#330 - Teamwork Makes The Dreams Work

It was another regular Monday morning.

My Teams app started making noises just before nine am and I was forced out of bed just to be able to answer some of the painter’s questions. I didn’t sleep well last night. I didn’t take the sleep aids because I was afraid it would make me oversleep. I stayed up a bit later than I wanted to working on writing. Still, it felt good to get the work done and the new writing lounge chair made it incredibly comfortable.

My colleague was a bundle of questions and suggestions this morning and I probably spent more time answering her questions or greenlighting her ideas than doing anything else. But that was okay because it meant things were getting done. Teamwork is what makes the dream work as they say.

I needed some sustenance to keep going, so I headed down to the kitchen and made some sourdough toast and tea. I managed to get back to my desk and spill half my tea onto half my toast.

No one wants soggy toast!

I started working on approvals and revisions while stopping now and then to answer questions. Two of our painters were unable to sign into their PC’s remotely due to some mechanical failure in the server room. This meant the day started to slow down as the day unfolded because there was less work to review and create questions.

We had our lead and supervisor catchup meeting at eleven, and I was glad to hear that my supervisor spoke up for me regarding the incident where I was asked not to speak to people about their work in other departments. It was gratifying to hear I wasn’t out of line to go directly to a person when all the other avenues had been exhausted.

Later, the same people who tried to hem me in were called out by another department for putting up substandard work. Work that did not meet the minimum threshold. Something anyone who does what we do should have known. The individuals treated the information like it was new to them and could explain all the craziness my team has had to put up with for the past four months. I’ll admit to enjoying them being called out by another department after they asked me not to out them the day before.

It’s always better to just say you don’t know something than to keep faking it. Demanding that coworkers not to discuss the errors amongst themselves is a real red flag. And it’s a game I am not willing to play.

But we had plenty of other things to discuss and once our game plan for the week was in place it was time for lunch. Robyn and I only had time for a short walk as we always have a one o’clock meeting on Mondays. During the walk, we received notification that one of our friends had accepted a position in a non-animation role after a couple of years of unemployment.

I think they really needed the break, both financially and mentally. So, it gave our hearts joy to hear they were going to be having an easier time with it soon.

The meeting after the walk went well. The painters can be a bit quiet sometimes and need a bit of coaxing to get then chatting. Things are running as well as they can be for the moment, so there wasn’t much confusion. And they have become used to how this show works to not have as many questions as they did at the start of things.

Kiddo#1’a friends all left today. I am pretty sure she just told them that they all had to leave. She, like Robyn and I, has a limited social battery and at some point, it just runs flat and we have to be away from people for a little while. I mentioned it in other posts that I believe there are people who get energy from being around others and the rest of us lose energy being around people.

Her friends left with fuller bellies than when they arrived, so I don’t think they complained about having to leave. I did notice someone has been hitting my supply of hazelnut Nespresso pods pretty hard the last few days. Oh well, I am glad they felt at home enough to help themselves.

It turned out that kiddo#1 is done her summer camp work earlier than expected, so she spent the entire day relaxing after dropping off her friends. Now she has to figure out what to do with the rest of her year. She is hoping to move back to Halifax and get more animation work. Things are starting to pick up a bit and that’s a good sign that it might be starting to recover.

I was impressed to see that this was my 330^th continuous blog post. I am sneaking up on the one-year anniversary of writing a post every single day without fail. When I started this challenge, I didn’t think I believed that I was going to last this long. Something always comes up to gum up the works. Somehow, I managed to just keep going until it became a habit, a thing I just do every day.

And if I could do, then anyone can do it.

But back to the day…

After the meeting I got back to doing approvals and revisions. Some of the revisions took longer than I would have liked, but I took them on myself to keep my painters from being distracted by them. Sometimes it’s just better to let them keep working on their current project. It takes time to start one thing when your brain is set on doing another thing.

As a supervisor, ask me how I know!

I finished my day at five and went to lie down. I put on the Peaky Blinders movie for a bit until Robyn asked for some help with the stove and I needed to go downstairs. Turns out she had just turned the dial to the wrong setting. There was a sheet with cut vegetables on it and four chicken breasts on another smaller sheet. She asked me what to do with the chicken, and it was just easier to grab one of my go-to recipes and whip up something for chicken. I picked a herbed butter and garlic recipe that would cook at the same time and temperature as the vegetables. It was a recipe the rest of the family seemed to enjoy in the end.

Robyn had to leave to do her second job, so I babysat the food. I put the TV on in the living room and set some timers for the stove and resumed watching the Peaky Blinders. I sometimes forget that we bought the new tv and soundbar for the living room.

I guess I was avoiding that space with all the kids’ friends staying over for the past few days. Then tend to pile in there all together and watch movies or play games.

I was surprised to see how much the kids were using the back deck this week as well. I think the temperatures have finally come down enough for them to start enjoying it. They have a very narrow temperature window where they will use a space.

Our dinner finished cooking before Robyn got home, but I didn’t want to eat dinner without her. Back to Peaky Blinders it was until she returned.

The kiddo#1 had left to pick up kiddo #2 from work and when they returned, they finally took the dead bird, which they had named Willy, off the from porch and buried him across the street in the little decorated box they had placed him in days before. I was glad to have the rotting bird gone, thank you very much.

They wanted to bury it somewhere on our property, but I wasn’t having any of that.

Robyn finally returned home and the two of us sat down to eat together. The kids were suspiciously not hungry which means they probably fed themselves while kiddo #1 was getting picked up. And kiddo #2 can always eat. She never misses a free meal she didn’t have to cook.

We had a nice meal together, and halfway through kiddo #2 started comparing his school schedule to Robyn’s, trying to suss out when he would be able to get a drive to and from school with his mother. The boy is a schemer and a planner by nature.

Robyn had to point out a few times that the ride he was anticipating was a class that Robyn took online and would not be going into the school that day. It gave me a small chuckle anyway.

After dinner we retreated to our room and watched an episode of John Oliver. It was another good episode that was both funny and informative. It was about companies switching over to subscription services and how they make it very difficult to cancel subscriptions. So much so that individual states are making laws to have a clear cancelation button visible.

It reminds me of the time I signed up for automatic RRSP contributions with my banks I had to make an appointment at a branch far from where I lived to get someone to cancel it.

It felt incredibly predatory to me.

I put on Lanterns next and watched it mostly to give it a chance. It could be a decent show, but it is moving a bit slow for an action comic. There is the risk that they are going to treat the older Lantern as a washed-up old hack to make the new guy look better. This is something that has not worked out well for recent franchises.

I have seen some YouTubers screen pages with the words, “They Hate Superheroes,” when referring to the new Lantern show. I think they are slowly revealing the backstory of the current lantern, so we get a deeper understanding of how he got the way he was. We’ll see if people stick around to that long though.

There is now delicate balance that needs to be walked when doing a superhero show where another new character is waiting in the wings to replace them.

Right now, the show is unwinding slowly, more like a detective story and that is perfectly fine. I don’t have a problem personally when a show takes its time, but many of today’s viewers can get a little impatient. But I think if the content is good, the story is interesting, people will stick around to see what happens next and to find out how it all ends.

Robyn didn’t seem too interested in the show. I think she is done with superhero shows for the time being.

My stocks are doing interesting things today, likely due to Trumps attempt to add last minute items onto a trade deal. My gold stocks are up enough so that I will take the profit tomorrow. They live in my RRSP so there is no taxation until I take it out of there. Seems like a no brainer to me.

In my TFSA I sold a stock at around $9.30, and it has dropped a dollar in the last week. I may by back in for a while. My original buy-in was $6 so it seems like a good idea to me at the moment. I’ll have to see what things are like in the morning.

I also found out today that I’ll have slightly more coverage on health care going forward thanks to Robyn getting a full-time gig at the studio. Most things are covered up tp about 80%, so this new coverage should get me to 100% coverage on most things.

I remembered to use my little notebook to record my daily streaks and things I need to keep track of today. I enjoy marking things off that list and checking the boxes as well as seeing the streak numbers climbing each day.

And since I bought so many of those little books, I better make sure I am using them.

Well, that’s all that happened today and if you’ve read this far, I thank you.

In the near future, I hope to post a short story a week here for free in case you’d like a different form of entertainment. Let me know in the comments if that is something you would be interested in.

Until tomorrow.