NightWatcher13

This week has been pretty good so far, still arguing with one of the machines in the lab but that's improving slowly at least. I did get myself a couple of fun masks (mostly for work, but works for stores etc too) though - 'cause if I'm gonna wear a mask, it is NOT gonna be a boring one if I can help it. (forgive the wild hair, it was in and out of rain and a hard hat that whole day) Also made a couple of broiled open-face sandwiches for the first time earlier this week - turkey, tomato and cheese with guacamole after they cooled enough to eat. That was way more delicious than expected. My little sister stopped over last night since she's in the state doing some on site stuff for the church she works for, so she came over and brought take-out and we binged the first half of the new She-Ra season and I got to introduce her to the awesomeness of Beat Saber. This coming weekend I get an extra recharge day which is super needed after the last couple of weeks.

It was very good unfortunately I'm out of bananas and now I want 50... I didn't want bananas all winter lol Those little dressing containers are one of my favorite recent finds! I saw them pop up on Amazon and was like "Yeeeeess this will help me eat more salads!!!!! So far they have too And thanks, when does the smooth sailing start though? 😅 Thanks! I'm slowly making progress towards meal prep being a habit again, I feel like I'm pushing a rock uphill but at least it's moving Saaaaame... those little dressing holders are helping so far for my salad eating. That and having a salad spinner again - I forgot how much of a difference one of those makes for salad greens after my last one broke before I moved houses.

Thanks I'm feeling pretty good about the week overall Also, NPH is just a motivational win - he is too pure for this world

Thirded. I hope all goes well, and sounds like you're still hanging in there and going strong!

Food tax : Smoothie, made with 1 cup almond milk, 1 cup chocolate Equate "meal replacer" shake thingie, 1 banana, 6 frozen strawberries and a couple of tablespoons of peanut butter. I also stirred in some chia seeds after this just 'cause Salad prep - one for dinner tonight (I'm eating it now actually), 2 for the next couple of days to throw in my work bag.

I love lilacs! We used to have three around my parent's garage, I'd basically grab a bunch and glue it to my nose while I was playing outside and definitely support causes that want to see everyone have access to clean water without walking miles to do so

Week 1 checkin: The end of this week from Thursday on suddenly turned a bit hectic Q1 - Sleep management : 3.5 points out of 5 - I've managed to be in bed between 1 and 2 am almost every day this week, but only made the bed twice. Q2 - Food : 4 points out of 10 - I got 4 plant based meals in this week, including some more veggie mac & cheese (this time with onion, mushrooms, summer squash, and celery stir fried before mixed into the whole box of mac & cheese) but didn't get a day tracked on LifeSum yet. I'll work to focus more on that this coming week. Q3 - Schedule : 3 points out of 7 - I got 3 VR boxing workouts in, but thursday and friday this week I wound up getting home too late to do it after work - and wound up staying at work way too late yesterday as well trying to fix our GPC and get the new columns working before production starts back up this week. I really need to start getting these done before work. No guitar practice though LQ - Japanese - 1/2 points - I did pretty ok at getting Duo done this week, I need to work on getting the text book practice in. So, overall a lot of ok work did get done, but I have a lot of progress to work on.

I wish I could take credit for the days lol, those are stickers I got from Etsy. But they're super nice for putting in when I don't want to spend a lot of time doing nice letters myself and don't want it to look like I put the layout together in 5 minutes I wish Moss was on sale for PS4! It looks really good, I love the mouse! I loved the previews for it, and got to play the demo that came with my VR - tis a pretty spiffy game. Yeah, the weather seems to be yo-yo-ing really bad this spring a lot of places, and I'm sure the general chaos around the world between pandemic and lockdowns isn't helping stress levels, so good sleep is extra hard to get right now overall it seems. Thanks!

My current weekly planner/tracker setup for the moment - simple, but it gets the job done

I like the tracker!!

Yay for riding, cooperative Daisy and the ankle getting better

Week zero went pretty great! (no real tracking/points, just general stuff) Sleep - I'm telling Alexa to snooze a bit still, but I'm actually tired and feel like I can go to sleep when I go to bed and I haven't felt the need to keep sleeping for 10+ hours after I finally got my brain to shut up. Sleep quality seems to be up, and while I'm still a bit tired at various points through the day it's nothing like it was for the last while. Food - I didn't track food at all last week, I do need to start doing that. I got a lot more veggies in my diet though, with 6 days getting marked that I had a vegetarian meal of some sort. And I got a LOT of veggies this last shopping trip (tonight), so I'll need to make some things like leek soup coming up this week. Schedule - I haven't practiced any guitar, but have been getting a workout of some type in every day except for Sunday last week - I didn't let myself play Sunday 'cause my knees were grumbly, I may need to figure something out like doing no-squat VR boxing "classes" every other day, cause those definitely are making me work out harder but also making my joints argue. Japanese - I've picked Duo back up in the middle of last week

Sounds like an awesome day, and holy smokes that song looks like one heck of a workout! That ocular migraine I hadn't heard of actually (!!!!) but now that I know about it, I'll keep an eye on my time as well. Playing in the VR for too long does give me a minor headache and slightly wonky balance just like when I first put it on, but I haven't had anything beyond that yet. I hope your manager's wife recovers well, and that it hasn't been transmitted between folks at your job either.

Tis very yum Oh man, that's epic! I can only do it (or anything so far) on Hard mode, and I only got there earlier this week. I'll bet you need a rest day after that. Also, these videos and the extra music are the 2 reasons I kinda wish I could have gotten a system that allowed for modding. It's so cool to watch the people play as an avatar rather than watching my POV with my head jiggling all over the place 'cause I'm super into the music 🤣 Adult mac & cheese is a good description of it - lots of the time I'll throw in a chopped up chicken thigh, stir fried mushrooms and / or zucchini too, it kinda fluctuates based on what I have handy and what I'm craving, but it's fantastic comfort food!

Reheated the remaining mac n cheese and diced in veggies again (and an egg, but I forgot about it entirely before I took the pic). Also, made some fresh mint leaf tea from the mint plant I put in this year. The boxing game is a ton of fun! And some of the classes get you moving really fast, the squat dodges can be murder though. I've been doing about 20 mins of the boxing game, then a few songs on Beat Saber for fun to extend the exercise time a bit without as much high impact movement. My shoulders are definitely tired by the time I'm done with both. WHY IS THIS DANG SONG SO CATCHY!!!!!!

Week zero is going pretty ok so far, I have one of the songs from Beat Saber stuck in my head though (Country Rounds... @Starpuck I still blame you for this 😛 ) I think this week has the most exercise I've gotten in at least... a year and a half? Two years? Within one week, I've tried to keep it dialed down in intensity a bit because holy heck am I out of shape and my knees are not thrilled with me right now because the boxing game makes me squat... and they're complainy. I did my first Duolingo lesson since a week or so after life shut down tonight. I should have taken a pic, but mac & cheese with egg, avocado, tomato and chives was a good dinner. I've been able to go to bed so far this week between 1:30 and 2:30 and not be awake till 6, which is definitely an improvement, I think the exercise and the shift in work hours are helping. That being said, it's 12:30 now and I still need to grab a shower before bed 😅 Sorry for the slightly disjointed update, but I wanted to post something before I kept putting it off and just forgot to stop back in again. Thank you, sincerely - I haven't mentally been doing great the last couple of months, so even if it's just voices from the internet telling me I'm trying it helps to hear it 💜

Forgot to stick this here for continuity 😅

Looks like you did pretty darn good over this challenge! I think stress levels are just plain dialed up right now, stress eating a jar of Nutella is pretty understandable and doesn't sound like a bad idea tbh 😛

"Starpuck cleans house"!!! Looks like you owned this challenge

That actually is pretty funny! It honestly does a pretty darn good with hiragana/katakana, it will help a bit if you have the Japanese keyboard installed on your phone but that is entirely optional, I just like it for me Thanks, I feel bad for how much I tanked last challenge, but I think that if nothing goes crazy this challenge I should be pretty good to go ❤️

Ok, that's not entirely true, I regret losing what shreds of control I was gaining over my sleep schedule. Like it says in the title, this is basically take #2 on last challenge - Life went completely bonkers about a week in last challenge: So for the challenge parts, I'm basically going to copy/paste from last challenge and make the modifications needed from there: ...understatement much there? Quest 1 : Sleep management - 5 points/week Going to bed near the same time every night - With moving my schedule from 3-11:30 to 12-8:30 I'll be able to target earlier times, between late work and stress I've been going to bed between 4 and 6 am Getting up at the same time every morning, when my alarm goes off - this one is DEFINITELY going to be a struggle, I tend to snooze and I absolutely hate getting up in the morning. I think for now I'm going to target 9am Ok, so because I'm still on seconds there's no way to do the "work out 4-5 hours before sleep" thing unfortunately. Instead, I'll try to make sure I actually make the bed everyday and set a regular bedtime - probably 1-2 am ish Half a point for bed made, half a point for going to bed on time, aiming for 5 total points Quest 2 : Food tracking - 5 points/week I've gotten better at making sure I have food options and making food ahead again, now time to start tracking it. That plus I'm not entirely certain when work is going to happen again, potentially early April? It depends on both my company and Ohio's government, much as I'm not super happy about being off for longer I hope the governor keeps the state shut down because I don't want to see this thing explode and cause a massive health crisis. But it means I don't want to try to have a food prep design that expects shifts every week, or one that expects time Track food on Lifesum at least 5 days/week, 1 point/day I may also share some pics/recipes on here 'cause food Adding 1 item to this - 1 vegetarian meal/day, mostly because it's a really good way to get extra veggies and fiber in my diet - I started trying to do that a couple of weeks ago and it seems to be helping, even though I haven't gotten this perfectly by any means Quest 3 : Work on sticking to a schedule - 7 points/week Madness. Definitely madness. And using some advice from this CGP grey video - even though I'm still working, a lot of the advice is really helpful for me. https://youtu.be/snAhsXyO3Ck Scheduling and sticking to said schedule for food prep, exercise and sleep. Keeping up with planning in my bullet journal, planning and executing such things as cleaning, project time, practicing guitar etc 1 point for each day I do a VR boxing workout (max 5 points/week) 1 point for each day I do guitar specifically (max 2 points/week) Me playing said boxing game - is fun, and makes me both sweaty and panty, so it's definitely getting me an actual workout on top of being fun Life quest : study Japanese - 2 points/week Use Duo min 5x/wk Study 1 lesson/wk from my text books, these have 12 lessons each and they should be plenty doable especially as a repeat course at a rate of 1/week. I completely dropped this last challenge due to general chaos 1 point for Duo 1 point for studying from the text books So um - yo ho, me hearties?

*NightWatcher.Exe has encountered an error, system rebooting* I'm still alive, promise! So, challenge functionally didn't go, going to night shift, having stuff in the plant in general and the lab specifically go a bit extra bonkers for the last few weeks, Dad going back to the hospital then getting discharged and sent home with hospice care (looooong story there) and general life in general right now I think my brain said "...we're just gonna keep the ship floating right now, we can deal with the rest later." Roommate is still here, she's supposed to be moving in with her brother... soon? But I don't know when soon is and neither does she, I think, and obviously the whole mess of the pandemic going on has complicated that in general. Thankfully, this coming week I'm moving my shifts a bit - I was on 3-11:30pm* (I've been on till 1 am quite a bit, due to aforementioned bonkers stuff at work) next week that shifts to 12-8:30pm, so hopefully that will help mitigate some of the chaos, and my lab partner and I will have some overlap time now so I can help him with some stuff that he just doesn't have the experience to deal with yet. Finally got some exercise aside from walking all over the plant in last weekend, I picked up a VR boxing game that I used then, then failed until Friday to have enough time before work to do it again. It does seem to be helping mentally a lot at least, I'll detail it more in new challenge - which is probably going to be this one 2.0 functionally, to allow a lot of flexibility.

Also, ongoing roommate saga below, feel free to skip the spoiler area if you don't want to see the drama. I'll update with challenge week 1 summary later this weekend, but so far apart from needing to re-figure out parts of the challenge because of schedule change it's going pretty ok

Well... remember that whole theme of making it up as i go? This is basically going to have to get scrapped and replanned, 'cause starting monday I go back to work... on second shift (that will keep my lab partner and I from working together at any point, so we can keep social distancing while we go back to work). So now I gotta figure out what sleep management is going to look like with that in mind, which should actually be easier since it'll go with my natural rhythm much more than day shift. Not sure how long we'll have to keep that schedule, but considering my biggest issue with second shift was always the fact that I felt socially isolated with it... well right now that's kinda what we're supposed to be doing.