Greetings once again and welcome to this coffee share. I hope that you’re having a wonderful weekend. Let’s catch up over coffee, tea, and no cake. But there are Marie biscuits which are my favourite. Eating them take me back to my childhood all the time. And there’s only the Bakers brand. Other brands have tried to make Maries but the Bakers can’t be beaten. Perhaps this is a southern African thing?

In any event, for all my intentions to equal the January blogging record of twenty-two posts … I managed five in February. This is a month of two very important birthdays – the lights of my life – those of my niece and nephew, one week apart. Combine that with new responsibilities at work and a ton of work in progress and blogging fell by the wayside (sorry blog!).

(1/8) Memories

Natalie The Explorer – who hosts this coffee share – posted some wonderful photos of Morocco. They transported me back to my 2019 trip. It was quite a round trip – Morocco, Portugal and Turkey. I live in Africa but to get to Morocco I had to go via Asia. There is no direct flight from South Africa.

Marrakesh was my favourite city. I’ll do a post about this soon. Chè and I had some notable experiences.

(2/8) Standing desk converter

I finally received this wonderful item from Deskstand plus an anti-fatigue mat that I stand on, barefoot. It’s been tiring standing for most of the day but I’m getting used to it. I still have the fantabulously comfortable (adverb-alert!) gaming chair that I use when I’m not on Zoom.

I’m used to standing for long periods of time – when I trained or facilitated workshops (before Covid). Standing at a desk is so much better than sitting – the tiredness comes from not moving around as much. When I sit for the whole day it feels like I’ve been on a long-distance flight minus the compression socks. Now that is something that hasn’t been thought of – Zoom compression socks! A Covid innovation for sure – who’s with me on this?

(3/8) Ring light

Ok, so I have one. And a tripod. It can fit my phone and has an adaptor for a camera. But my specs reflect the ring which looks weird. My niece tells me that YouTubers have these blue-tinted glasses that they use that don’t reflect the ring light. I need to get myself one of these. They probably cost a bomb and medical aid probably won’t pay for them.

(4/8) Multitasking and context-switching

This has never been worse! I have so much work in progress, many things started but nothing was done! Who is also experiencing this as a consequence of working from home? Asynchronous messaging keeps coming and it’s too easy to jump on Zoom for a quick chat or to confirm something. I love working from home but this is one part that I haven’t got a hold of yet. If I did I’d be blogging every day.

(5/8) Timezones

Last week I worked across four timezones. The places I ‘visited’ were Berlin, Sao Paulo, Chicago, Denver, and of course Johannesburg and Cape Town. I love it! I’m not complaining.

(6/8) The cats

They are behaving quite strangely lately. Nermal, who normally spends a lot of time with us, has not. He spends practically the whole day and night in the garden. He comes in for food and sometimes grants the favour of sitting with us whilst we watch Netflix (never mind that we are the food providers). As soon as we turn in for the night he’s out of the window like a flash. In fact, he’s like the flash – nought to sixty in a microsecond. In and out of the house.

BC has spent two days AWOL. He arrives at night, famished and offering no reason for his absence. I wish I could put a micro-camera on him or a GPS tracker to see where he goes. His skin is a bit scabby – who knows where he picks these allergies up – so I’ve put him on a grain-free diet hoping that his skin improves! We’ve just entered into autumn so maybe it’s a change of season behaviour. I’m hoping that they will settle back into their normal sedate behaviour soon.

(7/8) Autumn is here

It’s still hot and it still rains but the skies have changed. Cumulonimbus clouds have been replaced by wispy and light ones. Soon the skies will be cloudless.

(8/8) That’s it for this week

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this longer than normal coffee share. See you next week. Have an amazing one.

PS: There are more coffee shares here.

Cheers.