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July 5, 2021 12:06 PM

I need a break

"You always say that"

Yeah, I know.

June 8, 2021 11:24 PM

Top 7 moments of my trip to the Pacific Northwest

• eating soft serve pineapple dole whip while getting ginger beer refills
• walking through a neighborhood, stumbling upon a cool bridge leading to a 5 mile hike
• finding a beverage truck near the end of a trail, having a nice conversation, and drinking watermelon lemonade
• enjoying a quiet moment at a beautiful viewpoint in Bridal Veil (that I can't find a link for, which I guess is why it was so quiet)
• getting a tour of my co-worker's wacky and amazing house
• breaking up a tense moment, joking with my sister behind a towel, saying things that only we could possibly find funny
• catching up with my older cousin in Seattle

May 17, 2021 6:19 PM

The food blog before the food blog

This is a set of 9 10 blog posts that I wrote in 2018, detailing the food the I made and ate over the course of 9 10 weeks. I had a very specific goal of having a $30 a week food budget, and I basically failed that because I always do :P I had considered just inserting these entries at the time that they were written, but I decided I wanted one long-ass blog post instead. With commentary!

Weekly Food Review 1: 8/10 - 8/17

Welp, one week in, and I've already failed to stay within my food budget. It really wasn't too bad considering I did stay under $30 in groceries, but I gave myself a special birthday treat and I was also obligated to get coffee at a programming meeting. (Girl Develop It! I miss those meetups)

90% of the meals I make are from Budget Bytes (If you've never checked out this blog, you need to. It's amazing. I think it actually changed my life.) So this week I made three different dishes:

• Greek Chicken Pasta Salad (4 meals)
• Yellow Rice Chicken Skillet (5 meals)
• Sesame Glazed Salmon and Green Beans (5 meals)

If you actually read through those recipes carefully, you'll notice that I stretched out the chicken skillet to 5 meals--one of the meals just didn't have much chicken, and I supplemented it with an egg. I actually still have one more meal of this left. I also really stretched out the salmon meal, but that's because I bought over a pound of salmon and a pound of green beans.

I don't know if it was because I ate way too much in the two weeks prior to this, but I was feeling really hungry a lot of the time. For next week, I'm going to plan four dishes and make the portions a little larger. I know, I still need to stay within my budget. Salmon was about a third of the grocery bill, so I think I can replace that with something cheaper and more filling. For this first week, I didn't actually think about how much each meal would cost, nor did I utilize much that was already in my kitchen or think about what foods were on sale.

My eating out meal was at a fancy restaurant because I had a $30 off birthday coupon! (Man I also miss birthday coupons) Of course I still ended up spending a lot on it because of tips. I've already committed to a meal out next week, but I'll actually try and see if I can keep my grocery bill under $20 for this next week.

March 7, 2021 11:57 AM

How to get more sleep at night

I was dealing with insomnia for about three weeks during this past month. I know quite a few people that have had trouble sleeping throughout their whole lives. But that's not me. When I go to bed, it takes me a few minutes to fall asleep, and then I usually end up sleeping more than 8 hours. I feel restless if it takes more than 5 minutes for me to fall asleep.

So you can imagine how maddening it was for me to not be able to sleep. I would wake up after a few hours of sleep and just stay awake for hours more, feeling so tired, but not being able to do anything about it. So, I did what I always do when I'm having a problem: I asked people for advice.

Just take some melatonin!

Nope, nope, nope, that's a last resort.

Try meditating.

Man, meditating is hard. I tried this over the past summer when I found myself consistently waking up way earlier than I wanted to. I don't think I ever figured it out.

Use a humidifier.

My nose gets stuffed up every night (and this is a problem I've had all my life) but it definitely makes it harder for me to fall back asleep. I think the increased humidity helps.

Take it easy.

Yeah, I know. I know this is mainly caused by increased stress. I cleared a lot of things off my plate at work. I started taking naps during the day. I took a break from most of my side projects. I think it helped.

Get more exercise. Do some yoga.

Taking long walks, helping a friend move, making my runs longer--that all was to the effect of getting more exercise. I think it helped. I thought about the yoga thing, but yoga is boring.

Turn the heat down in the bedroom and use a weighted blanket.

Okay I think this actually helped a lot. I turned off the heat completely in my room, and I started sleeping with three blankets. Thanks co-worker.

Call me at night to get your thoughts out.

"I know this is a saying, but I mean this literally. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Thanks sister.

I don't think I feel completely normal again, but it's a lot better now. Better enough for me to write a blog post about it, and for me to make some ascii art.

          .-~~-. 
         /  .", \
         \ ;  ;  \
    {`'~.,-.,',-~-. 
     '. ;   : .,_,' 
       `'._.'`~.   !
      ,' ,'`'.,.'  |  .-~'
       ~'          |,'  .'
              `~-. |'-='
              '.  '|
         ,.,.,.,`='|,.,.,

A lot of the times when I try to make ascii art, it's
a huge struggle. But this, this flower, let's call it a
daisy, just kind of came together.

February 3, 2021 9:50 PM

This is what I love about my job

On Monday, I had an issue that I needed to investigate. I work on property tax software, and our client had asked why there was a pending refund on a bill from years ago. The business analysts (BAs) that looked into this weren't able to make sense of the numbers, so they asked for a developer's help.

So I'm asking the BAs questions on things that I definitely should have learned in my property tax training two years ago. I'm scribbling tax amounts in my notebook and doing math and getting confused because none of the numbers I'm getting match what our tax software was generating. There are taxes and fees and penalties and they weren't adding up. But I'd ask another clarifying question. And I'd redo my math. And I kept doing that, until it all clicked.

I explain it to the BA, and everything finally makes sense to him too. He in turn explains it to the client.

Client: Thank you for the detailed explanation, [BusinessAnalyst]! I will go ahead and approve the refunds to be processed now that we have a better understanding of why they were generated and how it was calculated. Really appreciate it!

Business Analyst: Thanks again on this one Kirsten. The county appreciated the detailed explanation (which I adapted from what you provided)

There's just something really satisfying about taking something complicated and confusing, making sense of it, explaining it to someone else, and seeing it all click in their head too.