It's Wednesday, middle of the week, and one more day closer to the 3-day weekend coming up. And as I count down to the end of the week, so has Mar Vista Elementary towards the end of the school year. After this week there's only 2 more weeks of school. Hard to believe I know. Their countdown started last week actually and they have had dress-up days every single day which is kind of fun I think. Today is SPACE DAY and so I put an oversize LEGO Star Wars T-shirt on Johnnie and he had a lot of fun with that. Look at him mugging it up for the camera. For me it was just another drop-off day and it felt good to go back to T-shirt and shorts first thing as opposed to yesterday. The thing was that when I got done with my Data Analytics team meeting, I looked at my schedule and lo and behold, that was it for the day! W-h-a-t? There seemed to be less people pinging me over email too. Maybe the exodus from the office has started... And so I had a relatively relaxed rest of the day. I took the dog out, let him run around in what amounts to be my backyard grass, also known as the grass area in front of the apartment where dozens of dogs poop and pee on a daily basis. Claire must know that from the scent too because he drops off and pees and poops almost on command the second he gets on that grass. Boy is she going to need a bath later. Anyway, I put myself in cruise control for the rest of the day. Oh I did manage to work still. Kept myself in front of the computer for the most part. AND I did work on my steps too, just so I didn't have to wait until way later on to make up 40 active minutes. I'm still determined to do an hour of active minutes a day while not pushing myself too much either. Which means I better be at a half hour by the time I pick up Johnnie. So really I'm calling this my true WORK-AT-HOME mode, only because if I were at the office, I wouldn't be up and about, enjoying late spring, early summer, taking in the days getting warmer slowly and with that great smell of flowers about ready to welcome summer too as I am. In doing all this walking around the neighborhood though, I managed to miss the Mar Vista Room 25 Open House at 4 PM. I did pick up Johnnie on time at 3 PM and then sat him down for his late lunch, but then I just lost track of the time. Fortunately, Ms Wiley did record it and sent it to us parents and I really did enjoy the 14-minute video. It had lots of Johnnie in it of course, just like it had lots of stuff on his classmates. And I wanted to make sure to save it here for posterity. Johnnie is for sure going to remember this later on, or at least he will have something to look at to remember the strangest year ever in terms of being in class. I mean TK was strange when they went online a year ago, but that was for just a couple of months. They had been remote for the the majority of this school year and THAT by itself is a huge deal. I even posted a pic of him enjoying the presentation too. And then we finally got on to watching the last few episodes of Jurassic World, Camp Cretaceous Season 3. Did they finally get off the island once and for all? Quick answer is yes... but... it would seem their boat had picked up a stowaway. Another dinosaur no doubt. Something to look forward fo for Season 4 LOL. And so it was that we concluded mid-week with yet another bath experience for Claire. She is much more comfortable now and even the whole drying process isn't so wiggly. And so by the time we all go to bed, she is smelling so clean. And we prep for the end of the week...
Today is Tech Council Meeting Day and because I had done the bulk of the work yesterday, all the other stuff I needed to get done seemed to come much easier, and all got done in almost no time to me. That would be my meeting minutes, that would be the Meeting agenda, and even a daily journal log entry got done. All by the time Johnnie did his first class. And I even had plenty of time to do a Data Analytics Meeting with Kennedy and James just so I could address the only other stuff that could have possibly caused me work anxiety today, which is all the dashboards that are behind and need refreshing. On the one hand, I did figure out where the source programs are. The trick, though, is that they still need to be ran and data still needs to get loaded. Still I felt reasonably good that we'd get a chunk of it done by the end of the week, particularly those that people were pinging me on. And so in the meantime, we (me, Johnnie, and the dog) were pretty much relaxed and in play mode for the bulk of the morning. Look at the pic of Johnnie teasing the dog in the bathroom. This was first thing in the morning at 7 AM. And then Johnnie got into his art work, doing the American flag in water colors. Pretty cool actually. Anyway, by the time he got done with his first 2 classes, I too had gotten my stuff done so fast that I actually had time to work on my steps outside. I'm doing this again because I read recently that 2 hours outside is now a self-care imperative, almost like, if not better than doing 10,000 steps. And then it was udon for lunch for Johnnie and Trader Joe's Cuban chicken bowl for me... with some leftover fried chicken on top. Mmmm. As far as the Tech Council Meeting itself, there were only 5 people that attended. Chad of course is on his way out and I didn't expect him. Maryam had to meet about the COVID vaccination event, Sheila was off, and Emma... I don't know where she was. Anyway with such a small audience I could have breezed through the whole thing in a half hour really. But I thought it was a pretty good presentation anyway. I focused on the Projects In Progress, and the not-so-good phishing test numbers were from the last month. Am I concerned? Yes, because it was a significant spike. Gotta figure out a way to reign in the clinical folks, there's no avoiding that. Anyway as it were I did take the entire hour for the meeting and my visualization of doing well and being acknowledged actually did happen. I felt satisfied that I did a good meeting and that it was productive. And when it got done by 2:30, there came the usual sigh of "a-h-h-h" relief that I accomplished Tech Council stuff for the month. Really though I just wanted to show that the Data Analytics side is under control. Help is on the way of course because I hired Shilpa, but it is still under control. I had to anchor the feeling of today still. The feeling that I knew the outcome, that it was going to be good <and it was> and that I had almost no anxiety at all from yesterday on. THAT IS HOW I GET IT DONE. After the meeting I called it pretty much a done day in terms of the work day. If I were at the FRB I'd be heading out getting myself a frozen drink at Starbucks. It had, after all, turned into a nice, warm, breezy day outside. That is not insignificant. Apparently parts of the country are freezing due to abnormally cold weather. I remind myself that it IS actually still winter. And I'm happy to be walking around in shorts outside.
And so it was that I got to relax for real by the end of the afternoon. The video I posted encapsulates the rest of the day actually. That was me and Johnnie dancing to Chuck Berry. I had to show him a video of a song with his name in it. There are lots actually but I picked this one. And that was just to slow Johnnie down from bouncing up and down on the trampoline all night long. The thing is already fraying at the edges and yesterday, Johnnie felt sick because he did it right after he ate. Well OF COURSE he would feel sick. Anyway, THAT would be my sort of victory lap for today. Lots to be grateful for. My TECH COUNCIL meeting went well, even IF it went barely unattended LOL LOL. Note; I totally didn't care about that in the least. The dog pooped and pee'd pretty much whenever we took her outside, which was every few hours or so. Anyway the victory here is that she didn't once go do her thing inside the house! Yay! Although she is starting to bite a little bit more. So much so Johnnie wanted us to buy a bite-proof jacket LOL LOL, whatever that is. Anyway I looked forward to some nice sleep tonight, although I actually had 6+ hours yesterday as I didn't have to stay up late to work on my presentation. Still, I'm in bed and snoozing with Johnnie. It was 9:30. It's all good...
It's midweek and I am actually working hard today. There's all this reporting required for all this coronavirus vaccinations, something I thought was coming down the pike anyway. And then all these corrections in UDS and OSHPD that we have to do. Especially the deal about WN not being associated with the E3 OSHPD number. Stuff gets missed is all. I got a little nervous about that one. Had to call a mid-day meet with James and Kennedy to try to find a solution. It was James actually that basically came at it with the most straightforward solution. If the problem is data didn't get associated because of some oversight, fix the oversight. And then rerun the report. I hadn't thought of that because I was already busy trying to figure out my Plan B. Goes to show I shouldn't always do that. However, to showcase my impatience, I had to put in my own help ticket to get attention to the problem, rather than wait for James to put one in. Or maybe he didn't, but he didn't copy me. And so CONTROL FREAK ME still had to do something. And then of course there's the actual UDS reports that James keeps telling me he's on track to do. But I've learned by now that he is TERRIBLE at estimating the time he takes to get tasks done. Or in my Arnel-speak, he's slow. And I hate that. My impatient self hates that. But I have to let him do his job. I wonder if that's the reason Lam left? That is why I always try to have a Plan B in the first place. Because the bottom line is, I don't trust James to do his job in the timeframe I'd like. And he has absolutely no motor whatsoever. Man I'm going to hate doing his performance eval later on. Anyway even with all this going on in my work day, I at least couldn't get too full of myself. How can I? Look at how Johnnie carved out his space in the living room with all the stuff going on with his toys, his drawings, even a plateful of cookies. The scene is IMPOSSIBLE to miss LOL. And actually I'm glad I see all of it because it gives me a sense of perspective. THIS after all, is all that's important. Isn't it?
In the meantime, Clare the dog has gotten pretty rambunctious in the space of a week. Look at the video I took of her fighting with my slippers that were on my feet at the time. At least she has been really really good about pooping outside. And peeing too actually except this morning when Johnnie and I went to the shower before taking her out when we all woke up. Of course she had to pee then and there on the bathroom floor. Sorry Clare, that was OUR fault. And so it was that the day turned out to be a busy one for me work-wise and I think it will be through the end of the week anyway. After all, we're only trying to put together the massive report that is the single most critical report we are responsible for. A whole slew of reports detailing our activity from every which slice for the last calendar year. I'd say even with the pandemic going on, we did admirably well. We'll see what the government says. Anyway between that and now taking over for all the reporting for COVID vaccines which I knew would happen sooner rather than later, I'd say I went about providing massive value today. By late afternoon, the focus was back to Johnnie and it was all about getting some physical activity for him, just so he's not too locked in on being in front of a screen all that. But even as physical activity turned out to be his karate class, he was still in front of a screen to do that. I'm just glad he worked so hard he was actually out of breath and sweating. Of course afterwards was our Wednesday night Panda Express dinner and I was glad to see they're letting us back in to the premises to make and take our orders. It was getting annoying hanging around outside. Not much the rest of the evening really... just another run-of-the-mill middle of the week in the middle of February. Except of course we had to give the dog her bath. And that was in and of itself a bit of an adventure. But afterwards, she smelled so great. I can confidently sit her on the bed to sleep next to me again. So with her sleeping softly on my left side and Johnnie breathing softly in his sleep on my right, all is good in the Universe tonight.
