Not-Work at Work

Work, the location, should be somewhere you enjoy going. I find working at home to be too distracting (or rather, distraction to be too accessible) but a dull workspace makes me depressed. You can't control your coworkers (for good or bad) but as long as you don't work for crazy dictators *coughcoughAcuituscoughcough* you can make your space into what you need it. And I need it to be "interesting".

One of my coworkers was super awesome and ordered a box of 36 mixed succulents from Amazon. He then distributed one to each member of the team and then other random awesome devs around the office. This made me happy. My friend Suko was awesome and used her Google-fu to sleuth out that the plant I got was a gasteria disticha.

It took me some time, but I eventually pulled together a teacup monster to house my new little green companion. I've named it Gretel after a book character I'm currently enjoying. Turns out Dremeling through cups is a bitch. Had to break it up over the course of several nights, so horrible was the sound and so tedious the grind/cooldown cycle. The legs didn't really turn out the way I wanted-- initially had hoped for a more realistic clay/resin type of leg... but I had to settle since I'm actually quite bad at sculpture. I'm not that dissatisfied with how these turned out. Adam pointed out they were rather elephant like, which makes me smile. I still have 2 more teacups so I might take another stab at it...eventually. Once my ears stop bleeding- ugh.

Another thing I do at work some times that makes me happy is bake. I think I've mentioned we have a fantastic oven there. Nice little well-stocked kitchen as well. The Friday before my vacation (you know, the day when it's near impossible to focus on work) I baked some bread at work that I made from scratch. In the office. Working somewhere that allows for such sillyness makes me extremely happy. I didn't waste *too* much time doing it and those who sampled the results seemed very pleased. It was one of the best loafs I've made in a long time.

I chopped up some strawberries and mixed them in with a normal batch of bread... which resulted in ridiculously wet dough. It was quite difficult to work with, I had to keep adding flour, and took over half an hour to work into a reasonable state. After its first rise (which went perfectly) I spread it out, laid down more slices of strawberries, honey, and M&Ms, then rolled it up. Pushed it into a bread tin, waited for the second rise (also nice), and then into the oven. So good. SO GOOD.

Coding with the aroma of baked goods filling the office is a good way to spend an afternoon.

Yay