Mad Hatter flips and glides into the new year

[Tanktimus the Encourager]

1 hour ago, Mad Hatter said:

Turns out drawing is a great way to entertain myself while waiting for builds to complete. I feel this guy needs a name.

 

This is Spectrum, so named because of his skill in reaching more colors of the visible spectrum than most Chameleons. He's also quite good at darts, but doesn't know it because he has never had a chance to play. 

[raptron]

Hehe, I love the sketches! 

 

And IT WILL GET EASIER!! 

[Harriet]

3 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Turns out drawing is a great way to entertain myself while waiting for builds to complete. I feel this guy needs a name.

 

 

I love iiiit! I like the way you used scribbly lines to build up its shape and texture. 

[Elastigirl]

Woot for getting up in the dark! I'd slept in too over the holidays, and I swear  that while on vacation in Flordia there nights are not as dark. When I woke up this Monday, I kept looking at the clock, thinking I'd mistakenly woke up at 4 am instead of 7.This morning I just laid in bed until the sunrise.

[annyshay]

Super late, but I'm here!

[KB Girl]

On 1/8/2020 at 10:35 AM, Mad Hatter said:

 

• Cooked dinner though I didn't feel like it. Stupid simple honey mustard rosemary chicken, green beans and mash. Took me about 5 minutes of active cooking time and today me is very happy about having home cooked lunch.

Already earned back those adult points I see!

 

12 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

At the gym I worked on handstands, which went much better than last session. I also did a few push ups, bench dips and light squats to get a feel for the strengthy things again. I felt very weak. I can't tell whether it was strength loss, fat gain or lack of sleep. But I do know one thing and that is that I'm really bored of losing and regaining skills and physical attributes and I'm now making it an overarching goal to not regress this year (as far as it's within my control). 

A great overarching goal! Though it could also just be your central nervous system needing to get reacquainted with the movements, which generally will only take a week or so and no harm done.. 

[Mad Hatter]

20 hours ago, Tanktimus the Encourager said:

This is Spectrum, so named because of his skill in reaching more colors of the visible spectrum than most Chameleons. He's also quite good at darts, but doesn't know it because he has never had a chance to play. 

Thank you, I love it! I hope he gets a chance to play darts soon.

 

20 hours ago, raptron said:

Hehe, I love the sketches! 

 

And IT WILL GET EASIER!! 

Thanks, on both fronts.  

 

18 hours ago, Harriet said:

I love iiiit! I like the way you used scribbly lines to build up its shape and texture. 

Thank youu! I for sure wasn't going to put in the detailed work, rendering a realistic skin well would take DAYS!

 

18 hours ago, Elastigirl said:

Woot for getting up in the dark! I'd slept in too over the holidays, and I swear  that while on vacation in Flordia there nights are not as dark. When I woke up this Monday, I kept looking at the clock, thinking I'd mistakenly woke up at 4 am instead of 7.This morning I just laid in bed until the sunrise.

It's super confusing when you have no idea what time it is.

 

18 hours ago, annyshay said:

Super late, but I'm here!

Hii, lovely to see you!

 

15 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Already earned back those adult points I see!

 

A great overarching goal! Though it could also just be your central nervous system needing to get reacquainted with the movements, which generally will only take a week or so and no harm done.. 

Trying to.  

 

True, and it's probably a combination of all those things. Either way, it is what it is...

[WhiteGhost]

Getting up in the dark is the worst.  Longer days are coming!

 

Also really enjoyed the sketches, please keep them coming  

[sylph]

1 hour ago, WhiteGhost said:

Getting up in the dark is the worst.

Truth. Though not nearly as bad as Finland, we definitely have a few weeks here where I get up and go to work in the dark and then subsequently drive to get home in the dark.

I count myself exceptionally lucky that my office currently has a window. When I had one that didn't, winters were much worse on my mental health.

[Tobbe]

On 1/9/2020 at 8:30 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Mine are constantly painful. The guy in the shop convinced me that I should downsize, but since I don't climb that often they don't get stretched, they dry out between sessions and my feet don't get enough pain desensitisation! Had I not been cheap I'd be tempted to buy a pair of slippers for climbing and sacrifice performance for comfort...

 

That's funny - the guy I talked to at my climbing gym told me to wear my socks in the shoes, and if they hurt even the tiniest bit he really encouraged me to size up  And the shoes he recommended were really flat/straight. Not at all as aggressive as bouldering shoes I've seen before. Sounds like the opposite of the advice you got  

[Tobbe]

On 1/9/2020 at 8:34 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Turns out drawing is a great way to entertain myself while waiting for builds to complete. I feel this guy needs a name.

 

 

Love the colorful change from your grayscale drawings

[Mike Wazowski]

Eep that little guy is adorable!

 

And I feel you on the winter struggle front, albeit to a muuuuuuuch lesser degree - it's weird getting out of the gym in the morning and having it still be dark out (and, thankfully, I'm in full view of a wall of windows at my current work desk, which is excellent).

[Mad Hatter]

5 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

Getting up in the dark is the worst.  Longer days are coming!

 

Also really enjoyed the sketches, please keep them coming  

Don't worry - soon I'll be whingeing about it being too light all the time!

 

Will do! Looking forward to one day see some of yours again too .  

 

3 hours ago, sylph said:

Truth. Though not nearly as bad as Finland, we definitely have a few weeks here where I get up and go to work in the dark and then subsequently drive to get home in the dark.

I count myself exceptionally lucky that my office currently has a window. When I had one that didn't, winters were much worse on my mental health.

A windowless office sounds awful!

 

32 minutes ago, Tobbe said:

That's funny - the guy I talked to at my climbing gym told me to wear my socks in the shoes, and if they hurt even the tiniest bit he really encouraged me to size up  And the shoes he recommended were really flat/straight. Not at all as aggressive as bouldering shoes I've seen before. Sounds like the opposite of the advice you got  

The recommendation is a little bit different for beginners.  While I don't subscribe to downsizing like crazy, climbing shoes just cannot be comfortable. As soon as there's any wiggle room your feet start sliding around in them and it's noticeable on the wall. This can happen with socks too, but it depends a lot on your feet and your shoe. How aggressive your shoes are depends a lot on what you climb. It can help a lot on small edges, but not so much on volumes. The reason why I like the aggressive La Sportiva shoes is actually because I find they hurt less. For some reason the front of my toes is really sensitive and my toes are a bit up turned and I find flat shoes squish them like crazy and I can't put any pressure on my toes when climbing. The aggressive shoes squish higher up at the joint which is a lot more comfortable for me. The reason why I went with the guy's recommendation of downsizing is simply because my previous shoes stretched and got a little too loose. The thing as well is that it's fine to have an uncomfortable shoe for bouldering, you can just take them off between attempts. The problem becomes if you spend a long time in the shoes, like on rope or outside. Or if the shoes are so uncomfortable you can't stand on them. But if your shoe is actually comfortable it means you'll lose some performance. Which doesn't always matter, especially as a beginner, but the shoe really does make a huge difference.

 

29 minutes ago, Tobbe said:

Love the colorful change from your grayscale drawings

Thanks! I'm working mostly with grayscale because it's easier when learning by reducing the many variables.  But I do love colours! 

 

20 minutes ago, Mike Wazowski said:

Eep that little guy is adorable!

 

And I feel you on the winter struggle front, albeit to a muuuuuuuch lesser degree - it's weird getting out of the gym in the morning and having it still be dark out (and, thankfully, I'm in full view of a wall of windows at my current work desk, which is excellent).

Thank youuu! I kinda like him too.  

 

So weird! It feels so wrong.

[mitch_dee]

On 1/9/2020 at 2:07 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Good vibes only

• Dragged my butt to the office gym.

 

Your butt got there; rather it was dragged, shuttled, ran or did a jig, it got there and that's all that matters!!  The eternal night trend does get stale real fast, but once your back at it, it won't be so bad.  Love the sketches and can't wait to see more!

[Tobbe]

Found an interesting article on pain that I thought you might like  

https://elemental.medium.com/the-latest-science-on-chronic-pain-is-fascinating-abb02370692c

 

Or maybe it's all old news to you since you're already interested in the subject of pain and probably know a lot about it. But at least to me it was interesting...

[Lara]

I loved Spectrum's sketch. So colorful!

[Suzaqu]

Here with a late follow. I love all your goals, especially sketching and am dancing. I think I might adopt that one, it sounds like more fun than my current morning routines! 

[Athena]

On 1/10/2020 at 6:36 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Don't worry - soon I'll be whingeing about it being too light all the time!

Hahaha I feel this. There are so many weeks in the NL as well were I have to go out in the dark & am done in the dark. And in april it starts only getting dark at around 9 PM !

 

The chameleon Spectrum makes me happy!

[Mad Hatter]

On 1/10/2020 at 9:43 PM, mitch_dee said:

Your butt got there; rather it was dragged, shuttled, ran or did a jig, it got there and that's all that matters!!  The eternal night trend does get stale real fast, but once your back at it, it

won't be so bad.  Love the sketches and can't wait to see more!

No getting up in the middle of the night is always bad.  Thanks!

 

On 1/11/2020 at 2:10 PM, Tobbe said:

Found an interesting article on pain that I thought you might like  

https://elemental.medium.com/the-latest-science-on-chronic-pain-is-fascinating-abb02370692c

 

Or maybe it's all old news to you since you're already interested in the subject of pain and probably know a lot about it. But at least to me it was interesting...

Thanks for sharing! Most of it was old, but it's still super interesting. I don't know much about it though, it could be fun to pick up a book on the topic at some point...

 

16 hours ago, zenLara said:

I loved Spectrum's sketch. So colorful!

Thanks!

 

7 hours ago, Suzaqu said:

Here with a late follow. I love all your goals, especially sketching and am dancing. I think I might adopt that one, it sounds like more fun than my current morning routines! 

Doing fun stuff in the morning definitely sets up the day much better than boring things!  What's your current routine?

 

1 hour ago, analoggirl said:

Hahaha I feel this. There are so many weeks in the NL as well were I have to go out in the dark & am done in the dark. And in april it starts only getting dark at around 9 PM !

 

The chameleon Spectrum makes me happy!

It makes sleeping difficult but I do love the long summer nights here!

 

Yay! That makes me happy to hear!

[Mad Hatter]

I see I missed some updates, I may have gotten lost in books. 

 

On Thursday I went to a flow workshop by my old parkour teacher that I really like and miss. Half of it was focused on floor and half on parkour and we went through different methods for creating flow. For the floor stuff we built up a flow by adding one or two movements at a time. In the parkour section we did a few different things. First we played on a single obstacle, building a flow move by move, focusing on smooth movement. Then we did lines, focusing on exact hand and foot placement and adapting it to our own bodies, step length etc. Then we switched to improvised forms of flow. We did a few exercises, such as moving continuously for x amount of time and one where you picked one or two movements and when your partner shouted out 1 or 2 you had to perform that movement as quickly as possible. It was tricky. Super fun workshop, I love this kind of stuff! It was also great to play with obstacles again, as my free running classes are very much focused on floor tricks and basic tumbling. The biggest take away was probably that to make the super smooth flows that my teacher posts on IG it actually takes a lot of meticulous planning and puzzling out how to best connect moves.

 

Friday I read. I didn't go to the office gym, I can't remember why. I think I might not have been feeling too well on Friday.

 

Saturday I went climbing. It was great because my climbing buddies have not been climbing for weeks either which meant that at least this one day we all sucked. Afterwards we went out for beers.

 

On Sunday my handstand teacher held a free bonus class (because he felt like it?) focusing on prehab and straddle press to handstand. It was really good. Most of the exercises were familiar (including some cirque physio ones), but there was some new interesting things too. One shoulder stability exercise where you start with one arm lifted overhead, with a weight plate in your hand, fingers pointing backward and then you just lower the arm as much as you can in front of your body without rotating the hand. Another interesting exercise was a chest to wall handstand, where a partner would try to move you around by pushing and pulling on your wrists, elbows, hips, whatever body part. The interesting thing here was that it was supposed to be a strong, but very reactive handstand, without adding unnecessary tension like say a gymnastics handstand. So you're kinda wobbling around, while someone's giving you a weird massage almost, and for some reason I found it very amusing and started laughing. Nice exercise.

 

Good vibes only (condensed version)

• Read Trevor Noah's Born a crime
• Read the second book in the Daevabad series
• Baked banana bread and shared most of it with my colleagues
• Cleaned kitchen
• Flow workshop (floor and parkour)
• Cooked dinner after the workshop for 800 adulting points
• Walked home to compensate for lack of morning gym
• Stroll in the forest, took out headphones to listen to ice slurry along the beach. It makes this amazing twinkling sound and I love the slow undulating movement the slurry makes compared to the sea without the ice.
• Climbing
• Post climbing beers
• Handstand class

[Harriet]

5 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Thursday I went to a flow workshop by my old parkour teacher that I really like and miss. Half of it was focused on floor and half on parkour and we went through different methods for creating flow.

 

This sounds super fun. Also, for a second I thought you wrote "post climbing bears" and were going to post a picture of bears climbing, but no.

[KB Girl]

23 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

my handstand teacher held a bonus class (because he felt like it?)

those are the best kind! 

 

I've heard of the Daevebad series... should I go read them? 

[Mad Hatter]

18 hours ago, Harriet said:

This sounds super fun. Also, for a second I thought you wrote "post climbing bears" and were going to post a picture of bears climbing, but no.

Sorry to disappoint. 

 

23 minutes ago, KB Girl said:

those are the best kind! 

 

I've heard of the Daevebad series... should I go read them? 

If you like fantasy of the more politicking kind then yeah I'd recommend them! I often find books like that can get really dull (like half of GoT...), and I know some people complain about it being confusing but I did not find it the case. I also like the middle Eastern setting and visuals and magicalness of the world a lot. Personally I would recommend it, but I know the series is quite polarising so I take no responsibility if you hate it. Like honestly most characters are pretty obnoxious but I find it makes things interesting, rather than off putting.

[KB Girl]

I won't hold you responsible I'll give it a try.. I stopped reading GoT because the writer is evil, but I liked some parts of it. And the middle eastern inspiration for a magical world is different and interesting  I really like Harry Potter fanfiction that gets a bit more political (and does it well), does that count? 

 

[raptron]

On 1/13/2020 at 6:24 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Another interesting exercise was a chest to wall handstand, where a partner would try to move you around by pushing and pulling on your wrists, elbows, hips, whatever body part. The interesting thing here was that it was supposed to be a strong, but very reactive handstand, without adding unnecessary tension like say a gymnastics handstand. So you're kinda wobbling around, while someone's giving you a weird massage almost, and for some reason I found it very amusing and started laughing. Nice exercise.

I like this. 

 

On 1/13/2020 at 6:24 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Baked banana bread and shared most of it with my colleagues

Yummm. 

On 1/13/2020 at 6:24 AM, Mad Hatter said:

• Stroll in the forest, took out headphones to listen to ice slurry along the beach. It makes this amazing twinkling sound and I love the slow undulating movement the slurry makes compared to the sea without the ice.

So neat.