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Weeknotes

Weeknotes: July 28-Aug. 2, 2024

view of Bellingham Bay from Boulevard Park connector trail, framed by plants
Bellingham Bay

Win of the week: found out the greenway route change I advocated for last year got made!

Looking forward to: planning to try making sourdough pancakes this weekend 🥞

Stuff I did:

  • 9.5 hours writing 🙌
  • 1.5 hours consulting — reviewing proofs
  • took a friend adventure to Bellingham
  • finished my entry to the July blog carnival on tools
  • baked plum crumb cake and terrible sourdough banana bread — turns out you should not use a blender to make banana bread, it makes it rubbery 😅 (I’d say lesson learned except I’m pretty sure I’ve done it before… 🤦‍♀️)
  • skipped gaming with my sister to binge read the new Courtney Milan 😄
  • hacked back blackberries for an hour and discovered another shrub hiding underneath 🦾
  • went to Homebrew Website Club
  • one virtual appointment
  • skipped my usual walk, we all decided it was too hot 🥵
  • wrote an email to city council in favor of an upzoning project but haven’t hit send yet
Continue reading “Weeknotes: July 28-Aug. 2, 2024”
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Featured Meta Personal Growth Weeknotes

Using personal weeknotes as a tool for attention

Since leaving my day job two years ago, I’ve been writing personal weeknotes. In short: once a week, I publish on my blog a set of notes about what I did the past week. I believe weeknotes started inside organizations (here’s a good primer on professional weeknotes), but I appreciate using the weekly checkpoint as a personal tool to steer my attention and action.

This post is my entry for July’s IndieWeb Carnival on the theme of tools, hosted by James G. Crossposted to IndieNews.

Continue reading “Using personal weeknotes as a tool for attention”
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Art and Design Cool Places

Pretty things I saw in Bellingham

A couple friends and I day-tripped up to Bellingham, a small coastal city near the Canadian border, over the weekend. I went to college there, but haven’t been back in ages, and my friends had never been before. We explored around downtown and the Fairhaven neighborhood, ate a lot of food, and soaked up the sights.

Arts

oversized metal sculpture of a scepter in front of a historic looking brick building facade
magical scepter aka “the Sentinel” by Ellen Sollod
Continue reading “Pretty things I saw in Bellingham”
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Weeknotes

Weeknotes: July 20-26, 2024

cool old conservatory building in Seattle

Highlight of the week: seeing a pink pineapple at the Volunteer Park Conservatory

Looking forward to: Bellingham trip!

Stuff I did:

  • 2.25 hours consulting
  • 6.5 hours writing
  • researched new personal computer
  • updated my portfolio tracker, reviewed amortization estimates for when we can pay off the house, took care of financial tasks, transferred a retirement account between brokerages to consolidate more
  • voted in Washington’s state primary
  • had a fun excursion to Seattle with my friend
  • baked strawberry shortcake but discovered that my cream was off so it was just strawberries and biscuits 😓
  • cut my hair ✂️ (with this tutorial)
  • one virtual appointment
  • my regular weekly friend walk

Don’t know where this week went! At least I’m marginally less stressed about politics than the previous couple weeks.

Continue reading “Weeknotes: July 20-26, 2024”
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Garden Places

Flower field trip to Volunteer Park

My friend and I are trying to get out of the house more often, exploring new destinations we don’t think will be too crowded. (COVID numbers are high so we both still masked too.) This weekend we headed into Seattle to the conservatory at Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. I’ve always loved the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers so when I found out Seattle had one too, I had to go.

purple flowers and taller shrubs along the front of a Victorian style white metal and glass conservatory building with arched entryway
cool old conservatory building and pretty landscaping
yellow and brown splotched orchid with five long curved petals spread out like a spider on the middle of a web
these orchids reminded me of spiders
a small pineapple with pink and white spikes emerges from a mass of variegated pink, yellow and green stems
😱 who knew pineapples came in PINK 🍍 we decreed the plant in the back the organic molecule bush 👩‍🔬
Continue reading “Flower field trip to Volunteer Park”
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Weeknotes

Weeknotes: July 13-19, 2024

boardwalk winds between trees in a lush marshy area on a sunny day
I love a boardwalk

Win of the week: a week of many walks!

Looking forward to: potential friend adventure to Seattle this weekend 😃

Stuff I did:

  • 10 hours consulting — sent my big signs off to the printer!!! 😱 and submitted another deliverable to a different client
  • 1 hour writing
  • installed software on my new work computer — why do I have to add a program just to move my taskbar these days? 🤦‍♀️ — trying out a font manager (FontBase)
  • did a make-up weekend walk with my friend at the local State Park (where there was a horse show going on so it was busier than desired 🙃)
  • met a friend I hadn’t seen in a while for a mid-week mid-morning walk to beat the heat
  • explored a new-to-me park with a third friend
  • picnic dinner and a wander with the husband at a pretty creek
  • more weeding while I was out watering the backyard plants — I tried watering in the evening and the mosquitoes were brutal
  • rewatched Howl’s Moving Castle
  • did a big tidy-up-the-house session (because I didn’t feel like writing 😅)
  • went to Homebrew Website Club
  • played games with my sister
Continue reading “Weeknotes: July 13-19, 2024”
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Health Self Care

Self-care that’s not driven by shame

I’ve always had a hard time keeping up with flossing, which is embarrassing 😓 even though I know I’m not alone in this struggle. Getting habits to stick takes me a lot of work. But after a couple decades of the “brute force” / “guilt trip” approach, shaming myself clearly wasn’t making me any better at actually flossing. It just made me feel bad about myself — and I wanted to stop doing that. I was trying, but I needed to try smarter, not harder. I started looking at my challenges through a kinder lens that let me grant myself more agency. With new assumptions — that I was not the problem, and willpower was not the answer — what could I do differently?

Continue reading “Self-care that’s not driven by shame”
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Weeknotes

Weeknotes: July 6-12, 2024

Win of the week: getting my new sourdough starter going 🍞

Looking forward to: I’m planning a trip to Bellingham later this month! I haven’t been in years (went to college there), and I’m meeting some friends of a friend 😃

Stuff I did:

  • 6 hours consulting
  • 4.75 hours writing
  • Did some end-of-project retrospective for my project that’s wrapping up and took care of some consulting admin
  • Cleaned out my music library — so far I’ve culled 10GB — more to go!
  • Tried backing up my files to external HD and I don’t have enough space on my computer apparently 🙃
  • Set up my new work computer and brought back out the KVM switch. My new second monitor isn’t working, so I need to troubleshoot that. Also still need to order a new personal computer… so many decisions 😭
  • Started watering the garden this week because it finally got hot
  • Revived my sourdough starter I got from Carl’s Friends 😄 Feeling a bit daunted about making bread bread after watching a couple videos, so I might stick with using it more as flavoring in like pancakes and quick breads 🤷‍♀️
  • Sunday morning donut run 😋🍩
  • Played games with my sister
  • Skipped my usual walk with a headache 😥
  • One virtual appointment
Continue reading “Weeknotes: July 6-12, 2024”
Categories
Future Building

Moving towards climate accountability

Pop Culture by Ed Zitron

AI’s power demands … are likely so significant that utility companies will have to spend nearly 40% more in the next three years to keep up with the demand from hyperscalers like Google and Microsoft.

+

Google’s carbon footprint balloons in its Gemini AI era by Justine Calma (The Verge)

Google has a goal of cutting its planet-heating pollution in half by 2030 compared to a 2019 baseline. But its total greenhouse gas emissions have actually grown by 48 percent since 2019.

Continue reading “Moving towards climate accountability”
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Weeknotes

Weeknotes: June 29-July 5, 2024

cornbread, baked beans, fried eggs, nectarines and tea
had this for breakfast a few days in a row 😄

Win of the week: finally getting to some pruning I’ve been thinking about for a while

Looking forward to: setting up my new computer when it comes next week 😃

Stuff I did:

  • 7.5 hours consulting work
  • No writing :/ (too much emotional energy sucked into politics)
  • Discussed the scope for a potential new project
  • Some consulting admin: cleaning out old folders, downloading receipts, updating spreadsheets
  • Took Thursday and Friday off work for a long holiday weekend
  • Chatted writing at a Bonus Homebrew Website Club
  • Reviewed a blog post for a friend
  • Baked blueberry nectarine cobbler
  • Ordered a second monitor — which comes with three months of Creative Cloud 🙌
  • Another hour and a half of weeding — I’ve made it to the back of the yard and cleared around like ten more plants 🦾 — some welcome native volunteers mixed in with the weeds!
  • Pruned our street trees to open up the sidewalk and garden a bit — still shady but walkers have better sightlines
  • Skipped my usual weekly walk because people set off too many fireworks last night and the air quality was gross 🙃
Continue reading “Weeknotes: June 29-July 5, 2024”