Jarric

Yeah, they're pretty limited. I've got a bunch of tabs open on my laptop with various others, but there's not enough Wednesday content out there. ❤️‍?

Yeah, the whole cast of the Netflix series was great (though it took me a while to warm to Luis Guzmán as Gomez). Thanks mate! ... I'd forgotten about that. Really missed a trick by not doing a Wednesday challenge in between, didn't I? I know, they're gorgeous! Hopefully they'll be enough motivation to get me focused on this goal.

Wednesday This challenge is partly inspired by the fact that I binged the entire of season 1 of Wednesday on Netflix a couple of months ago, partly by the fact that Wednesday Addams is great in any incarnation, and mostly by the fact that I'm now officially part-time at work, and Wednesdays are my day off. But first, let's have a look at my 2023 road map: And here's how my last challenge went: So my goals aren't hugely changed, but I've rearranged them, amalgamated some, and tweaked others. The chronologist [+2 SAN] On work days, be in the office, or at my desk at home, by 08:35. On Wednesdays, schedule my full day, and stick to that schedule. ETA: if I'm not working from home or the office, and my day starts with a train journey, be on time for that train. The first part of this challenge is the same as last month - I start work at 08:45, so I need to be in by 08:35 so I can make a cuppa, log in, and start on time. My timekeeping is terrible, and it's worse on days when I'm easily distracted, so I need to work to stick with this. The second part is new, because I no longer work Wednesdays . I don't want that to become a day where I just lay about, so for this challenge at least I plan to schedule the entire day. Things I might do include: Drawing D&D prep, or creating D&D stuff Climbing (more on that later) Learn some coding Work on work training (if I need study time outside of work) Spend more dedicated time language learning Look at some voice acting stuff Visit my Dad/help him out with stuff Because this goal is so important, I'm not only putting XP on it. If I hit at least 80% on this goal, I'm also going to buy myself some extremely pretty dice (which I failed to earn last challenge): The second storey specialist [+2 STR] Do some hangboarding 3 times per week. One of the things I'm really looking forward to doing with my Wednesdays is going bouldering. I've only ever managed to make it once per week, so a second session will be absolutely brilliant (and will hopefully boost my climbing no end). I do hangboarding as part of my warm-up, so I should hit twice per week there, and the third session will be at home just to make sure I'm making the most progress. The cartographer [+2 CHA] Drawing, 3 times per week. Another thing I promised myself I would do when I got a free day is to spend some of that time being creative. I haven't done as much drawing this year as I would like, and with Inktober around the corner this seems like a perfect time to do it. I'll be including the drawing I do semi in-character at Pathfinder every week, so between that and Wednesdays I should only need one more session. The muscle [+1 CON] Track all of my food, every day, and have both a protein shake and a recovery shake every day. I've combined these two goals into one, because they were both really a bit easy on their own. Nutrition is always important, but I'll be running my first marathon the week after this challenge ends, so this is a particularly key training period to focus on it. Add the fact that I'll be running a Tough Mudder and the British Obstacle Course Racing Championships during this challenge, and adding extra climbing to my routine, and I need to make sure I'm eating enough and eating as well as I can be. The translator [+2 INT] Practice both French and Dutch, using Duolingo, every day. I had these as two separate goals last challenge, but I don't want to have too many goals in total, so I'm recombining them. The face [+1 SAN] Brush my teeth, twice daily, use electric brush and interdental brushes in the evening. I'm better at this than I used to be, but I still need the accountability to keep me doing this, so here it is. Well, I think that's about it. Let's get going!

We had a bit of an explosion of craft gin here a few years ago. The laws around distillation changed so you could get a licence without producing millions of litres per year, and most of the new micro-distillaries started with gin because you can start selling your first batch within a few weeks (as opposed to the several years you'd have to wait aging whisky). So there's now some better, less mass-produced options. I think I've still only ever seen one brand of limoncello though - I think I actually thought limoncello was the brand name. I'm still holding out hope for a craft whisky revolution soon, now that those distilleries hopefully have some stock laid down.

I feel like a Folly wouldn't be far from an old fashioned. Or maybe something involving whisky and ginger wine. For me Mr Punch is, aside from the Rivers of London books, a feature of seaside towns. For that reason I'm thinking a Mr Punch would be mostly navy rum. And maybe something tropical that's imported to the UK. Fun fact, in the UK navy rum and navy gin have to be at least 57% alcohol by volume (traditionally 100% proof, though I don't think that definition is the same in the US). That's because that's the alcohol content at which gunpowder will still ignite, so if a cannon ball shatters your casks of rum (reserved for the sailors) or your gin (reserved for the officers), it doesn't compromise your ability to use your own cannon. The gin tasting I did was, naturally, a gin and tonic tasting, so they paired expensive gins with expensive tonics. Without fail, every gin was significantly nicer without the tonic. I think I'm just not a fan of tonic, or generally of diluting good spirits. (I'll give you water with whisky, because it unlocks a flavour that your wouldn't otherwise get, but my preference is still to chase the whisky with ice cold water rather than mixing the two.) I don't think I've ever tried a martini, but olives and good gin sound like a great combination.

Well this has blown my mind. The only question is can I bring myself to buy an entire bottle of Disaronna just to try it out? Actually, that's not the only question. Hot or cold?

Hey Deffy, really good to see you back. Sorry for the shit you've had to deal with - if you want to talk, drop me a line. Well I'm glad you realise it now. I can't say I'm in the least bit surprised. I hate tonic, so my option would always be neat gin. (I used to think that I hated gin and tonic, both individually and together. Then I did a gin tasting and discovered that, like whisky, cheap gin is awful and good gin is good.) As long as it's London Dry Gin. Actually, Rivers of London Dry definitely has a ring to it.

That's interesting; I got aprendiendo as well, from the context and the guess that it would be related to the French apprendre (to learn). It's nice when languages overlap - I often wonder how much easier learning languages would get if I had a handful under my belt.

That's a great commitment mate, I'm sure you'll go a long way if you keep up with that. I had no idea you spoke so many languages - that's mega impressive man. ETA: following to see your plans come to fruition, but also the music here is awesome ?

Challenge wrap-up The chronologist [+2 SAN] Score: 18/28 = 64.3% = +1 SAN Not a great result really, and definitely something I need to work on some more. As I didn't earn the dice I'll be rolling that reward over to next challenge too, providing that my cleric survives that long! Next month I'll only be working 4 days per week, so this goal will be both more important and more difficult to get a high percentage on. The decisionist [+2 CON] Score: 37/42 = 88.1% = +2 CON I dropped this in week 5 when I was gearing up for the mountain, more because of the mental load of preparing for it than anything external. I finished the challenge at 173lbs (12 stone 5, or about 78.5kg). That's still a bit behind the curve of the plan, but I've lost 5lbs in 6 weeks so that's fine. Going to keep gently cutting for the rest of the year, as it stands, though I want to still make sure I'm sufficiently fuelled for the rest of race season. The muscle [+1 CON] Score: 37/42 = 88.1% = +1 CON I stayed relatively consistent with this, and I'm happy with that. I'm not convinced that the creatine is doing much, so I'm going to drop that for a bit and see how I feel after a few weeks without it. De vertaler [+1 INT] Score: 37/42 = 88.1% = +1 INT 37 seems to be the number of the month... Anyway, it's a pretty pleasing level of consistency. There were a few days where I only did one token lesson, and I'm in the part of learning where things are feeling really quite hard, but there's no rush as long as I'm moving forward. Le traducteur [+1 INT] Score: 40/42 = 95.2% = +1 INT French is definitely going well - I feel like I'm understanding more when I listen to podcasts and read newspaper articles in French. I'm also keen to keep pushing through Duolingo, which probably shows in the high score for this one. The face [+1 SAN] Score: 35.5/42 = 84.5% = +1 SAN I'd like this to be a little higher, but it's far from being bad. I'll keep it on the agenda - I think the accountability helps. Overall it's been a pretty successful challenge. Most of the stuff above will come back, though I may amalgamte and simplify some of it, as I really want to being back a drawing goal. I also want to put a big focus on what I do on my Wednesdays off, now that I'm officially working part time! The main thing for this challenge really was to get through Man vs Mountain, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing that. I'll get a proper race report together, maybe with a couple of pictures, once I've posted my next challenge.

Week 5 The chronologist - 1/3 The decisionist - 3/7 The muscle - 5/7 De vertaler - 6/7 Le traducteur - 6/7 The face - 4.5/7 My goals dropped off slightly last week. Some of that's to be expected, with the run on Saturday and the whole weekend of travelling for it. Other stuff there's no excuse for, particularly not getting to work at my goal time, which shouldn't really have been affected by the other stuff. It was a busy week at work, what with Minday being a bank holiday and having Friday off to travel to Wales for the race. In the latter half of the week I just sort of gave up keeping track of calories, and made an effort to feel fuelled for the run, and that inconsistency in nutrition also extended to protein and recovery shakes so it hit two goals. On Friday we took the 8 hour drive up to North Wales to check in for the race, check into our appartment, and have a last pre-race meal. I'll do a proper race report later, but I had tons of fun at the race on Saturday, which took almost the entire day. Sunday was mostly turned over to the drive back (8.5 hours including breakfast), but I did get a roast dinner from WW and some time to collapse on the sofa in the evening.

Entirely fair, I must get on that! Expect it in my next challenge (when I get round to writing it!), and feel free to bug me if I don't get it written up soon.

Hope you feel more rested soon.

That is incredibly cool - both the choice of text and that it's hidden when you look directly at it. I usually read a couple of days, but this is basically my approach. I'd like to catch up properly with everyone, but my forum time and my reading speed just don't allow for it.

A great holiday and then all the music festivals - sounds like you're having a great summer mate!

Dude I've just seen this! So sorry, I would have loved to catch up with you while you were here mate! Hope you had a great time at the show at least?

Right, I've been AWOL for a while, so let's try and get caught up shall we? Week 3 The chronologist - 4/5 The decisionist - 7/7 The muscle - 7/7 De vertaler - 6/7 Le traducteur - 7/7 The face - 6/7 Week 4 The chronologist - 2/5 The decisionist - 6/7 The muscle - 7/7 De vertaler - 5/7 Le traducteur - 6/7 The face - 5/7 So the timekeeping goal has gone out the window a bit, and I won't be able to get those lovely dice this month . Looks like they'll be going back on the list for next month. Otherwise goals are going ok. I'm definitely a bit less strict with them without the accountability of updating here, and you can see the numbers are slipping slightly, but they're not as bad as they could be. All that's left is to finish strong in week 5. The no spend challenge is going pretty well too - after 4 weeks I've had 22 days with no personal spending (excluding groceries, bills etc.). I did have a big spend though; TomTom are discontinuing the software for my running watch, so I decided to get a new one. I was looking at the Polar Grit X Pro, which would be £455 from Polar's website or about £370 on Amazon, and it just so happened to come up nearly new for £300 on ebay. So, obviously, I jumped on that, and I'm loving so far! Only 98 pages into the 152 page user manual, but I'll work out how it works eventually . It's really pretty too... Other than that it's been a fairly chilled couple of weeks I think. Had a couple of physio sessions before deciding that I'm fine and probably don't need them as long as I take care of myself (and to be honest I didn't really get on well with the guy; it didn't really feel like he was interested in me beyond getting paid for my session). Should probably stick with the exercises for a bit though; that might have to become a challenge goal. We had a couple of nights of people staying with us, one of WW's colleagues one week and WW's mother and brother the following week. It was nice having people here, but that's another reason why I've not made time to catch up on here. And the final exciting thing, I worked my last 5-day week at work! This week will be 3 days because today's a bank holiday and I've got Friday off to drive up for Saturday's mountain run in Wales, and then I'll officially be part time on 4 days per week . At some point this week I'll have to write my next forum challenge, a big part of which will be using my extra day off productively.

I've been a bit absent here for the last couple of weeks, but things are going ok. I've had 22 spend-free days in the past 28 (by my rules), which I'm pretty happy with. One thing I've got much better at is taking a snack box lunch to work if I'm not able to take leftovers or make a sandwich, and I'm finding that's actually filling enough too. Sounds like you guys are doing well too, despite the universe throwing unexpected bills at you. I wouldn't mind continuing this challenge for at least another challenge cycle. I'm dropping to part-time hours at work next month, which I'm mega excited about, but it will impact my income so I could do with a little extra fiscal discipline to start me off right.

Hey man, thanks for checking in, I've been good. Extremely bad at checking in on here, but otherwise good. Hopefully I should get a chance today or tomorrow to catch everyone up on the last 2 weeks. How are you doing?

In terms of number of days, I'm doing alright this challenge. I ended up going out for a drink after work on Thursday, but that was a really nice evening and good to catch up with friends, so I'm not as worries as if I was spending just for the hell of it. But I also spent money on Saturday. TomTom have just announced that they're discontinuing the software for my running watch, so it'll be functionally useless after the end of September. Given that I've got some big runs coming up I did need to replace it, so I ended up dropping £300 on a new one. To be fair I managed to get it second hand on eBay - it retails at about £400 new - and I am ridiculously excited about it. Still a shame to let the money go though!

@Harriet your mention of histamine diets lead me down a rabbit hole where I discovered that I almost certainly don't have a histamine intolerance, but almost certainly do have pollen food syndrome, so thank you for helping me discover that! Also, if you want fresh ginger in your smoothies, I recommend grating it with a fine grater first. That way it doesn't matter how powerful your blender is, as it just needs to mix the ginger in. We usually freeze ginger and grate it from frozen, but if you go through it quickly enough you might not need to freeze it

This is very true. Thank you

Monday - Week 3, day 1 Monday was a good day. Crossfit was 60-second intervals of a 200m calorie ski followed by max reps handstand pressups. I got 3-4 handstand pressups each time, which I was really pretty happy with. I definitely could have got more too, just took too much time on the ski erg. Then we had some nice volume bench press paired with some l-sit practice. In the evening WW made a lovely baked feta dish (well, it was 'white cheese' rather than feta), and we cleaned the house as we have one of WW's colleagues staying over this week. 6/6 goals for the day done. I totally forgot about physio, and ended up doing it after bedtime to get it ticked off. Similarly I did both languages very late in the evening.

Week 2 stats The chronologist - 3/5 I'm struggling with this one at the moment - I'm far too good at procrastinating and far too easily distracted in the mornings. At this stage I pretty much have to hit this goal perfectly for the rest of the challenge to earn those dice, and I want those dice dammit! I've got a strategy now of getting my work bag ready before I shower, which seems to help a little, but this is still a real struggle. When I am hitting this goal I'm practically running to the office some days, but at least if I hit it I then have 10 minutes to log in and make a cuppa before my actual start time. The decisionist - 7/7 Still tracking calories, so all good there. Last week I ate 20,329kcal (2,904/day), which is a bit over my target of 18,928 (2,704/day), but I did still lose 1lb. I'm still not quite where I wanted to be weight-wise, as you'll see below, but I've now reached the point where I'm supposed to be maintaining weight so that I don't lose performance during race season. I think I'm going to split the difference, so that I'll increase my calorie target by accept a very gentle cut for a few more weeks. On that note, next week's target will be 20,104, which is 2,872/day, and I'll be splitting it as 2,513/day plus a 2,513 buffer. Date Target Actual Change Actual kg 26/06/2023 180 180 81.64 03/07/2023 178.65 180 0 81.64 10/07/2023 177.31 180 0 81.64 17/07/2023 175.98 182 2 82.55 24/07/2023 174.66 178 -4 80.73 31/07/2023 173.35 175 -3 79.37 07/08/2023 172.05 175 0 79.37 14/08/2023 170.75 174 -1 78.92 The muscle - 6/7 I thought I'd got 7/7 on this, until I looked back at my calories and realised I'd missed a shake on Sunday. Regardless, I feel strong right now, despite cutting calories, so I can only assume that the protein and recovery shakes and the creatine are working for me. De vertaler - 7/7 All Dutch lessons done. Sometimes I'm only doing a tiny bit and rushing it before bed, which isn't ideal, but consistency trumps quality. Le traducteur - 7/7 Same story with French here. I do really feel like my French is coming on - I sort of wish that I could commit a bit more time to it just to wizz through some of the easier lessons and get on to some more challenging stuff. Mind you, I'm still trying to process the continuous tense in both Dutch and French, so there's that at least. The face - 7/7 This hasn't been easy with late nights last week, but it's enough between the habit and the accountability that I am getting my teeth brushed.

My running shorts broke today, and given how much I need them I've had to immediately buy some more. Other than that I've been doing ok on this challenge, it's certainly making me more mindful of not buying a bottle of coke at lunch time, and stuff like that. I also bought a bunch of energy gels and some protein powder today. Not quite clear if I should be classing that as groceries or not, but today was a fail anyway so ?‍♂️