— पांच हजार दो सौ पांच —
Short DLU today. Mostly because I went rogue and spent fully one hour this morning creating
this chart in HQ, tracking how many days I spent each year celebrating my Birth Week.
It covers fully 20 years, now that 2022 is done. I mean, all this time I have been saying I started celebrating a "Birth Week" in 2004, which is technically true; I never used the phrase "Birth Week" in 2003, and didn't think to use it until 2004. But, functionally, I still had one in 2003—I did something birthday-related with someone different on seven different days of the week in which my birthday fell that week.
I didn't start taking the whole week off of work until 2005, either. So, I've taken a "Birth Week Vacation" 17 years now; I didn't do it in 2002 or 2003 (starting in 2004 because I realized after 2003 that including work days in Birth Week activities was way too exhausting), and I decided to forego the full-week vacation in 2020 because we were still under pandemic stay-home orders, and just took the full day off for my birthday instead. That year I pivoted to at-home "Virtual Quarantinis" which were a lot easier to schedule around full work days I had been working from home anyway. So, full-week vacations happened every year 2004-2019, then 2021-2022. And hopefully every year indefinitely to come, but, who the fuck knows what curveballs future years might throw at me.
All that said, one clear trend over this time is that my "Birth Week" has gotten progressively longer, the early years sticking strictly to the calendar definition of seven days, then creeping up to 8 and 9 days, and now all but one year since 2017 I've stretched it to 10 days—only 2018 going back down to 9 days. And even that year, like many years these days, had a "make-up" day later in the month of May.
This year was already 10 days, and I'll have
two make-up days later this month; one tomorrow with Jennifer, and one a couple weeks later with Laney, all hopefully part of my "Trains and Railroads" theme. When I told Gabriel about that, he went right back into his characteristic mode of dismissiveness about how I celebrate my birthday (he's literally the only person I have ever told about it who doesn't think celebrating the way I do it is a great idea), acting as though my goal all along has been to stretch out my celebrations the entire month.
Well, that's false on its face and the data bears it out! I still only ever take the week off of work, for Christ's sake. And this year in particular was an odd one, having to postpone my vacation a week and reschedule every single day of it—tomorrow and May 28 are just when I was able to reschedule with Jennifer and Laney, respectively, who could not make it happen last week. So there!
Still, I do aim to keep it capped at 10 days, as a rule. Starting the Friday prior and ending the second Sunday, a "Birth Week" stretched over two bookended weekends can only ever be 10 days by definition. It's really just a matter of how many special people I have in my life who I want to spend time with in that time frame.
— पांच हजार दो सौ पांच —
— पांच हजार दो सौ पांच —
I just had my second-Friday virtual lunch with Karen over FaceTime. For once I thought to send myself a reminder yesterday to charge my iPad and bring it to work, so I had a larger screen to look at her on, in the private phone room, than that of my iPhone.
She's clearly got a busy work day today, as she couldn't get on until she had her lunch ready, close to 12:10, and then by 12:50 she was saying she had "a lot of email screaming at me" so she had to jump off a bit early. Lunch today was just 40 minutes, I guess. I suppose it's just as well; I have lots of work to do myself, and I already wasted an hour creating that chart! Plus, I've had unexpectedly extra things to take care of as well because, and overall this is a
very good thing, I
finally got a new laptop from IT! Let's all bow our heads and pray that this really is the solution to my Office programs, and especially Excel, constantly freezing and forcing me to restart my computer.
Anyway, Karen and I just spent some time catching up. We spent a bit of time talking about my Birth Week, which she was unable to participate in this year (I was on trains, and she's a wheelchair user, which while not impossible—she and I took Amtrak to Portland once—it still poses a challenge). Now, though, I really need to get back to work.
— पांच हजार दो सौ पांच —
[posted 1:00 pm]
