What did you do this week (and weekend)?

Been quite a busy week for me. My wife was out of town for most of it and my kids were at summer camp, so I had a lot of time to find projects around the house.

I spare all the minute details of my week, but the big victory was getting some work done on my engine rebuild. This has been a 5 year project, an out of vehicle engine rebuild; in May, I finally put the engine back into place in the vehicle, but there was still a lot of work to be done.

Feeling utterly overwhelmed by it, I've not touched it since then until this week, when I decided to put one little piece on. Which lead to me putting a few more pieces on and a few more and suddenly, I realize, I'm significantly closer to having a complete engine than I had thought I was. Of course, there's still an absolute heap of work to be done after that, including installing and servicing the transmission, transfer case, rebuilding and installing driveshafts and wiring harness, etc. Lots to be done, but just so much closer than I had imagined, which gives me some hope.

I also cooked some new things this week, which was pretty exciting, including a copycat PF Changs lettuce wraps, including frying the rice noodles for the crunch, which I served with something I've never made before, which I believe is called called Banchan, which my kids and wife really enjoyed. It's been a very busy week, but thankfully today looks to be a bit more calm, even if I still have plenty to do.

Edit: a friend and I have also decided not to go to a miniature wargames tournament we had been planning to go to at the end of this month. This is kind of a big relief for me, as I've been desperately trying to crack out these minis I needed to paint for it and feeling a general lack of passion on the whole for the project now. It's a game I love, but I love it because it's a hobby and once it becomes an obligation, I begin to lose my passion for it. To top it off, it's just hard to spend 8+ hours playing three different games of it on a Saturday. I'm usually happy with just one game, but three makes me feel tired and already by the second game of the day I'm wishing I was done.

Great people in the group that plays and I'd love to see and hang out with them, but I've done so many tournaments over the past several years and they can be fun, but I think for myself the proportion is about 30-40% fun to the rest being slog. So I do have a little bit of eagerness to go to them, but also just thinking about all the prep involved in them (months) and then the actual long days just makes me dread them more often than not.

I've been pretty stressed out in my personal life, and this past week was pretty hectic. But! I still managed to exercise consistently (gym, badminton, and bouldering), see friends, and finally finish the big update for my tiny virtual pet sim, Pocket Kitten.

I had a marathon of food prep this weekend. I went to several Asian grocery stores on Saturday and then on Sunday I did a lot of cooking, both days, up until my chronic fatigue told me to lie down and not move.

Yesterday I also had to deal with a very sad and pouty dog because her BFF was picked up on Saturday after a week-long visit. She's still sad today.

Been a busy week for me! I'm leading a project at work for the first time so I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by that. On top of that, I'm once again the developer on support for my team so some of my team will be taken away to focus on that. I'm also preparing for an interview that I have tomorrow morning (as of the writing of this post) and I'm just feeling super anxious about it. I'm not the most confident interviewee and this being a software engineering interview, it involves Leetcode which I absolutely despise. I'm able to better recognize the pattern a question falls under compared to when I was in college but I still struggle with implementation as some questions just require you know a quirk or trick with the language you're using.

In my personal life, I've just been going on more walks, again to try to calm myself from my stress and anxiety from the stuff mentioned above. I'm also currently planning a short day trip with friends for next weekend so I'm looking forward to that. I've also booked flights for a trip at the end of the year with my family so I've also been doing some planning for that, can't wait for these trips!

Saturday was good. Went for a class in a nearby city with my partner and dogs. Basically a neat little day trip. Weather was amazing. We do this about one a month and stop in the way there to pickup a healthy lunch.

Sunday was good too. I exercised in the morning (upper body), then a friend asked if I want to go for a bike ride, so we did. Almost 40km. I was pleased with myself. Thanks to the last month of me getting back and sticking to a workout routine, even 40km didn’t feel like that much. My butt was a little sore from the bike seat, but my muscles were fine. It’s good to feel in good shape. Then, I had to do some overtime. Important report due soon at work.