turtleduck

Sure, I'd be down.

Congrats!! On the job and on making it to day 15 : )

Have finished another two: Britt-Marie Was Here, for A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60 Discount Armageddon, for A book with a cover you hate I... don't hate the cover anymore. It's not great, but I'm used to it.

Good luck!! I'm on day 13. The longest I've made it in the past is 29 (I know, I know, what an awful time to cave).

YOU GUYS I took an introductory parkour class today. Which means I've finally stopped collecting parkour underpants. It was easily the most intense physical effort I've expended since I had a baby in February. After class I was the colour of Lion from Steven Universe. I'm sure all my muscles are going to be very angry tomorrow morning. But it was awesome.

I really should. I've basically only been attending potions. The good news is I'm on day 10 of the Whole30 and things are looking good; the new recipes are satiating and have really helped keep my sugar dragon down. I think it's reverse-digivolving or something.

I like your attitude! Enjoying workouts and not feeling guilty about special occasion indulgence sound like success to me!

Spent a whole darn hour trying to make beef liver palatable. Fairly successful? bacon-apricot-cocoa-onion-mushroomy goodness. The recipe is from here. Sorry for the terrible picture. Bacon really DOES make everything taste better.

Hey can inner tubing count for Defense Against the Dark Arts? It sure felt like I was wrangling the Kraken...

That looks delicious!

Ummm I haven't read through the rules and so don't know how this works yet. Will check tomorrow and see if there's still room to have preferences

Ah! Makes sense; thanks! Also: does skill-building mean that cooking only counts if we are trying a new recipe or trying to improve the outcome of one we usually screw up?

*saunters in many days after school begins* Did I get Slytherin because I'm eating bugs this challenge? Ok, I'll be taking potions, DADA, and transfiguration. Can someone explain what the W1 W2 W3 etc in the spreadsheet means? Is this a nine-week mini-challenge, or is the W for workouts?

I hope it's going well!

Welcome! This is a great community : ) I've got 2 kids, and the busy-ness is real. It looks like your goals support each other though, rather than needing to be completed before moving on to the next - training for the 5K may help with the body fat percentage (I know, I know; lifting is better for weight loss than cardio, but building leg muscle for the run burns calories at rest), quitting smoking will help with the running, etc.

I guess I do have to try harder, then, because most of the categories are ones that I am interested in - so it has occurred to me to read books from them (ok except romance novels and westerns - unless space westerns count). All of the books I've read for this so far are ones I would have read - eventually - even if I hadn't found out about the challenge. So in order to get added value from it, I will need to choose books that I don't already have an interest in reading, which means I feel neutral/apprehensive about them. I'm not talking about choosing something I think will be a slog - I'm not going to give precious time to authors whose views I find morally repulsive or anything - but if the category is celebrity memoir, and there are a bunch of people whose memoirs look interesting enough that I'd read them challenge or no (authors, actors, scientists), then "expanding" would only happen for me if I chose another celebrity memoir (by an Olympic athlete, say, or a country singer). I wouldn't particularly expect them to be thrilling, but I don't doubt that I would learn things from them and be glad I read them.

Thanks for the input everyone; got the copper one inserted yesterday. Bonus: they gave me laughing gas! It was awesome.

I hope you made this official. I'm late to the party, but we are setting up a second-hand (yes, we disassembled it at the previous owners' place, drove it to our place, and reassembled - only took 8 months) playhouse/swingset for our kids. Every time I look at the spots where the cedar is starting to rot, I say to myself "A day may come when the strength of wood fails, but it is not this day." Have also decided the top of the ladder will have a sign above it that says "Speak friend and enter." I'm calling it: Lord of the Swings.

I guess so : ) maybe it's also that I've started with books I read this year before discovering this challenge, and then read books I had at home but hadn't read yet, an am therefore reading books of least resistance first - maybe it'll get tougher when I have to choose a romance novel and a western, etc. But also, is it "cheating" if, within a genre, I choose a book that I think I'm more likely to enjoy than others in that genre (like when I saw Neil Patrick Harris as someone's celebrity (auto)biography pick - I bet I would love it, so maybe that's too easy a choice, and I should try harder by picking the autobiography of a celeb I dislike or have no feelings about either way)? I mean, I know everyone will have their own answer to this - just musing on the "harder" in this Read Harder Challenge.

Joining halfway through the year, and therefore also counting the books I've read so far (the ones that count) - and am ok with one book counting for more than one category: A book published posthumously: A book of true crime A classic of genre fiction (i.e. mystery, sci fi/fantasy, romance): A comic written and illustrated by the same person: The Prince and the Dressmaker (graphic novel and comic are interchangeable, yes? ) A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa): A book about nature: Last Child in the Woods A western A comic written or illustrated by a person of color: Legend of Korra: Turf Wars (Part 2) A book of colonial or postcolonial literature A romance novel by or about a person of color A children’s classic published before 1980 A celebrity memoir An Oprah Book Club selection A book of social science A one-sitting book: The Prince and the Dressmaker The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series: First Test (Protector of the Small Quartet) A sci fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet A comic that isn’t published by Marvel, DC, or Image: Legend of Korra: Turf Wars (Part 2) A book of genre fiction in translation A book with a cover you hate A mystery by a person of color or LGBTQ+ author An essay anthology: The Geek Feminist Revolution A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60 An assigned book you hated (or never finished) Umm... not sure if this means I'm doing it wrong, but all these books are firmly within my comfort zone.

Thanks! I downloaded RemindMe a week or so ago, but haven't figured it out yet.

Welp, I haven't quite ground to a halt, but almost. - virtually stopped the breathing exercises. Diastasis still shrinking anyway; it's nearly gone. I think one of my big problems is that things don't go as wrong as they could/should when I don't do what I'm supposed to. It's why I was never able to stop writing my essays the night before they were due: the marks they got were good enough that my brain justified procrastinating by saying it didn't have a negative impact (yes, I know, think how much better the papers could have been if I'd started earlier...) Maybe some of the other exercise I did this week contributed to the diastasis going away. - did not get to the forest, I think. I can't remember much of last week. I blame momnesia. - did the usual mostly-paleo cooking (full disclosure: I do a LOT of absolutely-not-paleo snacking). No new bulk cooking recipes, but I bought and ate some celery, which I haven't done in a while, so there's that : ) - did not touch the stick shift car. I think this goal (turning it on and off once a day to start overcoming my fear of this type of car) is just not appropriate for a 4-week challenge. I succeeded in being completely ok with turning the car on/off, and so it didn't seem necessary to continue. It's not like exercising/eating healthy where you have to do it regularly. I need more graded goals for this, a marginally more challenging one for each day, like 1. back out of driveway 2. drive to end of street 3. drive around block 4. drive to grocery store and back, etc etc. This has been a useful exercise since I'm learning how to structure the 4-week challenge better. I already have ideas for the next one. For the final week of this challenge, I will aim to: -do 4 instead of 10 min of breathing exercises per day -1 new bulk recipe, to have done this at least 1 week out of 4 -get to the woods twice, to make up for last week -come up with better mini-goals/steps for learning to drive stick shift, to be implemented during the next challenge On the plus side, I read the first three books in the Protector of the Small quartet last week, so it's not like I was doing nothing

Is there someone (you would be comfortable with) where you work out who could spot you? Maybe enough repetition of the movement (with someone checking for proper form) will build up muscle memory so your body does the form automatically? Congrats on your challenge; you can do it!

I hope you're feeling better! The veggies and fruit count, I'd say, since the intention was there : )

I decided to stop drinking juice last December, and added all other non-alcoholic drinks early this year. I'm following the advice from an NF post about eliminating problem foods one category at a time, so you get used to not having them, while not feeling completely deprived. I made one slip-up the day before St Paddy's day, so technically I've been liquid-calorie-free (alcohol excepted) for 88 days. I'm not planning to cut out alcohol because it's only an occasional indulgence anyway, whereas juice/chocolate milk/sugary lattes were a significant addiction for me. Water and tea are new normal for me. Unsweetened coffee is still disgusting, but luckily tea and water are usually available. Now that I don't crave sweet drinks anymore, it's time to decide which problem category to take on next.... it might be store-bought cookies.