Jarric

Not particularly - I think I would have had to go more than 8 days to really see any effect. I drink a lot less than I did a few years ago anyway, but usually have a couple of drinks two or three nights per week. It was just a nice convergence of trying not to spend money and trying to keep my calories low. To be fair, I was particularly trying to keep my calories low because I knew I was having a boozy day on Saturday, so it wasn't a long-lived thing Congrats on the credit score going up!

Weekend 2 It's been a good weekend. On Friday we messed around with hand balancing at the gym, and now I really want to get down a side crow pose because it seems cool and relatively achievable. In the evening WW and I played some more Baldur's Gate together. Because I stayed in this meant I had gone more than a week without drinking alcohol, probably for the first time in my adult life. Only from one Friday to the following Saturday, and it's not something I was particularly aiming for but rather a biproduct of trying to cut calories and not spend any money, but it's still nice. Saturday morning I got up, went out for my run, and then met Hopalong for a cuppa at the bouldering gym. I didn't actually climb, because I had to be away early, but he isn't climbing at the moment either so it worked out well. Then I was off into town to have a meal and watch the England v Wales rugby match, which was bloody brilliant. It was a long day - I spent about 6-7 hours on the combined train journeys quite apart from the meal and the match - but I had a lot of fun. I also drank a bunch of beer and consumed almost over 5,000 calories in total (at my best guess), but that's why I was being so careful earlier in the week. I got home at about half 11, having somewhat sobered up from the 4+ hour journey home, and went to bed about midnight. On Sunday I had a bit if a lie in. D&D was cancelled, which was a bit of a blessing as it gave me time to do my run without getting up super early. The plan was 16 miles (25.6km), but at 12 I was seriously flagging and I pretty much walked from 14 onwards. Still, I'm impressed I did as much as I did giving the preceding day. In the after we went to Tesco, played a little Baulder's Gate, I cook roast pork, and we chilled in front of the TV until bedtime.

Well done on pushing through this week - losing that night's sleep and the stress of dealing with the flooding would take me a good few days to recover from at least. Fingers crossed for no electrical damage ?

Thank you! It seems to work at least some of the time

Thursday - week 2 day 4 Yesterday was a good day. Got up at a reasonable time and went for my run. It was supposed to be 6 miles but I hadn't planned a route, so I just did my normal 5 instead. It all felt fine, so though it was fairly slow I'm still happy. After I got back I procratinated for far too long, but I think I scraped getting to work on time? That's what I've written down anyway! Work was ok - still busy and now tackling some big jobs that have been languishing for too long because they're each so time-consuming. As soon as work was finished I started setting things up so that I could play Baulder's Gate over LAN rather than the internet, which I hope will increase stability when I play with WW. Then some of course I had to play a bit before she got home from work, which ended up with me playing a fair bit for the rest of the evening too. I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and man my party are screwed already! Might need to back away from some challenges if I want to get anywhere I think. At lunch time I decided to have a cookie, as I've had a couple of days under calories and could afford to go a couple of hundred over. Then WW brought me home my favourite chocolate chunk shortbread, so I had to have some of that. Then I cooked ribs for dinner, with a sweet, slughtly spicy sauce, and my total guess at calories for that meal was well over 1,000. Basically, I was 803 calories over budget for the day, which isn't ideal. I've still got 1,360 left in the buffer, but I know I've got a heavy weekend ahead so not sure if that'll be enough. 6/6 goals hit for the day again.

Wednesday - week 2 day 3 Wednesday was a good day. Crossfit was squats, and my hip felt rubbish, so I did a bunch of foam rolling and kept stuff light - 90kg (198#) x 3, 80kg x 5, 72.5kg x 7. Then we had another actual Crossfit-style workout ? - 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 of double unders, barbell lunge, and situps. I actually managed the double unders... eventually. With that a 50kg (110#) for a front-rack lunge I got through it in 11'38". By the end I was pouring with sweat, and I'm still walking funny 2 days later Work was ok. After work I did my physio exercises, which took a full 30 minutes so I won't be doing all of them every day. Then WW had stuff to do for a bit, then dinner, and eventually we got to play Baulder's Gate for an hour or so. The internet kept dropping out on WW (think I've fixed it since), so it was a stressful time and not the most fun unfortunately. Calories were ubder budget, so the buffer stays well preserved, and 6/6 goals completed.

So far so good on this challenge - I haven't spent anything on myself during challenge week 2. I know I'm going to break that tomorrow, because I'm meeting a friend for a cuppa, and I'm off to a work event in the day, but these things feel important and my average weekly spend is still way down. I've also realised that this challenge has lead to my first time having more than a week off alocohol in as long as I can remember (assuming that I don't drink tonight that is). I'd often go 6-7 days, i.e. weekend to weekend, but this week will be 8 days which has to be good. I'm currently in a weird situation where it's more cost-effective for me to sit in my overdraft and have a credit card balance than to move money out of my savings to clear debt. It's uncomfortable and I don't like it, but being in my overdraft does incentivise me to spend nothing at all.

Great song, but I've heard the Fatboy Slim version so much that it's really jarring to hear at the original tempo. Hope your ankle heals up quickly and you're able to get back to regular duties soon.

No, not at all! I mean, we're headed to fight a dryad and a forest god, but I think it's highly unlikely that this is in any way connected.

Tuesday - week 2 day 2 Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was bench, and I built to 72.5kg (160#) x 3, followed by 67.5kg x 5 and 62.5 x 7. Then we had, for time, 1,000m air bike, 500m row, and 250m ski (1,094 yards/547 yards, 273 yards) - that was a nice little quick one that I finished in 5'05". Got to work (at home) on time, and really spent a day trying to tidy stuff up and clear some really old stuff. Had to leave on time for a physio appointment; he was good and I talked through some knee and hip issues I've been having and he had some suggestions for exercises to help. I'll go back and see him again in a couple of weeks. In the evening I quickly heated up some food and WW and I went out for Pathfinder. This session we started travelling from where we had previously defeated a dragon towards an even bigger boss fight with a forest god and a dryad. We got about half way when our path was blocked by a one-eyed giant who earnestly believed that he was a cyclops, bless him. We had a nice goat stew with him, helped him build a forge, and taught him how to blacksmith a bit. Then we tricked him into thinking we'd come from the west, rather than approaching from the east, so in order to stop us from passing him we had to 'return' westward We headed out of the mountains and into a forest, and could sense we were being watched. As our sorcerer whispered something derisive about the forst god we were searching for, a womans face started to emerge from a tree to stare at us... And that's where the session ended. Got home latish but sorted my lunch si I wouldn't have to buy anything today, and did my French and brushed my teeth. 6/6 goals achieved for the day.

Monday - week 2 day 1 Yesterday was a good day. I really struggled to wake up and felt really groggy, but Crossfit turned out to be really cool and I felt much better for it. First workout was 3 intervals of 75 seconds to do a 100ft farmers' walk followed by max distance handwalking. I did the farmers' walk at 145kg, 165kg, 165kg for the three attempts (319#, 363#, 363#). I didn't record the handwalking, but I reckon I got about 2', 3', and 4' on the 3 attempts. So pretty rubbish really, but I did some additional practice in between sets, and I just enjoy very slowly getting better at handwalking. The second workout was an 8-minute AMRAP of 8 single-arm kettlebell clean and jerk, and 4 burpee pullups. I'll say this about burpee pullups: easier than burpees, and easier than pullups. I think I got about 5 rounds? It felt pretty good anyway. When I got home I procrastinated a bit too long and ended up 1 minute late for my goal time to work. Annoying stuff, I want to earn those dice! Work itself was ok - full of meetings as Mondays often are. In the evening I went for a run with one of the guys coming up the mountain. Got in a nice 6 miles and it felt pretty solid. That meant I was fairly late home, and by the time we had had dinner and watched the final of Lego Masters NZ it was gone 9pm. But I still wanted to play Baulder's gate. So, I spent a bunch of time messing around with settings and trying to resolve the bug I've been having, and I managed to fix it! Or work around it anyway. Of course, by the time I'd sorted that it was half past 10, but I just had to play a little bit and maybe get past the starting area. And then I had to play a bit more to try and find an NPC I'd lost that I was worried I'd killed. And then I had to level up the party and explore just round the next corner. tl;dr I ended up going to bed after midnight, despite the fact that my alarm goes off at 05:50. 5/6 goals for the day, having missed the chronologist. Dutch was a token gesture as it was done after midnight, but I still did it and my teeth before bed.

I really hope that happens for you sooner rather than later mate. That's good to know. I might actually have it on GOG, waiting for me to install it one day. I've definitely got BG1 and BG2 unplayed, as well and Icewind Dale and Dark Suns I think? And Planescape: Torment, which I only got a couple of hours into. I feel less worried about revisiting them now though (well, except for Planescape: Torment - I've wanted more Planescape in my life ever since you introduced me to it via one of your battle logs (I think it was a battle log?) Well done on the new habit! It's nice to be thought of

Week 1 round-up I'm sort of a day behind on updating at the moment, so I'll try and keep this brief: The chronologist - 4/5 4/5 ain't bad, or something. Missed this on Thursday, thanks to trying to do a GMB session and a run despite having got up far too late to do both. The decisionist - 7/7 Tracked calories everyday, and finished the week at 20,782kcal, which is a fair bit above my target of 18,928 (2,969/day vs 2,704). I didn't lose weight, unsurprisingly, but I didn't gain any either. Calorie targets remain the same for week 2, with added focus on actually hitting them. The muscle - 5/7 One recovery shake and one protein shake away from a perfect week. The recovery shake was missed because I missed a run, though I could have had it after climbing instead. The other shake would have put me further over my calories for the week, so not quite as unhappy about that. De vertaler - 6/7 Not too bad really, progress is slow but extant. Still pretty tongue tied on some Dutch words. Le traducteur - 7/7 Really enjoying studying French right now. The face - 6/7 Late nights, particularly after a few beers, remain a weakness for tooth brushing.

I honestly can't recommend it enough. Yeah., I get that; it's not always the most user friendly. If it helps, it's turn-based, so you don't need to have super fast reactions in an awkward viewing angle. Combat is always turn-based, but you can play the whole game in initiative mode if you wanted to, which was useful when WW accidently got herself and one of our NPCs attacked by a flaming bolt trap and they were both bleeding out . Also, you can move the camera independently of your party, so at least you're not totally stuck with their view if you can't see what's going on. A very accurate description. Might you miss both? You're definitely not too old for Crossfit, as your comment implies, but both a better schedule and being able to enjoy that kind of fitness routine would be an improvement for you, no? I know what you mean, though I've never actually played Neverwinter Nights. Ironically, though I haven't played it, I was playing BG3 last night wearing this vest:

It's been a good weekend. On Friday night I went out with a friend for a few drinks. We had a really good time; I'd forgotten how much of a nerd he is and we ended up spending at least half an hour talking about Pokémon . I managed to be sensible with food choices, but had rather a lot to drink, and it ended up being quite a high calorie day. I only manged to get 5 hours sleep, so I was feeling a bit delicate Saturday morning. I ended up skipping my run, but I did go to bouldering and had a really good time there. In the afternoon I fired up Baldur's Gate 3 and started a new co-op campaign with WW. A bit part of why I bought this game was for us to play together, and so far it's going really well. We ended up stopping for dinner and then playing some more, before nearly getting slaughtered by goblins and eventually going to bed at 11pm. On Sunday I got up earlyish for my run, tired from 2 short nights of sleep. The run went pretty well really; I managed to get through my full 16 miles (26.4km) and the best part of 2,000ft of elevation (600m). In the afternoon we went to a National Trust house. Slightly bizarrely it wasn't quite as old as the house I live in, so it wasn't a particularly historic building, but it was a beautiful stately home with lovely gardens to wander round in the sun. In the afternoon I did a little BG3 troubleshooting and a tiny bit of playing, and then watched a bunch of Lego Masters NZ. Goals-wise, calories were tracked, pretty low on Saturday but high again on Sunday including energy gels on the run. I didn't get in my recovery shake Saturday as I didn't run, and I didn't want my protein shake Sunday, so 2 fails for the muscle (though I did get my creatine both days). On Friday I didn't do my Dutch or my teeth, because I got back quite late and quite drunk.

Baldur's Gate is great! I love the characters, and I already have strong feelings about individuals I like and dislike; they're really well crafter. I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface, so it should keep me occupied for many more hours I think. I thoroughly encourage all 3 of you to play it. I do have a weird bug with not being able to loot corpses at the moment, so I'm trying to troubleshoot that. Such are the joys of PC gaming - particularly without a high-end gaming PC - that I've ended up with a weird issue no-one else seems to be experiencing. That's a good point, I hadn't actually looked at the rating. It's a 12A here, which essentially means that under 12s need to be accompanied by an adult, which maybe is about right.

Glad your son had a good trip. It must be nice to have him back home? Well done on the challenge goals; looks like you're making good progress.

Thursday - week 1 day 4 Yesterday was a good day. I decided to do a bit of the GMB resilience course before my run, despite having got up 20 minutes later than was advisable. I plumped for the 15 minute workout, which with the tutorials took a full 25 minutes. I do wish GMB would tell you the total time, rather than the working time, like, I want to know if I've got time to finish it, not how much effort I'm putting in. Anyway, I left late for my run and got back at 08:20, so no chance of me getting to work (even working from home) by 08:35. I was in by 08:40, so not late for work, just failing the goal. The run was a rather nice 5 miles. Work was really full on, and I was a zombie by the time I finished. I did log off on time, mainly because I wanted to start downloading all 101GB of Baulder's Gate 3 In the evening I went to see the Barbie movie with WW and some of her work mates. I spent a long time looking at the menu at 'spoons before deciding what to have, to try and meet my calorie goals. And having done that, I ended up with a double cheeseburger rather than the single burger I wanted, which somehow added an extra 450 calories? That annoyed me, but didn't stop me inhaling a bag on minstrels during the film. The film itself was fun. Surprisingly dark for a kids film, but fun and funny and I enjoyed it. When I got home I should have gone straight to bed. Instead I played Baulder's Gate 3 for 90 minutes, and got to bed about midnight Languages were however done, as were teeth, so 5/6 goals for the day. Calories were 1,400 over, which means I've already used my full weekly buffer and it's only Thursday

Assuming this is a GMB course? I don't know why they use the phrase 'pulling prep', it's not particularly accurate or particularly useful. I'd probably call it scapular retration or a scapular pull, but even just 'shoulder blades pulled back and down' would be a better name for it. I really like GMB, with a couple of very minor grumbles, of which this is one.

Forgot I was going to see Barbie last night, so that's a fail on the spending front. Had a meal beforehand and cinema snacks during. Today I realised I didn't have time or materials to make a sandwich for lunch, but I was extra determined not to buy lunch out so I've filled my lunch box with a load of random snacky stuff which I'm hoping will add up to a meal. Tonight is my 2nd planned spend, but I'll try and keep it a cheap night out!

That panda is #goals And thank you, on both counts! I think the problem is that I don't really know. I think I'm always going to be more valuable for my insurance knowledge than any coding ability I pick up, it just might be handy to have a bit more of an understanding of the latter depending on where my career and my insurance qualifications take me. Priority 1 is for it to be fun and interesting to learn just for the sake of learning - this will be something I'm doing in my free time after all - it would just be nice if it also turned out to be useful in later life. Actually, that's the same way I feel about learning French and Dutch - it might be useful at some point in my career, but really I'm learning it because I want to. Thank you! I should clarify that by a chilled out session, what I mean is we'd do a couple of reps, have a bit of a chat, do a minute or two on handstands, have another little chat. No time limits, not rushing to hit a working weight before the end of the session.

Wednesday - week 1 day 2 Yesterday was a good day. I couldn't wake up properly at all, and dragged myself to Crossfit, where thankfully we had a very chilled out session which was just what I needed. For the first half we were practicing handstand holds, and mixing that with practising muscle ups. I got 4 ring muscle ups overall, which I've very happy with. They all had a bit of a kip to them; I tried a couple strict but I'm not quite there yet. Then we were alternating max reps dumbbell bench press with max reps chinups, for a nice bit of bodybuilding. Got to work on time and had an ok day; I'm gradually catching up with things. I'm also thinking about things I want to do which may be good for my career, but also that would be fun for me to do on my days off from September. So, question for everyone, if I was going to start learning to code, where would be a good place to start. What programming languages would be useful to look at, and do you have any good resources for them? My current level is 'I did a bit of HTML about 15 years ago', so I'm pretty much starting from scratch. I've been looking at various fintech qualifications, because I'm in financial services and I have a lot of tech clients, but if I decide to go down that route in the future I will likely need at least basic coding ability. In the evening I made one of my planned purchases outside of 'no spend summer' and got 2 copies of Baldur's Gate 3 - one for me and one for WW. I'm anticipating this taking over my free time a bit in the next few weeks. Annoyingly I'm going to see Barbie this evening, so won't be able to play it as soon as it comes out, and I'm out seeing a friend tomorrow night so won't really get to touch it until Saturday. Bad planning all round! In the spirit of no spend summer I didn't buy any beers on the way home, which would be my normal Wednesday. I did polish off the final beer from our beer tasting box, and the last 110ml of a bottle of port, whilst watching Questing Time. It was a great show last night too - instead of D&D they were playing Oh, Dang! Bigfoot Stole My Car With My Best Friend's Birthday Present Inside. It looks quite excellent and I may have to run it at some point soon. Languages were done. Dutch is a bit dull as I'm still doing large numbers - there's loads of lessons because Duolingo thinks there's loads of vocab, but realistically if you know how the numbers are formed you don't need to treat every number as a new word. I also read an article in French before bed (it was about how American blockbuster films are getting longer, whereas French films aren't), and was pleased that I could follow it without having to resort to Google Translate. Teeth were done before a fairly late bedtime, so 6/6 goals. Calories were 2,748, leaving 1,297 in the weekly buffer. That's not a lot knowing I'm out for dinner and Barbie tonight, out for dinner and drinks tomorrow, and have a long run on Sunday.

Tuesday - week 1 day 2 Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was hard work, firstly with 5 sets of 3 power cleans (did the first 3 sets at 60kg (132#) and the other 2 at 65kg (143#)), and then we did an actual crossfit-style workout ?: For time: 10 burpees over box 20 single arm devil's press 30 toes to bar 20 single arm devil's press 10 burpees over box I used a 15kg dumbbell on the devil's press, and finished in 10'43". After that (and after a heavy leg day the day before) I was shattered. It was a working from home day, and I'm giving myself a pass for getting to my desk on time. It's a little wooly, as I went and set up the laptop at about 08:33, but then I ran down to get my tea and my protein shake so it was about 08:37 by the time I was sat down with that and logging in. Still, the intent was there, and I'd rather be rushing to hit 08:35 then my actual start time of 08:45. Work was busy - not too stressful but pretty full-on. In the evening I made a turkey chilli, and by the time I'd done that I was shattered. I barely avoided falling asleep on the couch while watching Critical Role, but I held out until 10pm before going to bed. I was a bit snacky yesterday, and knackered in the evening, and I couldn't figure out why. Looking back at that workout as I write this, and thinking of Monday's workout, I think it's safe to say it's exercise induced! 6/6 goals for the day. I ate 2,884kcal, which is 518 over target, leaving 1,679 in the buffer for the week.

That's awesome! I sincerely hope I'm saying the same thing in a couple of years time.

Oh that's cool - any recommendations of things to see in Paris? I wanted to go this year for the rugby world cup but couldn't get tickets, but we're going next year for the Olympics.