Another Thursday, Another Hand-off Nite

If it's Thursday, then it must be hand-off night tonight and therefore the day has all kinds of different things that Johnnie has in mind he has to get done today. So much so he made a list. Gee I wonder where he got that from? As for me, it's sort of the quiet before the storm kind of thing... meaning I'm going to be hit with stuff I need to get done starting next week with the Tech Council Meeting, and then my talk for the CCALAC symposium is due the week after that, and then we're into April already and my IS Team is hosting next month's FRB Birthday party and I already know we have to go... BIG! Because I messed up with this month's birthday celebration. But hey that's all in the future isn't it?! In the here and now the rains have stopped and we've gone back to taking the dog out every hour so she could poop and pee. That's how mundane the day was. See the pic of Johnnie doing just that. And then of course there is his schedule of classes and my schedule of meetings and together that's an ongoing set of activities through the end of the day. I did manage to catch a breath and sat outside and had lunch while Johnnie was in class. Made myself that un-stuffed cabbage dish over rice that I like so much. If we were back in the office, I'd lollygag and maybe get myself a Starbucks on my way back from lunch. These days I'm just catching whatever break I can to do steps / Powerwalk routine right outside my unit. You can knock out 500 steps easy in about 5 minutes, which is what I had been doing all week. In fact by mid-afternoon I was already at 280 active minutes for the week and over 210 cardio minutes. Which meant that I had done a full week's worth of medium workout and in 3 1/2 days. As busy as the day seemed we still managed to do all kinds of bonding stuff, and I might add that we even took a side trip to Lisa's house in the middle of the day so I could download Raya and the Last Dragon on her media player so Johnnie could watch it with her. His request you know. By the time I was getting us dinner at Panda Express it was already well past 5 PM. I was held up courtesy of another data request regarding Covid vaccines. Seems like there is one of those every damn day. I only felt rushed because there was an outside chance Lisa c-o-u-l-d come earlier than usual at 6:30 to pick up Johnnie like she had 2 weeks ago. I even had Johnnie clean up his saved work early in the afternoon so we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore after dinner.

As it turned out Lisa called at 7 PM and she was already outside waiting for Johnnie. I very much welcomed that. Earlier is better than later, at least as far as I was concerned. Even at 7 PM I did the scrubbing routine which was to clean up the apartment of traces of Johnnie and the dog LOL. First all the dog's towels went in to the laundry. Then all of her stuff, her bed, her food, her bowls, etc etc. By the time I got done it felt like I was living in the apartment alone again.  I was just about to put up my feet and figure out what to watch tonight when... a phone call. From Lisa's phone. It was Johnnie actually. He had forgotten Fuzzy! Damn. At first I tried to talk him into trying to go to sleep without him. But then he started to cry and said he was going to miss him. Damn. OF COURSE I had to get up off my ass and take him there. What a dirty trick for Lisa to let him call me like that. I will never be able to resist it when he cries.  So there I am in the pic in the elevator of my unit, Fuzzy in hand. I dropped him off and went right home. And then just basically lulled myself to sleep on the couch, comforted by my own perception that yesterday I might not have been such a good dad. But tonight and today I was. I most certainly was.