Things I did today

Today, I decided to start a small container garden. I'll be growing hot peppers, tomatoes, chamomile and mint. I'd like to use the mint and chamomile for tea, since I have a lot of delicious tea to get through. I ran today - short, but I'm happy with the total time. I ran/walked a hilly route for 1.7 miles and finished in 24:56. I also finished the larger crossword just under 30 minutes, which made me happy, but I didn't like many of the clues and at the first pass for the across clues, I didn't have much of the puzzle filled out. I did the mini crossword as well. I'm happy with solving it in under a minute.

Today was chores day. Unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, tidied up the kitchen and did a load of laundry. I did a few hours of photography practice and started designing a website. It's amazing to me that while I enjoy learning database and data visualization things, I find web development and learning those things extremely boring. I had to reread several pages several times because I found by the middle of the page, I was already zoning out. But, I have a very rudimentary page! Ended up taking with one of my friend longer than I expected while doing today's crossword, so I decided to forgo today's book discussion. I also have a headache that started at 9, and think I'll retire early to get rid of it.

First - work was work. I sat in meetings, I did work, people seemed to continue to like me. Second - Crossword wasn't great today! I had to stop and think and get a couple of clues from one of my friends. Most of the issues were I thought of nouns for the clue, where it was asking for a verb. Gah! I thought it was pretty cool that there were no black squares, though. But as I reached for the Twinkie, Deconstructed book, I thought "Oh, what's over on YouTube?" I... well, I don't want to say that I shouldn't have, because the rabbit hole I fell into was delightful, but it also took up most of my evening. I watched WheezyWaiter's video about quitting caffeine, and I like his videos. He did this No Caffeine Challenge with his wife Chyna and friends Jack and Nataly. Then they mentioned Jack and Nataly are in a band called Pamplamoose, which is a fantastic name for a band (and the French word for 'grapefruit'). I clicked on their linked channe

I did an almost 2 mile walk at lunch, then a 2 mile run after work. I'm really liking my watch, and apparently I have a high resting heart rate, and often go to the maximum level considered when I run. Maybe I should do more mindful breathing exercises. Crossword performance was great today! The clues weren't fantastic, but most were good enough to get the answer. I'm reading chapter 4 of Twinkie, Deconstructed, but it's a heavy chapter and I might break it up into multiple posts. I practiced photography again, along with photo editing, and I'm getting better with composition. I had another video chat with one of my friends and we talked about recipes we're interested in trying out. With all that, I didn't have time to read Reddit and barely caught up on the local news, and didn't even get to all of my hobbies or other projects. I don't know how I did anything when I had to drive places and not multitask!

Work was pretty normal. Sat in meetings, worked on ticket analysis, all good stuff. Afterward, I decided to walk what I thought was a 5 mile loop around a neighborhood in my area, and ended up finding out it's 4.73 miles what with my superwatch I got from my birthday. There was an extra area I could have walked that is longer, but it isn't a quarter mile longer, so I'll have to figure out how to make it a 5 mile loop. I enjoyed talking to two friends via videochat and considering what a social distance birthday would look like. The other friend and I tested a new (to us) application for videochatting, and will continue to use it for a week or two over the app we usually spend time on, just to see if this is better. Crossword time was excellent again! Pleased about that. And I'm continuing to practice photography. I don't know where the time goes - how did I get anything done before being stuck at home all the time?

Today I slept in, practiced more photography, got a delivery of a Garmin watch and a box of tea. Took the watch for a run, and I like it so much more than the free Runkeeper app. This definitely is the way to go! Now to create a spreadsheet of my MapMyRun and RunKeeper walk-runs and compare them to the ones I'll collect over at Garmin. Many thanks to the family and friends that made sure I got to 35. I spoke with several friends and family members today and enjoyed a cup of tea as well as being outside for about a half hour in the sun. My mother mentioned that her thirties were her favorite. It's been better than my 20s, that's for sure! I also did the Mini Crossword in less than a minute!! No need for Auto Check, I just hammered all the answers down, without typos or guessing!

I'm pleased that I got this crossword done so quickly! I filled it in with 1 across, 8 across, 9 across, 1 down, 3 down, 4 across and 7 across. For breakfast, I hard boiled some eggs in the Instant Pot, and while it doesn't save a lot of time versus the boil in a pot method, it certainly cleans up easier. For dinner, I made General Tso's Chicken from this recipe . I think it's close to the restaurant quality I enjoy sans breading, but I think I would omit a 1/2 TBSP of brown sugar. The sauce was good, but I think was a bit too sweet. This morning, I read chapter 3 in Twinkie, Deconstructed. The chapter focuses on on bleach, which acts as a whitening agent for flour. One could  ground wheat and wait 3 months for it to turn white, or instead, inject a small amount of chlorine for a few seconds. Bakerpedia  shows similar information on the kinds of bleaching agents flour mills use. Further research shows that many countries ban specific bleaching agents - and seve