Dutch Lock Down Day Nine

I’m gonna lose count eventually but today is not that day!

#LIES

I TOTALLY had to pull up the last post to see what today’s title is cause that’s where we are now. I’m only surprised it took nine days and not, say, three.

Narrator: it totally just took three days.

#FocusLeander

Today I did only two things.

1. I went grocery shopping.
2. I finished a jungle gym swing set thing.
3. I managed expectations at work.

Nothing else matters.

The local grocery store has a hand washing station set up outside the front doors. Which you are required to use before entering the store.

Which I did not use because I got there so early and the store employees weren’t actually ready to welcome people into the store.

AND / OR

I didn’t have to use because the one store employee who saw me took one look at my mask and gloves and mohawk hat and didn’t want none.

They were also only taking payment by debit card, there were massive plexiglass screens between the cashiers and the customers and if you used a scanner to pre-scan your groceries, instead of the cashier taking it and scanning it into the register, you did that yourself.

Everything was very… compartmentalized.

In thinking back over the trip I just realized that I totally bought fresh donuts and croissants.

Which are sitting in our garage decontaminating with all the other food.

Which will be shit tomorrow.

#FuckYouCorona

This is like when you give up chocolate for Lent except you eat chocolate all the time before Lent and now you’re just supposed to stop doing that habit that is so ingrained in your soul that you totally grab a chocolate cup cake and eat it with lunch and even your roommate, who KNOWS you’ve given up chocolate for Lent and totally said she’d help you resist the temptation, totally watched you eat it as if it was a Tuesday, which it totally was. You realize an HOUR AFTER LUNCH that you ate that chocolate cupcake for with lunch #DAMNIT

That’s what it’s like now.

We’re in the midst of this giant pandemic where there are all these new rules except we’re totally used to hugging our best friend and going out to the movies and splitting dessert after dinner and high fives and handshakes and three kisses and buying fresh pastries at the grocery store to eat on the walk home and just fucking hanging out but NOPE.

So in the midst of all this compartmentalization and loneliness and armageddon face mask (left over from DevConf.CZ and FOSDEM, not bought recently) and rubber gloves and oddities, I did a thing.

Not all today, but today I finished the thing.

Let’s review, shall we?

I build a thing that looked decidedly like a trebuchet or the beginnings of the most epic robots from Boston Dynamics but, no, it was only Step ONE.

And then I built another thing that looked decidedly more like a jungle gym swing set thing.

Then then I finished a thing.

Mostly.

The slide isn’t actually attached in these pictures, but I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch and by the time I ate lunch and finished the slide, that the sun would be far enough over the garage that all this would’ve been shadows, so I propped up the slide, snapped the pics, then ripped it off so a five year old wouldn’t sneak out while I was eating and fall to his D00M.

This contraption, which is disappointingly NOT a robot NOR a trebuchet, is meant for three to ten year old CHILDREN and totally not for ADULTS but I couldn’t resist TESTING out both swings, the trapeze, the ladder AND the slide.

Girl Twin loves it so much that she HOWLED when it was time to STOP.

And after dinner, she ran over to the window to gaze at it.

Twice.

And then the last thing is something that I completely forgot to do until now and the only reason I remembered is that someone within the RDO Project community asked me to write up a few tips and tricks on working remotely and, in doing so, I realized I hadn’t sat down with my boss to manage expectations, set goals, and shift priorities #CauseOfThePandemic

Sometimes you’re on top of things and mindful and juggling all the things and sometimes you’re in the middle of a pandemic making the best of things.

And you?