Dispatches from a happy Hullian

I ran the marathon on the weekend and finished nearly half an hour faster than last time — the next personal best is going to be considerably harder to achieve! The weather cooperated and I have been working on my speed — my consistency wasn't there all the way to the end but I was pretty solid for the first 36 km or so and the drop-off in the end wasn't nearly as precipitous as last time!

In other endurance events, our kitchen and bathroom are now both done. Waiting for the final invoice and anything else, but we've put most of the stuff back and are living in them. The space and brightness and lack of impending plumbing failure are all very nice.

This week is going to involve a lot of union stuff; I hope my team doesn't miss me too much...

Tomorrow is Ada's actual birthday: nine years old! She wants to go out to supper for her birthday meal, so off to our local bistro for moderately fancy burgers and fries we go.

1. What is your work/school commute like?

Summer: by bike in my work clothes — Strava on, maybe do an errand on the way.

Winter: by express bus after dropping the kids at school. Sometimes with an ambition to read a book but often just noodling around on phone news, Wordle and e-mail.

2. What did you want to be when you grew up? Has it changed?

I had astronaut, engineer, architect, web designer, propagandist and science journalist in my sights over my career. Now I design algorithms and explain statistical processes and methods to people (including statistical laypeople). So different, but not shockingly so, aside from how far it is from astronaut.

3. What is your weirdest work/school/project related story?

Might be the time I flew up to the Lower North Shore to teach Web basics? Or went to a transgenic goat farm to take pictures for a website? I had to wear clinic booties over my shoes, touch nothing and wash my hands obsessively on the way in and out.

4. What is something you're closely familiar with that media always gets wrong?

The media's understanding of contract expiry dates and real pay has been perhaps deliberately wrong in many cases, but really, even friendly sources often flub details.

5. Describe the stuff on your desk/workspace.

Foreground: cables, coffee cup, phone, two laptops, bullet journal, pen. Background: union stuff storage, binders, basement laundry hanging area.

From thefridayfive questions of last week :)

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.

This summer's season of tents is wound down — dagrim's cottage, Taylor Lake, Kaleidoscope. This year it feels like the parenting responsibilities are less total — I was able to read in various outdoor chairs and hammocks at every campsite, and my KG involved going to workshops and rituals daily, for the first time in years (probably since about 2009). It still takes a lot of energy to prepare and camp, but it was pretty satisfying!

After coming home, though, we managed to test positive for COVID, four of five in our household, one by one from Monday to yesterday. Elizabeth must be lucky and/or have lingering immunity from the spring, but the rest of us are getting through it. The little ones seem mostly better, Oscar and I are still in bad cold territory but are on the mend — we'll probably resume normal life this coming week. I'm feeling a bit touch starved and wanderlust-y so that will be good! Also, I got the bed and Elizabeth got the couch mattress this time, I look forward to sharing the bed again.

My switch-over to the new position was a bit bumpy with the usual IT permissions/compatibility issues, some staff turnover and the unexpected drag of a household COVID outbreak, but I still feel like it was a good move. We have a two-week window to piggy-back on another project in a way that tests one of our creations, and I feel like the new colleagues and clients are going to be easy to get along with and fun to work with.

I'm looking at the volume of stuff — work and union — on the horizon and hoping I'll be smart enough to delegate/trim as new stuff comes in and things get inevitably complicated. I keep trying to filter my projects and ambitions through my Bullet Journal and talking with people and I think I'm making progress... but it's a significant project. Maybe one for my next year of life (after I turn 42 on Tuesday) but probably not so time-bounded as that.

I cleared out a bunch of union stuff, certificates, training materials and reference books from my office today; everyone is going to get moved around as floors are remodelled and the square footage is reduced to reflect the large number of folks gone remote and hybrid. Some nice memories bound up in some certificates and reports I was shuffling through...

Also, just now I my mind wandered on to the cafeteria at work. It's big, it's in the basement (with little high windows), it's pretty bland... but I've had lots of good games of cards, mentoring talks, coffees, and even meetings down there pre-pandemic. And between secondment and pandemic, I last had a meal there in 2019 (maybe I popped in once or twice in very early 2020, maybe?) But I remembered it with its green paint, dark wood and stainless steel, and kind of missed it.

I've got a bit over a month before I switch to my new position, I'm looking forward to it, maybe mourning the things I won't do in this one a bit.

In other news, I ran the Ottawa Half Marathon a week and a half ago, and then a miserable (but generic) cold swept through our household. Glad I timed that right.

Waiting for my weekly rapid test result in the centre at work… today is the first day of the new phase of reopening, where measures go back to pre-Omicron. Still strong on masks and we'll see how many volunteers turn up (it's still almost entirely volunteer unless your job involves moving physical things around). It feels like spring is coming but Environment Canada is warning us we're going to get another dump of winter on Friday.

I'm eager to get out on my bike and run without slipping on the ice soon!

I'm in the late stages of organizing three virtual Positive Space workshops at work… curtains raise tomorrow on the first one. We've done it virtually before and I've got a mix of experienced facilitators and new talent signed up. It should go well!

From thefridayfive:

1. What was a skill you were proud to learn as a kid?

   Cooking! I remember proudly writing down the recipe for Caesar salad in a little exercise book when I was probably still in elementary school, and rolling out a full meal of Indian food from Madhur Jaffrey's cookbook one summer Friday as a young teen.

2. What's something you used to be good at, but can't do any more?

   Contortions — I'm still pretty flexible but I have a shoulder that limits my ambition (and I'm middle-aged now).

3. What's something you haven't done in a long time, but you could pick it right back up again with some practice?

   Snarkily, as a manager: coding in SAS :) Maybe also downhill skiing, but I'd be worried about that shoulder again.

4. What can you teach others to do?

   I've gotten nice feedback on how I teach HTML and related geeky stuff. I have also taught D&D to a few people now.

5. What would you like to learn next?

   I think there's a lot of psychology, organization and productivity for me to learn. Maybe as much training those "muscles" as picking up wildly new skills.

It's been a bit of a challenging winter and spring here, as everywhere. We're all still healthy here, employed, eating eggs from the backyard hens, so not as challenging as it could be, but still.

One of my union colleagues died last weekend. Mehran was quick to welcome me aboard when I got elected to the national Research Group executive, and quick to be friendly and to do what needed doing in general. He was also curious and open and talked happily of his love of food, dance and life in between matters of helping members and being good unionists. I'll miss him; there'll be a very empty virtual chair next weekend at the Group meeting.

Work is a bit of a slog... getting traction and coordinating people is hard and tiring sometimes, and there's a lot of staff movement and random requests going around. I might be able to make some good changes in an upcoming Lean process review, which would help me feel like I'm leaving things in good shape when I find an opportunity somewhere that fits me better. The return to virtual school for the kids, extended one week at a time since Easter, has thrown my routine and energy out of wack, even though Elizabeth has been taking the brunt of the daytime parenting. I have a fair amount of extracurricular stuff going on — Positive Space is getting more active again, union work continues with consultation and a stewarding case that might have legs. Those extras are work but they help make work more meaningful. In good pandemic news, our age slices are up for registering for a first shot next week... I'm hoping for Johnson and Johnson just so I'll be done (and apparently there are 300k doses of J&J coming into Canada now, but there are some possible bumps), but any shot in my arm is a good shot.

I've been mixing running and biking for my mental health/exercise time. I'm still shooting to run and now also bike every public street with asphalt and a name — I'm over half done on the bike and nearly two-thirds on feet. I've been varying it partly because if I run long distances too many days in a row my muscles have some concerns. But overall I'm getting pretty good at this, and seeing everywhere in the Hull sector at least twice, sometimes in different seasons, has been pretty cool. I know where our favourite tofu burgers come from because I've run past the factory in an industrial park. I can see new streets and developments go up, moving the goalposts for this whole silly game.

I'm missing seeing my Vanier loves in person — we've got our stopgaps — virtual D&D, grove rituals (happy Beltaine!), video storytime (Heather has finished the first book of Lord of the Rings with the kids) and various one-on-one chats. I used to do walk-and-talk after the kids were in bed by phone, but the 8 PM curfew has made that harder. Once the restrictions are loosened maybe walking and talking in person will be a thing again.

We're fairly Christmas-y here: tree up, elf maurauding, gifts mostly found, some still in the hands of the good workers of the postal service… It's been a bit of a marathon getting things together and also moving work forward. I'm looking forward to a little break between the holidays! I know I need it, my body lets me know by popping my shoulder out :( In this case just stretching in bed. It's back in and a little achy. Elizabeth has her aches and pains too. With any luck, and with our to-do lists fairly short, we can be in good shape for Christmas. I hope to take some more days off from work over the winter once some major projects are handed off from my unit. Pacing myself will be important.

The kids are schooling from home on either side of the Christmas break. The first day was a bit plagued by technical difficulties in Teams but now it seems to be working well. The music teacher edited together songs from every class to form a Christmas concert, and the class teachers moved the pyjamas and stuffed animals in class up to the last in-person days.

Tomorrow night is the Longest Night. We'll welcome back lengthening days and conduct our first (video-linked) ritual after Judith. I think her send-off will be gradual, given the health situation of the world and her impact on lots of us, but we'll collectively recognize her and remember her tomorrow.

I turned forty yesterday… sometime before March I threw out that my fortieth birthday would be nice if it was anchored in beer and board games — get a bunch of people who like one or more of those things and want to celebrate with me and make a day of it.

We had a scale down a bit but both of those things happened (not all at the same time) — Elizabeth and the kids had gotten Gaïa and I played a couple of rounds with Oscar and Ada after breakfast. The standard game feels like it's a bit to draw-dependent with few interesting decisions or back-and-forth opportunities, but the advanced version (especially minus the mean cards — volcanoes and thunderbolts in our game made it so that you kind of had to ride out the violence and then play in earnest once everyone was out of ammunition) is a nicely-balanced short game.

The kids gifted me with many supervillain-themed pictures, a felt medal and a hat made from a pop bottle with an antenna and googly eyes.

In the middle of the day we had a backyard party. Elizabeth had made lime meringue tarts, we barbecued some veggie sausages, we took cover when it rained :) Heather, Andrea and Morgen came for the first while until Morgen needed her own bed for a nap, and my folks turned up as they were heading out. It was the first time this year I've seen my parents in person. I hope we can figure out a visit down there; either a day trip on a nice day or a weekend if we can tinker with our bubble configuration or get to a better place in the pandemic.

Turning forty has been kind of overshadowed by the circumstances. I'm no longer young in the terms of my union, I guess when it seems prudent I'm due for a medical check-up. Ten years ago Oscar was still in utero and I was a young and promising Methodologist, more I'm more established and shifting to be a manager and Oscar's going to be a teenager before long. I'm more readily out as bi and polyamorous and organizing workplace things for Pubic Service Pride (which wasn't really a thing in the Federal Public Service ten years ago). I'm trying to be a bit more conscious of taking care of my body — choosier about food and letting there be leftovers, morning walks, an actual ergonomic chair in my basement lair. I feel like negotiation is a theme of the last little while: bargaining, working out pandemic safety measures in our bubble, trying to line up a working like that's as good as possible. Stabilizing the wobbly bits of my life, too.

Maybe I'll have a bigger party for 41 or 42, but I liked being celebrated yesterday. It's a nice round number, but it feels like a kind of transitional time for me.