Last week was a bit quiet and I was really busy so I ended up leaving it. Fortunately, this week's been really busy!
I'm off for a week. I was reading this about seventh-week sabbaticals (something I'm probably going to try and work into next year) and there was a useful thing in there about not scheduling stuff in for time off because the way you're thinking and the things you want to do when you're in "working mode" are not the same as what you want when you're off, so that's what I've tried to do for this week. We'll see what ends up happening!
Today's my last day of potato dieting (for more see here) after three weeks, because we're off this week and I promised CM we'd be able to have normal meals over our break. Results: I'm down 5.5 kg (though my final weigh-in is tomorrow); cravings have been largely confined to those for sugar on days where I'm unmedicated (and I only gave in to those a couple of times); I've generally felt good and energetic—and energy levels have been quite 'stable'—no after-lunch slump despite eating a huge jacket potato; and I've discovered an unanticipated fondness for hot sauce. Honestly, I think I'm going to go back to it after this week and see if I can stick with it until I hit my target weight. I'll also be interested to see how/if things change once I start properly lifting again.
Labour Party units traditionally don't meet in August as people tend to be on their holidays, so my branch decided to do some municipal gardening in a local street instead; clearing out weeds and such that had crept up between the paving stones. It wasn't something I'd really done much of before but was both fun and satisfying—the difference to the street was very apparent. I'm definitely going to be advocating for fewer meetings and more Stuff Like This going forward.
I put together my character sheet for my D&D group's next campaign. Last time I was playing probably the most "moves the plot along" character—this time I'm leaning into being a "acts into their character" character, which should be a. fun change.
My old armchair which I got from my friend Mahesh when he left Brighton about five (?) years back finally gave up the ghost (or, at least, its reclining mechanism did), so I Freecycled it off and replaced it with a nice new wingback chair and a footstall. It's totally changed the feel of the room and I find it much nicer to sit in and work from.
After getting heartily sick of working from coffee shops with inconsistent seating, wifi etc, and wanting to put less of a barrier between me and working than having to walk up a big hill (which was the case with my last coworking space), I decided to get an office, so we'll be moving into that when we're back next week. It'll be nice to have an office again, and it's literally 2 minutes walk from the flat so hopefully it'll feel close enough that there's no psychological barrier. We're also going to move our desks in there which should, again, really change up the feel of the room and how spacious it is etc.
I was talking to an old colleague about my Macbook not supporting multiple external displays and he put me on to this HDMI splitter which works very nicely in conjunction with the adapter I already had and the DisplayLink drivers to give me two external displays! It's not driving them at their native 4k resolution but that's not really necessary for work—it's good enough and saves me having to get a Mac Mini, which I had been considering. I've plugged all my PC gear into a USB switch so I don't need to change things over if I want to use the PC. It's a real quality-of-life improvement for when I'm working at my desk—which I will be more now we've got the office! I'm very happy with it.
I went to London (the first time, I think, I have actually been To London rather than just Through London since before lockdown) to see a... immersive theatre/dance... thing(?) based on the fall of Troy called The Burnt City with some old friends. It was very impressive in scope and scale—I'm not really sure I can adequately describe it, but it was certainly a spectacle.
Went to see Top Gun at the cinema with CM. Was going to be a double-bill with Maverick but we got tired and went home after the first one; we'll watch Maverick at home next week. It was really fun! Goose is my fave, RIP to a real one.