Another Tech Council Meeting

With my Tech Council presentation all done last night and with Johnnie sleeping for more than 10 hours we both got up this morning pretty well rested. And we started the day with a shower. It was rare for Johnnie to shower in the morning since he usually showers at night before going to bed. But I missed that last night obviously and I didn't take one either. And so today we had a very nice warm cleansing shower before heading out to McDonald's to get breakfast. It was like Johnnie was a new kid too and he was back to his pop-pop-pop energetic self <thank God!>. I know this because when he is his normal self, he ALWAYS races me to the elevator. Races me to my car. Races me everywhere! And he was back at it again today. Since I had gotten my presentation all done, i focused the morning on Johnnie's lessons and today we did a little more music and dancing and lots of art. I figured no more reading or advanced math, not today anyway.  Look at the gif of him hopping up and down like a frog. All good to burn up that seemingly boundless energy. And I actually couldn't be happier to see him this way. Nothing compared to yesterday. And I did manage to get him to draw. And draw. And draw. This is his go-to activity at least in my apartment when I'm busy and I can't be next to him or doing lessons with him. And so the picture of him drawing with ALL those finished drawings already on the table? That's for real! He had it in his mind he was going to make little fishes with paper today and he managed to do a good half dozen. Talk about self-directed. I didn't even lead him that direction at all. Actually I thought to myself there's nothing better than to hear him describe each fish <which were made up of course> and their characteristics. THIS is how I cultivate imagination right? For lunchtime I got him to eat some udon  while I had some tuna on brioche. Something light because I had back-to-back meetings in the afternoon. Ahh the Tech Council Meeting. I thought I had enough material for the hour actually. I talked about where we were headed trying to spark a discussion on IS projects for the year to pad up my department goals. And then we talked about the Approval Center that Kennedy had been working on. I thought it was ready for prime time. I just wanted a consensus that this was going to be acceptable as a policy for the organization. I DID manage to get that consensus. And then i got everyone to think about what it would look like work-wise for the next 6 months through the holidays. Safe to say we're going to be working remotely at least through the 1st quarter of this remaining year, which is just fine by me. At the end of it all my meeting had gone 1 hr 10 minutes. Wow. longest it had gone in a while. I guess I did a pretty good job getting material together. And there were still lots of stuff to talk about as I would find out later that Barbara had ideas for redesigning the intranet. Huh? What? No time to think about that. Not yet. And so by the time I got done with the mid-week huddle and it was already 4 PM, I did the bulk of what is now my aerobics routine. Johnnie passed on going scooter riding. Boy that attention on it is fading? or he's simply ready for another different interest? Tonight I didn't care. All I wanted to do was get out to Panda Express Westwood for our Wednesday night chinese food fix. And tonight they opened up the store to order. Still couldn't eat in. But it was good to be able to go inside again. It felt somewhat closer to normal. And we're all struggling to reach out to normal aren't we? Johnnie had his teriyaki chicken and I had chicken and green beans which hadn't been on the menu in forever! And right about dinner time did I finally give myself a chance to catch my breath. The week isn't done yet and I still have performance evaluations to finish before Friday. But a big chunk of it is already done and I could at least celebrate that. And with Johnnie back to his normal self I got him to even watch LEGO Avengers which he hadn't seen before. Something different to break the Octonaut monopoly. He did go back to Quasi, and Peso, and Shellington, and Captain Barnacle just as soon as the Lego movie got done. I had to laugh thinking a couple of years ago it was Paw Patrol and the names were Ruble, Skye, Zuma, Rocky. I hardly remember them anymore. He has actually started drawing a pretty good rendition of the Octonaut octopod too. Before long it was already 9 PM and time to go to bed. Tonight I gave Johnnie the option of taking his shower tomorrow morning since he had already showered this morning. i was surprised that he took that option. I guess we're both showering in the morning. And we're both knocking off around 9:30 tonight or thereabouts. It had been a long day for me. but another day of knocking off stuff on my DO list for the week and now we take the turn towards the end of the weekend...