Artemis Prime

Format-wise, there are just a few tweaks I'm making to this challenge. First, I'm going to make Monday my update day. Daily updates sometimes help me keep momentum, but it's feeling like a bit much at the moment. That means things won't be as in-depth, but if you guys want any more details on things, feel free to ask! Not posting on my own thread so much also hopefully means I'll be more active on yours. Second, I am adding a secondary opponent! The Dread Warrior will continue to take/give attacks based on whether I miss workouts or not. But now we introduce the Imp! The Imp will be the one making saving throws whenever I do Morning Prayer for Word of Radiance, and anytime I skip Morning Prayer (Monday through Friday) the Imp gets to attack. I've gotten lazy about staying in bed rather than getting up and praying (I'm going to throw some of the blame on the time change) and hopefully this will give me the boost I need to get back to it. Thirdly, social goals! I posted about this in the General Chat thread, but I need to work on injecting some social fun back into things. So for this challenge I am aiming to go out on one outing with a local outdoor group I just joined, and to play in at least one in-person TTRPG, to which end I have requested an invite to my local gaming venue's discord server. My point goal for the challenge is 1,254, which is an oddly specific number, but that will give me a grand total of 5,250 points. Definitely going to have to bump off some Dread Warriors and Imps to make that more manageable.

Hey, here we are with yet another challenge that is almost a duplicate of the one before, but if it ain't broke, right? And isn't the beauty of year-long goals that I don't have to come up with new ones each challenge? So let's jump to it: 1. Become an Ordained Deacon in the ACNA My current class runs just a couple weeks past the end of this challenge. So my goals for this challenge are to 1 - Keep up with class assignments 2 - Register for my summer class 3 - Finish meeting with my Parish Discernment Committee (meetings scheduled for April 10 and 17) 2. Strength GainZ The stars have aligned to have my next training block kick off in Week 1 of this challenge! I love when that happens. Reducing my current workout goal to 2 lifting sessions per week. It's all lunges, rows, and deadlifts as currently scheduled, so going to think about how I want to add some pushing work in. Also going to swap barbell rows out for dumbbells. Cardio-wise, going to shoot for 2 cardio workouts a week, and one must be a run. I've got a 5k to do on May 4th, after all! Side note - I just got a Fitbit because it came up cheap in an auction and so far I'm having fun playing with it. Not incorporating its metrics into any goals at the moment, but this may be a future development. 3. Finish Barndominium Top priority now that the weather should be more cooperative is getting the siding stained. Not going to stress about getting it all done this challenge, though, because that really is 100% weather dependent. Also going to work on finishing interior walls, then possibly ceiling work or maybe skip right to getting the deck on so apartment work won't require hauling things up a ladder. I also want to add a hot line to my fence, which technically isn't part of the barn, but I'm including it here.

One of my mentors just called me out last week for not going out and having fun with friends anymore. Mostly because I've distanced myself from some people because all we did together was drink, and other people have moved farther away making regular hangouts difficult. And while you guys are absolutely fantastic, I would benefit from rebuilding my meatsuit party. So, towards that end I have: 1 - joined a local outdoor group on Facebook. Going to shoot for going to one outing with them this challenge. 2 - sent a message to my local gaming venue about what games are available. Heard back from them about some stuff, waiting for the discord invite to see what other games are currently running.

Love you too, Sal. Sorry I haven't been keeping up with your thread! Hello, everyone. Sorry to have vanished from this challenge. I have been very low on mental bandwidth lately. I strongly suspect that my mom may have had a strong reaction to the infusion, but that she also picked up the flu somewhere along the way. She has been much more alert and herself the last couple days, but continues to tire very easily. I took her for her scans/ultrasound yesterday, which went very smoothly, but completely knocked her out for the rest of the day. Class is also challenging, in a good way, but taking up more of my brain juice when it feels like I don't have a ton to begin with right now. BUT! Despite not keeping up with form threads, my own or others', the challenge itself went pretty darn good. I ended with 3,996 points, which is 1,205 points for this challenge, which I will most definitely take! If I keep that pace up, with just a tiny bit of improvement, I can hit level 5 in two more challenges! Big Goal Review: My class is going well and I'm enjoying it. Also had my first meeting with my Parish Discernment Committee which went very well, and we have three more scheduled over the next few weeks. Also just had some really good discussions with a couple mentors and feel like my general clerical wisdom is levelling up nicely. Strength went well. I did miss a few workouts, but not too many and continue to add weight and progress. Cardio was a bit more hit and miss. I think it might be time to admit I just don't like indoor cycling. The stairs at my office were a good idea, but in practice didn't really work out when I don't want to get too hot and sweaty in the middle of a workday. I did one jump rope workout, which went well. That shows promise for future indoor options. Also leaning harder into the idea of getting a gym membership in order to have access both to equipment and a shower on my lunch break. However, for now, evenings are longer and weather is improving, so more running should be happening. North door got hung but not completely finished. Run in stall interior got finished, but stalls did not. Decided what I want to do for the ceiling but did not actually start it. So perhaps a bit overly ambitious for this challenge, but progress was made, and I did not anticipate family sickness interfering. All in all, I'm satisfied with it.

If you're willing to do some prep, toast steel cut oats in butter the night before. Add water, bring to boil, turn it off and let it sit. The next morning it just needs warmed up. Also works well to do a large batch and keep reheating and eating through the week. The more times you reheat it, the creamier it gets.

Week 5! This challenge got away from me a bit, but things are still salvageable. Week 4 was rough, ended with 104 points. I'm not going to read too much into it, because my mom's back trouble was a real curveball. I'm still not happy though that I missed both cardio sessions and 2 lift sessions. Took a couple of hard hits from the Dread Warrior for that, but I'm still standing! Things are picking up on the cleric front. I had a committee meeting yesterday for my church's 200th anniversary, and the vestry (governing board) meets on Tuesday. Since the week is a full one, I might skip the vestry meeting, although I'm not going to get away with that much longer. And it occurs to me that I don't have any points available to me for the business side of church stuff like various committee meetings. I'm tempted to make it Bane 😆 but I think I'll go with Command instead. But it doesn't really matter for right now because I don't have enough prepped spells to include it. But down the line, that will be a thing. Spiritual Direction on Wednesday, Parish Discernment Committee on Thursday, D&D Friday, coffee and Bible study Saturday, ongoing class assignments, all that usual stuff. Stopping for groceries on my way home, which will make getting a workout in tight, but based on the last couple weeks of data, skipping my Monday workout is not easily made up later in the week. I don't usually like after dinner workouts, but that might be my best bet to squeeze one in tonight.

It is pretty short-sighted. And my parents' house doesn't have a good option for turning an existing room into a bedroom. Although as I'm typing that, it occurs to me that we could close in the dining room and expand the half bath into a full one. But then we'd have to remodel the mudroom and the kitchen to move doorways around. And at that point, I feel like maybe it's easier to just add a room on instead of tweaking so much.

Sorry about the knee swelling. Dealing with old injuries bites.

Welcome! Being around for others is an important Big Why.

Thank you. She was much improved when I got home last night, and continues to trend in the right direction. Mostly I was just glad when her endocrinologist called back and confirmed that this happens sometimes after calcium infusions. It still sucks that she has so much pain, but at least we know nothing is seriously wrong. This was supposed to be an annual thing for her, but there is no way she is ever agreeing to this again, so now we've got to start looking for other treatment options. Also the timing of it is annoying as we thought we'd have her surgery all done and over with next week, and now stuff needs rescheduled and we're not sure when her surgery is going to be now. It was definitely an early night in the Prime household last night! I went to bed at about 9:30 and slept straight through the night. My mom got up in the middle of the night and made it to the bathroom and back on her own. Part of the fallout of this has been me starting to bug my dad a little more again about house renovations. There is a set of french doors in our living room that go nowhere. We've talked about putting a deck out there, but we already have a front porch and a back patio and don't really need the deck as well. My dad would like to put a sunroom out there, but he just can't bring himself to spend the money on it. His current thought it to take the doors out and put a box window in to keep plants there. My vote is to put a master bedroom there so that if/when stairs become a limiting factor, my parents can have a first floor bedroom/bathroom. My dad is very resistant to the idea, but the past couple days have made my mom realize that she might not always be able to run up and down stairs whenever she wants. Anyways, have not done great at tracking things this week, so might be shortchanging myself a little, but I am really low on points for the week. I did pull the loose bedliner off my tailgate yesterday, so there's Channel Divinity points. Going to get Ceremony points and Healing Word points. Need to turn in a class assignment by tomorrow, so there's Borrowed Knowledge points. Also going to do some workout catching up this weekend. So should come out okay by the end of the week, if still a bit on the low side. My room has gotten cluttered again, which seems to have a high correlation with my struggle to get up and do Morning Prayer. Weather is supposed to be rough tomorrow, so should be a good day to catch up on house stuff. Yesterday the sun came out as I was driving home, so I did a bit of outside stuff and then just kind of wandered around my property enjoying that sweet, sweet Vitamin D. Part of me feels like I need to come up with a better system of balancing workouts and indoor chores with nice weather, but another part of me feels like western PA has enough crummy weather for me to mostly stay on top of stuff, even if it's not exactly on schedule. I'm also thinking of setting part of my old barn up as a gym so that in nice weather I have a workout option that doesn't mean going down to my completely underground and window-less basement. But that's probably a project for another time as I'm currently kind of in the middle of a big one.

Oh, and a 4th positive thing (thought I was forgetting something while typing my update): I have a tentative date for my first Parish Discernment Committee meeting.

Kind of struggling today. My mom had a calcium infusion yesterday and is suffering horrible back pain now. It's apparently common to be achy afterward, and not unheard of for it to be severe, although they did not tell us this was a possibility. I was up with her from 3-4 this morning and then slept on the floor beside her because I was afraid I wouldn't hear her in my bedroom if she needed something. Was supposed to be off work today to take her to her thyroid scans, but there was no driving her down to Pittsburgh today. Got her situated in the living room this morning, rescheduled her appointments, then came into work. Been very tired and out of sorts all day. Might do a little light lifting tonight as that sounds like it might help me feel better, or might just crash on the couch to read or watch something. We'll see how it goes. Some positive notes to balance out my negative day: 1: I really like my rector. He is a good priest, and a good man. Those two things do not always coincide. I always feel better after speaking with him. 2: I really appreciate how flexible my office is. Was late coming in this morning, and it wasn't an issue. Went over to my church on my lunchbreak for altar guild stuff and ended up staying longer to speak with my rector, and it wasn't an issue. It's a very nice perk in the workplace. 3: I typed up a post for my class discussion forum and had to just sit back and go, "dang, that sounds good!" Turns out I might actually know something about this theology stuff, guys.

It's very up and down. I'll feel like I'm making no progress for a while, and then all of a sudden there's a jump and it looks like there's a lot more done. 10 feet out. It might also just be 10 feet wide, or might run the entire 20 feet of the main barn. That's a decision to be made after getting lumber quotes.

The good thing being, even if he is foolishly overconfident, a little unilateral leg work is probably still a beneficial thing to work in, as long as it doesn't cause the bad kind of pain.

YESSSS!!!!! This sounds so great. I kind of always wanted to get a truck bed camper and just hit the road, but I also like to acquire livestock. Those two things really aren't compatible, so enjoy the nomad life for me!

Yesterday was a pretty good day. Got up on time and did Morning Prayer for 2 cantrip points. Enjoyed the sunshine while I ran some errands at lunch. Soaked up more sunshine while working on my barn after work. Which reminds me - meant to post the picture I took Friday after finishing the main barn door: Got the man door framed yesterday, but think I need to take it apart and shave it down a little. Will likely do that after work tonight. Although I really should do a workout - but I'm going to let the weather decide. Because that is becoming a rather common refrain for me, I'm going to adjust my workout plans and for my next training block go down to two workouts/week. Often I end up not working out at all over the summer, and I'd like to push against that this year, but I also realize that 3 times a week just isn't going to happen much, especially with my running goals. But 2 should be doable.

It was delightful. I love my brother's kids, but I also love having a lazy Sunday without having to entertain them all afternoon. I am down for a Pittsburgh-based nerd gathering (@Snarkyfishguts?) but that is also my sister's birthday weekend, so I'm not sure what family stuff I'll have going on. I've mostly got a handle on it - usually my sister and I just joke about it while she uses reverse psychology on me - but there are times when it comes in handy - like when people are trying to peer pressure me into something. A little bit of pressure, I'm likely to cave. They start really bringing the pressure, and suddenly it's like a switch flips and not only do I not do what they want, I actively do not want to do it anymore.

Wooo deadlift day! But also...

The book is pretending to be the abridged version of a much longer book. There are footnotes throughout about the long, boring details in the "original" that he cut out to get to the good stuff. It's kind of a fun idea, but I thought the shtick got old long before the book ended. It's one of the few instances where I really believe the movie is superior.

Oh - I have had this at my friend's house, or at least a variation thereof. You're right, it's amazingly delicious. I am now envious of your dinner!

This sounds like a solid plan, even if a full workout doesn't happen. And what is this oh so delicious dinner that will be in the oven whilst you hoist?

I am happy to kick you if the physio doesn't! Also, happy birthday and yay for Princess Bride! I'm glad you liked it so much because I'm never entirely sure how much I love my childhood movies because they're actually really good and how much is just nostalgia.

Week Three recap: turned out pretty good despite not paying much attention to challenge stuff. Ended up with 144 points, which is pretty darn good. The conference was pretty good. The content itself wasn't super helpful to me (but was a good affirmation that my year of processing was successful) but it did make me like my bishop more (he's a pretty fun guy when he's not being The Bishop, and he uses Dr. Who references in his teaching) and has given me some helpful material that may come in handy as an ordained type person helping other people deal with stuff. I didn't do much yesterday. Went to church, then Sunday school, then had dinner with church folks. I felt a bit out of it because I was pretty tired from driving back and forth to Pittsburgh. Read and napped most of the afternoon/evening. My sister came over, but she's still not completely over the flu, so she just joined in the reading/napping. Sunny and warm today, so probably going to push the workout back and do barn stuff instead. Prepping most of the usual spells, Sanctuary, Ceremony, Healing Word because I'm teaching Sunday school this week. No Aid stuff this week, so instead I'm prepping Continual Flame because campfires make me happy and I have a ton of scrap wood that needs burned up. Also wanting to catch up with your challenges, but after taking a week off, I'm probably just going to jump back in with where you're at now instead of trying to figure out what all I missed.

Thanks, I genuinely appreciate this. The puppy sold over the weekend, and I'm really not that disappointed, except for the flood of messages from my coworkers who were upset I didn't get it. They were sort of joking, but also sort of not and I was just kind of over it. Them pushing so hard for me to get it actually made me want it less, because I dislike being told what to do. And now we're back on the original plan, which is to maybe get a dog next year. And, to @Sepherina's point, I do prefer getting shelter dogs. I kind of love it for me too. I ended up missing 1 lift and 2 cardio workouts last week, and the Dread Warrior rolled terribly and missed me on all three attacks, which I'm taking as a sign that even the dice acknowledge I needed an easy week.

I'm so sorry things are this hard right now, Sal. I'm glad you have a quiet place to go for a few days. I do, however, want to push back a little on how you're holding things in. I understand not wanting to worry people, but you deserve love and support and people can't give it to you if they don't know you're hurting. Reach out Sal. You've got people who love you. Let them help you.