Here is my August 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.
August 2016 Events
Aug 1 – in my spare bedroom reading through my browser tabs working my way down from 380+ to the low 60s.
Aug 2 – sitting my buddies basement in Cabin John drinking a Dogfish Head lobster and basil chocolate stout while eating mashed potatoes, balsamic vinegar Brussel sprouts, chicken, and salad with friends.
Aug 3 – reading Penn Jillette’s new book “PRESTO! How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales”.
Aug 4 – watching commercials on the Viceland channel waiting to see what Action Bronson (rap singer?) is going to eat next. The show is about him traveling the world with I think his brother and another buddy eating different things than they normally would. They tend to eat a lot of fantastic food and some they don’t like.
Aug 5 – driving home from Wegmans after grabbing a bit of dinner from the hot bar and doing some grocery shopping. I watched a bit of the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Olympics Games. I did screen reader testing of the SVG map page. Also spent three hours of my afternoon doing a DHS Trusted Tester for a women from WHD to help her understand the process better.
Aug 6 – Sitting in St. Elmo’s reading an article entitled “Git for Humans: How to Get Started with Git in Your Agency Today” ( http://www.planningforaliens.com/blog/2013/10/15/git-in-your-agency/ ) and listening to “Herb and Hanson” perform folk type music on acoustic guitars. Today I went to post office to mail a bill, along with Burke and Herbert Bank to pay my August rent. After that, I went to Del Ray Farmer’s Market to get some heirloom tomatoes. I grabbed a bunch of the little yellow and purple heirloom cherry tomatoes along with basil. Next, I went to Arlington Courthouse Farmer’s Market to get herbs (sage, mint, oregano, dill, tarragon, and rosemary) to make pesto. I managed to get to St. Elmo’s to meet-up for coffee (I don’t drink coffee) and found out one of my friends are due to have twins end of January 2017. I then headed over to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to get through a bunch of e-mail and read a few blog posts/articles I still had open in my browser. Once I left Swing, I went to Pho 75 to get a small bowl of Pho with raw round eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles and extra fatty brisket. Next, I moved on to my next coffee shop which was Bocatto Lounge to do more reading and listening to NPR. Then come home to read some more and take a two plus hour nap.
Aug 7 – Washing dishes for the first time in what seems like a year, which is not but has been a while. Slept in until around 9:15 AM after going to sleep after 3 AM, then went to Palisades farmer market. After grabbing some pastries went to DuPont Circle Farmers Market and picked up a mushroom and cheese pastry song with a few other things. I then headed home to drop them off before going to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to read a few articles and take some notes while listening to WAMU. Once my computer battery was about done, I went to St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub to read some more of Penn Jillette’s new book.
Aug 8 – working on a charcoal drawing of a whiskey bottle so we could learn how to draw glass objects. When I got home, I didn’t watch any of the Olympics because I was watching “Misfit Garage” and then “Vegas Rat Rods” show.
Aug 9 – participating in a sour beer tasting in Cabin John while eating mushroom risotto with a bit of chicken on top. A friend from Chicago was in for rest of week taking a wine class where she has tried between 100 – 120 different wines earlier in the day and had to describe them along with figure out the grape, vintage, wine region, etc.
Aug 10 – watching Penn & Teller’s show “Fool Us” while boiling purple and red small new potatoes. Did an accessibility review of some new mandatory training classes for work about accessibility that needed a few updates and corrections?
Aug 11 – was reading Penn Jillette’s new book “PRESTO! How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and other Magical Tales” while listening/watching the 2016 Olympics. I would read until I heard the announcer say they were on the last lap and then stop to watch who one each race.
Aug 12 – Driving from Wegmans to FedEX on Eisenhower Ave. in Alexandria after having dinner and grabbing groceries which was mostly fruits and veggies. The reason I was heading to FedEX was to pick up an order of whiskey from a company in Wyoming. My day was spent working with one of the Women Bureau’s front-end programmers to help figure out the best way to fix the newest set of annual reports that had issues with the data tables and also the color contrast of the charts.
Aug 13 – Having dinner at Vaso Kitchen (the old Whistle Pig) in Alexandria with six other friends from St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub. Woke up late around 9:45 AM and then headed to Del Ray Farmers Market before meeting friends at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub were we made plans to have dinner. After talking for about an hour and a half we left and I went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to read a few articles and take notes. I then drove to pick up my buddy Sam to grab Pho at Pho 75. I had a small number ten (raw round eye and fatty brisket with extra noodles and an order of extra fatty brisket. We then left there to head to Bocatto Lounge for some Gelato, and I had very dark chocolate Gelato. While there I worked on setting up my next few months blog posts about what I was doing at 8:16 PM each night. I published my June post and planned to post the July one later in the week. After dropping Sam at the Pentagon City Mall, I headed home to read and grab a short hour or so nap before showering and heading to a friends house to meet before dinner.
Aug 14 – sitting in my spare bedroom watching one of the last episodes of season 2 of Chefs Tables on Netflix. Went to three farmers markets and two coffee shops. Manage to get a few more articles read and some notes were taken too.
Aug 15 – Sitting in my basic drawing class using charcoal to draw a horse skull while the torrential rains started. We have two more weeks of drawing class because of July 4th holiday and teacher being out of town.
Aug 16 – Relaxing at home watching the Olympics.
Aug 17 – Relaxing at home watching the Olympics.
Aug 18 – Cleaning apartment before buddies coming to DC for the weekend to attend Black Sabbath concert with Ozzy Osbourne at Jiffy Lube Pavilion. Then it was off to South China to grab Mongolian Liow Mien with shrimp and tofu for dinner.
Aug 19 – Sitting in Bangkok Golden with buddies Bob and Steve for dinner which was crispy rice salad, duck lab, pork drunken noodles, and green curry shrimp.
Aug 20 – Driving around H St. looking for parking and found none, so we drove to Peter Chang’s for Chinese dinner.
Aug 21 – Sitting in row R left of the stage in the orchestra area of Jiffy Lube Live watching the opening band Rival Sons and waiting for Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne to start playing.
Aug 22 – Sleeping during what ended up being about a two and a half hour nap after work. I spent the whole day tired after spending three days with a couple of buddies running around the DC area all weekend. The thing that made me the most tired was going out to breakfast and then not getting to sleep until 1:45 AM after going to Jiffy Lube Live to see Black Sabbath perform with Ozzy Osbourne.
Aug 23 – Watching “Counting Cars” while eating leftover hot chicken strips from Peter Changs. Spent my day doing a lot of miscellaneous accessibility work.
Aug 24 – Relaxing and watching TV while thinking about the best way to create my 10K Apart entry to display restaurants information by city.
Aug 25 – Sitting in Bocatto Lounge starting to code my first attempt to
create a small enough 10K Apart application. I’m looking to keep my CSS and HTML page structure to 3 Kb or 4 Kb, so I have 6 Kb to 7 Kb for content. Met with a group from OCIO to figure out the best way to present their content. It started as data TABLEs with links to videos which we informed them would need to be captioned. Since they were under a short timeframe, we suggested linking to another page with a version of their scripts as a text version.
Aug 26 – Relaxing at home watching TV while working through the best ways to get my Place Geeks Eat application to work along with being under 10 Kb to create the pages and also be under 10 Kb for the loaded pages too. Thinking the easiest way to be able to read in each cities restaurants is to hand create individual city JSON files that I can pull in and process after the person chooses them from the drop down list.
Aug 27 – Listening to a six-person impromptu music event at a buddies house. Hadn’t planned on being there earlier in the day but found out it was a last minute gathering because one of the musician’s wives was due to have a baby any day now and figured he wouldn’t get out much for a while. Went to the Courthouse Farmer’s market to pick-up a bunch farmer fresh veggies and then it went to St. Elmo’s to meet friends before most of us travel for part or all of the next few weeks. After I left there stopped home to drop off my veggies then onto M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to work for about two hours on my 10K Apart entry which is about listing places geeks eat. It’s more of a prototype of how best to display the restaurant’s information for users. Once done I met up with a buddy for lunch at Taco Bamba which was out the second choice because Bangkok Golden which was closed for vacation. We also made a stop at Bahn Mi Restaurant DC for egg rolls and a few Bahn Mi sandwiches for later.
Aug 28 – Walking around Wegmans to pick up some Hatch chili’s, fruit, cured meat, seven-grain bread, etc. Today I managed to get to both the Palsides and DuPont Circle farmers markets. Then I drove around DC while listening to the TED hour in NPR. Stopped home to drop off food and then went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roasters to spend two more hours working on my 10K Apart entry after doing some checking to see about an AirBnB while in Portland for XOXO Festival the second week of September. Once I left there, I ended up at
Aug 29 – was sitting in my last basic drawing class not in the mode to draw since I was mulling over the best way to get my 10K-Apart entry to work with the least amount of code. What I was doing instead of dreaming was watching my teacher doing a live self-portrait from a mirror using gray paper, an eraser, and county to draw. Think I learned more by watching and asking questions than I would have I spent the hour drawing.
Aug 30 – Laying in my bed catching on Twitter since it had been a busy day at the office. Somedays you need to relax and let things percolate in your brain.
Aug 31 – I seem to be too busy doing something to write it down, but it’s not memorable enough to do so the next day.
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.