"Despite being hemmed in by later buildings it retained its courtyard and coach house round the back, which is where, these days, they keep the jazz. Coleman Hawkins played at the Bull, as did the multitalented Tubby Hayes, beloved of my dad and Nightingale, until the early 1970s when he popped his clogs."     Date: 16/09/24   All is solved by walking Total min exercise     Walk 30-60 min             The strong anvil 5 min Hindu pushup     5 min Hindu squat     5 min  bridge             Clothes maketh the gender-neutral man Jacket and tie   Y A nice close shave   P     1.5   Dawn is friend to the muses Kept 8-10 schedule   P Kept 10-12 schedule   Y Kept 12-2 schedule   Y Kept 2-4 schedule   P Kept 4-6 schedule         3   Rest is the best medicine 6-8 hours of sleep   Y In bed by midnight   Y AM writing exercise   N AM meditation   N PM writing exercise     PM meditation     Interoception meditation            

Week 1 Roundup Main goals Seek and defeat evil: 🌟 2 swarms of mephits defeated Regain spells: 🌟  Lesser restoration: 🌟 Buff the party! 🌟🌟 Protect the party coffers:  Side Quests:  Satisfy the Alderman: 🌟   Bonus Patrol the Hinterlands:  Long Rest: 🌟 Driving home from the observatory on a foggy night listening to my Folk Horror playlist 10/10 spoopy fall vibes I don’t care if it’s still summer   ☕️ 1/5 💪🏻 1/5   Running total: 7 🌟   First week of all jobs on schedule, but between my Main Concern Student being away three days and so much choir stuff (rehearsals MTW, concerts FSS) I’m still not feeling settled into routine.    According to my phone I logged 92 flights of stairs’ worth of elevation gain this week, I guess I could have taken on the mountain climbing challenge in the West Marches after all, haha.  I forgot about all the stairs I’d have to climb from the lower parking lot to the top of observatory hill and then to the upper floor of the telescope dome! Speaking of which, pls enjoy this photo of the gibbous moon, made so much more ominous by audience members’ taillights.      The observatory is a pretty special place for me. One of the original members of my folk ensemble, her husband is an astronomer who works there, and he convinced them to let us record a CD in the visitors’ centre up there after we got super frustrated recording in churches and theatres and dealing with noise from buses and even riding lawn mowers. Up there, it’s just the planes and the occasional herd of cyclists chattily catching their breath before they defy death on the steep, winding road back down. So I’ve spent a lot of beautiful weekend hours with some of my favourite people, making wonderful music and periodically popping out to enjoy this amazing view.      This week’s concerts are actually in the telescope dome - it’s a very cool concert, figuratively and literally as they open the dome and let in the cold night air along with the chill light of the stars. Well, it’s not wide open, there’s a telescope-wide window that stretches up to the crown of the dome, but it’s freaking cool. There’s a model in the visitors’ centre that we used as a green room!     The repertoire is divided between poetic/philosophical works, sacred works, especially that talk about “the heavens”, and science-themed works, often with an emphasis on historically minimized perspectives. This year we have a setting of a 1780s letter written by one of the first women to get paid for her scientific work and a gorgeous piece about early 20thC “human computers,” women who did calculations to interpret the photo plates taken by men who got to actually use the telescopes, men who measured the difficulty of projects in “girl hours.”   Anyway, I haven’t had much time or energy for anything but practice, rehearsal, and performance but I did make time for a workout and a meditative equinox-themed yoga video. Budgeting challenge is off to a bad start for a good reason - my Reaper Bones VI Kickstarter shipping charge was finally ready (Kickstarter wrapped in summer ‘22 😅 although this is only about six months later than the projected fulfillment so don’t knock Reaper) which means in a couple weeks I’ll have Stash Above Life Expectancy in the minis department as well as yarn. Too bad I didn’t get it before we entered the dungeon full of giant ants in our Pathfinder game, but there’s still hope that my Honeythorn Lancers will arrive before we finish dealing with the giant bees whose hive backs onto the anthill (they’re at war! And in Mr. Radost’s world, “dungeons are special and levels are magic,” so we basically have to “solve” dungeons in order to progress our characters, and our best guess is that the solution to this one is “end the war.”) We’ve been on hiatus for a few weeks because of my rehearsal schedule and I’m really looking forward to a session this week!

Thanks to the West Marches campaign, I've done pretty good at reducing evening screen time, but stretching has not been happening. Planning to make that more of a focus this week.

Our weather has suddenly changed to. It's supposed to be nicer later this week. But when I got up this morning, it was cold, and I decided  against my morning walk.

They put in the work but I'm extremely happy that 8 out of the 11 girls I had on my rec league softball team made it to the Travel teams.   I also learned I had a reputation as a coach that  I'm happy with, "I'm fair easy going and preach defense" so guess who is the new fielding coach for the developmental travel team. Also holy shit, if these girls stay together and continue to put in the work, I don't think they are going to stay on the developmental team for all to long.   

Bali pictures!   Tea ceremony   Some pretty flowers around the resort   The church where the wedding itself was held   The cake - won't upload, I'll fix it later. And, I apparently only took video of the baby turtles.   So, yeah, as I said, not a whole lot of pictures, but I was enjoying being in the moment. 😊

I hear you!! If it makes you nervous, you can always write a disclaimer or modification or note that modification is super acceptable -- I liked the deadbugs modification in one of the other quests, Spiders, I think?  I am honestly considering deadbugs instead of squats if they end up being too much for my knees, and thank you for the reminder that this is supposed to be heathy and fun, not painful and damaging

I like this. Maybe I'll think of them as an extended hold yoga pose. Thank you!

Week 2 calculations set up in the spreadsheet. Spider questers! Please use the drop down menu in Column H to select which option you are going with this week.

My almost 4yo loves Cosmic Kids too!  My 6yo is too cool for that though, he wants to do the grown up ones. Or do a "Brain Break Party" from Coach Corey Martin. Those are really fun because 1 yo starts copying the big kids and they are all doing silly dance moves or jumping around ❤️   Week 1 was crazy....  MrMezzo is working a lot right now so I'm having to be really intentional with my time. And I'm mostly succeeding, I think. I'm hoping to catch up with everyone's threads soon! 🤞   I ran 8 miles total and feeling pretty good. The 5k was a 48 minute one so I have my work cut out for me to get that time down though. I earned a STR point!!! 🎉 (Need to add that to my Epic Ques/Stats) The way I structured the challenge, I figured I would reach the first one pretty quickly but I'm still surprised I reached it on Week 2.  It just goes to show that when I have a goal to work towards, I push myself harder than I would otherwise.   Stretching is still going great, though I did miss last Wednesday. Kids are enjoying it too, though it's more of an evening thing than a morning thing as originally envisioned.   As part of my vanity project I'm taking a lot of pictures of myself (ewww) and I'm realizing that my posture is getting pretty terrible. 😕 So I'm working on how to address that as part of vanity project.    Week 2, let's go!