Weeknotes #61: holiday prep

Doctor visit, deployment uncertainty, social activities, travel joy, Lanzarote relaxation.

Week commencing Monday, 18 March 2024

Blue skies over the Lanzarote resort.
Lanzarote

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 5/7. (71%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 50,437

Life

  • Finally to see a doctor about my shoulder. Initial diagnosis is a rotator cuff injury. Scans and physio called for. No immediate relief but stronger pain killers prescribed.
  • Lots of planning work this week in preparation for my week off: mainly about connecting systems together. Really good engagement across teams.
  • “Will we, won’t we?” for the deployment of our new automations went on all week, when I left the office on Friday the team was planning on Tuesday but we had all our sign-offs by Friday evening so I feel less guilty about being away.
  • Monday’s pub quiz in Wimbledon was fun and so the four of us have booked again for an April Monday. How Mark identified the celebrities from the poor photocopy of the pictures of their eyes is a great mystery of our times.
  • Thursday catch-up with Linda, who is taking a short break from globetrotting on her boat, was lovely. It felt like St John’s Wood was going to be a bit ‘out of the way’ for a Thursday. But not.
  • Friday was full of last minute things: holiday Euro cash, foot appointment, Easter egg ordering and then, at the very end, packing. Happy we’d ordered extra on Thursday’s Indian takeaway so that dinner was a fast re-heat.
  • Saturday involved leisurely travel to Gatwick as the flight was early afternoon. The airport was pre-Easter packed, BA carrying double the number of Saturday passengers. The lounge was not the screaming-child free oasis I might have hoped for but the wine compensated.
  • Airport security at Lanzarote was a breeze, with electronic gates that accepted British passports.
  • First evening dinner: duck and chips. The honey rum came with the bill. I paid for it with indigestion.
  • Sunday, first full day in Lanzarote, started hot, rained, hot again, slight rain, then too hot. But I was immediately relaxed, had slept well and – as I write – delighted I came.

Media

  • Plane tunes were albums from Breland, Kane Brown and Macklemore. Also, last week’s musical discovery, Ada Morghe. An unexpected musical change from what I would have been listening to five years ago.