Tag Archives: goals

Setting goals for 2021 – Part 4: Learning, Photography, Astronomy, and Volunteering

The PolyBlog
January 6 2021

As I set my goals for 2021, I’m using already-established headings that work well for me. This grouping is mostly about learning, regardless of the actual sub-headings.

Learning

The first category, learning, is the catch-all when I don’t have something else broken out. Way back when I was in Grade 6, I had a teacher introduce me to origami, and I’ve been fascinated ever since. I have books, instruction sets, links for online stuff, and I never get around to doing it. My goal for the year is to find ten things that I like to fold and can learn to do well. I’m hoping to try 50 or so designs, and there’s even a paper folding penguin I listed earlier under activities with Jacob. But I’ll settle for even being able to easily fold a penguin, a panda and a frog. I just have to be able to remember how to do them for the future when I’m sitting somewhere and bored.

I did a Writers Digest tutorial, and I would be open to doing other writing sessions. Not quite sure what those would be, there’s a set that are offered by two online people that I respect and admire but they run $300 per class. A little rich for what is mostly a hobby for me still. That may shift, as you’ll see in a future blog post, but for now, it’s a hobby.

I completed my Video Games course a few years ago, and a Meta-Literacy one last year. There’s an advanced metaliteracy but I have kind of lost interest. In the end, though, they were mostly tests to see if Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) work for me, and they do. There are tons of courses on Coursera that I could do, including perhaps how to program an app. I’d love to make PolyWogg Trivia into a game app. Equally, I could consider a laundry list of “classes” from either Masterclass or The Great Courses.

I even have options in case I want to take an intro course in Psychology.

Photography

This category is both all-inclusive and greatly missing some key features. Let me explain.

If I start first with “image capture”, I do have some ideas for learning more. There is an option (in a non-COVID) world where a local photographer puts together photography shoots for budding photographers where he hires some models who are looking to build their portfolio, pays them in minimum cash and guaranteed professional shots from him, and also offers them any good shots from the amateurs. In exchange, the amateurs get great models, some guidance on the session for learning, and we pay the host. In other words, we pay to learn, he gets paid to teach and partially take photos of the models, and the models get some cash and a whack of free photos. Everybody wins. I want to do it, just for the experience really, even though it is not something that particularly interests me. I’d be willing to do photo shoots for friends for example, if they want some basic shots of their family in a park, whatever, just for free and fun, not something I’m looking to turn into a business. And in return, I get practice taking shots of people so that when I do want something really special, I’m already experienced.

I also have some links for free photography classes, some “tips” cards that I bought and want to put to use and design my own flash cards, a MOOC course to finish (National Geographic), summaries from a paid photography class through Henry’s, and I’m considering a potential new lens for wide-field astrophotography.

If I then move on to “image management”, I have my tool, Mylio, but I haven’t put all my photos into it yet. I’m still slowly integrating them as I process a given month, for example. While I have some 30K photos over 15 years, the extra challenges are old photos that are in photo albums to scan as well as managing photos that belong to my mother’s estate. I even have a few posts to do about past scans, like a birthday card collection. I’m not very good at editing though, and while I understand the basics, I’d love to learn the basics of photoshop techniques with programs like GIMP. I even have two images that I have to work with — one from my friend Roula and one of my wife Andrea on a merry-go-round. Both are great shots except for some stains in the photos that don’t look right. Someone with better expertise than me could process them in an instant…I took a few cracks over the years, but I have never quite nailed the technique.

Lastly, I have a grouping around “what do I do with my photos?”. The biggest thing is put them on my website but that’s something I track under my website commitments. It’s a huge commitment of time and energy, and it is what is “missing” under photography as it is more about the website than it is the photos. Instead, my activities are more around putting a backup copy on Amazon Prime (included in my membership), creating photobooks of special events and years (although Andrea is taking the lead on those), and putting a copy on an e-frame that I’ve never had setup properly. I’m also considering trying to make a video file for each year, the equivalent of a video photobook set to music, but I haven’t seen anything that inspires me for that yet. And I’ve considered but not yet implemented the possibility of uploading some of my pictures for sale on microstock sites. Long-term, I have to find options for storing the hard copies of some of the prints I have and disseminating old estate photo collections, but I also want to work on choosing high-quality shots that I can print on metal and put up around the house.

Astronomy

Sooooo, lots of people who know nothing about astronomy think I’m some expert. I’m not. My astro hobby is a bit of a maelstrom of potential, possibilities, impostor syndrome and failure. I have a lot of information across a spectrum of topics that lets me understand the basics of most astro topics, but not in any great depth. And while I am not entirely sure this is the best way to group this section (hence the impostor syndrome), let’s start with “understanding my own telescope”.

The first five years of ownership taught me a pretty good set of lessons in what not to do and how to avoid it in the future. I am now a regular online advisor for newbies on my type of scopes, including experiences, options, etc. My blog post about my alignment process is one of the most viewed pages on my site, second only to my HR guide. But even with my scope, I don’t have everything tweaked properly. I’ve read an after-market owner’s guide, and there are 14 telescope tweaks that I want to try to my setup to see if it improves operations. Some may do nothing at all; others may give me a slight gain in performance. I just want to try them so I know that I’ve done everything to get every last ounce of performance from my scope.

The next area is not so much about the scope itself as learning more about the history of telescopes and astronomy. I’ve started a project whereby I’m going to read all the back issues of Sky and Telescope all the way back to the 1940s. I have already read one year, and I plan to do the others, just got a little side-tracked with a basement reorg. As I go, I’ll write up reviews for my blog and the local astro newsletter.

In a similar vein to my setup for my scope, I also want to look at setup for binoculars. I bought a pair, and they work well for me, but I want to get used to using them. I want to do a deeper-dive so that I could teach someone else if I had to do so. Which is a major part of the theme for this section that I’ll come back to…the idea of teaching myself so I can teach others.

I have a cheap telescope that I got for free and some parts from binos to make some custom eyepieces. It’s part of my “creative / crafting / maker” heading that appears spread out through my list between stuff I do myself, stuff with Andrea, stuff with Jacob and potentially stuff with outside people. I would like to make a maglite to replace a green laser pen option to see how viable I can make one. I also have two old battery supplies I’d like to repair and upgrade.

But as I said, part of my interest is teaching it to others as part of my volunteering duties below. And while it is a chicken/egg situation of which came first, I realized that one thing I bring to astronomy that a lot of experts don’t is an ability to help newbies understand the basics. I’m pretty good at taking complex subjects, boiling them down to their essentials, explaining them in plain language, and onboarding people to a new subject in a way that gives them a good base for future understanding. In effect, I can frame their entry into the world of astronomy in a positive way. My blog post about alignment proves that, it is highly popular despite there being way better experts out there and I’ve done almost no promotion of the page. I wrote it, I shared the links in a couple of fora, people liked it and continue to share it, while my hit count grows. People regularly email me to say “Finally! An explanation that made sense and that ACTUALLY HELPED me”. And they’re off to the races again.

I have done that for an HR guide about federal government competitions, and now I want to do it for astronomy. I am going to write a PolyWogg Guide to Astronomy. Unlike my HR guide, where there are few natural competitors, it is the height of arrogance to think I’m going to offer something better than some of the giants in astronomy writing for amateurs learning how to work a scope and see the cosmos. And yet. I’ve already written some parts of it, and I’m taking a similar approach to my scope. Testing it out, figuring out what works, coming up with a good workflow, and then finding a way to explain that workflow in a manner that makes sense to people in context. The biggest section that I’m going to work on early, and that will reinforce some of the volunteer work, is a guide to choosing a telescope. There are tons of online resources I can use to help build that guide, some of that not even “bad”, just not the way I would explain it. I have materials from an online virtual astronomy course, and I took a course in astrophotography, I have multiple adapters for connecting a smartphone to a scope. I even have an adapter that will let me attach a point-and-shoot camera to my scope. But I also have materials from RASC itself including target lists, a new yearly Almanac, the 2020 Observer’s Handbook, and a guide to native peoples’ constellations. Plus, for the year? Jacob and I are going to do the Explore the Universe kit from RASC. I might even be able to get Andrea to join in. All grist for the learning and writing mill.

But I have other projects or activities in mind. I started working on an astrolog that can run on my phone, and it will take some time to finish and get in the right format. I’d love to make it a full app, but that’s beyond my abilities so far. For the astrophotography side, I’m hoping to take some photos of the moon, planets, DSOs, and constellations. Maybe even some sets worth sharing. In terms of milestones, people often recommend doing a Messier marathon at least once in your life — every Messier object (110 of them) in one night. At least, all the ones you can see that night. This is often combined with an “all-night session“, and that’s on my list too. It would be nice to hit the astronomy lottery and combine both with an astro-themed trip somewhere like a dark-sky site.

Volunteering

My volunteer work falls into three simple headings: astronomy, computers, and GCWCC.

For astronomy, I am a member of the Ottawa Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, and I help out with the club. For the last three years, I’ve been the star party coordinator. Except this past year, I had almost nothing to do. There WAS no star party option. And while I fully intended to give it up for 2021, there’s no one stepping forward to take on the role. Which likely would be the case until we open up again, why would anyone volunteer to do something that can’t happen and if it does, where they may not be comfortable saying yes in advance? Soooo, I’m likely to suggest that I’ll keep the title / role until we get going again. For most of 2021, there won’t be much to do.

In the same vein, I stepped up to take on one of the roles in the Centre as the Ottawa representative to the National Council. Again, it isn’t an onerous role again, attending virtual meetings four times a year and conveying views back and forth, and if / when they hold an annual in-person general meeting somewhere in Canada, probably attending. I can be down with that I guess. Oh, and part of that duty is to feed into manuals, guides, handbooks, etc. for the administration of the club so I’ll likely draft some text regarding two of their publications. I also attend the bi-monthly Ottawa Centre Council meetings as well as the monthly meetings.

And there is a weird role which is they need someone to audit the Centre’s books once a year. Since I’m not an elected member of council, and thus not a voting member for spending decisions, there’s no conflict of interest for me to audit the books for the year. And they don’t need a formal accountant to do it, just someone who can exercise due diligence. Okay, I can do that, I suppose.

However, I have recently inherited a much bigger project. One of our project partners reached out to us and piggybacked / dovetailed with some ideas we already had about teaching people how to use different types of scopes. They want a video on how to use a new scope that they got, and so I’m going to produce it with some other people in the Centre. Yay us. The first one has a bit of a deadline while the others can take all year, if we want.

Continuing the astronomy theme, I am a member of the Board for Astropontiac and I maintain the website. Like RASC, there’s not much happening in a lockdown world, but my role will continue. Pretty low demands, 99% of the time.

Beyond that, I’m wrapping up my involvement last year in the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign as one of the co-coordinators for our branch of 600 people. I’m running a trivia game on January 21st, working on a report, and other than that, I’m pretty much done.

In checking my to do list, I realized that I still have administrative access to an old website that I was helping with web duties for at one point. I’m not sure they’re even using the site anymore, but I feel like I should make sure SOMEONE has admin access before I delete myself completely. I asked at one point previously and never heard back, so maybe it’s moot. But I need to close that out.

What am I going to do in January?

So that’s my big list for the year. What am I going to include for January?

  1. Integrate photos in Mylio
  2. Develop outline for PW Guide to Astronomy
  3. Read and write about one year of Sky and Telescope
  4. Plan year for Explore the Universe, Almanac, and Observer’s Handbook
  5. RASC monthly meeting
  6. RASC Ottawa Council meeting
  7. RASC Ottawa auditor download
  8. RASC Ottawa SPC confirmation
  9. RASC Ottawa video
  10. GCWCC trivia
  11. GCWCC report

Do you have any plans this year for learning or volunteering?

Setting goals for 2021 – Part 3: Finances, Organizing, and Activities

The PolyBlog
January 6 2021

I am setting my goals for 2021, and I’m using already-established headings that work well for me. First up for today’s post? Finances.

Finances

Overall, I would say I feel a bit guilty about our financial situation. Survivor guilt in a way, particularly given where we work and what we see some of the clients having to deal with during the pandemic and how badly certain sectors are decimated. Working for government, we’re probably immune to the cutbacks for some time since it is our groups that are responding to some of the needs, but a few years after, everyone expects the cuts to take effect then to get deficits under control. In the meantime, our finances are in pretty good shape. The down-side of the pandemic is we are not going anywhere or doing anything; the upside is we are not going anywhere or doing anything that costs much money, so we have some extra money saved for when the world does open up again. And overall, it’s not a big category. Things are going relatively well for us on this front, no “big” concerns.

But each year, I tend to do some pretty advanced social planning for attending potential plays and shows around town. Multiple theatres, multiple types of shows, etc. And when COVID hit, I had a lot of shows that were cancelled, leading to refunds and credits. For the credits, once the world opens up again, I can book new shows. Obviously not a short-term priority, but it’s on my list.

I also have some minutiae to handle under a general heading of “clean-up”. This includes a credit from Rogers that didn’t get processed properly. How excited do you think I am to deal with THAT mess, even though it means money for me? There’s also an old health claim where something “bounced” in the claim process, so I have to resubmit, and of course, some new health claims to submit for 2020. I also want to go through and clean up some credit card consolidation. We don’t owe anything on them, it’s just that we use one that gets us grocery store points (PC) but if I never really use them these days, is that really worth it? And why have other cards we never use? Eventually I’ll request an updated credit report and see if there are any gremlins in there. Two other areas for clean-up are updating my will (mainly for catastrophic loss if all three of us are killed at once) and better coordination of various gift cards that I haven’t used yet.

The real “work” to be done in this area though is retirement planning. We have a bunch of RRSPs, we have our big pensions with the government, but we haven’t done much else for sophisticated planning. We did a plan a number of years ago, and it was fine for what it was and for the time we did it. More about cost planning and general revenues than investment vehicles. But I also have a pension buyback to do so that I can retire in 2025. There are a number of ways to process that, including financing it through payroll deduction or transferring it from my RRSPs, but we’ll see which is a better configuration with some other options. We need to do a meeting with a new financial advisor, and while we did some initial reaching out at the start of the pandemic, we stalled back in August.

The reason was pretty silly, in a way. One of the obvious questions for retirement planning is what are we going to do in retirement, and so Andrea and I had a conversation during our vacation in the summer about a whole bunch of places we would like to go and live for a week, 2 weeks, a month, maybe 2-3 months even, during our retirement. Possibly while keeping our house, maybe renting it out, maybe selling it and being homeless while we rent in multiple short-term places. Some of it depends on when Andrea retires, our overall health then, etc. But we made a list. Or rather, I wrote down the list, put it away safe, and promptly forgot WHERE I PUT IT! Kind of hard to submit the forms to our financial advisor if I’m missing the major “abnormal” expense from our plan.

I couldn’t find it. I was convinced I wrote it in a notebook that I had with me at the time, but it wasn’t there. Andrea remembered me writing it on loose paper, so I thought maybe I stuck it in as a bookmark in some books. Nope. Not in 2-3 other notebooks that are frequent companions. Not in my big shoulder bag, not with my laptop, not with my obvious loose planning papers. Not with my financial stuff. WHAT THE **** did I do with it? Well, I put it away somewhere safe. I folded it over, small piece of paper, and put it in my small shoulder bag. The one that use when I go shopping or to a coffee shop. You know, the things I am not doing now. And I put it in a small pocket that I never use. Because that was a safe place to put it where it wouldn’t get lost or destroyed or misfiled. Well, I was right. It didn’t get any of those things. But I was cleaning out the bag the other day for pens or highlighters and things that don’t need to be in there since I’m not using it, and Bam! There it was. Son of a fudgsicle. Okay, back on track.

We can do the retirement planning and fill out the docs. We can have a retirement planning meeting. And I can decide how I’m financing my pension buyback. I even have a great book about types of activities in retirement to help me refine my thinking (The One Thing), with a nice cross-walk to the type of fitness needs that go along with them.

Organizing

So you often see a joke about to do lists that the first thing on the to do list is to make a to do list. And some of this category is simply that…a category for getting organized that lists how I’m getting myself organized. Not competely, but somewhat. In some years, it has literally meant doing this big list for the year. Doing my review of last year, focusing on the future for my goals, communicating my intentions to the universe. But that’s done as soon as I press publish, so hardly worth mentioning.

For those who are friends with me on Facebook, you have likely noticed that I regularly share some of my favourite comics. I get most of them through one specific site, and I never really feel like I’m well-organized for those feeds. I can make it highly personalized, even deleting or adding on a daily basis if I wanted to, or reading online instead of through my email, but I like getting the email feeds. And so I went through and reorganized them recently. It’s done, but officially I guess it was part of this year’s plan. To the extent it is a continuing item, the “to do” portion is that I continue to share them and file the old ones away in my computer. Just cuz I can, not because I need them per se. Although I did get behind at one point in my feed, and so I have a bit of a comics reading backlog sitting there that I can go through at some point too. I may just delete them, haven’t decided yet. Not exactly a priority.

Activities

This is a slightly weird category. It doesn’t particularly fit anywhere else, and it is about various activities that I want to do on a pro-active basic but more almost one-off things than tied to a category. I could count it as a “medium-term bucket list” of sorts, but perhaps more like “superficial bucket list”.

For example, I bought a Raspberry Pi kit awhile back and I am hoping to turn it into a portable gaming system or something cool like that. I bought a bunch of parts, but I never really made time to do it, thought perhaps J might be interested but he isn’t really. Instead, it is just a project for me to do by myself. Part of a new focus on crafting. I also have a robot to assemble, but I’ll do that one with Jacob.

Before COVID hit, I was thinking about taking archery lessons or trying axe-throwing. Not so much right now, obviously. I also want to learn how to play the piano, but I suspect that will be more online stuff with YouTube and books than taking formal lessons. It would be a good activity for the pandemic, just haven’t got around to it yet.

I mentioned above that I have a drone stored in my alcove, and I’m hoping to fly it properly at some point. The main challenge is getting it going without banging into a tree. I’ve tried 3-4 times, and what I really need is a bunch of open space to get the controls properly balanced. I have a friend who apparently flies drones and I’m hoping he’ll take me out some time to show me how to fly it. After that, the world will be open to me. Or at least within the range of the drone. It has a small camera in it, so I’m hoping to use it for practical things like checking out shingles on the roof as well as taking pics of the cottage and lake from the sky, or even some observing sites.

One thing in the list that seems almost silly to have on a list but I added it a long time ago from a list of activities for fun you could do in winter. It’s NOT complicated, requires almost no planning at all, and I hadn’t haven’t done it — make a snow angel. Stay tuned for an update on this one.

So what else is in this category? Plant something and grow it, possibly flowers, possibly vegetables. I’ve never really purposefully planned to plant something and grown it. Not really, little things here and there. More as a lark than a plan.

Way back when I got married, I tried to do indoor go-karts for my bachelor party, but the plan didn’t work out. So it’s been on my list for coming up on 13 years.

Another item is partly for interest and partly for research for writing, but I’d like to do a ride along with police for an evening or two.

A last one to include, and I’m not even sure what I mean exactly, is to run a 3D printer. I have an idea for some astro gear that I’d like to print, the files are available online (some free, some not), and I’d like to play with the files and print them. The reason I am not sure what I mean by doing this is I don’t know if I want my own 3D printer (which would allow me to print a whole bunch of parts for board games for Jacob as well as astro tools, some other crafting things, etc.), or if I just want to go commercial (I’ve printed a focus knob for my scope at a small industrial shop in Nepean, although not likely to be able to tweak it much nor do stuff on the fly), or if I want to get set up at one of the maker spaces. Sure, I would love to have my own 3D printer, and I *know* a guy with a 3D printer, I just don’t know if I would use it enough to make it worthwhile. I’m tempted when everything is all over to call the guy with the printer, go for an afternoon with some design ideas, and see how it all works.

As a small aside, I find the business model for 3D printers somewhat amusing. You can buy them all ready to go, OR, just for fun, you can buy a kit and assemble it yourself. I think this is one of those tests for irony. If you aren’t buying the kit to put it together yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be thinking about buying a 3D printer to make a whole bunch of things to make yourself. And yet, I’d rather buy it preassembled and ready to go than to futz around with leveling and particle nozzles the first few times.

I have a few other projects on the go too, but they fall under other categories I think.

What am I going to do in January?

So that’s my big list for the year. What am I going to include for January?

  1. Start filling out the retirement planning docs
  2. Sort out my comics feed
  3. Make a snow angel

Do you have any plans this year for finances, organizing yourself, and/or one-off special activities?

Setting goals for 2021 – Part 2: Family, home and reading

The PolyBlog
January 4 2021

As mentioned in my previous post, I already have much of my goal-setting broken down into various categories, so I’m using my well-established headings that work for me.

Family

I always struggle with this category from a philosophical perspective. “Family”, as a category, is not particularly amenable to goal-setting. But some parts are, and it those parts, i.e., organizing myself better, that I am targeting. This year, most of the effort is going to focus on five areas.

First and foremost is emotional, mental, and physical support for Jacob. We’re working on some potential surgical options for him for later this year, and while the surgeries are relatively straight-forward, they are hard for him to understand and process in advance. He’ll need help and guidance with that so that he’s comfortable with the decisions and the process. However, far more importantly, the potential rehab activities afterward can be quite extensive for some of the options. It’s a potentially tough road ahead, or at least some serious bumps, and he’s going to need every ounce of support we have to get through it in a positive mindset. On the more mundane side, we also need to set up an appointment with a new dentist for Jacob.

Secondly, I think there is a grouping of activities around “projects with Jacob”. We certainly have new Lego kits to build, including a couple of large ones. Other projects include assembling a robot, fixing J’s remote control car, constructing a paper penguin, some “Sonic Dad” projects to do with Jacob, and Jacob has a new paper airplane calendar that looks fun. I’m also hoping to do some monthly challenge ideas with him. Andrea does jigsaw puzzles with him, so I think those are “covered”, as they have a bunch to do. I have a bunch of Kiwi kits for Andrea and I to do, but I suspect those will be awhile.

The third area is grouped around the games we like to play as a family, as Jacob has been wanting to teach me Fort Nite for awhile and we do have Pokémon cards to try at some point. And we want to design some new cards and cheat sheets for a couple of our existing board games (Dice Forge, Q of Q). But Jacob has also taken board game design at summer camps and we want to transform two or three of them into actual printed games. Overall though, I think I might start blogging about board games too, based on perhaps a series of in-house family game tournaments we might play throughout the year.

The fourth area is larger, more about our family events. Most of them depend on a vaccine letting us return to travel, but we’ll likely take a decent trip once everything is “over”. Depending on surgery outcomes and recovery, of course.

The fifth and final area is about larger family stuff. I’d like to do some ancestry stuff that I’ve been putting off, and miscellaneous family stuff here and there.

Home

This area is huge. In fact, it is so massive, I’m not even sure sub-categories help me weed through. I’ll separate it from large-scale “home” changes requiring contractors vs. internal reorganization of various rooms by us. I’ve blogged before about feeling overwhelmed, and well, now you’ll see why.

a) For outside, we had initially planned some landscaping work before COVID. Some better setup at the front of house, edging perhaps, maybe some flower bed-type edging in the backyard. We also need to fix our fence (it hasn’t been replaced since the original build, 20+ years ago), and while the back is in good shape, the two sides need a lot of refreshing. We’ll likely just replace the whole thing. We’ve talked to the neighbours already, and one asked us to wait until Spring as they have some stuff just inside the fence they didn’t want disturbed before Winter. Since they’re also willing to pay half for their section, it’s all good.

Then COVID hit, and we’re considering a pool. The pool, though, is the easy part to design. The real challenge is the location of the heater and pump, in relation to the existing deck, fences and house. We can do “a pool”, but keeping all the other dimensions in play may make for a smaller pool than we might want. If we can’t get it done, we’re likely to go with a trampoline for Jacob and back to an observatory for me. Farther out, we would also like to redo the main bathroom upstairs plus the ensuite, but that also has some implications re: surgical rehab, so not sure how we’ll get to that soon. Two other things that were on my list were xmas lights (we didn’t get them up early enough this year so just gave up on them) and additional roof vents (identified as beneficial way back in our home inspection). We’ll likely have to redo our roof at some point, so we might be able to combine the timing for those two things.

More simply, we are also looking forward to eventually getting back into having cleaners come to the house, even if just for the bathrooms and kitchen primarily. And be more engaged to do this frequently ourselves in the meantime.

b) That first area ranges from minor (trampoline) to major (pool). This second area is about a massive reorganization in the house, with changes in contents for the basement, first floor, second floor, and even the garage & shed. Some of it is already done, but the huge list is intimidating.

Basement: As I mentioned early, I now work out of the basement. I have the basics of my office organized for work, but I’m still tweaking the setup for my home PC as well as filing (two things to be moved from the top floor and one to be assembled), lighting, hanging pictures, and curtains. Mixed with my office is a built-in crafting space. Adjacent to the office is my “fitness area”, with a Bowflex and an exercise bike to be assembled. I have my old stereo sitting in a cabinet, ready to be hooked up and configured so I can stream from my phone, but haven’t got to it yet. When I get to my media area, i.e., the TV room part, I don’t currently have my internet running to the VMedia box nor a PC set up to stream to it. I also have multiple video game systems to attach, although at least I have the TV stand already assembled from earlier in the summer. Somewhere in there I have to purge a bunch of old electronics, set up one of the Amazon Echoes that are waiting to run, sort through my movies, get rid of all our old CDs (once the library takes donations again), and clear off an area where we / I can display our various projects that we’ve built, aka a trophy area.

Laundry room: Our laundry room doubles as our basement storage area, and we have some camping equipment in there, some housewares, some basic household maintenance stuff, and long-term storage of some older electrical and computer equipment. I have a bunch of books in there to purge, but at least I’ve started on that, even though it is a longer-term project (3-5 years). Two things are hiding in the back area, hinting at larger projects. First, we have a replacement sink for the laundry tubs. Something a bit cleaner than the older one that looks like it was used to clean paint buckets at some point. In an ideal world, I’d love to have BOTH hooked up, one clean and one utilitarian, but that’s probably overkill. I’ll need a contractor at some point to do that, and we’ll likely use whoever does the upstairs bathrooms. I also have a small project to do, likely myself. Jacob and I bought Andrea a Christmas carousel last year (or the year before???) and there is “some assembly required”. Basically a bunch of pieces need to be formally glued in for the thing to work safely. We just have never got to it, nor even had a space for it. Oh, and I almost forgot. There’s a small access panel / window into the laundry room from a hall, and I have a couple of parts to install on it to stop the door from falling off. 10 minutes work if I can get all the parts and tools in the same place at the same time!

Garage: My garage is currently a disaster zone with a ton of dominoes to fall in order to finalize the layout. I had a small brain-fart earlier today that may upset half my design, I have to do some measuring first. But WHEN I do decide on the final layout, I have to store some sports equipment and tools (we already have the bookshelves assembled for those), and I have some decent options for my astronomy equipment (although a future observatory option would solve most of that dilemma, while ANYTHING is better than it currently sitting in the playroom). But what is outstanding is a decision about the workbench that I have that was a gift from my in-laws. It’s a great workbench, just can’t decide if I use it enough to justify the amount of space it takes. And I could put it in the basement instead but I’m loathe to do that and lose use of it for woodworking projects (I wouldn’t want to blow sawdust everywhere down there).

Shed: My backyard shed is relatively straightforward, I mostly use it to store my snowblower in the summer and my lawnmower in the winter. Plus various seasonal things that don’t have other places to go (like bicycles and sometimes golf clubs). Jacob has new golf clubs and unfortunately, I have three mixed sets spread between the shed and the garage which need to be consolidated and sorted. Plus for fun, my summer tires are stored in there during the winter.

Front hall with a small alcove: Back inside the house, we want curtains for the front closet, I have to relocate my drone to somewhere more appropriate, and come up with a new storage option for the bookshelf that is there (I’m thinking an old-fashioned desk of some sort would be really nice there. Maybe a roll-top? Not sure I can sell Andrea on that config). Oh, and I have a new e-deadbolt to install when I remember.

Living room: Our front room is not spared from the list. Most of the basics are covered, but we need to hang some pictures and paintings, I’d like new curtains for the bay window that will go close to full dark, and then just for fun, we probably need some new seating (couch or chairs) along with a new coffee table, and potentially an end table.

Playroom: The room next to our kitchen is where Jacob does his daily schooling, it’s our home for our annual Xmas tree, it houses all of our game collection (which is still growing), and a table for ongoing crafts and projects like puzzles or Lego projects. It needs a good vetting of content, as well as improved lighting, hanging some pictures, regrouping of games and trivia collections, an Echo set up for the first floor, and new window coverings for it plus the adjacent kitchen (either curtains or blinds that match).

Andrea’s office: While the basics are covered with a decent design, the room would benefit from hanging some pictures, setting up an Echo for her while she’s working, hanging a map, and getting new curtains for the West window and potentially the East too.

Guest room: The GR is functional, but would benefit from hanging some pictures, and adding new curtains. There are also two projects hiding in the room — one to repair a Casio organ whose speakers are dislodged, which should be an easy fix, and a much larger clothing purge for some of my old clothes.

Main bedroom: Like pretty much everywhere else, I need to hang pictures and curtains. We also need to come up with some sort of reading chair option for Andrea, purge some contents from bookshelves and then move them elsewhere in the house, and purge more clothing.

Stairwell: You might be forgiven for thinking the stairwell escapes modifications, but I’d like to hang some pictures on the walls.

Yep, that’s a really long freaking list. No wonder I’ve been overwhelmed.

Reading

With that long to do list, who has time to read? I do! I do! 🙂

At least I hope I do. The main “thrust” for my reading for the year is my own PolyWogg Reading Challenge, and for January, the books are:

  • A. Reader’s choice – any book
  • B. Category: Humour
    • Book 1: Any book by David Sedaris (Amanda Graham’s suggestion: When You Are Engulfed In Flames)
    • Book 2: Any book by Harlan Coben (My suggestion: Deal Breaker, the first in the Myron Bolitar series)
  • C. Challenge books
    • Book 1: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
    • Book 2: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

I’m reading Harlan Coben at the moment. We’ll see if I get to any of the challenge books. I also have a bunch in my TBR pile, including some gifts. So those are on my list. A separate list, but “on the list” nevertheless.

I’ll keep the Reading Challenge alive for the year too as it provides a small measure of socialization too.

Other reading include lots of things I’ve saved in my email in a “bloggable” folder about a variety of topics. I’m hoping to curate those saved files over the course of the year, but maybe that is more about “writing for my blog” than simply reading.

And I should also mention I’m running the Penguin and Penguee Book of the Month Club for Jacob and Andrea all year.

What am I going to do in January?

So that’s my big list for the year. What am I going to include for January?

  1. Start a medium-sized Lego kit with Jacob
  2. Paper airplane calendar with Jacob
  3. First monthly challenge — memorization
  4. Play Fort Nite
  5. Cheat sheets for Q of Q
  6. Clean house more regularly
  7. Finish organizing garage
  8. Finish organizing office area of the basement
  9. Make a list for curtains and blinds
  10. PolyWogg Reading Challenge
  11. Book of the month club

Do you have any plans this year for family, home or reading?

Setting goals for 2021 – Part 1: Health, fitness and cooking

The PolyBlog
January 4 2021

I like the process of goal-setting, reconfirming my sense of “me”, what’s important to me, to think “how do I want to spend the next few months of my life?”. That’s not really true, though. Like the cliché that no battle plan survives an encounter with the enemy, no life plan survives encounter with, well, life. So, while I like planning, and it gives me an illusion of control, I also know that I’m really planning about 10% of my life. Most of it is already set by previous decisions — choice of career, marriage, having a kid, working for the government, working from home, where I live, etc.

My goal-setting is really about how I use about 2 hours of day of non-linked time. And sometimes it is just going to be about vegging out (like the Pretty Woman quote, “Yeah, be still like vegetables, lay like broccoli.”) or spontaneous side-quests. But other times, when I feel like being productive, I can choose what I’m working on, projects that are important to me or that I think I’ll enjoy.

I already have much of my goal-setting broken down into various categories, so I’ll use the headings that work for me. Note that they are not in a specific order of priority, this is from my tracker. When I have the full list, I’ll worry about prioritization then.

Health

This category is about specific health concerns, so obviously the first thing is to stay healthy. Following pandemic protocols, continuing isolation, keeping the family safe. But honestly? That’s part of life now, not really a goal. I mostly just have it on my list so I’ll remember that I’m spending time and energy on it. Or having energy sucked out of me by it.

More pointedly though, I’m worried about my spending too much time in a dark basement with no light, so I’ve bought a Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD) UV light and need to get that going. I also need to get curtains on the windows down there so they don’t have to be completely blacked out. I also have a social worker that I use for occasional chats about mental health, which I may continue; I want to get into meditation; and I have a gift card for a small B&B that I had hoped to use for a weekend getaway by myself at some point, but that will likely need to extend past COVID, alas.

I’m also monitoring headaches/sinuses and a sore on my leg, but those aren’t really a priority. I’m hoping my fitness goals below will have some benefits for this part too, but I’m also going to keep seeing chiro to keep my back in shape, particularly given that I’m spending a lot more time sitting at a computer.

Fitness

My fitness goals are much more ambitiously detailed. I’ve restarted tracking my weight, and have a spot to do it on my iPhone which will be easier than what I had been doing (mix of tablet and desktop). While my weight has been holding steady during the lockdown, I’ve lost muscle. Which explains how my girth increased, my stomach is larger than it was as evidenced by how my shirts fit and some less-than-flattering photos in October to December. Just as building muscle can initially increase weight, since muscles weigh more than fat, I’ve replaced less muscle with more fat. Sigh. That just won’t do.

Initially, I’m going to make sure I get out of the house twice a day for a walk, hopefully with Jacob (11:00 and 3:10 are good times for his schedule). But even on days when he can’t make it, I still need to go. It’s a small step, hehehe!

I have a small workout area almost ready in the basement, and hopefully we’ll (all of us) be able to use it for yoga and stretching videos. I need to get a good stretching routine going. But the real “boost”? I need to assemble a BowFlex and re-assemble our exercise bike. My goal is to have both up and running by February 15th. When the weather improves, I also want to use my scooter more. Of course, once I get the Bowflex and exercise bike up and running, I can merge it with walking, riding, and other activities into a larger fitness regimen.

Jacob and I are also going to go to the driving range at Hunt Club. We may have to do a lesson or two to get J and I back into the “swing of things”, so to speak, but that’s easy enough to do as the Kevin Haime school is operating there.

Cooking

This category is a bit of a double-edged sword. While it obviously serves the overall section if I’m managing to cook and eat more healthy foods, the real goal for me is just to make more things from scratch (usually healthier) and to do more of the cooking rather than leaving most of it to Andrea. Recipes help me do both. However, not all the recipes, such as the desserts, are going to be about health choices. Some are just tasty. 🙂

I tried to get a baking and cooking challenge going last year to help drive trying out new recipes, but it kind of fizzled. So I’m deleting that group.

Beyond that, let’s start off the category with some good old-fashioned bread. While, maybe not old-fashioned. I have a new bread machine that I want to use more regularly as well as some other tools for doing bread by hand.

I also would like to do more for breakfasts, and that likely starts with re-finding a good recipe I had for crépes. I also want to make ice cream, tiramisu, and come up with a really good apple pie option, as well as my mom’s peanut butter cookies that I miss.

Beyond those, I am going to give an attempt at a really complicated cassata recipe that a friend gave me years ago. But most of my energy, I think, will be more around trying out recipes of certain types:

  • More insta-pot recipes;
  • A special short-ribs recipe;
  • Some Dutch-oven recipes;
  • Ground beef recipes;
  • Some from the SEB Cookbook we did for GCWCC;
  • Some from the Coconut Lagoon book, a gift from Andrea and Jacob; and,
  • Some from a new subscription service for Jacob called Raddish Kids (i.e., “radical dishes for kids to cook”…we have a Thai one that is really good, we quite liked it).

I’m tying the “new recipes” in with family time with Jacob too, cooking them together when/where we can.

What am I going to do in January?

So that’s my big list for the year. What am I going to add to my plan for January?

  1. Set up my UV light in the basement.
  2. Go to Chiro every other week.
  3. Track my weight.
  4. Walk daily
  5. Finish setting up the work-out area
  6. Make bread.
  7. Try one new recipe per week, hopefully with Jacob.

What are you going to start your year with in the area of health, fitness or cooking?

My personal progress in 2020

The PolyBlog
January 1 2021

Frequent readers know that I’m “big” on goal-setting annually, ripping off the New Year’s resolutions bandwagon timeline to do my own version of symbolic timelines, goal-setting and progress reporting. Bullet journals, self-help techniques, the Seinfeld method — I read about them all when I see a new tool. Radical incrementalism is my motto, and I’m willing to steal from any technique that might give me even a 1% improvement in my efficiency.

My overall system is aligned with the fundamental precepts of any good planning system:

A. Know where you’re going;

B. Plan how to get there;

C. Set milestones or markers for yourself along the way;

D. Monitor your progress; and,

E. Regularly restart the process to ensure the original destination is still your true goal.

And just for fun? Remind myself that the destination is not always as important as the journey. Singular focus is great, but just like in video games, side quests are fun too.

So let’s see how I did for the year.

1. I survived

Good news, I extended my streak to 52 years for the number of years I’ve managed to survive on this planet. I’d like to say I “lived”, but as I wrote about earlier (What I tell myself about 2020), it is more like “existing” than thriving and growing.

But it was a tough year, and I survived relatively intact. Financially, emotionally, physically, mentally. All were challenges, all were met. Not all equally, not all “well met”, but met nevertheless. I, and my family, are doing okay. Could we be happier? Sure. Could we be healthier? Sure. Could we exercise more, invest better, learn more, adapt better? Sure.

But given the level of the challenge, I’m calling it an accomplishment to not simply curl up into a ball and not get out of bed. I’ve been THERE before, and oddly enough, despite the challenge, I didn’t really come that close to that stage this year. It was tough, I had other mental and emotional issues going on, but not paralysis.

2. I adapted to working from home

I’d love to say I took to WFH like a duck to water, but I didn’t. Andrea and I started off sharing an office, but that wasn’t working, and I eventually moved everything to the basement. I have a decent setup, but even workflows took a while to get “settled”. I love not commuting and to be candid, I never want to go back to working in an office. But I didn’t really feel like I hit my stride until September when I took on the charitable campaign as my “surge capacity” file in my team, mostly relying on me to be the “surge”. Between regular files and the “extra” files, I accomplished a lot. Some in teams, some alone, all of it “pensionable time” as they say, but I mean productive time. In short, at certain times in the fall, I totally rocked being able to WFH.

I’d like to say I managed the work/life balance better for helping Jacob, but that’s a work in progress. We did have lunch together every day, something that wouldn’t be possible without home-based work and school.

I still want to retire in 5 years, but if I’m still able to WFH then, I’m not as against extending by a year or two, if it helps our finances and I have interesting work. I like my new files, made a small change in job responsibilities in the fall, and I feel like I’m on a good trajectory.

3. Purging and reorganizing

With the lockdowns, I started working on reorganizing a ton of stuff in the house. While I’ve stalled in the last month, I’m probably 75%-80% of the way there. I’m feeling less motivated to finish, but it will get done. It’s taking me way longer than I hoped, but I’ll get there. Hopefully by the end of January. I’ll write about it when I get there.

4. Astro outreach

I had an outreach session set for March 14th before the world shut down, but in the meantime, I’ve done some writing on my blog, outreach online to newbies both generally and with some people directly, and I even did two direct in-person sessions before deciding it was just not distanced enough. More risk than I was comfortable with continuing. Probably not “bad”, but not worth the risk.

5. Website redesign

I undertook a massive redesign of the back-end of my website way back in January / February. WordPress had moved to a new “block” design interface, and I had been resisting making the change-over. Ultimately, I decided the longer I held out against the inevitable change in tide, the more difficult it would be to adjust later, so I bit the bullet and did a deep dive. I had a long list of things to do, and if I was going to “fix” things, I figured that I might as well fix them all. Given the volume of content, this is probably the last time I can make changes to individual layouts myself. If I decide to do something like that in the future, I’ll probably have to pay someone who has better tools and workflows to do it efficiently.

Back in September, I summarized the changes (PolyWogg 5.0 – Ten significant updates to my site) and declared to myself that I was now at version 5.0 of my website. As mentioned, I switched my site from the classic WordPress editor over to using blocks. It was a massive undertaking to do that, some 1300 potential posts and pages to convert, but I bit the bullet and did it. I also improved the look and feel of my site (featured images, signature blocks, a calendar / date out to the left, more mobile friendly, limiting the use of tables, etc.) and figured out a way to better handle book reviews, movie reviews, humour and quotes. I also improved things on the back-end for myself (updated the admin menu, figured out auto-posting to social media, namely FaceBook and Twitter using Buffer again).

Between the reorg, and new blogging this year, I have 416 refreshed or new posts since January 1st last year. Overall, I’ve increased the volume on the site to 1487 posts + 160 pages, for a total of 1,588,374 words. Yep, 1.6M words in total. I find that number staggering, personally. Particularly as I don’t “blog” just to post, I post when I have something to say to myself, others, etc. I know people who blog just to have new content, that’s not me. I also haven’t done much in the way of guest blogs (two from my wife about her hobbies). The rest? All me.

I also did a deep dive on a coding conflict that lots of people with more expertise than me had said “couldn’t be done” easily. And I found a solution. Mostly because I thought outside the box. I was pretty happy with myself for that one. Oddly enough, I’m also doing a bit of support for a couple of new areas (WordPress, the gallery tool I use) for people who are struggling to make it do what they want.

And I added some basic Trivia to the site, while also doing substantial additions on photo gallery management, even if it doesn’t necessarily show on the front end.

6. New writing

Early in the year, I started working on an update to my HR Guide, and while I’m happy with the direction it’s going, I didn’t make a lot of progress. The original plan was that Andrea would serve as my first reader/editor, but it was becoming challenging for timing, layout, etc. to do it in digestible chunks so I think I’m back to just me again. I had hoped multiple times to get it finished by the end of the year, but other life events tended to intervene when I was working on it, and it’s not like there is any formal deadline.

I’ve also been a bit slowed by a weird echo of an earlier decision. I reorganized the website, and I solved one problem that also created several others that I didn’t foresee. In the old layout, a bunch of stuff was spread across posts (not pages) and there were different versions of the posts. The end result was that people trying to get to an individual “page” often went to an old version, rather than the current version, and to a post rather than a page. But there were comments on those posts that I didn’t want to lose even though I wanted them to go to the current page. I ended up merging it all into one big page, along with migrating the comments, but I’m not completely happy with the result. There’s too much content for one long page. And I do see it as chapters that break out nicely. I’ll talk more about this in my plans for the new year, but I’ll likely update the layout to something completely different, partly related to my next item.

Just as I have my HR Guide, a “PolyWogg Guide”, I started a “PolyWogg Guide to Astronomy” too. And when I retire, there will be more PolyWogg Guides as well. Since I know that I’m going to do them, it is getting a bit onerous to keep it all in one website structure. Again, I’ll talk more about this later, but the expanded writing is driving me to make a change regarding my website, and I have a simple solution that doesn’t require a lot of work but DOES look like a significant change. I considered something way more radical, but instead, I can go more simply in a different direction.

I added lots of other new writing this year including book reviews, movie reviews (finally getting them back on the site), music reviews (some new stuff), recipes (mostly reformatted as opposed to new), and television reviews (a new layout on seasonal reviews gives me more options for the future).

I even started some astro writing that is more historical than current, and shared it in our local Centre’s monthly publication.

But probably the biggest contribution on writing was tied to “making choices”. I wrote almost 100 “Today I choose” posts to remind myself that I still have choices each day that affect my outlook on life, even if the big ones like staying home or going out are already made for me by COVID.

7. Building projects

That title sounds more ambitious than what it was. I don’t mean sheds or houses, just legos and kits. We did some Lego this year (the large Millennium Falcon), some wooden dinosaurs, a few other crafts here and there. I’m hoping to do more in the new year, and I even have a new crafting area for some of it. I also have a few projects I want to do in astronomy-related crafting so we’ll see how those turn out.

8. Recipes

We collectively tried a few new recipes throughout the year, including buying a new bread maker and making some new loaves. I need to get into that more in the new year.

9. Dental health

This one is a bit weird to take credit for, I suppose. I had been needing to see the dentist before the lockdown, and when it hit, I figured I would likely end up waiting it out. I needed a full cleaning, plus checking on potential cavities, etc. But I need sedation for it anyway, so waiting was easy enough to do. However, when my root canal happened, and the choice of timing was made for me, I piggybacked on it to make sure I got a cleaning in too.

10. Efforts to socialize

For Christmas, I got Jacob and Andrea lots of things for us to “do” as a family (as did they for me), so internal socializing is covered. Over the last nine months, we managed to go to the cottage and did socially distanced things with Andrea’s parents and our friends Paul and Mary Ellen. I had coffee with my friend Sanden, freezing my butt off in a parking lot, and another coffee in warmer weather on a patio with my friend Roula.

But I think the biggest thing I’ve done is organize some online trivia games for friends. It’s a fair amount of work to keep it interesting and fun, and I might do a “kids night” sometime, but for now it’s mainly adults. If people keep showing up, I’ll keep doing it. Admittedly, it’s not “super social” for me, as I’m the host. It’s more for Andrea, Jacob and the people who show up that week, but I do get a chance to chat before and after with people.

Oh, and I kept the reading challenge going for the year, which has a social component to it, albeit fairly passively.

And that’s my list. It’s not super impressive, but I did manage to keep making progress on some things that are important to me. I hope your year was satisfying in some way too.