#283 - More Pork and Nitrogen

It was another morning of dragging myself out of bed to start my workday.

I really need a long lie in to get back on track.

Heading straight to my home office I logged in and started reading all the messages that were piling up on my Teams and Outlook inboxes. People were very chatty this morning. It usually a sign that something has gone horribly wrong or that everyone is in a great mood.

It was a great mood kind of morning and who can be upset about that. We had a ten AM meeting in which all the supervisors and directors let everyone know what they are working on, inform the team of any unforeseen challenges and bring up any challenges on the foreseeable horizon.

After that, I started working on some approvals and had a couple of paintings that required a fair bit of work to make them look right.

That took me until noon, when for the first time in a long time we made it to the park to take our lunch hour walk. It was a great day for it, except for all the humidity and lack of a breeze. But it was great to get the heart pumping and get a sweat going.

Returning home, I put another pork shoulder into the slow cooker to make a second batch of pulled pork.

I grabbed a drink and a can tuna with chickpea thing that tasted pretty good all things considered. Then it was back to approvals, checking in with some of my painters and then rendering some files to pass on to the next crew.

I had a couple of small revisions that I was responsible to handle. Nothing to crazy and those didn’t take very long to make happen.

By five thirty I was ready to end my day.

 I needed to cut and water the lawn. The act of mowing the lawn was a bit of a nice way to ease into the evening. After watering the lawn, I made up a solution of iron and nitrogen in liquid form and sprayed the front lawn liberally. It was starting to turn a little brown over the past few days, so the combo of water, iron and nitrogen should give it some much needed love.

I also received my response to my mentor assignment, and it wasn’t the news I was hoping for, but we have identified another area of the craft that I need to work on.

This new area is called fake details. If I say a character climbed a tree, that is a fake detail. If I instead say, the character climbed an ancient oak with limbs that spread out like a spider’s web, you know exactly what kind of tree it is. In the first example the tree was whatever you imagined.

That’s a bit of a simplification of what a fake detail is, but you get the idea.

I’m thinking to rewrite that assignment this week for my own benefit and I’ll submit it to my mentor, although, it is unlikely they will read it. But that’s not the point. I want to make sure she knows I am willing to put in the work and want to learn.

I also got my next assignment, which is a historical crime story set in the town I live in.

Could be interesting. One of the things she recommends is getting a hold of some historical images to help with writing the descriptions. Good thing we have the internet these days, but I might take a trip to a local museum and see what we have there as well.

I made a whirlwind of food this evening. I finished the pulled pork after about nine hours of cooking and then made some roasted vegetables, followed by some chocolate chip cookies. I also boiled half dozen eggs to have ready for breakfast tomorrow.

For dinner I took some of the roast veg, a little basmati rice and the left over makhani sauce from the previous night and had an amazing feast. I added in one of the boiled eggs and had a chocolate chip cookie for dessert.

It felt like a very productive day.

Going to keep this one short again tonight. Up early to catch a train in the morning.

Until tomorrow.