Another month’s worth of what I have been doing at 8:15 PM every night. Doing this has become a great way to see what I’ve been up to on a particular day along with what else I add in about my day. It’s become a regular habit of what I’m doing and what has happened that day and a wonderful little one paragraph diary/journal of my actions and thoughts.

A Little Background on This Post

I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) every day for the last few months after reading Kitt Hodson’s Pastry Box article from Jan 1, 2015. Which was about how a year earlier she read Erica Douglass’s article about writing down what she did at 11:11 AM and 20:14 (8:14 PM) every day.

I thought this was a great idea to see if I could find any patterns in my nights. So far, I tend to watch TV Monday, Thursday, and Sunday nights when I’m home. Also on the weekends I tend to be leaving or coming back from dinner, sometimes even eating dinner.

Here is my post on what I’ve been doing at 20:15 (8:15 PM) in January, February, March, April, May, and June.

JULY

Jul 1 – ENTERED – 07/04/2015 – Reading Twitter on my bed along with complaining about its new iPhone application that had buttons moved to questionable places, which corrected it once I restarted the application. Still now my favorite improvement, but better than when using it the first time after update.

Jul 2 – ENTERED – 07/04/2015 – Having wine at Tony’s in Cabin John with Jeff, Barry, Hannah, and Andrew. I brought a whole bunch of cheese and cured meats from Di Bruno Brothers South Philly store. For some reason, the different German smoked sausages from the Reading Terminal Market were all moldy and a but slimy. Hung forward can’t store more than a few days in brown paper in the fridge.

Jul 3 – ENTERED – 07/04/2015 – Reading Twitter after two and a half hour nap. Spent part of the day at Tony’s in Cabin John out on the back deck drinking wine, talking, and watching the awesome birds (inside joke you had to be there to enjoy). The woman I had met before at the house brought her eleven-year-old daughter, which made for interesting conversation, she could carry a conversation better than a lot of adults I know.

Jul 4 – ENTERED – 07/05/2015 – Walking from Go Fish in Rehoboth Beach, DE, towards my car after having fish and chips with a side of curry sauce. Was heading home so I would be home in time to do my 90th day in a row of painting wine bottles on canvas as part of my #100DayProject. Earlier in the day I had shrimp and large crabs at Crab Shack in Kent Narrows, MD. I followed crabs up with a trip to Ocean City, MD, for ice cream because I couldn’t find parking in Rehoboth for fish and chips, plus I wasn’t hungry enough yet for dinner.

Jul 5 – Watching the United States Women’s soccer team in the second half of the FIFA Women’s World Cup Final. U.S. Women’s team ended up winning 5 – 2. Slept in until 10 AM and then read for two hours or so in bed, and then headed to Wegmans for lunch, more reading, and a bit of grocery shopping. Came home, read, napped, and read some more.

Jul 6 – Watching Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us”, where they gave other magicians did tricks to see if they can fool them. One of the guys did great things with Rubik’s cubes. The best one was the guy that used a little plunger to do card tricks. He did this by picking the person’s card even when the card was half way down the deck, along with being able to pick all the cards above them with the little plunger.

Jul 7 – Laying in bed reading “Starting and Sustaining” by Garrett Dimon, which is a great book on what to think of when starting a company/web application. In this book, Garrett talks about creating the bug tracker “Sifter” from coming up with the idea of building the application to launching to using other services to speed things up. How using other services, so you don’t have to build them yourself can save time and money, plus a whole lot more. I’m reading the book for a second time, since I have been toying with the idea of building my own web application to store places I want to eat while traveling. I’m always asking people or watching TV about where to eat in different cities. The problem is I end up with answers in e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, text, etc. I want one place where I can search by city.

Jul 8 – Sitting in my spare bedroom working fixing the spelling and grammar with Grammarly of what I’ve been doing for the month of June and first week of July. Also had been doing some work creating a Trello board for my “Got Eat Here” website. Mostly putting in the large ticket items/functions that need to be created. Along with the different phases of the project that are: analyze, develop, test (QA, security, and accessibility), and deploy.

Jul 9 – Again I’m reading Garrett Dimon’s book “Starting and Sustaining”. The chapter I was reading is called”Creating Interest”, which about he managed to get people interested in his bug tracker software “Sifter”. The main thing he said was he started a few years before writing about some bug tracking screenshots and gave away information about bug tracking all along gathering names and e-mail addresses for when they launched.

Jul 10 – ENTERED – 07/11/2015 – Finishing up wine bottle painting #96 of my 100 Day Project. Painted early so I could meet up with my buddy for a late dinner at Bonchon Chicken in Arlington, VA. DOL did an article on him as part of their blog post on people with disabilities prior to the 25th anniversary of ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act).

Jul 11 – Driving to Barnes and Noble to look and see if they have the latest addition to the “Great Discontent” magazine. Slow day of meeting friends for coffee, relaxing, a short nap, reading, some TV.

Jul 12 – In the basement putting stain remover on my work shirts. Needed to do four loads of laundry since I was about out of clothes. Most likely only going to get three loads washed and dried. Slept in until about 9:30 AM and then did a bunch of reading before heading out to Dupont Circle Farmers Market but couldn’t find any parking. So went to farmers market next to MacArthur’s. Ended up getting some kale along with a veggie and Thia sausage crepe. Did some shopping for roast pork and limes at Good Fortune market. Once done there drive to Wegmans for some hot bar food and cured meats.

Jul 13 – ENTERED – 07/15/2015 – Sitting in my spare bedroom updating the Accessibility Camp website with information about their camp on July 22nd. While FTPing the code to my server I noticed and odd folder I didn’t create with and index PHP page in it, which I deleted. I then went through my other websites and noticed a few other odd folders or index PHP pages that deleted too. Next step is to change my password, but I think they got into my virtual server from someone else’s.

Jul 14 – ENTERED – 07/15/2015 – Drinking wine at my buddies in Cabin John. As we normally we talked about many things. One being guy on NPR that was talking about the new Iran nuclear deal used the word “legitimate” twice, which none of us thought was a word.

Jul 15 – Listening to  Yitzchok Willroth better known as @CodeRabbi  as part of his “Wisdom World Tour”. The talk was titled “Talmudic Maxims to Maximize Your Growth as a Developer” sub-titled “Everything I Learned About PHP I Learned at Rabbinical School”. Great talk on just start by doing something, being part of the community, learning, teaching, helping others, etc. The talk was the first time hearing Yiddish as part fo a tech talk or any other for that matter. At least Yitz translated everything so we all could understand what the Yiddish was.

Jul 16 – RE-ENTERED – 07/19/2015 – Attending the 99th Refresh DC at Atlantic Media Strategies. I’m hearing a talk about the need to be able to move up in your organization without having to be a manager or moving on. Great talk and even better discussion afterward to see what others had to say. Of course, we ended up getting into the discussion about doing speck work when the boss told you too.

Jul 17 – RE-ENTERED – 07/19/2015 – Was napping until about 8:30 PM after falling asleep around 6:45 PM. Had been tired all day after being out the prior three might until at least 10:30 PM and then not getting to sleep until after 12:30 AM. I had to be up at 7:13 AM to make it to work on time. I was supposed to go to Ron’s house to listen to him, and others played music but decided to stay home since I was late and hadn’t dinner yet.

Jul 18 – ENTERED – 07/19/2015 – Was waiting in Wegman’s bakery for someone to slice a loaf of bread for me. Asked a nice young woman by the name of Emma if there was anyone around that could do it since I didn’t see anyone else around. She said she didn’t work in the bakery, but knew how to slice the bread. Told her to make sure took her time and didn’t hurt herself or slice off any fingers. It took a bit more time for her to do it since hse hadn’t done it much, but it work out fine. I made sure to thank her for her efforts. Had to hurry back home to see the first episode of Mythbusters which started at 9:00 PM. Ended up about two minutes late, because I had to put away the food from Wegman’s and use the restroom. Earlier in the day went to St.Elmo’s to meet up with the gang. We talked about a bunch of stuff and some kind of deal to help motivate Big Dave to lose weight. Tried coming up with something to do with $20 each per week that he lost 5 pounds, which I pointed out at his size if he tried just a little bit would be easy for the first month or so to do. Next went to Courthouse Farmer’s Market, then to pick up some blackberries and herbs to make pesto. Then it was back to the house for reading and a nap.

Jul 19 – Eating a chocolate cream pie from Wegman’s while writing bills (four). Extremely hot day today. Went to Dupont Circle Farmer’s Market to pick-up a few things, along with having the three different veggie tacos from the stand down near 29th and Q St. NW. After that, I drove around a bit to cool off before heading to Springfield Town Center Mall, which has been updated. Ended up taking a walk around the mall a bit. Got some of walking in without having to do it outside in the mid 90 F  heat, which had a heat index of close to 105 F. Now re-typing the last three days worth of notes into Simple Note, since for some reason one of my browsers I looked at it with (iPhone or iPad mini) didn’t refresh with the latest information. Next need to through in some laundry, which includes the new pants I bought at JC Penney. I also purchased a pair of black and a pair of brown dress shoes.

Jul 20 – Talking on the phone with my brother to see about meeting up for dinner on Tuesday. He wanted to know if he should go to National Gallery of Art or one of the Smithsonian Museums. My recommendation was National Gallery or Art since he would most likely go with the family if they came to town.

Jul 21 – Laying on the sofa watching Anthony Bourdain bungee jumping off tallest building in Asia while cooling off after having dinner with my brother James. He was in town to speak to lawyers. Another hot day where it felt like 95F.

Jul 22 – Sitting at Long View Gallery listening to Kelli Anderson talk about her personal projects at the Adobe Creative Jam event. She did a lot of creative work with paper from building a five-page book that you make other things from the pages like a planetarium, a guitar, and much more.  Most of the day was spent gathering information about how to test mobile websites and native applications besides using VoiceOver (iPhone) or TalkBack (Android) phones.

Jul 23 – Sleeping after I fell back asleep after my iPhone alarm went off to wake up from my nap from 6:30 PM to just before 8:00 PM. Had been tired all day because I had stayed up past 1:00 AM for the second or third night. Managed to get up a bit before 9:00 PM. The plan is to get back to sleep by 11:30 PM.

Jul 24 – Mindlessly watching some TV show called “Desert Garage” or something like that. They were building a show quality 1970’s Baracuda. Earlier in the evening was reading both a book and something on my iPad. I was looking for a nice relaxing evening.

Jul 25 – Watching “MythBuster” in which Adam Savage and Jamie Hynamann were training at a California airbase to be able to go up into space on a U2 plane. After four days of training, both passed the tests and had to decide which would go, which included simulating being in Space under pressure. Once they got to 65,000 feet the water in a bottle in the room started to boil, which showed what would happen to a person if there were problems with their suits or cabin pressure. In the end, Jamie let Adam go because he knew how important was to him to be able to go into space (70,000 feet), which only astronauts go farther. Adam seemed truly touched be his experience while up there.

Jul 26 – Watching “FantomWorks” car show where they are restoring a 1950 Studebaker Commander and a 1964 Barracuda. Spent the day driving out to the Shen-Valley Flea Market, along with the Front Royal Flea Market where I picked up a meat cleaver and a Japanese vegetable cleaver. Ended up getting a bit of a sunburn on my head and ears because I didn’t where a hat, and there was not much shade. Picked up two packs of jowl (face) bacon in Sperryville on my way home. Had to get home by 5:00 PM to meet Doug and Nguyet as they were coming over to put my painting of the horse head on a man’s body that I got in Nay of 2013. Building and stretching the canvas took about 45 minutes. After we had been done, we went to Holy Cow for burgers in Del Ray. I had a two cheese third if a pound burger with bacon and a fried egg, along with fries and a chocolate chocolate milkshake.

Jul 27 – ENTERED – 07/28/2015 – Was watching Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us” on the CW. The “Amazing Alison” was doing mentalist tricks (mind reading). She had Penn come up with a number between and 25 and 100. Then filled out her answer in a four by four set of squares, which all added up to Penn’s number 26. That is both across and down for each row, along with diagonally and a bunch of other ways. Next she had Teller draw a picture that she then drew after having to lean on each other and rub their butts together a bit. Also, there was a 16-year-old kid up on stage doing a great trick about tearing a card into eight pieces that he put back together with the one signed piece backward. Penn and Teller loved the trick because they thought he did it so well for someone so young and in front of such a large audience even though they knew how he did the trick.

Jul 28 – Working on updating Trello board about the “Gotta Eat Here” website and web application, after writing bills to be mailed tomorrow. While this was happening, I’m updating my iPad mini to iOS 8.4. Always update the iPad before the phone to make sure there are no weird thing going on. Not sure If I’m going to update the old iPad 2 with the shattered screen or not.

Jul 29 – ENTERED – 08/02/2015 – Watching TV after updating the Accessibility Camp website with information about the first New York City accessibility camp on September 26, in Brooklyn. Need to add website and Twitter information once they send me the information.

Jul 30 – ENTERED – 08/03/2015 – Walking out of South China restaurant with a takeout order of Malaysia Lo Mein which has tofu and shrimp. Then it was home to watch mindless TV that I can’t remember what it was. My guess is it was one of the car building shows or just bouncing around looking for something to watch to relax.

Jul 31 – Driving with Sam to Bangkok Gloden to have Loa food. We ordered Thai sausage, crispy veggie salad, Pork Larb, which is a sour meat dish with a lot of heat since we ordered it medium. Last I remembered reading the menu for their heat scale that mild was India hot, Medium was Thia hot, which is really hot for me, and the hot if Loa hot. Can’t imagine what Loa hot is like since the medium or Thai hot made my mouth burn. And the final dish was drunken beef noodles. They make some great food. It’s a place I would take people to try new things and something different from what they normally would eat.

Conclusion

In the future, I plan to post this information once a month at the beginning of the following month once I’m caught up.

Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and gets you to keep track of what you do a particular time of the day, along with a short daily diary.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:15 PM some evening, please leave a comment. Or a suggestion of something that is not part of my ordinary life you think I should do.

P.S. Need to go back through these 8:15 PM posts and add any links or photos that are relevant to make them more appealing.