As martial arts injuries go, this is a light one. It only hurts when I touch it, which does not happen often. The bruise is starting to show a lot of color. Dumbledore is afraid that people are going to blame him. 🤐   So far, no one at work has said anything. I often come home with mystery fingerprint bruises on my arms. Par for the course.   --------- The weather was great yesterday so I went outside after work and mowed. I felt good after doing the back yard so I kept going and did the side yard. It took me 1.5 hours and I felt good when I got done. That was encouraging after the knee pain from walking on Sunday.   I played Immortal Life for 1.5 hours. I actually stopped when my alarm went off. I did evening prep for half an hour, then helped Dumbledore with a project. That would have been great, except that we started at 9pm.   The project was reorganizing in the dining room cabinets, pantry closet and mud room to make space for the baking pans that do not fit in the new stove storage drawer. Dumbledore wanted to have all the baking pans consolidated in the dining room, which makes sense to me. To do that, we had to find a new home for the crock pots. The floor of the pantry closet looked like the best place for accessibility and safe storage. However, the bottom of the pantry closet was already full of stuff. We pulled that all out, vacuumed the corners, and did some rearranging.    One of the dusty items in the back corner was the deep fat fryer, which gets used once a year to make holiday cookies. Last year I used the Dutch oven instead because it had better temperature control. I may donate the deep fat fryer since I rarely use it and don't trust it. That  was an easy choice to put out in the mud room. We discovered a box of silverware (with bone-handle knives) under the deep fat fryer. The weird part is I don't recognize it. My good silverware was in the dining room cabinet. It must have come from someone in my family, but I'm not sure who. Now both sets of silver are stacked in the bottom of the pantry, under the small crockpot. Everything fit with only a little rearranging and putting some extra jars and tins in the recycling.   I am very glad we did that project, but wish we could have found a different time. In this case we really did not have any better option before next week. I feel like Dumbledore says he supports me getting more sleep, but keeps coming up with urgent things that make me stay up late.   Family drama update  

Yesterday I did most of the things. Even yoga. I was super exhausted; my meditation was very, very hard mode, because I kept doing hallucinatory microsleeps. Smelled great. Mostly sleeping well. I'm improving at sleeping, anyway. A little.  

You're rock steady even in the face of weird weather disasters? Damn

Love the beautiful wood stain on the Barndominium!   Also, the plethora of raspberries sounds delicious. 

Hi, I'm Bailo, this is my first Challenge here. 🕺🪩🎶 Since I started late, I'll probably just be copy+pasting this and continuing it next month. Let's get into it!  Challenge 1: Mindful Morning Meditation - Wake after first alarm, and open curtains, plug in string lights, drink water - Sit in front of window either upstairs or (ideally) downstairs - Meditate on gratitude, come back to the phrase "I deserve peace and happiness"  Challenge 2: You Gotta Fight for Your Right to ¡Bailar! - Decide on which Zumba playlist/songs to dance to & which songs to cooldown to - Change into gym shorts and thin workout shirt - Stretch & drink water, make sure waterbottle is nearby - Dance for 30 minutes following YT videos - Light core exercises for 5-10 minutes (music, no video) - Cooldown stretch (music, no video)  Challenge 3: You Always Find Something on a Hike - Walk an average of 2 mi a day, with rest days - Hide a painted rock or two - Find a painted rock! - Arrange rocks, leaves, sticks, flowers, mushrooms, etc. to make art - See a cool animal (bonus points for skunks! just don't get sprayed...) - Have a nice interaction with a stranger  Challenge 4: Play Hard, Rest Hard - Make sure to use a fidget toy or stim app once a day at least - Take time to just sit and meditate, and do nothing else - Sit and stare at my cat, and just be with her - Find new good music to relax to, and to boost my energy - Doodle to destress, don't try to make the drawing perfect  Challenge 5: Wax On, Wax Off - Find one YouTube channel with good Tae-Kwon-Do videos - Memorize the tenants for white belts - Practice the white belt form until it's memorized - Stretch & core exercises before every practice - Lots of water during practice - Start with just 10 minutes of practice, work up to 15, then 20

So how about that narrative update? I don't recall where I last updated, but quick summary: They made it to the village of Barovia (I had started them by Krezk despite Death House being in Barovia because I wanted to explore the other side of the map first) They killed a vampire spawn under the chapel, and received an invite to dinner at Castle Ravenloft. They returned to the Burgomaster's house to find Ireena missing. On the way to the castle they visit the Vistani camp and get more context for their personal and group readings from Madame Eva. At the castle, they encounter numerous monsters and NPCs (including their ally, Pidlwick II), and work their way to an exit route via the teleportation brazier. They bamfed to the Tsolenka Pass, where the cold took a toll on them, as did the short lived trust of the prisoner they extricated from the castle, resulting in exhaustion and bitter feelings. When they made it to Krezk, passing Rictavio on the road in search of ancient legends beyond Tsolenka Pass, they accepted the mission of saving missing children from the werewolves . They massacred the residents who hadn't gone on a hunt, brought the children as far as the Abbey, fought several shades to have a place to sleep, and found they couldn't sleep (except one who had been too busy praying over the dead to do any looting at the den). Exhausted and still escorting several children, they stopped to speak with the Abbott who deemed Vasilka ready to be escorted to Castle Ravenloft, and he spent an hour casting Raise Dead on a child who didn't make it through the fight with shades (it also had become a shade in the night, but a Guardian of Faith zapped it before it could attack... due to being undead and re-killed, I opted for the soul to have been prevented from returning). While preparing to go down to Krezk, they group was interrupted by Strahd slowly descending the staircase, addressing them, and hopefully being very aloof and unfazed, maybe even unimpressed, but amused? Hard for me to say. But the twice exhausted cleric nearly used Hold Monsters with her amulet if not for the rested cleric insisting she NOT start a fight when he is presently not attacking. It was soooo fun. XD   Thanks for reading! Maerad

@electrictrailrunner that is so smart. what did you use that was safe for your face?

gotcha, thanks. smart to prevent bots & scammers, for sure.

Yes, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I believe you have to be active on the site for a little bit before you can upload pictures.

so weird, i don't see it! maybe it's something that unlocks after i've made a few posts?