HOLIDAYS

Today was my last day of work for the year before I go on the holiday break. I will return to work on January 13 as I’ve taken some extra time on the back end of the break. My employer, from the very top of the executive level, down to the middle-managers have encouraged everyone to take extra time off if they desire so. I have lots of vacation time in the bank, so I decided to take the time off.

I am looking forward to resting and relaxing over the next few weeks.

ONE

My niece is officially one year old today and we celebrated her birthday on the weekend. Because of the pandemic, I’ve only started seeing in person for only half her life, at the six month mark. She is a very cute baby and well on her way to becoming a precocious toddler. Her most recent development is crawling extremely fast. She can also pull herself up on furniture, especially baby gates. I think walking might come next but she’s still unsure of that herself.

Sometimes she’ll let me hold her for up to five minutes and sometimes she’ll wait about sixty seconds before reaching out for my sister. I’m going to see her more often because before long, she’ll be too big to hold and I don’t want to miss out on that.

POO

I ran out of toilet paper this morning. I just forgot to get some yesterday when I was out and about. This led to a situation in the early afternoon where I could feel a poop coming on. It wasn’t a dire feeling of needing to poop immediately though. I also had to get some Christmas cards at a drug store, where just incidentally, they also sell toilet paper. Could I delay the poop long enough to drive to the drug store, shop for the cards, get the toilet paper, and then drive back home?

The urgency to poo can change in a second and the urgency rarely, if ever, decreases. It almost always increases. So, I made the decision to poop at home before going to the store. I wasn’t going to go without wiping though, so I used the next best thing to toilet paper, which in my opinion is tissue paper (or Kleenex in some parts of the world). There’s some debate if that stuff is flushable but I took a risk and flushed it.

I was able to get to the store without having to worry about a poop. I got my Christmas cards and a dozen rolls of toilet paper. Thanks for reading.

PAINTING UPDATE

I was hoping to get my apartment painted before the holidays started but it’s been pushed to the new year. Everything will start on January 3rd and it will take three days. I can wait that long. It also means I move all my crap away from the walls during the holidays and not worry about taking time off to do that.

LOW

I started playing the new Battlefield game tonight and it automatically determined my computer was capable of playing it on the recommended graphical setting of “low”. That’s a bit of a bummer. It’s mostly my old-ass video card that’s dragging my experience down. It’s four years old now. I’d love to replace it but as you may know, along with everything else in the world, new video cards are difficult to come by now if you don’t want to spend 2-3x MSRP.

I guess I will play with blocky graphics until things get better.

IS IT THE HOLIDAYS YET?

This is the last full week of work before the holiday break begins. Many of my coworkers are already off for the holidays. Meetings have been cancelled and will resume in the new year. I’m just trying to do enough work so that I can get to the holidays without anyone bugging me.

A second holiday season while living in a global pandemic. I think a lot of people are just trying to get to the holidays to get some physical and mental rest.

WELLIES

I made mini beef wellingtons tonight for dinner. As part of the holidays, my employer gave me a meal kit and a Zoom recording of a chef making said wellingtons. It was convenient because all the ingredients were included and I didn’t need to go out and getting anything.

They weren’t perfect looking but it tasted pretty good. If I were to make them again, I am sure I’d improve upon it. The pastry was a bit too moist because I didn’t cook enough of the water out of the mushrooms and spinach that was inside. I also think I took it out of oven about five minutes too soon.

Now that I’ve done it once, I can probably make them 25% faster. It took me about an hour to make. Next time indeed!

NEW CHAIR

I have been using the same desk/office chair for probably about ten years now. This is the chair I’ve spent countless hours in while gaming on my PC, watching pornography YouTube, and now with the pandemic, going on almost two years of work from home. It’s not the most comfy chair but my lack of back problems has most likely led to me not changing chairs until now.

Many people got better desk chairs once work from home became a thing but it took me until now to finally upgrade to a better chair. At first, I thought I was maybe going to get a “gaming” chair but it didn’t take long to realize those things are ultimately are not my style. I then realized I get a discount through work for a few companies that sell chairs and desks. At work, we have Herman Miller chairs but even with a discount, those chairs are more than I’m willing to pay.

I finally settled on an ErgoChair from Autonomous. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that a $2,000 chair might have but it’s undoubtedly an upgrade from the $90 chair that I think was purchased from Staples or Office Depot. The padding in the seat of my old chair had flattened so much, I was basically sitting on a hard surface. My new chair has a thick padded seat that offers support. My old chair also had no lumbar support because the back of chair didn’t even go all the way down. I now had lumbar support with the new chair.

Overall, this new chair will promote better posture for me and ensure I won’t get back problems as I work and game.