Today seemed like a long day! It started with me waking up and feeling more alert than expected. I had two events on my calendar today that were a little out of the ordinary: an orthodontist appointment, and a CSS meetup. I don’t think I was amazingly excited for both these events, but they still happened, and turned out quite well.

I managed to get out of bed before 7am, and downed some tom yum soup for breakfast. Words cannot explain how delicious that stuff is in the winter! Despite staying out in the cold a lot yesterday, I hadn’t gotten a cold, so hurrah for my superwoman powers.

Morning

I visited my orthodontist last week for the first time in about five years. I had my braces removed almost a decade ago. Because I was stubborn, I wore my retainer consistently but stopped because I couldn’t be bothered. You do need to wear it to maintain the alignment of your teeth. Unfortunately, I have bruxism, which means I grind and clench my teeth, which can be damaging to not only the alignment of my teeth, but to the surface of the teeth as well. The unfortunate part is that it happens in my sleep so I am not aware of this ‘habit’ and cannot stop myself. As a result, my teeth misaligned over time, and more than the average person’s teeth.

Last week my orthodontist suggested I continue to wear my retainer on my bottom teeth, as much as it hurt – to see how much resolution we could get out of that. I don’t really want to pay for braces again and it’s really only the bottom front four teeth that have become a little crooked. A week of wearing it almost all day did some good, and today I went to pick up a new retainer for my top teeth, because my old one was nine years old and quite simply – gross. It also had a lot of holes in it as a result of this really shitty bruxism.

My orthodontist also got a little metal strip and filed between my teeth a little to allow the teeth a little more room to move past each other. There was a bit of blood, that was a little unpleasant. It was over pretty quickly. I didn’t have to wait too long in the waiting room either, and I was out within fifteen minutes of arriving. Neat.

I walked to the train station nearby. It was a pleasant walk, and the train station (which I had never been to, as I was usually given a ride) seemed peaceful and clean. It took about an hour to get to work. On the train I managed to read some emails and reply to some messages, as well as tweak a few things on my blog.

Noon

My day at work went alright. I got a little distracted, so I picked up my laptop and moved to the couch area, where I sat in a big rounded chair. I have been doing that occasionally this week and I find that it helps me get ‘in the zone’. I am in a better state of mind to focus. I suppose it is because of my current desk location that I find it difficult to concentrate – I am amongst the support staff and there is a lot of chatter, people with their music on in the background, and a lot of collaboration. It can be good to leave my desk and work in a quiet corner. That’s the good thing about being provided with a work laptop!

I took a little bit of a break from my tasks at 1:30pm to revisit some jQuery exercises on Codecademy. I was listening to music on Apple Music at the time, sussing out a 1990s indie rock playlist, when I discovered a song I simply fell in love with. It’s called Merry Go Round by The Replacements. I did an internet search on the band and read briefly about their history.

Afternoon

Obsessed with The Replacements already, I listened to their last album All Shook Down, the one that had Merry Go Round on it.

Nick and I caught up in the late afternoon at about 3pm, after he went to a work lunch. By then, I had listened to All Shook Down in its entirety. I hadn’t eaten anything for lunch so my lunch was essentially waffles at one of my favourite cafes, Caffe Tiamo. Ha ha! Yum. And naughty. I like sweet foods but too much sweetness can be off-putting, so I got Nick to eat some. :D

After heading back to work I went to my little corner by the couch again. I was quite productive the rest of the afternoon, though I probably wasn’t working as fast as I had hoped.

Evening

After wrapping up at work, Nick and I went to the SydCSS (Sydney CSS) meetup, which is held monthly. This time it was held at the Campaign Monitor Sydney office. It was my second time attending, and I don’t know why I didn’t make an effort to attend these things before. I didn’t like the idea of meeting new people because I was not social and perhaps I am a little scared. Or just introverted. :P

The topics were not superbly focussed on CSS, but more about giving back to the community. The three speakers talked about public speaking, mentoring and open source projects, respectively. They were all very friendly and I think their insight was helpful – it helped me to realise that everyone out there goes through the same thing, and there were definitely people attending the meetup who could relate to some of these speakers’ talks.

I found it in myself to talk to one of the organisers, Fiona, and express interest in speaking at a future meetup. I held concerns about 1) talking about something that someone might have already covered, which would bore people, and 2) talking about… I don’t know what to talk about?! and 3) talking.

But the truth is that for the past few months I have been greatly inspired by well-known developers in the community, and wish to contribute by sharing my ideas. That’s why I began to blog about web development. I hope that I think of something to discuss in a talk, and exchange ideas with others.

It’s making me nervous, but it also seems fun.

Night-ish

Nick and I bought bubble tea before catching a train. On the way home, a freight train broke down in front of our train. Nick and I had to wait for a bit, and we had a bit of a laugh at a small group of people who were impatient and decided to get off and wait for another train on the opposite platform. We could tell by their gestures, as our train finally moved after fifteen minutes, that they regretted not waiting. :P

Now I am at Nick’s house where I am writing this blog post and will be staying the night.

How was your day? :) Don’t forget to blog about your day some time this month and join the linkup! More details here.

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