Dispatches from a happy Hullian

We have emptied out the kitchen and bathroom downstairs in anticipation of the renovation crew arriving early tomorrow to demolish anything left in there. It's going to be a bit like camping at home for several weeks, but when it's all done we'll have normal-height counters, a built-in dishwasher, better plumbing and a kitchen arrangement that gives us a bit more room to swing a cat (put the cat down, kids). Meantime, our place is feeling pretty small, and a bit like we're moving.

I was at three days of national union meetings Thursday through Saturday, and we're trying to tighten up a lot of things internally while processing the latest budget and rumblings from Parliament Hill. With Liberals like this, who needs Conservatives? I really like enough people in the union to make it still fun, but this is going to be a hard stretch.

I also replaced my beaten-up road running shoes with this year's version of the old model, and have been putting them through their paces. Almost 24km at a run in and out of Aylmer. Wanted to do more, but I was kind of flagging on the way back and walked the last three.

It's the Sunday after the Wednesday Elizabeth and Vivien took off for Europe. My general strategy is to keep myself and the kids here busy. We rode the Cycle for CHEO (15 km edition, to keep it manageable for Ada on a one-speed kid BMX bike) and it went pretty well — Oscar zipped off ahead despite my admonition to stick together but we didn't have too much trouble finding them. We took some time to hang out with Simon (who had done the 35 km on their own), chowed down on the included BBQ and wandered the activities — Ada sat in the driver's seat of the OC Transpo EV bus while Oscar assembled a cardboard O-Train and double-decker bus in one of the passenger seats (and took some prompting to dislodge).

We've been eating things that Elizabeth and/or Vivien don't (sushi! pancakes! meat sausages!) and on the PD day Oscar went off to the library after the bunch of us had sushi with Andrea. Yesterday Ada and I met up with Andrea and Morgen for a visit to the Ottawa Art Gallery at the speed of four-year-old attention span (we can get away with that because admission is free!) followed by Byward Market ice cream and a community barbecue at the Children's Garden.

One unsettling thing that happened on Thursday night was that someone was skulking around the yard and went into our garage, smoked in there, moved things around and, as far as I can tell, didn’t take anything — might have borrowed Elizabeth's bike helmet for a bit, and I thought they stole the digging fork but then it turned up inside the garage (it had been leaning against the fence). I think I saw the guy putting back the bike helmet. Odd — at first I thought Elizabeth had left her bike and helmet somewhere and the guy (not a familiar one, but I'm not at every open mic…) was bringing them back? They also moved the chicken feeding station out of their coop and unplugged the light in there. It wasn't hard to put things back and the garage smoke smell has dissipated but it was pretty unsettling.

This coming week I deliver the presentation on our unit's specialty to the recruits at work — I've delivered it last decade but it's been a while so I've spruced it up and am looking forward to it. I think, with me responsible for the kids in the evening, I might book a morning off for a second 32ish km run before tapering to Race Weekend.

I have tried a Bullet Journal rite of passage — breaking out a topic into a collection (okay, I did one for Christmas prep, but I still want to mention this one): "Wrap up [old team]." I'm technically thinking over my options over the weekend but odds are very high that I'll be moving to a new division in July, under my old supervisor (who has been promoted in the interim). It's stuff I know well and like, and a team that's maybe a bit bigger than what I was hoping for, but by all accounts I'll have good lieutenants. I hope it'll be a good fit and let me develop as a manager while knowing that the technical stuff is familiar enough that I'm not playing catch-up all the time.

I've been back at the office for a few weeks after isolating due to Elizabeth having COVID. Biking in is good for me, I think, and many lunch hours I go for a run in the neighbourhood. It's not a panacea — I can still get thrown by chaotic days or other stuff — but it does help my focus and productivity. There's a reorganization of everything coming, to clear out materials so that the agency can consolidate into fewer buildings, and I'm not quite sure how I'll be affected, being a mostly-onsite person. Also, who knows what a change of position will do or not do to where I sit now...

My shoulder has been acting up again — once from falling over in a broken chair, and yesterday a couple of times, one just wiping cat pee off the floor (boo) and then again just stretching wrong. Often it's more likely to pop out when I'm stressed, so I'll take that as a sign. For now, naproxen, taking it a little easier, trying not to be excessively cranky.

Last weekend I went to in-person union meetings for the first time since 2019. We were in a huge room and people were still being mostly careful. It was good to physically go somewhere (even if it was on the edge of the Convoy 2.0 zone) and be a union person for full days. Learned some useful stuff about family status accommodations and the union's next steps on COVID attestation grievances, too.

1) What are you doing this spring that you weren't doing 1 year ago?

Making a habit of running or cycling daily.

2) What pandemic precautions are you still taking?

Giving people space, masking up indoors, seeing less of people than I'd like and giving strangers more personal space including stepping off the sidewalk as we pass each other. Also, got vaccinated!

3) What's a safety rule that's very important to you?

Don't surprise drivers.

4) What plants are blooming where you live?

A lot of the spring flowers have come and gone... strawberry flowers are still open, bleeding hearts too, and honeysuckle has some flowers holding on and lots of golden fallen petals under the bushes.

5) What was your most memorable summer job?

Probably working on web development in the mid-to-late 90s as part of a bold little enrichment program which connected talented rural kids with community groups that wanted websites. I discovered ramen, both ends of a job interview, Photoshop and Illustrator, hand-coding HTML, and doing tech projects in teams. I liked how us kids taught each other a lot of what we needed to do and I liked biking to work and having my own money.

Questions: thefridayfive

My supervisor at work had a tip for us to maintain work-life balance: keep some simple task you don't find fun for the end of the day &emdash; you will probably get it done and you will also probably not keep doing it an hour past when you wanted to finish. K. is keen to use some of our administrative time to upgrade our skills in managing ourselves, or minions and our bosses, and is pitching in herself rather than just sending us to take an online course or get on the waiting list for a classroom session. I'm all for it; I haven’t really had a manager who takes that tack on things before.

Elizabeth is doing music virtually &emdash; quite a few things are in the works and she
’s been posting things on Facebook. Keep your eyes peeled!

My phone has FaceID and it seems to rely on being able to see my nose &emdash; it generally works if I'm covering my mouth, but with a bandana over my nose for going out of the house I’m punching in my passcode more.

The chickens are coming, sort of: coop ready, city chicken permit procured, and now there just remains acquiring the chickens. Elizabeth has tried to contact a local farm but we haven’t heard back from them yet. My dad was saying that Montréal-area farms are a bit overwhelmed by demand, so it may take a little while…

I’ve got a month left in my secondment. I have good surges of productivity and engagement, and some low-traction times too. I think it’s been a good experience despite it not going anything like expected, and I hope the connections I have made will stick. It’s been work I really like and good people too. I hope I can carry some of the energy on back to my home position.

The bridges are opening between Gatineau and Ottawa on Monday — guidance is still essential trips only but it’s a step in loosening restrictions. We'll have to see what this comes to mean for our connections with Ottawa loved ones but it’ a sign we can realistically start figuring that out. I’ve found time to connect over phone, text and video with Heather, Andrea and Morgen &emdash; including kicking off a virtual D&D game and video story time with Morgen and the little ones here — but it’s no substitute for in person. Ada’s birthday weekend is two weeks away; maybe by then it’ll be okay to have some sort of cautious celebration? The older two have been back in school and even with quite a few restrictions and a little grumbling they seem to be liking it and in good spirits.

I can see green grass here and there now, and my cycle commuting is back on track after a snow-related interruption earlier this week.

I've had some good news lately… the post-vasectomy test results came back all clear, and the promotion process I started in the fall has declared me qualified to gain a level — with any luck I can continue working on similar stuff to now but training and managing some help, but that's for management to decide.

I was slated to do some teaching internationally somewhere in the Caribbean (for learners from across the Caribbean) but the project has been bumped over to more senior people. Which is mostly a blessing because I have plenty going on, and it got bumped from February when going somewhere hot sounds appealing, to June, when 40 degrees happens. It stings a bit to be pulled but it's for the best.

I did get to teach locally, though — a Positive Space training with a new set of materials and approach I developed with Deirdre. I think it went quite well, and it qualifies more volunteers at StatCan and Health Canada to do listening and referral.

Elizabeth has been really busy with music — open mics, house shows, a show in Wakefield coming up… it's nice to have that heating up after a long fall but it has been an adjustment in terms of time and energy available for her and me. We're off to an afternoon open mic today with the kids… it's been a while since we've had kids take in her music in a venue. I hope they'll let her do her thing, cheer at the end and munch on fries during (rather than rush the stage)!

Next week I'm contract bargaining most of the week… I hope we make some good progress toward a solid agreement. I get to draft the bargaining updates. I'm learning a lot and think I'm making a difference.

I've been carrying around a list in my head of things to do while I'm 32 years old; now I'm committing it to the Internet. I've seen bucket lists and life lists, but the time horizon doesn't speak to my procrastination-prone and tactical nature, and I of course see New Year's resolutions, but I think going by my years rather than calendar years is more personal, and protects me a little from the list elements being fresh when the invariable collapse of many resolutions happens in late January. Also, some elements of the list were really dear and salient to me in the summer, so it made sense to hang them on my birthday (even if it's taken months to post them here). So, here are the things I would like to do or improve significantly this year:

• Floss more days than not.
• Make a conscious and courageous-when-necessary effort to improve my relationships in ways that make me happy.
• Make deeper use of this journal, as part of trying to be less guarded with people that I trust.
• Wear through multiple massage bars.
• Get the deposit back on beer bottles at smaller intervals and more reliably.
• Wipe out the mortgage and direct the resulting savings to a mix of responsible and fun things.
• Replace the chain-link fence with a durable, attractive, Oscar-resistant one.
• Get a check-up this year and renew my vaccinations; it's been too long on both counts.

In general, I think I have more guiding values than long-term specific goals, but here are some things (somewhere between values and goals) on a longer time scale.

• Have fewer secrets.
• Be entrusted with more secrets.
• Raise competent, well-adjusted kids. Do so with good humour, love and trust in them.
• Make our house more comfortable, energy-efficient and adjusted to us.
• Take care of my body and try and make my list of aches and pains not increase monotonically.
• Get family doctors for all of us in the household.
• Continue to like my job, be good at it, and be worthy of the respect of my co-workers.
• Keep learning new things, and consolidate dabbling into competent in new areas from time to time.