Jarric

Thank you, on all accounts! I'm sure it will be helpful - it's all a process.

Wednesday - W4D3 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ❌ Study: ❌ Teeth: ❌ Waist tracking: ❌ Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing, and we had farmers' picks and farmers' walks, which is great fun. We were building up weight on a complex of 3 picks plus a 50ft (15.24m) walk, and I got up to 174kg (~383#) which I was pretty happy with. We were then supposed to have intervals of deadball throws over our shoulders and skiing, but my knee was not happy with that at all so I stopped and did some stretching instead. Work was busy, but after the chat we had on Monday it does help to know everyone's in the same boat. By the evening I was pretty mentally drained, I think partially from Tuesday's counselling call as much as work. I finished somewhere near on time, bought some cans of beer, and went home to drink them in front of a very silly Questing Time one-shot. I stayed up until midnight drinking, levelling up Psyche, watching Twitch streams, and catching up with people on Discord - it was a really nice evening.

Tuesday - W4D2 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ✅ Study: ❌ Teeth: ❌ Waist tracking: ✅ Tuesday was a good day. I went for a run first thing, but my knee felt dodgy halfway through so I cut it short and came home for some stretching. At lunchtime I had a call with the counselling service I'd got in contact with. It was just really a triage call to get me into the system and decide what type of help I need. I realised that I am probably less ok than I thought, but at the same time I scored at the low end of the scale on the initial questions they raised so that's encouraging. The person I spoke to was also keen to point out that they usually say the bereavement cycle is at least 2 years, and not to expect a quick fix for anything. She's put me forward for 3 counselling sessions, which will be in August. After that we'll have to see whether I would benefit from longer-term therapy, bereavement specific counselling, or anything else. In the evening we had Pathfinder. We fought a member of the Bloody Claw; an anti-civilisation group in the wilds of the land we are exploring. Then we killed some horrible sand monsters, and pledged our service to help a village fortify themselves against the Bloody Claw. Most importantly, we levelled up! It's taken 8 sessions to get to level 2, and man am I keen to have some new abilities finally!

First of all - awesome fitness goal. Second - if you want something new and of a regulated weight, you can buy gym tyres from gym equipment suppliers. I've not looked into this, and from a very quick search they don't seem to be cheap (I guess because they're marketed at gyms, not individuals). If you're not so worried about getting a 'gym tyre', look for local motor mechanics who work on tractors. In some places they have to pay to have tyres taken away, so you might get a random tractor tyre for free or very cheap. Failing that, look at used tractor tyres on eBay. If you just want to use one, rather than buy one, I'd look at local Crossfit/Strongman/functional fitness gyms - quite a few gyms will have tyres these days - or outdoor bootcamp-style fitness places.

I loved that game so much! I never had a console as a kid, but I seem to remember playing it to death in arcades and on my friend's Sega Saturn Weirdly I don't have a strong opinion on this. I usually go for stouts and porters giving half the chance, but I don't mind a hoppy beer either. Hopped lager is better than barley larger, I know that.

Monday - W4D1 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ✅ Study: ❌ Teeth: ✅ Waist tracking: ✅ Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was bench day, and I equalled my 5RM at 67.5kg (~149#). Then we had a really fun workout - we were learning how to do dumbbell clean and jerk in the style of the strongman competition circus dumbbells. I didn't go mega heavy - got to a 25kg (~55#) dumbbell in practice and used a 22.5kg one for the workout, but as the technique developed it was amazing how easily I could throw that over my head. I really want to practice this now and see how heavy I can go with it. I also have lovely bruises on each shoulder where the dumbbell rests for my trouble Work was busy. We had a team meeting, and discussed the fact that everyone's overwhelmed and we're struggling to recruit staff to take the pressure off. No resolution in sight until we find some new recruits, but at least everyone is on the same page. In the evening I called my parents and caught up with them for a bit. WW cooked a sausage meet hash, and then I sat down on the sofa to play with the drawing tablet some more. I decided to throw some shading on Guglug, the half-orc who is currently my profile picture. I've got some learning to do, but I was pleased with how it went: Did my physio and teeth right before bed, as I really wanted to get those goals ticked off. Study, not so much.

A Wacom One. I wanted something where I can draw directly on to the screen, but usually they're quite expensive. Then I was at a tech conference the other week and there was a guy discussing reusing and refurbishing tech, which totally changed my way of thinking about buying new. That lead to a brainwave that I could get a refurbished tablet, and it turns out Wacom do direct sales of refurbished items and they're 1/3 cheaper than brand new. What finally sold it to me is I ran it past @starpuck and she uses the same one - it kind of felt like everything came together at once for it really.

Friday - Sunday - Week 3 Physio: ✅❌❌ Creativity: ✅❌✅ Study: ❌❌❌ Teeth: ❌❌❌ Waist tracking: ✅✅✅ Friday was a good day. Crossfit was pretty full-on - push press building to 62.5kg (~138#) x 3, then a workout of strict toes to bar, dynamic pushups, and wall balls. Work was busy but productive. I spent pretty much all evening messing around with a digital drawing tutorial and my new tablet. Saturday was a good day. I ran in the morning; went out for 8 miles which is the furthest I've run outside of a race in a very long time! It felt fine, despite it being hot as balls here, and no complaints from my knee at all. In the afternoon WW wandered into town, and I picked up the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist adventure path that I'm most likely going to be running for the Ranger D&D group in a couple of months. I spent the rest of the day reading through some of that, which was very relaxing if not very good for my goals. I stayed up until midnight reading it, so it's certainly got me gripped. Yesterday was a good day. Climbing first thing - I got in a reasonable session and had fun, despite feeling tired and not entirely motivated. In the afternoon I finished the digital drawing tutorial I started on Friday and read a chunk more of Dragon Heist (I'm a very slow reader). Food was a fairly big part of the day. On Saturday I had put a turkey thigh in the slow cooker for 9 hours, so yesterday I shredded that and separated it into tubs with the contents of our salad box (potatoes and butternut squash, which I tray baked, and then raw tomato, cucumber, parsley, broccoli, mixed salad leaves, and maybe something else?). I've just had the first of my 5 tub of that whilst writing this (I made 10 between WW and myself) and it was very good. I was meant to do roast pork for dinner but I left it too late and then discovered it takes 3 hours in the oven, so I ran round the corner and grabbed a roast in the bag chicken instead, and we had that for dinner with potato, sweet potato, beetroot, and Yorkshire puddings. Finally I boiled eggs before bed for my week's breakfasts, so now I have breakfast and lunch sorted every day. Scores for week 3: Physio: 5/7 - need to not lose momentum on this, because it's working Creativity: 4/7 - hoping this will go up as I play with the new tablet Study: 1/7 - must try harder; these essays won't write themselves Teeth: 4/7 - think I'm struggling a bit with motivation, and this is usually the first thing to slip when that happens. Must keep a good headspace around this. Waist tracking: 6/7 - that'll do

Don't worry about that, new players are totally welcome. We're going to be running a short campaign starting at 5th or 6th level over the summer, which might be a bit of a steep learning curve, but when we start the next campaign after that we'll most likely be starting at level 1. We've had brand new players before, all that really matters is that you can commit to the time slot, have fairly stable internet, and want to have fun. Oo, well I'm definitely saving that for later - sure I can inflict that on some players at some point. Thank you! It was good, for what was realistically a fairly lazy meal.

Thursday - W3D4 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ✅ Study: ❌ Teeth: ✅ Waist tracking: ✅ Yesterday was a good day. I did my physio first thing - which took a little longer than expected - then went for a run. Cut it to 4 miles (6.4km) rather than 5 due to time constraints, but it felt pretty good. Work was busy. Still not sure if I'm getting anywhere but I worked late to clear one project as best I could. In the evening I made homemade beef burgers stuffed with mozzarella and basil. They were lovely, but I had to make them absolutely massive to get the cheese in the middle which made for quite a pricey meal. I served them in sourdough rolls with home made chips and carrots cooked in honey. The exciting things was that my drawing tablet arrived yesterday, which I chose thanks in no small part to encouragement from @starpuck. After I got my head around the fact that I had to plug it in as a USB device and an HDMI screen, and contacted support as I couldn't register it, I got to have a play. It's one of those where you draw on the screen, which is pretty intuitive, but I keep going to pinch to zoom/rotate like I would with a tablet and that's going to be a hard habit to break. I'm really excited to play with this some more over the weekend and actually create some digital drawings. I was responsible and didn't stay up all night playing with my new toy, so I went to bed at half 10.

So all we need to do to get you drinking IPA is make it taste nothing like IPA? Got it Drunken monks are wonderfully OP - I'd love to play one. I always imagine any drunken monk character I'd play being like Shun Di from Virtua Fighter: And now thanks to my ranger brain I've decided I want to learn a Zuì Quán style martial art. I suspect this won't happen any time soon

Nice one! Keep it up - you've got this

Congratulations on deciding to stop smoking - the decision is the hardest step. I've been there, so if you want to talk about it just @ me

Wednesday - W3D3 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ❌ Study: ❌ Teeth: ✅ Waist tracking: ❌ Yesterday was a good day. Went to see my physio first thing - she's given me some stretches to replace the exercises I was doing, but she seems pretty happy that the knee will fully recover in the coming weeks and months. Work was busy again. I'm going between feeling like I'm starting to make headway and feeling like I have an impossible mountain to climb, to the point I don't know which is true any more. Still, stuff got done, that's all I can ask for. In the evening WW made a cauliflower and chickpea curry, and an apple and gooseberry crumble for desert, and we chilled in front of Questing Time. I had a couple of very nice, very strong beers: At 10% ABV it packed a punch (though Willy would be absolutely mocking me for saying this about a Belgian beer ), and almost tasted like a wine. It was very, very good. After 2 of those I decided that I probably needed to move on to something lighter, and finished with one of these: That was also excellent, but a completely different thing being quite sweet. I called it a night about midnight, having not got too drunk and not fallen asleep on the sofa. It was a good night, and if anyone watches Questing Time, a big night in the game too! * * * I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to celebrate this - the toxic haystack has finally resigned as Prim Minister! Unfortunately it looks like we're stuck with him for a few months whilst the next leader is chosen, but holy hell it's been a long time coming. I can't believe he's only been in power 3 years - it feels like a lifetime.

Tuesday - W3D2 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ❌ Study: ✅ Teeth: ✅ Waist tracking: ✅ Tuesday was a good day. Physio then running first thing - I was a bit short on time but I did 5 miles anyway as I was working from home and could be ready pretty quickly. It felt good - no complaints with the knee. Work was hard - I had a ton to do but was really struggling to focus all day. I did have a study session over video call, which handily ticked my study goal off and gave me a bit of human interaction. After work I quickly stuck some sausages in the oven, made some mash, steamed some broccoli, and threw together an onion gravy to go with it all. A simple meal, but it was really nice and I love that I can just create a good gravy off the top of my head. The evening was supposed to be Pathfinder, but most of the group were isolating or not feeling well. WW and I went and chilled out with the GM for a bit and played some Exploding Kittens, which was nice. I had intended to draw during the game as usual, so I missed my creativity goal on the basis that the game didn't happen. By the time we were finished I was absolutely shattered, and went to bed very soon after getting home.

Thank you. Glad to hear it's working for him. I can 100% imagine that! I told her you said this and she very much appreciated it

Oh yeah I see what you mean! It looks like a restaurant or a tourist attraction with that sign, rather than just a house.

If you're looking for breakfast options, my go to is to boil and peel 15 eggs on a Sunday. Then every weekday morning I grab 3 of those, a banana, and a big protein shake, for an easy 600kcal breakfast to start the day. Alternatively, the easiest thing if you're struggling might be a meal replacement shake - a friend of mine swears by Huel shakes at work because he doesn't care what he eats, he just wants the energy. I've not really looked into them to see how they fair nutritionally, but that would certainly be a way to guarantee some easy to digest fuel.

Monday - W3D1 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ✅ Study: ❌ Teeth: ✅ Waist tracking: ✅ Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing - a WOD of wall climbs and deadballs to shoulder, then building up a heavy power snatch/hang power snatch/overhead squat complex. My knee felt a bit off on the latter, but I got in a couple of goes at 37.5kg (~83#) anyway. Work was busy, but I finally finished the thing I was hoping to do on Friday (well, it's not finished, but I've done all I can on it for now). After work we spent an inordinate amount of money in Tesco, and we now have a lot of food to last us the next few weeks providing we plan it well. We had a lateish dinner, and I didn't really want to do anything after that, but I did do some inking on a copy of a Chris Riddell drawing I'd done at the weekend. His drawing style is totally different to what I'm used to, which is really interesting (though my version looks crap!). I also did my physio at the last possible minute before bed. The other development is that I managed to book in an introductory counselling session . It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but properly making the decision on it and getting through all of the effort of booking it (which wasn't much effort in all honesty, but I didn't need much excuse to put it off) took quite a while. It's a telephone session next week, hopefully it'll be helpful.

Oh, that is interesting. When you say just a last name, do you mean that houses where you are normally have people's names? I now want a hanging, flaming cauldron outside of my house, that's pretty metal. Glad your shelves are built - poorly designed flat-pack is an absolute nightmare!

You, Puck, are a very smart person. It's not easy to recognise this, so good on you for being aware of it. If you want somewhere else to vent, drop me a line. I would like this, because I'm not going to have a clue what I'm doing when this thing arrives

Sunday - W2D7 Physio: ❌ Creativity: ✅ Study: ❌ Teeth: 1/2* Waist tracking: ✅ Yesterday was a good day. After falling asleep on the sofa Saturday evening I decided on a lie in yesterday morning, and that turned into an extremely chilled out day. In the afternoon we played D&D - @DarK_RaideR DM'd a game of 5 Torches Deep which was brutal and scary and really good fun. The only time I left the house was to go and buy a chicken for WW to roast, and then did some more chilling out for the rest of the day. It was nice, and I think much needed. *Because I didn't exercise I didn't shower in the morning, which in turn meant I forgot to brush my teeth in the morning. Giving myself a half point for the evening. Week 2 scores Physio: 4/7 - think I got a bit disheartened on this when my knee started hurting again, which is obviously quite counter-productive Creativity: 5.5/7 - that'll do Study: 1/7 - it's hard to find the energy to do this when work is really busy. It needs to be done though, hard or not, so let's get on with it! Teeth: 5/7 - if I can stop falling asleep on the sofa I can definitely get this to 7. Waist tracking: 6/7 - not bad

Oh that's a shame. I should try and find a local parkour/ninja gym really - as far as I'm aware we don't have anything here either. All that stuff about your town is fascinating. So if the one house you looked out originally much older than the rest of the town, or just an unusual design?

Tony's chocolate is that good I had to take the risk. And to be fair, it just tastes like raspberry milkshake, which isn't a great quality in a beer but isn't actually bad.

Saturday - W2D6 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ✅ Study: ✅ Teeth: ❌ Waist tracking: ✅ Yesterday was a good day. I got up first thing and went bouldering with Hopalong and MG. We climbed for a good 2.5 hours and had a great time. In the afternoon I chilled out a bit; just trying to remind myself that it's ok to take a break occasionally and that I am not a salmon*. In the end I managed to get in a hour of studying - finally made a start on my next essay. Then I did a bit more drawing along with the Codename Entertainment sketching videos (a dark, gothic, basilisk penguin this time). In the evening WW and I went out for tapas, which was lovely, and then came home for TV and beer. I fell asleep on the sofa again - I really must stop doing that - and so went to bed at a stupid time without brushing my teeth. *For the confused: