[Mad Hatter]

On 4/11/2024 at 5:27 PM, Harriet said:

(according to one theory, exercise reduces the energy budget available for surplus inflammation). 

How interesting!

 

20 hours ago, Harriet said:

Having children could be an amazing project with them at my side, if it doesn't destroy my life by pushing me over the precarious fatigue cliff I am balanced on and grinding me into dust, ensuring that I never have long enough periods of restedness to get back to "I feel just barely okay" let alone creating a life I want and can bear. Since my mood and motivation plummet when I am tired, I am worried that my worst moments would become everyday and I would change into the unbearable person I was when I was at my most depressed. Hmmm. 

Oof tough calls ahead. Whatever you decide remember there are no wrong choices. 

 

20 hours ago, Harriet said:

...accept my kindness, listening and humour as acceptable gifts...

These are wonderful gifts 🙂

[Laghail]

Children and the "fatigue cliff" is such a real calculus. It's why we have dogs - Laura decided she wanted to be a mom with a vibrant energy supply for her children's needs, or to not be a mom. This is not the only conclusion to land on re: energy budget and motherhood, but it's where we landed. Like you'd imagine, processing the foreclosure was hard and bits of it are still ongoing.

 

I like the idea of unweighted lunges while your soft tissue is complaining. Step-ups, lunges, dips, and chin-ups are my go-to bodyweight movements, and I have seen each provide a pump, which I think correlates to hypertrophy?

[Harriet]

19 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

I don't particularly look for hypertrophy from any exercise. I tend to look at results from how my daily life goes, and if an exercise makes my muscles stronger, I accept it happily without questioning how or why.

 

And yes, donkey kicks makes my glutes and hamstrings stronger. 

 

Fair enough. I think my hips are already strong enough for everyday. I want hypertrophy. 

 

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Oof tough calls ahead. Whatever you decide remember there are no wrong choices. 

 

Not necessarily true. If having children pushed me back to an endless crash state, which is what I experienced for years and years through school and uni, that would be a very, very, very wrong answer for me. Seriously I'd rather die than go back to being that exhausted all the time. 

 

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

These are wonderful gifts 🙂

 

Cheers!

 

54 minutes ago, Laghail said:

Laura decided she wanted to be a mom with a vibrant energy supply for her children's needs, or to not be a mom. 

 

Very understandable. If I weren't sick children would be a maybe. I want enough energy for me to have an okay life. But of course I also don't want to be an absent, resentful mother.

 

54 minutes ago, Laghail said:

I like the idea of unweighted lunges while your soft tissue is complaining. Step-ups, lunges, dips, and chin-ups are my go-to bodyweight movements, and I have seen each provide a pump, which I think correlates to hypertrophy?

 

Pump somewhat correlates. Apparently the key mechanisms are time under tension, stretch under tension, and metabolic damage (correlated with the BURN), with time under tension being the most important. I think pump correlates to metabolic damage? Some say it contributes a small but direct amount to the hypertrophy itself, but that's unsure. Cell mechanisms are complex. 

[Harriet]

I went to the fatigue doctor today and got blood taken. Got it to work first time. She said my blood is flowing easier and looks a better colour (I can't tell. Always neon purple normal human red.) Iodine test results: I have just squeaked out of the mild deficiency and into the normal range. Gotta keep taking the tablets, then. 

Went for a walk and took photographs of red maples in the neighbourhood to show Mr Harriet for our garden.

Installed baldur's gate on laptop so I have a downtime activity in Cassis. TOO MANY CHOICES?!?! Good? Evil? Class? So many classes!?! Different considerations for BGI and BGII, as early levels favour ranged weapons and early spells are unimpressive. Same or different characters for I and II? Possibly a custom pair and only 4 NPCs, since they are annoying. 

Did laundry, groceries, walk. Not very energetic but not crashed either.

[Laghail]

3 minutes ago, Harriet said:

I went to the fatigue doctor today and got blood taken. Got it to work first time. She said my blood is flowing easier and looks a better colour (I can't tell. Always neon purple normal human red.) Iodine test results: I have just squeaked out of the mild deficiency and into the normal range. Gotta keep taking the tablets, then. 

 

Congrats!!

 

3 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Installed baldur's gate on laptop so I have a downtime activity in Cassis. TOO MANY CHOICES?!?! Good? Evil? Class? So many classes!?! Different considerations for BGI and BGII, as early levels favour ranged weapons and early spells are unimpressive. Same or different characters for I and II? Possibly a custom pair and only 4 NPCs, since they are annoying. 

 

 

BGIII you're playing? Liam is a consummate spellcaster and he finds the game weighted against direct evocation. 

[Harriet]

44 minutes ago, Laghail said:

BGIII you're playing? Liam is a consummate spellcaster and he finds the game weighted against direct evocation. 

 

No, 1 & 2! I want to backstab. *Stabbitty stabby*

[Laghail]

6 minutes ago, Harriet said:

No, 1 & 2! I want to backstab. *Stabbitty stabby*

 

[Harriet]

4 minutes ago, Laghail said:

 

 

I LOVE IT! Including his coquettish look 😛

[Everstorm]

What kind of red maples do you like?  I know you don't favor the purpley ones.

[Sea-to-sky]

35 minutes ago, Harriet said:

No, 1 & 2! I want to backstab. *Stabbitty stabby

🗡️🗡️🗡️ go for it 😄

 

also recommend divinity eternal sin 1 & 2 and also wildermyth  if your into d&d like games. Both are awesome and very replayable. Divinity eternal sin is also a really fun multiplayer. 
 

 

[Scaly Freak]

8 hours ago, Harriet said:

 

No, 1 & 2! I want to backstab. *Stabbitty stabby*

 

The backstabbing is indeed very satisfying. And fun.  

[TimovieMan]

19 hours ago, Harriet said:

No, 1 & 2! I want to backstab. *Stabbitty stabby*

Go for the eyes, Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!!! 🤘

[Mad Hatter]

22 hours ago, Harriet said:

Not necessarily true. If having children pushed me back to an endless crash state, which is what I experienced for years and years through school and uni, that would be a very, very, very wrong answer for me. Seriously I'd rather die than go back to being that exhausted all the time. 

I think that's thinking a bit backwards about decision making. You'd be making a bad decision if you ignored the risks and potential consequences, rushed into things, didn't have the means, made it based on societal expectations, ignored your own needs and wants, didn't discuss it with Mr Harriett etc. The outcome is a separate thing. You can't predict it, or control it. You can only do your best to make an informed decision based on extremely limited knowledge. As I see it, if you do that, you can't make a "wrong" decision. But it sure is a scary and tough one.

 

22 hours ago, Laghail said:

BGIII you're playing? Liam is a consummate spellcaster and he finds the game weighted against direct evocation. 

Oh good now I have an excuse why I found smashing the enemies with my face instead of skill and finesse was more effective. 😜

 

20 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

 wildermyth  

There's some really cool stuff going on in Wildermyth but I didn't find it very replayable. Wish it had a bit more content!

[Laghail]

Can I drop a brief plug for Solasta for the isometric RPG fans in the room?

 

Made by a French kickstarter campaign, the games' release predates BGIII by two years but featured increased tactical play / environmental interactions options, only some of which were mirrored in BGIII. The gameplay conceit is that you design an entire 4 person party, instead of just a single player character. Obviously this is going to change how dialogue works, removing any single character as the sole point of narrative focus, it has you select character and conversation traits for all four PC's, and then their differential personalities generate all your possible responses in NPC dialogues. It also handles "companion quests" by assigning a more generic personal quest to each of the 4 pc's, depending on what backgrounds you selected in the 5e char creation process.

 

Storytelling is a bit more linear that BGIII, and because of the 4 PC thing, I find lower re-playability once I've finished a module. Good news is the game is 3 years old now, but the studio is still releasing quarterly plot/class/race bundles as DLC. This means I re-install the game every year and try the latest goodies, usually while telling a fairly niche story with a party that sometimes is mono-species or mono-class, just to draw out different gameplay approaches. The 3 rangers and 1 green mage party I played through the Lost Valley content, it was a treat in tactical gameplay and ambush setups, and obviously I had the party of wood elves romancing each other as a messy messy polycule (yes the green mage was the party/polycule sub but he resented everyone just assuming that the spellcaster would be the  submissive). 

 

[Harriet]

21 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

🗡️🗡️🗡️ go for it 😄

 

also recommend divinity eternal sin 1 & 2 and also wildermyth  if your into d&d like games. Both are awesome and very replayable. Divinity eternal sin is also a really fun multiplayer. 

 

Divinity original sin? I played both but finished neither 😳

 

13 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

 

The backstabbing is indeed very satisfying. And fun.  

 

I especially loved it in Dragon Age: Origin. Really loved seeing those bold critical hit numbers pop up.

 

2 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

Go for the eyes, Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!!! 🤘

 

Precisely! But miniature giant space hamster is not a playable race 😡

 

25 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

I think that's thinking a bit backwards about decision making.

 

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm considering what my life will be like later with and without children. I'm considering possible outcomes and their likelihood and utility. Why is that not exactly what one should do? 

 

25 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Oh good now I have an excuse why I found smashing the enemies with my face instead of skill and finesse was more effective. 😜

 

Face smashing is an excellent and enjoyable modality. 

[Harriet]

Went to the gym, had a bit of a rest, then went to visit my brother at his apartment. Berlin is so spread out that it's a 45 minute ride. Discussed the children issue with him and found it helpful. Now home and resting. Need to do a few things to get ready for trip to France. Tomorrow? 

 

Mr Harriet booked a session with the trainer at the gym. He is finally ready to work on his low muscle mass (he's skinnyfat, and it's affecting his posture and vertigo, and heart disease seems to run in the family) instead of just doing endless extreme endurance exercise and hoping it will shrink his stomach. The guy gave him a workout to do twice a week, on machines. Leg press, hip thrust, pec machine, cable row, lat pull down, and maybe one other thing. I forget. But those are the machines I use to supplement BB and DB, so I thought it was okay. No bosu ball shit or endless featherweight isolation exercises. His reasoning is that you can build muscle more easily on machines. Not sure if that's always true, but they're definitely less fatiguing than complex free movements so it might be easier to get more volume on them, and volume is crucial to hypertrophy. He recommended 8-12 reps, and that Mr Harriet should add weight if he gets to 15 reps. Overall it sounds like a pretty solid way to programme and explain to someone with limited interest and time, IMO. He also said Mr Harriet should eat 1g/lb protein, so about 150g. Possibly overkill, according to RP, and hard to achieve as a vegetarian without protein shakes. I did enter a sample day of vegetarian eating into my app that gave him 125g, though, so that he has some ideas how it might be done. Dairy helps. 

[Mad Hatter]

7 minutes ago, Harriet said:

I'm not sure what you mean. I'm considering what my life will be like later with and without children. I'm considering possible outcomes and their likelihood and utility. Why is that not exactly what one should do? 

That's exactly what one should do. What I mean is that it's not wrong to decide that the risk is worth the benefits. And it's not wrong to decide that the risk is too high.

 

7 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Face smashing is an excellent and enjoyable modality. 

True. So's backstabbing. But I only do it once because I'm too impatient to coordinate.  

 

35 minutes ago, Harriet said:

Precisely! But miniature giant space hamster is not a playable race 😡

Sad.

 

40 minutes ago, Laghail said:

Can I drop a brief plug for Solasta for the isometric RPG fans in the room?

 

Noooo I don't need more games.  (Oh no it's on sale.)

[Laghail]

5 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Noooo I don't need more games.  (Oh no it's on sale.)

 

It's such a gentle game!!! If you have a crush on any one fantasy race, play a party of just that race and maybe explore what a dwarven princess has to say to a dwarven union organizer in the mines? Okay, 50% of that happens in head cannon, but the other 50% is diegetic!

[Elastigirl]

Yay for your blood not being purple!😉 And otherwise looking like some of your health markers are improving

[Harriet]

23 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

That's exactly what one should do. What I mean is that it's not wrong to decide that the risk is worth the benefits. And it's not wrong to decide that the risk is too high.

 

Right. I'm just feeling out some possibilities and their values, and one of the important things that has come up in my reflections is that an endless crash state is not unlikely, at least during the early years (but maybe longer, since my crashes are triggered by minor infections and emotional stress, or regularly overstepping my boundaries, which is very easily done and which characterised my life for about fifteen years while I studied and worked, even part time). And there's a real possibility that the utility of this scenario is so negative that I would rather be dead. I had suicidal ideations throughout school and my part time internship, not because anything bad happened but because I was overtired/under-recovered all the time, which doesn't sound that bad, but kind of is. It doesn't kill you but just creates permanent mild to moderate suffering (the unbearableness of this is not high at first, but increases over months and years) and causes your cognitive and emotional function to deteriorate, in my experience. In my understanding of my history, my depression lifted precisely because I wasn't working or studying, even part time. Hard to see how I'd cope better with children, which seems to push healthy people to their limits, but that's still open to discussion. Maybe there are some differences that are relevant like the time frame or the privacy and home setting of childrearing vs paid work, or increased coping skills now I'm turning into a give-no-fucks Hag. And all this is measured against the positives, which I'm also trying to feel out.

 

23 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

True. So's backstabbing. But I only do it once because I'm too impatient to coordinate.  

 

I'm finding that stabbing someone directly to their face (like a MAN!) is much more convenient, yeah. 

 

23 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Sad.

 

Saaaaad.

[TimovieMan]

42 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

Noooo I don't need more games.  (Oh no it's on sale.)

[Sea-to-sky]

1 hour ago, Harriet said:

But miniature giant space hamster is not a playable race 😡

Disappointing 

[Sovalis]

All the power to us give-no-fucks-Hags. ❤️

[Scaly Freak]

13 hours ago, Harriet said:

Precisely! But miniature giant space hamster is not a playable race 😡

 

There is no reason to let that stop you from going for the eyes of your enemies. It's somewhat challenging while backstabbing, but it can absolutely be done, and is quite satifying.

[Mad Hatter]

16 hours ago, Laghail said:

It's such a gentle game!!! If you have a crush on any one fantasy race, play a party of just that race and maybe explore what a dwarven princess has to say to a dwarven union organizer in the mines? Okay, 50% of that happens in head cannon, but the other 50% is diegetic!

Fine twist my arm will ya 😛 It was on sale.... But a playthrough will have to wait as Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion also ended up in my cart as a palate cleanser. 😆 So far it's adorable.