Week 8: Cancelled

A week of cancelled plans, breakfast champagne, excessive TV, and a warming cascade of green ticks.

Posted on by Rowan Manning.
Tagged with ChristmasFamilySide ProjectsTVTootsieAudreyYeehawTestingMasterchefSnackmastersGreat British MenuLove BitesChampagneHis Dark MaterialsBooks

  • What even is time? I’m very firmly in holiday mode, where I’ve forgotten what day of the week it is and I have no routine. The only constant is Tootsie waking me up at 7:30 to be fed and Tootsie meowing to be given his dinner.

  • So Christmas is cancelled. We have a lot of food already as we were planning to have Christmas day with some friends, which we can’t do now, I guess we’ll be eating leftovers for a while! I’m still excited for our first Christmas not going to either of our families – we can do things the way we want at the pace we want and that sounds delightful. Nobody can judge us for opening champagne at 8am 🥂 (Aldi, naturally).

  • I’ve been staying away from coding a bit over the last week to moderate my pace and not burn out. The small bits I did get done are integration tests for Audrey. I love writing tests, I get more satisfaction from them than any other aspect of programming – nothing beats the warm secure blanket of >90% coverage and a cascade of green ticks.

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  • Wasn’t that nice?

  • Oh I did do one more thing, I made Yeehaw give all horses Christmas names for December. It was a small job which will bring me a lot of joy. My favourite horses so far have been Merry Firewood, Jolly Chimney, and Bethlehem Vixen.

    Five emoji horses lined up in Slack, waiting to race. Their new more Christmas-themed names are Seasonal Gold, Frosty December, Bethlehem Miracle, Party Star, and Happy Vixen.

  • I had a lovely chat with Becky (my sister), it’s been ages since we caught up and it’s so weird that I’ve only seen her once, maybe twice this year. We laughed a lot and I didn’t realise how much I needed it.

  • There’s just been too much TV, I feel like a bit of a zombie. I’m loving His Dark Materials and getting some strong nostalgia from reading the books as a kid. But we’ve also been watching a lot of cooking shows (maybe too many cooking shows):

    • MasterChef: The Professionals is a fixture, I really want Monica Galetti to tell me nice things about my food.

    • Snackmasters is such a good concept and a lot of fun, but I find the presenter really annoying.

    • Great British Menu, Christmas has felt much nicer than the regular show, Andi Oliver is great as a presenter.

    • Love Bites (on ITV2) should be a guilty pleasure but I’m not guilty about it. It’s very cringey watching people in their early 20s try to impress each other, especially when they’re trying to do it by cooking things they have no clue how to make.

  • OK I think I won’t write anything until after Christmas now! I hope you enjoy the festive period despite everything that’s going on 👋