so many browser tabs. so many half started thoughts. so many “maybe I’ll be more productive when I’ve…..” moments. I think I could use a couple of days in an office. let’s not talk about work, hey?
bought 5 more Hive thermostatic radiator valves; now when we try to boost the heating in one or both of our offices during the day, we can keep the rest of the house cool. gutted that our smart meter has broken and I can’t see what impact this is going to make on our bills. hopefully it’ll reduce, because we’re not heating the whole house every time we want to be a bit warmer at work. but maybe it’ll increase, because the radiators in our offices are always trying to be or get to 18 degrees, rather than us letting them get to 15-16 before we press the ‘boost’ button.
I wonder whether, had I learned the phrase 'balance the heating system’ before yesterday, we could’ve done something jazzy like this using only the usual, non-smart thermostatic valves.
only the best content for my weeknotes crew.
if the stock market carries on this way, I’m going to retire by Christmas 2021. [the stock market will not carry on this way]
we got sent a brand new robot vacuum because of the network issues. it still doesn’t connect to the mesh network. but we can just stick it in a room, press 'play’, and it vacuums. in context, that’s still quite something.
taking a week off next week. apparently bike fitters can still work in this lockdown, so I’m going to go and get one on Tuesday. I am sick of my knees feeling dreadful every time I get on two wheels. I miss feeling brilliant on a bike, instead of nervously waiting for the moment my body starts to creak.
finally admitted to myself that perhaps my inflexible biomechanics are part of the picture here, so like All The Toms, I have started stretching more. Apple Fitness+ seems to take away the inertia of choice, because filtering for length of session is so easy. one more SaaS product enters the picture. at first I was wondering how long I’d have to do daily yoga for before it makes a difference, but that’s not the right mindset: really I think I need to admit that if I don’t stretch properly 3-5 times a week for the rest of my life, at some point it’s gonna hurt.
just as things (heating, robots) were starting to feel like they were working around here, the council have stopped collecting our garden waste. they came this morning, picked up everyone else’s on the street, looked at ours, and skipped it (says our lovely neighbour). mmm, more bureaucracy to interact with. I love it.
new sofa arrived. unlike bureaucracy, I genuinely love it.
slowly, reluctantly, disappointingly beginning to consider whether it would be easier or better to get a car. urgh.
despite having taken three days off the week before last, I remain very much at the end of my tether. I know this because I spend a lot of time muttering stuff under my breath and swearing when very minor things go wrong.
by Wednesday night I was texting pictures of the cheese in the fridge to the group chat after our Sainsbury’s order arrived. by Thursday morning we’d moved onto discussing bin collections. life is truly scintillating right now.
bought a turbo trainer a couple of weeks ago. tried to put my bike on it. only then realised - and I should’ve thought about this beforehand - that turbos work best for bikes with vertical dropouts, not my semi-horizontal ones, because lining up cassette and chain is…tricky. any excuse to buy another bike I guess.
like Chris, I’m also interested in the search results for ‘garden shelter lean to’. the tree surgeons came on Friday, so now not only is our garden much lighter, but we also have logs to dry out. and as if I’m going to spend £160 on a wood store.
feel like I spend most of my spare time at the moment, and occasionally time in working hours, doing wifi network admin. I miss the days of broken internet during working hours being someone else’s problem. and have you ever tried to get a robot vacuum cleaner to connect to a mesh network? a world of pain.
finished Broken April by Kadare, a book about people in the Albanian mountains living by a code called the Kanun, which involves generations-long blood feuds between families. I don’t think I understood the ending, but bravo to Daunt Books (my mum bought me a subscription for Christmas), who absolutely nailed the brief of “I want to read things about utopias and dystopias and also the Western Balkans”.
the dog has discovered how much she loves chasing squirrels; so much for the easiest dog ever. let the hard training yards begin.
we got a dog in December. she came over from a shelter in Bulgaria in a van with 19 of her other dog buddies, two months after her puppies all got adopted. from all the chats I’ve had since with other dog owners, we’ve lucked out: she’s calm, good with kids, doesn’t jump up at strangers, and is super loyal.
every morning when we get her out of her crate she is incredibly excited to see us both and it is the purest expression of unconditional love I’ve ever seen.
the routine is 3 walks / day, which exacerbates my previously stated feelings about lunch breaks. and it’s so difficult to pass a split bin bag! when she’s confused, scared or wants to go a different way to us, she freezes, so we spend a lot of time standing in the cold waiting for her to move. it’s getting better and I’m making my peace with it, but damn, hiding frustration from a dog is an emotional low.
Dishoom now have one of those dark kitchens in Hove, so there’s your last excuse gone for not moving to Brighton.
speaking of those lunchbreak thoughts, let me make it abundantly clear how little I appreciated people telling me how to make an omelette. I’m trying to dismantle capitalism and you’re telling me to crack open some eggs in butter. please.
I feel as flat as everyone else, and like all I do is work, walk the dog, drink and watch telly. grateful that the days are getting longer, and that I can start work at 10am every day to get some daylight in before work.
this week in particular it felt like most of my job is about influencing and steering; the slow pace layers of culture change and strategic direction. it’s great to now have a lead delivery manager in our little gang of three (DM, PM, design) focused on the accounts and data teams on GOV.UK. I’ve missed you Ruth!
bookshelves arrive Tuesday. once we’re not surrounded by boxes of books we’ll realise we don’t have any furniture, but that’s not the worst problem to have. C is planning the garden. I’m thinking about loft insulation. can you really imagine going back to an office 5 days a week?
this week marked five years since James died. someone called it the longest, shortest time; that about sums it up.
that doesn’t feel like a great note to end on, though it’s a good thing for me to think about. time to take the dog out.