A Challenging Find and Scary Games

I realized that I didn’t do my blog last night, opting to crash out after time with friends rather than try to push through a post. It’s early right now, almost 8am on new time (did you remember to “fall back” last night?), and though I was going to get my Nanowrimo session done first, I figured I’d go ahead and kick out yesterday’s grind.

I started my day off with some hot tea and writing, working on my piece for Nanowrimo. I settled on erotic fiction, since it’s a genre I hadn’t yet really tried, and though I’m not regretting it, I don’t think I’ll be comfortable letting anyone in my family read it. So far it’s coming along nicely, though. Like most of the things I write, it’s doing things I didn’t expect, which is always fun and why I use a very loose outline when I write. Yesterday, I broke 6,000 words, and I’m hoping to break 8,000 this morning before getting started with the rest of the day.

Once we left the house, we headed out to the Wamego Boat Ramp once again to try to find that geocache. After talking about it with the cache owner and some others who had found it, we wanted to give it another try.  NCC had helped us eliminate some of the possibilities, so we focused our attention elsewhere this time. Within a few minutes, I saw a place where it could be, and Jon managed to get into a position to check it out. Sure enough, there it was! Talk about a sense of accomplishment.

From there we went to Zeandale to grab a few more on one of the back routes to Manhattan. This trek took us to Pillsbury Crossing, an area that we’d heard about and talked about but had never been to until yesterday.

It was a little weird driving across here.

Swing time!

Had to make a short hike to get down here, but the view was worth it!

We found one cache in a picnic area. There was another one near the rocks in the lower picture, but we decided to save that one for a day when we were geared to handle wet and rocky terrain. We ended the day with five finds and one DNF.

We called it a day there because we were hungry and because I had some prep to do for a small one-shot horror game I was testing out, After stopping at Taco Bell, we headed over to Forsh’s for puppy sitting. I finished up my game’s back story, and we watched the latest episode of “American Horror Story: Coven.”

Around six, Terry and Erica came over. I transferred some music over to Erica for her workouts and we ordered pizza, ate too much candy, and got the game going. Though it was only supposed to be a one shot game, we put it on hold to finish at a later time. It’s story based, so even though I had a general outline for it, I had to veer a bit since the players basically dictated what happened. This is actually a really fun way of running a game, at least for me. It’s like storytelling improv. To my knowledge, I only made one mistake in the telling, and I’m blaming that on being tired.

The goal for today is to “detox” and get back on track with eating well and exercising. When I say detox, I’m really just going to avoid sugar, drink a lot of water, get a good workout in, and maybe have a green smoothie for lunch for a nutrient boost. Last week was SugarFest 2013 (thank you, Halloween) and a short gym hiatus, but I want to get back into a routine. We have our St. Louis trip coming up, and I want to be ready for that and the high amounts of walking we’ll be doing.

For now, going to work on my Nano.

A.

Today Was Brought To You By the Letter “Rain”

It rained all day today. I think there may have been a combined total of twenty minutes that we didn’t have precipitation, but I can’t verify that. I did make it to the car from work without getting rained on, but just barely.  Jon and I got soaked walking from the gym to the car and then got completely whiny about the whole thing and decided to avoid any more wetness by foregoing a trip to Dillons for a trip through the drive-thru.

I realize we weren’t going to melt, but the rain makes me tired. Also, I don’t mind being  in the rain, and a wet shirt doesn’t bother me at all. But wet feet are a different thing entirely. I don’t  own rain boots (or galoshes, as the kids call them these days) or a raincoat. I have tennis shoes. And they are not waterproof and my feet were pretty damp for most of the day. Another thing I hate? Wet pant legs, and it’s worse now because all of my pants are too long.  This has actually been an ongoing problem. The places where I buy pants firmly stick to the big and tall rule of clothing making, so I can’t find a plus sized pant that accommodates my short height.  My current pants selection was doing okay for a long time. Sure, they were a little long, but I made them work.

Apparently, increased physical activity and more fruits and veggies make your pants larger. Be warned of this weird trick of nature.

I need to either find someone who knows how to hem pants or I need to take a crash course in doing it myself. Because even pulling them up as I walk over the wet ground doesn’t always do the trick, and it’s a tricky feat when I’m already carrying other things. The pants I wear are not “roll up” friendly either, and I’m not going to resort to the early ’90s fashion statement of pegging my pants. That hasn’t come back in style and I have no intentions of bringing it back.

The gym did happen though, and that’s always a good way to kick off a Monday. I’ve been using my gym time to watch Netflix on my phone, and I’m almost done with “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”  This makes time go by faster, which is good, because even though I like how I feel when i exercise, I’m not entirely sold on the exertion part. Also, having my ear buds in gives me an excuse to zone out in my own little world. I could be considered a rude gym goer. Unless I know someone, I have no interest in talking to complete strangers, especially the old guy who got up in my business about how to diet several months ago (I really do hold a grudge). Today, he actively tried to engage me while I had my ear buds in and was very obviously watching a movie.  So I ignored him and just kept doing my thing.

Which I’m sure makes me a horrible person, but age has seriously worn down that part of me that feels the need to indulge everyone.  My gym time is my time, and I’d like to keep it that way.

The last thing of the day is that my newest Coursera course started today. I’m taking Social Psychology and I’m kind of excited for a refresher on part of my college major.  Admittedly, I went a little gung ho when I first started signing up for classes a few months ago, and then they all rolled around and I quit them all because I got overwhelmed. This wasn’t the first time I’d done that to myself. But right now, I’m in the mood to maintain a stress free, low pressure class. Even with Gencon coming up, I think I can hang with this one.

I was going to do a little discussion about the remake of “Oldboy,” but I think I’ll save that for another night.

A.