[oromendur]

Holiday greetings to the Rebellion!

 

Quote

"Great stores of goods and food, and beer, were found that had been hidden away...so that there was a great deal better cheer that Yule than anyone had hoped for." (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

 

In the spirit of my last two holiday challenges, I'm back to make an effort to seek out moments of #YuleCheer in and among the random and ofter exhausting adventures that generally characterize the holiday season for one over-educated, under-employed, somewhat-unmoored wandering mythologist Adventurer. I'm sneaking in late (as usual) as today is the first day of Week One for me (challenges start on MONDAYS and I refuse to listen to talk that says otherwise) but if I can get this up before midnight I'll call it good.

 

The real challenge tracking happens over on the spreadsheet, but here's a breakdown to put some narrative flesh on the spreadsheet's bones.

 

PAI: I will keep my PAI score over 100. I've been doing this for a few years, and it works as well as any other arbitrary measurement designed to keep me moving, and it actually requires me to get my heart rate up for a time as opposed to simply counting steps. To get to 100 I generally need at least two short (or one long or very intense) proper cardio sessions a week.

 

Outside: I will go outside every day for at least ten minutes. I'm in the second week of a six-week trip (see Adventure description below for details) and I want to take advantage of the opportunity to see things I love that I generally can't get in Southern California (pine trees, mountains, snow).

 

Routines: Every day, first thing in the morning I will do a meditation/HRV reading and do Julia Cameron-style morning pages, and right before bed I will write in my gratitude journal and do at least the Sleep routine with the Theragun. In recent challenges I've been attempting to keep up with a long list of routine habits. I won't try and do everything -- it is a holiday after all -- but I want to keep these four going because when I blew them off in the craziness of the last week I felt icky about it.

 

#YuleCheer: Three times a week I will post something highlighting my enjoyment of this holiday season, extra credit for more (up to 1 per day). I've done this for the last two holiday challenges and I like what it does for my mindset. If I'm noticing how pretty that bright silver ornament is nestled in dark green pine, or smiling at the colorful patterns of lights in the darkness under a fluffy snowfall, I'm not seething about family drama or feeling sorry for myself. Since I also need some encouragement to keep this thread updated (for proof of how awful I am at this, see pretty much every one of my NF challenges ever), updating this thread will count for this task. Charming hobbity holiday images encouraged but not required

 

Adventure: Twice a week I will leave the cocoon of my various comfy temporary homes for some sort of adventurous activity, extra credit for more (up to 1 per day).

 

Spoiler for trip description:

Spoiler

This past February I used up a bunch of expiring timeshare points and weeks left over from the pandemic to go adventuring in Lake Tahoe and the central Sierras. It was awesome. So when I noticed timeshare availability in the Tahoe area for this December, I decided to use this year's points and weeks to do it again. Considering that the Tahoe ski resorts were spinning lifts at Halloween, I was very much looking forward to a long and leisurely ski holiday, taking advantage of the fact that I'm now officially in a retired military status and can snag the great pass deals. Unfortunately, Mother Nature (<cough>climate change<cough>) had other ideas

 

I drove up to a lovely little condo slopeside at the newly-renamed Palisades Tahoe (on Sunday before my challenge Week Zero started) to find lovely sunny weather and not a snowflake to be seen (sigh) I spent the first two days of that week in an all-out sprint to finish my NaNoWriMo novel. I then needed two days to recover from the mental and physical damage that sprint caused, and finally on Friday I used my retired military season pass to ride the tram up to High Camp and hike down through Shirley Canyon. While there was nowhere near enough snow to ski on, there was enough on the north-facing slopes that I almost had to give up on potentially the only use I may get out of this expensive bit of plastic   My grumpiness about the whole situation precipitated one of my characteristically questionable winter hiking decisions, and I found myself mired in some pretty gnarly bouldering (at a level honestly a touch too technical for my skill) underneath the Solitude lift in order to make my way down the steeps to Shirley Lake without breaking anything or dying. (The trail from the lake down to the base was much nicer.) Everything worked out fine but the DOMS over the next few days has reminded me that I'm getting a little too old for these sorts of questionable decisions

 

Anyway, I'm now up in Incline Village for a week, at the same place I stayed in February. This coming weekend I'll move to another slopeside condo on the Nevada side of Heavenly for one last week before I fly to Buffalo to spend the holidays with my sister's family. (Then on New Year's Day I'll fly back to Tahoe for further adventuring with a friend before heading south for Disney and dancing adventures, but that's a story -- and a problem -- for the next challenge). There's a storm predicted for later this week, and I've got everything crossed that it will bring enough snow with it that I can get at least one or two days of use out of my pass. We'll see.

 

Should the snow gods prove kind, I hope to get a few days of skiing or riding in before I leave. If not, well, I will have to figure out some more hiking options to meet my adventure task (preferably with fewer incidences of questionable decision-making but I can't make any promises on that). There is also the option to drive to Reno for a some ballroom dancing at a holiday ball this coming Friday, which since I know not a soul in the city will totally count as an adventure

 

Projects: As this (like most) is a working vacation, before Christmas I have three personal and professional projects to complete: a) submit a paper proposal to the Tolkien Studies area of the Popular Culture Association National Conference (deadline 23 Dec), b) mail my holiday cards (deadline next week sometime), and -- this is the big one -- c) edit the page proofs of, write the index for, and submit the final version of my forthcoming academic book on Tolkien and wilderness (proofs deadline 13 Dec, index deadline 3 Jan, ideally I'd send it all at the same time before I leave for Buffalo).

 

Spoiler for book discussion:

Spoiler

This book is an adaptation of my dissertation in mythological studies; it examines the mythic idea of wilderness in three of Tolkien's medieval sources (Beowulf, the Mabinogion, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), highlights how those ideas appear in his own work, and considers how they have developed within the multimedia Middle-earth phenomenon that has arisen since Tolkien's death. (If this sort of fairly dry academic tome sounds like something that might interest you, DM me your email address and I'll send you further details once they're available; I'm trying to avoid searchable links to my NF threads because they are so public.) It's been a long, slow, and often painful process, but I now have a title (which I quite like) and a cover (which I honestly kind of hate) and, assuming I get everything done and in before the deadline, it will be a real honest-to-goodness book come spring. (I honestly haven't a clue how to actually write an index, but it can't be that hard, can it? Watch this space...)

 

So. That's the challenge. It's a bit more complicated than expected for a short holiday challenge while traveling, but I think it should do the job anyway.

 

Here's wishing everyone all the Yule Cheer you can enjoy, and not a drop more!

 

[Ann of Owlshire]

I’m going to pretend that I haven’t been checking daily for your challenge to pop up…

 

Nevermind, no I’m not. You know me  

 

Loving this, and good luck on your projects (and Xmas with family)! I’m definitely interested in your book when it comes out! 

[Elastigirl]

Following for holiday cheer! Hoping for a good snowstorm to come your way.

Spoiler

That book sounds interesting. I'll be DM you my email address

 

[Manarelle]

Quite an adventure, even without snow. Hoping you got the promised storm and were able to make use of your pass!

[oromendur]

Monday evening? Of Week One? Already? Yikes 

 

Time for the [WEEK ONE UPDATE] then.

 

PAI: 7/7, 100% I woke up on Friday with the number in the sixties, but a couple hours' worth of social ballroom dancing sorted me out Then all of the packing and schlepping and unpacking on Saturday started me off on the climb to a point where next Friday I hopefully won't be looking at another max day to stay over 100.

 

Outside: 5/7, 71% I missed this on Monday and Friday, both times because the day got eaten up by driving to Reno (Monday for shopping, Friday for dancing). The rest of the week I turned myself out for short walks in the Incline Village area; there was still no snow to ski on, and I couldn't be bothered to drive anywhere to go hiking. I am on a better track this week, and hopefully I will manage a perfect score. I mean, seriously -- I'm in a location that ties with several other friendly wilderness areas for my favorite place on the planet and I have enough cold- and wet-weather gear to outfit three of me on any given day. AND IT'S SNOWING! If I can't bother to go outside for ten minutes then why the heck am I here?

 

Routines: 27/28, 96%. I blew off the Theragun session on Friday because I got back from Reno so [BLEEP]ing late and had to leave so [BLEEP]ing early on Saturday (to avoid the extremely draconian measures a resort struggling with COVID staffing shortages put in place to ensure compliance with the check-out times), otherwise this was perfect. I think I picked a good balance -- there's enough oomph to get me to do stuff when I don't want to, but not so much of a requirement that I can't meet the standard with a minimum of effort.

 

#YuleCheer: 2/3, 67%. Every time I saw something that reminded me of this task I was driving, and when I wasn't driving I kind of forgot I was supposed to do it  I'll add a cheery hobbity image to this post to start me off better this week.

 

Adventure: 2/2, 100%. Well, sort of...

 

Spoiler for length and pics:

Spoiler

On Friday I made my excursion to The Ballroom of Reno for their holiday ball. I didn't know a soul, and at first it seemed like everyone was dancing in their little cliques (there was a salsa/bachata clique, a swing clique, and a few scattered ballroom types) and I was going to have to watch the whole time, but things got better as the night went on. I ended up leading a skilled Eastern European lady (Russian, I'd guess, but my accent-fu isn't nearly good enough to distinguish Russian from other Slavic languages and I didn't want to ask) in an EPIC Viennese waltz (it helped that there was only one other couple on the floor, so I could step out as much as I wanted without worrying about how much my floorcraft sucks). I also danced various forms of swing with several gentlemen (I was probably quite a disappointment as a partner, since I definitely dance swing like a ballroom dancer, and they definitely didn't), and there was a very nice waltz at the end of the night (with the fellow who had been on the floor with his instructor for that VWaltz). I'm glad I went. Lack of social dancing has been far and away the biggest of my COVID woes, and it's only just starting to recover (sigh)

 

The next two don't really count as full adventures, but I guess together they might add up to one, if I squint a bit and look the other way

 

On Saturday, after checking out of one condo and before it was reasonable to expect to be able to check into the next, I drove down to Carson City to get gas and then back up the hill and through all of South Lake to visit my old friend Emerald Bay. I literally parked in the state beach parking lot, walked about twenty feet, took some pictures, took a picture for a group of tourists, got them to reciprocate, and then walked back to my car. Definitely doesn't count as a proper adventure -- but it was so darn pretty:

 

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Then on Sunday, when all of the weather-guessers were spouting doom and destruction about how the incoming storm was going to snow everybody in for DAYS, I decided to walk down to the local convenience store to see if they had any fresh meat. (They didn't.) As I hiked back up the hill from the store, empty-handed, the snow was starting to blow around. The roads were still clear, though, so I drove down into South Lake to get the fixings for beef hand pies, and I guess the fact that it was indeed kind of sketchy driving up through the blowing snow made it worth at least half an adventure point...

 

Projects: I didn't make any progress on PCA or cards, and the index is going a lot slower than I hoped. I'd totally be done by now if I had any idea what I was doing But this is the first index I've ever tried to write, and there were more than a few false starts until I finally figured out how it's supposed to work. I should still make the deadline though (fingers crossed).

 

After all of that, with a few extra credit points, I ended up with a surprisingly high 89%. Not bad for Week One!

 

Now I'm holed up in my well-stocked and cozy condo and hoping against hope that this storm will bring lots and lots of snow but not so much wind that the resorts won't be able to open midweek. Seriously, I can't win with this whole feast-or-famine thing. There was no snow forever, now we're having a proper Sierra blizzard, and current projections suggest sunny weather after the storm on Thursday and Friday, with all the resorts expecting to fully open this weekend. And I have to leave on Saturday

 

Ah, well. Here's to enjoying what can be enjoyed (and not focusing on what can't). That's the theme of this challenge, isn't it? Finding better Yule Cheer than expected?

 

May everyone find the #YuleCheer they want, need, and deserve!

 

[oromendur]

On 12/8/2021 at 8:21 AM, Ann of Owlshire said:

I’m going to pretend that I haven’t been checking daily for your challenge to pop up…

 

Nevermind, no I’m not. You know me  

 

Remember last year when I wasn't going to do the holiday challenge and you shamed me into it with Shire picspam? I remember  Always wonderful to have you here 

 

On 12/8/2021 at 8:31 AM, Elastigirl said:

Following for holiday cheer! Hoping for a good snowstorm to come your way.

4 hours ago, Manarelle said:

Hoping you got the promised storm and were able to make use of your pass!

 

Well, we are definitely getting the storm. Use of the pass is still kind of up in the air though 

 

4 hours ago, Manarelle said:

Quite an adventure, even without snow.

 

It definitely was! Spoiler for the "what the heck was I thinking" shot I took of the crazy bouldering after I made it down:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

[Manarelle]

18 hours ago, oromendur said:

 

Well, we are definitely getting the storm. Use of the pass is still kind of up in the air though 

 

Hopefully it settles gracefully into reality along with lots of useful snowflakes.