Yard Work Kind of Weekend

There are a number of yard work related chores I’ve been needing to get done. So far I’ve been picking away at them. Last weekend it was literally picking away at them. The front yard has been overtaken with weeds, so I spent time picking a bunch of them out. There are still piles there but I put a pretty good dent in them.

When I was out there weeding I had wished I had some better earphones to wear while listening to music out in the yard. I didn’t want anything really good though for fear of wreaking them. Yesterday I remembered that I still had the pair of WordPress earphones Automattic had sent me when I first started. They were good and comfortable but they had broken not long after getting them. Part of the plastic broke which connected the left ear piece to the head band piece. After trying a couple types of glue, which didn’t hold for more than 5 minutes, I had put them away and forgot about them.

Before I went out to mow the lawn yesterday I pulled them back out again. This time I brought out my soldering iron, got an old tip for it, and melted the plastic causing the two sided to bond back together. Now I don’t think this will hold for a really long time, but they held up yesterday while mowing the lawn and today out in the yard!

Today was un-fun yard work. Last year we had a strip down the side of the house which we had turned into a bit of a vegetable garden. It worked really well so we decided to expand it this year. We decided to use the whole piece of land on the side of the house. The sod has been all dug up and Jen poured the bags of mushroom compost my sister picked up for us all over, now it had to be tilled up and the compost mixed in.

We looked into renting a tiller to do it, but it would have cost more to rent it then to hire someone who had one to do it for us. So instead I went out with the garden claw and turned up the soil that way mixing in the compost at the same time. It’s times like this where it is obvious the only work I do with my hands, is really with my finger tips on the keyboard. My right hand especially feels like just one big blister.

Although there are a bunch of little projects I would like to do to the yard, the only other one I really want to tackle this year for sure is along the back of the property. We had planted a bunch of little boxwood plants. We were in a hurry to get them in the ground so all we did was dig a hole for each one and put the in. This makes it really hard to mow around, and in behind especially weeds end up growing really tall. So this year I want to make it like a long strip flower bed along the back. Where we dig up the sod again and cover it with mulch in between the bushes. We will also likely plant some flowers in between and around to give it a bit more life.

That won’t happen this weekend though, but hopefully I’ll make time coming up sometime soon.

Playing on the Shore

It was a nice warm day in the Valley today, so the kids and I went to visit the shore for a while. There is a neat little spot up in Black Rock I really like so that’s where we went. The Bay of Fundy has such huge tides though and it was in pretty far so we didn’t have a lot of shore to take advantage of.

The kids wanted to grab some rocks to bring home to make a foot print for each of them in the garden. You can see the results in the pictures. It turned out pretty neat.

Hermes Team Meetup

Two weeks ago our team (Hermes) at work got together in Durham North Carolina to spend time together and plan our coming months. As I’m sure most readers of my blog know, Automattic is a fully distributed company. So while we communicate all the time, it’s rare we get to spend time in person together. That makes the time we do get all the more important.

Even though I’ve only been on a couple meetups, one team, and one company wide, I don’t think it will ever cease to amaze me the awesome people I work with. Since the last team meetup we went on our team has changed a great deal. In fact there are a number of people on the team who weren’t at the Grand Meetup in October so I hadn’t met them yet, so I was really excited for this one.

While I was excited I was also pretty nervous. I volunteered to organize and plan the work we would be doing while together. With the help of my colleague Simon who introduced me to it at our last team meetup, I came up with different activities using Game Storming. This was something out of my comfort zone but very was really fun and seemed to go pretty well for my first attempt. We spent our work days exploring different questions to help bring our large team together and come up with a shared understanding of what our teams contribution to the company goals over all should be, and what we can do to get there.

Although we accomplished a lot work wise during the week,  I think my favourite part are the connections we build. When you spend a week working closely, eating meals, and spending fun time together outside of your normal day to day routine, it really seems to speed up this bonding process. A couple team mates have said that after returning from meetups they can now hear the persons voice when reading things they’ve written. It just helps add that extra bit of context to written communication when you have a better feeling for the personality behind the words.

Durham is a neat city. It is really easy to get around, which is great, as it gave us the opportunity to explore it by walking. In the mornings some of us would get together and go wandering. It’s also how we went to most meals as well. The weather was beautiful just about the whole time we where there and I miss my early morning runs and being able to wear shorts and t-shirt.

We were staying right beside the beautiful Duke campus which we walked around. A group of us also spent a lot of time one day taking in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens. Coming from a place barely hitting spring and seeing all the flowers in bloom and all the green trees made for a memorable time.

Things are in the planning stage for this years company wide meetup and I’m already looking forward to seeing all these folks again.

Here are some pictures from my iPhone of Durham and the people I’m fortunate enough to call team mates!

Always Performing

Even when she isn’t on stage for dance, she’ll find and make her own. 

Beautiful Day in Halifax / Bedford

Today was the beginning of another weekend of dance competition in Halifax. While we spent a lot of the day inside watching dance a couple times we ventured down to a park in Bedford, overlooking the Bedford Basin. It was a beautiful day and the kids loved playing on the playground equipment.

Throwing Rocks


On our walk yesterday Noah and I stopped to throw rocks in a little pond. 

Noah and Dad Time

Today was my first day home after a week where our team at work was able to meetup with each other. I’m going to talk more about that amazing time, but today Noah and I were able to spend some time together while everyone else was out.

The day before I had left for my trip a bunch of us had gotten together to go for a hike and find a waterfall. We had a lot of fun so I asked if he wanted to do it again except to another falls I had never been too. He agreed, so off we went.

We had a great time even though it was rough going while trying to stay dry. I had read others advising to go right through the brook but we tried to stay on the sides which were steep at times.

It wasn’t very far though so we made it and were pretty proud of our team climbing skills 🙂

Should Sleep Tonight

The past few nights I have not been sleeping properly. A couple nights in a hotel and getting ready to go meetup with my team have led to some tossing and turning. 

This afternoon has been great though. Getting together with family and friends we went for a two hour hike through the woods to get to a little waterfall area. The kids did really well and didn’t complain at all until about the last five minutes that their legs were getting tired. 

Dance Competition Dad

For the past two weekends our family has stepped into the world of dance competitions for the first time. All three of our oldest daughters have been involved with dance at some point. Alexandria no longer does as horse riding has become her main activity. Although Noah loves to shake it around the house hasn’t been interested in following his sisters when we’ve talked with him about it. He’d rather soccer and basketball.

Caile still takes one dance class currently, it’s a musical theatre class as she really enjoys drama and this gives a good mix of that with dance. Ella though I’m pretty sure would dance all day everyday no questions asked.

This year we put her into a dance troupe within her dance company Dance Conxion. They have been practicing and rehearsing a bunch of dances this session and last weekend was the first of dance competition season.

If you had of told me not many years ago that I would be spending my weekends driving to and watching dance competitions I would have called you crazy. So fast forward and seeing the fact that I am actually enjoying myself very much is a shock to me.

I’ve always known dancing is hard and takes a lot of skill, strength, and memory, but these weekends have really blown me away. Watching all these dancers perform dance after dance and pretty much nail it every time is so impressive. At such a young age to be able to do the moves they are doing, remember all the steps for all the songs, and do them in sync and in precision timing, has just blown me away.

I’m still not sure at my age that there is anything in this world I’m as good at as they are at dance at their young age.

Even if Ella and the rest of her fellow dancers weren’t raking in the awards and medals I’d still be proud of what an awesome job they all are doing. I’m very thankful for the dedicated, kind, and creative instructors who have choreographed some wonderful numbers and helped get them to this level.

March Challenge Update

The challenge I had given myself for March was to read and become more productive. While there is still a lot of work to do and a lot of progress I can make I did come a ways.

Typically I would read maybe one book a month, and this month I was able to read three. Each one was a recommendation and they lived up to them. With the help of the books I have been able to increase my productivity especially in this last week.

Managing Humans was the first book I read through. I’m not sure how I’ve made it this far without at least reading Rands blog previously let alone his books. This book has a lot of ideas and concepts which I believe I will help me as I look to move into a leadership role in the future. It also gave me new insights to the way I think myself. As it turns out I believe I really am a nerd.

The way I think and get into a project is really put well into words by Rands in this book. It helped make some of these things clearer while at the same time allowing me to gain perspective on how I come across to others. Both things will serve me well going forward.

The next book I read was Game Storming. This was introduced to me last year on my teams meetup by co-worker Simon Ouderkirk, who if you are interested in support or remote work you should certainly be reading his site. He led our team meetup project last year and used Game Storming to do it. At my upcoming team meetup I’m going to facilitate a similar type of activity to help our team build a road map for where we should go in the coming months.

With Simon’s help and this book I’m feeling confident that I’ll be able to help run this and get some meaningful work done with our team. The concepts of using games to brainstorm hard problems and come up with creative solutions is really interesting. Seeing it first hand last year not only did we come up with a good road map, I think it helped bring us together as a team. Hopefully we can duplicate that this time.

The last book I finished is the Effective Executive. Don’t let the title fool you though this book I believe can be a benefit to almost anyone who wants to be more effective in their life or job. My co-worker Andrea Badgley recently read it as well and wrote a great review and the part that stuck with her most.

The part that stuck with me the most was a bit different than Andrea though. One of the instant things I was able to take away and put into effect is to know my time. The author Peter F. Drucker says this of time.

Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed. The analysis of one’s time, more over, is the one easily accessible and yet systematic way to analyze one’s work and to think through what really matters in it.

Thinking about this I took a look at my time. I didn’t go super deep or keep records of what I spent time doing, but I looked at my schedule for a typical day and then restructured things and to hide things that could be a distraction. In the past I’ve noticed, and had co-workers say, that adjusting their schedule helps them be more productive. This book helped me realize why this is and the importance of revisiting your time frequently.

If you adjust your schedule it forces you to think about your time. Just the act of doing this has helped me get more focused work in this past week which has helped me get more done. I’m now going to be more purposeful about revisiting often where my time goes and how I can organize my day for the best results.