Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

Aaaand… it’s October. How? Why? And where did 3/4 of this year go? (Don’t answer that. I know you’re all having the same questions.)

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Last week I started the 8-week Power Zone Fall Challenge with PZPack and the Peloton Streakers. It’s a cycling challenge that we are taking on as part of a team, where we ride a minimum of 3 power zone rides per week, plus an optional 30-minute “accelerator ride” that earns our team extra points. Tanja and I are always up for a good challenge – keeps you on your toes, you know? – so of course we had to join. Do you enjoy exercise challenges?

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This tweet from last week really resonated with me. I have warmed up a little bit to Instagram Stories, but Reels still stress me out and don’t get me started on YouTube videos. Most times, I prefer a photo with text over video content. This is why I still have a blog.

Can we just…not use video for everything? Please just write the information down and let me read it. Please.

— Amber Naslund (@AmberCadabra) September 30, 2021

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How did you cope with the social media outage on Monday? TBH, I was so busy at work (two back-to-back telcons that took up most of my day) that I didn’t even notice. I only knew about it because one of my Whatsapp message was in “limbo” for a while and I was wondering why it wasn’t being delivered. Goes to show you, life goes on even without Facebook and Instagram. Who knew?

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I am looking forward to a long weekend. I had a “progress report” presentation this week for one of my projects and ended up working some long hours in the last couple of weeks to get the slides together. And while that part was fun, it was also a bit stressful because I am a bit of a perfectionist and want to deliver something good. But I am happy to report that the presentation went well, so now I am really looking forward to relax and recuperate this weekend and not think about the project for a little while. Do you have the day off on Monday, too? Any plans?

Enjoy your weekend!

Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

Today is my first day of ‘staycation’. Well, actually my first official day is on Monday, but since I usually have Fridays off, my staycation starts today and will be a full 10 days. I am so stoked. I haven’t taken any time off this year so far (except for my birthday back in March) and even if I was telling myself that I was fine, I think I’ve been kinda overdue for a break.

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Do you have “peak events” where you live? Electricity is most expensive during the peak hours for Time-of-Day rates Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.  Our electricty provider schedules these – usually two-hour –  time windows, called peak events, when hot summer weather causes people to use more energy than normal, and asks everyone to conserve as much energy as possible during the time. It keeps the costs for everyone low and makes sure that the grid is not overwhelmed. They make it kind of fun and send you updates afterwards on how you did. If you know me, you know I like a good challenge. Last time (a few weeks ago), we were the 4th most effecient home in our area :) There’s another peak event later today (5-7 pm).

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I had an annual physical check up last week with complete blood work. I am happy to report that all my tests came back normal (yay!). I just wish the doctor hadn’t just dismissed my inquiry about my now almost 2-year on-and-off journey with stomachache/heartburn/bloating/chest tightness as “GERD” and thrown a PPI prescription at me. I am currently in a phase of remission, of course, and didn’t have any symptoms, so I rejected that. If anything, I am convinced that I am dealing with low stomach acid, but when I inquired about a stomach acid test (and there are more sophisticated ones than the baking soda test which I have done repeatedly at home), he didn’t know about it (or hydrochochlorid acid (HCL) supplements, for that matter, which I have also experimented with) and insisted that if PPIs had helped before, I should just do another round of PPI treatment. Ugh, this is so frustrating. Why do doctors just throw prescription medication at you instead of getting to the bottom of your symptoms? I am willing to make lifestyle adjustments, if I have to (although most of the things that are recommended for GERD, I am already doing!), but don’t just dismiss my concerns.

So, I guess I am relieved that nothing else is going on that would have shown up in my blood work.

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I am really, really upset about this stupid recall election of our governor Gavin Newsom here in California and if you are eligible to vote in my state, I urge you to do so. You can dislike Newsom and still vote NO on the recall, because remember, this is not about our governor as a person, but about policies. For the record though, I think Newsom did a phenomenal job under difficult and unprecedented circumstances and this recall effort is a waste of money, IMHO.

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My avocado pit, which I put in water 3.5 months ago, had finally – after much patience – grown a root and was ready to be transfered to a flower pot and has now started to grow the actual plant stem and I am so stoked. Have you ever tried to grow an avocado plant from seed?

Happy weekend!

Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

What’s your favorite summer fruit? I am usually all about berries, I love apples any time of the year, but right now I am slightly obsessed with peaches. I always forget how wonderfully sweet and juicy they are. I’ll have to pick some up on my grocery run today.

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There was an M6.0 earthquake in the Antelope Valley Fault Zone on the east side of the Sierra Nevada yesterday afternoon. We could feel it all the way over here in Sacramento, 100 miles to the west. I was startled when I felt my chair shaking a little bit. First, I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, but when I looked up, I saw that our hanging planter by the window and the hanging baskets in the kitchen had started to sway back and forth. Jon was out in the front yard and said he didn’t feel it (but he was probably distracted). As you can see on the shake map, the seismic waves were pretty mild down here, but it looks like the people near the epicenter got a pretty good shake.

Sacramento and the Central Valley don’t really have active faults. The major faults systems in California are along the coast (the best-known faults are of course the San Andreas and Hayward faults) and in the Sierras. While there are many earthquakes in California every day, they’re hardly ever felt – even locally – because they’re relatively small in magnitude. We usually only feel any shaking in Sacramento when the earthquake is a larger event, like the one yesterday. 

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I think I have a bit of summer blues. Some of my friends have announced their summer travel plans, many other Germans I know have traveled or will soon travel to Germany to see family. I won’t be one of them.

This is the first week of summer break in Germany, and originally we had hoped that my family would have been able to come and visit this summer after their visit last year had to be postponed. Unfortunately, because of where we’re at with the pandemic, we had to postpone their visit again this year, as they’re still not allowed to enter the United States under the Covid-19 travel ban. As disappointed as we all are, I do believe that it’s not a good time to travel yet.  So, we’re just going to hang in there and make the best of this summer. Hit me with your best staycation tips, ha!

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This was a short week for me (because Monday was a holiday and today is my regular day off, luckily), but I feel like I have worked a full week and then some. I’ve been reviewing comments on a report with a colleague and instead of doing it separately and then getting together to discuss them, we tend to work more efficiently when we just sit down and work through them together.
However, in the time of Covid and WFH, that means we’ve been working on the report over Teams for hours on end last week and this week. Like I said, very productive, but tiring AF.  I am ready to sleep for the next three days.

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Oh, and on a different note, have I mentioned that it’s supposed to hit 111F/44C again this weekend in the Central Valley? The joy! [\sarcasm]

Stay cool, kids, if you’re anywhere on the West Coast (except for San Francisco. They never seem to get the heat memo!). Otherwise, enjoy your weekend!

Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

Did you hear that crazy story this week where David Keene, a former NRA president and current board member, and John Lott, an author and gun rights activist, were invited to give remarks to a fake high school graduating class? Unbeknownst to them, the two men gave their speeches to thousands of empty chairs set up to represent the estimated 3,044 kids who should have graduated high school this year and instead were killed by gun violence. Change the Ref, an organization founded by Manuel and Patricia Oliver, whose son Joaquin was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, organized the stunt and called it “The Lost Class” of students. Genius.

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Are you watching the European Football Championship (UEFA Euro 2020)? It should have been held last year but was postponed because of Covid. I almost forgot that it started on June, 11 but I have been watching the (German) live games as much as the time difference has allowed, and I am thrilled that they have made it to the knock-out stage (albeit with a bit of a struggle). Hopefully, they’ll go forward with a bit of a more compelling performance.

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Here’s your PSA of the day: trying to guilt-trip someone into spending time with you never works. It usually has the opposite effect. Just sayin’. 

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It is peculiar to me that my FSA (Flexible Spending Account) will reimburse expenses for OTC drugs, but not natural supplements (you need a doctor’s note for that) when they’re supposed to help with the same symptoms. 

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One of the few perks working for the government is that I get “in-lieu-of”-holidays. When a holiday falls on a weekend, I get the preceding or the following day off. If a holiday falls on a Saturday, but Friday is my regular day off (I work a 4/10 schedule, as you might recall), I get the preceding Thursday off. It’s a pretty neat arrangement if you ask me, and I am not mad about it. 

 

TGIF! Have a great weekend!

Five Things Friday: just five things I’m thinking about or things that made my week, or things that I otherwise feel like sharing.

My parents got their second vaccine shots this week and it gives me such relief to know that all my family members – well, except for the kids – are now protected. I am not sure yet when we’ll decide to travel and finally see them, but the possibility is definitely getting more likely. 

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I had a coupon and picked up a box of the Yasso Vanilla Chocolate Crunch Dipped Greek Yogurt Bars last week and they were so good. I am usually more of a salty snack kinda girl, but during the summer months, ice cream beats everything else. What’s your favorite flavor?

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Our gardeners were at it again. They trimmed our Scotch Broom (as per direction from our landlords) this week, as it was getting out of hand and taking over our patio area. I had talked to them on Monday morning to tell them that they were supposed to just trim the branches and was a bit taken aback when I went outside later to see how much they had cut it back. Our bush looks more like a “tree” now, but I must admit: I like it. Makes our small backyard look and feel a lot more open and spacious (as long as the Scotch Broom doesn’t drop all its leaves and plays “dead” for a while, like the Bougainvillea 6 months ago).

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The Washington Post published an article yesterday saying that the federal government will maintain expansive work-from-home policies after the pandemic. I don’t remember if I mentioned it but we were given a survey a few weeks ago asking us to weigh in on pre-pandemic and pandemic work experiences to determine how to move forward in the future. I thought it was great that they were trying to get input from each employee. I am curious what this is going to mean long-term for our agency. We haven’t gotten any specific guidance yet (other than that we’re not going back yet.) How are things moving forward in your work environments? Are you still working from home, or going back to the office?

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I don’t want to jinx it, but I picked up my knitting again this week… oh, after only weeks of not even as much as side-glancing at it at all. Knitting is usually something I do more during the winter months, but I was craving some “relaxing” repetitive motion with my hands. Do you knit during the summer? I’ll have to take advantage before it gets too hot again.

TGIF! Have a great weekend!