🍵 I have been feeling (more) introverted this winter. I’ve been enjoying quiet activities, such as reading, walking, yoga, meditation, some private journaling. That means I haven’t shared too much online as well. It’s probably the winter vibes when I usually get more introspective, and I search for extreme coziness.
🌼 Spring is getting closer and closer (not quite there yet, because I live in winter land, and winter might last up to April/May) but I hear some birds chirping here and there, while temperatures start getting above zero during the day (here and there).
📝 Even though I listed “Journaling” above, I’m not journaling as much as I wanted. I had this goal to do longer private journaling sessions once a week for a more in-depth brain dump. But I didn’t. It just didn’t work out for me. On the weekends I’ve been staying away from my computer as much as possible. I just wanted a break. And journaling by hand never appealed to me. I prefer typing.
💼 At work I’m still working on a temporary cubicle (while office renovations are ongoing), and I feel like the noisy environment is very distracting to me. Some days I handle it well, and I can put on my headphones with some music and be focused. Some days it feels cluttered and messy. The cubicles walls are super short, so I can see my neighbors monitor screens and vice versa. I find that very distracting. There are still 1-2 more months of renovations, and I’m doing the best I can to manage this work situation.
🖥️ My left cubicle neighbor always has a small window with YouTube videos playing while she works. And it’s fine, I mean, she uses it as background noise I guess, but I always wonder how she can get anything done. Sometimes I feel that little screen bothers me. There is no rational reason for it to bother me: she uses headphones, so it’s quiet, it’s small (she keeps it in a small window between her 2 monitors) but when I look left to glance at the window on the far end of the room, I see that screen in the vicinity of my field of vision and I get overwhelmed/distracted by proxy. It’s weird, it shouldn’t affect me at all, but I can’t help it some days.
⛸️ Me and my partner went ice skating on an outdoor trail! It’s a place called River Oak Skating Trails. I was excited to try it out, but I wasn't ready for the ups and downs and twists and turns. The trail is not flat (like the Rideau Canal) and I’ve never ice skated uphill or downhill. It’s not super sloped but sloped enough to make me completely lose control before a bend to the left, where I tried to snowplow-style slow down and fell spectacularly. I bumped my head on the ice, and I think I passed out for a couple of seconds, because I remember waking up sideways with my partner talking to me and I wondered where I was. Anyway, I got a tender spot at the back of my head for a couple of days, and a bruised right hand palm, but nothing else. It hurt my pride most of all.
⛸️ There is only one more ice-skating class left in this season for me. I made a lot of progress! I can do forward crossovers both ways and I got better at using the blades for tight turns and stops (as long as they are not in a sloped terrain – see above).
🧩 We finished the “Tiamat Queen of Dragons” puzzle! 🥳
📖 I was feeling a bit tired on the weekends, so I didn’t do much expect for reading (and the usual regular house chores, etc). I didn’t even want to watch anything because screens were causing me headaches most of the time. No video games either. I’m reading Ali Hazelwood’s “Deep End” romance because I just need a comfort read right now.
🧘♀️ I got a peg board for my yoga space to organize some of the accessories I use daily.
📫 I let my Inbox become messy, I skipped several weekly reviews, and that only made me feel more tired and scattered. But this week I managed to process my digital inboxes, update my work notes, revise my projects and next actions and get some clarity.
✅ One of the things I realized about my projects and next actions lists in Nirvana is that I have a bunch of stale items in there. I plan to do a much more in-depth review of my system in the coming days. Delete old stuff, move things to someday-maybe, delete items I no longer want to act on, clean up my someday-maybe lists.
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Post 75/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
❄️ We got lots of snow this week. There were two snowstorms of 30-40 cm each. And it was a long weekend, so it was nice to just cozy up inside and read a book. We thought about going for a hike at the trail, but it was snowing most of the time and when the snow stopped it was awfully windy (and cold!).
🧩 We did some more progress on the Tiamat Dragon puzzle. It’s time to reclassify the remaining pieces by color and shape. I think we’ve done most of the colorful shapes and patterns, and now it’s going to be more uniform-colored areas left.
🛋️We installed some shelves on the wall behind our sofa. We have a plan to add some shelves to other side of the room as well, by the dining table.
📖 I am really enjoying “Paladin’s Strength” by T. Kingfisher. I love the writing style, the characters, and the sense of humor on this book.
🎧I listened to one episode of this podcast called “D&D Legends and Lore”. I learned a bit about the Legend of Zariel. I liked the podcast quality; it’s storytelling with cool sound effects and background music. Apparently there is a YouTube channel as well, but I’ve only listened to the podcast so far.
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Post 73/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
⛸️ This weekend was great to go skating at the Canal again. Perfect -4C with very good ice. I’m still impressed with my pair of skates that are comfortable and cozy. This time we skated around 10km, and I rewarded myself with a classic Beaver Tail and hot chocolate.
🧩 We’ve made some progress on our Tiamat dragon puzzle. Slow but steady progress.
🤖 We got our first robot vacuum for our house. I’ve never had one before and it does a decent job of maintenance cleaning. The main reason I got one is that every time I vacuum with my old standard one, my low back hurts. So, I want to minimize the time I spend cleaning the house, and the robot helps a lot!
🎧 I wanted to find a podcast with a Dungeons and Dragon campaign in which the DM was a woman, and I found one. It’s called Spell Check. It’s not new and I’m going through the archives (it stopped being updated in 2021!). The players are all Young Adult authors, and they are fun. I am enjoying it because it’s simple and unpretentious.
🩺 I did another upperendoscopy last week to investigate my acid reflux/stomach issues. This time I finally got an appointment with a gastro specialist, so now we are waiting for biopsies results to confirm the doctor’s suspicions. This time the doctor told me to suspend my stomach medication for a week before the exam, and those were tough days, because symptoms exacerbated a little. But all is good now, back with medication.
📗 I finished a book that deep inside I wished I had abandoned it about halfway through, but I don’t regret finishing it (if that makes sense). It usually happens when the beginning of the book is great, but then it starts to drag. And because the beginning intrigued me, I want to keep on reading because maybe it will get better, right? Sometimes that is not true. But anyway, now I know. It was a series that I had on my radar for a couple of years, and now I know I don’t want to continue reading.
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Post 72/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
📖 After finishing reading “Barrayar” by Lois McMaster Bujold I went straight to the third book in the series “Warrior's Apprentice” which starts with young Miles Vorkosigan doing 17-year-old shenanigans in space. It's super fun, fast paced with the most absurd heist situations. I couldn't help but love Mile's “in control” attitude but also internally panicking about the situations he put himself into.
⛸️ I've been progressing with my ice-skating crossovers. The counterclockwise is still tricky, but the clockwise direction is getting smoother. It's also a bit easier for me to skate backwards but still challenging if I do it it for too long (at some point I get tired, and my balance just gets all off). And I was Finally skating again on the Rideau Canal Skateway!
📚 I've been thinking about the books I want to read, and I decided that this year I will focus on continuing some series that I love. I don't want to explore too much. It will a be the year of series.
🛡️ We had our first official Dungeons & Dragons campaign session! I didn't expect we would fight 3 bad guys in the first session, but we did. I had lots of fun!
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Post 70/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
I got back from Brazil feeling super tired because of the long trip. The total travel time was 24 hours, with 4 flights, 1 bus ride and lots of time waiting in airports. I started feeling my throat itch 2 days later.
So, I was sick the whole week: some type of respiratory virus that was not COVID. The worse is gone, but I'm left with a cough, and I still haven't recovered my full lung capacity. I tried to run today, and I couldn't keep it up for more than 10 minutes. So, I'm still recovering. The doctor gave me a puffer to help with clearing the lungs.
I'm also left with some headaches which I think is related to an occasional sinus congestion. It's getting better little by little.
I had lots of planning I wanted to do this week, but because I was sick, I let it all on pause. I could take some time to read, in between naps. But I also worked a bit from home once I got a little better mid-week.
I finished reading “Barrayar” by Lois McMaster Bujold and it was great! This book is unique because it's a fast-paced science fiction novel about motherhood. All kinds of motherhood: in utero, in vitro, in an artificial womb. It's part of a big series called Vorkosigan Saga, and this series is known as a feminist sci-fi ahead of its time (it started being written in the late 80's).
I finished writing about my Dungeons and Dragons character background, her appearance and decided on a name: Astrid Silverhammer (very dwarvish and righteous).
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Post 68/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
🌞 I am still in Brazil at my mom's place in my hometown. It's hot (20°C to 32°C everyday) with occasional rain. It's definitely dryer and it took me a day or so to get used to the heat. The main difference here is that everyplace seems smaller, the streets are narrower, the cars are smaller, there is more people, it feels noisier. I spend most of my time hanging out with my mom, helping her with errands, fixing little things around the house, reading, walking, relaxing.
I helped my mom create some Spotify playlists in her account.
I helped my mom organize some books, get rid of some old electronics and free up some space in the apartment.
I helped my mom solve an issue she was having with the Android Auto in her car. It was an easy fix, but she was struggling with the issue for weeks.
💪 I temporarily enrolled at my mom's gym to get some weight training done. It was the first time that I went to the gym with my mom, so that was fun!
My sister arrived last week so I'm catching up with her as well.
Me and my partner met a bunch of old friends: from childhood, from elementary school, from high school, from university. It was nice to catch up!
I also met my brother-in-law and her wife for a nice coffee with chocolate afternoon. It was a wonderful chat; I needed this time to be with them to catch up. They live in a different city, so they were in town for a couple of days.
🥳 We went to my mother-in-law 80th birthday! It was a small gathering with the typical Brazilian “churrasco” (grilled meat in a barbecue).
We had the typical “meat/chicken sfiha” (which is a triangular shaped pastry here, traditionally brought to Brazil by middle eastern immigrants). I am not sure this is the original recipe or if this is a Brazilian adaptation, but it's quite common here.
📖 I finished reading “The Way of Kings” and “Shards of Honor”! I didn't read as much this month, and that's okay. I thought I would read more during the flight to Brazil, but I was super tired.
👟 Me and my partner went for walks around Igapó lake which is the nicest place in my hometown. We had fresh coconut water from a real coconut (something that I never saw in Ottawa).
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Post 62/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
✈️ I'm getting ready for the trip to Brazil! I've got my travel checklist ready and started packing. I always travel with a carry-on and a backpack, and I just need to add some toiletries and I'm ready to go!
📖 Because of the upcoming trip I've not been doing too much reading lately. It's been hard to sit down to read for more than 15 minutes. So, I'm still reading the same books as the week before.
☕ I'm actually looking forward to all the downtime at the airports to do some reading.
✅ I had a small crisis again this week about to-do list apps, and I was tempted to change tools again. In 24 hours, I realized that what I have (Nirvana HQ) still works well for me and that any other additional feature offered by other apps is not enough to beat Nirvana's functionality for me.
📔 I got a paper planner for 2025! I want to have it as a goal/intention setting tool, with focus on wellness. I want to use it to make monthly, weekly, and daily plans. So, it's more strategic, rather than tactical. I will keep my digital calendar and to-do list as my tactic’s tools if that makes sense.
Currently reading
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson
Gentle Rogue (Malory-Anderson Families #1) by Johanna Lindsey
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Post 61/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
🏢 The office at work will undergo some needed renovations. There will be a temporary arrangement of some people working (partially) from home, some people grouped together in offices and some people on temporary cubicles. I currently have an office all to myself and I will be moved to a tiny cubicle while the renovations are ongoing. My department is not keen on working from home at all, so we will be 6 estimators working together in small cubicles for a while. The move will happen this week, and I'm not looking forward to it.
☑️ I deleted all previous GTD setups that I had on Todoist and Microsoft To Do. I didn't want to be tempted to keep going back and forth between to-do apps. If I decide to change, it will be a whole lot harder because I will have to start from scratch.
❄️ Cold has arrived around here! It seems we will get negative temperatures all day all week long now. We had a bit of snow yesterday.
💪 I went to gym 4 times this week!
⛸️ I've advanced in ice skating a bit. I can now do the clockwise forward crossovers! I mean, it takes some concentration and it's still a bit awkward but I'm doing it!
💼 This week I will start getting ready for the trip to Brazil in a week or so. I plan to bring only my carry-on and a backpack, like I did last time. Some folks want me to bring maple syrup to them, I'm not sure how I'm gonna do that yet.
🎮 I bought two RPG games that were on sale on Steam this weekend: “Pillars of Eternity – Definitive Edition” and “Pathfinder: Kingmaker”. They were on my wishlist for a while. I started Pillars of Eternity and created a character.
📗I DNF’d a romance book that had lots of buzz: “Butcher & Blackbird” by Brynne Weaver. I knew it was about serial killers, but there is so much gore and vivid descriptions of torture that I couldn't get past Chapter 3.
Currently reading
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson
Gentle Rogue (Malory-Anderson Families #1) by Johanna Lindsey
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Post 59/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
💻My work laptop was super slow and crashing a lot, especially after the company installed a zero-trust service called Zscaler on all computers. After complaining with IT, they said I was due for a laptop update anyway, because my current one was 3 years old. They issued me a new laptop, a Thinkpad with 32Gb RAM, intel i7 vPro processor latest generation with Windows 11. All I can say is that I’m not impressed. I mean, it’s not crashing anymore, but I expected it would be a faster machine looking at the specs. There is so much bloat, and everything is scanned five times in the name of cybersecurity. Very annoying.
🚗 Ours cars were all changed to winter tires, but we didn’t have any snow yet around here. It seems like the true Canadian cold is coming later this year.
🥂 Me and my partner attended the company’s Holiday Party this Friday. It’s the first year we had positive temperatures, it was +8C that night. It was weird not having to wear a full winter coat on top of my dress to get to the event.
📺 I watched this series on Nebula by Polyphonic “Hit Record: An Incomplete History of the Music Video” (it’s also available for free on YouTube). It a wonderful series of video essays, exploring the first attempts at making music videos, the rise and fall of MTV, VEVO, YouTube music and how we got to TikTok.
☑️ I had some back and forth with to-do list apps, but Nirvana is still my trusted system. I just can’t use any other app for more than a week. The issues I’m having has more to do with my habits and frequency of reviews, rather than the tool itself. Time to polish up my routines.
📚 We did a “Book Choose” meetup for our Book Club to choose the books we will read in 2025. We want to re-read the classic Neuromancer by William Gibson, get into the Vorkosigan saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (maybe we will read all the books in the series as an alt-read throughout the year), The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, among others. I’m excited!
📥 I got a new in-tray for my work office with more tiers to store my notes and reference materials. That freed up some space on my desk space.
🪑 I also got a cushion my work office chair because I’ve been having some low back pain while seated. I wanted to be a bit higher while seated and my current office chair doesn’t go any higher.
Currently reading
Children of Memory (Children of Time #3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson
Butcher & Blackbird (Ruinous Love #1) by Brynne Weaver
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Post 57/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
💼 The past 2 weeks have been super busy at work for me. During the process of closing a big job, I’ve had 2 presentations to deliver! It’s not something I usually do, but coincidentally, I was invited to present about estimating to the company’s project managers the first week of November and then to present about estimating to a group of kids that were participating in the “Kids to Work” event last week. It all went well; I was actually impressed at how well I managed my stress and anxiety!
📰 I’ve been taking a break fromnewsfeeds and even RSS feeds. I don’t feel like going through a feed and read about random topics right now. I’ve been focusing on reading my books and something else, which I’ll talk about in the next bullet point.
🐲 Dungeons and Dragons! We finally had our Session Zero this weekend! I was super excited! So, before this session, I got a physical copy of the new Players Handbook version 2024 and I read through it and made a bunch of notes. I’m creating a tough Dwarf Paladin, to be our group tanker, with Lawful Neutral alignment. I’m still deciding on a name and background. The group has a total of 6 players, and we will be somewhere in the mysterious High Forest of Faerûn. I’m thrilled!
✅ I’ve been thinking about my to-do list again. I don’t know, I am trying to understand what is bothering me about Nirvana. It’s still a work in progress, but there’s something there I need to figure out.
🎧 The power button of my 5-year-old Bose Soundsport earphones broke! I’ve been using this earphone daily, and I really like it, but the button fell out and broke just from pressing/regular usage. I read online that the rubber gets old, and it has happened with many people before. I can still power it on with a pencil or something that reaches inside for the button. But because I use it daily mainly for my yoga practice, I ordered a new SPORT True Wireless Sennheiser that was on sale. I still prefer the sound of the Bose, tho.
📺 I finished watching Season 3 of “The Legend of Vox Machina”!! It was so good, so heartbreaking and lots of high stakes. I loved it!
🌲 The weather is colder now and perfect for hiking the trails around our home (now that the bugs are gone)!
Currently reading
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive #1) by Brandon Sanderson
Again the Magic (Wallflowers #0.5) by Lisa Kleypas
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Post 55/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
