• Considered fully vaccinated as of this Friday just passed. Which, honestly, is a bit anticclimactic since it doens't suddenly change a lot of things. But, it does bring a new peace of mind that I'm very unlikely to get sick and more importantly even less likely to get someone else sick.
• Pre-vaccination, we'd be extremely conservative - we haven't been doing even outdoor dining or anything that would have us maskless around others nearby. Now we're vaccinated, we've relaxed enough that we went out to dinner! At a restaurant! With friends (from the bubble, but still)! Still outdoor dining, distanced tables and masks, but still. Very exciting and an excellent excuse to not wear a lycra-blended outfit for once.
• Finishing up a couple more paintings for Deadpan Studio. I also cleaned up my pig painting and I'm waiting for the proof to come back for that one.
• iRiver project seems to no longer need my services, which I take as a win for my ability to teach certain others some basic git/github skills. Teach a man to merge to upstream and he'll eat fish for a lifetime something, something.
• Two other pieces of on-going work are more or less settling into the same focus area - namely product management coaching.
• I'm reading a book called Switch by Chip and Dan Heath that someone recommended to me once in a pub (so definitely in the before times) which I impulse bought and has languished on my kindle since. Basically, it explains how to change minds and get people to change behaviour, mostly by starting small and hitting folks in the feels. It reads like an American explaining all the little tricks we played at GDS. Anyway, it's very pop sci, but sensible.
• I'm half way through my 12 week Zwift training plan and they're actually starting to hurt a little bit. Progress will be made!

The only thing worth mentioning this week is that today I was vaccinated for COVID-19!

• Alex and I were able to get the one-dose Johnson & Johnson Janssen vaccine today at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, who opened up vaccination for anyone over 16 earlier this week, ahead of the State-wide 16+ eligibility opening on the 15th April.
• We switched to stay-home mode 56 weeks ago, and honestly, I cannot truly believe I'm vaccinated so soon. Go science!
• I am so relieved and happy!

• Huge amounts of anxiety around vaccinations. They're opening it up for anyone over 16 to get them from the 15th April here in California, and I'm so impatient and I just want this done and over now. Preparing to spend a lot of time refreshing appointment websites and swearing.
• Alex said 2 weeks ago that he thought we'd either have had our first vaccine or have an appointment for it within the next 12 weeks, so I'm now mentally operating my life within that timeline.
• Signed up for a beginner-friendly 12 week structured fitness programme on Zwift. Just finished week 2 and feeling good about it. I did the ramp test to see what my FTP is and it works out that my power-to-weight ratio is, like, 2, which appears to be the very definition of noob. That's fine. Can only go up, right?
• Took a fondue class with Gwen on zoom with the SF cheese school. I had this impression that making fondue was difficult, but it absolutely isn't, so that'll be a large portion of my diet going forward.
• Dana gave me a shashiko making set. It's very easy looking, being that it's just a running stitch, but the trickiness is in making thousands of little stitches that are equally sized, spaced and straight. Good for doing while watching TV, though. I've nearly finished a tea towel.
• Within this new 12 week window of life, and with the said addition of shashiko projects, I'm planning to do a frog or finish on all of the craft projects loafing around the house. There's probably a good dozen - knitting, sewing, embroidery, model making, etc. - that need to either get completed or go away forever.
• Work has been a bit busier, including one new project that's actually let me touch some code for the first time in a long time. Nice change of pace.
• I ate 4.5 donuts this week.

Stationary bike arrived. Declared putting it together yesterday's workout, so wish me luck on future endeavors. I had a practice go on it and it's much harder than I expected.

This week I finally put out my first prints on Deadpan Studio. I've been noodling on some paintings and stuff the last few months and via some very kind encouragement, mostly from Monica - a fellow shy, but actually quite good, artist -, I decided to just actually follow-through on making something all the way from idea to print. It's been fun doing it, to be honest, including figuring out how to actually sell something online and package it and all of that stuff. I'm incredibly self-consicious about "doing" art at all, but it feels sort of nice to have a specific outlet for that now, and I'm not expecting to turn a profit, just have a bit of fun. I'm currently working on some oil paintings I intend to share there.

Mum & Dad got their first vaccines this week, their second will be in May! Feel good about that. I can actually, maybe, possibly, imagine getting to go home late this summer.

That's it. I'm really bored of cooking.

Not much to report for the last few weeks. We're just on the cusp of it being 1 year since we arrived home from Japan (1st March) and pretty much went directly into a lockdown. It's sort of funny to think of that trip a year on. We were definitely joking a little through the journey, but on the last few days I did start to get a little nervous that we might be stuck in Japan. Wonder when we'll be on the move again.

I've picked back up my weekly exercise goals. I rode my bike for the first time in a while a couple weekends ago and felt extremely weak, so I've decided to just go for it and buy a stationary bike. Not a peloton, obvs. Curious to see how it sticks. Because I can't do anything high-impact, I rely on a lot of walking and invested in a little mini-elliptical last year, and that's helped a lot. Even Alex has got pretty into getting sweaty while stepping and watching junk TV.

The new bike has bluetooth (what doesn't?) so maybe I'll Zwift?

Palm Pilot is just about done, wrapping up some last bits of logistics. Another project (Walkman) that went dormant over the holidays appears to be waking back up and seems like it'll turn into a longer-term product coaching thing. I'm not sure if I'm a good coach, but I am good at being constructively honest, and I think that objectivity (along with having already done similar things already) is what people are looking for, as a rule.

I haven't played anymore Destiny 2, but I have played a lot of Valheim.