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Mostly Garden
Let's see. My garden is doing well. The red flowers are sort of dying off, but I've been told they'll come back over time.
The lobelias seem very happy, probably because it's been cloudy for most of the week.
My tomato plant has more flowers, and one tiny tomato! I didn't get a pic of it because I didn't see it until later. It's seriously the size of a tic tac, lol. But still! I'm happy to get even one tomato! There seems to be another opportunity for a strawberry too, although I don't really know how to pollinate those.
The herbs are still mostly doing well, although the purple basil is dying off and I don't know why (the regular basil is just fine and they're right next to each other.) I have big hopes for my carrots and radishes, they are looking pretty good! I hope to fertilize everyone later in the week.
I am still very surprised that everything is growing all right. Somehow I just thought stuff would die under my fingertips, haha.
I look forward to my little tomato :)
What else. On Thursday Jameson and I worked in the yard. He's been wanting to put down some nice mulch, so we went to Lowe's for that and a rake. I cleared out some of the weeds and old mulch, and Jameson laid edging and laid down the new red mulch. We didn't buy enough mulch or edging, so completing the yard will be an ongoing task. But still we got a lot done today and it looks great! Some before and afters:
The front of the house. Still a lot of work to be done, but I think what we managed to do already looks great!
On Friday I went back to work. I get pretty irritated because my employers gave me this really nice day planner, and I'm trying really hard to plan ahead and manage my time wisely. But every single day something comes up that just blows my plans completely out of the water.
Let's say I schedule 10 caption evaluations, one meeting with one of my employees, one hour in the morning to log my employees' timeclock punches, and one captioning timing test. By 9am I've usually gotten 5 evaluations done and I've logged the timeclock punches. But after that things start falling off the rails.
For the meeting and the timing test, I need anywhere from 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted time. So I can't do either of these tasks while I have what's called "floor coverage", where it's my responsibility to respond to calls from captionists who need to go on break or are having trouble with their stations, etc. I am required to be on coverage for three hours of the day, which leaves me four non-consecutive hours where I could complete my other tasks, minus 30 minutes for a lunch break because I need to eat. So 3.5 hours. Sounds doable right?
I still need 5 more evaluations, so I try to do them during my floor coverage and usually make it to about 8 before the last two hours of the day. I try to schedule my meeting, but my employee decides to leave two hours early so now that has to wait until tomorrow. Meanwhile another employee has failed a captioning evaluation so I need to immediately dedicate a full hour to finding them a coach, pulling them off the call floor and coaching them myself, and then remember to do 5 evaluations on this employee in addition to the five I had already scheduled for myself. But I can't start evaluating them until the coaching is finished, and that has to be a straight two hours. So now I'm down another hour at least just for handling that situation, 2.5 left.
When the coaching is finished I will need to dedicate 15-20 minutes per hour to giving them as many evaluations as I can (they can't have more than one per hour so I will only have time for two; the other three will be pushed to tomorrow.) That accounts for another 40 minutes, so now I'm down to less than two hours. But now with the unplanned evaluations in addition to the ones I'd planned for, I no longer have an uninterrupted hour to complete my timing, so that has to be put off as well. Since my other employee left early I'll now have to wait an additional day to have a meeting with them because tomorrow is their day off.
AAAAAARGH.
I mean, I'm sure a lot of this is just getting used to how I need to manage my time. But it's frustrating! Especially when my supervisors ask at the end of the day, "Why weren't you able to meet your goals?"
Anyway, there are good days and bad days at work. The good days are when the captionists on my team do their job without me having to pull them aside and spend extra time on getting them to do their work. The bad days are when I have one termination and two suspensions 30 minutes before I leave for the day.
I mean the turnaround is so high at this place, I should have known there would be a LOT of days like this. It will just take some getting used to.
On the stenography front, I need to work harder as well. I need to dedicate at least two hours per day to practicing. I'm doing all right so far, but I can feel myself coming up to a wall that will require extra effort to get over/around.
Anyway, the work week went by without much incident. Jameson is working hard too, and fighting off feelings of depression. I have faith that he will be ok. I don't know when or how, but it doesn't matter. I'm sticking by him.
On Wednesday I got to enjoy my "weekend". My poor little neglected garden continues to do extremely well, I was able to harvest a large handful of romaine lettuce, parsley, and thyme. The parsley is actually getting a little out of hand, I wonder what I'll do with it! For now I guess it's going in a salad...
The tomato plant is absolutely bursting with flowers, so I hope to see a lot of cherry tomatoes soon!
The purple basil is looking better, I think maybe it was drying out and I didn't realize it because after the last big rainstorm we had it perked up some.
The carrots and radishes are looking good, but I plan to fertilize this week and that should really help them along.
I have a confession to make. I "cheated" and bought a new strawberry plant. Listen, I have FIVE strawberry plants and not a single one has flowered or put out a strawberry! While I'm happy that all of the plants are alive, I do want to learn how to cultivate food, so I don't want to just sit back and say "oh well" when I could be trying different things to get my plants to bear fruit!
I took one of the strawberries out of the planter and moved it to a spot next to the fence behind our house. It will be a good test to see if I'll be able to plant more in that area, or if I'll need to prepare the soil or build protection from insects and animals. I put the new strawberry in the planter...I was careful to choose one with both fruit and flowers so that I could watch how things grow, and also hopefully encourage some of the other plants to start producing too. Maybe this is a stupid tactic, but hey, gotta try something!
On Thursday Jameson had to work. I took myself to Massage Envy because he got me a gift card for my birthday!
I've never had a full-body massage before. NEVER. I was a bit nervous, but once it got started, DANG. What an awesome experience! It hurt so good haha. I got a medium-hard pressure massage with a focus on my back and shoulders. Afterward I didn't want to do ANYTHING, I felt so relaxed! But tomorrow is work so we'll see how long that lasts :P
Meanwhile, I drove out to a plaza with a Whole Foods and an Aveda hair salon, and got myself a haircut! I mean why not, it's been like six months since I last got my hair cut!
I have a horrible hairline and a big zit on my face and horse teeth, so what. It felt good to get my hair cut!
Next I went to the Whole Foods for lunch and the ingredients to make chicken Alfredo pizza with a cauliflower crust! Back at home I did a little prep by squeezing all the moisture out of the cauliflower, then mixing it with cheese, egg, and spices to form the crust. As the crust baked I cooked some chicken and mixed cream, parmesan cheese, butter, garlic, and red pepper on the stove to make a creamy Alfredo sauce. When the crust was mostly finished I topped it with the sauce, chicken, and some leftover roasted broccoli we had lying around. Voila! It was delicious and fun to make!
Our day ended quietly with me preparing for work and Jameson relaxing in front of the TV after a long day at work. When my work prep was done I wrote an essay for my stenography class, then enjoyed goofing off online.
It was a pretty nice weekend, I really hope I can make it through this next work week with my stress levels down and my positivity intact!
The lobelias seem very happy, probably because it's been cloudy for most of the week.
My tomato plant has more flowers, and one tiny tomato! I didn't get a pic of it because I didn't see it until later. It's seriously the size of a tic tac, lol. But still! I'm happy to get even one tomato! There seems to be another opportunity for a strawberry too, although I don't really know how to pollinate those.
The herbs are still mostly doing well, although the purple basil is dying off and I don't know why (the regular basil is just fine and they're right next to each other.) I have big hopes for my carrots and radishes, they are looking pretty good! I hope to fertilize everyone later in the week.
I am still very surprised that everything is growing all right. Somehow I just thought stuff would die under my fingertips, haha.
I look forward to my little tomato :)
What else. On Thursday Jameson and I worked in the yard. He's been wanting to put down some nice mulch, so we went to Lowe's for that and a rake. I cleared out some of the weeds and old mulch, and Jameson laid edging and laid down the new red mulch. We didn't buy enough mulch or edging, so completing the yard will be an ongoing task. But still we got a lot done today and it looks great! Some before and afters:
The front of the house. Still a lot of work to be done, but I think what we managed to do already looks great!
On Friday I went back to work. I get pretty irritated because my employers gave me this really nice day planner, and I'm trying really hard to plan ahead and manage my time wisely. But every single day something comes up that just blows my plans completely out of the water.
Let's say I schedule 10 caption evaluations, one meeting with one of my employees, one hour in the morning to log my employees' timeclock punches, and one captioning timing test. By 9am I've usually gotten 5 evaluations done and I've logged the timeclock punches. But after that things start falling off the rails.
For the meeting and the timing test, I need anywhere from 30-60 minutes of uninterrupted time. So I can't do either of these tasks while I have what's called "floor coverage", where it's my responsibility to respond to calls from captionists who need to go on break or are having trouble with their stations, etc. I am required to be on coverage for three hours of the day, which leaves me four non-consecutive hours where I could complete my other tasks, minus 30 minutes for a lunch break because I need to eat. So 3.5 hours. Sounds doable right?
I still need 5 more evaluations, so I try to do them during my floor coverage and usually make it to about 8 before the last two hours of the day. I try to schedule my meeting, but my employee decides to leave two hours early so now that has to wait until tomorrow. Meanwhile another employee has failed a captioning evaluation so I need to immediately dedicate a full hour to finding them a coach, pulling them off the call floor and coaching them myself, and then remember to do 5 evaluations on this employee in addition to the five I had already scheduled for myself. But I can't start evaluating them until the coaching is finished, and that has to be a straight two hours. So now I'm down another hour at least just for handling that situation, 2.5 left.
When the coaching is finished I will need to dedicate 15-20 minutes per hour to giving them as many evaluations as I can (they can't have more than one per hour so I will only have time for two; the other three will be pushed to tomorrow.) That accounts for another 40 minutes, so now I'm down to less than two hours. But now with the unplanned evaluations in addition to the ones I'd planned for, I no longer have an uninterrupted hour to complete my timing, so that has to be put off as well. Since my other employee left early I'll now have to wait an additional day to have a meeting with them because tomorrow is their day off.
AAAAAARGH.
I mean, I'm sure a lot of this is just getting used to how I need to manage my time. But it's frustrating! Especially when my supervisors ask at the end of the day, "Why weren't you able to meet your goals?"
Anyway, there are good days and bad days at work. The good days are when the captionists on my team do their job without me having to pull them aside and spend extra time on getting them to do their work. The bad days are when I have one termination and two suspensions 30 minutes before I leave for the day.
I mean the turnaround is so high at this place, I should have known there would be a LOT of days like this. It will just take some getting used to.
On the stenography front, I need to work harder as well. I need to dedicate at least two hours per day to practicing. I'm doing all right so far, but I can feel myself coming up to a wall that will require extra effort to get over/around.
Anyway, the work week went by without much incident. Jameson is working hard too, and fighting off feelings of depression. I have faith that he will be ok. I don't know when or how, but it doesn't matter. I'm sticking by him.
On Wednesday I got to enjoy my "weekend". My poor little neglected garden continues to do extremely well, I was able to harvest a large handful of romaine lettuce, parsley, and thyme. The parsley is actually getting a little out of hand, I wonder what I'll do with it! For now I guess it's going in a salad...
The tomato plant is absolutely bursting with flowers, so I hope to see a lot of cherry tomatoes soon!
The purple basil is looking better, I think maybe it was drying out and I didn't realize it because after the last big rainstorm we had it perked up some.
The carrots and radishes are looking good, but I plan to fertilize this week and that should really help them along.
I have a confession to make. I "cheated" and bought a new strawberry plant. Listen, I have FIVE strawberry plants and not a single one has flowered or put out a strawberry! While I'm happy that all of the plants are alive, I do want to learn how to cultivate food, so I don't want to just sit back and say "oh well" when I could be trying different things to get my plants to bear fruit!
I took one of the strawberries out of the planter and moved it to a spot next to the fence behind our house. It will be a good test to see if I'll be able to plant more in that area, or if I'll need to prepare the soil or build protection from insects and animals. I put the new strawberry in the planter...I was careful to choose one with both fruit and flowers so that I could watch how things grow, and also hopefully encourage some of the other plants to start producing too. Maybe this is a stupid tactic, but hey, gotta try something!
On Thursday Jameson had to work. I took myself to Massage Envy because he got me a gift card for my birthday!
I've never had a full-body massage before. NEVER. I was a bit nervous, but once it got started, DANG. What an awesome experience! It hurt so good haha. I got a medium-hard pressure massage with a focus on my back and shoulders. Afterward I didn't want to do ANYTHING, I felt so relaxed! But tomorrow is work so we'll see how long that lasts :P
Meanwhile, I drove out to a plaza with a Whole Foods and an Aveda hair salon, and got myself a haircut! I mean why not, it's been like six months since I last got my hair cut!
I have a horrible hairline and a big zit on my face and horse teeth, so what. It felt good to get my hair cut!
Next I went to the Whole Foods for lunch and the ingredients to make chicken Alfredo pizza with a cauliflower crust! Back at home I did a little prep by squeezing all the moisture out of the cauliflower, then mixing it with cheese, egg, and spices to form the crust. As the crust baked I cooked some chicken and mixed cream, parmesan cheese, butter, garlic, and red pepper on the stove to make a creamy Alfredo sauce. When the crust was mostly finished I topped it with the sauce, chicken, and some leftover roasted broccoli we had lying around. Voila! It was delicious and fun to make!
Our day ended quietly with me preparing for work and Jameson relaxing in front of the TV after a long day at work. When my work prep was done I wrote an essay for my stenography class, then enjoyed goofing off online.
It was a pretty nice weekend, I really hope I can make it through this next work week with my stress levels down and my positivity intact!