2024 - Year of Change

It has been a long time since I signed in here and updated anything. After such a full pull for the most of the pandemic real life came flooding back in and swamped my momentum. I thought it might be nice for anyone actually following this to know what I’ve been up to. I’ll do a very high view of my year to date.
In January I wasn’t feeling very well. I didn’t know what the deal was. I could feel my lungs, I was having heartburn randomly when I felt I shouldn’t. After years of my father harping me about dying of a heart attack at forty years of age I was terrified that I was about to kick off. Admittedly my lifestyle had taken a turn for the worse. Specifically my diet and sedintary habits. I went to visit a doctor for the first time in twenty years for an actual check-up. He did blood work and I had to go in to review the results, generally a red flag. I got some startling news, I had two health issues to tackle. And I did just that, following all the instruction I was given and then some. I made some very significant changes to my diet and to my activity level and it started to yield results. I’m coming at you nearly seven months later today and I’ll share that I’ve lost a large amount of weight so far. Closing in on 100 pounds lighter. People ask me if I feel better. I haven’t taken the time to register if I do or not. I don’t think I realized how bad things have been for the last 10-12 years. Anyways, that was a massive change.

I thought it would be good to keep that change moving. So I moved. I’ve been working on buying out all my aunts and uncles from our family farm for several years now and was able to complete that transaction. That required me to sell my home in the south and move back to the North. It was a very stressful thing. A transaction of that type is complex at the best of times but mix in family and then do it in a tight timeline and it gets wild. Once the deal closed I brought a bed to my new house at the farm and helped put the crop in. I went back south afterwards (had to go to a meeting, more on that in a minute) and put my house on the market. I sold it in four days for nearly asking and no conditions. Then I fought to get the closing date moved up to avoid paying more interest to the bank and got that to work for all parties. Second half of April through June was a pretty stressful period.

With a closing date in place I had to hustle up and pack all my stuff and prepare to move. The Chef played a big role in the move itself by volunteering to drive the U-Haul up. I could go into more detail around that but just wanted to give him a shout-out at this point. True friend right there.

I alluded to needing to go to a meeting, it was actually in St Louis. And it was to find out what my job was to become. Because what is a year of change without a professional change too. Our company is going through some significant changes that I won’t delve into but I can say that I got to keep my job though it’s now called something else. I went down there to meet my new team(s) and figure out how we’ll work together to deliver the business.

Those are the broad strokes, maybe I’ll take a stab at filling in some detail on some of the smaller items and perhaps on the big events too but for tonight I’ll call it there. I forgot how long this takes. Catch ya next round.

Enjoyable Reprieve

If you look down a post you’ll see that it’s been some time since I last illuminated the internet with my prowess. I’ve been doing the odd video on the YouTube but it’s been a long spell since I moved off of this. Things are well, life has returned to whatever normal was before the masks and the staying indoors. Things started reverting late in 2021 and then full-on about mid-way through 2022 and it’s been full speed ahead in 2023.

I actually don’t have a lot to share at this point, maybe I’ll get back to this but not likely to the daily level I was doing. That was a lot and with life being much busier now, it will be difficult. I’ve been getting some weird and random comments the past week so either some kind of hackers have discovered my page or strangers came out of the woodwork. Either way, I find it alarming. Though it did prompt me to emerge from my hiatus to spew these few sparse lines.

I’ll end this foray but wishing you and yours well.

Adventure

Got my knife, not as expected in some ways, better in others. Guy buying homeless man food. Beautiful girl selling games. Reflecting during drive and rocking tunes. Looked at the lake.

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. The preceding were my notes for the day. I’ll elaborate some. I went to Walmart to pickup the knife I’d ordered with my Dyson, not sure which day the vacuum arrived but I probably gushed about it enough already. It was only one knife though the picture showed two but it’s pretty sweet. I wear it daily now, here in the future. When I was getting my McBreakfast I saw a man stop and give a meal to the homeless man who hangs around the drive thru. I was pretty touched by that, seemed like a very human thing to do. From there I drove towards Lake Erie. I was going to buy some Christmas gifts on behalf of Mother for STL Sister. When I arrived an hour later I was shocked by how attractive the girl selling them was, it was a sign of me being isolated from the world for so long. I’m not embarrased to say it. It was the first time in a long time that I went on a relaxing drive. I decided to go the last ten minutes and look at the lake. It was cold, windy and unpleasant but I stood on the shore and took it in for awhile, just reflecting and trying to be in the moment or something. I recall enjoying the experience. I returned home and had a nice Saturday.

This post was the last draft I had. Since April 17, 2020 I’ve posted every single day. Usually that would entail taking a photo in the morning and then starting a draft with some bullets and fleshing things out in the evening or more and more a day or two later when I’d put up a bunch. When things got busy I might have done five or six at a time. Writing them and then posting them. Once I got a few weeks behind I knew I wasn’t going to catch up and stopped drafting. I still took photos for weeks after but won’t bother trying to post them now. My sense of duty to post everyday waned and my MSF usage jolted up. I enjoyed my time putting up daily Musings and for awhile I had a bit of a following. I was getting over a hundred unique visitors to the site and had over four daily visitors. Not much but very different than the usual zero. I’m glad I created this record and I often will go back and scroll through to revisit my experiences and learnings. I’ve tried a few recipes again because of that. I start posting again at some point but I’m not sure it will be as frequent and regular this incredible run. I hope you go back (maybe go quick over the preceding three weeks or so) and check it out. There is some interesting stuff, some raw, personal reflection, and fun photos for you to review. I’m not planning to take the site down so you can take your time and consume it all. Until later, enjoy!

Family Feast

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

I pushed to get this one up. I kept taking photos and trying to have updates but this was the last one I was really hanging on for, to get the Family Feast because I know my Mother and sister would want to see it. Even though they’re all on STL Sister’s Meta account. Facebook, never heard of it. I did a minimal job of labeling the photos too. I’m sure I did other things in the day but this is all you’ll see of it.

STL Sister

Parents

Sudbury Sister

The Tugboat

Free Thursday

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

I had some free time apparently. Not from work, but from endless meetings. It’s been several weeks of day long meetings, a grind. Here are my three meals for the day. Those homemade burgers were thick and juicy. I used the burger batter I’d got for the previous Christmas.

Island in the Waste

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

The island isn’t just for the Hawaiian pizza, it’s a blip in a drudgery week on this day. D&D day. Something to look forward to every week, really breaks things up and gives a respite to all the terrible parts of the working world. A time to relax with your pals and create an adventure. Those sausage rounds are the trashy Walmart ones but I miss them, there are none in the future. Not even the trashy ones.

Pressure Tuesday

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here and this time there isn’t even a photo. Sorry folks, keep scrolling. I worked and worked some more. I was going until seven in the evening this week.

Quick Monday

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

The snow did arrive, and in greater numbers. You can see I’m falling off my routines. I’d stopped posting regularly and now the meal planning is disintegrating now. I didn’t even see it happening, see MSF slowly taking over my life. Also, I should point out that I don’t think the day was shorter, it just seemed to whiz by. I think I was busy or something. Probably grinding away at making presentations for every crop and every brand. A challenging part of my year.

Sunday Business

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

Big job was to get groceries. Eggs were tight and I ended up with brown eggs. This looks like a massive haul. I recall buying that pot and this was the day I hustled around to repot a number of plants due to that purchase. I managed to get them done just before the snow started and never really stopped, winter arrived this day. I also tried these cookies for the first time. They are amazing, huge improvement over the original in my opinion. I’ve also purchased them every shop since.

Saturday Mischief

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

The Chef was out of town so I broke into his house and left him a welcome back spread. Mainly I gave him a bottle of wine and a shirt for his belated birthday. I’m also lending him some RainX treatment. I know that he has a cornhole board and I don’t so I’m donating my bean bags I got for free to him. Fun little surprise for him to find upon his return. Not sure what happened the rest of the day but that was most of the morning to drive over there and back. Looks like I fed myself a terrible dinner made up of garbage nuggies and remains of last night’s dinner.

Friday the 12th

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos.

Super original title on this post. These were not the cheesy tots and it was a remarkable difference, and not in the good way. The cheesy tots are so, so much better. That was a heavy lunch that took me down a full peg. I followed it up with a better effort at dinner.

Remembrance Day

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. This is around the time we met a cloaker in D&D and my egg on the right looked like something in that family. And if you’re wondering, yes, I paused my long meeting that took the whole day for a few minutes at 11am to observe a few moments of silence. I didn’t listen to any bagpipes this year but I couldn’t not take a time to remember those who sacrificed their lives for us to be free. I was pooped by the end of the day so I ordered in some salad from Pizza Pizza, guess I hadn’t had my nasty and unfortunate run in with them yet.

Hump Day

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. Those chicken balls were dry and horrible. I should have thrown them out but I’m inherently cheap! The chicken on the pizza was electric, strong move.

A Tuesday

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. Looks like breakfast for breakfast and for dinner. I was on a video call the rest of the day, in a recliner.

Marathon Monday

Normally I’d be flying to STL or already there today. It’s the first day of the early RM NA Corn meeting in our company. This is the time of year that we evaluate all the results from multiple years of testing and decide what products have commercial merit or not. Typically it takes most of the week and is a long and stressful slog. This year will apparently be no different. I was up early and knocked out my MSF chores while preparing for the day. Integrating it is the only way I can manage, I can’t do them as a separate block of time, that’s not feasible. So I battled other heroes over cereal today. Yes, breakfast was truncated so that I could get a good start on the day. I ate and washed up so that I could be at my desk by half seven. I had a lot of email from over the weekend that I refused to address until I got back to work. It is critical to set boundaries and stick to them or work will crawl all over your life. That is the corporate way, to maximize everything. Companies only care enough to keep you productive. Don’t be fooled, Human Resources is a department designed to manage the corporation’s humans, not to help you. But I’ll curtail any potential ranting, I’ve never had anything but good experiences with those folks personally but it’s in human nature to revolt to control. Work started with an hour to wrap the weekend and prepare for the onslaught. First meeting flowed into the second and then into the third that went until after six. There was a lunch break and I warmed up my gnocchi leftovers and inhaled them while on the phone in about fifteen minutes and got back into it. Here is how I did last week for my meal board, better than I suspected on Tuesday.

At quarter last six the meeting ended for the day. It was a different format this year and a little less structured than I prefer. Or maybe I’m longing for the past. When it wrapped we had an hour to live life before the evening meeting with my Canada colleagues. I decided to knock back a bigger meal of a Knorr Chicken Sidekick, actually a pair of them. It was a good recharge but I still had a worn down feeling and slight headache.

I ended up having to drive the data tools for the evening. The meeting had some lovely discussion and probably took two hours longer than required because of one individual wanting to take every product. There always seems to be a wart or two on the best products and eventually we got to a list with acceptable trade-offs. It’s a fun game but can be stressful. Eventually we wrapped up at half eleven. I hustled to do my French lesson and my MSF again, I was actually able to do the chores for the next day by the time I wrapped up. I slipped into the sweet embrace of sleep shortly after.

Great Rest Day

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. I remember enjoying these nuclear Cheetos macaroni. The gnocci was good but the sauce wasn’t right for the application. I also have a photo of my grandma’s old dog. I took her in when my grandma had to be put in a home. Eventually she was taken in by my aunt and uncle. She’s no longer with us.

Sat Around Day

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. This is a weak post, just the one photo of me being perfect for October 2021. That marked two full years of perfection.

TGiFreya’s Day

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. Those rolls look divine, I’d eat those again right now. And look at me go with the titles.

Long Thor’s Day

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. I have vague memories of this day too. We went way extra into the evening to try and get things done. Looks like the food was decent.

Wondrous Wednesday

I’m posting this six months after the fact. I don’t remember much of what happened back here but enjoy the photos. I vaguely remember this, it was when we had our soybean meetings. I recall someone playing a gag on a colleague with that fake mug shot. We had a big laugh on that one. You can see I went hard on the MSF during dinner. I’m sure there was D&D after, probably a great topper to a big day!