Gratitude journaling together

This is why I wish I’d learnt Latin. I loved learning enough Old Icelandic to read the sagas and that was really cool. (I should’ve kept practising my Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic… but keeping up my French is hard enough!)

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Ooh, yes, my gratitude entry for today is our new bug report template:

I had so much fun figuring that out (consulted extensively with my linguist friend in Germany and the rationality hive mind on Facebook) and I know it’s so eye-rolly to everyone else but, well, I’m grateful that I have people who like to nerd out on such things with me!

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I’m grateful that there is an instant cure for canker sores - I had a really painful one and putting the cure on it made the pain go away.

I’m also grateful for this thread! It’s a lot of fun and it helps remind me to appreciate good things.

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  1. My housemate made pumpkin scones.
  2. The weather has turned cold enough for blankets to be snuggly but not so cold it’s uncomfortable.
  3. EasiYo yoghurt - you can make it at home from powder, and I have a stash of packets, which is really convenient right now.
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  1. The little piece that came off my glasses repeatedly ended up just borked. I was very afraid we wouldn’t be able to get them fixed because of everything, but it turns out my optician has a totally slick repairs setup where you just show up, place your glasses in a pod, they whisk them inside and get to it. It was done in like five minutes!
  2. I started my day late because we accidentally slept in by half an hour, but a) that meant I actually got 7 hours sleep and my Beeminder graph is looking happier, and b) I’ve pretty much caught up, anyway.
  3. I set up a bee drinking station yesterday and right as I stepped back and left it, a butterfly landed to drink or rest.
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  • I got my MacBook Pro back! Apple replaced not just the battery¹, no, they replaced the entire top case for free. New battery, new keyboard, new trackpad, new speakers and of course half of the case is new. The guy who returned it to me said it’s basically a new computer, aside from the mainboard. And aside from the display I guess. I asked him why and he said they did it as part of the keyboard replacement program. That’s only half an explanation, but I’m not complaining!
  • Riding my bike is still so much fun! I’ve never done a sport as regularly as this
  • The shelter in place is beginning to see some relaxation, meaning I can get plywood and get crafty again, soon
  • I got good friends and I talk to them often
  • I pitched the idea to my professors that I am “cautiously optimistic” to hand in my project’s documentation, the bane of my existence, this week. While that means more stress now, it also means I’ll get stuff done and probably have this thing off my mind in a couple days.
  • The weather is just lovely!
  • I’m making new friends and I’m very excited to meet them once people are allowed outside again

¹ It kept inflating when in use, pressing against the trackpad so much it became hard to click on it, the computer had terrible battery life, would shut off at about 19% charge. Despite only 40 cycles. The battery was just a dud², plain and simple. Maybe it bent so much stuff inside that they replaced the entire thing? Dunno. I think they were just being nice.

² In German these things are called Mondaysomethings, implying that faulty products were likely made on Mondays by, say, people who were still trying to catch up on missing sleep from the weekend. So this would be a Monday battery.

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Oh man, I eventually learned that if I don’t get at least 8.5 hours of sleep a night, (1) I can’t function worth a damn cognitively or emotionally, and (2) I’m not really aware of (1) at the time.

So I realize I keep telling everyone to get more sleep, and hopefully I’m not being too obnoxious, but it really is one of the best life hacks and cognitive enhancers there is - of course, easier said than done, but I’ve found it worth putting some time and effort in.

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A lot of people don’t sleep enough, it’s true! Personally I know seven hours is around right for me (benchmarked with no alarm and a dark room), but there’s quite a lot of variation between people. My sister’s got a non-24-hour circadian rhythm and that blows everything up. :joy:

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Almost forgot today! (Oops, I think I was relying on the notif from @alys doing hers!)

  1. Chatting with childhood best friend. We have something in common again because we’re both self-employed.
  2. A book I preordered arrived this morning! (Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie.)
  3. Listening to music I used to love back when me and childhood best friend lived in each others’ pockets as teens. Can’t help but smile! (Dido and Vertical Horizon, if you’re wondering.)
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  1. There was an urgent work problem that I had to deal with. The gratitude part is that it fixed itself miraculously. :woman_shrugging:
  2. Bite-sized chocolate easter eggs.
  3. Spider Solitaire. I’ve loved this patience card game for decades, ever since I was a teenager. I didn’t have phone then so I played an analogue version of it using small rectangles of cardboard that had colourful images of the suits painted on them. Shuffling and dealing was tedious.
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My entry: I’m having a ridiculous amount of fun with a Slack bot I wrote to play a dictionary guessing game. Hopefully it won’t erode workerbee productivity too badly! I’m going to be so tempted to make it an easter egg in the Beeminder Slack bot.

Also this:

(That’s Bee working out yellow brick road adjustment algorithms on graph paper. I guess that was her antidote for all the distracting Slacking – pen and paper!)

PS: And a third, to repeat from the beemail I’m about to send:

Coronavirus silver lining of the day: My @byorgey style “dial” goal to, once a week, look at my calendar and schedule breaks or make yellow brick road adjustments for upcoming trips or events is now downright trivial.

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  1. My couch. I love it to bits and I’ve been spending a lot of time on it lately. It has a backrest that’s wide enough for my cat to sleep on.
  2. The park behind my house that’s nearly abandoned at night and so I can go for long walks.
  3. Audio books of Dumas’s d’Artagnan Romances and The Red Sphinx.
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  1. My grandma had emergency surgery this morning and it went okay.
  2. The inbox was quiet this morning when I finally got to it.
  3. I found an old external hard drive with tons of music on it, and I’m finally going through the backup dump of the files I made when I wiped it. I’m not sure I ever listened to some of this!
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  1. Jeremy, my housemate. I’ve been mentioning him here so he might as well have a name. :slight_smile: He’s lovely and he cooks for me and it’s a pleasure to be trapped at home with him.
  2. Anjunabeats Worldwide 666 with 8Kays (youtube). I don’t normally like techno but I loved this. I was even dancing to it!
  3. The Vi Dance! Its steps are:
    1. Be editing a file in vi.
    2. Search for some text of which you need to see all instances.
    3. Hit “n” to move between the instances.
    4. Release that you’re now hitting “n” in time with the music and have cycled through the file three times without reading any of it.

I invented those dance steps myself. I’m very proud of them. :laughing:

Dislikes:

  1. Sugar that does not stay on the teaspoon while you are dancing.
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  1. Grandma called me yesterday from the ward! She is feeling a little better and mostly seemed to want to promise me she is going to drink properly in future. (Part of the problem was severe dehydration, so I guess she’s thinking of how I used to scold her!)
  2. I found Gundam Wing character songs in the hard drive dump I mentioned yesterday! Still catchy. (I met my wife through Gundam Wing fandom when I was 14!)
  3. Listened to archival material from Apollo 13’s safe landing on Apollo in Real Time. Probably my favourite discovery of recent… months? It’s just so cool.
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  1. I got a “care package” from my parents! Mostly books on the Apollo program, because my mother’s a big fan and I asked for a rec of her one favourite Apollo book (that I hadn’t read already). Also my Narnia boxset, because it’s comfort-reading for me.

  1. My planned work looks quite light today. Mondays have a lot of tasks but they’re usually quick to complete!
  2. I feel somewhat better today, after feeling “weird” (only way I can describe it) yesterday.
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Grateful to learn that I’m not the only one who does this - though in my case the music is in my head.

Also grateful that I did NOT get eaten by mountain lions, grizzly bears, or wolves last night (inclusive or) when I got lost in the mountains and had to spend the night under a tree! And grateful that I got out of there in one piece!

Hey, stay on topic! :open_mouth: :grinning:

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Also grateful for Adam Cadre’s Lyttle Lytton contest, in which the goal is to write a hilariously bad beginning of an imaginary novel.

And greatful for the following award-winning entry, which cracked me up for a while the other day:

Truant children mocked Jack Tranton as he walked. He could have easily dispatched them with his military training. But he ignored them.

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Holy cow! Nice work!

  1. I’m so grateful for the NHS, taking care of my grandmother right now.
  2. The existence of hot cross buns is a blessing.
  3. I got paid by everyone who needed to pay me, and now I’m paying into my pension fund and everything. So adult.
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