Mike Wazowski

Soooo I’m assuming by an Easter egg you mean a candy one? I read that sentence a couple times trying to figure out if a hard boiled egg with horseradish could actually taste sweet in contrast to something, haha. Also, way to keep killin’ it with goals and accomplishments!

It does! In some ways, it feels maybe inevitable? With new cases still being non-zero (although now much lower) throughout my area, and knowing that cases initially were concentrated in lower-income, less white communities, it was maybe inevitable that the new cases would start being more prevalent in a higher income, whiter space. And of course it’s hard to say how much is happening spread wise vs ambient case rates.

Projection is also fun for everyone! Week wrap up: I'm kinda at a blah level of energy right now - one work meeting in particular left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I am still processing and figuring out how to put it behind me. Also, it looks like there may be a mini COVID outbreak at the dance studio, blergh. So I'll be avoiding that for at least the next week and doing solo practice on my own. I'll also be more diligent about mask-wearing while there to do my part (mostly symbolically, given my recovered and soon to be fully vaccinated status).

Haha denial is a fun trip! Haha fair - I am appreciating the cinematic level of soundtrack they did for it. Cake is often healing, at least for what I tend to suffer from (mostly bad mood). It's hard to say with detraining on running, but tentatively, I'm thinking yes. This morning I went out for a run (also with a new set of shoes, so confounding factors) and my 30 second running intervals were faster than I ever remember hitting before at not that intense a perceived effort. More to come on that front as I ramp up my noob program!

Good luck on this one - I have no idea if small job machinists even exist these days, but you could try searching craigslist in addition to google and maybe you'll get lucky and find a hobbyist with a garage machine shop who can do it for you (for less than $90). I tend to just throw a bit of money at problems like that, so I'm precious little help (but I'm a big of my door jam - mounted above to the doorframe to the studs - pull up bar for stability if you do end up buying a new one). Hopefully, there's at least some upgraded parkour video quality to dull the pain of paying for a new Apple product? I cackled at the start of this kitchen update. Mesh shelves might work if you can see everything inside, or you could consider a lazy Susan or tiered shelving? I use this tiered spice rack from Target and it's helped with my unhealthily large collection of spices: https://www.target.com/p/bamboo-expanding-spice-rack-threshold-8482/-/A-79552973 Way to go for doing the thing, and huzzah for the steps forward!!

It was indeed lovely and beautiful and a memory I'll cherish forever. It was hectic preparing for it (the exact ceremony flow and vows were finalized within minutes of the ceremony) but that just made it an even more pleasant memory in retrospect. 😛 I think it may be more of a caffeine sensitivity thing - and also maybe a bit of needing to train my brain to recognize the diminishing marginal returns of MOAR COFFEE even and especially when I'm a bit tired. I have been tempted a few times to splurge for a genetic test to see where my caffeine processing phenotype lands (but my Midwestern Catholic working class upbringing and its associated frugality has won the day so far). Yep, 'twas a truly spectacular weekend! Alright, quick update from Week 4, Day 2: 🏃‍♂️ The sunshine and warm weather were calling to me, so I did an outdoor run, rebooting my noob running program 💻 Actually had a productive day at work, first time in a while (I have a real, pressing deadline on the calendar, that certainly helped get my rear in gear) 🛠️ Went to home depot before work to grab some additional lag bolts, because the wall mount for my dip bars neglected to include screws, puzzlingly; unfortunately, while attempting to hang them today, it turns out my hex bolt wrench doesn't fit into the 3" x 3" square tube in a way that'll let me attach it to the wall, so another hardware store trip is called for. 👬 BF and I started watching our first TV show together - in true nerd fashion, it's Avatar: the Last Airbender (I've never seen it, and it's been astonishingly good so far for a cartoon). He came over yesterday after work and before I had to teach dance to cuddle, hang out, and watch a couple episodes. Nice low-key mini date in the middle of the week

YES another nerd is on the path to vaccinated!! Glad you were able to get that scheduled, and that your side effects still feel like a good tradeoff as you go through them.

Sorry to hear your son is going through a hospital stay! Best wishes for a speedy recovery for him, and I'm glad you're able to find so many consoling reasons for gratitude in spite of how hard the past few days have been. Crossing my fingers for negative COVID tests as well, for both of you.

Hell yes, deadlift PR!!!

Oh hey!! I'm alive and just rubbish on keeping up with stuff here. The past week has been...ok-ish. Definitely some sleep issues, possibly from adjusting to how strong cold brew coffee brewed at home can be vs. a half-caffeinated espresso blend I drank most of the winter (plus various and assorted work anxieties). Also, possibly a bit sick or a delayed side effect from the vaccine - I just felt tired and sinus headache-y all day yesterday. But there were some really bright highlights!! 🙏 I officiated my best friend's wedding on Friday!! 🍕 Boyfriend and I tried a new pizza place* that offers what they call detroit style pizza and it was very, very good (think a thick, almost breadlike crust with a really nice chew, plus cheese that melted over the sides and caramelized) 🕺 Per usual, plenty of dance practice over the weekend *Technically, a not yet open offshoot from an existing place, that's selling their pies at the the existing location for now. Mobility and meditation were both kind of a struggle and realistically, I haven't found the right solution to make them part of my routines yet. But that's ok, I'll come up with another experiment, maybe tomorrow

Glad there were a lot of good things this past weekend (even with an annoying lack of luck on cushions)! And hugs for the unpleasant start to this morning - I wish I had something better / more useful to say on that, but alas.

I'm actually really, really glad that you found a psychiatrist (I'm presuming, based on prescriptions being in the options discussed) like that! Harriet, I love the landscape, very serene!

FWIW, one note of caution on longer-term savings - the date when you need the money should affect your risk tolerance for that money. Specifically, while the long-term, 20+ year trend for the S&P 500 makes it (or similar broad-market equity indexes) a great choice on that time horizon, using it for money you want to spend within 5 years is less of a great choice - you'd want to be a lot more conservative if you were planning to use the money for a down payment in 3 years. I listened to a pretty lengthy podcast discussion on it, but I'm pretty sure where I landed was to just find a high-yield, FDIC-insured savings account (i.e. one from any US bank) and call it a day for stuff in the very near future. Thinking is, market corrections (losing 10%+ of value) are possible and don't always resolve quickly, so you don't want to risk needing to put off buying a house for a year or more while your savings fund for it recovers (or, God forbid, have that happen to funds for a wedding after a venue's been reserved). Vidd, not saying that this changes your bit, but maybe think of keeping some percentage of your net worth, above and beyond an emergency fund, in cash - as a hedge against stocks losing value, and also a way to be able to rebalance if you like during a market correction and recovery (I keep my overall net worth in 90% equities, 10% cash but that's not necessarily based on any rigorous analysis as much as picking round numbers). Yuuuuurp. I am everyone's least favorite person at parties when I point out that this NY Times calculator is a thing and it doesn't always show that buying a home wins out: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html Nerdy side note: I eventually want to crunch through a lot of data out there, especially from Zillow, to get better numbers to plug in for myself and potentially for other people. At a minimum, their default value for investment returns is *wildly* low, implying real (inflation-adjusted) returns of 2% per year. +1 ^ JB is speaking my language! I did a whole thing (final project for a data science class) looking at the inflation-adjusted financial returns of buying a home in cash vs. US Treasuries and the S&P 500 and the results strongly, strongly favored not thinking of houses like investments (if you're going to live in them - rental real estate investing is a whole separate bag). Specifically, only a couple metro areas in the US consistently performed in the ballpark of US Treasury Bonds, none came even close to the returns from the S&P 500 (and the national average was well below US Treasuries).

Oh hey, I'm catching up after a while! If you're looking for a fun art project, maybe just look up a random landscape somewhere you haven't been and try painting it? This is honestly a suggestion mainly motivated by me liking your landscape work a lot. On the diet front, I really liked the way you structured your thinking / framing of the problem - I'll have to take a similar tack if / when a conscious cut comes up as something I attempt. And glad that your early efforts feel pretty comfortable so far!

OK, it's been a hot minute since I checked in! Here's the highlights of the latter half of week 2 and the first half of week 3 (in emoji form, as a poor imitation of raptron - and limited only to things I remember): 💊 Got my first COVID vaccine shot on Monday - side effects were a sore arm, plus a little bit of fatigue yesterday 🌲🍩 Had a park birthday party with bougie donuts Saturday morning - it was a grand time in spite of ~mediocre~ rainy weather 🎵🕺 First. Full. Weekend. of dance practices since January. It was much needed and very fun and very intense, all in one 🍲 Date night with the BF - went to a chinese-inspired noodle place that was essentially new to us* and had a great meal of spicy noodles and dumplings; sadly, the cool ice cream shop down the street was temporarily closed Other stuff happened, but honestly 🤷‍♂️ *I had gone once before and been unimpressed, but I believe I both ordered a poor choice and had malfunctioning tastebuds from a slight head cold at the time - so I gave it another shot and was not disappointed! Scores and stuff: Mobility (10+ minutes a day): ✅❌❌✅✅✅✅|❌❌ Mindfulness / Prayer (5+ minutes a day): ✅✅❌✅✅✅✅|❌❌ Walk (at least 0.5 miles outside per day): ✅✅✅✅✅✅✅|✅✅ Daily Plans Made (at a minimum, every work day): ✅✅✅✅✅|✅✅ Weekly Plans Made (no later than Monday, or Tuesday if Monday's a holiday): ✅|✅ Running Weekly Average Hours Asleep (no set goal per se, but will course correct as needed): 6:41 | 6:59 Running Weekly Average Daily Active Calories (no set goal, just collecting data): 1,206 | 953 Ankle prehab (3x / week): ✅❌❌|✅ Pilates (3x / week): ✅❌❌|✅ Bonus! Mini Strength Workout (ideally 2x / week): ✅✅| Bonus! Solo Dance Practices (ideally 1-2x / week): 0️⃣ | Ankle prehab, pilates, mobility and mindfulness all showed up as opportunities. Have strategies I'm implementing as of midweek, TBD on success rate. But if nothing else, big wins on day / week planning and walks (and high activity levels in general).

Way to go with the negotiating!! Glad there was a good payoff to reward you for the prep work you put in (and the skills you've built in your day job).

Hehe the tone didn't come across in writing - I'm actually pretty sure it's hugely helping, the only joke is continuing to call it a "nose job" (it's maybe the inverse of one - my nose looks exactly the same, but the interior function is *vastly* improved)

Week 2, Days 2 and 3 (Tue / Wed): I, unsurprisingly, felt like I was run over by a train on Tuesday morning. OK, maaaaybe not that bad, but the body was whining, that's for sure! I sort of shambled through the work day both days, but still got the critical things done. Had a little hang out time with the BF Tuesday after work, then taught my college kids by myself which was a grand old time. We've got a small but mighty group showing up for zoom stuff, this week was smaller than usual so it was more biased towards socializing and shooting the shit, and it was really fun even if I can't wait til vaccines are a thing and we can start seeing people safely in person (because a ballroom class, especially with a lot of different ability and dedication levels, is much Much MUCH better in person). SPEAKING OF, I was able to refresh the CVS website early enough in the day Wednesday, and I was able to finally get registered for Covid vaccine appointments - fingers crossed nothing happens to disrupt those. Wednesday was mostly a work shamble and D&D game, which was fun. We're still in a between adventures interlude, so a lot of my contributions were just making oafish comments in an attempt at a Russian accent. Sleep's been a bit rocky - I think I overcorrected for tiredness with caffeine both Tuesday and Wednesday and it kept me up too late (OR maybe I have an issue going from a state of high arousal for a social situation to low arousal and ready for bed, to use some Huberman lab terms and pander to @Mad Hatter and @PaulG). But my first attempt will be weaning myself down to more normal caffeine intake the next couple days and see if maintaining that into next week solves things on my Tuesday and Wednesday when I have social things that go later into the evening. I've also been slacking on mobility - might need to place it somewhere else in the day if it keeps getting cut at the end of the day - and my ankle prehab and pilates. If I do it 3 out of the next 4 days (it's not so intense as to preclude back to back days), I can still hit my goals and get through only missing 2 mobilities and 1 meditation (which is pretty solid for the first week of a restart). Mobility (10+ minutes a day): ✅❌❌ Mindfulness / Prayer (5+ minutes a day): ✅✅❌ Walk (at least 0.5 miles outside per day): ✅✅✅ Daily Plans Made (at a minimum, every work day): ✅✅✅ Weekly Plans Made (no later than Monday, or Tuesday if Monday's a holiday): ✅ Running Weekly Average Hours Asleep (no set goal per se, but will course correct as needed): 6:33 Running Weekly Average Daily Active Calories (no set goal, just collecting data): 994 Ankle prehab (3x / week): zilch so far Pilates (3x / week): zilch so far Bonus! Mini Strength Workout (ideally 2x / week): ✅✅ Bonus! Solo Dance Practices (ideally 1-2x / week): likely 0️⃣ this week

Actually, I disagree with the word "ample," though I believe that's been a common media framing. The main issue was insufficient regulation requiring winterizing of plants, and in addition some issues with aged infrastructure making rolling blackouts difficult to implement. 538's politics podcast had a pretty good run down of what did and didn't actually contribute to the issues in Texas. But the aging infrastructure, in particular, is an issue everywhere within the US and likely in most of the world, because infrastructure maintenance is often slowly skimped on when budgets need to be trimmed down. Unless you're talking about bill shock news, and in that case, that's basically a single company (Griddy) operating with a type of plan that's not well understood by the bulk of its customers (literally, probably only analysts at power companies are familiar with how it really works). I believe it should be regulated better - either with better disclosures or not allowed to exist - since it's the power plan equivalent of driving without insurance. But that's an issue affecting a tiny fraction of all Texas consumers. Thank you!!!! It was a beautiful bacchanal on Saturday, have a one week late little shindig planned for Saturday morning as well (with more sugary fried dough, this time in the form of fancypants donuts). Hehehe what can I say? Enthusiasm is strong with this one. And maybe the "nose job" is helping my upper respiratory system not be the limiting reactant in my physical training? (a boy can dream, at least). Ooh, thanks for sharing another take! I'll probably update the herb profile on mine a bit based on some of these, next time I make it. But this weekend is all about a redux of my quiche, because there was a pretty scary crust mishap that didn't affect the final product tooooo much but definitely annoyed me.

Immediately added trying the cornstarch tip and that biscuit recipe to one of my upcoming weekends, tbd which one. Also, woohoo on the goals front! Can’t wait til we get to see the final plan (assuming we get to see it).

Oh, you might've found a more authentic starting point! I got my recipe from the ingredients in a trader joe's frozen meal that may have just listed "spices" and then 2015 me just picked some stuff that sounded good at the time. But definitely report back how yours goes! Haha yes. Twins aboard the noob gainz train! Hmm ya, glad I'm not alone there. I think for bridges, I'm fine with the glutes firing less near neutral hip angle since I'm pretty sure that's standard for deadlifts as well. I thankfully have a pretty large range of kettlebells so I can do some resistance on single leg RDL's and honestly that plus some glute accessories is about all my posterior chain can handle with dance constantly in season. Haha if only...though to be fair, I would also need *very* forgiving downstairs neighbors! Though I sometimes miss my old office gym (which had oly platforms), I'm actually really happy overall with the home gym I've cobbled together this past year.

WOOO, she returns to lifting!!! Sounds like a lovely anniversary dinner, at least within the constraints of Covid.

Ah, my favorite progression scheme! Oh yes, it's very possible that it's a placebo and/or awareness thing. But I'm pretty sure that Sunday evening, the first day I implemented a conscious light color temperature and intensity ramp down scheme, was also the first night in a long while where I was able to fall asleep easily without using netflix as a digital pacifier.

Week 2, Day 1 (Mon): So, remember how I was gonna ease into things nice and slowly, building back up to my old activity volume and taking it easy on strength training until I was used to dance training again? ...there's some evidence that didn't happen yesterday. For starters, there's how my whole body feels - a bunch of muscles around my scapulae are super sore, as are my anterior delts; and I'm currently feeling a mild version of that pleasant "leave me alone and let me be one with the couch" level of exhaustion you get after an intense workout. Then, there's my smart watch stats - remember a couple weeks ago when a dance practice and a long walk had me setting an all-time record for daily activity at 1,700ish calories between exercise and NEAT? Well, that record got shattered yesterday (whoops) between a morning strength workout and a dance practice. Dance was super productive, just very physically intense (and sadly, didn't get frustrated very much, I was mostly just excited to be back - so no neural plasticity for me *). Work just sorta flew by - I got good work done and had some productive meetings, but I remember basically nothing. Then it was time for dance, then coming home from dance to change out of sweaty clothes, scarf down some cereal, and PTFO. *For anyone who didn't get that joke, check out Paul G's thread for neuroscience discussion stuff. The workout - definitely can tell I'll be able to ride noob gains for a bit given how much my strength has fallen off since last year and even since a few months ago. And the daily scores: Mobility (10+ minutes a day): ✅ Mindfulness / Prayer (5+ minutes a day): ✅ Walk (at least 0.5 miles outside per day): ✅ Daily Plans Made (at a minimum, every work day): ✅ Weekly Plans Made (no later than Monday, or Tuesday if Monday's a holiday): ✅ Running Weekly Average Hours Asleep (no set goal per se, but will course correct as needed): 7:16 Running Weekly Average Active Calories (no set goal, just collecting data): 1,909 Ankle prehab (3x / week): N/a so far Pilates (3x / week): N/a so far Bonus! Mini Strength Workout (ideally 2x / week): ✅ Bonus! Solo Dance Practices (ideally 1-2x / week): N/a so far

Thank you!! It was a very good day indeed, and I'm in the process of planning a little get-together this Saturday that should also be excellent. if you ever wanna try making it, I put the recipe in a spoiler below for Paul. D'awww Here's hoping! It started off with the first day of a city-wide thawing and hasn't taken a crummy and horrible turn yet, so it's already WAY better than the last couple months of my twenties! Kind of! I started making it a few years ago by trying to make a version of the "greens, beans, and grains" frozen meal Trader Joe's used to make (that was vaguely based on a West African stew of some sort). I hadn't made it in over a year, so I was pretty sloppy with my process - but it turned out well in spite of that. And good news - the original frozen dish used couscous, so you can call me a godless heathen and serve it over whatever grain you like! Here's roughly what I did: ^this is pretty damn accurate. As someone who just tried beignets for the first time on Saturday. Thanks!!!