New Digs and New Routines

My blogging mojo flew the coop for awhile. In the days leading up to the move, I didn’t really have anything to write about. We were laying low and heading home after work. Even our weekends were fairly mellow. Plus, there was stress. Since I don’t like to use this space for venting, I didn’t want to come to the keyboard feeling out of sorts.

So I took a break and let things simmer. I think I’m ready to get back in the routine, but bear with me. I need to find my blogging feet again.

The good news? We’re in our new apartment! We stretched the move itself over a full week. Because of the way things worked out, we got the keys to the new apartment on July 7 but didn’t have to give the keys to the old one back until July 12. Jon and I spent every evening after work unloading the car in Manhattan, unpacking boxes, then loading the car back up again in Wamego. It was an exhausting process.

On Friday, I took the day off to finish emptying and cleaning the old apartment. This meant a total of twelve trips up and down three flights of stairs. I was in pain the rest of the weekend, but honestly? It was worth it to be able to say that I could do it. Our last move was horrible for me, so I was happy that this time around I could actually be of use.

We had some helpers that evening, and even though we’d planned to continue the move on Saturday, we didn’t need to do much. All of our boxes and furniture were moved before 9pm Friday night, and the only thing we did on Saturday was send Jon and two of our helpers back to finish cleaning and to grab our last few storage items.

I tried resting up on Saturday since I was doing the Relay for Life that night, but those stair trips took their toll, and the pain was a little more than I was prepared for. I did make it to the event for a few hours though, but I ended up leaving early. Between the pain and the heat and the exhaustion, I wasn’t feeling well.

Sunday was dedicated to unpacking the rest of what we could and having our new neighbors (but old friends) down to visit for a little while. Since we’d done so much throughout the week, unpacking was pretty easy. Everything found a “home” except for some books and wall hangings, and that’s only because we need a bookshelf and some command strips, both of which are waiting until they fit into the budget.

So much cabinet space…and this is just one small corner of our kitchen.

I love our new place. When we saw it the first time, we took into account the fact that it was smaller than our old place, so we figured that once the furniture was in, things would be a little cramped. Not the case at all. In fact, we have way more room than we’d originally thought we had, as well as more storage space than we’d anticipated.

It’s comfortable and cozy. The shower water doesn’t run different temperatures, we have a ton of stuff within walking distance, and coming home for lunch is pretty great…other than the fact that I don’t necessarily want to leave once I’m here. For the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to having people over, and I can’t wait to bake in our nice, big kitchen.

Now that the move is over, it’s time to try to get back into my routine and get going on projects that I’ve been procrastinating. I’m still settling in and work has been busy, so it’s been somewhat of a challenge, but I think in a few weeks things should feel more settled on the homefront. Which is really good, because the rest of the summer is going to be busy with travel and social times.

A.

 

Dallas Comic Con 2014

The weekend before last, Jon and I took a mini road trip to Texas for Dallas Comic Con. My brother-in-law invited us a couple months ago and scored passes for us, so we couldn’t resist. The drive is a longish one…eight hours to Burleson, where we stayed with family, and then another hour to Dallas for the con. It was well worth it!

We made sure to get there early to try to avoid long lines. We didn’t avoid them entirely, but it was okay. In fact, we waited in three lines. This first line was the one to get into the ticket pick-up area. It wound around and down the convention hallway. It moved fast, though, which was nice.

I found Waldo!

The second line was just as quick. The convention staff had this down to a science. We picked up our orange bracelets (one of the staff called them “fun shackles,” and yes, we giggled like 12 year old boys) before heading down to our third line, where we ended up having to hang for awhile until they opened the exhibitor hall doors. We stood behind Batman and Catwoman, and the cosplayers were nice enough to let me take a picture.

The exhibitor hall was huge. Jon and I started by browsing the booths and taking some pictures of the vehicle models they had on the floor. The Winchesters’ Impala (from Supernatural) was the highlight of the vehicles. I made sure to get some pictures for my mom, who’s a huge fan of the show (yes..my mom is a fangirl).

Weeping Angel…don’t blink!

Sadly, I started tiring out quickly, though I don’t know if it was because I didn’t pace myself or because I didn’t sleep well the night before. The floors of the exhibitor hall were brutal, so it wasn’t long before my legs started hurting. Still, I wasn’t giving up. I stopped by a few vendors I’d wanted to see, then went down to the autograph hall.

One of my favorite movie villains of all time is Freddy Kruger. I was watching the Nightmare on Elm Street films long before I was what most parents would deem age appropriate, but none of the gore and horror struck me as a major thing when I was young. When I found out that Robert Englund and other cast members were going to be there, I was cautiously hopeful about getting to meet him.

The line wasn’t super long when I got in, but it filled up quickly. Not only did I get his autograph and get to meet him, but I also got a selfie with him as well.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that yes, I did pay for both the autograph and the selfie. While I don’t normally spend money for celebrity encounters at fan cons, for me, this was worth it. I’ve heard horror stories of celebs taking your money and giving you a quick autograph with little to no interaction, so I knew I was taking a chance. But Englund didn’t disappoint. He was very nice and we even talked for a bit about the movie and the mythos around it.

As part of the combo, I also got the autograph of Amanda Wyss who played Tina in the movie. Once again, another celebrity who was nice, who chatted, and who seemed genuinely grateful to her fans.

And as a bonus, while I was standing in line, I got to see Brent Spiner, who walked through the curtain to get to his booth and gave us all a wave and a “hello.”

I found Jon and we went and grabbed some lunch before heading to the Q&A panel with Christopher Lloyd. He talked about the Back to the Future movies and some of his other work.  

Later, we went back to the panel hall for the Nightmare on Elm Street reunion Q&A. It was interesting to hear them talk about the film and their experiences making it. As a bonus, it also got Jon interested in doing a NoES movie marathon with me…which is awesome since he doesn’t normally like horror movies.

We ended the day playing some board games. DCC had a whole area dedicated to gaming…which is one of our things…so we played a new game called Loonacy, a round of Fluxx, and two rounds of Ticket to Ride.

It was a fun day, but I crashed hard that night. There were a lot of people there. Luckily, my social anxiety stayed down for the most part. It was so worth going, and I’m hoping we can make it again next year!

A.

Tea and Chocolate

It was a nice Sunday in that it was relaxing and I checked a few things off my to-do list. The weather was ominous though. I like a good rain, and I love a good thunderstorm, but driving around in it isn’t so fun. Still, we survived to do laundry, run some errands, and attend the Habitat for Humanity Chocolate and Tea.

Jon received tickets through this work, and since we’d never been before, we thought it would be a fun new experience. Besides the chance to drink tea and eat chocolate goodies, there were also silent and live auctions. I took a bid number…just in case. There were several silent auction items that looked interesting, but nothing I couldn’t live without.

The snacks were tasty. There was a chocolate fountain and an array of baked goods. Jon pointed out that I failed at Strawberry Dipping 101 even though I stood right there when the person ahead of me was being shown the right technique. I don’t get enough quality chocolate fountain time I guess.

I’ve only been to a couple live auctions, but I’ve enjoyed every one I’ve gone to. I love listening to the auctioneer. This live auction had several neat items. One of my favorites was the handmade quilt pictured above. It wasn’t in our budget, but I’m not ruling out the chance of bidding on a quilt in a future auction.

 

Funnily enough, I did win something. They were passing this ring around and no one was bidding, so I threw a bid out. I thought someone outbid me, so I kind of lost track of what was going on. They finally closed it and…whoop…I won! The ring is not my usual style, but I’m going to rock it anyway. Jon suggested I go get it resized. It fits on my left ring finger, but not my right. However, that might not be an issue much longer, since my other rings are becoming increasingly loose.

All the proceeds went to Habitat for Humanity. We had a good time, and since they hold this every year, I’m hoping we can go again next year and maybe plan ahead money wise so we can bid on more things.

A.

Hanging at Tulip Fest 2014

This year was my first year going to the Wamego Tulip Festival. I haven’t gone in the past probably due to a combination of not being around and not being able to walk all over the place, neither of which was an issue this year. I met up with a couple of friends and we joined the festivities.

There were bouncy houses for days, and kids could get an all day pass to all the bounce they wanted for eight dollars. I’m ready for adult bouncy houses to be a thing. There were also booths of hand crafted items and homemade food.  I picked up a handmade necklace and earring set made from ammunition shells.

The food court offered a few different things: asian noodles, BBQ, and italian sausage sandwiches. The turkey legs looked tempting, but…

 

…I went with the italian sausage sammy. It was super spicy.  FB pointed out the face in my bun by asking me to tag it as a friend. Bun face and I could have been friends, I guess. But I ate him.

Baby animals are the cutest. Besides these lambies, we saw baby chickens and ducks, a calf, and a goat. I’m not sure if the goat was a baby, but he was still adorable.

We found this one lonely little tulip. A few minutes later, we found a few more, but the tulips didn’t seem to be plentiful this year. Then again, we may have just missed seeing them.

On the way to the beer garden and winery, I gave in to the call of the cherry limeade. It was delicious. If I’m lucky, they’ll have these at the Kansas Sampler Festival in a couple weeks.

Other than the expected sore feet, walking was easy peasy. Unfortunately, my body malfunctioned in other ways, and I ended up having to come home after just a few hours. I got a bit of a sunburn, despite using sunscreen, but it was worth it. It was a fun day with good friends, and I’m glad I went.

It’s going on tomorrow, too, so if you’re in the area, I definitely recommend checking it out.

 

A.

 

 

Day 4: St. Louis Vacation – Art and The Loop

We were up early, ready to tackle our itinerary, but the day ended up being quite a bit different than planned, which ended up being mostly a good thing.

Our first stop was unplanned until this morning when I did a Google search of things we could do while we waited for the museums to open. In my searching, I found Bellefontaine Cemetery. Though they offer tours, we just drove through it and looked at the pretty structures and scenery. It was huge, and we got a little bit lost in there, but we managed to find our way out after finding a geocache that had been hidden at one of the trees on the property.

Once we were done there, we headed towards St. Louis Art Museum near the zoo. We weren’t prepared for how huge it was.

The view from outside the museum.

After we’d only covered about two big sections, I started feeling hungry, which was kind of a bummer since I’d made sure to eat a big breakfast to fuel up. It was making me tired and cranky, and even though they had a cafe on site, I wasn’t feeling the menu or the prices. We ended up leaving to go find some food, figuring if we felt up to it, we’d go back. It didn’t happen that way. We didn’t finish out the art museum, nor did we go back to the zoo as planned, so I was a little bit unhappy about that.

As a side note, we found a cache near the museum, and Jon was able to drop his zombie travel bug off. Now his is in the wild. I’m hoping I can find a good place to drop mine off tomorrow.

Even though I was a little bummed about leaving the museum, the detour made for a good time because we found The Loop, a cool artsy area that had been recommended to me. Our first stop was for food, and we ate at a small bar called the Market Pub House.  They made an awesome burger, and the re-fuel gave us the energy to do some more walking.

We walked down the street and browsed the shops and art along the way. We made two stops, one at a game store and one at Ben & Jerry’s. I’ve never actually eaten at a Ben & Jerry’s shop, but it’s one of my fave ice creams. I opted for a small bowl of half peanut butter and banana frozen greek yogurt and half chocolate peanut butter swirl. So good!

We picked up a geocache in the area and then headed back to the hotel for some rest time.  My legs are a little sore tonight from all the walking, but I’m kind of loving the feeling. The fact that I can now do all this walking is reminding me that staying in motion and getting daily exercise has been completely worth it.

Tomorrow is our geocache day! We have our route mapped out and will be getting up super early to head to Peoria, grabbing some geocaches along the way and attempting to find a tough one that only one other person has ever found. We’d love to be the second to find on this, but I think it’ll be fun just to add our name to the list of people who couldn’t.  Hoping to find some cool scenery and places to visit along the way as well.

A.

Changes on the Horizon

Mostly, today was an uneventful day. It was definitely a Monday. I did manage to make it to the gym (yay!) and the grocery store to get lunches and snacks for this coming week. I used breaks and part of lunch to move forward with my Nanowrimo story. I’m a little bit ahead so I should be able to relax later in the month. I’m ending my day with some blogging, oven pizza, and some Netflix.

Something really cool that I can share now (since it was announced at work today) is that I was offered a new position within my company.  The transition will be happening over the next several months, and there are a few details that still need to be worked out, but I will be taking a technical writer position in our communications department.

I’m so excited about this! I love to write, and though I’ve done it mostly has a hobby for many years, I love getting asked to help with writing or proofreading oriented projects.  Writing is one of my strengths, or at least I believe it is, and I think this new job is going to be perfect for me.  Don’t get me wrong…I like the people I work with, and I think I’m good at my current position. But this new position is so in line with things I’ve always wanted to do that it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

There is a lot of changes going on in general at work, and it’ll definitely be a big change for me to move to a completely different department, but I’m looking forward to the process and the eventual new workload.

I kicked Monday’s butt…sort of. Now onward to Tuesday.

A.

 

Clever Caches and Pumpkin Patches

Even though we slept in this morning, we still got up in time to find some geocaches before meeting friends at the pumpkin patch out at Britt’s Farm.  I’d planned the trip to Britt’s a few weeks ago, and originally, Jon and I were going to use the morning to walk the zoo and visit the Flint Hills Discovery Center to see the new exhibit. However, with the late night we had, we decided sleep was more important.

Our first stop was a cache that we just couldn’t find. It was hidden in a tree that had a lot of thick, low hanging branches. We basically wrestled with the thing. I came away with a few scratches, but Jon’s legs and shirt got tore up. We might go back and try in the winter when the leaves have fallen off. The park itself was pretty cool. It has a game course for something called disc golf.  I’d never heard of it, but I thought it was neat to find something like that. Seemed pretty unique.

We went to Subway for lunch, then started towards town to hit a few more caches. Today’s cache theme was “clever hides.” Almost all the containers looked like something else and were in plan view because they looked like part of the environment.  At the first one, I even told Jon not to mess with it because it seriously looked like part of a big mechanical box. He finally just went for it and sure enough, it was the cache.  He managed to find the other tricky ones as well.

One of them wasn’t tricky in how it was hid, but it still had a clever theme.  It was called “Flash Gordon’s Trial of the Wood Beast.” This meant nothing to me since I never really watched Flash Gordon, but Jon is a fan and so had a good idea of what we were looking for before we set off to find it. One thing I did know about this geocache was that we looked at it when we first started caching and had decided against trying to find it because at that time, it seemed too hard. It’s not a difficult cache. The difficulty for me was having to make a hike that was almost a half mile round trip.

I’ve come a long way, because the walk was really nice today. It was down part of the linear trail and then off into a wooded path along the river, another beautiful part of our area that I never would have seen if it hadn’t been for geocaching.

We found this abandoned car in the woods. Kind of cool, kind of creepy.

 

We finally got to the hiding spot and were met by two hornets guarding the cache. They weren’t flying and were really slow moving, but they freaked me out a little bit, as do most bugs with a stinger.  At first, we weren’t even going to attempt to get the cache. Jon was close to one of them and it didn’t sting him though, so we tried to edge over and grab it without making either of them mad. Luckily, they were mud daubers and not yellow jackets. One of the things I learned from a fellow BOW woman was that mud daubers tend to be pretty mellow and keep to themselves, while yellow jackets are the aggressive guys.

As Jon put it, had they been yellow jackets, they would have stung us, killed us, then probably buried our bodies. Those guys are jerks. Since these were not them,  we moved slow and kind of stared the mud daubers down, and they let us grab the cache without stinging us.  Between geocaching and BOW, I feel like I’ve developed a better appreciation for nature. A few months ago, I doubt if I would have even stuck around to watch a couple hornets the way we did today.

After grabbing a few more in the area, we went out to the farm. During the fall, they host a “pumpkin patch” with all kinds of activities, many geared towards children. I’m an adult and I still thought it was cool. There was an area that I think was supposed to be the petting zoo but seemed more like a chase area for kids to go after the animals. The geese and chickens there were pretty good sports about it.  They didn’t bite anyone.

We met up with my friends there, but we decided to go ahead and tackle the corn maze early. It sounds silly, but walking a corn maze is on my Day Zero list, so I was pretty excited to finally be able to do it.  There were two mazes, an easy one that  would take about five minutes to complete, and a hard one that would take about a half hour (according to the signs posted outside of the entrances).  I already had it in my head that we were going to do the hard corn maze.

There was definitely a creepy vibe here, likely from watching “Children of the Corn” at an early age.

Though my goal was to walk in a corn maze, it wasn’t to get lost in one, so Jon and I kept to the right through the whole thing, which inevitably lead us around some needless loops and a dead end. Maybe getting lost is part of the fun, but that’s the part that would have made me panic. As it was, I had a little panic towards the end anyway. The terrain was rough, a fact that was to be expected but never landed on my radar, so my feet were pretty sore by the end. We’d walked out pretty far and I started to feel disoriented. I probably would have kept my cool, but I hit a divot and popped my knee. The pain and the heat and the fact that I was ready to be out of that maze made me cry a little. Luckily, we turned the corner and there was the end.

I have no regrets. I’m actually happy I could do it and proud of myself for finishing. But to be honest, now that the maze is off my list, I doubt if I’ll ever need to do another one.  That walk took a lot out of us, so we caught up to the others to see how they were doing and to say our good-byes. I was hurting, we were both exhausted, and I don’t think there was anything else there we really could have done. Except maybe the potato gun. That might have been fun.

We picked up some apple cider on the way out, and once I’m done here, I’m getting mine for an evening snack. We had a good day, but I definitely need a shower and maybe some more ibuprofen (my friend Forsh gave me a couple when we got out of the maze). The knee swelling seems to have gone down, but my upper back could use something.  Maybe some Biofreeze.

Not sure what tomorrow is going to bring. We have gaming in the afternoon, and the plan is to get our third gym day done for the week.  If we’re feeling ambitious, we might do our zoo walk, but I think we’re going to play it by ear and plan our day based on how we feel in the morning. It was a fun day, and I’m going to cap it off with a shower, some horror movies, and some knitting.

A.

Day 1: Becoming an Outdoors Woman 2013

What a weekend! I’m tired and a little bit sunburnt, but the BOW experience was definitely worth it.  Like I did with Gen Con, I’m going to break these down into day posts because it seems like a lot to put into one long blog post.

I got to Rock Springs a little before 10 on Friday morning, after dropping Jon off to work and grabbing a quick breakfast sandwich. I had a little trouble finding check in, but eventually found parking.

Almost everyone else in my cabin was there, but thankfully I scored a bottom bunk. The ladies were so nice and welcoming. They helped me bring my stuff in and gave me some newbie pointers.

We had lunch (the food was great all weekend, and there was a lot of it), then the welcome meeting, then our first class. Mine was Intro to Fishing. We started out learning about the more popular fish native to Kansas. Then we learned about different poles and how to tie a hook, lead, and bobber. I caught on to making the knot fairly quickly, so now I kind of want to go fishing so I can show off.

Learning about fish!

Once we had our poles ready, we headed down to a small fishing hole and stream. The area was beautiful, but I was feeling tired and a little shaky. Standing on the edge was making me nervous. I still caught several fish, including the only large mouth bass of the day.

The anglers in my family should also take note that I put a nightcrawler on the hook by myself and didn’t get too grossed out. And I unhooked my own fish. Next year, I might even take the advanced course or the course where I learn to filet and cook a fish.

The mini Walk for the Cure was originally scheduled for that night, but they switched it up since we were getting a visit from Theresa Vail, also known as Miss Kansas 2013. Instead, we did a Chuck-A-Duck (I didn’t win), and later I went and visited with Theresa for a little bit.  She was genuinely sweet, and in case anyone was unsure if her love of the outdoors was genuine or not, it is.

After dinner, I attended a mini session called Kansas Critters that was taught by the same instructor who taught my fishing class. The session went long, but it was really interesting, and I actually learned and retained several outdoor facts. I debated going to the campfire afterwards, but I ended up just heading back to the cabin instead. I was tired, and the walk back itself was even more exhausting. It was uphill, over several rocky, uneven steps. I made that trek many times over the weekend, and it never got easier.

Not gonna lie, that night I felt a little homesick. My shower experience might have had something to do with that. I’d been given a pair of shower shoes by my friend, but I hadn’t tried them on first, and they ended up hurting my feet. The showers themselves weren’t horrible, but they had the hard rubber mats inside the stalls, and those hurt my feet even more. Because I’ve never actually showered in a camp setting (at least that I can remember), I was ill prepared all around, and so by the time I got back to bed, I was hurting and exhausted, and even though I’d had a great day, I still missed Jon and my own bed.

However, I slept fairly well, and when I woke up the next morning, I was refreshed and feeling good and optimistic.

To be continued…

A.

Hiking, Climbing, and Dungeon Crawling

It’s been a long day, but for the most part, it was good. I usually like having Sundays to just chill, but we’re getting into a time of year when that’s not always going to be the case. I should clarify that my idea of “chill” could include walking, hiking, and anything that doesn’t include sitting around the house. But…it could also mean just that.

We were up early at the in-laws this morning, wanting to grab a few more geocaches before our weekend there ended.  The first three were “did not finds.” We were feeling pretty bummed. To be fair, we didn’t stay for long at any of them, partially due to muggles, partially due to just wanting to do some more exploring. After we couldn’t find the third one, I wasn’t sure if we should try to find a nano in a high muggle area, but Jon wanted to  check it out, so we did. He found it in a few minutes.

The next two were out in the country, which involved a bit of a drive and a turtle rescue.

It’s okay, little turtle. At least you won’t be a turtle pancake in the middle of the road!

The first “country” cache was a hike through some tall grass on the side of the road, and the other was a cemetery cache.  It was starting to get hot by that time, and Dad F was bringing us breakfast, so we headed back to house, ate, and watched some TV before heading back to MHK. I couldn’t resist, though, and found one more in Andover, a large that ended up being a hike across a field and an obstacle course through some trees.

We were on a time table to get back to MHK for a game, but we decided to take one last geocache detour (I know, it’s always “one last” with us). This one was about ten minutes off the beaten path, so we were definitely bumping up against our time. Once we finally found it, we weren’t sure if we were up for the challenge.  It was on what could be considered a hill but struck me more as a plateau, with the sides going almost straight up. The climb honestly looked like more of a challenge than I was up for. Jon managed to get to the top while I looked for a lower part to climb with no luck. I was going to let him find it on his own, but when I got back to where we parked, I figured all I needed was a little bit of courage.

Using the grass to help pull myself up and paying attention to my footing, I managed to get up the hill.  Out of breath and sweaty and gross, all I could think at that moment was “Holy cow, I just rocked my own world.” This was seriously another moment of pride for me.  The view was gorgeous and worth the climb, and shortly after I got up there, Jon made the find. Getting down the hill was a little less graceful. I literally had to sit on the ground and slide down because my knees and balance were not going to let me walk down that slope. Still, it was worth the dirt and the grass cuts I ended up with.

On the drive back to the highway, we came up on some uprooted trees that I thought were kind of haunting.

 

We made it back to town, and even being dirty and gross, we got to our game on time.

I’m easing back into RPG games after kind of losing my mojo for it. Jon and I were invited to play in a Pathfinder game, so I decided to give it a shot. I’m playing a human fighter and our first encounters were level one dungeon crawly type things where we killed a bunch of rats and skeletons. It was fun! I’m not used to Pathfinder, so I’ll probably have more questions as this progresses. I’m excited to see where the story goes and getting to know the other players who all seem like cool people.

After the game, we headed to the campus library to distribute con flyers at a movies on the grass event. Unfortunately, shortly after we got there, Jon started shaking and feeling sick. I think it was probably a mix of not eating and dehydration, but it freaked me out. We ended up leaving before it started, but they let me hand out some flyers and put some on a table for people to grab.  I had a touch of guilt, but  I wasn’t taking any chances.  Everything is okay now. Jon’s feeling better, though a little run down.

We decided to stay in MHK one last night since my friend offered the extra night to stay at her house. Once I got here, I took a shower and sat down to handle some emails and other projects. Jon has a test tomorrow night, so I’m going to be doing some con updates and correspondence at Hastings.

It was a good weekend overall. We didn’t get as much activity as we’d wanted, but what we did get was fun.  The goal this week is to get back into our routine. We made our gym goal this past week, but not our walking goal. Which is okay. Now we just try again for the coming week.

A.

Wasted Days and Running from Zombies

This whole day felt wasted. That probably isn’t fair to say, since things did get accomplished, but I’ve been spoiled with having weekends where Jon and I can go do stuff together and have a good time, and today wasn’t really like that.

We slept in a bit and had breakfast at home for once. We bought some sausage and gravy Banquet pot pies and each had one. They were really good and really filling.  On the way into town, however, Paradise Donuts caught our eye, and we decided to treat ourselves. I’m not usually a donut person, but I was feeling off this morning and kind of grumpy, so I decided to soothe the angst with a cocoa krispies donut and a frappuccino.

We started the day trying to geocache, but it was not a good day for us. We either couldn’t find the places we were supposed to be, couldn’t find a way to get to the place we needed, or just didn’t want to take the chance of being seen by muggles. We weren’t really up to much hiking today and had been hoping for some quicker grabs, but it just wasn’t happening. We did find one, but the other one we could get to we couldn’t find. The description said that no one had gotten it without help.  We’re going back before we claim defeat, but not until it cools down a bit, because I’m going to say the heat today had a little bit to do with my grumpiness.

We had a meeting for the gaming convention that went fairly well, other than the fact that I found out my updates to the site have not been posting.  I’ll have to re-update the schedule and then check with others to see if it’s working now. I suppose maybe this is my ball drop, at least the one I currently know of. However, if this is the worst that happens, we’ll be good. A couple people have had to cancel, but I’m keeping positive. We’re doing what we can do, and I think we’re doing it with relatively low stress.

After that we went to Game Hounds so Jon could meet with one of our friends to do some trading of sorts. We chatted with some people, walked to Dara’s to get some water, then headed across town to Manhattan Running Company where we finally got armbands to carry our phones in for our walks. The main goal was to not have to hand carry when we started doing the Zombies Run game, but the bands will come in handy for our regular walks too. They were a little pricey, but we’re trying to look at the long term investment. Now we just have to make sure to use them.

Though we were supposed to do our C25K today, we decided to just go ahead and try the Zombies Run. The program we started with is kind of boring, and our curiosity was getting the better of us. So instead of hitting the mall, we headed home early, figuring we’d go out later when it cooled off to walk the rec path. On the way home, we stopped at Ramblers for a later lunch. My craving for vegetables persists, so I ordered a side of steamed veggies, conveniently forgetting that I don’t really like veggies. The BBQ brisket sandwich was good, but I made the mistake of trying one of Jon’s fries. Man, there were regrets. On a good note, even though I don’t like green beans and broccoli, I did manage to eat about a quarter of the cup, so that’s progress on my part.

At home, I made playlists and laid down for a little while, procrastinating checking my website and doing updates. It’ll happen, but the day had already kind of worn on me. Finally the day got dim enough that we went out to the rec trail to take a crack at Zombies Run. Unfortunately, when we got there we realized we actually had to download the missions, which we hadn’t done at home. That was annoying, and a good way to make me feel like a moron. So we drove home to jump on our wifi, downloaded the first mission and went back.

Get ready for this drama.

It started out okay. The story was good, and I was really digging the immersive nature of it.  Every time it said I picked up something, I felt pretty cool. I got almost all the way around the track before feeling the need to rest, which is definitely an improvement. When I got to the end of the track, I was originally going to go across the parking lot to the beginning, but instead I turned around, figuring I’d just walk the loop the opposite way.  It was about that time when the first RUN happened.  My original plan of walking fast didn’t seem to cut it, as I could hear the zombie voices in the app. So I ran. Not fast. It was more of a jog, but it kicked my butt. I figured I’d be okay, and I told myself to just walk fast next time. But guess what? I ran again. The thing is, I know it’s a game, and it doesn’t feel real real, but it fuels the imagination enough that I really wanted to run and get away from the zombies.

When I got to the bench, I finally realized I needed to stop, not just because I was so tired, but because I’d pushed my lung capacity and couldn’t breathe right. I pulled the earbuds off, sat down, and then listened to what sounded like people rustling around in the woods behind me. That break didn’t last long at all. The noise could have been animals or birds, but I was already uneasy, so I booked it. I was so glad when the Mission Complete message came on. Instead of trying to make it around the track, I walked across the field, which wasn’t much easier.

Jon met me part way, and I just fell down in the grass. I didn’t faint or anything, but I was worried I was going to, so I just laid down in the grass. That was pretty major, because my knees don’t allow me to get up from ground position very easily. But it was a necessary action at that time.  I finally got up with Jon’s help and had one of those intense post exercise breakdowns where I cried. In reality, this was my best walk and considering I did run, I was kind of awesome. But in that moment, all I could focus on was that I’d failed because I couldn’t make it to the car without feeling like throwing up or passing out.

We stopped to get gas and something to drink and we talked about our future Zombie Run plans. I think we’re going to put in a little more time with the regular C25K we were doing as well as more gym time This was fun for the most part, and I know it’ll get easier in time, but I’m just not sure if we’re ready for it.

I will say, though, that for a wasted day, the walk did the trick of making me feel like I accomplished something. Now to shower and to bed. Tomorrow is an early day because….that’s right…we’re going on an adventure!

A.