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, May, June, July, and August.

September

Sep 1 – Sitting in Cabin John drinking wine and eating a great triple cream cheese from Wegmans with my buddy who owns the house and a few other friends. As usual we are talking about many things but decided to put the Nationals game on in the background on the huge 60+ inch HD flatscreen TV. Was nice watching the Nationals play well for the first few innings before heading out? The team had all nine players bat in the fourth (?) inning while scoring four runs.

Sep 2 – In my spare bedroom watching the 12th episode of the third season of “Mind of a Chef” with Chef Magnus Nilsson which is about “Traditions”. It was great seeing how he and his family are keeping some of the old Swedish food traditions alive by teaching his kids who are around five years old. He had his mother and aunt there who taught him and they learned from his grandmothers. Another day spent reading about the Department of Homeland Securities Trusted Tester process. The rest of the day was spent looking into the newly updated enterprise scanning software after it has been unavailable for close to two months because of space, server, and other issues.

Sep 3 – Watching more of a “Mind of a Chef” with Magnus Nilsson. Interesting watching a young chef from Sweden showing traditions that others are keeping alive and cooking dishes from when he was younger with a bit of a modern twist.

Sep 4 – Walking out of Wegmans after having dinner and a bit of shopping for the long weekend. Picked up hot dogs and rolls, along with some desert and triple cream cheese.

Sep 5 – Watching Josh Adams taking his first carry for Notre Dame against Texas University and scoring a 14-yard touchdown. Spent time at St Elmo’s with friends after mailing bills, paying rent, and picking up nectarines, heirloom tomatoes, and Cortland apples. Came back home and napped for three hours then did a bit of reading. After that went and watched “A Chef’s Life” from PBS on my Amazon Prime accounts live streaming.

Sep 6 – Driving past the original Dogfish Head Brewery in Rehobeth Delaware. Had an interesting day traveling around Maryland and Delaware. First stop was for crabs at the Crab Deck then headed to Ocean City, MD, to drive around and kill some time so I could get fish and chips at Go Fish before heading home. Didn’t make it home until 12:05 AM, since I stopped at Hopkins Farm Creamery in Lewes, DE.

Sep 7 – Sitting in my spare bedroom watching San Francisco episode of the “Movable Feast” on my Amazon prime. Interesting show with the chef going to a new city and talking with one or two or even three chefs to create a meal for about 15 or 20. Not as good as a chef’s life.

Sep 8 – Sitting in my buddies basement Cabin John with a few friends having beers instead of wine. We tried a bunch of sour beers which that were not too bad since I’m not a beer person. I brought some pig jowl bacon, heirloom tomatoes, and herbed bread to make mini sandwiches that everyone loved even though I didn’t have mayo or lettuce.

Sep 9 – Working on creating our first Accessibility DC event on EventBrite in over a year. Need to send out a notice to the person at the venue to make sure I have the information correctly before publishing and sending out invites. My day was spent re-working our enterprise scanning software that was having issues with old scheduled scans that used the old license. The rest was spent reviewing a new iPhone application for accessibility issues.

Sep 10 – Was adding updates to the Accessibility DC event on EventBrite. Had to set up the e-mail invite to be sent out at 11:45 PM Thursday and 4:15 AM on Friday morning, so everyone can get the invites in the morning. Another day was spent checking the new iPhone app for accessibility issues. Tended to find the same types of issues on all the screens.

Sep 11 – Walking through the Tysons Galleria Mall on our way to the Ritz Carlton to have dinner at Jose Andres’s American Eats Tavern. Once my buddies and I got there, we ordered a whole bunch of food. We ordered bowls of summer corn soup, buffalo style chicken wings, Hoppin John with mushrooms,  finely chopped tomatoes, celery, carrots, and peppers, and a plate of five different thinly sliced country hams. The final dish we ordered was a large order of suckling pig jambalaya. Oh, almost forgot about the awesome biscuits with the fresh light fluffy butter with a touch of cinnamon. Those were the best biscuits I have ever had in my entire life, and I’m old.

Sep 12 – Eating dinner at Wegmans from their hot bar. Grabbed some General Taos tofu, shrimp, and two different types of Indian curried chicken along with some spicy pork. Had a good day today met with old coworkers at Union Market for lunch. We walked around, and everyone got different things to eat. Even though it was raining most of the time we were there it started to rain hard for a few minutes. Was nice to see everybody after every six months or so and was glad to see everyone. Managed to get a nap in once I got home during the first part of the Notre Dame vs. Virginia football game. In the end, Notre Dame won the game.

Sep 13 – Standing outside CVS on the 500 block of King Street. Just finished purchasing in Arizona Green paid. Needed something to drink since I haven’t had much to eat. The sugar and would be great. I spent most of the day resting, napping, reading, watching television on the Internet. Managed to get 8,000 steps in today even though I didn’t start with my fit bit until 8 PM.

Sep 14 – ENTERED – 09/22/2015 – Watching Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us”.

Sep 15 –  ENTERED – 09/22/2015 – Drinking beer and wine while eating pork jowl stew with pasta with friends.

Sep 16 – ENTERED – 09/22/2015 – Watching the review show of America’s Got Talent to see how Piff the Magic Dragon did with his performance from the day before. Once that was over wait to see him perform with Penn and Teller.

Sep 17 – At the new Chief office listening to Ross Nover speak about design back at school for the 100th Refresh DC.

Sep 18 – Waiting at National Airport (DCA) to head to Boston for accessibility camp Boston.

Sep 19 – In my room at the Doubletree Inn in Danverse, MA, after a great day at Accessibility Camp Boston. Learned about Deque’s aXe tool for checking pages, along with listening to Molly Jane Watt from England talk about being deaf and blind. The final talk was by Dale Cruse about “Using the Language of Love”.

Sep 20 – Approaching DCA on my way back from Boston. Was in Boston for the weekend attend the Boston Accessibility Camp. Spent most the day Sunday with Char and her husband Jim having breakfast and then watching the Bills game against New England, which we lost, before heading back home.

Sep 21 – Watching Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us” during the commercial of the first episode of the season for the Big Bang Theory. Missed a few episodes last year so didn’t realize Penny and Leonard were going to elope. Spent the day mostly in meetings and when not doing that reviewing accessibility wiki entries that improve anything.

Sep 22 – Standing at the cheese counter at Wegmans waiting to get some triple cream Gorgonzola. Had dinner at the hot bar that was some red and yellow curried chicken, spicy lamb, General Tso tofu, along with some breaded shrimp with a cream sauce. When I was done at the cheese counter, I shopped for some cured meats, bananas, grapes, and double chocolate chip cookie half dipped in chocolate. Most of the day was spent updating an almost eleven thousand word “Accessibility Standards” wiki page after three meetings.

Sep 23 – Driving up King St. and crossing Patrick St. after leaving Caphe Bahn Mi for dinner. I had summer rolls with mint, vermicelli noodles, shrimp, and a few other veggies with a great peanut dipping sauce. My main course was lemongrass chicken with vermicelli noodles, mint, pickled veggies, lettuce, crushed peanuts, and a sweet fish type sauce. Had a good day working at hoe, since the pope is in DC until Thursday night. Having the pope here allowed me to sleep in an extra 45 to an hour and still take a 25-minute walk, which is about the same amount of walking I do to get to my office. At lunch time took the same walk and then heated up some leftovers to eat at my desk while working. Around 3:00 PM went for my normal planned walk to stretch which ended up being around the block. Once I was done for the day at 5:30 PM I did a little bit of reading on Twitter then headed out for about a mile and a half or more walk. Doing this would be similar to my commute home. I enjoyed this day. Got a lot more done without all the distractions of the office, plus walked about 4,000 or so more steps than normal, which is over one and a half miles more walking.

Sep 24 – ENTERED 11/16/2015 – This what you get to write when you don’t write things down when they happen or, at least, a few notes to jog your memory later in the night or the next day. Not sure what I did that night, but most likely it was watching TV or reading, but I will never know because I didn’t write it done.

Sep 25 – Walking over to Prequal at 818 F St. for the after party of TEDxMidAtlantic. Great day for inspiration along with some time to realizing that you need to do more with my life.

Sep 26 – Standing around talking to people at the TEDxMidAtlantic closing party at the Sidney Harman Theater. Again another great day at TEDxMidAtlantic. It’s worth going year after year because I get to meet interesting people along with learn things I never knew existed.

Sep 27 – I was watching the review of the fifth season of “Parts Unknown”, while I wait for the new season to start about Anthony Bourdain in Cuba.

Sep 28 – I was watching “The Big Bang Theory” is about how Leonard kissed another woman while away on a research project. Today was spent working on accessibility documents.

Sep 29 – I was flipping through the TV and landed on “Counting Cars”. Today was spent trying to finish things up with leaving for vacation on Thursday. Did a review of the new Developer page for ILAB Child Labor dataset pages and found a few issues. The other thing I reviewed was the new Android OSHA Heat Index in English. Found a bunch of usability issues and still have to check the Spanish version and check both for accessibility issues using Androids Talk Back, which I’ve never done. Asked on Twitter if anyone had any resources I could check out and be given at least one slide deck to read.

Sep 30 – Sitting in Blackboard conference room talking about what the Accessibility DC meet up should do next. Joanna Hunt did a great talk about how Blackboard is improving their accessibility. Busy day at work and after meeting went home to pack to for my two-week vacation. At around 11 PM left for Front Royal to get a head start on my trip.

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.