Oases

On Mondays, my department has team meeting. Every third Monday, we are encouraged/required to do Linked In Learning. I sometimes ... don't. Not because I don't want to. I do love webinars and classes and things. But most of the time, I've got some other thing happening. 

Today, for instance, we usually have a code push every 3 weeks on Mondays but it was pushed back to tomorrow because the devs at our partner company have a holiday today. 

This gave us an extra day.

And it is a good thing too. My co-worker and I do the QA for our team, and he and I didn't finish our tests. On Friday, he said he'd work over the weekend and I told him that he didn't have to because we got the Gift of Monday Holiday that we don't get off! (we get a floating holiday. I suppose if you really needed the Presidents' Day Holiday off for yourself ... have at it). 

We both started work early, dove into our testing. 

And then it was 10:30. We're ... required to do this LIL thing. Drop Everything, spend an hour (plus?) watching a thing. And I'm muttering under my breath that I just want to finish QA. Someone is asking me for a help document for the help center, someone wants me to proofread the release notes. "Sorry friends, I gotta... learn stuff."

Today I picked a 90 minute session on Quality Time Management for People Working From Home.   I figured, eh, what the heck. None of the other topics were interesting to me. I've gone through all the effective listening, active participation in discussions, I am not interested in learning Python, and advanced Salesforce queries. No thanks.

It was kind of stupid. The guy was likable enough, and went over habits that over the last three years I have dismissed as not my style. But he talked about the importance of breaks. When people work at home, they don't take breaks. 

You're damn right, son. I have work to do. And I took a lot of breaks at the office, which is why I like being here. I can focus and get things done! 

He called these breaks Oases. Give yourself an Oasis in the morning, take your lunch (never work through lunch), and another Oasis in the afternoon. He also says that he starts work at 8:30, is done at 5, uses the first half hour of his day as a "commuting" time to get into the swing of things, and at 4:30 he begins his transition from work brain to home brain. 

How many hours a day do you get work done, dear sir? 

So I do my walks during each hour to get the 250 steps. I have an hourly oasis. Sometimes I start meetings 5 minutes past the top of the hour, and end them 5 minutes before the next hour, they call this "good meeting hygiene." I call it steps and "bio" breaks. 

Doug went to bed tonight at 8pm. He was wiped out. We were watching TV and I heard him just start snoring. Once he hit the hay, I decided to go down to the pokemon gym, it's a fast walk if you want it to be, or a gentle stroll if you're catching pokemon as you go. It took me about 10 minutes round trip. I thought about going up the street, past our house, to the other pokegym, but wanted to come in and get myself ready for bed too. 

Thought about baking, but, meh. Started the dishwasher, may read for a little while. I don't want to go into the bedroom and disturb Doug so I'll take Phineas to the guest room in a bit here. 

No picture today, lads. Back to my usual work week uninterestingness. 

digits

exercise: dedicated 10+5 while dinner was cooking; additional 10 min walk (very slow) to play pokemon. 12/12 of 250 steps

blood glucose:
8:30am: 174
4:15pm: 165
9pm: 219 (close to dinner - if I waited it'd be lower but. goodnight!)

food:
coffee, water
9:45am: very small apple w/ peanut butter
12:30pm: metformin. BLT salad with special guest appearance by cucumber!
5:15: 2 handfuls of Pepitas
6:15: 3 boneless pork chops, peas, 4 pierogis
7pm: Metformin+jardiance
8pm: another pork chop while putting dinner away