Week 16: Escape to the Country
I hired a car and got out of London for the first time in months. It wasn’t for a fun reason, I went to my grandad’s funeral, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being out in the countryside again. The service was all outdoors at a green burial place so it felt safe, and the sun shone for most of it.
Aside from funerals being sad, it was lovely seeing a lot of my extended family at a distance. I miss everyone a lot, and we chatted for as long as we could before it got too cold to be out. I went on a long drive afterwards to nowhere particular while I had a legitimate excuse to be out on the road.
In incredibly shitty news, the trial I was supposed to be a witness in next week has been delayed again until January 2022. I’ve spent the last few weeks mentally building myself up to this, and to have it pulled out from under me is pretty devastating. All the energy and preparation I’d put in has just kind of dissipated; I feel a bit hollow.
There was quite a lot of drinking this weekend.
On Friday it was Keran’s leaving drinks at work; it’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a post-work social this much. Keran’s a great engineer, has been a really important person in pushing the FT’s diversity and inclusion, and she’s a super fun person to hang out with. I’m gonna miss her (You should try and hire her if your company is fully remote or you’re based in Vancouver).
On Saturday our friend Alison had birthday drinks. We did a remote cocktail-making class which was a lot of fun, and then a virtual game night. I needed an evening like this to forget some of the bad news this week.
I’m loving Wandavision. I’m kind of glad I can’t just binge it all. Charlotte hates anything super-hero related, so it’s also some much-needed time to shut myself off from the world with headphones.
Celebrity Best Home Cook is OK, but I’m just never as invested in the celebrity versions of cooking shows.
I’ve been documenting some of our end-of-year review and promotions processes at work. It’s been refreshing to get some deep focus time on a couple of documents, and I feel good about making this part of my job more transparent. It should hopefully help us onboard new principal engineers (I’m really excited that Dawn is moving into my team and I’m gonna get to work with her more closely 🎉)
