Star Wars Day Birthday Party, Workouts, Deck Rehab

May 7, 2024

Star Wars Day Birthday Party

My son had his birthday party on May 4th so we rolled that into a Star Wars themed party. We had Star Wars themed food and games and decorations. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and had a good time.

Workouts

My workouts are getting more intense. I’m now swimming 4500 meters a week and weight training for 3 hours. I’ve found a way to fold all of it into my normal day. I do all my weight training in the morning before work, usually wrapping up by 7:00 AM. I do that Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Then on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I go to the lap pool at lunchtime and do 1500 meters. I am lucky to work at home and fold this into my day. I am trying to take advantage of this in case I ever find myself working back in an office.

In the four years I’ve been working from home full time, I’ve not really done anything different than what I did when I went into the office. Part of that is because I drive my boys in school in the morning, so I still get up, get dressed and showered, and get to bed on time. I think the WFH dream is to just roll out of bed after staying up until midnight playing video games but I don’t have that option. The other huge advantage of WFH is working from anywhere in the world if you work in an a-sync environment. I’ve not been able to take advantage of this though since the boys are in school and my wife’s work is 100% on site. So, that is the first two bonus items I can’t take advantage of unfortunately. So, this is the last one I am doing, the ability to work out and not worry about coworkers complaining about body odor or giving you a side eye when you get up and do some squats every thirty minutes.

Deck Rehab

We’re busy rehabbing our deck to use as a secondary space. We rarely use our deck. For one, the back of our house faces an odd direction in the summer where you get blasted with the sun regardless of where you sit. We also had some wood rot in one of the pergola supports so I had to pull all of that down. I added some privacy screens to the lower deck that look really modern and interesting. On the top part of the deck I rebuilt the pergola using four by fours. I should be able to utilize the vinyl slats for the roof and put some shade in. This will help a lot with cooling things off. I still have the shades and hardware from the original design and I’ll see if can pull those in as well, although I know one of the shades is damaged.

Part of this rehab plays in the prior piece about my workouts. I wrote about not being able to take advantage of the many benefits of working from home. One of these is the working from anywhere. There’s those who work from pool side or from the deck looking at the ocean, I work in the basement. I am hoping the deck rehab will give me a chance to go out in the morning and work outside. I don’t like not being at my desk though to be honest. I have a perfect four monitor setup that helps my workflow. I don’t have an “email job” so I need to a lot of analysis and problem solving during the day and that requires me to lay everything out in a logical manner. Perhaps I can work outside during meetings and get a little bit of sunshine in the process.