Both of the girls have colds, so they’ve been waking up in the middle of the night a lot more than usual. V woke up at 3 and I tried/failed to get her back to sleep, so Jen had to nurse her. Jen also had an early appointment today and needed to be out of the house by 6:45am. But that worked out well because it meant she was already up when G woke up at 6:15 asking for “mommydaddy bed”. So I brought her back into our bed and she slept for another hour+. Outstanding.
V woke up for real around 7 as well, and she had a 100.4° fever. So I decided to keep her home today. Even without Tylenol her fever was already dropping by the time I got back from dropping G at school, so she’ll be fine.
But if she’s staying home, I’m putting her to work. Here she is rearranging furniture:
Enjoying an afternoon cup of coffee in my new mug. These have been sold out in the WP store since I joined Automattic, but I happened to notice they had a few in stock the other day, and I jumped on it. Checked back half an hour later and they were gone.
Worth noting: it’s not a two-tone mug…my phone’s camera has a nice artifact where you can see a line across the middle where the color slightly changes. I need to get a new phone, this one is falling apart.
I posted yesterday that we went to Jammin Java to see Red Wanting Blue. They were awesome. It was an acoustic show, which I was expecting to be low key, but they had a ton of energy. And I really like the lead singer’s hat. I think I should get one.
We’re at Jammin Java in Vienna tonight to see Red Wanting Blue for an acoustic show. It’s intermission right now. The opener was fantastic. Morningsiders. Hopefully the headliners live up to the standard. Jen’s seen them a bunch, since their from Ohio, but this is the first time I’ve seen them.
I’m writing this while Jen is getting more drinks…lest you think I’m being anti social by blogging instead of interacting.
November is “bring a friend” month at Little Gym, so Gia has been tagging along with RMG, and she’s loved it. I think we’ll sign her up for real next month.
And since the last couple days I’ve been neglecting to feature my other daughter, here’s a picture of Valentina eating a cracker:
Gia and I just sat here and she “read” these 19 books all by herself for about 30 minutes. She got them all off the shelf one at a time, sat down, flipped through them, then put them up against the couch like this (with my help). I didn’t get individual pictures of her reading the first few books, but here’s most of them.
I hate saying it out loud because it sounds so pretentious, but we have people come and clean our house once every two weeks. They do a great job, and keep us from having to worry too much about the minutiae of daily life, like scrubbing toilets. And no, don’t think that just because I work from home now that I can do it all myself. I always thought that when I started this job I’d have time to do more around the house, but that hasn’t really been the case. I’m always busy. But it’s busy doing stuff that I love, so hooray for that.
This isn’t at all what I started writing this post about, but I ended up here anyway. Somebody posted this in one of our Slack channels today, and said the center was Automattic…and I think I agree. I’m not saying I’ll be in this job for the next 30 years, but I’m incredibly happy to be here right now.
Ikigai is the Japanese word for finding your purpose in life. Or so I’ve been told.
But now on to what I really started to say here – We have cleaning people come every couple weeks…and rather than sit there while they clean around me, I use these days as a reason to get out of the house and work somewhere else for a few hours. Normally they come in the morning, and I come back home after lunch and the house is clean, but this week we had to reschedule for a different day, and they ended up coming in the afternoon (I know, because I’ve been spying on the baby monitors). So I’ve been out of the house all day, migrating between different wifi hotspots.
I started out this morning at the Deli Mall Cafe, across from the Springfield Mall. I was actually trying to go to Barnes and Noble, but they weren’t open yet. The cafe was nice, but I was the only one in there, and I don’t think they get a lot of laptop jockeys. I felt a little uncomfortable, so I left after an hour or so.
Then I moved to the Burke Library, where I sat for almost 3 hours. I got a really nice table in a corner next to a window with a power outlet. I even set up my iPad as my second monitor using Duet Display (well worth the $15 investment).
Next I had to get lunch, so I went to Panera and sat outside there for at least an hour, maybe close to two. I got a lot of work done, but ended up posting a problem I was having on an internal blog (using P2) right before leaving.
Next I stopped by the post office to mail a dead USB stick back to PNY for replacement, and while I was there I got an alert on my phone that somebody had replied to my post with a potential answer. So when I got back out to the car I opened my laptop (tethered to my phone for wifi) and checked it out, and sure enough they had solved it.
After that I finally went home…only to find that the cleaning people were still there. So of course rather than talk to people I opted to turn the car around, and now I’m sitting outside at Starbucks writing this epic post. Next I’ll probably run in the grocery store next door and pick up something for dinner before heading home for real.
It’s been a long day, but I’ve been just about as productive as I normally am.
Next time I think I’ll try to ride my bike instead of drive. I’m just a couple miles away from a shopping center with Starbucks and Chipotle, so I’ll be set for most of the day there and I won’t have to go far. And if I was feeling really ambitious I’d bring the bike trailer and fill up on groceries too. But I can almost guarantee that I won’t be ambitious.
We had a good Halloween weekend here. Costume party at daycare on Friday, birthday party with petting zoo and trick or treating on Saturday, and a visit to Nall’s to see Penny, chickens, and pumpkins on Sunday.
Oh, and my Halloween decorations definitely scared a couple kids. I have a good thing in the bushes that shakes and growls with light up eyes whenever anyone walks by. It was a hit!
I’m still waiting on my pictures to upload (NAS -> Jen’s laptop -> Google Photos), so I don’t have any good ones convenient to my iPad to post, but I’ll put some up to tomorrow. The best I can do for now are these pictures from dinner tonight at Macaroni Grill…which happened to be the best meal out we’ve ever had with Gia. She actually ate well and didn’t throw a fit. Well, just a tiny one, but it was over quick. Maybe we just need to go to restaurants where they let you color on the tablecloth.
They had a Halloween party at daycare today. We took the good pictures on the real camera, but here are a couple I took on my phone of the girls at the playground after the party.
Skit Skat Skoodle Doot 