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  • Planning to do nothing

    Today marks four months until my sabbatical starts and 25 days until I hit the qualifying point for that “perk” – 5 years at Automattic. I got the final date in March and got those dates locked down using our home built scheduling tool (Your team can use this same thing – https://happy.tools – we…

  • On Writing

    James Whatley posted this morning and it’s a good one. There’s so much to unpack in it from my perspective, I think I’ll leave it there for now. I know I’m one of the lucky ones. Throughout all this I’ve kept my job, the roof over my head, and – frankly – my life. On…

  • Spring colours

    Today is definitely the first time I have felt springtime year. Walking out on the dog walk just now, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was late afternoon. And in 15 minutes, it’s turn a shade darker. The colours of Balgay Cemetery hit me as Chew-dog and I walked through. This morning on the way…

  • One Month

    Believe it or not, I have a “fitness” blog. The last month has got me back into it. Closed all three Fitness rings on my Apple Watch.

  • 75317 The Child

    New BrickHeadz for my small LEGO collection. Set 75317 The Mandalorian & the Child Built and photographed on the dining table and will live in the spare room/my office.

  • Distinguished HE Award

    Almost every quarter in work, we have nominations for the Distinguished HE Award. This is a virtual award from peer voting for Happiness Engineers who have made an impact over the past quarter. The past quarter, I was a recipient of that, so now I have a cool image to share: I’ve long said I…

  • AFK Day Eleven

    Fell behind didn’t I? But it’s been a good mix or busy and idle. Today I decided to use the Activity feature on my Apple Watch to record my gardening as “Other”. Paused a few times but this is what a few hours or mainly shovelling chuckies from part of the garden looks like: It…

  • AFK Days Two and Three

    The back garden has Astro turf. I’ve mentioned it before but the past year it got bad. It is a constant effort to keep it clean/clear and this snowballs to the rest of the garden. We’ve decided to use this time to repaint with the idea that fresh paint will help until we can tackle…

  • AFK Day One

    Decided to start a sort of diary so I can look back on what happened over these two weeks. I’m AFK for the next two weeks. Originally it was the Easter Holidays but y’know, a pandemic happened. There is a trend now that people are doing more outdoor things and being more active, which is…

  • Longest relationship I’ve ever had

    Still remarkable that I work with this lot. Maybe I should use this as an excuse to “Keep up that good blogging”