EricMN

I LOVE Pink Five. Chicks RULE We got this. As long as Steve doesn't issue Order 66 and the paid NF people don't take us out, I have high hopes. I plan on it, my friend. Kind words from one of my favorite people. Thank you, Chaplain.

Monday First day back to school for the small Monsties. And by "back to school" I mean that I'm forcing them to keep a consistent weekday schedule and do their studies and their homework at what I'm calling "learning stations" that I built for them that are totally NOT cubicles and that I totally did not position in order to look over my monitors and keep an eye on them. And I oop... Okay, they're totally cubicles, but after working in cubicles for most of the last 30 years, I know what a good one is and what a bad one is and I left out all the bad things and put in some good things of my own: The entire desk-facing side walls and the entire desk surfaces are made of dry erase markerboard for taking notes and writing down homework to-dos The back wall is a giant bulletin board for tacking up things like school calendars and weekly class agendas They each have a power strip on their desk, right behind their monitor, with something like eight outlets and two USB connections each so no one needs to ask for MORE POWER There is no "desk return" leaving two feet of unusable space in the back corner, just a 60-inch-wide desk There is no overhead bookcase storage blocking off all the light above the desk on one side No filing cabinet for all the filing they will not be doing And I totally positioned them this way to keep an eye on them and help them stay on task. (Now someone else needs to do the same for me.) I still have work to do, but this was good enough for the first couple days. I have to trim out the top and the ends where the frame is exposed. The gap in between the two workstations was intentional and I'll turn it into a shelving unit to store their books off their desktops and also hold supplies like pencils, highlighters and notebooks. The Pink Princess had issues with her external webcam and I don't Macbook so we replaced her Godforsaken Apple product with a Windows laptop that I know how to support, where all her peripherals just plain worked when plugged in, and she was good to go for all her classes today. Nothing to report challenge-wise. I got a late start posting this thread and then I went directly into a 2-hour church board meeting. We've been congregating virtually since Shelter In Place began back in March and we have such a high population of at-risk folks that we are not planning to re-open for in-person worship any earlier than November. Right now, we can't even get a cleaning company to bid to take over our existing cleaning contract, so no matter what the numbers say, without a professional cleaner to do a certified weekly deep-clean, we can't re-open. That was a fun chunk of last night's meeting. Tuesday This was The Boy's first day of in-person school since early last March, when the school cancelled the week before Spring Break and then went fully-virtual upon the return. He's also been self-quarantining due partially to a misunderstanding of the meaning of "social distancing" and also due to high anxiety that is co-current with his Autism Spectrum diagnosis. Before today he hadn't seen any of his friends in person in six months. I dropped him off at school and he was happy and excited. I pretty much bawled my eyes out on the way home. The Pink Princess was awesome and she kept herself productive. This is 180 degrees from last Spring, when she spent the entire Trimester depressed or sick and in bed and failed four of seven classes when a passing grade was only 45%. Tuesday was my fiancee's birthday. We had her family over - six adults of varying vintage - and grilled tasty meats for consumption. It was probably the last hurrah for this kind of thing this fall. Tuesday was also the first anniversary of The Small Monsties losing their mom. It was a rough year. This one should be better. Actual challenge goal tracking starts now.

Reintroduction I've been terribly scarce around these parts for a LONG time. Every challenge I've started over the last... what... year? has been an abandoned failure. So, for those who don't know or who have forgotten, this is who I am: I'm 53, I'm twice divorced and now engaged again. I have three grown children who are 30 or older. I have two children in high school (The Small Monsties). From 1992 to 2012, I was mostly sedentary, I ate a LOT of crap, and I got really fat, topping out at about 260lbs at about 5 feet 10 inches height. In 2013 I got my butt to a Boot Camp regularly, got a personal trainer, and lost a bunch of weight, dropping down to about 193. Over the next several years I added a bunch of functional muscle mass, added running to the strength and nutrition training, and got into Obstacle Course Racing. In 2017 I qualified for the OCR World Championships in the Grand Masters division. I finished in the bottom 10 in my age group in that competition, but I slogged up and down that wet, rainy, rutted mountain and finished. I was at the height of my powers. In 2018, everything began to fall apart: psoriatic arthritis had set in during the second half of 2017, and in 2018, when I had my sights set on returning to OCRWC, we bought a house instead. Then, in 2019, while training for 60 miles of Spartan Race on back-to-back weekends, my younger kids' mom passed away at the tender age of 48 and I've been basically been adrift since. I've tried to run a few challenges this year to kick-start myself, but between Covid-19 social distancing, single parenting, watching my childhood neighborhood in Minneapolis burn and then volunteering to ferry supplies in from the suburbs multiple times per week, and other general stress, frankly, I'm nearly back to Square One. But this is NOT a reboot. This is not a re-start from a save point. Everything that happened to me since 2012 happened. I was fat, I got healthy, I became an athlete again at 50, and I got fat again. I'm a man of Christian faith and I serve regularly with my church as a Youth Ministry leader and a community service volunteer and an elder. I'm also a Star Wars person. I identify strongly with the Jedi and the Rebellion and I see a strong correlation between this and my faith. I have made Star Wars a strong part of my family's lexicon, and now, with my youngest daughter (the Pink Princess) doing full Distance Learning as a high school Sophomore and her older brother starting his Senior Year in Hybrid learning, there's going to be quite a bit of my life consumed with re-earning my title of Jedi Master while training up my two Padawans. Main Goal Like I said, I've been down this road before. I know the way I need to go. This time, I'm bringing my two kids along, partly because I want to and partly because they need the PE credits. I used to be qualified for this, as I spent about a year and a half working as a personal trainer, and I'll lean on that, plus every other resource I have at my disposal, like online classes from my gym. Last spring during Shelter in Place, I built a few home gym items that have, frankly, been gathering sawdust out in my garage. We have some equipment: About 150lb of free weights Two 20lb kettlebells A pull-up bar A plyo box Four gymnastics rings A 12-lb sledgehammer A tire for beating with a hammer or pulling around the block with a harness They're not excited about it, but I am, and we're going to make it work. They won't have to do everything I do, just their part, but here's what it will look like for me: Goal: Nutrition This is the bottom line for me: every time I let this go, my middle expands like a blowfish. Right now I'm bloated and gross and a lot of my clothes don't fit right. Macro tracking works for me. When I'm on and keeping to a fitness regimen, I will start worrying more about targets. Right now I just want to track what I'm eating. Goal: Use my food tracker and track my intake. Goal: Strength Training I asked The Boy, who totally buys into the whole Jedi Padawan thing, what he wants to work on. Last spring he got winded mowing part of the front lawn. He's been voluntarily quarantined since last March, meaning he rarely leaves the couch except to come down to the office for gaming. He also was born with low muscle tone, so he's super skinny and he is self-conscious about his lack of upper-body strength. We'll work on strength training together while slowly building up his endurance. The Pink Princess just wants her gym credit. She will have to deal with whatever is on the agenda. I let them pick the days and we will be doing Wednesdays for sure, and I'm going to add 1-2 other days to get them to 2 hours per week. Goal: Body-weight or light equipment workouts 2x/week Goal: Cardio Training The Pink Princess enjoys long walks (seriously) with her friends. The Boy enjoys hiking with his classmates at the School of Environmental Studies, but he's in for a rude awakening. I cannot run a mile right now. The bonus to this is that the assigned PE credit for The Pink Princess is Cardio Fitness. She doesn't have to become a runner, but she does have to put in some cardio work. The Boy could easily be a runner with his build and long legs. I am a grinder at best. Between the three of us, it's not going to start fast, but hopefully it will get better over time. Goal: Run 2x/week It's kind of exciting for me to be doing this with my kids. My entire family is pretty unhealthy and when I was doing 12-plus mile OCR races regularly, I was the unicorn. I'd like to get back there, but this time, I'd like to be part of a herd instead, by dragging my kids with me, by whatever means necessary.

Last spring I told one of my kids' teachers that I appreciated them and everything they did for her because distance learning took away all the good things about teaching and turned them into curriculum implementers. It's not what you got into the profession to do and I can't imagine how hard it is with younger kids. My kids' district uses Google Docs and Google Classroom for a lot of stuff and that means they have a managed Gmail account. Which means they have a Google Calendar. I've finally got them doing things like putting their scheduled Zoom meetings on there. That way they get browser notifications, and when they use Chrome, they don't need to install anything to get them. Today it's working. I hope it continues. I hope y'all come up with a working solution for your Slothgirl. She's pretty awesome. My kids' mom was the same way. I have a ton of respect for all y'all, my introvert people, who do this.

My friend, you're a teacher. You've been an influencer since before it was a buzzword. I hope school is going well so far.

We're starting in a hybrid 2days/week in person and I'm not sure that's better and it's probably not safer out here in the bootlicker suburbs. This is clearly the cause of the malaise. Say the word and I will buy you socially-distant birthday street tacos. Happy Birthday, my brother.

Congrats on the gaming gig. There's a whole dystopian-future novel in that simple sentence. As always, my best thoughts are yours, my friend.

These are both Good NewsTM.

I'm so sorry to hear this. The two of you still bring balance to the Force. Now you're the bright center to the universe. You'll guide her back. Your neighborhood is better than mine, and you're a good man, my friend.

This is just infuriating. I will never understand. Not the part where they continue to want you on a string, not the part where they want to decide who you're in a relationship with, not the part where they agree to do one thing and then change that thing to manipulate you into something else. I'm sorry you continue to go through this time and time again.

Check-In Okay, this is far too far over-due. I didn't realize how far behind I was. What's been going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L0BMfqXLZM I finished my deck, the single most Suburban White Guy thing I could possibly say. Resist? I realize I have the luxury to both fight the man AND build a deck in the suburbs because I don't constantly have police pulling me over on the way home from work, like the dad of a family a block away from me. We have continued to take donations from the 'Burbs to Minneapolis to support the people who are putting their lives back together. Many of our donations went to the Sheraton, where 200 houseless people lived before they were forced to encampments in the city parks. We collected over a ton of clothes in the first two weeks before having to shut down donations on clothing due to having nowhere to send them. We are now providing mostly personal items (toilet paper, dental care products, feminine hygiene, disposal diapers, etc). We are bringing about a pickup truckload per week at this point. People needing donations could use a truckload per day, but donations citywide have slowed to a trickle now that the cameras are gone and the white backlash of people who want their lives to "get back to normal" has happened. Between the anti-racism/anti-police-brutality counter-protesters (Lick That Boot! Lick That Boot!) and the Coronavirus protestors (um... how do you protest a pandemic?) who are actively ignoring sound science on how we need to proceed to get there, it's clear we're living in the stupidest timeline right now. The kids' grandma and grandpa just came to visit from Rapid City, SD. They retired a couple years ago and travel in an RV. They camped at Lebanon Hills - right across the road from where I will be trail running starting *checks notes* tomorrow morning. They are Rush Limbaugh conservatives who both had long careers in law enforcement. My babiest daughter is a flaming ACAB pinko commie liberal. She came home angry every night this week after spending the day with them. Quote: "I love them so much but they're so wrong about everything and won't stop talking!" I started running again. I got four runs in during the past two weeks for a total of 12 miles. I used to call this low-end average for a single week. It's a start. My back is a mess after a month of construction. I need to get going on real workouts now that I will get my schedule back so that I can regain some kind of actual core strength. You and everyone who has ever listened to me bitch my way through an OCR. Miss you and yours, my friend. You were the one person I was worried about offending, Chaplain. I'm glad we're still friends. I have respect for isolated individuals that have put their misguided energy into fixing our broken mess of a government from the inside, but that's where it ends. Also, I won't dive into my views on the bizarre, quasi-religious nationalist zealotry of "American Patriotism" because this is my Nerd community, but readers should feel free to extrapolate from this sentence. 10/10 would watch this series on Disney+

That sounds amazing. I'm jealous.

I don't think someone gets to bitch about it if they volunteer and especially if there's something in it for them. You need to post progress photos when you can of these projects because they sound amazing.

Check-In So, folks, thanks for stopping by. Angry Eric will be replaced with Slightly Less Angry Eric for the remainder of the week leading up to 'Murica Day on Saturday providing nobody's local Imperial Stormtrooper Division continues to murder citizens of the Republic. Slightly Less Angry. No less rebel-y or scummy. In the two weeks or so since I posted my opening screed, I spent about a week de-nailing the pitted and cracked and semi-petrified decking from my existing deck frame. This was followed by a couple days of loading and unloading the large lumber required for this project, and another day spent drilling 42-inch deep 4x6 post holes for the deck posts with an auger and then further work with a manual post-hole digger putting those holes in the right places because evidently spatial layout skills are NOT part of my toolkit. Add in the six 60-lb bags of concrete mix and you've got a little workout there. In short, my deck has a good foundation and I also now have a good foundation for regaining my upper-body strength. I have not yet completed my deck and I am annoyed. Last week was completely day-job free as it was scheduled to be my annual Youth Mission Trip. I'm used to building and completing at least one of these with a team of untrained teenagers in under five days. But I am a software engineer, and true to my breed, my estimation skills suck. For one, I have been working mostly alone on this project. Due to weather, I was two days behind on removing the existing decking, and because we have that massively-heavy, OMG you need a forklift to move it patio umbrella, I tried to replace deck boards as I pulled them so I didn't have to get the aforementioned forklift. Finally, to add insult to estimating injury, I am short three 20-ft decking boards to finish the expansion (which is 8ft by 18ft). I had to rent a moving truck to pick up the materials the last time and this time the delivery fee from the store was cheaper than the truck rental, so those will be here Tuesday afternoon and I can start getting the lower deck completed. Oh, and the aluminum railing kits we (she) chose are a pain in the ass to install, and I will need to cut down two railing panels and one stair railing and I'll have to be pretty precise or it will look terrible. I'm not done, but all progress is progress. Eventually there will be fascia boards and lattice skirting on the whole thing and I will be happy. But for now, this is a project that isn't done on time and I'm annoyed. And again, last week was supposed to be my Youth Mission Trip. So I'm back from "vacation". I haven't run and I haven't got in a proper workout, but I did get to the Chiropractor twice in the last week and my back is about as straightened out as it will be for a while and I feel like I could probably go for a run without a lot of pain. A friend asked if I wanted to join his virtual Ragnar team and I was too stupid to say "No", so I'm committed to 10-12 miles this week, which is a good thing. I do better when someone is watching. Nutrition has been ~really~ good, except for the 90-degree day when I ate a whole medium Buffalo Chicken pizza. Which, in retrospect, is still better than a whole medium most other things pizza. I stayed sufficiently hydrated. I'm ready for this week. My friend, I am just trying to do a little of what you do in my own way. You're still my favorite superhero. The clothing donation drive was overly-successful, thanks in no small part to the fact that all the thrift stores in the area were closed for almost three months. It was so successful that we stopped taking clothing donations because we had more than our recipient orgs could take. Donations are now dwindling severely because the cameras and outrage have disappeared. We're going to refocus and I'll let you know what our strategy is. I know that when it comes down to punching actual fascists, that you're going to literally have my back. I call the purple lightsaber. I will drop a few "m'f'ers" for suitable effect. I know Folwell. I went to Folwell back when Middle School was called Junior High. My first year attending was the 1979/1980 school year. That's 40 years ago for those who don't like to math. The SO was more of a south-of-the-creek girl, and I think that's the delineation where people went to the 'burbs for shopping instead of Lake Street. But one of her best friends' parents still live across the street from the Holiday store on Hiawatha and the Creek Parkway that burned to the ground. She still knew the neighborhood. You and I are in agreement with what happened to our City. A lot of those businesses and jobs won't come back. Some will. In the meantime the community is going to be hurting for resources, and the donations are drying up. I worry for everyone who will now be riding the bus for hours to and from the suburbs for necessities. I also really, really worry about the brown people who will have to drive to the suburbs for things like groceries and personal supplies and who will be harassed by suburban police for driving while nonwhite. And I will take you up on that invitation. I can even bring some pretentious beer to leave as a "next time" gift. If we ever coordinate that social-distancing trail run at Leb Hills, you'll be invited over to hang out on my deck in whatever state of unfishedness it happens to be in to have a beverage as well. And this time, I mean it. I'm going to need more friends on the right side of things as I fight the good fight.

Sup my friend. It's halfway through June and all I've done is about the same as you. Leb Hills is calling us. What's next week look like?

Happy Birthday, my friend.

Main Goal I've had a bad 2020. (I know I'm not alone, Social Media seems to believe 2020 should be cancelled like a bad sitcom and also like every race I signed up for so far this year.) I am out of shape. My arthritis is flaring. My fiance went to Florida for a scheduled six weeks this winter to escape the cold, and then due to COVID-19 restrictions and the fact that TSA agents at the airport I would have flown into to retrieve her were testing positive for COVID, wound up staying there for three months. She's now been back a month and things are... tense. My kids just now finished distance learning school and mostly not successfully. She is constantly cold and unhappy unless it is warm and she is outside, and she has preferred to sit in a lawn chair in the warmest spot close enough to WIFI to matter, which is smack dab in the middle of my shop/garage, where she does her nails because her nail salon has not yet opened. Everything about that has just not been conducive to me getting healthy. Then, during Memorial Day weekend - when she had been home for just a week - this bad dramedy of a year jumped the shark and the plot changed from zombie plague to worldwide rioting with a heaping dose of police brutality smothered on top. Over the course of a week, the neighborhood where I grew up was looted and burned. Since then, my kids and I have been running a donation point out here in the 'burbs to get needed supplies to people in the City where the anarchists and white supremacists ransacked, looted and burned all the shopping, grocery, and pharmacies in non-white neighborhoods while skipping over the gentrified, white parts of the city to go continue inflicting chaos on brown people. We started collecting clothing for a houseless (they're not "homeless", they're not "a blight on this city", they're people who need the safety and stability of somewhere to live) community that was established in a hotel a block away from the riots that saved the building and the owner's business. We expanded to personal care items and other stuff that the individual supply sites in the City were requesting. We volunteered to deliver meals from a volunteer kitchen in a restaurant shuttered by COVID-19. Everything has been a whirlwind of "we're too overwhelmed and busy to catch our breath". I'm going to be clear: there is definitely "sides" in all this, and I need everyone to know which side I'm on. (Hint: it's not the systemically racist, fascist Police-Military industrial complex.) Seriously. People were protesting police brutality and the unjust policing and killing of black people and cops everywhere pretty much went "Hold my beer." I'll wait for those of you who thought that maybe a middle-aged white man from the suburbs who has espoused the Jedi way and who for years has been serving a multicultural youth group that includes a great group of African American kids might be on the other side of this to slowly back away, and probably for good. Okay, for all both of the rest of you, here we go. My family and I are going to be on the right side of history. My youngest monstie and I attended a Black Lives Matter protest together. My middle child was pepper sprayed and my eldest was tear-gassed, both of them at protests in Seattle that turned violent when the highly-militarized police force decided that Stormtroopers gonna Stormtroop. This is the beginning. We are now part of a ragtag band of galactic Rebel Scum, a role for which I have been preparing my entire life. I'm gonna need to get in shape before some fascist jackboot in military cosplay cracks open my skull and steps over me while I lie unconscious, bleeding from the head on the pavement. My gym has finally opened, but classes are running with very limited space and I'm going to need to use the stuff I made back in April to get back to being strong enough to stick it to the man, and also in good enough cardio condition to not be the slowest one trying to flee from an unjust tear-gassing. Goals: If you know me, you know the drill. Run, Lift, Boot Camp, don't eat like an asshole. I've decided that I'm not tracking macros for a while. But I need to make sure I'm not housing burgers and fries on the regular. Lockdown life has actually been pretty good here for the last few months: lots of chicken and steak and vegetables, along with a daily breakfast of two slices of pumpernickel rye bread, three scrambled eggs, and four small, thin slices of bacon. If I were working out regularly, I would probably have lost weight. Resistance training for the Resistance. Dig it. As this challenge starts, I'm refurbishing my existing deck and building an 8-foot extensions while helping deliver the remaining clothing for those in need and trying to coordinate COVID-safe youth mission efforts to help my city rebuild over the coming months. I will probably be happy to get in 2 runs during the first week, and I will be really happy if one non-deck-building workout happens, but not doing it is not an option. I'm fighting against a fascist police state while helping my friends and neighbors rebuild and I need to be my best self to do it.

Keep you and yours at the top of my "sending up positive vibes" list.

Check-in Thanks, everyone, for being here and being supportive. It's making this isolation life a little less overwhelming. Productive week so far. I think. Maybe. I spent most of the last challenge doing woodworking and home improvement projects. Right now I don't have any large projects, so I've just been picking away at small ones. Last weekend was a Plyo Box build: I have yet to use it for anything fitnessy. Also, if I plan on becoming Rogue One Darth Vader to my current Old Busted Up Half-Robot Darth Vader, it means I should be able to do a lot of what I was able to do, skillfully, before I became broken. That means re-building some of my OCR skills. Monday (I think, days are pretty meaningless except I have to remember which ones to log on for work) I got sick of the ancient carpet runners on our stairs. We have cats (I do not have cats, our household has cats) and they all have personality disorders ranging from treat addict to skittish and shy to clinically insane. The shy boy came to live with us last fall when my kids' mom passed away. He is neutered and de-clawed (poor boy, nobody should ever do that to cats) and he has screaming fights with our other cats when they happen on each other and nopes out of the room regularly when people approach. He is also in a literal pissing context with our older female cat as they both try to establish dominance. Anyway, I hated the carpeted stair runners when we moved in, they were nothing but a collection portal for cat hair and now cat pee, and now they're gone, problem solved. This exposed the really crappy, busted-up, scraggly stairs beneath and the unfinished wood underneath the runners. Now I have a weekend project to refinish the stairs. Problem solved? Tuesday (pretty sure it was Tuesday) I broke away from work long enough to work out. I fired up the iPad, walked out to the garage, uncovered my scraggly little kettlebells and my scraggly little free weights and did an online FB Live workout hosted by one of the trainers on my gym's private FB group. Wednesday could have been a run day, but I ran a bunch of errands including a Craigslist purchase for our church Tech Committee that took an hour's drive. Evenings so far this week have been spent helping kids with schoolwork. I haven't been tracking food yet but I'm making a concerted effort to make healthier food choices. I'll start tracking on Monday the 11th. Overall I feel like I'm in a better headspace at this point this week than I was last Friday, so that's a good thing. Bless you, my son. BMS Biggs Darklighter is one of the amazing, awesome things about Blue Milk Special. Also, I want that grip strength, man. I felt every bit of this when I got out of bed again today.

Eventual inaugural RotO tag team champions...

Congrats on the house, brother! I am with you on the garage gym train. I've got ideas if you need them.

And in one short phrase you have summed up most of my musical tastes, regardless of genre. I have lived this. It was my weight, and my diet. Not only was my lower number about the same as yours, my resting pulse rate was too high to donate blood at least once. I waited until I was older than you are now to do something about it. I'm glad to hear you're taking it seriously (not panic-seriously, but seriously) now. Selfishly I want you to be healthier for a long, long time because I enjoy your friendship, and I plan to become very old. And while I'm an introvert, I enjoy my friendships and will need my friends to mock me about how much older than most of them I am.

What an awesome kickoff. I hate Eyeless Vidmar. Robert Howard should have won, I've been marked out since before his chain match "back in the day". Looking forward to seeing how the women's division plays out and seeing where the next Geena comes from...

My observation is that these two things are often not unrelated. Here to watch you problem-solve.

Check In Not much to report since last time. I either ran out of fucks or lost track of them, because I did a bunch of little things but it didn't feel like they added up to anything substantial. Maybe I'm just used to project work and there's nothing tangible to show for it. Allergies kicked my butt last weekend and while I did a bunch of errands outside, that's about it. My brain said "You're wasting a day you could be out running" and "You could at least be raking the yard" and I didn't do either. I even took Monday off because I was just run down. Again, I'm blaming allergies on top of the general malaise of isolation. No. She is planning to leave May 16 and will be driving in convoy with her uncle, who is dragging back the boatload of stuff she acquired over three months living in Florida. This is, I'm sure, part of my malaise - both missing her and worrying about the change to the shelter-in-place dynamic that's going on here. It's not really working, but we have an ~equilibrium~, and she's not an equilibrium kind of person. It took her five minutes after I sent her the photo of the old stuff on the rack and she had ordered a new set. It was delivered last weekend. I'm interested in this cutting board. It got put to good use exactly once. I'm working on changing that. Thanks for keeping me company these past few weeks. New challenge post is up.