June times
art therapyfriendsTerraformAWSI can't believe it is June already.
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A few weeks ago, after my last post, I met James L for lunch along Marchmont Street. I realised how many bsl signs I forgot, and how I really need to practice. A lady stopped to sign with us in the park, she was visiting her mother nearby. I think it gave her a lift to see us, James explained we used to work together. I can understand lots of signs, and lip read, but I was sad I couldn't communicate what I wanted to say to the same level I speak. It was great to see James, we had these epic sandwiches that I still think about.
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The project i'm on is slowly taking more shape. Last week I had some fun with Terraform providers not working with my Mac M1. The work around ending up being spinning up an ec2 instance (something I've never really had to do) and plan and applying terraform from there. This meant I got more hands on with Terraform, but also way more hands on with AWS.
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I've been waiting for some news about some health things related to my Dad. We got some news, but it isn't all the news, so there's more waiting and being in the space of 'no news is good news' or maybe just, 'no news is no news'. In my notes for this post I had written the words: 'practicing hope as a discipline...', this felt related.
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I have spent a lot of this month in the garden. At the beginning of May, Lucy removed some of her raised beds and we replanted things. This left half of our very small lawn needing grass seed. You can picture me having arguments with some starlings and crows who thought the grass seed was very clearly for them to eat, I'm happy to report they got some but the lawn has grown in fully now. I've planted out so many beautiful things. The garden is now an even more peaceful place to be.
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The gnomes are almost done. I've talked about these gnomes a lot to people, but not in notes. They're a family of gnomes Lucy rescued from the tip. We painted them last summer and we going to donate them to Swindon and Wiltshire Pride Parade, but that didn't happen and the gnomes stayed with us. They were saved from the tip again when we cleared the garden a few weeks ago. They're big gnomes and wouldn't all fit in the car for the tip run and I felt bad breaking up the family. Lucy pointed out the many colours made them a little bit glitch inducing, so I set about spray painting the gnomes in one solid colour.
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Last week I spent Friday and Saturday in London, I got to visit my friend Jen and her partner Harry. This also meant I got to hang out with Jen's lovely cats Doris and Diana. We met up with Zak and his partner Chloe after climbing (yes it felt like climbing) a big steep hill with a few of the city from Forest Hill. It was a lovely surprise to see them at the top, we wandered on to a really lovely pub called The Ivy House. They had a beer and cider festival on - it was an ideal way for us all to spend time catching up.
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On Saturday after wandering around some open house galleries in South London, I got meet another lovely Jen and other great people for Jen's birthday drinks. I got to catch up a little with some of the folks there, but time went so quick it wasn't long before I had to head off and grab a train back home. Seeing people I used to work with was such a lovely tonic. I miss them.
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I tried out oil pastels with my left (non dominant) hand, and writing letters to myself with my left hand (where the non-dominant hand represents your younger self). There's more context to that which I won't go in to, but I've been finding it enlightening and helpful. If practicing hope is a thing, then practicing imperfection is certainly one too.
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Do you ever have those days where you just listen to Taylor Swift for a few hours? I've had a few of those. It started to become a case that every song felt somehow related to work I was doing, or software development work I had done.
On repeat
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