Cleaning Up

[Sciread77]

1.  Sleep 7+ hours per night.

 

I'm basically always tired.  This is, critically, my functional minimum average.  Fun fact: I was less tired running around the WDW theme parks with 3 kids than I normally am at work.

 

2.  Quality time with my wife.

Today is our anniversary.  Unfortunately, she's sick.  So is the younger boy, who is only getting worse and requires snuggles.  Also, disappointingly, only half of her anniversary present came in.  It's a bronze birdfeeder with a hummingbird sundial on it. For the garden that she finally gets now that we've moved.  But only the pedestal has come in.  Oy vey.
 
3.  Vive en español.

I'm getting to know a bit more of the financial terminology. Still terrified of talking with my native coworkers in Spanish but they're all incredibly friendly.  I'm really enjoying being able to hear spoken Spanish on a regular basis. 

 

4.  Unpack.

Totally stalled.  The decorations are going to be an issue soon.

 

5.  Diversify.

VO/Norwex.  We've got 4 events scheduled during this challenge, as well as the theatre show, and the due date for my big VO project which is way behind since a computer issue caused the loss of all my recordings not saved on the cloud.  *stupid stupid*  On a positive note, I sent a ten-minute finished chunk to the client and she loved it.  So I'm on the right track.

 

6.  Tweaking the routine.

I'm more tired at home/work than I was on vacation.  I suspect it has something to do with never being outside in the sun.  I'm very sun sensitive and tend to avoid it in the summer but I may have gone overboard.  My arthritis cleared quickly on vacation.  On another note, my wife's hip stopped hurting but immediately began to hurt on the airport ride home; we must have something screwed up on the seat setting of our cars.

 

I'm off to get flowers, the healthy 2/3 of our kids, a nice take-out Italian dinner, and a special dessert.

[WolfDreamer]

First!

 

 

 

Glad you're still at it, even amid the chaos. Goals look great, as always.

[Sciread77]

I’m not dead, I swear. 

 

1. Not gonna happen until I finish the project. I’m coming up against a hard deadline and there’s a boatload of work to do. You wouldn’t believe the time it takes to edit voiceover properly. Especially for someone still learning tricks of the trade. This project, while a good chunk of money, was always going to be more of a labor of love and learning than a sustainable business move. 

 

2.  We had to cancel our alone plans for our anniversary. I don’t know when we’ll get to reschedule since the show and work will probably fill up every waking moment for the next 3.5 weeks. 

 

3. Vive en español. I’m doing ok here. It’s also contributing to the exhaustion, which wouldn’t be nearly as bad if I didn’t have to cut into sleep to finish the project. I’m getting far more comfortable with the language, though. 

 

4. Made room for some more stuff in the basement. Only outdoor Halloween decor for us this year    But we seriously need to kill the storage unit. 

 

5. Diversify. I think this is going well. Generally people are buying and scheduling more stuff. I’m developing a strategy, my wife is nailing it, and it’s bringing in tangible chunks of money. So will my project when it’s done. 

 

6. I think that once with the big VO project and the show is over I have a decent routine worked out. I’m just tired of being tired most of the time. 

 

In other news, the Pittsburgh shooting is hard because one of the victims was very close to one of the teams that I supervised for the last four years. He was their client and they were his. I can’t even imagine being closer. Something similar in my area would likely involve someone I know. The 2014 shooting in Kansas happened at the local Jewish Community Center and assisted living faculty by my apartment and I went to church with some of their family members (although it was a huge church and I didn’t know a lot of people well.)  Ultimately, I’m angry. A bit scared. But mostly angry. Why the hell do we still have Nazis slinking about? Since when are white nationalist and white supremacists not afraid of sticking their heads out from under the rocks?  The should fear our boots crushing their heads. Damn them to hell. And damn anyone who enables them too. 

 

[Sciread77]

1.  Possibly going to make some headway this weekend. Realistically, I can clear the garage out so we can pull the cars in since it’s starting to snow here. 

 

2.  We’ve been talking in the car on the way home. The kids gave me hand foot and mouth, which is apparently not something adults usually get but I’m more susceptible due to being on immunosuppressants. It’s pretty much taken out my voice. I’ve spoken to my client and I’ve got the beginnings done. She’s more flexible on the delivery of the rest. Once my voice returns I’ll get the rest of it done quickly. At least I’m caught up on editing. 

 

And with the show I’m not getting to close to my wife in case she gets sick too. Which sucks. But I don’t want her to get sick on top of everything else. 

 

3.  It’s slowed substantially this week because the rest of training actually picked up. It should resume normally next week.  I’m happy to say I can follow most of the Spanish conversations of my coworkers now without translation, even if I’m not really contributing much yet. It’s not terribly complex since it’s mostly commentary about something on a screen or in an email, but I picked up an important tidbit over one of our bigger people before they summarized in English and I’m pretty proud. 

 

4. Garage is next. Only the dog and I have been in the basement this week, and only to put her in her kennel. 

 

5. Diversify. Got another event tomorrow. Shipping the burned CD portion today or tomorrow for the VO project and the rest will be delivered via Dropbox. 

 

6.  If I wasn’t sick, this routine would be working well. Between being sick and having the show I’m stretched thin, but I have to prioritize rest and getting my voice back. 

 

 

  I hate being sick and hate it when the kids are sick even more. I’m not staying home from work because I’m out of PTO for the year but I’m not close enough to anyone else to spread it and frankly, I feel good enough that if I were at home I’d just do different work and maybe take an extra nap. 

 

Before I got sick, I went to my wife’s theatre lock-in. They’re putting on She Kills Monsters, a fantastic show about D&D. But most of the kids hadn’t played D&D so our friend’s husband and I ran a one-shot module all night a week ago. I had modest expectations because you never know how things are going to go and some were pretty lukewarm about the whole thing even though they’re in the show. 

 

It turned out to be one of my top 3 all-time DM experiences and probably in my top 5 favorite gaming experiences of all time. The kids all played their characters from the show, including those characters’ alignments. So we had a mixed group. I gave them common goals but they all had differing motivations, and that caused some interesting group strife. They started out pretty meek-they we’re robbed because they were too polite to stop the Robinhood-esque bandit group from taking their money. They came together as a team and fell into character hard thereafter, up to and including stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down and randomly attacking a group that happened to be an evil slaver and his minions in town. They burned down a tavern. They set an evil minion on fire. They investigated a haunted mound and ran away in terror. 

 

I’ve never seen a group of non-gamers (most were totally inexperienced) turn into a well-oiled team in just 2 1/2 hours before. They also didn’t know each other that well IRL, being mostly new to theatre and having little else in common. The experience reminds me of why I loved role playing and how things came together in my two other favorites. In one, my wife and I (as newlyweds) met some random people in a comic shop and started playing. Her Druid barbarian roller Nat 20s repeatedly and ended up punching a baby dragon until it was domesticated, and they also witnessed the birth of a whole new species.  In the other, I ran a D20 conversion of the West End Games Star Wars Darkstryder Campaign in which a Wookiee tore off a slaver’s arms and beat several other slavers to death with them in the face of overwhelming odds. Both favorites included some solid luck and, more importantly, an aggressive adhesion to the characters’ convictions. The Druid was a pacifist who refused to kill things and loved dangerous creatures. Wookiees are known for opposing slavery and fighting it regardless of whether it’s “smart” to do so. 

 

I’m babbling. Needless to say, that was fantastic and I wish I could do more of it. The time is soon coming that my kids will be able to play and they most certainly have a couple of DMs waiting. 

[Sciread77]

Hoth Base is, apparently, being sectioned off of our building and sold to an outside developer. That’s terribly depressing. It’s been on and off lately but I thought we still had a group or two working in it. Turns out I was wrong. 

[Sciread77]

Life just threw a massive curve ball at us, and we were just over here playing Scrabble...

 

There’s not much to say other than this: I’m 1000% into my capacity as a husband and a father. Everything else is off the agenda. 

 

May the Force be with us.