Well, look who made it to sabbatical

[flexagon]

C'est moi! I jittered my way through the workweek, pushed hard until the last hour, and went out as clean as I could possibly have hoped to for my four weeks of sabbatical/vacation/outage. It hasn't fully sunk in yet, on this first day that was much like a normal Saturday, but two things were different: first, I read a fun book cover-to-cover in between other things (The Girl With Ghost Eyes; yes, it was good. Yes, I read very fast). Second, when the party I was attending kind of blurred on for a while and I lost track of time, it didn't stress me out.

The one thing that deserves (but won't get) its own entry: blacksmithing offsite on Thursday, in which we made bottle openers. I am far, far happier with this bottle opener as an object than I was with the bracelet I made last time I went to this same place; also the bottle opener doesn't have bad memories on it. I might actually keep it and use it! Also, the proprietor of the smithy gave the same wonderful lecture on how when one is a toolmaker, one owes it to the world to smith up and fix things that are wrong with one's workspace or environment. Smith up! Fix it! He didn't know, and I had the honor of telling him, that norwoodbridge and I have had an email thread about "smithing up" running since last year when we got that lecture the first time. He was super touched, and I felt good about allowing that circle to close.

I also learned the lovely phrase "think in the fire", which apparently is the often-lost other half of the "strike when the iron is hot" maxim. It doesn't mean to think while one is on fire but, rather, to use the time while the iron is sitting in the forge to plan one's next move and get things all set up. It has applications to life, I think: use the calm parts of life, get ready, think how you want things to be for the next time you need full functionality. As a manager, it could also mean: use the time when your team is calmly working on their project to be thinking about their next projects.

Little else to report... a freak 80-degree day and a 90-degree day have melted the ice off my bones, and I'm behind on reading/commenting but have a lot of tabs open for perusal tomorrow.

Comments

[triesticity]

Congrats, enjoy your time off! And "smithing up," that's great, and great that you got to tell the proprietor about how it stayed with you.

[coraline]

yay time off!
i have put that book on my hold list and look forward to it :)
do you goodreads?

[flexagon]

I don't goodreads yet, but should I? I'd like to hear more about it. I think that at some point I felt I'd read too much in the past, that to really participate I'd have to spend a trillion hours listing all the things I've read and writing reviews of them.

[coraline]

so I am reading things on my kindle which means it automatically tells goodreads when I've started something and when I've read it (unless I tell it not to) so it's completely passive that way, and keeps a record for me, which I like a lot. Adding friends means I can get recs for what else I should read, especially if they've bothered to rate or review the books they've read. but there's no obligation to do that and I still find it useful :)
and there's CERTAINLY no obligation or expectation to input what you've read in the past, that would be truely hopeless. (when i joined i basically checked off everything from my kindle history because it was trivial, but nothing else.)
(and also if you mention "read a good book" i can use goodreads to remind me what it was if you're there.)

[apfelsingail]

Ooh, thanks for the book recommendation! I enjoyed it. :)

[flexagon]

Yay! It specifically made me think of you, so I'm glad you picked it up.

Usually I get annoyed when I read a standalone book and it turns out that there'll be sequels, but not this time, because I will totally read that sequel.

[drwex]

Mazal tov on making it to your break. I hope it does you well.