I haven't done any serious running in a long time. But I'm getting back into it.
I went for a 45 minute interval run at the gym the other day. It wasn't very fast, but you gotta start somewhere. I'm glad I did. Afterward I felt good. Best part was I figured out that my gym had a treadmill that does intervals pretty well. It's gonna work out well for me.
I've written before about my lifelong love of Scrabble, and how my aunt taught me to play when I was very young. She soundly trounced me for literally thousands of games over the course of about 15 years, before I got skilled enough to beat her.
It's a tradition I've continued, first with my own stepson, T., and now with my newest student, our girl Kate's little boy, Captain-Man. Katiebug and the good captain were down for a visit this weekend.
High on the Captain's agenda was us playing Scrabble Junior, which his mom was good enough to get for him.
There's our first game, in progress. (I'm the one with the bigger, hairier legs.)
I was pleasant surprised by just how much Cap already knows. He's very clear on his consonants versus vowels, and he was able to read the words on the board without much help on my part. Once I showed him the tactical advantage to looking for words he could complete, especially words of his own color (which give two points in Scrabble Junior), he was on the case.
And he won.
OK, I'll admit, I consciously avoided plays where I could have taken points from him. I didn't outright throw the game, but I was very generous. (C'mon, he's 5. What am I, a monster?)
He loved it. Later in the weekend, we played a four person game with Missy, and his mom. He came in third that time, and lost gracefully, which also pleased me. (And just for the record, I came in second, so put a sock in it. Kate won. She was great.)
I strongly suspect that our playing this game each visit, and ultimately graduating to the blank board version of it (on the other side of the board) is in our future, and that it won't even be long. His eyes lit up when we played in a way I recognize.
I am looking forward to his becoming a formidable player.
My job is pretty flexible about time. I don't have an exact time to be there first thing, and I can leave early if I want, as long as I make up the time later in the pay period. That's an enormous benefit.
Some days I'm filled with fire, and leave my house at what my brother calls "oh-dark-early" in the morning, so I can dig right in.
Other days I leave early because my brain says, "that's it, Mako, we're done here." Friday was like that. I just got sort of brain-full, and needed to come home.
I'm really grateful I get to do stuff like that.
So, this one is going to be rather NSFW.... just a warning.
On Tuesday I had a great day at work, recovering from a glitch I had made/caused myself. I not only redid my work, but improved upon it, quite a bit. Things were going swimmingly, right until the end of the day when I went to check in my stuff, and wound up blowing something up.
I wasn't quite sure how to fix it, so I left for the day, hoping to get assistance with the issue the next morning. When I got in, my coworker had already fixed it altogether, even going so far as to include data I needed as he fixed it.
What a good guy!
So I spent all of yesterday moving even further ahead on my project. Right up until the end of the day, when I realized I needed more/different requirements to be able to continue at all, and that I was going to need to meet with a different coworker to hash it out.
But that's okay. Because this work is a team effort. It's not all about me. I can, and do lean on my fellow coworkers to get things done. I trust them.
It feels good.
