Another month’s worth of what I have been doing at 8:15 PM every night.

Doing this has become a great way to see what I’ve been up to on a particular day along with what else I add in about my day. It’s become a regular habit of what I’m doing and what has happened that day and a wonderful little one paragraph diary/journal of my actions and thoughts.

A Little Background on This Post

I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) every day.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far, I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Here is my post on what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, March, April, and May.

JUNE

Jun 1 – Working in WordPress to create a new blog post about “What I was Doing at 8:15 PM” for both April and May. Posted my March blog post of “What I was Doing at 8:15 PM” and even go comment spam in less than an hour. Busy day working on reviewing a few PDF’s for accessibility issues and updating another developer dataset page to be more mobile friendly. Also attended the APIv2 planning meeting to figure out the board items we still need to finish before deploying later this month.

Jun 2 – Watching “Trip Flip” on Travel Channel in Michigan. The show was shot during the winter, so they did quad racing on a frozen lake, dog sledding, luging, etc. more document reviewing and fixing dataset pages to be more mobile friendly.

Jun 3 – Sitting at my desk in my spare bedroom writing my rent check to be deposited on Friday morning, along with writing my bills to be mailed on Friday too. The day spent making another page with TABLEs more user-friendly on mobile devices, along with attending a few meetings and re-reading a testing and accessibility document for like the fifth time in two months.

Jun 4 – Stayed home from pig roast prep because it was raining and was watching TV.

Jun 5 – Talking with G C Meyer about his new paintings at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. Ended up buying one of Gary’s smaller pieces with a red chair. Spent the day in Cabin John with most of the pig roast staff.

Jun 6 – Doing a bit of clean-up with Bev and Jeff before we headed home after we were done at the pig roast. Spent eleven hours in Cabin John working and attending the pig roast.

Jun 7 – Cleaning my apartment in preparation for my father on Monday, along with watching a bit of TV. Managed to get up at 6:13 AM so I could help clean-up after the pig roast. Even managed to get painting number 63 of my #the100DayProject completed since April 6th.

Jun 8 – Sitting in my spare bedroom cleaning up my e-mail while my father watches Fix News “O’Reilly Factor”.

Jun 9 – Sitting in my buddies basement Cabin John, MD, drinking Italian wines, while eating homemade lasagna and watching the first round of the women’s FIFA World Cup game between Brazil and Japan.

Jun 10 – Catching up on Twitter while watching “American Picker’s” after a day of taking an overdue eLearning class (overdue 194 days). Next reviewed the content of a document on how to make eLearning classes accessible, went to Blackboard to meet JoAnna Hunt to see their conference space to start having Accessibility DC there soon. On the way to Blackboard saw a guy with Red Devils horns, Purple Heart-shaped sunglasses, black tank top, and a black thing dancing and tweaking near the Chinatown metro station entrance.

Jun 11 – Watching TV and reading Twitter. Nice relaxing evening after a busy week at work.

Jun 12 – Sitting in the Clarendon Apple Store as the third person in line to buy something. Never head to be put on the waiting list at a store to give them $500 – $600. After waiting ten minutes went up to ask how it was going, and they told me I still had two people aged if me. At that point, I was getting frustrated because I was paying for parking since they don’t validate irking anymore. Think one of the managers heard while walking by and had someone bring him a black 64 Gb iPad for more me.

Jun 13 – Walking to Cache Bahn Mi to grab pork steamed buns and a pork and veggie noodle dish. After going to St. Elmo’s for a short bit and then a quick stop at home I headed to Frederick, MD, to get my beard trimmed up, after over 22 months of doing nothing. All I did was trim the sideburns and mustache. Had a great time wandering around Frederick before my beard trim. Enjoyed the antique mall next door, along with Market St. Grabbed late lunch at the Wine Kitchen. Had Mac and Cheese fritters, duck spring rolls, steamed pork buns. Would have liked to eaten dinner at Volt, but didn’t want to wait until 8:45 PM because 6:00 PM was too early to eat again after late lunch at 4:00 PM.

Jun 14 – Changing the sheets on my bed while washing laundry in preparation for Char, Jim, Jesse, and Vicky stopping to stay at my place on their way south for vacation. They will be stopping on the way back up as well. Work up a bit before 7 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Which I turned into a positive and got to the grand opening of the Alexandria Wegmans. Spent an hour or so wondering around then checked out, put purchases in the car, and came back in to grab a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin. Once I was done eating, I grabbed a case of water for under $3, plus some avocado sushi for later. I was home before 11:00 AM. Read and grabbed about a three and a half hour nap.

Jun 15 – Watching “Tiny House Hunting” about finding a tiny home in Baltimore’s Fells Point neighborhood. Mostly watching to see what you get in a tiny home since that is what I think I would be looking for if I ever buy one. It’s that or one out in the woods or maybe portable.

Jun 16 – Checking my grammar with Grammarly for my responses to the three main questions asked by XOXO Festival to see if I can be part of the lottery to get a ticket for this September’s event. The three questions and answers are the following:

• What do you do? Inform and teach people the importance of web accessibility as my day job at Department of Labor and whenever anyone asks outside out of work too. Along with spending time away from the computer with great friends over food and wine.
• What are you working on right now? Getting monthly DC accessibility meeting back going and figuring out the best way to find more time to work on the side project of keeping track of places I want to eat when I travel. Plus, have been participating in the 100 Day Project. I’m on my 72 consecutive days of painting wine bottles on canvases.
• What’s something you’ve made that you’re proud of? Starting www.AccessibilityCamp.org so others will learn about accessibility, which is a free to attendees. Other’s have run events around the globe in the following cities: London, Tokyo, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angles,  Boston, Seattle, Guelph (Canada), Missoula, MT, and many more.

Jun 17 – Watching “Tiny House Hunting” after doing a bit of Twitter reading because it was a busy day at work. Attended meeting about new iPhone application so we could get an understanding of the application before it was time to test. Plus, face a few suggestions of possible accessibility issues. Did a bit of QA work, along with did a bunch of document review for content. Now off to grab some takeout Chinese food.

Jun 18 – ENTERED – 06/19/2015 – Walking from Atlantic Media Strategies office were Mariesa Dale talked about UX Hooks at Refresh DC. We were head to District Commons over near Foggy Bottom metro and a bit after 8:25 PM it started to rain hard. Luckily we were near a Residence Inn hotel that had a large awning that about eight or ten of us got under to stay dry until it blew over in about ten or fifteen minutes. Continuing to get developer datasets ready for deployment end of next week. Spent part of the afternoon in meeting about work using DHS’s Trusted Tester program and implementing a larger accessibility plan too.

Jun 19 – In my spare bedroom checking my grammar using Grammarly for my June entries of what I was doing at 8:15 PM each night.

Jun 20 – ENTERED – 06/21/2015 – Driving to Manassas, VA, to drop off co-worker after our day trip to Philly. Prior to this, I drove through the worst thunder and lightning storm I have ever driven through. Since maybe the time bring my aunts car back up north from Florida with my father when I was a new driver in my mid teens.  Had a great day wandering around Reading Terminal Market trying a few different sandwiches from Di Nic’s (pork and sharp provolone, roast beef, and meatball with sharp provolone). Then it was a bit of shopping and off to Indy Hall to meet Sean and pick-up my art from my last trip. Sean had given my co-worker the ten cent tour before we each bought a JFDI print from the latest art show. Once done at Indy Hal we headed to South Philly to Di Bruno Brothers to get too much cheese and cured meats. The last stop before heading home was at Isgro’s for cannoli’s.

Jun 21 – Starting to read Bloomberg Magazines June 15, 2015, edition entitled “What is Code?” by Paul Ford (@ftrain). Figured it will be easier to read over time since it’s over 38,000 words from what I’ve been told on Twitter. Lazy day today. Went to sleep at 12:45 or so after falling asleep watching TV on the sofa. Woke up at about 8 AM, read in bed for a while and did a few other things, and then went back to sleep until 12:56 PM. Haven’t slept past noon in years even with going back to bed.

Jun 22 – Again reading Bloomberg Magazines June 15, 2015, edition entitled “What is Code? by Paul Ford (@ftrain). At this, rate I will get through the 112 pages in a week or so. That is of course if u can Read about 20 or so minutes per day. The day was spent trying to figure out why the in-page anchors for the mobile friendly dataset pages were not working. After a few of us looking into reasons for the issue, it ended up being a Foundation CSS issue or a possible JavaScript not letting the action to happen. The issue ended up being duplicate IDs, which were needed because part of the page was displayed for desktop view and the other when on a mobile device. One was set to “display:none” while other is being displayed. The fix ended up being adding different link anchors depending on which device you were using.

Jun 23 – ENTERED – 06/29/2015 –  Made it into District Taco with Char, Jim, Jesse, and his girlfriend Vicky as the rain started coming down hard. It was one of those big huge storms, which didn’t seem that bad being in a winder lock building. Char and her family were staying at my place on their return trip from Myrtle Beah, SC, on their way to back home to Boston, AM. I ended up getting two basic breakfast tacos (egg, cheese, and potatoes) with chorizo, along with two fish tacos with extra chipotle mayo cabbage slaw. Jesse managed to eat six fish tacos. After dinner, we headed to Buzz Bakery to have cupcakes to keep Jesse’s streak of going there every time he has been to DC.

Jun 24 – ENTERED – 06/25/2015 – Tried calling my youngest brother to see how things are going and had been reading a bit of Twitter.

Jun 25 – Talking with my youngest brother to see if he was traveling to our sisters in Columbus, OH, for the 4th of July. He explained how much fun it had been getting his boat back to Buffalo, NY, from Detriot, MI, along with how his new job was doing.

Jun 26 – ENTERED – 06/28/2015 -Just finished ordering dinner at Bangkok Golden with Sam and Eric. We ordered six different dishes. Some of the dishes were: crispy sour sausage, veggie fried rice, duck and veggie dish, drunken pork noodles, pork belly and broccoli rabe. My sandwich that had tons of different flavors and lots of different textures, along with a bit of heat in a few dishes.

Jun 27 – ENTERED – 06/28/2015 – Sitting in Vaso’s Kitchen with some of the Saturday morning St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub crew. They wanted me to order the wine for the group. They wanted a white and a red. I ended up ordering the Crab Stuffed Flounder with lemon wine sauce.

Jun 28 – Watching the American Pickers episode where they are picking gas and oil stuff, along with fire equipment for Dollywood. Slept in until about 8 AM. Did a bit of reading in bed before heading to Hoffman 22 movie theater to first watch “Mad Max: Fury Road”, then I saw “Inside Out”. Both were interesting movies for different reasons. Mad Max was about getting away from someone or possibly something that is controlling you and maybe realizing being back where you were could be better for you with a few changes. “Inside Out” was great in seeing how people make decisions at a young age. It would apply to any age since joy, sadness, disgust, safety, and anger play a big role in most if not all of people’s decisions. Another thing was seeing how some core memories can set the way your life will go, but others can unravel the whole thing.

Jun 29 – ENTERED – 07/01/2015 – Sitting at a table in Matchbox Pizzeria on 14th St. near U St. NW, playing euchre with the DC Euchre meet-up group. Hadn’t played any euchre in over a year or two, which wasn’t helpful, since I lost every game I played. I played with five different patterns and never really got to many good cards. The few times I got good cards the other team or my pattern had the opposite of what I had. Plan on going back to play in the future. The day was spent fixing up and figuring out the accessibility issues with the new Quarry website and the mobile version of developer.dol.gov.

Jun 30 – Taking an hour and a half nap on my bed, since I’ve been tired of staying up late but getting up early to make sure I’m in work in time. More time spent funding and helping others fix website issues, along with making sure API issues are now corrected, which they seem to be.

Conclusion

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month once I’m caught up.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

P.S. Need to go back through these 8:15 PM posts and add any links or photos that are relevant to make them more appealing.