Jarric

I've missed a couple of updates, so let's get back on track here. Thursday I destroyed my phone in the morning, as previously mentioned. Spent the day in a sales meeting, which was pretty tiring but to be fair I was pretty tired going in. I stayed for one drink after, and then thought better of it and blagged a lift home. Had a couple more beers in front of the TV, whilst practically vibrating from a mixture of stress and exhaustion. I did manage to do my Duolingo (on the laptop as I had no phone). I tracked my food in my notebook as I couldn't use My Fitness Pal - it meant I didn't have the calories but I'm going to count it as a best effort for the purposes of this challenge. I just about remembered to check in here, and teeth were done. Friday I got into work and immediately went through everything I had outstanding, made a big list of it, and sent it to my manager to ask for help. She was able to share it out so at least the most urgent stuff will get done while I'm off next week. After getting that sorted, and in the full knowledge that it would be impossible for me to get everything up to date before I left, my day was no less busy but certainly less stressful. When I got home I packed for Saturday's race, and chilled in front of the TV with a beer. I opened the laptop to update here, but I didn't have it in me. Food tracked in my notebook again, and teeth were done. Saturday was the final race of the season, Nuclear Oblivion. The weather travelling there was absolutely shocking, really torrential rain for the drive backing off into drizzly rain for the run. Regardless, it was warm enough, and I managed to overdress a bit which worked out well. It's a fun event, with a good mix of technical obstacles and slogging in and out of rivers, and plenty of marshals in good spirits despite the rain. I was having fun, not taking it too seriously, and everything was going well until I dropped out of a tube into a little pool of water and felt my ankle crunch. Well, that was about 2 miles (3.2km) in. The rest of the race was spent with a mixture of limping and trying to run in brief stints. Although it was annoying, I kept reminding myself that the whole point of this race was just to have fun. I wasn't competing for anything in particular, and I was in no particular rush. I still managed to complete all of the obstacles, if not with quite as much flair as I would have liked, and got to the end of the lap. I had booked for 2 laps - 14km (8.75 miles), so I had a decision to make. I pretty quickly decided that the risk of getting cold and getting into trouble because I couldn't run was too great, and that it wouldn't be much fun to limp another lap anyway, so I quit after the 7km. Got myself a beer and a burger and headed back home. By the time I got home I was very glad I didn't go for the second lap. I could barely operate the clutch by the end of the drive, and was struggling to walk round the house at all the rest of the day. I did limp into town to buy a cheap temporary phone while I wait to see if mine will dry out. Other than that it was a deeply relaxing day of food, drink, and a nice long bath. I didn't update here, but I did track calories (and backfill 2 days of My Fitness Pal), and teeth were done.

Yeah, it wasn't smart, though I was very glad when I got back alive . And I am very much, thank you.

This morning I went for a run in a thunderstorm. It was slightly fun but mostly scary and probably a pretty stupid idea given how little I could see. I got soaked to the skin, as did my phone, which is now very, very unwell. So updates from me might be sporadic whilst my phone dries out (hopefully) or I end up replacing it. I am very tired from work. Tomorrow I'm going to have to do what I can, hand over what I can't, and look forward to a week off of trying to relax.

I forgot to update yesterday, and it's now bedtime so this'll be a short one. I'm tired, really tired. Work is absolutely crazy. On the plus side, I've only got tomorrow at an internal meeting all day, one day of proper work on Friday, and then a week off. Just got to power through and try not to leave my work in too bad a state for other people. Food has been tracked, including lots of delicious Halloween baking, and teeth have been brushed.

Thank you!

I'm glad it worked. I don't know for sure, having only seen it from the student side, but I've always thought the TurnItIn score doesn't matter very much as long as the highlights are all correctly referenced. I mean, I guess if the score was 100 you would have done no original work, but other than that

Not much of an update to do, as I've already talked about what I got up to yesterday. It's mostly stats. Documancer: 7/7 - updated here every day Face: 6/7 - didn't brush my teeth Friday night when I was ill, but otherwise good Muscle: 7/7 - tracked calories every day In terms of food, I ate a total of 19,817 kcal last week (average 2,831 per day), and according to Polar burned 23,822 kcal (average 3,403 per day). I lost 2.3lbs, to bring me down to 171.8lbs (12 stone 3.8 or 77.9kg), which more or less bears out the calorie numbers. My target for the week was to eat 20,000 kcal, so I was pretty much bang on track with that too. I didn't end up going to bed particularly early last night, but I did manage to catch up with watching Loki, and I still got a decent night's sleep. Feeling a bit better today.

Thanks man. Thanks

Your salmon and lentils sounds amazing, I hope it did the trick to warm you and perk you up.

So, that elaboration I was talking about. Friday was a good day. Crossfit was fun - heavy farmers' walks and then some nice assistance stuff. Also spent a bit of time ignoring the programming and messing around trying to do pullovers (these: ) Work was really busy again. I felt a little bit less frantic, as I just worked on what was in front of me and ignored my todo list, but I'm in no better position that when I started in terms of workload. In the evening I went out to see a friend, and had a few drinks and a really, really nice time. When I got home I decided to stay up watching TV for a bit, but then started to feel really ill. In hindsight it could be any one of several things that I've eaten this week that have been allowed to defrost/get warm, and then been re-refrigerated when our new fridge arrived. Of course, throwing 5 pints of beer on top didn't help either, but this wasn't just the effects of alcohol. Suffice to say I spent quite a lot of the night on the toilet, and got to bed at about 4.30am. I did not brush my teeth that evening, so that's my first failure on that goal this challenge. Saturday I slept until 8, got up and fed the cat, and then went back to bed until about midday. I got up and went out for brunch with WW and both our mums, and then spent the rest of the day feeling rough and doing very little. I did watch the rugby final, at least. Today I still feel rough. I got up and went for a run, a slow 10k (6.2 miles). I've spend the rest of the day sitting on the sofa again, though I have started making gingerbread coffins to take to our pathfinder group on Halloween, and I've done some washing up whilst WW makes blood red velvet cake and Halloween rocky road for my work bake off. Mostly I'm looking forward to going back to bed.

Forgot to update today, and now it's bedtime, so this is my update for ticking the box on this goal. I feel rough, didn't get much sleep, may elaborate tomorrow.

Thank you ❤️

"I smell frosting. Ready your weapons" ? Challenge rating is useful, but in my experience always too low. If it were accurate, a twice-deadly encounter should have killed your party. As it is you can probably give the players a few 'deadly' encounters per day without issue. I'm 100% stealing that premise if I run a Christmas game this year, that's an excellent idea! Thanks for that!

Very true! One race left this year, don't want to pick up an injury now.

I can't find the Candy Horror online (I don't have the book on D&D Beyond), but this sentence makes me know that I need to use the Gingerbrute in a game soon: "The gingerbrute makes two Fork attacks, two Gumdrop Slingshot attacks, or one of each." Good man! I thought as much, but always worth checking. There's a language barrier issue here - In England the first one is a pancake, in America the second one is a pancake. Given that TimovieMan is niether English or American I didn't feel right calling them 'English pancakes' and 'American pancakes', so I went with pictures. I don't think savoury snacks would be weird. Halloween themed crackers and cheese could go down well - you could make novelty crackers or (easier option) cut the cheese into spooky shapes. Think gingerbread men, but in the shape of caskets instead of men.

Thursday - week 1 day 4 Yesterday was a good day. Went for a run first thing, which I cut short to 5k (3.1 miles) as I'm still not 100% from the marathon. It felt strong though; I could have gone further. Work was madness - I'm drowning a bit at the moment and I ended up working until 7pm. Hope I can offload some stuff sooner rather than later. Today I've been doing a little better at doing the job in front of me and not worrying so much about the rest of my todo list. Once I'd eventually finished work I cooked myself bacon, egg, sausage, and beans, but the sausages tasted acrid (they were a day past their best before date) and I felt sick by halfway through. I ended up throwing half the meal away, which is a bugger given I was trying to use up freezer food before it spoiled. Spent the rest of the evening playing Balder's Gate multiplayer with some online friends. It was a pretty successful session, until the end where I brutally murdered an innocent gnome because I clicked on the wrong guy. * * * I'm debating whether there's any merit in trying to calculate the error factor in my calorie burn data. For example, this week Monday to Thursday I've eaten 10,672 kcal (per My Fitness Pal) and burned 13,832 (per Polar Flow). I suspect that that calorie burn figure is too high, although it would indicate a fat loss of less that 1kg per week now that I look at it. It would be interesting to know if there's a simple numerical correction I could make to get it spot on, but that would take me recording data accurately for quite a long time. And the output is interesting, but not necessarily super useful. *shrugs* I might track it for a few weeks and aee how I go. * * * Apropos of nothing, someone shared this on a Discord server I'm on, and there's some seriously cool vocal tricks going on there. I'd love to be able to do some of this stuff with my voice:

As Halloween's on a Tuesday this year it'll be D&D night, so I'm going to try and whip up some gingerbread caskets for the group. WW is the baker in our house, not me, so we'll see how that goes! Important question: or ?

Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was fun - a few rounds of chinups, handstand pushups, and handwalking, and then some high-rep OHP. I'm having some issues with my wrists so I had to go neutral grip with my chinups, but otherwise it was all good. In the morning I cleared out what was left in the fridge, and the new one was delivered a few hours later. It's currently making a high-pitched noise which is quite distressing, so I hope either it stops that or I get used to it pretty quickly. It's good otherwise though; much bugger than the old one, and allegedly frost free. I also managed to get some studying done for my new work course, though not nearly as much as I had planned, before heading off to bouldering. I've signed up for a membership now, rather than paying as I go, so there's no excuse not to get down there more often. In the evening I cooked bacon, black pudding, and mushroom quesadillas (continuing on the 'use of the stuff we had to defrost theme'), and we started watching season 2 of Loki. Food's being going well - I've set a target of 20,000 calories for this week, which is 2,500 per day plus a 2,500 floating buffer, and so far that seems reasonable to stick to. We'll see what it does to my weight. I've also started on the creatine again, which will probably increase my weight slightly over the next few weeks, so any reduction at all will be fine.

Thanks man! Thank you, it was

Hey, good to see you! I don't know about a race report, but I was meaning to talk about it more. Let's make that my update for today... The day started inauspiciously. Up at 5am, a walk to the train station in the rain and I was already soaked through before I'd even left my home town. I did dry out on the train, and waiting for my connection I met a couple of people doing the ultra (the 10k route, followed by the marathon route). They were very nice. The race itself was really well organised - it started more or less on time, and we were off up an incredibly steep hill and into the countryside. There were plenty of rest stops, and plenty of food at them, and all of the volunteers were really lovely. I'm pretty sure it's the best value race I've ever done, in terms of cost, distance, and how well organised everything was. It did, however, piss down with rain for most of the day. When it wasn't raining sideways the scenery was pretty beautiful, and it even got a little sunny for an hour so I managed to take a reasonable photo: The first 17 miles went really well, and then I ran out of water. That was ok, but after 19 miles I was getting pretty tired. At that stage I was averaging about 12 minutes per mile (or 5mph, or 7'30" per km, or 8kmph, depending on your outlook on life), which was bang on track for what I would want out of a hilly trail run. And then we got to the range of hills at the end that I knew would be absolute murder; the Seven Sisters: Don't let the picture fool you, there's a bloody great valley between the tops of each of those hills, to the point where as far as I'm concerned it's impossible to run up them. Hopefully the tiny, tiny people on the second hill give you a sense of scale. Anyway, by that point it was pissing it down again, my left foot/ankle were screaming at me, and I had fully run out of energy. I pretty much walked from then on until mile 25. At that point it levelled out slightly, and as soon as I started running again I saw a couple of friends who had come out to meet me. It was really lovely of them, but it was a brief hello as I wanted to keep moving while I could, and I promised to meet them at the finish. The running didn't last long, and I was soon back to walking/hobbling the last bit. Still, I managed to finish in 5 hours 51 (gun time, 5 hours 49 chip time). I'd being saying for a couple of weeks that I'd be happy with anything under 6 hours, and I was certainly happy to stop moving! My friends met me at the end and took a finish line picture (in the background you can see the hill we ran up at the start and down at the end). Post-race I went and picked up my free sausage, with jacket potato, cheese, and beans (another example of how great the organisation of this thing was), and then finally grabbed a quick beer with my friends before heading for the return train journey. Would I do another marathon? To be honest, I knew I was going to finish when I was in pain and walking at the end, but I wasn't really enjoying myself. Maybe if the weather had been lovely I could have found some more positivity in the enforced walk. Never say never, but I'd have to find something that sounded really exciting to make me want to do this kind of distance again. Not to mention all of the training time that goes into it - it's a big commitment.

Following! I like the boost goals idea, and the reward makes it boosts for boobs, which in pleasing to say.

It's a good line. Do it! If you hate it, it'll grow back soon enough. Well done on a great week - 5 days exercise and 6 days of solid eating is pretty great.

Yeah, we don't let Bagheera in the bedroom for this reason (also because of the fleas to be fair). He used to scratch at the door when he was little, but doesn't even do that anymore - think he's learned it doesn't work. If we're up really late on a weekend though he stands on the bins below our bedroom window and yowls for us to let him in

To be honest, I don't really like cucumber and I'm not a big fan of fennel, it just needed eating. And the beef was a whole pack of reconstituted sliced sandwich beef. Weirdly, it was actually quite nice

That's a pretty killer combo. How do they wake you up? Are they in the room, scratching at doors, knocking on windows? (Just realised that that's an odd line of questioning without the context )