Losing a part of me

This morning’s exam is behind me. I have no idea how I did it, but I passed. It is the eleventh straight exam that I passed (dating to May of last year), and extends my current streak to 32 of 35 exams passed dating back to November of 2017. The pass streak of eleven exams surpasses my previous best streak which was ten exams (nine of which were technical) from November/2017 through June/2020. I am also confident in saying that unlike that previous streak, this one included four of the most difficult exams I have ever sat. I definitely get to celebrate today.

With that said, I am exhausted. I was in bed by 9:00pm last night (in anticipation of the 4:30am alarm that I set), but it took me three hours to fall asleep. My eyes popped open five minutes before the alarm (which is good) and I was out of bed and ‘at it’ with plenty of time to spare. According to my fitness watch my sleep score was an abysmal 50 based on 3h59m of actual sleep. I am glad that I did a few things last night that would otherwise have had to be done this morning – I cleaned off the table and set up my testing environment, and I prepared my coffee machine so that when I woke up I just had to press the button. I also ran through the pre-test verification procedures that are required before taking an on-line proctored exam. I would usually be more cavalier about that, but realizing that the testing platform was completely new to me I decided to not take any chances… and it turns out it was the right decision!

Following the exam completion I wrote a couple of emails to people who needed to know immediately (which was accompanied by my morning meal replacement shake and half a cup of coffee), and then went to my neighbour’s to pick up Her Floofness. We went out for a walk that was longer than most from the last few weeks, but still much shorter than usual. I hope that within a week or two the weather will be consistently better and we will be able to resume our usual morning walking routine. As there is another deep freeze predicted for the weekend, I know it will not be before Tuesday… by which point I will be back to teaching overnight for the week, so that might have to wait for next weekend.

In the meantime, while the winds are forecast to pick up around dinner time, the forecast high for this afternoon is a balmy -2°… which means that unless the forecast is wrong, or if something comes up between now and then, I will be able to sit outside on the balcony with a cigar for an hour or two. I have not done that since the cold spells began several weeks ago, and I am looking forward to it!

I did not step onto the bathroom scale this morning, but I can’t imagine I would have liked what I saw. I was very bad yesterday. The stress of the exam I was preparing for (which, despite being related to information security, was quite a bit outside of my usual comfort zone) had me stressed, and I stress-ate. That included carbs and starches, in addition to more chicken than I normally would eat to make positive progress. I will do better today.

Have a great day folks!