#212 - Seeing Double and Espresso

I went to bed around five AM and fell asleep fairly quickly.

My alarm went off two hours later because I forgot to turn off my alarm. No matter I passed out again quickly and slept until my co-workers started messaging each other with cheery hellos.

I managed to crawl out of bed by nine thirty, fired up my work PC and then headed straight for the Keurig machine. My stomach protested as I reached for the Nespresso machine instead, so I pivoted back to tea. Probably a good idea.

There was a flurry of messages on the work Teams app, some important others completely forgettable. Lots of pointless cat and dog memes.

With all new information coming in and overwriting past info, I requested a meeting with my supervisor and the other lead to go through everything and make a game plan for today and only for today, because the ground keeps shifting under our feet.

By the end of the half hour, we had things in pretty good standing, solved some things and were able to hand out marching orders. I feel better knowing what needs done today and what things can wait and what things are currently on fire. I guess it’s a bit of triage.

Robyn couldn’t take a lunch walk with me, so I puttered around the garden, pulling weeds and looking at the flowers and plants new growth. It’s a calming thing to do before you dive back into the chaos of children’s television. I was happy to see the ferns and hostas coming up through the soil.

One thing I forgot to think about when I decided to work from home today was that I gave Robyn my digital stylus to use as she broke hers last night. I think I can get by with my mouse for today as I am mostly doing approvals and mild revisions.

My pina colada and peach Perrier arrived while I was outside toiling away as well as the new 65-watt charger. I am testing the charger out right now and it is clear that my laptop prefers getting full power. The fan isn’t constantly running anymore because the batteries aren’t charging and dispensing energy at the same time. The new charger can run the laptop without any need for the batteries.

This new charger is much smaller than the brick that came with the laptop and even has prongs that fold away when travelling. A small but welcomed upgrade.

I can already tell it is going to improve my laptop writing experience.

It sounds like kiddo #1 maybe returning to live with us. Her studio didn’t get the contract they were expecting and now she must decide what to do. Look for work there or come home and look for work in a new industry.

A tough choice to be sure and one that most of the people who work in the animation industry are struggling with themselves. We are all making back up plans.

The day went well for me. I was able to get my approvals done by the end of day. I immediately jumped into bed and took a nap for about an hour. When I awoke, I ambled downstairs and Robyn informed me I had snored loud enough to wake the dead.

I can believe that.

She had dinner on the stove and in the oven, which was a god send to me as I was still dopey from my slumber. We at spaghetti, meatballs and some roasted vegetables and it was amazing. I truly appreciate her support as I try to do this crazy challenge.

I took a spa bubble bath to aid my back pain. I got to use my thermometer rubber ducky for the first time to see how hot the water was. I was happy to see it was in the one hundred and two degrees Fahrenheit to one hundred and four zone. Same temperatures as my friend’s hot tub. The back pain is all but gone at this point, yet there are moments it feels like it is one wrong twist or sitting position away from returning. The recliner chair has really been a boon to my back. It might be the most comfortable writing chair in the house at the moment.

I was just saying to Robyn, now that I have started using the chair in Kiddo #2’s room she’d end up moving home. And she called today to say that was likely to happen soon as she tries to figure out what to do for work for the rest of her life. She asked if she could borrow our car, which is here in Ontario, to move her things back from Halifax. After we stopped laughing, we explained to her why that was the most expensive way to do it. It would be one thing if the car was already there, but it is not.

But if she is coming home, maybe I’ll move the recliner downstairs into the writing cave or even somewhere on the first floor.

I did a little bit of reading on my phone while I was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for dinner to finish cooking. I had completely forgotten about the kindle app being a thing. I opened up a Bryant Street story by my writing instructor and dug into it. His Bryant Street series is a suburb where all kinds of odd things can happen a bit like The Twilight Zone. My instructor has a fear of suburbs. Not something that I understand, but I guess if you grew up in place that didn’t have them, they could be considered maze like and hard to fathom.

Kiddo #2 wanted to go for a walk with Robyn, but she had already gone and it in bed all cozy reading. Something she loves to do and right now she has a book that is really good and she is enjoying. So, instead of going for the walk, she convinced the kiddo to go to the convenience store and buy us all some chocolate. That’s high-level mom voodoo right there.

I tried the Perrier Peach Spritz carbonated water today and didn’t love it. It was just okay, a little peachy and had a slight sour wine taste to it. Might be okay on a really hot day, but the Pina Colada version is still the winner for me.

I can hear that the raccoons have returned to our attic crawl space again. Sounds like a big fat one up there right now. I think they come in and eat the stash the squirrels have been leaving in there all year long.

Now that the weather is getting warmer, I will have to back up there and block their entrance the made in our aluminum soffit panels where the dormer window meets the slant of the roof. I think they follow the scent of the squirrels so they can steal their caches of nuts and mushrooms.

Either way, both species have to find another place to go.

I have to take off the soffit panels and then insert a wooden frame that has a stiff wire grid stapled to it. This prevents the critters from being able to push up on the soffit and bend it until they gain access to the attic.

Lots of things need attention around the house this year. From the gate to deck repairs, new tiling in the front entrance and cracked ceiling drywall just to name a few items.

This evening I decided to start my night by writing on my science fiction novel first. It is a continuation of an assignment I did for my mentor. I find I usually start with the blog as a way to warm up, but I end up writing six-thousand-word blogs and no fiction.

So tonight I started with the fiction and wrote about five hundred words continuing the scene right where I left it off. It felt good to get that done first. I was able to check of the Sci-fi novel and 500 words of fiction boxes in my little brown notebook for the first time.

I drew a big fat check mark in the box and added a large number one after each entry.

I am also timing and recording my word count tonight. This is a technique I have employed in the past when writing a short story to deadline. It keeps me accountable and gives me goals that are easily divided into fifteen-minute sections.

This way I am less tempted to take a break if I am getting behind or maybe skip ahead to less taxing section of the story. I guess it’s like having mini deadlines within the hours. Four deadlines each hour and each hour being its own section.

It might sound like an odd ball thing to others, but hey, if it works, it works.

Like right now I have eleven minutes to write one hundred and twenty words if I want to make my ten PM deadline of writing two thousand words. And therefore, sticking to the larger goal of writing one thousand words an hour. Because I don’t want to be up until five AM again.

I am supposed to commute into work tomorrow, and getting two hours of sleep gets me into dangerous territory. Like I am more likely to get into a car accident on the way to the station.

Another thing I am trying this evening is bouncing back and forth between the blog and the fiction piece. I give myself those hourly goals, but with the fiction, the writing often comes at a slower pace, and I can use the blog to catch up.

Otherwise, there is too much pressure put on the fiction if I were to use it as the main way to get my word count. And my brain appreciates the change ups.

Last night, I forgot to put on my earbuds and listen to some music as I wrote. I think that was one of the reasons it took so long for me to reach the goal. And possibly there was a believe that I was going to fail to get the words written. Writing with that kind of noose around your neck makes it less fun. And it’s supposed to be fun!

Nine fifty-seven and I just met my 2000 words by ten PM goal!

See, it’s working.

Time for a fifteen-minute break and then I have forty-five minutes to write eight hundred and fifty words of fiction.

So, to illustrate my point, I just spent the last writing segment on the fiction piece and only wrote four hundred and thirty-two words in that time. This put me about four hundred words behind for the next time segment and means I’ll have to put it into overdrive to get back on track. And I’ll do that here in this blog or at least attempt to.

The story is going well. Its really still in the opening stages of the book. The big stuff is yet to come, even though I have no idea what that will be. It’s one of those stories where things keep getting worse as fast as they get better. I love books like the Martian and the Bobiverse series for that reason and many others. So far, I am liking the characters and the vibe. I may change the main character’s name because it ends in and s. I hate writing Minas’ this and Minas’ that. Bob’s this and Bob’s that is easier for people to read. So, I’ll come up with a better name eventually and then do a find and replace to get them all at once.

That’s some of the things I think about when writing. Is this going to make the reading unnecessarily harder for the reader? The idea is to entertain not create reader fatigue.

That’s what this blog is for.

Tired yet? I am.

The kiddo had his little hamster, Timbit, at the kitchen table tonight in clear bin. Something about animals kept in cages rubs me the wrong way. What other people see as a cut hamster running about like its on crack, I see as an animal desperate to escape. Cats and dogs kind of choose to stick around. The ones that don’t want to be in your house to find a way to leave.

I don’t suppose fish care about where they are one way or another. But that hamster has escape on its mind and you won’t be able to convince my otherwise.

I was planning on making a recipe out of the Dishoom cookbook this week and serve it for an early Mother’s Day meal. Like our own personal Indian restaurant buffet.

But with the way things have worked out I need every single second to complete this challenge. My back-up plan it to order from a restaurant we have used before and get it all delivered. I might have time on Friday or Saturday to whip up a batch of chicken ruby and Prawn Moilee, but that will be the extent of it. And to be honest, I am going to need some down time. Work is offering overtime, and if I was a smart man I would take them up on the offer. A little more dosh in the bank might come in handy when Robyn is eventually laid off.

So, its just about eleven thirty and I have just passed the halfway mark for tonight’s goal of six thousand and thirty-six words. At this rate I will be finished around three thirty in the morning.

Is it any surprise that the forecast is calling for rain again. Every time I have to commute there seems to be an imminent storm brewing. It is April, I guess and they are known for their showers.

I see King Charles is over visiting the US and gave a speech in front of congress. I imagine there was some veiled and not so veiled talk about the US playing nice with its NATO members and probably a reminder of all the great co-operation the two countries have had over the years starting with a firm bond created during WWII.

I haven’t watched it yet; I’ll save that for when I am working and I can listen to it.

One of the YouTuber’s I have recently started watching over the past four months is a couple on a solar boat, that he hand built and had sailed from Norway to Spain all under electric power. He recently bought some upgraded batteries to run the boat, probably from his YouTube earnings. But as they have reached Spain the content has slowed. One of the other things he has been talking about is the addition of two riggers with pontoons to help mitigate the rolling of the boat to make it a more comfortable ride.

In a previous video a Spanish fan picked him up and helped him acquire the wood and foam he would need to make the riggers. I do enjoy the freedom this guy, his name is Lucas, has carved out for himself. He has plans to make a larger boat in the future and is using this current one test out theories and to learn what works best.

I like the idea of seeing different countries and bringing your accommodations along with you. And with the free solar energy, moving from place-to-place cost you nothing but sailing time. Even his girlfriend, who joined him part way on the journey to Spain has her own channel as well. With Starlink, they could both have online jobs as well with no issues. Assuming the company you work is okay with that.

I’m trying to imagine Robyn and I painting in the evenings and uploading our work, while we spent the days sailing and exploring different locales and trying new foods.

The idea of posting videos about my daily life and the constant churn of record, edit, and post isn’t something I would want to do. But with a cheap laptop I could maybe pen some stories that brought in enough cash to keep us in groceries.

All a pipe dream I know.

I like things like this and even van-lifers probably because I will never actually do it myself. That’s one of the great things about YouTube, isn’t it?

After all this rigmarole is done and resets, I need to start thinking about an idea for the Shorts Program that is happening at work. It would be cool to be a part of that, particularly if it revolves around a story I wrote. Not sure I want to paint on it or direct, but writing might be something I could do.

Having another writing credit couldn’t hurt my credentials at all. Sometimes working on a team project is more fulfilling that doing everything solo all the time.

It’s coming up on midnight, and I am about four hundred words behind, meaning in the last two hours I only wrote sixteen hundred words instead of the two thousand I was hoping for.

I do have to say, that in those hours I have not had any back pain or stiffness. The recliner is working its magic, and I think my back has had the opportunity to heal itself. A position that is likely to get reversed by my time at the studio and on the train.

I just took fifteen-minute break to make a decaf tea and was surprised to realize that my back wasn’t all stiff. This has been the norm for the past two weeks.

While I was waiting for the tea to brew, I watched a brief clip of the King’s address to the US Congress. His speech as witty and filled with low key jokes that seemed to go over well with the assembled crowd. He made light of their checkered past and referred to that time, “…as Dickens would say, A Tale of Two Georges.”

The king waited for each joke to hit and like a cheeky old uncle gave a little smile, pleased that crowd had enjoyed it. The three-minute clip was a good showing from the King of England. If the whole monarchy thing doesn’t work out, he may have a future on the comedy circuits. Yuk Yuk’s presents the “King of Comedy, Charlie Windsor!”

The possibility of stopping at the Patrician Grill is on the table for tomorrow morning. It might be the only thing to look forward to in the city. I haven’t been in a few weeks, and it might be worth getting to work a half an hour later to get some breakfast. If you remember, they will be closing sometime in May and that’s not that far off.

My local news is telling me that our area is finally moving towards those wheelie bins for garbage pick up. As far as I can tell it doesn’t include the recycling bins. The bins are a good idea in this part of Ontario. My township is a very windy place and recycling ends up blowing everywhere. The trucks come before seven Am and that prompts people to put out their blue bins the night before inviting racoons and other animals. The wind tends to pick up in the morning and now the refuse is everywhere. Turning our lovely township into a hoarder’s house.

I might have been a bit dramatic there. Might have been.

There was a break and enter a few blocks from my house a couple of nights ago. Three men with hammers smashed the window and entered the house waking the owners in the middle of the night. The armed men demanded the keys to their Mercedes SUV and then sped off in it followed by another high-end SUV. The police found the car abandoned in Toronto a few hours later.

That must have been scary as hell for the homeowners. There seems to be a rise in crime rates around here lately. Maybe I just never really paid attention to the news in my area before. They also said that youth unemployment has doubled from previous years, and I wonder if that is having an effect as well as the rising costs of things.

Luckily the car I drive isn’t on the top ten list of carjackers favourite ride. It reminds me of the Fight Club line about the things you own end up owning you.

But I am glad that no one was hurt during the altercation. But I’ll bet they won’t be sleeping soundly for some weeks to come. I know I wouldn’t. Robyn would probably want to move.

It’s a big part of why everyone is getting doorbell cams and dashcams. Video is still one of the big equalizers in obtaining justice.

And to switch things to a more joyful note, it looks like we’ll be getting another season of Ted Lasso. That show really blew my away. I had no interest in it because it was, I thought, about soccer. But the writer in me should have known better. The subject revolves around soccer but that is not what the stories are about.

I still need to go back and watch the first episode of the show. Those first ten minutes are a master class in comedy writing. I came to love all the characters and the story lines. It’s one of those shows that has heart and it can make you laugh and cry. That’s a special kind of thing we don’t always get from our entertainment.

This year it looks like the coaches are in charge of the women’s team. I wonder if the Disney documentary, “Waiting for Wrexham,” inspired this season. The Wrexham team spent quite a bit of time and money building up their women’s team as there was a huge gap between the men’s and women’s leagues. And there is a huge growth potential in the sport as a result.

Looking forward to more of Waiting for Wrexham as well. Not sure if the show got canceled with all the craziness going on in the streaming world. And then I did the more sensible thing than to wonder about it and googled it. Season five premieres on May 14.

So there you go. You have two soccer shows to watch now.

Mr. Inbetween continues to entertain me. I was trying to think about how to describe it, and the closest I got was it Ray Donovan had a love child with the Trailer Park Boys.

A fixer with all the banter and suave of the boys from the coast.

Sometimes while I am working, I have YouTube videos on in the background. Usually the watch later playlist. Videos I might not be super interested in but will give a chance if I run out of content. One of these is a guy who loves all things coffee, James Hoffman.

Today he was talking about the Americano and ways that you could make it taste better. He tested out a few different methods of heating and preheating the water, that I would never take the time to do. The idea centered around removing gasses from the water.

The one that caught my attention was the degassing the espresso. I have a Nespresso machine and love the brew it makes. I really like to make my version of a Cortado with lots of sweetener. So, I decided to test the method he suggested with todays cortado. The idea is to put the finished brew in a vacuum chamber to degas the coffee and the water.

I have a hand pump and a glass vacuum set for leftovers made by Zwilling. It’s just like having fancy Tupperware. I put the cup in the vessel and sealed it like I was saving my leftover spaghetti. It takes less than ten seconds to get a vacuum. Then I released the valve and the coffee exploded everywhere. Most of it stayed in the glass vessel and some even managed to stay in the cup. I salvaged what I could from the vessel and added it to what was left in the cup.

And lo and behold the coffee had lost almost all it’s bitterness. I added my portion of milk, usually I do a fifty-fifty ratio of espresso to milk and then added in some sweetener.

The coffee was smooth. And I my impression was that I needed less sweetener than usual.

Next time I give it a go, I will release the pressure gradually. But I think this is going to be my new technique for making my cortado. I want to try it on some of the flavored Nespresso capsules I have as well. I think the hazelnut one would benefit from this technique.

The other option was to steam the coffee, but this changes the overall texture of drink.

And I forgot to mention he also scrapes off the crema from the top as it doesn’t add any nice flavor. It is an indicator of freshness, technique and strength of the brew, but the flavor is pure bitter.

I didn’t scrape off the crema when I tried it, but you should definitely try the vacuum chamber if you have access to one. He used a commercial food sealer to do his.

It might be interesting to do the same experiment with teas and wines. See how the removal of gases affects drinks with some tannins.

It’s just past two in the morning and I have to tell you the temptation to go to bed is strong. I am completely wiped out and I still have about eight hundred and fifty words to go.

This part is always the hardest because I have run out of things to say. Or, I have told you all the things I thought about or did that were even remotely interesting. And plenty that were not!

Sorry about those.

And there are plenty of days were nothing much really happened, either in the world or in my private life. I do find the writing of this blog has me looking at news articles more that I used to.

And staying up this late writing this is a strain. I almost called in sick today at work. It was a battle I fought within myself. On one hand, my team needs me and there is work to be done, and on the other I was dead tired and I haven’t ever taken a sick day this year. I often never use them. But boy, did I want to today.

And the worst part is that this is all of my own doing. Letting myself get behind this month was a dumbass move on my part. After the last three months of saying, “I’ll never do that again.” I jump right in and serve up the worst case so far since I started this challenge.

I might have to buy myself a dumbass trophy and award it to myself over and over again.

And the winner is… Dumbass!

It looks like Ontario is considering the ban of cellphones and social media in secondary and elementary schools following a move by Manitoba to do the same. But it sounds like Ontario wants to take the ban futher than Manitoba.

I remember my stepson had a massive following on TikTok, but he was completely miserable. One day he decided that it was making him unhappy and he closed his account. I don’t know of many kids that would walk away from that many followers. I was very proud of him for being brave and realizing what was bad for him. That he felt he had the autonomy to do something about it.

There was an instant change that came over him right afterwards. It was visible in the way he carried himself and in they way he treated us and other people.

I find myself looking at my phone way more that I should. I have to put it in my pocket if we go out to dinner with friends or it will appear in my hands almost all by itself. And you can see it everywhere you go. Heads stuck in screens.

When the train to work is departing, I often find myself standing on the upper-level stairs waiting to exit. It gives me a bird’s eye view of other people’s phones and most of the stuff people are looking at is a steaming pile of garbage.

And we are all guilty of doing it.

Like a bunch of crack addicts waiting for our next dopamine hit.

One of my pet peeves about the train, yes I know I have many of them, is people who stare at their phones while descending a set of stairs. I always wonder what could be so mesmerizing and then you look and it’s a website that sells shoes or something.

I am really surprised that more people aren’t pushed down the stairs. I kid. Mostly.

Well, before all of this started, I thought I would take me until about three thirty to get my final word count for the day. It’s twenty minutes to three and I have about two hundred and fifty words left to go. I think estimating these things is one of the skills you learn as you keep doing this. Not a bad thing to be able to do.

Only two more days of meeting this ridiculous quota are left to complete. Friday is going to feel like I am on vacation compared to what this has been like. And yet I am glad that I have been able to get this far. I really didn’t believe I was going to make across the finish line this time. But I am still in the running to make it happen.

My teacher always says the only difference between us and him is the amount of hours his butt is in the chair and his fingers are moving.

I still didn’t write as much fiction as I was hoping to tonight, but I am glad that I was able to get something written on that story. My hope is that as this challenge progresses the majority of my word quota will come from the stories as opposed to the blog.

But I was able to get this “little” portion completed a half an hour before I thought I would and that is a win I am willing to take.

Anyways my eyes are so tired I am starting to see double, and I am missing most of the keys as I type these last sentences. Time to call it a night.

Until the next time.