Day 53 – 1.04.53

In case you were wondering what the title means. It means Phase, treatment 4, day 53. It is code that Ryan suggested. Today has been an interesting day. I have been baking sourdough bread for 2 days now and I got up at 7am to start the process. Everything was going great until the 6 hr mark where I decided to take short cuts and resulted in me deflating my beautiful dough. 100% my fault for rushing a process. Mel and I then proceeded to take another shortcut while removing a Step 2 cottage from our basement upstairs. Instead of taking apart the house completely we pushed it through some areas and resulted in denting our front door. I am pretty sure we need to move now. We are not 100% sure if this was caused by the door of by hockey bags during the winter. Never the less, there is a new flaw and the only option is now to move. We can not change the door, the only option is move.

1.) I am very lucky with the direct reports on my team. They are all hard workers who take pride in their work and no matter what problem we encounter, there is never the talk of whether we can do it or not. We do not spend time discussing whether an initiative that we are given is doable. The concern is how are we going to execute it. I know that we do not always agree on the initiative or the timeframe, but there is rarely hesitancy to do it, just discussion on how we prioritize and do what we need to. No matter what task is assigned, people will do it even if they are not comfortable. The reason why this is important is because we are trying something. The team does not have negativity on whether we can do it not, as a team we try and figure out how we are going to do it. This journey is not without struggle, but as everyone is positive and failure is not an option the discussions are smoother. There are times where people are outside of their comfort zone and need to adapt, but I appreciate the teams dedication to get the job done regardless of what is asked. Our ideas do not always work and we may miss some deadlines, but effort is given on how to keep moving forward.

2.) When we announced that we were having our first kid, we determined who was going to be the God parents for the kids. As soon as the Godfather for Xavier was chosen he started to plan things that he was going to do with his Godson. It was a lot of the things that we did with him when he was young and he had fond memories of it. It was nice to see that the memories we had built were things that he wanted to replicate. Telling my side of the family it was the same. I have cousins that I am close with and I use to take the kids of my cousins out to buy them treats and take them shopping. They remembered these instances and were looking forward to taking our kids out doing the same thing. We see them all now and both side of the family get together when we are in Toronto and we all go out to eat. Traditionally as the eldest I am the one that gets to pay for all of our meals, but when we are in Sudbury they are always willing to treat. I am grateful that both sides of our family have integrated and get along so well that when everyone is together we all share meals. I am happy that the experiences that we provided to the younger generation was something memorable enough that they want to replicate it with our kids.

3.) I realized that days 3 and 4 after treatment days are a bit tiring. I do not necessarily notice it until it hits me. I decided that I want to cook bread every day for 14 days to work on my skills, but we will see if I can keep it up as by 3 or 4 pm I hit a wall and need a break. The fatigue is not a big deal, as I can take a quick fifteen minute nap and it is not bad. The thing that I miss the most is the lost of taste. Primarily because it is hard to properly criticize cooking when I can not tell if it is good or bad. Very disappointing to not be able to critique food. Mel is too nice and will not say when things are bad, but all of Mel’s cooking so far has been 10/10 because I can not tell if it is seasoned or not.