Author Archives: Panther

Productivity Workshop 💼

I discovered a productivity guru, Ali Abdaal, two to three years ago. It was the beginning of my journey to improve myself. He has now written a book; in that context, he offered a productivity workshop for those who preordered his book. The workshop was planned for two hours.

The workshop lasted four hours. I’m impressed that he continued the workshop for two more hours than planned. The workshop did not have the topics that I expected. Ali works after the philosophy that you look book at the year or month that has passed and then contemplate what could be done better or more productively. Then, you plan the future, including the things you need to improve to have a goal in mind. I can see the benefit of large portions of it, so I want to revise it and make the philosophy fit me, and I guess that that is how it’s supposed to be - you take the parts that fit you and work on them from there.

Ali’s biggest point is that you have to feel good and be happy with your assignments - then you are automatically more productive. I’m looking forward to reading his book.

Garden covered with snow

Happy New Year 2024 🎇

The year 2023 has ended, and it’s time to do status. I wanted to prioritize my health, which went well for the first three to four months, but then I returned to my old habits. In pursuing new habits, I have learned a lot about myself, and my own worst enemy is my ‘all or nothing’ mentality. If I fall off the wagon one day, my first thought is that I’m unable to complete anything, and then I could just as well stop trying to complete all new habits. And that thought couldn’t be more wrong. I suffer from migraines, so there will always be days when I can’t complete a habit. How do I handle that? At some point, I heard someone say that you must aim to be mediocre, which is tough because I’m a perfectionist. But it makes sense. Therefore, I’ve spent the last couple of months lowering my goals so that I can complete them - even when I have a migraine or have a day where I don’t want to do anything. I’m looking forward to completing most of my goals in 2024.

2023 was the year when I received online saxophone lessons from a professional saxophone player. He got me to improvise, which I hadn’t thought was possible. He also taught me how to play without sheet music and that I can transcribe soli. It was so inspiring that I look forward to more lessons in 2024 and hopefully take a step closer to improvising.

2023 was also the year where I got more than one hint that I’m getting old. First of all, I now need reading glasses. Second of all, there are several signs that I’m in menopause. The last thing has an impact on my migraines, so I’ve spent months trying to listen to my body to be able to differentiate between a typical migraine and a migraine influenced by menopause hormonal fluctuations. It has been difficult, and I’ve spent several days on the couch or in bed. I’m still working on it, but I’ve become better at deciphering which medication to take, so I’ve had more good days.

In 2024, I want to focus on my health; this year, I’m better equipped to reach my goals. This year, I also want to focus on my musical skills. Of course, I want to continue playing with backing tracks, but I also want to focus on getting a better tone on the saxophone. I want to play more music by ear and aim to learn a new tune each month. Hopefully, that will also help me be better at improvising. I’m looking forward to 2024.

New Years decorations

Merry Christmas 2023 🎄

It was a great Christmas Eve. It was the first time that Christmas Eve was held at my place. Of course, my mom helped me because she had to make the gravy. My mom also brought the risalamande. I was very worried about the Danish caramelized potatoes, but my trial-and-error efforts worked, and they tasted good. The only thing that went awry was that I had underestimated how long it would take me to peel 2 kg potatoes. It delayed the meal by an hour, but we talked and had a good time while the potatoes were in the oven. The duck was tasteful, and we enjoyed our meal. We were only three people, so it was a relaxed and quiet evening, which I hope we can do again next year.

My mom is coming tomorrow, and we’ll eat leftovers and exchange Christmas presents. She is the only one I buy Christmas presents for, and we don’t want to exchange Christmas presents in front of other people. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, and the leftovers suit me well. Other than that, I don’t have any plans before New Year’s Eve, so it’ll be some wonderful Christmas days with many good holiday movies, which is how I prefer.

I hope everybody has had a wonderful Christmas Eve and that the holidays are as you want them. Enjoy this nice time with family and/or friends.

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Decorated Christmas tree

One work week left ❄️

There’s only one work week left, and I’m looking forward to having the Christmas days off. It’ll be the first time that I’m cooking Christmas dinner. Even though we’re only going to be three people, it is new to me, and I want it to be perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, but the dinner has to taste great, and that’s not easy to guarantee; it is impossible to taste the duck beforehand. I’m worried about the Danish caramelized potatoes. I want to bake them in the oven, which I tested a couple of times but was unsuccessful. I will try again this week, and it has to end up with a good recipe; that’s a lot of pressure.

I’ve decorated the house like I want, and the dessert is also taken care of because my mom is bringing it. She loves risalamande, so she is making it. I don’t like it.

My Christmas jigsaw puzzle is almost finished, and I expect it to be finished before my last work day before Christmas.

Partly assembled Christmas jigsaw puzzle

Christmas jigsaw puzzle 🧩

I am trying something new this year. In the past years, I’ve used an advent calendar to count down to Christmas, and I enjoy the process. This year, I saw a commercial for a Christmas jigsaw puzzle where you get a certain number of pieces to place each day. That, I thought, would be a welcome new tradition. When I was younger, I loved puzzles, but when I started getting migraines, I stopped assembling jigsaw puzzles. I got migraines from bending forward and looking down at the jigsaw puzzle, so I had to take a lot of breaks, which prolonged the time I spent finishing the jigsaw puzzle, and I gave up on it.

I didn’t like the price tag on the Christmas jigsaw puzzle, so I figured I would buy another one and finish that instead. To my surprise, I found the same jigsaw puzzle for a third of the Christmas jigsaw puzzle price; I just had to divide the jigsaw puzzle myself. I bought it and have started assembling it. I don’t pay much attention to how many pieces I place daily; I just want to finish before Christmas Eve. I prefer finishing it on my last work day before Christmas.

Christmas jigsaw puzzle box

Christmas decorations 2023 🎄

It has become my tradition to buy a new item for my Christmas decorations each year. This year, I discarded the Christmas decorations I hadn’t used in the last five years. It was a hard decision, but some of the Christmas decorations were given to me, and I didn’t like them, so I got tired of having them lying around taking up space. Some of the decorations are broken, so this year, I decided to throw them out also.

Of course, I have also bought some new decorations. I bought some for the windows, which looked disappointing when I received them. They looked childish, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to put them up. I did put them up, and they look beautiful. I was very surprised and happy. They look like Christmas baubles hanging in the windows. You can see a photo of them down below.

A couple of years ago, I bought stickers for a wall in one of the rooms in my house. I was very happy with the result. This year, I bought some Christmas stickers for the wall in the family room. I was tired of the bare wall, and I wanted to decorate it this year. I loved the result; you can see the picture below.

Christmas stickers on windows
Christmas stickers on the wall

OmniClean 🛀

I bought a thing to disinfect mouthpieces and reeds. I have long thought about how gross it is when I am sick and play the saxophone or clarinet. Normally, I clean the mouthpiece and reed with a Kleenex, but that doesn’t remove viruses or bacteria. That is the reason why I bought the Silverstein OmniClean. It is made for holding both mouthpiece and reed while UV light cleans the content. Afterward, it blows air through it to dry the mouthpiece and the reed. OmniClean changes color to show which step in the process it is in.

A universal mounter also comes with the OmniClean so that it can be used for other things, like a credit card or AirPods, making it useful for many different things. It is rechargeable, which is very smart.

OmniClean with blue light
OmniClean with orange light

forScore 🎼

I have used forScore for many years to manage all my sheet music. It’s the perfect program for me and all my play-along sheet music. I can attach backing tracks to each piece of music, adjust the tempo, or get the program to turn the page - that is great.

Until now, I’ve used the program’s web interface to import new sheet music. It made it easy to simultaneously change attributes on many pieces of music, which is how I put them into different folders in forScore. The company behind forScore has chosen to decommission the web interface, so I needed to find out how I should import my sheet music from now on.

The best replacement that I’ve found is to use ForScore on my Mac and then sync with iCloud. The small ‘problem’ is that I must import all my sheet music again. Yes, I could let my iPad sync all the sheet music to iCloud and get them on my Mac that way, but I never got that to work 100%. I might have forgotten something in the process, making it my fault. But, it got me to think in different directions, and I discovered that forScore is able to import certain attributes from PDF files. I also found out that I could label my sheet music files better. All in all, I decided it was time to go through all my sheet music to rename the files and set attributes in the PDF files the way I wanted them.

At present, I’m renaming files and adding attributes to the PDF files; it will be perfect once I’m done. Along the way, I noticed that the way I register my sheet music in Notion really isn’t useful. Initially, I needed one place to see if I already had the sheet music book I was looking at in a music store. Now, I primarily use it to find the physical book when playing with someone, and the process is not optimal. First, I have to find out the book’s name, and then I have to search in Notion before I can see the number of the ring binder where the book is located. Now, I’m creating a file that is placed together with the pieces from a specific book where I can see the book’s location and the play-along CD (if there is one). That makes it very easy to locate the physical book - it is already tried and tested.

All that is left is several hours of work to get everything renamed. For those of you who are curious - at this moment, I have 28 ring binders filled with sheet music 😃

Flower decoration in fall colours

Magnesium 💊

One of the things that has bothered me since summer is the unrest in my entire body. It is supposed to be one of the perks of pre-menopause, but it makes it difficult to sleep. It is also very annoying when I’m in a meeting and suddenly have difficulty sitting still.

My mom has never had any issues with menopause, so it’s no good to ask her for advice, so I asked my masseuse instead. She told me that another of her customers had a positive effect when she started taking magnesium. My masseuse has not had problems with unrest, so she doesn’t have personal experience with magnesium.

I decided it couldn’t hurt to try out the magnesium, so I went home and looked for possibilities as I didn’t want to take a lot of other minerals. I chose a supplement that only contained calcium and magnesium, which I have taken for the last couple of months. The unrest in my body is almost gone, so I’m very happy. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but I’m happy it works.

Halloween decorations

Lugning af ukrudt

Jeg må indrømme, at min have er vokset mig over hovedet. Jeg har en nem have, men efter at have forsømt den flere år i træk, så er den nu i stand, hvor jeg ikke kan magte at gøre den pæn igen. Jeg har derfor besluttet at få noget hjælp til at gøre den pæn. I første omgang vil jeg gerne finde en, som kan luge alt ukrudtet væk og evt beskære et par planter. Senere vil jeg gerne have hjælp til at lave et par ændringer, og så vil jeg gerne have noget hjælp i løbet af året til at holde ukrudtet væk.

Jeg startede med at kontakte Go Go Garden, hvor det ikke nødvendigvis er anlægsgartnere. Jeg tænker ikke, at de har den store lyst til at lave denne slags arbejde, og det vil passe mig fint, hvis det bare er en, som har lyst til at hjælpe. Jeg er ultra kritisk, det skal bare være pænt. Jeg bliver henvist til en mand, som ringer tilbage samme dag, som jeg ligger en besked på hans telefonsvarer. Han vil gerne se haven først, og det kan jeg godt forstå. Jeg hører intet fra ham, selvom jeg kan se på mit overvågningskamera, at han var forbi dagen efter. Efter en uge skriver jeg til ham og spørger, om han har været forbi. Det svarer han på, og han skriver også, at han gerne vil hjælpe, men at det nok vil tage 10-12 dage at lave arbejdet. Umiddelbart synes jeg, at det virker som lang tid, men jeg har jo ikke bundet mig til noget, så jeg kan altid smide ham ud efter et par dage. Han siger, at jeg vil høre nærmere.

En måned senere ringer han og siger, at han har været indlagt på hospitalet, og om jeg stadig vil have lavet arbejdet. Det svarer jeg ja til, og spørger ham samtidig, om han kan klare opgaven. Det svarer han ja til. Han vil så komme mandagen efter. Han kommer ikke, og da der er gået en uge, så skriver jeg til ham, at han ikke behøver komme, for jeg finder en anden. Jeg synes simpelthen, at det er for dårligt, at han ikke overholder aftaler, og at han ikke engang gider ringer og sige, at han ikke kommer.

Jeg tænker, at jeg ikke gider prøve Go Go Garden igen, så jeg skriver til en anlægsgartner. Jeg hører intet. En uge efter ringer jeg og lægger en besked, hvor jeg spørger, om de har fået min mail. En ugen efter (altså 2 uger efter min første henvendelse) svarer de så endelig, at de ikke har tid til at lave opgaven nu. Øh, det har jeg heller ikke bedt om, men ok, de er ikke interesseret i opgaven.

Næste offer er også en anlægsgartner, og han svarer mig et par timer efter, at jeg har skrevet til ham. Han vil også gerne se haven, men han siger, at han gerne vil lave det. Hverdagen efter får jeg en besked om, at han ikke kan lave opgaven. Da jeg har været hjemme hele dagen ved jeg, at han ikke har været forbi.

Nu har jeg så kontaktet anlægsgartner nummer 3. Han svarede heller ikke på min mail, men til gengæld svarede han på min opringning. Han vil gerne komme og lave opgaven uden at se haven først (med mindre han skulle komme med et estimat). Efter et par uger modtager jeg en mail, hvor han spørger, om jeg ikke vil have lavet opgaven alligevel, fordi jeg ikke har svaret på hans sms. Men jeg har aldrig modtaget den, og det viser sig, at han har sendt til det forkerte nummer. Nu er jeg så spændt på, om jeg hører fra ham igen. Jeg regner med at kontakte ham i det nye år og spørger, hvornår han forventer at komme.

Jeg krydser fingre for, at han kommer, og hvis han ikke gør, så må jeg lede videre.

My overgrown garden