Month: March 2022

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.

Today was about the most archetypical day I can imagine. I worked out, ran, meditated, and had a decent day at work. Home life, not so much though. The girls came home and ran off to play. Younger was in a such a good mood when I came back and caught her coming back from a walk with her friends. Then she had a rather bad accident — bad by Kindergarten standards — and she about broke Missus’s heart. She had been in a small tree and was trying to get away from one of the smaller children and jumped out of the tree, catching the her exposed side on a branch.

Elder, not to be outdone, is having an allergy/sinus issue, so I’ve doped her up and sent her to bed.

There was a bit of fun while we were getting ready for bed. Younger has a helium balloon she bought this weekend, and she was being a bit too rough with it before bedtime, and the ribbon came off. She was in my bedroom, with elevated ceilings, and I was unable to reach it. I was not about to go get the ladder at seven-thirty, and was trying to move her to bed, but Missus started brainstorming ways for us to get it. It was too high for me to lift any of the kids, so Missus started throwing stuffed animals at it to get it further down the slope of the ceiling where I could reach it. That didn’t work, so I put Elder on top off my dresser, hoping she could climb onto a small ledge set into the wall — why it’s there, I have no clue — but she couldn’t reach it. So it was my turn. Climbing up on an old hamper, and onto my dresser, I was able to rescue the balloon and return it to Younger’s room, with her eight-foot ceilings.

I am turning in now, at nine, to read and turn in on time to recover for tomorrow.