Here is my June 2016, installment of what I had done at 8:16 PM each night during the month. I also found it helpful writing down what happened during the day as a small journal/diary of what was good, bad, or interesting.

Little Background

I started keeping track of what I was doing at 20:16 (8:16 PM) every day for the last month 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) everyday.

June 2016 Events

Jun 1 – driving over to Five Guys to grab a cheeseburger and some fries for dinner. I spent a lot of my day responding to emails.

Jun 2 – Doing a bit of reading in my living room of Aaron Drapiln’s new book “Pretty Much Everything”. One thing to make it easier to read the more text-dense pages would be to use a larger font and have better color contrast too.

Jun 3 – Walking around the Principle Gallery in Old Town Alexandria, looking at G C Meyer’s newest art, along with talking with him ad his wife about what they were up to the last six months or so since I saw them last. It was interesting seeing some of his new work were he was adding in swirly winds or rays of sunlight.

Jun 4 – Reading over the 30 x 500 ask me anything questions and answers to cuddle lounge. Met up with a few friends at St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub. Spent most of my day getting through emails and responding setting up reminder e-mails for Accessibility DC along with taking a two and a half hour nap.

Jun 5 – Sitting at Boccato Lounge drinking tea while finishing up e-mail and Accessibility DC reminders. Was in Cabin John at a buddies house to get ready for his annual pig roast the following Saturday for 500 or 600 people. We mostly cleaned up the yard of sticks, leaves, poison ivy, etc. along with putting up the portable carport where the food goes and some lawn furniture from the neighbors across the street. Once done we sat and had some wine along with a couple of frozen pizzas. When I got home, I read a bit on my bed and then “napped” for four hours. Guess I was a bit tired after working and sleeping the night before for only five hours.

Jun 6 – In Cabin John for pig roast prep with pulled pork over rice with roast hot pepper sauce.

Jun 7 – In Cabin John for pig roast prep drinking wine and chatting with friends.

Jun 8 – walking back into the house after spending over an hour of mowing the lawn on a cool evening with not much humidity. One of the nicest evenings in the last month. Started functional testing of the new elastic search project.

Jun 9 – talking with friends in Cabin John that I haven’t seen in months or since last year’s pig roast. Started doing some accessibility testing of a new elastic search project after finishing up most of the functional testing.

Jun 10 – watching the first mopping of the base on the pigs after a day of relaxing and drinking wine with friends before the storm we call pig roast the next day.

Jun 11 – walking around buddies yard in Cabin John doing clean up before heading home since I was there starting around 9:30 AM. Took two friends and a friend of theirs back to their summer rental (internship) toss be them waiting for along with for an Uber. Hot day and didn’t eat all that much because of the heat.

Jun 12 – watching mindless TV to recover from a week of after-work work for the pig roast and the party and clean up. Was in Cabin John by 8:00 AM to start the clean up process which took an hour and fifteen or so minutes which included taking the tarp off the lighting rig over the smokers.

Jun 13 – walking around Wegmans produce section gathering up some red seedless grapes, a few bananas, salad greens, etc. after having dinner from the hot bar. Worked on testing the appeals search accessibility and usability issues.

Jun 14 – in Cabin John talking about pig roast and any other thing that came to our minds while tasting beers.

Jun 15 – sitting in a conference room at Blackboard listening to Dylan Barrel’s talk about agile accessibility as part of a team’s build process.

Jun 16 – walking from Toki Underground to Maketto to kill time and say hello to the staff with a friend who is moving out of town next week.

Jun 17 – eating Pho at Pho Viet after going to JC Penney to pick up some new casual work pants, polo shirts, a pair of shorts, and a few t-shirts because of the 40% – 50%off for the Father’s Day sales.

Jun 18 – Met friends at St. Elmo’s for coffee and then headed to Swing Coffee Roasters to work on dealing with old e-mails. Went to Pho 75 for dinner after a few hour nap. Once done went to Bocatto Lounge for tea while reading and taking notes from newsletter e-mails.

Jun 19 – I was watching TV. Mostly Viceland for most of the afternoon after driving around DC. Had tried to go to DuPont Circle Farmers Market but couldn’t find parking so went one near Bear Cafe in NE. Stopped for late breakfast at  American City Cafe if a cheese omelette, hash browns, rye toast, and a side of sausage.

Jun 20 – drawing negative space at the Torpedo Factory in my first basic drawing class. Worked on figuring out why Magic 13 with IE 11 wasn’t allowing the user to click any links on the new OFCCP home page. The issue ended up being a pop-up that was blocking non-secure content, but once the content was allowed the links worked.

Jun 21 – It’s Tuesday, so I’m in Cabin John with friends having some wine, along with a spicy pork ragu with penne pasta. Spent the time all over the place talking about politics and how messed up we will be depending on who wins the election in the fall. Think either primary candidate will not be the best for the country, but one could be worse than the other, and it all depends on what side of the fence you are on. We all agreed that if you don’t vote you’re not helping the problem.

Jun 22 – Reading Twitter while waiting to be seated at Caphe Banh Mi. Ended up sitting next to a couple that introduces themselves. They had never been there so I made a few food suggestions and then we started talking about other food places and he suggested a few places in and near San Diego that I added to my list of places to eat. And I suggested to them Las Cuatro Milpas for tacos and tamales with red beans and rice, along with Tajima Ramen Bar Hillcrest for Ramen. Plus, I mentioned how when I go with three or more people we got all four types so we can share and try each one, which is the best way to get to try all the kinds and pick a favorite. The reason I was there for dinner was that I had gone to the Torpedo Factory to pick up my Basic Drawing class supplies to have for Monday’s class.

Jun 23 – Sitting in Wegman’s lounge after grabbing dinner reading Twitter before going grocery shopping. Did more work on reviewing other agencies accessibility issues.

Jun 24 – driving from Wegmans towards Dairy Godmother after grabbing dinner and cashing in my change, so I had cash to walk around with while I waited for my new debit/credit card to show up Saturday. Never stopped at Dairy Godmother because I was too full from dinner earlier. Spent most of my day fighting fires with accessibility issues for another agency within DOL.

Jun 25 – Driving over to Boccato Lounge to grab some gelato and read a bit, which is mostly my open tabs in my browser of articles and blog posts I opened either from Twitter or other articles or posts I was reading. Went to bed at midnight last night and woke up before 7 AM and stayed up reading on the internet until about 8:15 AM. Then fell back to sleep until 10:10 AM. Before leaving for St. Elmo’s to meet friends I checked and my new debit/credit card had not arrived yet. After meeting with my friends, I stopped back home, and the card was there. I then activated it right away and proceeded to go to 7 Eleven’s ATM to get some cash. Next went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roaster for a hot chocolate and to answer e-mails and read articles and blog posts. Went to Pho 75 for lunch before heading home to nap for close to three hours.

Jun 26 – deleting photos and visors from my iPhone so iCloud will back up my phone. For some reason, iTunes thinks all the photos and videos are still there. Went to Hoffman 22 to Yo-yo Ma’s new movie “Music for Strangers” which is a documentary about the Silk Road Project. Was interesting seeing how passionate the musicians from countries around the globe and how some can’t go home and perform? Then went to M. E. Swing Coffee Roaster and St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub to respond to e-mails, along with taking notes from articles. Once done there went to  Pho 75 to get a late lunch of a small bowl of Pho with fatty brisket and raw round eye along with extra noodles and extra fatty brisket. Then headed to Boccato Lounge for tea and more article notes.

Jun 27 – basic drawing class that wasn’t going so well. Hoping it was a bad day and not things to come. Was having trouble getting things to scale. Spent my morning finishing up making the weekly ETA HTML page accessible.

Jun 28 – in Cabin John celebrating the beers kids one year anniversary of hanging out with the group while eating homemade beef beer stew. Started making the RFD Word document accessible.

Jun 29 – cleaning out the fridge of old moldy food since it’s garbage night. Didn’t get as much work done as I planned because a few odd things that came up during the day.

Jun 30 – sitting in the audience at Agency Chief at Refresh DC to listen to Kit talk about UI animation. It was great to see a few friends I hadn’t seen in years. One has been busy while the other moved out of the country for a year and a half then was home when the family was ill, and finally, she and her husband left the country to travel to Asia for over six months.

Conclusion

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 entry to see what you have done or can accomplish over the course of a year.

If you want to meet up to do something exciting at 8:16 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.

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, and May.

JUNE

Jun 1 – Working in WordPress to create a new blog post about “What I was Doing at 8:15 PM” for both April and May. Posted my March blog post of “What I was Doing at 8:15 PM” and even go comment spam in less than an hour. Busy day working on reviewing a few PDF’s for accessibility issues and updating another developer dataset page to be more mobile friendly. Also attended the APIv2 planning meeting to figure out the board items we still need to finish before deploying later this month.

Jun 2 – Watching “Trip Flip” on Travel Channel in Michigan. The show was shot during the winter, so they did quad racing on a frozen lake, dog sledding, luging, etc. more document reviewing and fixing dataset pages to be more mobile friendly.

Jun 3 – Sitting at my desk in my spare bedroom writing my rent check to be deposited on Friday morning, along with writing my bills to be mailed on Friday too. The day spent making another page with TABLEs more user-friendly on mobile devices, along with attending a few meetings and re-reading a testing and accessibility document for like the fifth time in two months.

Jun 4 – Stayed home from pig roast prep because it was raining and was watching TV.

Jun 5 – Talking with G C Meyer about his new paintings at Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. Ended up buying one of Gary’s smaller pieces with a red chair. Spent the day in Cabin John with most of the pig roast staff.

Jun 6 – Doing a bit of clean-up with Bev and Jeff before we headed home after we were done at the pig roast. Spent eleven hours in Cabin John working and attending the pig roast.

Jun 7 – Cleaning my apartment in preparation for my father on Monday, along with watching a bit of TV. Managed to get up at 6:13 AM so I could help clean-up after the pig roast. Even managed to get painting number 63 of my #the100DayProject completed since April 6th.

Jun 8 – Sitting in my spare bedroom cleaning up my e-mail while my father watches Fix News “O’Reilly Factor”.

Jun 9 – Sitting in my buddies basement Cabin John, MD, drinking Italian wines, while eating homemade lasagna and watching the first round of the women’s FIFA World Cup game between Brazil and Japan.

Jun 10 – Catching up on Twitter while watching “American Picker’s” after a day of taking an overdue eLearning class (overdue 194 days). Next reviewed the content of a document on how to make eLearning classes accessible, went to Blackboard to meet JoAnna Hunt to see their conference space to start having Accessibility DC there soon. On the way to Blackboard saw a guy with Red Devils horns, Purple Heart-shaped sunglasses, black tank top, and a black thing dancing and tweaking near the Chinatown metro station entrance.

Jun 11 – Watching TV and reading Twitter. Nice relaxing evening after a busy week at work.

Jun 12 – Sitting in the Clarendon Apple Store as the third person in line to buy something. Never head to be put on the waiting list at a store to give them $500 – $600. After waiting ten minutes went up to ask how it was going, and they told me I still had two people aged if me. At that point, I was getting frustrated because I was paying for parking since they don’t validate irking anymore. Think one of the managers heard while walking by and had someone bring him a black 64 Gb iPad for more me.

Jun 13 – Walking to Cache Bahn Mi to grab pork steamed buns and a pork and veggie noodle dish. After going to St. Elmo’s for a short bit and then a quick stop at home I headed to Frederick, MD, to get my beard trimmed up, after over 22 months of doing nothing. All I did was trim the sideburns and mustache. Had a great time wandering around Frederick before my beard trim. Enjoyed the antique mall next door, along with Market St. Grabbed late lunch at the Wine Kitchen. Had Mac and Cheese fritters, duck spring rolls, steamed pork buns. Would have liked to eaten dinner at Volt, but didn’t want to wait until 8:45 PM because 6:00 PM was too early to eat again after late lunch at 4:00 PM.

Jun 14 – Changing the sheets on my bed while washing laundry in preparation for Char, Jim, Jesse, and Vicky stopping to stay at my place on their way south for vacation. They will be stopping on the way back up as well. Work up a bit before 7 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Which I turned into a positive and got to the grand opening of the Alexandria Wegmans. Spent an hour or so wondering around then checked out, put purchases in the car, and came back in to grab a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich on an English muffin. Once I was done eating, I grabbed a case of water for under $3, plus some avocado sushi for later. I was home before 11:00 AM. Read and grabbed about a three and a half hour nap.

Jun 15 – Watching “Tiny House Hunting” about finding a tiny home in Baltimore’s Fells Point neighborhood. Mostly watching to see what you get in a tiny home since that is what I think I would be looking for if I ever buy one. It’s that or one out in the woods or maybe portable.

Jun 16 – Checking my grammar with Grammarly for my responses to the three main questions asked by XOXO Festival to see if I can be part of the lottery to get a ticket for this September’s event. The three questions and answers are the following:

• What do you do? Inform and teach people the importance of web accessibility as my day job at Department of Labor and whenever anyone asks outside out of work too. Along with spending time away from the computer with great friends over food and wine.
• What are you working on right now? Getting monthly DC accessibility meeting back going and figuring out the best way to find more time to work on the side project of keeping track of places I want to eat when I travel. Plus, have been participating in the 100 Day Project. I’m on my 72 consecutive days of painting wine bottles on canvases.
• What’s something you’ve made that you’re proud of? Starting www.AccessibilityCamp.org so others will learn about accessibility, which is a free to attendees. Other’s have run events around the globe in the following cities: London, Tokyo, Toronto, San Francisco, Los Angles,  Boston, Seattle, Guelph (Canada), Missoula, MT, and many more.

Jun 17 – Watching “Tiny House Hunting” after doing a bit of Twitter reading because it was a busy day at work. Attended meeting about new iPhone application so we could get an understanding of the application before it was time to test. Plus, face a few suggestions of possible accessibility issues. Did a bit of QA work, along with did a bunch of document review for content. Now off to grab some takeout Chinese food.

Jun 18 – ENTERED – 06/19/2015 – Walking from Atlantic Media Strategies office were Mariesa Dale talked about UX Hooks at Refresh DC. We were head to District Commons over near Foggy Bottom metro and a bit after 8:25 PM it started to rain hard. Luckily we were near a Residence Inn hotel that had a large awning that about eight or ten of us got under to stay dry until it blew over in about ten or fifteen minutes. Continuing to get developer datasets ready for deployment end of next week. Spent part of the afternoon in meeting about work using DHS’s Trusted Tester program and implementing a larger accessibility plan too.

Jun 19 – In my spare bedroom checking my grammar using Grammarly for my June entries of what I was doing at 8:15 PM each night.

Jun 20 – ENTERED – 06/21/2015 – Driving to Manassas, VA, to drop off co-worker after our day trip to Philly. Prior to this, I drove through the worst thunder and lightning storm I have ever driven through. Since maybe the time bring my aunts car back up north from Florida with my father when I was a new driver in my mid teens.  Had a great day wandering around Reading Terminal Market trying a few different sandwiches from Di Nic’s (pork and sharp provolone, roast beef, and meatball with sharp provolone). Then it was a bit of shopping and off to Indy Hall to meet Sean and pick-up my art from my last trip. Sean had given my co-worker the ten cent tour before we each bought a JFDI print from the latest art show. Once done at Indy Hal we headed to South Philly to Di Bruno Brothers to get too much cheese and cured meats. The last stop before heading home was at Isgro’s for cannoli’s.

Jun 21 – Starting to read Bloomberg Magazines June 15, 2015, edition entitled “What is Code?” by Paul Ford (@ftrain). Figured it will be easier to read over time since it’s over 38,000 words from what I’ve been told on Twitter. Lazy day today. Went to sleep at 12:45 or so after falling asleep watching TV on the sofa. Woke up at about 8 AM, read in bed for a while and did a few other things, and then went back to sleep until 12:56 PM. Haven’t slept past noon in years even with going back to bed.

Jun 22 – Again reading Bloomberg Magazines June 15, 2015, edition entitled “What is Code? by Paul Ford (@ftrain). At this, rate I will get through the 112 pages in a week or so. That is of course if u can Read about 20 or so minutes per day. The day was spent trying to figure out why the in-page anchors for the mobile friendly dataset pages were not working. After a few of us looking into reasons for the issue, it ended up being a Foundation CSS issue or a possible JavaScript not letting the action to happen. The issue ended up being duplicate IDs, which were needed because part of the page was displayed for desktop view and the other when on a mobile device. One was set to “display:none” while other is being displayed. The fix ended up being adding different link anchors depending on which device you were using.

Jun 23 – ENTERED – 06/29/2015 –  Made it into District Taco with Char, Jim, Jesse, and his girlfriend Vicky as the rain started coming down hard. It was one of those big huge storms, which didn’t seem that bad being in a winder lock building. Char and her family were staying at my place on their return trip from Myrtle Beah, SC, on their way to back home to Boston, AM. I ended up getting two basic breakfast tacos (egg, cheese, and potatoes) with chorizo, along with two fish tacos with extra chipotle mayo cabbage slaw. Jesse managed to eat six fish tacos. After dinner, we headed to Buzz Bakery to have cupcakes to keep Jesse’s streak of going there every time he has been to DC.

Jun 24 – ENTERED – 06/25/2015 – Tried calling my youngest brother to see how things are going and had been reading a bit of Twitter.

Jun 25 – Talking with my youngest brother to see if he was traveling to our sisters in Columbus, OH, for the 4th of July. He explained how much fun it had been getting his boat back to Buffalo, NY, from Detriot, MI, along with how his new job was doing.

Jun 26 – ENTERED – 06/28/2015 -Just finished ordering dinner at Bangkok Golden with Sam and Eric. We ordered six different dishes. Some of the dishes were: crispy sour sausage, veggie fried rice, duck and veggie dish, drunken pork noodles, pork belly and broccoli rabe. My sandwich that had tons of different flavors and lots of different textures, along with a bit of heat in a few dishes.

Jun 27 – ENTERED – 06/28/2015 – Sitting in Vaso’s Kitchen with some of the Saturday morning St. Elmo’s Coffee Pub crew. They wanted me to order the wine for the group. They wanted a white and a red. I ended up ordering the Crab Stuffed Flounder with lemon wine sauce.

Jun 28 – Watching the American Pickers episode where they are picking gas and oil stuff, along with fire equipment for Dollywood. Slept in until about 8 AM. Did a bit of reading in bed before heading to Hoffman 22 movie theater to first watch “Mad Max: Fury Road”, then I saw “Inside Out”. Both were interesting movies for different reasons. Mad Max was about getting away from someone or possibly something that is controlling you and maybe realizing being back where you were could be better for you with a few changes. “Inside Out” was great in seeing how people make decisions at a young age. It would apply to any age since joy, sadness, disgust, safety, and anger play a big role in most if not all of people’s decisions. Another thing was seeing how some core memories can set the way your life will go, but others can unravel the whole thing.

Jun 29 – ENTERED – 07/01/2015 – Sitting at a table in Matchbox Pizzeria on 14th St. near U St. NW, playing euchre with the DC Euchre meet-up group. Hadn’t played any euchre in over a year or two, which wasn’t helpful, since I lost every game I played. I played with five different patterns and never really got to many good cards. The few times I got good cards the other team or my pattern had the opposite of what I had. Plan on going back to play in the future. The day was spent fixing up and figuring out the accessibility issues with the new Quarry website and the mobile version of developer.dol.gov.

Jun 30 – Taking an hour and a half nap on my bed, since I’ve been tired of staying up late but getting up early to make sure I’m in work in time. More time spent funding and helping others fix website issues, along with making sure API issues are now corrected, which they seem to be.

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.