Friday’s Delayed Grind

I didn’t get yesterday’s post up because we didn’t get home until about 2 in the morning, and I wasn’t feeling hardcore enough to post a blog that late. It was a good day though, so I’ll give it its own belated post before getting to Saturday’s adventure.

Work stress was low yesterday. I was given the office recognition by another co-worker and asked to do a special project to help with the office costume idea for Halloween. I don’t do costumes. It’s always fun in theory, but I’ve never been able to pull off a good one, and let’s face it…I’m lazy. I have no ambition to prepare and dress up in a possibly uncomfortable costume. I’m okay with helping out. I’m going to keep this project a secret until Halloween so as not to ruin the costume surprise. I picked up the supplies for the project during lunch and have already started on it. Now I just have to make time to finish it.

Jon and I went to Hastings after work to buy new headphones for him before going to the gym. The headphones he picked up broke almost right away, so we had to go back and return them.  I’ve theorized a thing called Hastings Law: one can’t go to Hastings without something going wrong. This stretches to things like certain drinks or food not being available or the bathroom not working. In true form, Hastings Law didn’t let us down (even though I do realize this one should be blamed on the company that makes the headphones, but it still seems fitting).

From there, we went to Terry and Erica’s for gaming. We got a late start, using the first few hours to visit. I did some knitting and we ordered dinner. The game was fun.  This one is Jon’s fourth edition DnD campaign. Our party solved a puzzle, beat up some giant bugs, and took a secret passage to a room where we had to fight some big bads. They almost killed our entire party. There was a good chunk of time where we pretty much figured we’d all be rolling new characters before the next session. But we managed to survive and can now take our current characters with us to the next adventure.

Besides having a late game night, we decided to try to find a cache in the area before heading home. We had no luck. There were a few late night muggles around, including a group of girls who asked if we were looking for something. I just said we were goofing around and that seemed to appease them. I suppose we could have told them what we were doing, but they were staggering a bit. It could have turned into a long, weird, conversation.  We might go back to that one some early Sunday morning, but I think we need the daylight to give it a good go.

We finally got home and crashed out, deciding to set a later alarm instead of the super early one we generally set for weekend adventures.

A.

Gaming, Noodles, and Weekend Plans

I crashed out hard when we got home last night, so I didn’t blog. The highlight of yesterday was last night’s gaming session, a new 4th edition DnD game that Jon is running. Before it started, we hung out with Erica, watching some weird horror movies on Chiller and knitting.  The game got a late start, but we had time for the intro and first combat.

I was tired today, but not as tired as I expected to be. I went with one of my visiting co-worker friends to lunch (she works in the field but is in the office this week) at Noodles and Company. Work was okay. Had some trouble focusing but still managed to accomplish quite a bit. After work, I went to pick Jon up. He had a phone interview, but it didn’t last too long.

At the gym, I attempted to use the Zombies Run app on my normal machine, but it didn’t work out so well. I got eaten by zombies. My steps and speed didn’t register correctly, so it looks like I’ll only be able to do that when walking. It felt like a short workout, but we needed to get home to put away laundry and just relax.  Originally, we were going to have a late evening meeting with another friend about a website, but she postponed, so we were home bound.

I did some knitting, finished a couple of movies, and put away laundry. I have a whole to-do list of things I need to get done, but like always, I’m procrastinating.  It’ll get done. Eventually.

I’m looking forward to the weekend. Originally I was going to try to have a wrap-up meeting for the convention, but I realized that I don’t have my notes together to pass on to my successor and I’ve had several busy weekends in a row. I need a “down” weekend with Jon, so we’re going on a weekend geocaching excursion to try to break 100 finds. We’re about 30 away, and we have a route of caches mapped out  for the first day. I’m excited! I’m sacrificing my plans to attend Oztoberfest, but geocaching sounds more my speed at the moment.

Pretty mellow day, and I’m kind of hoping the rest of the week follows suit.

A.

On Hold Until Tomorrow

I’m not feeling well tonight, so this will be short and sweet.

1. Made it to the gym.
2. Watched Rise of the Guardians.
3. Did character creation with Terry and Erica for an upcoming DnD game.

It’s early as I write this, so something else exciting may happen, but I’ll have to write about it tomorrow.

Four day weekend ahead of me, and I’m feeling sick with what I think is a UTI. My luck. But hoping for the best.

A.

Vacation Recovery Day

I’m always glad of the extra day of vacation I take after Gen Con. It’s a day to relax and recharge, but it’s also time to get stuff done and get my head in the right space to get back to the regular grind.  I slept in a few hours and felt like I had a road trip hangover when I finally got up. A shower cured most of the fuzziness, but I’ve been kind of dragging all day. I suppose that’s to be expected.

I received a confirmation letter today saying I was awarded one of the scholarships to the Being an Outdoors Woman program, which means I’ll be able to attend for less than I’d anticipated. I figured I wouldn’t get it, so I was pleasantly surprised. I’m really excited for that weekend, though I am a little nervous. I suppose that’s normal. I never went to summer camp as a kid, at least not until I was in junior high, and then those camps were more academic.

We started the day off with laundry. I wasn’t in the mood to try and multi-task, so I sat with Jon at the laundromat and played through the Learn to Play pack we got at Gen Con for Legend of the Five Rings. It definitely feels more involved than MtG. I think I liked it, but I’m going to have to practice more to figure out what’s going in, and I’ll probably have to enlist the help of one of the local players to help with further understanding the cards.

After discussing Chipotle in the car yesterday, we went there for lunch. I love their burritos, but they’re huge, and I tend to realize only after I’m done that I probably shouldn’t have eaten all that. We were going to go to the gym, but then Chipotle and tiredness happened, so we called today a rest day. We stopped at Dillon’s to pick up dinner and lunch for tomorrow. Since Chipotle had felt indulgent, we decided to juice for dinner, something I want to get back into to make sure I’m getting my fruits and veggies.

On the way home, we decided to hit up a geocache. It was one we couldn’t find before, and I figured that with some experience under our belt, we might be more apt to find it this time. We were successful, but we were a little irritated that we didn’t realize what it was the first time around. Even this time, we looked at it a few times before finally “finding” it.  The irritation was at ourselves, not at the person who placed it. If anything, I thought it was pretty clever.

I scheduled a couple more Gen Con posts to post tomorrow and Wednesday. If by some chance you’re reading this but didn’t read about Day 0, you can find it here.  I should have used the evening to put away laundry, but decided that playing Trains with Jon was infinitely more important.  I won both games, but I suppose I had the edge since I’d played it a lot this past weekend.

Some other cool stuff:

Jon got an email to set up a job interview with a firm in Missouri.

We’re going to try to do the Orc Stomp 5K at Gen Con next year, which means we’re going to start training right away. We’ll most likely walk it, but we’re going to do the Couch to 5K program to try to up our walking speed.

In other gym news, we’ve set a goal for ourselves. Since we’re going to be 5K training three days a week, we’re going to aim to make it to the gym three days a week. This is to both increase our exercise level and to decide if we’re going to keep our memberships after the end of September. If we make our three times a week goal, then we’ll keep them. If we slough off and find excuses not to go, then it’s really just a waste of money and we’ll cancel our memberships in favor of more walking.

There is a chance we’ll get to volunteer for AEG at a gaming con in KC in November. It’s the week before our trip to St. Louis, which means we have to work out a few more logistics of the trip. Nothing is set in stone yet, but it’s definitely something that might happen.

Gen Con sparked some gaming mojo in us, and it looks like we’re going to try to do a DnD 4th Edition game. I believe we’re also going to do some Pathfinder in a couple months. I’m easing back into it. Still not sure if I’m ready to run any games and I’m going to hold off on doing anything online (partially because my computer is having some major issues), but I’m kind of looking forward to gaming in a small group again.

I’m sleepy already, so I might punk out on putting away laundry and just pull some clothes for tomorrow.  An early night’s sleep should be helpful in getting my mind back to the work day mindset that starts bright and early tomorrow morning.

A.