Real Life and What's Happening...

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wife is resigning from the public health department. schools are going full online and no way i can monitor my kid and expect to work and tend to niece. She doesn't like the job anyways, so no great loss. I expect literally 100 things will get better.

I've gotten a lot written on mythic cyberpunk. Honestly, I am liking it a lot at things point. It needs polishing, and there are a couple of sections that need a lot more writing (decking, rigging, a bit on sorcery and animism for cults) but I think I have money FINALLY nailed down, and I got contacts in. Pandemic has been good for this.

I go on vacation at the end of next week for a week. 2 nights here, then another 5 in an AirBNB nearby
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Nice! I'm taking a long weekend up in a yurt up in the mountains next weekend myself. Will be nice to unplug and get away from everything.
 
Thanks for the encouragement, folks! Day 1 of Project: Get E-Rocker back on track is going well!

I did go to the gym. There were only about 5 people there, but I still had to wait for a bench press bench, haha. Besides bench press, I also did some trap bar deadlifts, lat pulldowns, medicine ball slams, and 100-yard sprints on the SkiERG machine. Kept the weights light since I haven't been to the gym since early March.

I fell so much better now!! Was I sliding into depression because I had stopped exercising, or did I stop exercising because I was sliding into depression? I dunno, it's a chicken and egg scenario. Point is, I can see the light now.

Also reminded myself of a few things:

  • I have a wide variety of home-cooked meals in my freezer. There's no need to go out to eat.
  • If I drink soda/pop/fizzy drink, I feel gross afterwards, so it's best avoided.
  • Yeah, I slacked off for a week or two, maybe three. But if I look at where I am now compared to one year ago, I'm ten pounds lighter, significantly stronger, and I fit into clothes that didn't fit then. I don't want to lose that progress.
 
I attended the virtual Hugo awards last night. It's ten years since I last watched a Hugos ceremony, but my god it's gotten so political in that time. I'm singling out the American winners, but every last one of them I was able to watch (the usual technical difficulties) hopped on their soapbox and made a little speech about problems in the home country.

Accept your award, thank the people that got you there, and sit your ass down. Not every experience needs to be politicised.
 
I attended the virtual Hugo awards last night. It's ten years since I last watched a Hugos ceremony, but my god it's gotten so political in that time. I'm singling out the American winners, but every last one of them I was able to watch (the usual technical difficulties) hopped on their soapbox and made a little speech about problems in the home country.

Accept your award, thank the people that got you there, and sit your ass down. Not every experience needs to be politicised.
You apparently haven't visited here lately. I half expect to run into a protest on the way to my bathroom.
 
Just been up to Mt Tamborine yesterday, a little wine district in the Gold Coast hinterland, QLD.
The township itself is about an hour away from my home here in Brissy city, so a nice trip.
It's not an arduous drive on the highway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, about 30min to 40min to the turn-off. Once you hit that, then it's a 20min drive up the range taking in the views.

Sometimes it's great just to get out and about, and the air is so fresh once you get up there.
It's quite nice, we love the cool weather at present, and it's always colder up on the ranges
It's a nice change from our hot summers, so we grab the winter weather when we can.
Social distancing was in place as usual, but it didn't dampen the day at all.

My wife spent our money as usual, buying little foodstuffs from the markets, and a few bottles of wine from the cellar door vineyard retailers,
Had a nice lunch at 'Clancy's', the Irish-Australian pub up there, it was all very hearthy with the fireplace keeping us warm.
If we were just a couple we would of stayed overnight in one of the many Bed & Breakfast places up there, but with my kids that loses alot of it's charm.
Not to worry, we all had a great day, and still home by late afternoon with time to spare.

After the week I had at work, it was a nice escape :thumbsup:
 
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Just been up to Mt Tamborine yesterday, a little wine district less than an hour away from home.
It's quite nice, we love the cold weather at present, and it's always colder up on the ranges
It's a nice change from our hot summers, so we grab the winter weather when we can.
Social distancing was in place as usual, but it didn't dampen the day at all.
After the week I had at work, it was a nice escape :thumbsup:
The rarely seen three-guitar lineup!
 
I did go to the gym. There were only about 5 people there, but I still had to wait for a bench press bench, haha.
Dude that totally got a LOL out of me. Oh and gratz for getting back on track!

Accept your award, thank the people that got you there, and sit your ass down. Not every experience needs to be politicised.
Agree 100%

I don't know if exercise is truly the silver bullet for depression, but it does seem awfully hard to be depressed while straining to hold dumbells over your head. Most people just can't multitask that well.
Exercise helps me stay on track mentally and some incredible insights arise during a hard workout like wreckage rising from the bottom of the sea. Iron and the Soul by Henry Rollins is a pretty cool article on the topic of exercise and mental health.

I haven't exercised since March tho :argh:
 
wife is resigning from the public health department. schools are going full online and no way i can monitor my kid and expect to work and tend to niece. She doesn't like the job anyways, so no great loss. I expect literally 100 things will get better.

I've gotten a lot written on mythic cyberpunk. Honestly, I am liking it a lot at things point. It needs polishing, and there are a couple of sections that need a lot more writing (decking, rigging, a bit on sorcery and animism for cults) but I think I have money FINALLY nailed down, and I got contacts in. Pandemic has been good for this.

I go on vacation at the end of next week for a week. 2 nights here, then another 5 in an AirBNB nearby
549579847.jpg
Wow, that looks great! Obiviously it's 'High Country' somewhere over there. What's the region?
Not the exact location - just the broad region, like is it on the Californian range/Sierra Nevada somewhere, Great Smokey Mts, the American Rockies, etc?

Just curious, as I want to mix country visits with city visits whenever I go over there to the USA (which will be some time away now, due to this pandemic situation)
I've been up in the San Ramon Valley in from San Francisco, around Danville, Mt Diablo, etc, and we also went up to Yosemite, which was awesome.
We also have family who moved to Denver Colorado last year, so we may be doing some jaunts into the Rockies at some time.
 
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You apparently haven't visited here lately. I half expect to run into a protest on the way to my bathroom.
Funny, I had some friends over tonight for the first time since Covid, and they were discussing the challenges of grocery shopping with protesters in the aisles. They managed to get everything they needed by coordinating their movements around the marching, but had to pause a few times for photo ops.
The world is weird.
 
Wpw. that looks great! Obiviously it's 'High Country' somewhere over there. What's the region?
Not the exact location - just the broad region, like is it on the Californian range/Sierra Nevada somewhere, or the American Rockies, etc?

Just curious, as I want to mix country visits with city visits whenever I go over there to the USA (which will be some time away now, due to this pandemic situation)
(I've been up in the San Ramon Valley in from San Francisco, around Danville, Mt Diablo, etc, and we also went up to Yosemite, which was awesome.
We also have family who moved to Denver Colorado last year, so we may be doing some jaunts into the Rockies at some time).

that picture is of Sperry Chalet (http://www.sperrychalet.com) in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, in the American Rockies. Quite a ways up from Denver (solid 14 hour drive, even at pretty high speeds, Montana's freeway speed limit is ~130kph), but worth every minute and mile.
 
that picture is of Sperry Chalet (http://www.sperrychalet.com) in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, in the American Rockies. Quite a ways up from Denver (solid 14 hour drive, even at pretty high speeds, Montana's freeway speed limit is ~130kph), but worth every minute and mile.
The American Rockies looks like a place that I'm going to be becoming more familar with, although more from the Colarado end I would say.
Yep I hear Montana is beautiful, and it looks like Glacier National Park is an awesome place to visit. Another one to go in my book of things to try and see!
Sperry Chalet certainly looks like a great getaway! :thumbsup:
 
The American Rockies looks like a place that I'm going to be becoming more familar with, although more from the Colarado end I would say.
Yep I hear Montana is beautiful, and it looks like Glacier National Park is an awesome place to visit. Another one to go in my book of things to try and see!
Sperry Chalet certainly looks like a great getaway! :thumbsup:

colorsdo is also beautiful. A little drier, but a little taller mountains. Make sure you get down to the Gunnison area, as that is just gorgeous. My wife and I did our honeymoon down that way as broke college students.
 
After months of playing it safe, masking up, avoiding crowds as much as possible, and two COVID scares at work (same employee, no less)...we're now playing the waiting game.

My wife works at a hospital as a housekeeper. Apparently they transferred a patient from the ER into a regular room...before her COVID test came back. And my wife cleaned her room Saturday. And went into work Sunday to find out the patient did, in fact, test positive (normally she is not allowed anywhere near COVID positive patients, only following specific cleaning protocols on the rooms once they are released). So now we're home bound until she can get tested and gets the test result back, because someone fucked up.

Thankfully, my boss has authorized me to work from home, since my standard operating procedure has become bringing my laptop home every day since this broke out, just in case.
 
if it gives you confidence and hope, my son was exposed a week and a half ago at day care. they are good about distancing as they can with kids, everyone wears masks, cleaning, all that jazz. He came back negative

Glad your son is okay!

The alarming part here is that my wife *is* the housekeeper and there are apparently different protocols with COVID patients and everyone else, but the COVID protocols weren't followed due to the breakdown in communication.

I hope, obviously, that it was incidental enough that she's fine, and that these prove to just be extra careful precautions. Especially as I have co-morbidities that put me in a higher risk group (working on them, though!).
 
After months of playing it safe, masking up, avoiding crowds as much as possible, and two COVID scares at work (same employee, no less)...we're now playing the waiting game.

My wife works at a hospital as a housekeeper. Apparently they transferred a patient from the ER into a regular room...before her COVID test came back. And my wife cleaned her room Saturday. And went into work Sunday to find out the patient did, in fact, test positive (normally she is not allowed anywhere near COVID positive patients, only following specific cleaning protocols on the rooms once they are released). So now we're home bound until she can get tested and gets the test result back, because someone fucked up.

Thankfully, my boss has authorized me to work from home, since my standard operating procedure has become bringing my laptop home every day since this broke out, just in case.

You all should be ok. Risk of contagion through surface contact (as opposed to airborne particles) is not as bad as we once thought it was. Keeping my fingers crossed just in case.
 
You all should be ok. Risk of contagion through surface contact (as opposed to airborne particles) is not as bad as we once thought it was. Keeping my fingers crossed just in case.

Right. But she was in the room with the patient, changing out the trash. The poor respiratory therapist did have much worse exposure, though...
 
Right. But she was in the room with the patient, changing out the trash. The poor respiratory therapist did have much worse exposure, though...

Okay, whoever let that happen needs a serious dressing down, at very least, and that's if everything turns out okay. (Which I trust it will.)
 
On the verge of backsliding into bad habits of poor nutrition and insufficient exercise. I need to get back on track, like, now.
Heh, I've been backsliding since kids... Moving didn't and changing jobs help either. At our old house and old job, pre-kids, I was doing good. I would get up at 6:00 AM and go for a 30-40 minute walk, all on sidewalks and crossing no major streets so walking in the dark wasn't an issue and then shower up, have breakfast, and go down to the basement to log in for work. Only times I missed was if I got up late, actually had an early meeting, or it was just raining too hard.

After the first kid, and our move, I managed one summer of walks, at first without the kid, and later adding to the exercise by pushing the kid around in the stroller. But it was only manageable late spring to early fall because of lack of sidewalks and having to cross a major street twice. Then kid #2 came along. Then was a summer where I pushed the double stroller around. And then some things happened:

1. It became apparent that I needed to log as much work time before noon as I could due to working with folks on the East Coast (I live in Portland Oregon) and India.

2. I started to need to drive kids to school and back, which sucks time out of the day.

Now I get up at 5:30 AM, get down to the basement by 7:00, work for an hour, then take the kids to school, then come back, work for 6 more hours, then pick the kids up from school, then get 1 more hour of work, then up at 5:00 PM for dinner and family time until we put the kids to be at 7:00 and then 3 nights a week it's free time for me, and the other 4 nights a week are time with the misus... I just don't see how to fit in time for exercise. At least I have to do a flight of stairs to use the bathroom or get snacks or lunch.
 
Food is my enemy.

But I've been getting into a routine of:

- Get up, do DDP Yoga.
- Go to work.
- Come home, and hit any dishes or laundry that immediately need addressed
- a) do Resistance Bands Mon/Wed/Fri or b) do kettlebells Tue/Thur
- Get on exercise bike immediately after the above and get at least 5 miles
- Then go about the rest of my evening.

I've also added (as of today) a lower back workout with kettlebells on Mon/Wed/Fri to help with back pain. If I can get the willpower to get the diet under control, I'd be in great shape. But last year they put me on blood pressure and cholesterol meds. I had them switch cholesterol meds because I was having a reaction I didn't like, but the new med isn't working. So I am uniquely motivated to get myself whipped into shape (and hopefully get off the meds, since I'm on a pretty low dose of each right now).
 
So, it turns out my heavy duty chair rated for 150kg isn't strong enough for myself, Mrs Nobby-W and the two spawn at the same time, and the joint where the seat fits onto the gas lift broke. Now I've got a chair rated for 220kg. This one weighs 26kg; hopefully it's strong enough.

In unrelated news, I'm getting increasingly underwhelmed with BT's new look email (actually Yahoo mail skinned). It's making me increasingly nostalgic for my old email system of fetchmail, procmail, postfix and mutt. Before that I used to use elm, which would happily ingest a mailbox containing 40,000 messages on a 486.
I just look like a rugby player.
 
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No one asked for the gories but I am recovering from surgery. Hemorrhoid surgery. Internal and external. I never realized I'm such a woose. But, I gotta tell ya, I've been opened up from my breastbone to my belt buckle before, and the recovery was way easier than this. This sucks so fucking bad. And the drugs they gave me aren't doing shit.

I know, TMI. But God damn.

Can't wait until this is over.
 
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