Sappiness Alert

So once again, I should be working. But I needed to pause for a moment of reflection.

I'm feeling so inspired by the family of goldfinches outside my office window. I've seen the male goldfinch come and go throughout the afternoon. He always lands on the same low branch of the tree, surveys the area around him carefully in all directions, then when he's sure it's safe, he flies up under the foliage to the nest. He passes a beak full of food to the female, who has been sitting on the nest constantly. When the exchange is completed, they sing to each other very briefly, and he takes off in search of more food.

During the last few days (excluding the weekend), it looked like the female was eating the food herself while incubating her eggs. But today, I noticed that she's not sitting inside the nest anymore. She's perched up on the edge now. And during the last exchange of food between the male and female, I saw her make the motions of distributing the food amongst an unknown number of chicks.

After a few hours of repeated peeks at the nest, I finally caught a glimpse of a tiny chick's head, poking up out of the next, beak open, asking for food.

:) :) :) :) :)

I'm so proud of this little family.

She had to commit to sitting on those eggs non-stop for weeks, even during our 100 degree plus weather last week. And he had to commit to bringing her food continually throughout the day. And now that the chicks are hatched, he brings her food, and she feeds it to the little ones. What teamwork! How the heck do they know how to do this? Is it learned? Is it instinct?

I still remember when the scrawny little male was alone and searching for a mate. It looks like he's done good for himself, and for his new family.

Confused Monday

So... I should be working right now, but I'm so not ready to be part of the office this morning.

Mondays are strange now. We do all of our work in week-long iterations. Each iteration starts on Thursday and ends on Wednesday. At the end of Wednesday when the iteration is over, the sense of completion makes me feel like the week should be over too. But it's not. We still have two days to go. And Thursday is always a bear because we spend most of it in planning meetings. By Friday, I'm completely drained.

Then Monday comes around. I'm still drained. I look at our iteration board, where all of our tasks are posted, and I realize we still have a ton of work to do, with only three days in which to do it. It feels like a mad rush to get everything done in time.

But here's where it's really strange. We've picked Monday as our "research day". The whole department takes half a working day to focus on research. It can be done together or individually. Most people opt for individual time, since we don't otherwise get that anymore.

So it's the start of a new week, yet we're in the middle of an iteration. We have all this work to be do before the iteration ends on the day after tomorrow, and there's enormous pressure on us to make it happen... yet... we pause for research time.

It's weird.

I'm not saying it's bad. It's just completely different than what we're used to. My work schedule feels... off. I'm having trouble adapting.

Monday is more overwhelming than it used to be. Thursday is no longer my favorite day of the work week because it's filled with very long meetings. Friday is the end of the week, but not the end of the iteration.

I'm sure I'll come around eventually after we've been through a few more iterations. This can't remain weird forever, can it?