Jarric

Well done on the certification; that's really cool!

I used to struggle with wrist pain for hand-balancing stuff quite a lot, but over a while of doing GMB's wrist warm-up regularly it did get a lot better. Hopefully if you stick with it you'll see the warm-ups being more useful and less like workouts in their own right.

I love this! I'm going to start trying to do that too; it's a really helpful idea.

Challenge goals So now is as good a time as any to change my goals a bit. I'm not tracking food, and I don't think I'm likely to, so I'm not going to flog a dead horse for the next 5 weeks. I've been thinking about a replacement goal, and a couple of things came to mind. Firstly, Mr Willes used to have a cool spreadsheet for tracking his weight with a 7 point moving average. I loved the level of data, but there are two problems. First, I can't be bothered to weigh in every morning. And second, I don't actually know if I want my weight to go up or down at any given moment. And then I thought about @deftona's way of not making her goals about weight, by instead focussing on maintaining the best arse in Britain. Now I wouldn't dare to challenge her for that title, but it got me thinking about what I would like to change. The one thing I don't like when my weight goes up is my belly, and it's a good indication of how much fat I'm carrying (as opposed to say, my chest, which might get bigger if I gain muscle or fat). So, a simple daily goal - measure my waist every day, and stick the number in my spreadsheet. Hopefully tracking that will keep me mindful with what I eat and drink, and if not it will at least give me some data to start from. I also like @Cheetah's idea of having some basic nutrition rules that are easy to remember. I don't want to institute them right now, but that doesn't stop me from thinking about what's worked for me in the past and what might be useful in the future. So I plan to come up with rules that work for me, and stick them in my tracking spreadsheet so I see them every day. So far I have: No caffeine after 4pm No fizzy drinks on normal working days Don't drink beer you don't enjoy No more than 300kcal snacks per day Raw veg at lunchtime Bring lunch to work Daily protein shake

Saturday - W0D6 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ✅ Study: ✅ Teeth: ❌ Food tracking: ❌ Yesterday was a good day. I went climbing first thing with Hopalong and MG, and had a really nice time. Didn't climb anything particularly stunning, but I had fun and got a good workout. At the end of the session I stayed on for a few minutes to do some stretching, and to do my physio and get it done for the day. When I got home I sorted out a little bit of house stuff, and then spent a good portion of the afternoon catching up on here whilst listening to angsty teen music. Turns out I like the new stuff as much as the stuff I listened to when I was an angsty teen, which is nice. In the evening WW and I went to Tesco, then she cooked some fish cakes, calamari rings, and cauliflower cheese. I did some study, scribbled some drawings, and drank beer in front of the TV for the rest of the evening - it was very nice. I did fall asleep on the sofa, which was less nice, and did mean I ended up missing brushing my teeth as I staggered up to bed. Song for the day is a proper classic - Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. I think I knew intellectually that it was a fantastic song, but I heard it yesterday and was reminded just how good it really is - it's almost spiritual listening to that song.

you're not wrong

Hey Puck, how's zero week going? Finally ended up in your thread at a time I can have sound on and listen to this - this is really cool! I shall have to dig into them more. And I guess if they never make it over to you, you'll have to come here to see them

I like the plan of scheduling something to do for the time you know you get snacky. How's it going so far?

I really like this challenge; it's a really clever format. I may have to steal it at some point in the future. For the credit cards, you can get cards that charge 0% interest on balance transfers for the first few months, so I think you could transfer the outstanding balance on your existing cards to one news card and then work on paying it off before you start paying interest. I've never done it so don't know the exact mechanics of it, but might be worth looking into.

Loving the positivity challenge; it sounds like a great goal.

I love this - these are good things to have, and good things to strive for. Wishing for more cool storms and fewer headaches for you.

Nice one on the PR!

This is the way to go - keep consistent and the progress will come on all those exercises. The main thing is that you do the thing, it doesn't matter what scaling options you need to use as long as you're doing it.

Couldn't resist - Willy would have been all over that comment. I'd like to hear people's stories of him too - I'll share some of my own at some stage.

Yeah, you're right, I can only do what I can do. It's not really my manager's fault either - everyone is genuinely very busy. We recruited a new guy to give the team some extra capacity a couple of months ago, but then another one of my colleagues got promoted out of the team so we've ended up with the same number of people and less experience. Hopefully we'll get another new recruit soon, and we'll be in a better place, but for the last year or more it's felt like we're in a constant cycle of people leaving and trying to train up new staff to fill the void. We're in a better place now than we were 9 months ago. Unfortunately I'm personally feeling a bit less equipped to deal with life right now so, although I know the workload is better now, it doesn't feel better,

Friday - W0D5 Physio: ❌ Creativity: ❌ Study: ✅ Teeth: ❌ Food tracking: ❌ Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit was fun, but really weird as there was only one other person and the coach there. A lot of the regulars have a competition today, so they were presumably resting in preparation. We did a workout of handwalking and pullups, and the small group really leant itself well to some solid handwalking practice. I cut the pullups in half, only doing 45 throughout the workout instead of 90, and at the time it felt like I'd gone too easy unnecessarily. This morning I was very glad that I'd make that choice. That was followed up with OHP. I did 47.5kg (~105#) x 3, 42.5kg (~94#) x 5, and 37.5kg (~83#) x 7 plus a drop set. Work was the same as ever. I left on time, which is unusual but I was just out of energy to carry on. When I got back I managed to do some basic housework, put some rug grips on the rugs which have been sitting around for almost a year, and sat down to do some studying before WW got home. When she got back I went and bought some beer, then cooked us butternut squash risotto with an excessive amount of cheese in it (it was awesome, but tasted more like cheese sauce that risotto!). In the evening we drank beer, watched the Taskmaster final, and then watched Questing Time: Dragony Aunt to hear about some of the controversy in the D&D community right now. I stayed up drinking until I fell asleep on the sofa and dragged myself to bed. Zero week so far hasn't been great for goals, so I want to recommit this weekend and get on with some stuff. I'm still struggling with life, but life ain't going anywhere so I need to get on with it. Still thinking of changing the food goal, but the rest are where they are for a reason. I've recently discovered an artist called Scene Queen, who I can best describe as a mix of brutal hip hop and brutal metal. So my song for the day is one of hers, in a spoiler because it's very explicit and probably not for everyone who reads this thread. Viewer/listener discretion is advised.

Thursday - W0D4 Physio: ✅ Creativity: ❌ Study: ✅ Teeth: ❌ Food tracking: ❌ Thursday was a good day, Ran first thing, but my knee wasn't feeling 100% so I heeded my physio's warning and stopped running at about 1.4 miles. I walked a loop home for a total of about 3 miles. Work remains crazy. I've reached that point where I've gone through stressed and out the other side, and now I'm just beyond caring what gets done. Everything will probably work out; it usually does. In the evening we had Pathfinder, the final proper session of our Rise of the Runelords campaign. We'd finished last session part-way through the final combat (level 17 Pathfinder final boss battle - it was always going to be a long one). I won't give you a blow-by-blow of all 3+ hours of dice rolling, but here's a summary. Ravi, my sorcerer, started the session on 8hp, so he turned invisible and ran away to heal. He avoided most of the combat, came back to chip in a bit, and hovered invisibly near the others ready to launch a crazy assault. Then the boss cast an AOE which he happened to be in, killing him instantly (200 damage vs. his 45 remaining hp), and sending him tubmling hundred of feet into the lava below. Liekki, our hobgoblin kineticist who has the damage dealing potential of a nuclear warhead, fell victim to a maze spell and ended up trapped in an extra-planar maze for the entire combat. Beshaba, an NPC arcanist that had joined us for the final fight, was killed by a brutal hit from a giant's sword. She was being played by Liekki's player, after Liekki was mind-controlled a couple of sessions ago and we thought he was lost forever. I was playing Carlos, a human rage prophet, for similar reasons. That left most of the damage to be dealt by Linnie, our ranger who was unleashing whole volleys of arrows every round, and a planatar NPC who we'd also recruited on our way through the dungeon. As we worked our way through the minions, a whole host of giants, a dragon, and a lamia cleric, it became clear that we were gaining the upper hand. After a long evening of spells, dice rolling, and high-level maths, we were victorious. It feels weird, after 4.5 years of playing Ravi in this campaign, that it's all finally over. It was a shame for him to die in the final battle, but he was a full-on glass cannon, so it's no surprise. and we're certainly rich enough to resurrect him so he can live out the rest of his debaucherous life. Song for the day, because it was playing as I was typing this and it feels fitting: Edit: I've put the song in a spoiler, because I'd forgotten that the video is a bit gory. Also, when I say the song feels fitting, I literally meant hearing the line 'popular monster' whilst writing about giants and dragons - I'd forgotten what the full lyrics were too!

Exactly the same idea! And thank you on both counts. I'm getting used to playing her, think she'll really get interesting over the next few levels. Well I had to google that image - clearly my meme game is not strong enough. And thank you man Not quite, though there's a few similarities there I'm leaning more and more toward characters who are front line fighters with a bit of magic; Psyche's a cleric but I'm pretty sure I'm going multiclass barbarian with her. I like the idea of a character who's all sweetness and light, and love and beauty, and then becomes an absolute monster in combat. As for Aphrodite, the whole campaign is Greek mythology inspired (and even if it wasn't, I love to mine Greek myths for character ideas), so she was the perfect fit.

Happy Birthday mate! Hope you had a great one.

This sounds heavenly - I'm putting it on the list for my lunches next week.

This sounds fun - being able to do cool stuff is usually my main motivation for fitness.

I really like this idea. I would have to figure out what those rules would be for me - I don't have a bad base of eating sensibly so it would just be how I marginally improve consistency. I'll have a think, thanks.

Oo, I'll be keeping this thread handy...

You can never have too many D&D props, just saying. I bought new dice to play online a couple of years ago ?