Scaly Freak

Yes, this. This is a valid option for books.

OUCH! Reading that injury description made my own thumbs twitch. I'm glad it wasn't a serious injury, though obviously I hope the pain passes quickly! Take care of yourself, and remember that perfection is for toxic people. It's more important to eat anything at all right now, than it is to follow your food plan at every turn (note I do mean "plan", budgets generally should always be adhered to if possible), and be patient with your hand while it recovers.

So you are doing double birthday celebrations? Excellent plan!

SOLD

This. There are some artists whose work I truly enjoy, that I just cannot bring myself to support anymore. Bastards, all of them, ruining my enjoyment with their shitty personalities.

I am firmly convinced the soundtrack contributed to the lack of fame and glory for this movie.

Of course, that makes complete sense. Our of curiosity, are you able to do audiobooks or podcasts during the slug phases? I'm looking for good historical podcasts that are not fixated on modern history or medieval europe.

Lord of the Rings Online came back online mid-morning on Monday. Earlier today, the company made an off-cycle blog post with apologies, obligatory thanks to the players for their patience, and a list of "things we want to give you to show how much we appreciate you not abandoning us". One of the things on the list is an in-game store rewards code that can be redeemed for the item "Pick A Mount" - using it opens a list of 14 in-game mounts to chose from. Which mean I finally have the magnificent and very rare steed I've been wanting ever since I saw someone ride one two yule Festivals ago...! Her name is Sanguine. (Spoiler tag for size.)

It also makes it easier for the guest, if they are the kind of person who wants to be considerate and try not to disrupt things. If I'm visiting your home, and you want to be in bed by 9 PM, I really appreciate knowing that... because I'll be awake for at least another 2-3 hours, and now I can adjust my evening activities so I don't ruin your sleep every night during my visit.

Before I act, do you need a hug, or do you need help luring a target to a remote location? I'll provide either one, but it gets awkward when I guess wrong.

....because giving you fair warning would completely ruin the surpise because you can't be trusted not to tell Dave? I agree with everyone else, you are being gracious and patient, and you deserve a ton of credit for adjusting to what undoubtedly was an unwelcome surprise to you as well. A suggestion if I may? While the surprise visitor is visiting, take them aside for a private conversation. Explain patiently and politely about the surprise plan you had made for Dave, that you had to cancel on short notice. Then explain how you would really have appreciated being made aware that the visit was coming, so you could participate in surprising Dave, rather be turned into a spectator for something that's happening in your home, and may cost you money. In my world it goes without saying that an unexpected guest stays for a week or longer, and their stay causes an increase in household expenses, the guest contributes, and if they're not willing to do that, they can stay elsewhere. I acknowledge that's not everyone's world, but to me it simply seems like the decent thing to do.

I don't think it ever was. For anyone, not just for you. But my opinion on motivation is that it's a myth that very polished people with painfully fake smiles invented in order to help them sell self-help books, so I'm hardly unbiased about it I would never dare speak for the industrious slugs. I also forgot the second part of the slug conversation, and I appreciate that you were gracious and patient about reminding me.

Weekend update I forgot: I did remember to meditate both Saturday and Sunday! Now I need to remember to document it for the challenge..... Stamina (emotional energy) Read books and colored a picture today.

The game's Community Manager has been great about posting updates in their official forums and from what they've shared, there was "some kind of power related event at the data center that has caused critical hardware issues". Whatever the event was, it must have been significant, because the redundancies built into the data center were impacted as well, which is what led to the downtime. So that's a big yikes, especially considering we're approaching 30 hours of downtime, with no end in sight yet. Delusional jackasses in the game forum and on Reddit think this is the end of their world. The reasonable part of the fanbase are urging them to please follow through with their threats to leave for another MMO, since that will make for a better community when the game comes back online.

HP (physical health) Went to the gym. My rowing machine had been rudely appropriated, and I was forced to find another machine for training the myocardium. I chose the elliptical, since I was wearing my Converse shoes for lifting and they don't have sufficient padding for running on a treadmill. Booooring. I also did bench press and barbell row. Stamina (emotional energy) I was going to play LOTRO, but the game went offline this morning and is still down now... coming up on 12 hours of downtime for LOTRO and for the other game owned by the same developer, DDO - Dungeons & Dragons Online. This is extremely rare for them, and I hope they solve it soon. My kinship is taking it fairly well, but we appear to be a lot more level-headed than the fans on Reddit, or the ones in the game forums. and by level-headed I mean, my kinship realizes that being complete dicks about an outage doesn't make it go away. Seriously people. Take a breath. Sipped Kaffre Roma while reading instead. With a splash of Amaretto.

No, for now you are recovering. You are in a healing stasis. You're hibernating in order to restore energy. Haven't we talked about this?

Fair enough. (Trimming fat off chicken thighs is a tedious chire). If you're looking to get some variety now and then, cutting the chicken breasts in strips/pieces and stir frying them could be a nice change of pace.

HP (physical health) End of the week means very low stamina bar, and going to the gym became an ordeal and a half. Determined to lift none the less, I did a kettlebell circuit at home instead. Stamina (emotional energy) I read a book during my 5 minutes breaks today. Much, much harder to stop on time, than coloring is.

Not nearly as bad as it felt for most of last year, actually. I won the jackpot in the Boss Lottery, so that helps a lot. I set a timer for 5 minutes, then I put the phone across the room from my work computer. Being forced to get up and away from work to color more is enough of a deterrent for me. My upper back feels amazing now. It was stiff and sore this morning, but that is normal. The massage loosens up lactic acid and a few other things, and they can "get stuck" and cause soreness afterwards, if not given enough water. So I drank lots of water all morning and that took care of it..

Also a very shit thing to do to a child.

It was. I recorded it in my fitness notebook so I can repeat it next week HP (physical health) I was supposed to go to the gym this evening, but the very lovely person who gave me an incredible deep tissue massage said lifting with muscles that just had one of those, is not recommended. The deep tissue massage is a form of stress for the muscles and they prefer at least a day of aggressively hydrated recovery before being asked to lift at a gym. So I made a deal with H. that we will go tomorrow evening instead. And I'm posting that here for accountability. Stamina (emotional energy) I didn't realize how much of this goal would be "I colored random pictures" But I also edited some .abc files for my LOTRO musician, so that's some variety at least.

Yes, it is. But it's not here at NF with us, and we are going to keep it that way. (That said, if you need to vent to an outside third party who won't judge, feel free to send me a PM. And if not, that's fine too. Again, no judgement.) I've been meaning to thank you for posting these comedians slayers, by the way. Comedy is one of those very personal things - a comedian, or a comedy, is funny if they have the same sense of humor as I do. The thing with humor is that it's almost entirely dependent on cultural context (this is why Chaplin movies aren't funny anymore), and as someone who grew up outside the US, I'm missing a lot of the context a lot of the stand-up comedy here relies on to be funny. But when women comedians make jokes about all the struggles around being women, that appears to transcend cultural differences somehow. I look forward to see who else you'll post videos of and hope for specific ones to show up. I won't mention their names because I don't want to influence your process. I'll just cross my fingers and hope to see them here (you got three of them already ).

Congratulations on everything in the spoiler. Especially a doctor who listens and empathizes. That is rare, and you should guard this treasure carefully and get as much out of it as you possibly can.

I don't think that ever goes away. Fitness and nutrition are fields that will always have new things for us, no matter how many year we've spent on them. And that's a good thing. To quote the great and wise Tanktimus, the easiest way to cook chicken breasts without drying them out, is to cook chicken thighs instead