Dispatches from a happy Hullian

Bargaining meetings with the employer start tomorrow — two days of staking out our positions and interests and getting a feel for each other. All us on the bargaining team have been asked to do some brief introductions including what their constituency has been doing for the public in These Exceptional Times. As the Researcher rep... we're a real grab bag; it's been fun crafting a list for maximum entropy.

Heather and I decided to de-escalate out of romantic partnership in December. We're still planning to be in each other's lives in the long term, we enjoy each other's kids and still have a partner in common, but if things are a little weird, we're not in the same place at the same time as much or we're a little glum or emotional, that might be related.

The Ottawa marathon is less than 18 weeks away. I've been running with the work group and did a half in the snow a couple weeks ago, which might've been overdoing it a bit. Feeling better now (and have been doing 3-5km lunch runs in the interim) but next long run might be more like 15-16 km.

Andrea and I celebrated six years together on Sunday — we wandered the Ottawa Art Gallery and took a look at the Rideau Canal (no skating allowed yet) and had a nice supper at The Albion Rooms. Our server seemed to be holding down the whole place alone and had a bit of an anxious vibe, but the food was uniformly delicious. With everything that's happened over the past six years it's hard to say if six years feels accurate, but I know I'm still filled with delight in and admiration of her. We're safe harbours for each other and I hope we'll keep being that and more for each other for many years to come.

Work involves more tinkering with budgets and juggling tasks than I'd like, due to budget tightening, and there are still many rough patches in the return to the office — local management is showing some willingness to fix or roll back things that aren't working, though. I attended a Lean skills seminar last week and one of the things that struck me was the value of actually zeroing your task list from time to time. I'm not sure if I can manage that, but maybe a month where at the very least I don't re-migrate any tasks I migrated the previous month would be attainable.

Fall isn't so bad, so long as you stay warm, says Elizabeth.

I just finished migrating my to-dos from September — I got a lot done, procrastinated on a bunch, and picked up a bunch of new responsibilities. I'd do well to make out > in this month, though! My page was full. I see themes emerging, though, maybe it's time to organized them into collections (or farm some out!).

I celebrated a birthday since last entry, kind of quietly. Oscar did too, and now Elizabeth's is coming up. A friend of mine asked if I was in the best shape of my life (with all the exercise I'm getting) — I figure I definitely was at some point in the pandemic; I'm a bit off my peak but still feeling pretty good. I signed up for the full marathon in May (early bird discount!) so I hope to hit a new peak in the spring!

Last weekend I spent Friday and Saturday with union folks — my first long meeting with that crew in person in a while. Got a few of those to-dos done there, wrapping up treasurer loose ends and picking up some good news to spread at other tables about improved gender-inclusive languages in our contract. Things are getting off the ground with negotiations; I just gave something like six months of availability to our negotiator for him to set up training, planning and bargaining meetings.

I went to the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation events last Friday, the mood was a bit odd but Andrea pointed out that not every culture's sense of how serious or sombre you need to be at a memorial event is the same. The Hon. Murray Sinclair compared the day to Remembrance Day but between weather and maybe a lack of shared understanding, it felt more like a typical demonstration. Maybe it will change with time. The sheer physical scale of the banner listing names of the dead in the residential school system was striking, and the event felt well-resourced and organized. There were a couple of convoy-esque people wandering in at the Parliament Hill part wrapped in Canadian flags; it looked to me like they were informed they had missed the memo and then they wandered off. I have a some aspects of my work that interact with Indigenous sovereignty (including data sovereignty), I hope I can do right by Indigenous folks in the scope of my projects.

This week my supervisor and one of my employees are coming back from long leaves, and I've got a couple of days of in-person union meetings with my CLC comrades. I'm going to need to be disciplined and get the right things done in the right contexts.