Jarric

Great win there; nice one Shaar!

I loved it - I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Those ren faire trips look great! Hope you have a most excellent trip.

That sounds like fun! Is it all with the same weight, as one giant set?

Sorry to hear about you MIL mate. My thoughts are with you and Sra. Tanque.

That's really interesting, I watched that episode and didn't pick up on any of this. But then, I am English, I very rarely eat Mexican food (and I'm sure most of the stuff we get is heavily Anglicised anyway), and I've never met a Mexican person, so I guess I would entirely miss this. Really hope these two things aren't related. Get well soon!

Assam is a good choice if you want a strong, dark, loose leaf tea. Thank you for the reminder that I have bought tea expressly for this purpose - I'm going to make some now!

Congratulations on the job dude! Great to see you back.

Saturday - week 0 day 6 Yesterday was a good day. An excellent day in fact. I had a little lie in, dropped WW at work, and went bouldering. I had a really good session, climbed lots of new stuff, and even flashed a yellow route for the first time ever. (Yellows are Font 6A to 6C, and the bottom end of that is well within my ability to flash, but I've never flashed on of this set before). I also hung around to do some stretching and all that good stuff. After climbing I dropped in to see my grandma for the first time in ages, and Mum joined us after a while too - it was all really nice. I stayed at Grandma's later than planned, and I had a couple of hours when I got back, but somehow I managed to fit in: Cooking lunch. I needed something filling, high protein, and relatively low calorie, so I took all the veg we had that was on the turn (fennel, chickory, a carrot, a red pepper), fired it up, and chucked in 6 eggs to make a sort of Chinese omelette. It was alright, and helped by the addition of soy sauce. Listening to a French lesson on Language Transfer Updating my thread here Half an hour of essay writing A shower, change of clothes, and packing an overnight bag Boxed up the rest of Friday's quiche for dinner Then I headed up to meet WW from work and hop on a train into town, where we were going to see Ed Gamble. The gig itself was excellent, he was supported by Chloe Petts, who I'd never heard of but was great, and for Ed's set I was in absolute stitches all of the way through. We went for a pint after, then back to our hotel for the night where we'd got a free upgrade to a really nice room. I did a token Dutch lesson on the train to tick of the language goal. Food was good and all well thought out, so I'm giving myself a pass despite having chucked about 1,500kcal of beer on top of it. Teeth were done; 5/5 for the day.

Yeah, sure, let's call it that. The thing is I exercise every day, and I sometimes have a hangover, therefore I sometimes work out with a hangover. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was 'push' day, which meant that my knee wasn't really an issue. After the beers at the event on Thursday and not a huge amount of sleep two nights running I wasn't feeling 100%, but I did alright. We had a 7 minute workout to climb as high as we could on 1, 2, 3 etc. reps of pullups (or muscle ups) and handstand pushups. We did some muscle up transition practice first, but I wasn't feeling up to full muscle ups so I did pullups instead. I rx'd the handstand pushups though, which I was very pleased with, and completed 7 rounds plus 1 rep. We followed that with some overhead press; I did 45kg (99#) x 2 x 3, 40kg (88#) x 2 x 5, and 35kg (77#) x 2 x 7. I spent almost the entire day ignoring my e-mails and working on writing a single report, and after staying an hour and a half late in the office I did get it done. after a fashion. It was oddly calming to just work on one thing, and rather than rushing just accept that I was going to work until it was done. and despite the lateness I got home feeling a lot less stressed than the rest of the week. Whilst I was at work WW was home cooking a cheese and bacon quiche from scratch (pastry and all!), which was lovely. It was fairly calorie dense, so 1/4 of the quiche was my entire meal, but it was really good. Breakfast was my usual (3 boiled eggs, a banana, a protein shake), lunch was half a ciabatta with cheese and chutney (I'd had the other half on Thursday) and a couple of clementines, and with that and avoiding any snacks I managed to sneak in under 2,000kcal. In the evening we chilled in front of comedy TV (Late Night Mash, Taskmaster, and Friday Night Live) and got to bed at a reasonable hour. I did my Dutch lessons in the adverts, and had done my French at lunchtime, but after the late day at work I couldn't bring myself to write any of my essays. Teeth were done, and I did some token stretching in front of the TV, so 4/5 for the day.

Always a pleasure to have you man

I feel like I could learn a lot in a tea shop dojo; I'd like to hope one really does exist somewhere.

It's that question, am I being far too hard on myself, or going far too easy? I think you're right though, it's really easy to be too critical. Brains are hard. Thanks! Yeah, some time at home definitely helped. Things will be good. I was going to say, I've only ever used schlep as a verb, never a noun. Apparently so!

Thursday - week 0 day 4 Yesterday was a good day. I didn't want to risk running with my knee so I did some yoga and calf stretching, as well as rolling out my upper back. Work was really busy again, but I was working from home which let me crack on a little more. I got an hour of study done, and made some progress on a long report I need to finish ASAP. In the afternoon I left for a corporate event in a nearby city, which was pretty nice. I drank quite a few beers and managed to talk to a load of strangers for a while. I think I'm giving myself a pass on calories, despite being massively over the target. I didn't snack all day, I had a small lunch to mitigate the inevitable beers, and I tried to keep dinner sensible (despite not really being able to track at the event). I think that makes sense, though I'm still a bit torn. Languages were done throughout the day, and teeth done before bed. 5/5 goals complete.

Thanks Puck. You're right about injuries - they never seem to give up do they? I need a gun with each injury's name on a barrel... Thanks! It was definitely better. I think we should just leave the cat in charge for a bit, he seems to know what he's doing. Failing that we could elect the cabbage. (Thanks though, a reminder that the past is in the past actually turned out to be what I needed.) It was great! I've never had nduja before, and it was too spicy for WW so I don't know when I will again, but it was good.

If it helps, over the course of that workout you lifted 5,895lbs. That's getting on for 3 tonnes! What GMB program have you got? I'm thinking of picking up Literal Immortality on payday next week.

Sorry to hear about your dad. Sending positive thoughts and I hope the doctors are able to sort him out. You would think a pharmacy would be quite hot on typos, given the potential consequences of making a mistake like giving someone with hypertension medication to treat hypotension.

Wednesday - week 0 day 3 Yesterday was a good day. It started off pretty frustrating though; leg day at Crossfit and my knee was giving me loads of issues. I really thought that I was getting past this, so this feels like a big step backwards. I did what I could in terms of rehab exercises and stretching, but it wasn't really what I was hoping for. I was feeling pretty stressed about work, as I know I have a million things to do and not enough hours in the day. Then, when I got to work I discovered that some absolute genius had decided to reset my user profile without asking me. I'd lost all of my system settings, standard texts, saved passwords, call history, chat history, pinned apps - everything. I was absolutely fucking livid, a fact not missed by my colleagues, and then gave me a really horribly stressful work day. I lost almost 2 hours of direct time in the morning, and was stuck doing everything else at half speed, before IT managed to recover most of my settings in the afternoon. I got kicked out of the office at half 5 as the last key holder needed to go home, and it's probably a good thing or I would have stayed there all night. I wasn't going to drink last night, as I'm out tonight, but my resolve for that disappeared pretty quickly after my work day. That, plus an excellent pork belly and nduja stew that WW made from out Gousto box, meant that I was well over on calories for the day. I didn't snack at work or in the evening at least, shame about the 936kcal of beer. I spent the evening chilling on the sofa, ignoring the TV and catching up here and on Discord in a kind of semi-aware state. When WW went to bed I stayed up and started watching The Tick, which was pleasingly easy-going entertainment. I had no desire to do any more work so study didn't get done, but I did squeak in a tiny bit of language practice and brushed my teeth before bed. 3/5 goals for the day.

Thank you! The week is getting more challenging, but I guess this is supposed to be a challenge!

I'll try and keep this brief, but a bit or background lore might be useful. Following a huge cataclysm the people of the Orastan Empire erected a magical barrier which kept the worst of the nasty stuff and weird magic out of their part of the world. This barrier divides the world in two, and is powered by the source of great magic. Unfortunately, that source is on the other side of the barrier. Each year the empire sends a pilgrimage to visit 10 temples beyond the barrier, in order to renew the power source. This year, our party are that pilgrimage. We were hunting a group know as the Bloody Claw (or, possibly, they were hunting us). The Bloody Claw are one of the groups that live beyond the barrier. Many of them are criminals that were exiled from the empire, and as a group they are highly anti-establishment and want to see the empire torn down. The individual we are tracking attacked another group in the badlands, and we thought he had stolen a magical amulet which was keeping one of them alive. He was travelling with a pack of coyotes. We cornered this person (or walked right into his trap, depending on your outlook on life), in a small caldera atop a barren hill. As he emerged from a cave and spoke to us, he called down a pack of rabid coyotes who set upon the party in a fierce battle. After a tense fight were were victorious, but the man didn't have an amulet on him, and we were unable to save our friend who magically aged and died within another day. It felt a bit of a hollow victory. tl;dr they got rabies from coyotes

Glad you've got a diagnosis and a plan to work with, and the plan sounds good!

Holy high reps Batman! Less of the 'Not a whole lot'; that's a load of work. Nice one!

Following for kitten pictures! ...and like, fitness stuff. Yeah. I was raised to clear my plate, so I really struggle with leaving food too. The only solution I've found is to plate up less food - I can always go back for more, but if it's in the kitchen rather than on my plate I don't tend to.