This is the last entry in my series on a typical day in my life. The first two parts are here and here. This part will cover my evenings after work.
Evening Time To Get Away
Once I get home, Jessa and I usually discuss dinner – in the same way I imagine very few couples do it:
“What do you want for dinner?”
“Food. What do you want for dinner?”
“Food.”
“What kind of food?”
“Edible food”
“What kind of edible food?”
“Good edible food.”
“Oh, too bad, we don’t have any of that.”
This discussion usually doesn’t last too long before someone folds and we decide what to eat. Once dinner is ready, we settle down for our one hour of television per day – an episode of some show that we like, watched on DVD. We batch watch shows by season, then move on to something else. Our current rotating list is: Criminal Minds, Doctor Who (there’s always more Doctor Who), Leverage, Millennium, or Supernatural. We just recently finished White Collar, and our previous shows have included such things as Death Note, Stargate SG1, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Warehouse 13 among others. This is Jessa’s and my family time and shared experience together, and gives us things to talk about.
From this point until about 9:00pm (which can sometimes be as little as a half-hour) I have some free time. Sometimes I use this time to poke at projects, do some web surfing, or get a bit of game time in. Other times, I try to satiate any curiosity on some topic or think through something that occurred to me during the day. Usually, I work on small projects during this time so that I have a chance of making good progress, or evening finishing them.
Twilight Time
At 9:00, Jessa and I go on our evening walk. Our walk is about a mile and a half around the neighborhood and nearby park and serves as a chance to get a bit more exercise in and chat about the day (or anything else that catches our fancy). With all the walking I do during the day, this almost always gets me to my goal of 10,000 steps, and always feels good to get out in the cool for a bit. We chose 9:00 primarily because things have usually cooled off by then, and, because it’s dark, the bugs aren’t out anymore. I suspect that will become earlier in the evening as we transition in to fall and winter, but we’ll see.
After our walk, I spend a few minutes closing everything down, turning off all the lights, and checking all the locks before bed. Closing things down is an important step for me so that I stop thinking about anything I was working on. Sometimes this works, sometimes I still end up distracted by some problem until late into the night. Lastly, I plug in my phone to charge, and set out my bag for the next day.
Nights in White Satin
For me, bed time is 10:00. That is when I start to get tired, but it’s also, more rationally, when I want to go to sleep. I usually fall asleep rather quickly. I dream a lot, and usually quite vividly, but I don’t usually discuss my dreams, as they are rather fleeting.