JuiceeTarget

:yay: Always glad to follow along

Now for the hard part, keeping up with the forums.

Hey, it's me!

Your story reminds me of the one time I tried to run a PC... three returns/exchanges and the one I finally got working stopped working two months later and I just gave up. We may not get all of the cool games, but our stuff just works, and works for many years. Whoa! I just channeled some old anger there, sorry. And glad you are doing okay.

Just finished driving! No, really, just got caught up with life and this took a back seat. I didn't want it to, but here we are. As we prepare for the next challenge, I have to figure out what I want from this so I can engage more.

You go and CLEAN THE FUCK OUT OF THAT BATHROOM!

Wildfire smoke and the sneeziness from that has slowed me down the rest of this week. :sigh: We have a busy weekend, we are tag teaming the daughters. I'm driving 4 hours each way to drop one off at school and the wife is driving 2 hours away and staying overnight for a soccer tournament. Only good thing about them being gone is I get to play BG3 for as long as I want.

Aaaghhh!! What a week. Riding to the bus has been good. But I've dropped off of going to the gym in favor of that. I feel like I can do some more, but still want to make sure I'm in the swing of it before I go crazy with my routine. Food hasn't been as good as I want it to be... but I think I'm ready to focus on that now. I need to be better about honey in my coffee... I think that would help quite a bit. Still figuring that out.

Dungeon delving as an allegory for life. I can get behind that. "I've used up all of my health potions, so I have to be careful opening the door to the next room."

The water splashed out of the bucket as JuiceeTarget brought it up by the old rope from the well. He placed the bucket on the ground, and with hands wet from the rope he moved them in a complex gesture while murmuring, "Ish zahl doh - na faren doh" and a barely perceptible sparkle came from the water in the bucket. The cool morning fog was starting to clear, hinting at the warmth that would come later. He paused, and looked down the trail towards the road. The small trail was now choked with new grasses and vines. Picking up the bucket, he walked to the small house and stepped inside, but not before pausing to look again at the trail. Week 0 has been fine. I could have done better with my food intake, but my parents had come to visit, so I let myself eat crap for the weekend. For exercise, I've done quite a bit of walking, and I am now taking the bike to the bus stop in the mornings. I was driving twenty minutes to the bus stop that has the park and ride, but realized I should be riding to the stop that is a twenty minute bike ride. I had to figure out the bike lockers and it turns out that was easy. So now I am getting 40 minutes of bicycling in on the days I work in the office. Once I am in the swing with that, I'll start going back to the gym. If it was in a subzero tundra, it would be a cryptic cryptic cryogenic crypt keeper.

"Mini meatloaf" sounds like a euphemism.

I turned forty over a decade ago… ahhh to be so young again… 😜 One thing I did way back when (like when I was 17 or so) was to promise myself to appreciate the age I am at. Don't wish you were older when you are young, and don't wish you were younger when you are older. It's not an easy thing to do, but it has really kept me grounded. I don't like the acheyness, and the fact that the hair on my head is getting thinner while the hair in my nose and ears is getting thicker... but I appreciate the perspective the years have given me. I also appreciate that I am not in my twenties trying to date or figure out my career path... really, there are a lot of things to appreciate. Following along for pictures of cute chicks and to get updates on the kids. Farm jokes never go out of style.

Following along, sounds like you are busy and having fun

There is plenty of research on mid distance stuff that "80%" effort is faster than 100% effort. There are lots of reasons, mostly not related to early fatigue that contribute to that. In particular the old "slow is smooth and smooth is fast" cliché has a lot to do with it. So it doesn't surprise me that not thinking about beating that mark let you get close to it.

Following along. I love that your strategy for procrastination is to put off dealing with it. Paying off the mortgage is awesome! My wife and I were just talking about our strategy for that yesterday. There is so much advice about it lately, "If your interest is low, and you can keep it in a place that earns more interest… blah blah blah" - I think it is important to think of that and to think of cash flow, and to think of how having your mortgage paid off makes you feel. Sounds like it is making you feel great, so congratulations!

The small house nestled in the woods as evening creeped up on it. The shutters all closed but one pair. From that peered a middle aged man. Looking outside, scanning the grounds his eyes alighted on a raven. "Abby, come inside before someone sees you." The raven dutifully flew through the open window and alighted on the table. A light caw the only indication of emotion. The black feathers gleamed in the candle and firelight. Abby the raven hopped over to the book that lay open on the table and cawed a little louder. "Yes, Abby, I know I need to finish my research notes on that spell, I am not forgetting." JuiceeTarget closed the last shutters, hiding the light within. He moved to the table and sat, hand perched over the quill in the inkwell. He then moved the hand to stroke the bird. He again looked to the shutters and the door, checking they were closed. Moving with purpose he picked up the quill and wrote the last of his notes. "… again, if we assume the Widowgast postulate of counter clockwise motion for transmutation magic, one can glean from that a fundamental, almost imperceptible arcane vortex. This has been speculated on by other researchers (included in the footnotes) but there hasn't been any attempt to reconcile that with Mordenkainen's postulate of orthognal energy dissipation that I have found. I believe that with the right equipment one could use the known values of …" He wrote until the candles burned down too far to be of any use. His work done for the evening, he closed his book and put it on the shelf. He listened to the silence of the room, closing and opening his eyes slowly. He looked through the room, pausing on each item until he got to Abby. "I bet you are hungry, thanks for being so patient with me." And thank you all for being patient with me as I hide away in my little corner of the internet. This will be a simple challenge: Visit the forums weekly at least Don't eat stupidly Get some damned exercise Last challenge started off well by doing what I've been doing. I'd like to get back to that, but will focus on being focused. I don't know if that makes sense, but I want to choose a couple of things and follow through with them. Life is weird now (though when isn't it weird?) and I hope to just go with the flow. Letting my focus take me to the other side. Cryptic, yes, but what do you expect from a wizard hermit living in the woods?

Looks like a small dragon might be needed until the boiler gets fixed.

And you've said you are doing away with "standard obligations" which should include this one. Get your rest on, queen.

Oh man! Does this mean that this isn't even your final form?

To wrap up... oops. I just turned on autopilot last week and coasted to the end. Not my best showing, but that just means the bar for the next challenge is lower (hah!)

Oops! Long break here. Last week was a little bit of a wash. I took it easy on a bunch of fronts: I worked from home last week (so no gym or bus meditation), and I took it easy on working out. I did some walking, but really not too much more than that. Food was fine, the garden is producing a bunch, so getting my greens/veggies in is easy right now. This week I'll be back in the office, and I'll try to get back into exercise. But last week was one of those: "Sometimes you gotta call a time out"

Beginning of the school season is always tough. But as hard as it is for us, it is harder for our youngest who just started high school. She is on a high level comp club soccer team and she has decided to take up water polo at the high school level. It will be great for her fitness, but it means long days of practice followed by both of us staying up late doing math homework. I keep telling her that she just needs to get her groove this next week or two... which is good advice for me as well. Lifted this morning and bumped my squats up again. I'm still taking it easy (3x10 at #135) but want to make sure I am keeping decent form. Also bumped up the arm exercises and it hurt to wash my hair (that's a good sign, right?) I feel like I am back on track this week. It feels good (if tiring)

Updates two days in a row? What madness is this? I got to the gym this morning and did a good rowing workout. It felt good to get back into it. I also did a quick meditation while waiting for the bus, it was very introspective, and I feel like it is going to make the day an introspective one. Today I am going to focus on not focussing too much on food, while trying to do the right thing (if that makes sense.) Hope y'all are having a fine day yourselves.

Thought of you while on vacation as I snorkeled down to 29 feet (~9 meters) and remembered my body can do things like that. I had forgotten how scary it is going down and feeling like you are going too far... and then hanging out for a few seconds before lazily dolphin kicking back to the surface thinking, "That was easier than I expected"

Whew! I got behind here. After vacation (which was lovely), had to do some catching up and some plain old recovery. We have nice beaches where I live, but the beaches on vacation were so much nicer. First day out in the sun, I was slathering on the sunscreen when my wife offered to do my back. So she got my back really well... but I forgot to do my chest. Burn. Day after that, I slather sunscreen everywhere... except my back. Burn. At least it evened out Once we got back, we had to catch up, get my youngest ready for her first day of high school (holy crap! she's in high school?!?) and so I kinda just tried to coast through the end of last week with the intention of hitting the ground running today. Did well, doing the penultimate GMB elements session. And I intend to go to the gym tomorrow when I get into the office. Food wasn't terrible on vacation, it was worse when I got back. So, today is a good day to reset. Luckily the garden is starting to produce again so have lots of beets, kale, bok choi, and lettuce. So have to eat that first! Also, the dahlias are incredible: