Jarric

(I realise this reference has been made a ton already, but I couldn't resist the gif) Ironically, I wish I had drawn a white circle! It would have been better than not drawing anything, which is what happened for me. Still, another 10 days of prompts to play with.

Always here (and on messenger/Discord if you want to discuss stuff you can't share here right now).

I've been neglecting this thread for a bit - @Starpuck you are killing it! @TGP good to have you! That's a great piece. Finally managed to get back on the Inktober wagon today, during a webinar at work: On the first series of Robot Wars there was a robot called Psychosprout, which was just a remote control car in a giant ball painted to look like a Brussels sprout. Today's prompt made me think of that.

Well, the goal is worth 0.4% right? So maybe if you break that goal, but only in a very minor way (like 2 cubes of dark chocolate) you award yourself 0.2%, rather than dropping to 0 for the goal?

I appreciate your specificity! And actually it sounds much more reasonable when you put it like that.

Seems like an excellent choice. No matter how often I think this, it's a hard lesson to learn!

My reaction is torn between "wow, that sounds amazing" and "wow, that's a lot of butter". Actually, maybe not - is 1/4c = 1/8 pint?

Seriously though, I like the system, it looks pretty neat.

It's not quite mulled cider weather here yet, so I'll have a pint of the black stuff barkeep.

Thank you man! I'm quite sure you can ranger just as hard as me Thanks Terra! Thank you!

I feel this so much! Hope you're able to get the backlog clear without too much extra coming in.

Yes, that's exactly the sort of thing! So frustrating when it does happen.

Spartan Weekend Round-Up Last weekend was great. Exhausting, but excellent. On Saturday I was up at 6am to get to the Spartan Beast. It was a chilly morning, and a really foggy one, but I got there with no drama, and in plenty of time to get ready for my 08:15 wave. We were the first open wave of the day, so unlike the pro and age group waves we got the full Spartan spiel, complete with extravagant comparisons to Spartan warriors in battle, over-the-top Hollywood orchestral scores, and all of that good stuff. And then we were off! It was a fun race, and a lot easier than I was expecting. It was 21km (13.1 miles/half marathon), but there were only about 35 obstacles across that, and only a handful of really challenging ones. The rest of the race was just a nice trail run over the rolling hills of the Ashdown Forest. It's a really beautiful part of the country, and when the sun came out and started burning off the fog in the valley it was seriously picturesque. I clocked 1,828ft (557m) of ascent, so it was very hilly, but I walked up the steeper bits and was ok otherwise. I managed every obstacle on course without too much trouble - there were a few little rigs but nothing really technical to challenge me. The heavy carries were pretty brutal, particularly one sandbag carry that went on for what felt like a thousand years, but again I got through them ok. The one exception was the spear throw, which I missed by so far that I was almost closer to the next dummy over, so that clocked me my regulation 30 burpees. I hung around and collected some free food and drink, and then went home and had a nice long soak in the bath to ease my muscles. On Sunday I was up even earlier at 5am. I felt slightly more relaxed knowing what to expect on site, and was there comfortably in time for my 07:10 wave. I ran this one as an age group competitor, as I knew that would give me plenty of time to relax before the third race in the afternoon. Because of that most of the field shot off at the start line, and I was left fairly near the back of the pack. Fortunately a chap I know from other races caught me up, and decided to run the whole race with me. The guy running with me used to be a serious competitor, but he's been out for a couple of years following an ACL reconstruction, so it suited him to use me to keep him from going too fast, and it worked for me to have someone to try and keep up with. I made a couple of mistakes on this race. The first was on the Z Walls - a climbing traverse wall with two corners that made it a sort of Z shape. When I got on the obstacle I realised pretty quickly that it was leaning slightly to one side, and that it would be vastly easier to go along the side that had me leaning into the wall instead of hanging backwards. So I got off to move round to the other side, and immediately had a marshall screaming at me to come and do burpees. Apparently you only get one go at each obstacle. I wasn't aware of that rule, and if I had have been I would have given it a proper go from where I started. Lesson learned. My second mistake was on the spear throw. Not that I ever stand much of a hope of getting it as I have no way to practice, but standing on the rope attached to the spear certainly did me no favours. Otherwise I got through the 10km (6.2 mile) race ok, though I definitely think I would have struggled more running on my own. Now was the waiting game, with me stood around in mostly wet clothes from about half 9 when I finished the first race, until my 14:15 wave for the 5km (3.1 mile) Sprint. I managed to speak to a couple of people I vaguely recognised, got some food and drink, watched the podium medals being awarded, and generally tried to keep moving to stay warm and limber. Hindsight being 20:20 I should have got changed into dry clothes, even though that would have meant getting changed back into my wet gear for the race, but it wasn't too much of an issue being wrapped up in my dryrobe. Finally the time came for the Sprint. I wasn't feeling it much at this point, but I managed to get myself round at a leisurely pace, hit all of the obstacles (other than the spear throw again!), and got to the end to collect my last medal and my trifecta weekend medal. https://www.instagram.com/p/CU5Nxi5ozEx All in all it was a very good time, and though I was knackered by the end I haven't suffered too much with sore muscles and aches and pains since. Let's call that a success!

Guess I better get writing then!

Had the weekend off being busy with lots of things, but I'm back with today's prompt with a jar of sour sweets:

Haha, so there's a subtle difference, but I'm struggling to put it into words. Murphy's law is "Anything that can ho wrong, will go wrong". Sod's law is more like if you tempt fate or try to eliminate chance from something it'll bite you. Like, if one day you decide not to wear a seatbelt, it's sod's law that that one day will be the day you crash your car. Or like in my example, normally I would just go to my local petrol station, and it's sod's law that the one day I go out of my way to make sure I get petrol all that effort is wasted because I could have gone to my local one on the first place. This might describe it better: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod's_law#Comparison_with_Murphy's_law And that sucks that you still can't get round a table. I really like playing online, but it's never quite the same as being there in person. Is there anywhere else you can go to play outside of people's homes? We book a room above a pub when we play, or we go to a gaming café. Yeah, she was excellent at that. I'll pass that on; she'll appreciate the compliment I'm sure.

Today's offering. I thought this would be much easier than a ghost, now I'm not so sure. Quite enjoyed making it though. Also, I want a drink now.

No, randomly it was a Shell. I think it might just be sod's law. To be fair I had to drive past about 3 of those 9 petrol stations, I just took a bit of a longer route home to specifically pass the others.

Yesterday was a good day. I went for a little 2 mile run first thing, and then did a bit of cool down yoga. Work was busy - I'm really struggling to get through stuff right now. In the evening WW heating up the curry I made on Sunday with the rice I cooked on Monday, and then we headed out to our Pathfinder 2e game. We bypassed (well, climbed round) a trap, fought a bunch of kobolds, and finally hit level 2! After that we decided to call the session early, as our party wizard wasn't there and we know we're heading towards the boss fight. We sat and talked for another hour or so just about life in general, which was nice and chilled. In the way home we needed to get petrol. We went past 9 petrol stations before finding one that actually had any fuel, and typically it was the one round the corner from our house so we needn't have taken such a circuitous route to go past all of the others. Still, we now have another week or two's worth of miles in the tank, which is the important bit. In other news, I definitely have taper tantrums right now (to steal a phrase from Xena). Every little niggle or muscle ache makes me panic about unfit for the weekend. I'll be fine, but it's a very annoying mindset to have. Update counter: 22/31 (3/7, 6/7, 4/7, 6/7, 3/3)

It was a good plan! Not how I thought you'd execute it, but it worked. Yeah, it's definitely expensive, though it's cheaper the further in advance you book. I volunteered at a Spartan at the end of 2019 to get a free race, so I used that on the Beast as that's the most expensive, so that helped too. Thanks man! I'm not sure how I'm going to feel to be honest. I don't think I'll want to go out for the third race by the time that rolls around, but it's only 5k so I'm sure I'll drag myself round it. I also entered the competitive age group wave for the Super, but I don't think I'll be up to doing much competing by that point!

I'd love to claim that as true, but actually I got a photo of a raven up on my computer and worked from that. Some stuff I draw from my head, but a lot more of it involves some kind of reference, particularly when it's a weird pose or a form I'm not familiar with. I love your raven! I'm slightly scared of it, but it looks awesome!

Well done getting back on the workout train man! Onwards and upwards!

Ok, a quick update, because I'm tired and I have D&D this evening. Sunday was a good day. First thing I went climbing with Hopalong - it was quite a short session, but a good one. Then it was our Ranger D&D game, in which we met some mercenaries created by the players as employees of the party (well, of @DarK_RaideR's character specifically). We also met some NPCs mercenaries that'd I'd come up with, which gave me an excuse to piss about with silly voices for a bit. The party then ventured onward, and finished the session by capturing a giant (sort of, anyway). In the evening I did lots of admin type stuff and some meal prep for the week. Monday was a good day. First thing was Crossfit, with a brutal little workout of d-ball over shoulder and ski erg which absolutely knackered me. After that we had OHP, and I worked up to 50kg (110#) for 2 x 3, 45kg (99#) for 2 x 5, and 40kg (88#) for 2 x 7. The album of the day was Sunshine Superman by Donovan. Having never heard of this album, I realised that I actually knew a couple of tracks, and also that this album is an absolute banger. It was released in 1966 and it really sounds like it was, but there's a mix of some great pop tunes and some weird hippy shit that when put together is really appealing. Well worth a listen. In the evening I chilled in front of last week's Questing Time, failed at some Inktober drawing, and cooked eggs to have for breakfast for the rest of the week. Update counter: 21/30 (3/7, 6/7, 4/7, 6/7, 2/2)

I think it's just a brand name thing that makes it so expensive. I'm running all of them! Saturday is the Beast (21k/13.1 mile/half marathon), then Saturday is the Super (10k/6.2 mile) and the Sprint (5k/3.1 mile). Thank you, that's a nice thing to hear. Thank you! I'm sure it'll be fine, just a bit or preparatory panic!