Okay, I admit it, we eat out a lot as a family. Most of that is my fault. We do well when we actually plan in advance, and organize accordingly. But often I let the majority of the weight fall on Andrea, and if we don’t have a plan for the week, it is easy to say, “Okay, it’s 6:30, nothing is planned, what are we ordering?”. It’s basically a plan to use our backup plan. Andrea doesn’t enjoy it as much as Jacob and I do, but she doesn’t tear my head off either.

But to avoid total chaos, we have a three-part rule that we follow. The first two are simple politeness, the third one was ingenious in hindsight.

Part one of the rule is that we take turns deciding. We don’t always remember whose turn it is, necessarily, as we all like similar restaurants, and have our favorite dishes from each. Ones that one of us doesn’t like much tends not to be in the rotation much. On pizza nights, it’s a separate rotation from the normal rotation, and is more rigidly enforced. I like Colonnade Pizza, Hawaaian with chicken; Andrea is open to moving around to different places like Milano’s or Toppers; and Jacob will choose Pizza Hut every time. For regular restaurants, we have fast-food staples of Wendy’s or Harvey’s, or if Andrea isn’t participating, McDonald’s. Subway is popular with all three. Other restaurants are Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese (low-end), Royal Oak, Swiss Chalet, Montana’s, Red Lobster. A few others in lesser rotation.

Part two of the rule is we can’t always choose the same thing in our rotation nor can we choose something we just went to, those are kind of “pre-veto” guidelines. Andrea reacts to that more than I do, and Jacob would eat the same place every time if it was Pizza Hut.

But as I said, Part Three is designed to save marriages and prevent family breakdown. Have you ever been in a situation where someone asks where you want to eat, you don’t really know, where do they want to eat, they don’t know, blah blah blah? Or someone says, “anywhere is fine with them” but you suggest Place 1, they say nah; Place 2, no; Place 3, it wasn’t very good last time. But yeah, anywhere is fine.

Both of those situations drive me round the f***ing bend. Seriously, it used to piss me off to no end. And so I finally got fed up one night and said, “Okay, NEW RULE”.

Here’s the eye-opening truth bomb.

If someone suggests somewhere to go, and you don’t like it, you can say no,
BUT…wait for it…you have to propose an alternative.

You can’t just say no to other people’s suggestions and crap on their idea. You have to suggest something that you yourself are comfortable with as a choice. And if you don’t have a better choice to suggest? You shut the f*** up.

I wish I had thought of this years ago. Years of organizing things with friends, family, dates, and seriously, this rule has changed our discussions. No stress at all. We all know we can’t say no without an alternative to suggest. And surprisingly, it makes us all more collaborative.

For tonight, I probably would have opted for Montana’s. We haven’t done them in a long time, could be good. We all like their food, not regularly, but occasionally. Early on we had tried to go to the one local and it wasn’t open. We’ve gone a couple of times since they figured out how to be open, which coincided more with their patio being open too. We’re not THAT brave.

For Andrea, she has a craving for Red Lobster, and I bet it’s her next choice.

But it was more or less Jacob’s turn, hard to tell when some previous nights were collaborative decisions, but we called it as Jacob’s choice. Frequently he wants some suggestions from us to help him create a menu. We suggested Montana’s (he normally gets burgers), Vietnamese (won ton soup and pad thai…I know, not exactly Vietnamese, right), or Red Lobster (probably would get some sort of nugget). His choice? Swiss Chalet.

I like Swiss Chalet, and they have their festive special on right now. But here’s the small irritating part. Jacob doesn’t order their chicken. When he chooses the Royal Oak? He orders mac and cheese. Vietnamese? Some Thai food. Swiss Chalet? Cheesy pizza. With stuffing from the festive special as a side.

I did point out to him, as I have before, and will in future, that it is his choice. And that he might want to consider something else in the future. But it is his favourite food, even if it is not the best place to get it. I find it a bit ironic, and my parents would chortle at the experience. When I was a kid, well, Jacob’s pre-teen age, my parents used to take my brother and I out to the Miss Diana restaurant, sit in the “nice” section rather than the diner, and order. My dad frequently had veal; my mother too, but she varied occasionally. My brother had varying things. Me? I would look over every item on the menu, and in the end, I would choose fish and chips. Every time. Used to drive my dad nuts.

I didn’t really know how to articulate it back then, but later in life, I realized that it was perfectly rational as a decision. Not only did I know they did a good job with it, and that it was consistent, I also never had fish and chips at home. Most of the rest of the meals on the menu might have been okay, but the ones I was likely to choose were all dishes that would likely have been “different” from the way my mom made it, and different wasn’t necessarily better. She wasn’t some gourmet cook, but I liked her cooking better for most things. Sure, not veggies. But meats certainly, potatoes definitely. We could have burgers on the BBQ, her tenderloin was awesome, and I still salivate at the thought of her broiled pork chops. We tend to burn ours, I have no idea how she had hers perfect all the time. Maybe just volume.

As an aside, back in my single days, if I was eating out by myself, I appeared to be a definite creature of habit. If I went to a specific restaurant, I might have soup if they had a good choice (anything but tomato or vegetable usually, or pea, blech), maybe chicken nuggets, fries, diet coke, and perhaps some ice cream afterwards. One of the waitresses thought I was crazy cuz I always ordered the same thing. I was like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. But not really. What the waitress didn’t know, was that I could have gone ANYWHERE for dinner. I decided I was in the mood for nuggets and fries, and so, I went to that restaurant as they had decent nuggets at an okay price. With possible soup and ice cream added to the front and back. If I had wanted steak, I would have gone somewhere else. Pasta? Somewhere else. Thai? Burgers? Italian? Pizza? All somewhere else. I would occasionally ask about specials just to see if anything enticed me away from my plan for the night, but not often. I had decided 2 hours before what I wanted, that’s why I was there. Not for the restaurant, not for their menu. Just that dish. In a COVID world, you can just order it. Heck, we could order three different take outs if we wanted to do so.

So if Jacob wants to choose Swiss Chalet and order pizza? Sure. If we want to veto it, we have to suggest somewhere else AND feel strong enough to override someone else’s choice. Neither Andrea nor I felt strongly enough, so Swiss Chalet it was.

Today I chose to follow my own rules. I only wish I had those rules long ago.

What choices did you make today?

The bad news is that my dental problems persist; the good news is that the antibiotic has worked well enough that I can still function today, even though one tooth is really tender. I was pushing 8 on the pain scale before the antibiotics, today I went up to about 6 or 7 at the worst, and more like 5 most of the time. The better news is that I ran an online trivia game tonight.

I’ve been blogging for awhile about my past trivia options, and my nostalgia for when I used to run a trivia game by email. 25 questions a week, plus some bonus features, and anywhere from 50-90 players I guess. Anyway, I’m working on some options to get some trivia on my website, but in the meantime, I’ve been organizing some trivia for work. Tomorrow (Thursday) is my first live event for individual players, and honestly, the biggest challenges have been making it bilingual and making sure people can access the score sheets to enter their answers.

I’ve also been thinking of running a weekly trivia game through a Facebook Group, or more accurately, organizing the players through Facebook but running the game through Zoom. My wife has a paid account so she can do Toastmasters events, so why not?

I was going to wing it this week, and then with my tooth pain, I cancelled; with the reduced pain today, and the fact I had a deck of questions ready to go for work tomorrow, I thought, “Pfff, why not?” again. It was confusing for the 20 or so people who are likely to play, were we “on” or “off” tonight, but in the end, we had five screens…Mike and Terry (brother and sister-in-law), Vivian and Phil (friends), Bruce and Jenn (cousins), Stephan (friend) and Andrea (my wife). It took me a bit to work out the various screens and which order I had to go back and forth from, but overall it worked. I think with five screens, we were okay doing individual scores. Next week? I’m hoping to do breakout rooms and add in a “team” component to boost the social component. 🙂

I had a blast running it. And at about an hour’s running time, it was about right. I can speed up the question reading a bit for next week, I gave a bit too much time in places I think, and it will take time for me to do scoring and provide updates.

Today I choose to embrace the past and run an online trivia game with friends with a bit of socializing. It felt good and right.

What choices are you making?

Someone asked me a few weeks ago what “paralysis by analysis” means, and more granularly, what it means when I say I’m a “blue”. For those in the public service who have done the various personality profiles with the Lego Block souvenir, you’ll know that it is a shortcut to thinking about about how various personality profiles tend to act and how best to communicate with them. Lots of people like Meyers Brigg profiles, but I never felt they were very accurate for me. By contrast, the Insights Discovery profile DID work well, and I liked the way of remembering it:

Personality Matrix	Introvert	Extrovert
Analytical	Analytical Introvert COOL BLUE Give me details	Analytical Extrovert FIERY RED Be brief. Be bright. Be gone.
Intuitive	Intuitive Introvert WARM GREEN Show me you care	Intuitive Extrovert SUNSHINE YELLOW Make it fun and interactive

While everyone is all four colours simultaneously, and may even switch dominant colours in different situations, I tend to be a dominant BLUE. My wife is TEAL hehehe as she prefers green at times but often defaults to blue. Don’t tell anyone, shh, but sometimes I think she aspires to yellow. At work, in a management situation with bosses, I’m blue and red; with my team, I’m red and blue. At star parties, I look like a yellow. At home, with Jacob, I am often a green.

But blue is my dominant colour, an analytical introvert. In management literature, people frequently refer to “paralysis by analysis” and it often comes in two forms for blues. First and foremost, the pop psych and behaviouralists use it to refer to people having too many choices and not being able to choose. Research has shown, for example, that if you present someone with the options for 50 types of soup to buy, they struggle to make a decision; if you narrow it to 5, they grab and go. Lots of restaurants think huge menus attract more customers for the variety (no mention of the challenge of running a kitchen with that many food choices to stock, cook and serve well), but it often works against them…customers often have trouble deciding because the choices are so different. They’re practically comparing apples to oranges.

The second use of the term is often with respect to policy analysis, where people become so focused on ensuring they have painted a full and complete picture, of say a country landscape, down to the last detail. Is the barn the right shade? Did I get the lighting right under that tree? Should the cow in the meadow be looking towards us or away? Meanwhile, they’re totally failing to answer people who want to know why the barn is on fire, was anyone hurt, who set the fire, how can it be put out, and WHY ARE YOU PAINTING AT A TIME LIKE THIS? The analysis becomes so detailed and granular that you lose all perspective as to what might matter. In business speak, people often respond, “Can we take this up to the 10,000 foot level maybe?”. Pulling back to see what is really important. Where they can have 5 big choices, not 50 small ones.

Enter the domino

For me, I like the “too many choices” idea, but don’t really like the paralysis metaphor for policy as I think it fails to adequately nuance two sub-options. The first sub-option is already above, i.e., too many details. However, a second sub-option is more like domino theory to me. And it is where I run into problems when I’m trying to do a major reorg at home. I’ve already broken a few logjams this year, but here’s an example of a big one that was remaining and how it can paralyze me.

My garage has about fifteen types of things in it, besides a car:

1. Garbage and recycling
2. Bicycles or shovels
3. Lawnmower or snow blower
4. Tarps (on top of a shelf)
5. Xmas lights
6. Garden tools and basic cleaning supplies
7. Car and bicycle parts
8. Balls and beach toys for Jacob
9. Golf clubs and hockey sticks
10. Tools (manual and power)
11. Work bench
12. Astronomy equipment and tables
13. Spare wood
14. Toboggans
15. Ladder

A bunch of them have obvious places to go either by function (garbage, ladder), by season (bicycles, lawnmower, toboggans), or storage in a bin on a shelf (garden, cleaning, parts). The garage is a 1.5 car garage (two if really small and nothing else is in there!). The real question is how to arrange a few key things that tend to be inter-related as well as linked to other domino options inside the house, or shifting things seasonally to the backyard storage shed.

As listed above, I have two bags of balls that Jacob and I have accumulated over the years. Soccer balls, volleyballs, cheap balls for screwing around with, basketballs of different sizes. Do I have too many? Yes. Would I like to purge? Yes. But while I could in theory decide between the four soccer balls, we have played with them at the park all at once kicking them back and forth down a long field with Andrea. It’s more fun kicking multiple balls between the three of us, a sort of quick chaos, than waiting for the ball to come back to you after passing through two other people. Equally, though, there are some balls in there that would be great to use in a pool, if we put one in next year. I love having lots of balls in the pool to play volleyball while we float around. Some with traditional beach balls, some other balls too for a bit of oomph and weight. Soooo, do I purge? When?

I’ve thought of purging the beach toys but it gives us an option for going to the beach, particularly if we don’t have access to the cottage anymore. But not as needed if we buy a pool. Decision and options are still pending on that.

For golf clubs, it should be easy, right? Wellll…Jacob has a set of his own, and he’s likely outgrown them. We didn’t get out this year, and we were thinking of buying him a new set. But now his uncle can’t play anymore, and isn’t much taller than Jacob. It would be a fair option for him with some good clubs. I also have a few “extras” that I tend not to carry in my bag as I have trouble controlling them. When I retire, I hope to play more often, and maybe then I’ll be able to use them. Do I get rid of them? Do I just store them long-term in the shed? Do I see if they are anything Jacob will want when he’s a bit taller? I don’t know. Heck, even for the winter, I would like to put them away in the shed, but there’s an indoor driving range nearby and with us both being at home all day, I was hoping to go to the range after school a couple of days a week maybe. But it’s not clear if they’re going to be open or not. If I put them in the shed, it’s hard to open in the winter. Meh.

Tools should be easy, and for the most part, they are. I KNOW what I want to do! Yay. Except not quite where I’m going to store them in the garage…on existing shelves, new shelves, this wall or that wall? Am I reconfiguring? I have them mostly sorted as part of a purge this summer, which was great. But now I have to “finish” and some of the other options are holding me up.

I have a workbench in my garage. It was a gift from my inlaws, 6′ x 2.5′, nice and sturdy 2×4″ construction. And I love having it, but I’m not a big handyman. I don’t use it that much. Heck, often I use it as a bench to store stuff on and around, not work on it. But I like it a lot and I don’t want to get rid of it. In an ideal world, I would move it down to my basement, and keep it there. Except I don’t really have room for it down there until I finish purging my books. Another domino in the way.

I have my astronomy equipment in an old IKEA wardrobe, 2’x3.5″, and while it keeps everything relatively clean inside from dust, etc., it’s not a great design. Multiple small drawers, I end up piling some stuff. I’d much rather have solid shelves, but I’ve never bothered to modify the box. And now the real dominoes come into play. If we build a pool in the backyard, it takes up the whole yard. If we DON’T do a pool, we’ll put in a trampoline, and I’ll have enough room to do a full observatory. So with a pool, I need to keep my gear in the garage and have a way to move it to the backyard simply and easily. I have a Gorilla Cart chosen that I would use for that purpose, looks great. On the other hand, without a pool, I would store most of my big gear IN the observatory with a lock on the door and locked storage inside. Which option do I need? Depends on if we put in a pool. And if I buy the cart, I need to have a place to put it (either where the wardrobe is now or where the workbench is).

And then we come to a bunch of spare wood that I have for making shelves. I know the layout of my basement for 90% of what goes where. I’m okay with it, I’ve got a good layout in my head. Except for that last 10% where I need some storage for cables, maybe some small office stuff for drawers, a bunch of current papers, some non-current papers (like in a filing cabinet), and I have a very defined space where all this can go for length and two different heights. In an ideal world, I would just build the shelves and layout I need to maximize all that space. But I already have some simple IKEA furniture to put there, and no other use for it. And to be honest, I’m not the greatest of handymen. I can do functional, but it isn’t awesome-looking when I’m done. But if I’m going with my “dream office”, shouldn’t I be willing to pay for the stuff that actually looks nice too? Sigh. Yet I’m talking about dominoes, and the end result is that it would be GREAT to use the wood I have for that; or to use some of it to build a small doghouse cover for my astro cart in the garage so that I can park it in the right spot with my astro gear all in it, ready to go to the backyard, but without risking dust and dirt getting on my astro gear. I have the wood, I know the design, I don’t really have the talents to pull it off, and it takes time.

And the biggest domino of all? I want to actually park my car in the damn garage instead of in my driveway. It annoys me to scrape and brush snow WHEN I HAVE A GARAGE!

This is the way of the analytical blue. I can see how all the dominoes line up, and I know that some of them need to fall first or I’m just putting in place interim solutions that are a waste of time. But the biggest lever in the mix right now is whether or not we’re putting in a pool next summer or going with a trampoline and observatory reno, and I can’t tip that domino yet. I likely won’t know until spring. In the meantime, things have to move.

Breaking the logjam

I needed to break the mental logjam, and while I’ve been letting it percolate for awhile, I just need to make the decision and live with it. It’s not the ideal scenario, but it’s workable and things can start to move. And I can get my car in the garage before the end of the year.

A. I’m ripping out some wooden shelves and putting in two new sets of tall shelves. At the front of my garage, I have a small set of hand-made wooden shelves. I made them pretty roughly, mostly aiming to have a shelf about chest height where I could store bicycles for the winter. There are various toys, balls, beach stuff on them, but it isn’t a great use of space, and I need to just bite the bullet and get good sturdy shelves that go up 6 feet. I ordered two sets from Home Depot, so now I just have to empty the existing shelves, rip the old wood ones out, assemble the new ones, and put them in place. Then I can start finishing sorting my tools and putting them on there in well-labelled bins.

B. I’m putting a pin in the observatory option, as I have repeatedly before. Instead, I ordered a good cart to transport all my equipment from the garage to my backyard rather than having to make a whole bunch of trips to lug it around. I debated heavily the idea of the “cover” for the cart in the garage, and while I have some ideas for the future, more for short-term coverage than long-term coverage, I’m going to upgrade my IKEA wardrobe with some sturdy shelves of my own design. They’ll be functional, they’ll work easily, and I don’t have to worry if they don’t look super special, because the wardrobe doors will cover them when closed. But it will be a LOT more functional than what I have now. I think, but am not 100% sold yet, that I’ll be able to get rid of a smaller “side” wardrobe too. I’ll need to store the cart in the garage, but I have an option for that too.

C. I’m going to shift a bunch of stuff in the garage. I’ll keep the golf clubs that are in bags in case the dome opens, and move the extra ones to the shed. I’m going to get rid of a bunch of extra wood I have, as I have everything in the house “built” where I need to have stuff built already, so there’s no reason to hang on to it. It’s good shelving, and I’ll use a bunch of it for the wardrobe, but I’m jettisoning the rest of it and it will give me lots of room to hold balls and beach stuff that can stay in the garage

D. I’m going to (temporarily) disassemble the workbench. I would love to move it as is to the basement, and I have a potential option to do that, but I’ll have to check a couple of things first. Otherwise, I’ll take it apart, move it to the basement, and reassemble it when I’ve got the rest of the basement finished and the books purged.

E. I’ve decided what I want for storage in my last 10% of the basement. Part of it is a bookshelf (new), part of its an existing drawer unit from IKEA, and another is a filing cabinet option from something Andrea is repurposing from the office upstairs. It’ll work, and it fits the space. No need to break out the power tools and sacrifice the look, and it allows me to tip the “wood stock” domino and purge it from the garage.

F. Much of the other options stay where they are. Garbage and recycling, tarps (albeit tied up), Xmas lights, garden tools and cleaning supplies, car and bicycle parts, toboggans and my ladder.

Today I choose to break a mental logjam for my garage setup. Or at least to make the decisions and form a resulting plan. I still have to implement all of it. Gulp. On the other hand, I did find time today to also write a long post, work on some trivia options for work, and clean two out of the four bathrooms in the house. All while fighting a sore tooth in my mouth that is giving me a headache but my dentist isn’t open until Tuesday and I don’t really have a lot of time to worry about it this week anyway.

What choices are you making?