Here is my July 2016, installment of what I had done at 8:16 PM each night during the month. I also found it helpful writing down what happened during the day as a small journal/diary of what was good, bad, or interesting.
Little Background
I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:16 (8:16 PM) every day for the last month 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) everyday.
July 2016 Events
Jul 1 – checking on my computer what if anything news on television being that it’s Friday before Fourth of July. Most of my “early leave” day was spent working on the FRD for the accessible SVG map. After coming home early from work, I read a bit and then managed a three and a half hour nap.
Jul 2 – waiting to be seated for crab dinner at the Crab Deck in Kent Narrows, MD.
Jul 3 – Watching “American Pickers” after a slow day of going to DuPont Circle Farmers Market and having an excellent pulled pork veggie leaf wrap with dill lime rice, thinly slide age cured ham, pickled red onions, and pickled yellow beets. Then it was off to the Georgetown flea market and then home to read until I met up with my buddy Sam to go to José Andres’s American Eat Taverns for their indoor picnic. The picnic included a great variety of food which included cured aged ham, Serrano ham, three types of deviled eggs (jalapeno, pickled, and traditional), pickles, etc. Then the next batch of food was suckling pig jambalaya, shrimp fried rice, fried oyster slider, cheeseburger, bacon wrapped mini hot dogs, and Texas beef brisket chili. Next moved on to the seafood of shrimp cocktail, Alaskan King Crab cocktail, and other mixed seafood. Finally, made it to the desserts which were mini key lime pie, mini chocolate cake with chocolate whip cream in a small jar, dark chocolate tart, more of a lemon tart/pudding. The meal was well worth the cost, but will go earlier next time so some of the dishes won’t have sat out so long, since being the Sunday of 4th of July weekend not so many people were there. After dropping Sam home went and took a few hour nap and never had dinner until close to 10 PM because I was still full.
Jul 4 – watching and taking notes during Amy and Alex’s 30 x 500 “Sales Safari in Action” with special guest Brennan Dunn.
Jul 5 – was visiting with a friend from Ottawa Canada and his family and mother. I met them at their AirBnB in Capitol Hill area after stopping to grab some cheese and crackers to go along with the wine I brought with me. I left cheese, open wine, and an extra bottle since they were going over to other friends for dinner on Wednesday after a visit to the National Zoo.
Jul 6 – sitting at my desk in my spare bedroom adding removing people from my EventBrite mailing list. Doing this should take more time than it does to create a new event and prepare and e-mail announcing the event. I should be able to see which people asked to be removed and those that bounced. Plus, be able to add easily new people that signed up. Once done with that relaxed to watch some TV.
Jul 7 – walking out of the kitchen after grabbing a few slices of hot soppressata, along with a Kind bar while the two samosas I pulled out of the fridge get to room temperature before heating them up as my dinner. Worked on adding my accessible SVG map HTML and CSS to GitLab. Had to work on a readme file after I created and an empty one to make things easier. The process took much longer than planned because we tried using one product before giving up on it and that I did not have the proper access to be able to add, updated, delete, etc. on GitLab.
Jul 8 – Driving to Momo Sushi listening to “Dinner Party Download” on NPR. After dinner, I stopped at Sugar Shack Donuts and picked up a red velvet cake donut along with a maple bacon yeast leaven donut. I have noticed I like their cake donuts better unless you can get the others once they come out such as their salted caramel leaven donut.
Jul 9 – Sitting in Bocatto Lounge starting to read “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Ellix Katz. I’m in the process to see how to make vinegar and pickled items such as beets, cabbage, carrots, etc. Spent my morning going to the Courthouse Farmer’s Market to pick up herbs (basil, mint, sage, oregano, dill, tarragon, etc.). Next, I stopped at St. Elmo’s to visit with friends before heading to the Del Ray Farmer’s Market where I got a few more bunches of basil so I can make two large batches of pesto and pork and beef empanadas. I then went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters for a hot chocolate while catching up on e-mails and taking notes from e-mail newsletters and blog posts. Finally, headed home after stopping at Pho 75 for lunch to read and nap.
Jul 10 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 – Since it is a Sunday night I was most likely watching TV, but not sure because I was too busy it seems to write anything down.
Jul 11 – in drawing class attempting to draw using one, two, and three-point perspective. My drawing was of three boxes stacked on top of each other but offset a bit for the middle box. Created QA sign-off document along with some testing and found issues with the search results not being correct anymore. My guess is mismatched code to content.
Jul 12 – Watching Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana which is in Modena, Italy, in the Chef’s Table documentary series on Netflix. Not eating dinner before the show is not the best way to watch the show because it makes you even hungrier than if you had eaten s at all the great food. Worked with the team to come up with ideas of what needed to be done to make updates to developer.dol.gov for now having offset for the APIv2 datasets. I went to the website and looked for all the broken or redirected links and any other weird things I noticed. Plus, created a list of all the pages that were using APIv1 and the few that were using APIv2 along with which section.type of dataset they were.
Jul 13 – having chicken, fig, and pine nuts risotto with a mixed green salad along with a Nigella Lawson’s sour cream chocolate fudge frosting and cake at Evan’s. I was there with two other couples, one of which live in the condo downstairs. We had one wine before dinner with some cheese and roasted cherry tomatoes on garlic toast. One of the best dishes was the watermelon gazpacho with finely chopped cucumber. All this came about because I had been wanting to drop off the new “Food Labs” book to Evan while killing some time, so the metro bus was less crowded because if metro’s yellow line is closed between Braddock Rd. Metro Station and Pentagon City metro. Most days it’s taking over an hour and a half to get to work or come home afterward.
Jul 14 – either walking around the beer section of Wegmans or checking out at the cashiers after shopping but first having dinner from the hot bar. Worked with co-workers to do QA testing of the new Appeals elastic search along with updating the dollar and cents of the earnings disparity column for the District of Columbia.
Jul 15 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 – Since it was a Friday night I was most likely either at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then shopping, or I was at or driving to or from Pho 75 for dinner.
Jul 16 – walking around the parking lot of screen 2 at the Family Drive-in Theatre in Stephen’s City, VA, waiting for Ghostbusters to start.
Jul 17 – watching the “Chef’s Table” episode about Niki Nakayama of “N/Naka Restaurant” in Los Angeles.
Jul 18 – working on my first charcoal square to create the class portrait of Samuel Becket.
Jul 19 – since I wasn’t in Cabin John for wine or beer tasting I was in the process of unboxing my new 34 inch Ultra DELL monitor.
Jul 20 – met up with Mike and Kevin who were in DC for Drupal Gov Con. We were at Bangkok Golden with Sam for Loa food.
Jul 21 – waiting at a stoplight on Telegraph Rd. On my way to Wegmans to grab dinner and do a bit of grocery shopping before the almost 100F heat until later next week.
Jul 22 – sitting in my car at the corner of S. Joyce St. and S. Glenn Rd. Waiting for the light to change on my way from dinner at Pho 75 to get vanilla custards with hot fudge at Dairy Godmother for desert.
Jul 23 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 – Since it was a Saturday night I was most likely either at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then shopping, or I was at or driving to or from Pho 75 for dinner.
Jul 24 – walking in front of the White House while on a walking/bus tour of Dc with speakers and other attendees from An Event Apart DC. While dropping off my annual cupcakes to the An Event Apart staff, they asked if I wanted to go on the walking/bus tour since they had an extra seat. I said yes even though it was going to in the upper 90’s F with a heat index over 100F during the tour which started at 7:30 PM. The tour was great because I got to learn a few more facts about DC, such as Constitution Ave NW used to be a canal and the stone building at the corner of Constitution Ave NW and 17th Ave. NW was the lock keeper’s house which he lived in with his wife and thirteen children. The house is extremely small even for two people let alone 15.
Jul 25 – Sitting in my basic drawing class at Torpedo Factory Annex using charcoals to draw white cloth draped to form shadows.
Jul 26 – reading Twitter to see if and when to meet Kevin Hoffman other An Event Apart speakers/attendees to see Ghostbusters at the AMC Hoffman 22 Theater. Ended meeting there for the 9:35 PM show and dropped them back at the hotel after the movie to save them a cab or Uber/Lyft fair back to the hotel.
Jul 27 – Sitting at Blackboard listening to the end of Denis B.’s Accessibility DC UX talk.
Jul 28 – was at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then doing a bit of grocery shopping. I worked home so I could attend the GSA PULSE tool call and then head to the cemetery for Tony’s mom funeral. After the ceremony at cemetery went to Knights of Columbus hall for lunch and then headed home for a 3-hour nap.
Jul 29 – driving on Route 27 towards Washington Blvd to grab Pho at Pho 75 for dinner. I had a small bowl of Pho with raw eye round and fatty brisket along with extra noodles and more fatty brisket. Spent most of the work day figuring out the accessibility issue we had from the new GSA PULSE tool, along with other DOL websites. I noticed that the HSA tool had not scanned the home page of MSHA. I also ran a maximum of 200-page scan of each website I had never run before to get an idea of how right or wrong most were. Of the seven I tested four were 90% or higher, two were in the 70s, and one was in the mid-30s.
Jul 30 – ENTERED 08/13/2016 – Since it was a Saturday night I was most likely either at Wegmans grabbing dinner and then shopping, or I was at or driving to or from Pho 75 for dinner.
Jul 31 – walking in my house after going to three farmers markets (DuPont Circle, Palisades, and the one near Big Bear Lounge in NE). Spent test of the day in four coffee shops answering e-mail and getting rid of a few hundred browser tabs by either reading articles, closing tabs, or placing it as a bookmark for later.
Conclusion
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 entry to see what you have done or can accomplish over the course of a year.
If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:16 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.