend wasn’t home. I came home to find a half-eaten bowl of ramen on the table, and she was eating crackers. So I guess grocery shopping is first thing on my list today.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I wound up going on a run because the weather was so nice, and bit of a bit more than I should have. I ran 5.5 miles. Then I stayed up till 2:30 in the morning drinking and gaming. Today has been a recovery day. I don’t think I’ve done anything productive at all. I finished watching Boba Fett — ridiculous — and have been watching episodes of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier — not bad.

Missus is staying at a hotel with her friend for her friend’s birthday. They’re doing dinner tonight and are going to a spa in the morning. I wound up watching the neighbors kids all day and ordered pizza for dinner. The pizza was not great, the hot wings were horrible, and I was short with the kids because they were bickering and wrecking stuff. Oh, and did I mention that there’s a hole in the dining room wall now, and it looks like someone drew all around the wall with a brown marker. I’m totally pissed about it.

Tomorrow the girls are going to church and I’ll have the house to myself all morning. Missus isn’t coming back until well in the afternoon, then I owe Elder a day out for an overdue quarterly meeting — daddy-daughter day. I told her I’d take her shopping for clothes and take her out to her favorite restaurant, Golden Corral, but she has other plans, apparently.

I’m not sure what else I’m doing tonight, probably watch some TV, put the girls to bed and go to sleep early.

I should really rename this blog Oops, I did it again after the way this week is going. Missus voiced concern today that I’m engaging in self-destructive behavior, mostly staying up too late and shooting my mornings to shit. It would appear that I’ve used this threat of jury duty as an excuse to shirk my responsibilities, so I need to get back on track and do some work.

Things around the house are mostly fine. I’m still waiting on the second round of repairs to start before things deteriorate more than they already have. The garage door almost buckled in half the other day, and there’s a birds nest under the soffit on the corner of the house.

Financially, taxes are going to be a damn burden. There’s just so much paperwork I need to go through and get to the CPA. It almost feels like it’s going to be more work to have them do it, but I’m catastrophizing.

Healthwise, I’ve been staying active and running my ass off — four miles on Monday, two each on Tuesday and Wednesday — but I’m erasing any benefits with the damage to my liver and lack of quality sleep. I need to get back on track.

Missus’s mom had a vertigo attack at the grocery store, which caused all kinds of problems for us yesterday. Missus hasn’t been sleeping well either, Younger has only had one good night in the past two or three weeks, and that’s because I locked the bedroom door Tuesday night. She’s going through some sort of emotional stock-taking with her job and union work that’s probably being drawn out by sleep deprivation. She’s basically let some problems go on too long and one of them blew up this week. I found her up at 4AM Wednesday morning, working at her desk after one of the cats woke her up. (I locked the door, which kept Younger in bed, but the cat woke her up instead, so she didn’t even reap the benefit…)

Solana seems to have finally clicked in my brain, and I understand Anchor now. Not that I’m an expert, but I know what I’m doing now. I’ve got another week to crank out this three-token escrow program, then it’s back to working on the dao.

I realized yesterday after I pushed publish that I had forgotten to include what was by far the most exciting part of Sunday, the Girl Scout Cookie Booth.

The kids have been in scouts for two years now. It’s a casual affair compared to the Boy Scouts, which was a bit more keen on uniform wearing and oath taking. The girls’ troop is laid back by comparison. They have a meeting every two weeks during the school year, have a couple camping trips or outings, and sell some cookies.

The troop only asked me for money when I signed up and provided the girls with uniforms; I’ve never been asked for a membership fee. This is in spite of us doing the absolute minimum on the cookie sales years past. I said ‘two years’ earlier, but it was actually three. COVID was kind of a lost year there.

Regardless, my point is that we’ve been slacking off and I wanted the girls to actually put some effort into it, which naturally means I have to lead. So I’ve been pushing them the last couple weeks to make their commitments and get the sales form out to the neighbors and in-laws so that we wouldn’t be last on the sale results.

We were last on the sales results.

Part of doing our job meant running a cookie booth, a two hour shift in front of a local Walmart. I was mostly prepared to go on my own, but I felt that I’d been carrying most of the load on the scouting endeavor, and I really wanted Missus to participate. She relented, for which I was grateful, and Elder’s troopmaster had volunteered to go. Her daughter apparently took a liking to the activity, and I offered to bring her, but scouting rules required that a registered member be present at the event.

So we all went, the four of us, plus the troopmaster and her daughter. We set up our table at 2PM Sunday, taking over the spot from another troop. Everything was great, foot traffic was substantial and we wound up selling more than a hundred and eighty boxes of cookies. I think we walked out of there with over eight hundred in cash. But there was one moment that got very tense and almost got out of control.

I was in the flow, having found my sales patter and running credit cards and cash. At one point I was ringing a woman up and noticed that something going on in front of our table was not quite right. Missus sounded the alarm, telling me to “get the kids”. Two men were arguing with each other. One of them seemed like a middle class guy, and the other was a homeless dude who was severely agitated and screaming threats and profanities at the first guy.

Fight or flight started to kick in, and me, the troopmaster, and the lady I had been selling to all switched gears to round up the kids. We tried to move them away from our table, and I tried to put myself between them and this perceived threat, who was yelling “I’ll fuck you up man, I’m in the motherfucking mafia”, at the other guy.

Enter Missus. She’s a clinically trained social worker, and constantly deals with mentally ill patients. Within a minute she had pulled the homeless guy aside and had walked him several feet away from the table. Within two she was back, saying “sometimes, people just need to be heard.” I was grateful she was there, otherwise I don’t know what would have happened.

Needless to say, she was drained after we got back. As was I, having made several trips back and forth to prepare and cleanup for the booth. We were both a bit drained from the experience and joked about it afterward.

The strangest part of the whole situation is that I don’t even think the kids noticed that anything was going on. Like it didn’t even register.

Daylight savings time sucks. I know I’m being really controversial here, but gawd did this morning suck. We did everything we could to get the girls to bed on time, and to get to bed on time myself, but this morning got off to a horrible start.

First off, I woke up at one to find Younger laying next to me. She must have thrown off her covers and gotten cold and come to our bed. I carried her back to hers and tried to put socks on her but she fought me off. I think she said I hate you at some point.

We woke up to the alarm this morning but Missus and I quickly decided that everyone was going in late today. Somehow Younger work up and got dressed and was standing in my bedroom about fifteen minutes later. I asked her to brush her teeth. I hate you. I wasn’t having any of it.

So that’s how the morning went. I got home and made some tea, straightened up the kitchen, which was neglected most of the weekend. I meditated, which I hadn’t done in two days(?) and then laid on the couch for a cat nap that wound up being over an hour.

Then I went for a five mile run. It was almost more than I bargained for, about halfway through I had some serious doubts that I was going to make it without stopping, but I managed to finish hard. Now I’ve eaten and trying to get my mind right for some deep work Solana coding session.

I’m on standby for jury duty, for two weeks starting last Friday. I’ve yet to hear from the court that I need to appear, but everything should be good for work. If anything I gave myself two weeks to relax and get some work done. Time to put my head down.

The second round of repairs on the house are about to start. The garage door almost broke in half last night, and we’ve got birds or some rodent building a nest in our soffit. Still, the weather is beautiful. It’s been getting cold at night but has been burning off by midday. Spring is officially here next week.

Friday was a bit nuts. I was a ball of nervous energy yesterday as I had my 90 day review with my boss. I went for a short run before and had to meditate leading into the meeting just to get my head straight. I shouldn’t have worried, I exceeded expectations. I spent the rest of the day celebrating, well till about 1:30 AM actually. Missus had to miss out because she had fasting blood work this morning. I didn’t crawl out of bed until 9:30, about the time she got back. I had a couple of meetings with the PMs and leadership, but most of the time I spent working on Solana code.

I’m supposed to be on-call for jury duty, but I lost the number I’m supposed to call in and didn’t really worry about it. I did manage to set my team up with the goals they’re supposed to have for the next two weeks, so I should be able to grind out some work next week.

We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. I have really got to start taxes, and I’ve got a number of house-related things that I need to deal with. Plus the girls have some scout events coming up that I’ve got to deal with. And Missus decided to go to Denver after all, so now I’m looking at plane tickets for the rest of us to come with. It’s going to cost about $700 for tickets, and that’s still a big stretch for me. I haven’t adjusted to being a baller.

Today’s title is a phrase that meets me every day when I open up my Whoop! app, which is a high-end fitness tracker that I’ve had for the last month. It tracks cardiovascular strain throughout the day and somehow magically my sleep cycles as well, and gives me a recovery score. It’s useful for elite athletes as it lets them know how hard they can push themselves and still leave something in the tank for when they need it. For me, it just tells me that I’m not getting enough sleep and that I’m not pushing myself hard enough to see any “fitness gains”. Right now I’m just trying to keep it balanced, which means at least running over two miles a day. I probably need to throw in a weight lifting session as well to keep it moving in the right direction.

I’ve had some success moving my bedtime up, although this week has been a mess. I was turning in at nine PM last week so that I could get the recommended eight hours, and it was great, but I’ve struggled this week. I turned in relatively early last night but didn’t fall asleep until close to midnight.

This morning is cold and dreary. It’s raining, but I might have a window after lunch to get out and pound the pavement. It won’t be pleasant.

Younger put Missus through the ringer last night. So I let everyone sleep in while I meditated. I just dropped the girls off at school. Missus is still asleep.

Meditating, running, and working out, coupled with an early bedtime, is forcing me to refactor how I spend my time. I’m allowing myself a lot of time spent playing Tarkov — I am determined to master the beast — but other than that I’m staying productive. I started in earnest on a Solana program for a small work project yesterday. I’m letting the dao project take a bit of a backseat while I let others on the team do their thing. Plus I have to call in for potential jury duty on Friday which might take me off the schedule for two weeks.

In all, things are going in the right direction. My existential anxiety has been muted; my work review tomorrow is highly anticipated, and with it, a significant raise. That should give me a good idea how my future with Star Atlas is looking. I’ve got my health, things around the house are good, relations with the family strong, and my financial security seems strong. COVID seems like it’s over, and if not for the conflict in Ukraine I’d say everything is perfect.

Still, I’ve got a lot going on that I’m ignoring. I haven’t even started on taxes yet, (this weekend, I promise), and I’ve got a bullshit bill from the insurance company, who are refusing my blood work again. Don’t get me started on the American healthcare system. Please, not this morning.

Today is a beautiful day. And yesterday was really nice as well.

I didn’t stay up too late Saturday night, I didn’t drink and woke up feeling well. My Whoop said I was 96% recovered, so I took that to mean I needed to get some exercise. So I got the girls out the door for church and went for a four-mile jog. I played Tarkov with my brother, and then the girls got back.

Yes, there was one slight wrinkle in our day. When I came downstairs to watch Origins with the girls, I discovered a lot of trash under the coffee table. There were for the special treat Missus had bought in order to get Younger to stay in bed at night. She had climbed up and opened the box on top of the fridge and eaten two packages. Well, almost two, there was still a few bites on top of the coffee table. As I was discussing with Missus, who was very upset. Younger came downstairs. She was carrying a small paper bag and told us she was going to play with her friend.

I told her that she was grounded for sneaking candy and that she needed to take a timeout and clean up her mess before she was allowed to do anything. I took the bag from her. It was sealed shut with tape. Inside the bag I could feel a small object, about the same size as a single-serving snack treat. BUSTED.

The next twenty minutes could only be described as deny, deny, deny. It was quite fascinating to watch. I was very Zen about the whole deal and was just fascinated by the rationalization and coping strategies that she went through to trying to convince us that not only did she not eat the treats and leave the mess in the living room that morning, but that she hadn’t even been trying to sneak one of them over to her friend. It was an amazing glimpse.

When it was clear that she wasn’t getting out of it without an apology, she would apologize, but not tell me why she was apologizing. Then she would say it under her breath or mumble it so that we couldn’t hear it, and at one point I laughed out loud at her, which really pissed her off, and she ran upstairs for some good old door slamming. Then she had the nerve to come down and tell us that it was Satan that made her want to do bad things, while simultaneously demanding an apology from me for laughing at her. She eventually did her timeout, and we cleaned up the living room.

The rest of the day we spent outside. Missus and I gave the shed a thorough cleaning out while the kids played with the neighbors. There was the constant refereeing, numerous boo-boos that we had to deal with, but we managed to finish it up with some homemade cheesesteak sandwiches and a few fingers of whiskey.

I stayed up till midnight, and woke up a bit groggy, but not hungover at all. My Whoop is telling me I need my daily dose of strain. A good two mile run ought to do the trick. I’ve been doing pushups and some random sets with the weights, but work is quiet today so I should probably get outside while it’s nice.

…tell it your plans.

Friday was a very good day. My plan to present my work to impress the team went well, culminating with me giving a presentation not only to the PMs, the engineering team, and also about 400 people in a town hall. I also got doxxed. There’s that.

I do not need the attention right now. Either from a three letter agency nor some other problem coming through my front door. The fact that I’m still here typing should say a lot, but I’m not sure what the real risk is. It’s apparent that some additional transparency is required, but I don’t know if I’m ready to go all in and dox myself completely. It’s insane.

So the question becomes whether to kill BCM. Or go all in.

—

Kicked off work, took the girls to Scouts. Broke open the current batch of homebrew IPA and almost blew up the keg because I forgot to put the tube in. This is another batch that did not come out great. Not sure I want to keep it up but we’ll see.

Stayed up playing FC and listening to music with Ed. This Kal Marks track was hitting particularly hard:

Not much to say about this morning since I slept through most of it. Had a SAIA meeting that went well and gave me some work to do Sunday.

Spent most of the afternoon out. Went to buy clothes for myself, but wound up getting a bunch of stuff for the girls as well. Got a haircut, drove to see dad, then came back and see one of my higher companions. OMG.

Picked up Chinese and watched Spider-Man: Homecoming with the girls and spent some quality time with Missus. Got back to journal and kick it around the house for a bit.

I decided not to write yesterday. It was a generally productive day culminating with a pretty serious meeting. I felt like I came out of if pretty well synced up and had a good evening with the family. After I put them to bed I thought I would be better served by writing down some notes about the meeting instead of blogging. We’ll see if it pays off. Work continues this morning, although I’m not quite sure what ‘the next thing’ is quite yet.

The weather is beautiful, it feels like spring. The girls are off tomorrow, which complicates things, but I’ve got today and tomorrow to prepare for the end of the sprint.

I’ve generally been trying to ignore the outside world lately. The last ninety days have been a whirlwind, and I’m not sure that I’ve gotten used to it yet. It’s definitely been a bit rough and tumble, but I’m taking the role in stride.

Sometimes I worry what I have to offer other people, but I generally try to ignore it and come back to the moment. Cain said, of impostor syndrome, that it is generally overcome with hard work. I’m taking that in stride. I hope.