02/18/2025 - Squirrel!

Today's Rating: 6/10

Song of the Day: Mr. Redundant - Rainbow Kitten Surprise

Current Book: Dust - Hugh Howey

Welcome to Day 2 of What's In a Day!

I'm not sure if I'm just unlucky or if my brain purposely self-sabotages, but it seems that the nights before long work days or late maintenance are the ones where I'll randomly wake up between 2-3 AM. On days like yesterday, I desperately wish I could be one of those people who can take naps. I can count on two hands the amount of times I've napped and only need one to count how many naps I've woke up from actually refreshed. Most attempts results in 10-15 minutes of having my eyes closed and intrusive thoughts about how I'm not asleep at that moment. On the rare case that I actually do manage to fall asleep, I will without fail wake up like this:

Yesterday was my first day back at work since 02/12. I had received an award at work back in January called a "Paid Leave Award" that gave me 16 hours (2 full days) of what is essentially short-term PTO. The award was set to expire on 03/31, so I had to use it prior to then. I decided to use it on 02/13 and 02/14 since that gave me a five day weekend with Monday 02/17 being President's Day.

The great thing about taking random days off from work is that you get to not work (obviously). The not-so-great part about taking random days off from work is that everyone else is working, so I tend to come back to a mountain of emails/messages/tickets. Surprisingly enough, the amount of backlog I had to get through was minimal and nothing urgent needed my attention. I was able to "focus" for the first couple hours of work to handle the preparation work needed for the maintenance last night at 8 PM as well as a database logging update ticket that had been in since Friday. I use "focus" lightly here as, due to the combo of lack of sleep and above average caffeine intake, I felt like Dug from Up when he saw a squirrel.

I did find some time to setup the Author page (more to come there as I find more time). After that, it was a couple of meetings that I have everyday called standup. I typically leave for my long walk of the day around 10:15-10:45 and walk for an hour.

Tuesdays and Fridays are my least favorite days to walk where I live. Trash days. I get all the typical views of my walk with the bonus added scents. Luckily, this time I did not get stuck walking behind a garbage truck for several blocks so that was a plus.

In total, I walked ~3.4 miles in about 61 minutes. I came home and prepared my typical lunch of cabbage soup, a protein shake, and an apple. I've been eating this same meal for nearly a year now as part of my weight loss journey, and surprisingly enough I have not gotten tired of it. Based on my estimates, the whole meal has roughly 445 calories and keeps me full until a late afternoon snack.

The rest of the work day consisted of a couple of meetings and investigating a ticket that came in. I'll need to wrap up that ticket tomorrow though.

One of my friends texted me to play tennis, and we were able to get a set in (~45 minutes) before the rain interrupted. I played surprisingly well given my lack of sleep. The weather is supposed to be cold the rest of the week which may make it hard to find people to play with. I also came home to a pleasant surprise that the two new racquets I had ordered off of eBay had come in extremely quick.

Dinner tonight was Hungarian Mushroom Soup based on this recipe. I ate this with some slices of a baguette for a tasty but low-calorie dinner. And of course, this was consumed at America's table with the TV playing.

My least favorite part of my job is the late night maintenance that I have to do. It's scheduled outside of business hours to prevent any downtime during the day. This means I can't start the work early or get ahead of it and have to wait until 8 PM EST to start. In total, the maintenance took about 1.5 hours to complete.

After wrapping up maintenance, I read a couple more chapters of Dust (~80% complete with the book) and am excited to see how the series ends!

Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow!