A Little Down, a Little Up

I’m going to kick off this post with a touch of seriousness and say that depression sucks. Today was definitely a down day for me, and I’m blaming depression because in all honesty, there was nothing that happened to me that was sad or anything that should have made me as mad as I felt at times.  It comes and goes, and it’s better than it was several years ago, a fact I attribute to my husband and to being more active.  That doesn’t mean I’m “cured.”  Now that the days are shorter and the weather is getting colder, I think my seasonal affective disorder is kicking in. We made it to the gym tonight, but I’ve been struggling with getting there, even though I know I feel so much better when I do. I think I need to start kicking my workouts up a notch though. I’ve been talking about doing that for about a month, but it really is to the point where I’m not working up a sweat, and I kind of want to.

I am going to end this bit of depression talk with a little PSA: if you’re depressed, please seek help. Talk to someone. Go on meds if you have to. Exercise. Do whatever you have to to make yourself better,  and remember you’re not alone. I’ve always been open about my depression, so it saddens me when someone is struggling with it, and for whatever reason feels too ashamed to reach out.  Believe me, you are part of a larger group, you are not alone, and you are not at fault.

As down as I felt all day, after a workout and some time with Jon, I perked up. After the gym, we grabbed some dinner, then had time to kill before our geocache event. First, we were going to go geocaching, but it was dark, and I know myself and my tendency to get frustrated, so we decided to nix that idea. Then we were going to go to the library and use a computer to try to solve some puzzles on a local mystery cache trail. However, there were no parking spots. We ended up at the mall where we finally found little zombie dolls to attach to our zombie travel bugs.

I think we’ll be sending those out into the world this weekend, unless we get wild and make our own geocaches to put them in, which will take a little extra time. My zombie is so cute (mine is the vampire girl), I kind of don’t want to get rid of her now.

The event started at 8am at the top of Manhattan Hill. There were several people there we’d met previously, a few who remembered us, and a couple cachers who wanted to meet us since they’d seen our names online. It’s such a good group of people. They’re all friendly and cool to talk to, and even though I get anxious being around new people, once I’m visiting with this group, the anxiety goes away and Social ‘Manda shows up. This event was a “flash mob” to get together and earn the souvenir celebrating Geocaching in Space.

After visiting for awhile, we said our farewells and came home. I’m going to finish this up, map out some geocaches for the weekend, then shower and get some sleep. I’m prepared to feel better tomorrow, and I want to be productive. Two days left of the week! Yay!

A.

 

 

Deja Vu Thursday

The “deja vu” in the title of this post refers to the fact that today kind of felt like other days this week and was relatively boring.  This seems to be a mellow week in general. I think that’s probably good, though it doesn’t make for any interesting blog posts.

Work stress level today: 5.

On the way to pick Jon up from work, I passed an ambulance, some cops, and a woman sitting in the street with something around her leg. My guess is she got hit.  Some of the cops looked to be interviewing the people in the vehicle, but I can’t even jump to a conclusion and say the driver was in the wrong because I drive that stretch every day, and sometimes the pedestrians walk like jerks. Don’t get me wrong, I understand there’s a right of way that recognizes pedestrians. But the crosswalks and the walk lights are there for a reason, and too often, a college student doesn’t use one or the other and walks in front of a car that is way too close to brake effectively.

The woman was upright and talking, and they weren’t hauling her into the ambulance, so I’m guessing she’s okay, but she’ll probably be using crutches. I don’t know if she was at fault either, so I wasn’t placing blame in that last paragraph. The only thing that surprises me is that I don’t see more of those kinds of accidents in that area.

We had no errands or anything to do after work (since I gassed the car on my lunch), so we headed to the rec track for our walk.  It was tempting to just head home. I didn’t get my rest day, and Jon was fried from classes. Somehow, we managed to talk ourselves into getting our walk rather than out of it. I did a zombie mission without the chases and maintained a nice, steady pace the whole way. I walked about a 1.25 miles, hitting the mile mark before thirty minutes with no breaks.  I had a little back pain towards the end, but nothing that put me down. Eventually, I’m going to work up to hitting the mile and a half mark and so on.

We had Subway for dinner again. I’m going through a Subway phase, specifically their tuna sub on honey oat. It’s so good.

I finally put laundry away and cleaned a few things in the apartment before settling in on the computer. During my weekly check of Instantwatcher, I found the 2012 remake of the Beauty and the Beast television series. I didn’t even know this was a thing! After doing some checking, it looks like there are some differences, but the names and location are the same, so there has to be some sort of rebooting going on there. Either way, I put it on the queue for later consumption.

I made some pocket queries and stored some caches for next weekend’s trip to Oklahoma. I had to restrain myself from putting too many on there, though. Otherwise, we’d never reach our destinations.

Time for a shower and probably some sleep. Some extra snooze time tonight would be good.

A.

 

Noodles, Sharks, and a Little TMI

I’m feeling much better today than I was last night. When we got home, I crashed hard. I had some really weird dreams, but I’m assuming that meant I slept well.  I’m having a little bit of pain tonight, but the day passed in relative comfort, so hopefully this will run its course. I think I’m at the mercy of a UTI/possible bladder infection. I get these every once in awhile. They don’t stick around long, but they’re pretty nasty when they hit. This one has gone on a little longer than usual, so if it’s not cleared up in a week, I’ll be seeing the doctor about it.

We slept in a little today, but not too late since Jon didn’t get the extra Friday off.  I took him to work and went to Hastings to work on some con stuff. They didn’t have regular coffee. I guess their brewer was down, which is to be expected. I like Hastings, I like the Hardback Cafe drinks and the baristas…but anymore, I pretty much just expect something to be broken.  However, I did have an Americano and liked that okay, so it was all good.  I managed to get some stuff accomplished, though I did sit underneath the TV and listened to the news, which was depressing.

I did two hours of work before heading over to my friend’s house.  She started her vacation yesterday but had reminded me that she was home today so we got to hang out. We went to Best Buy and to Noodles and Co. for lunch, then we went back to her house and watched Sharknado since she hadn’t seen it before. Most of the day was spent just chatting. It was really nice. I was surprised how fast the day went when I realized it was almost time to pick Jon up from work.

Today was supposed to be our C25K day, but we opted to go to the gym instead. One thing I’ll say for the walk training…it makes the gym seem that much easier. We’re still getting a good workout, but we did 45 minutes today and it didn’t seem as difficult as it used to. I watched Monsters on Netflix and may or may not finish it tonight. It’s okay.  Another thing we did today was buy the Zombies. Run! app which is on sale this weekend for two bucks. We’re not going to start it until our current program is over, but I’m really looking forward to doing it. I have eight weeks to come up with a playlist for it.

After the gym, we opted to just come home and relax for the evening. I played some Riptide and Jon did some css code. For fun. Which is why he’s the graphic designer. It’s been a nice, chill night. Going to end with a shower, some more water to keep flushing this infection out, and then either a movie or sleep, depending on how tired I am. Right now I’m sleepy, but sometimes that’s just a false alarm.  We’ll see.

A.

Zombie Gaming

Last weekend we had a zombie themed game day with friends.

We started the afternoon out with a new game our friends picked up.

I’m sure a board game can effectively prepare us for the zombie apocalypse

The game is timed and only goes so many rounds, but there are ways to make it different each time you play, namely by choosing different characters, playing with a different number of people, and flipping the board pieces for different locations.

Setting up the survivors…

…and bringing in the zombies!

 

There are no writing on the cards or characters other than the names. It’s all conveyed with the use of symbols so it can be played across different languages.

Second, we played Zombie Munchkin. Munchkin in general has become a staple of our gaming sessions, but the Zombie one is a little bit different because you play as the zombies trying to fight the humans. I wasn’t completely sold on it at first, but now I love it. 

We finished off the night with some Left 4 Dead on the Xbox, and by “we,” I mean J. Felbs and Tony O. Originally we planned on a four person game, but then we found out that L4D doesn’t allow for four players. Which is all good, because after watching the first few minutes of the game, I realized that it wasn’t a game for me (I’m really slow and not accurate when it comes to first person shooters). But watching was fun, and I chilled with C and played some MtG instead.

Another successful gaming night in the books!