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Movie marathon? Who are we??
May. 10th, 2021 02:18 pmYesterday Steve and I walked to Walgreens for a few things, and then up to Caribou for coffees. The weather was FINE, but it's still way too cool for my liking. Warm up, dammit!
On the way home we got to talking about TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and he told me he'd never seen Secret of the Ooze. I was like "BUDDY! How have we made it 12 years into this relationship and you have not seen it EVER?!"
We own it on Amazon (I made some of my students watch it, haha), and on Blu-Ray (we own very few movies but Steve found it at a garage sale). I started it right when we got home. We had SUCH a good time marveling at how late 80's/early 90's it was — in dress, in music, in camera shots, in sound mixing. Every moment of that movie is amazing.
The soundtrack is a BANGER. Oh my god. And it's just a really funny, wholesome movie. David/Sancho said that the first TMNT got a ton of backlash from Mom groups for its violence, so the second movie doesn't even have the turtles directly use their weapons (instead there's a bunch of entertaining martial arts that is more distraction than violence). I love how the movie takes its time with scenes and absolutely doesn't take itself too seriously.
After it ended Steve was like "OMG I LOVED that. Wow. So good."
We realized we had momentum, so we decided to just make an evening of movies. We are NOT movie people, generally. It's so much effort to get going! But we did it!
( Read more... )
If I could be
Nov. 30th, 2020 04:05 pmStolen from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikesgirl58
Steve was able to guess most of mine! I've had this draft up for days.
I added one (expression):
Leah
If I could be a month, I'd be August.
spikesgirl58Steve was able to guess most of mine! I've had this draft up for days.
I added one (expression):
Leah
If I could be a month, I'd be August.
If I could be a day of the week, I'd be Friday.
If I could be a moment of the day, I'd be 10:30pm.
If I could be a planet, I'd be Jupiter.
If I could be an animal, I'd be a pampered house cat. <-- Keeping this answer
If I could be a piece of furniture, I'd be an ottoman.
If I could be a drink, I'd be a mug of warm Jasmine tea.
If I could be a musical instrument, I'd be a violin.
If I could be an emotion, I'd be yearning.
If I could be a vegetable, I'd be microgreens.
If I could be an element, I'd be water.
If I could be a song, I'd be Cello Suite No. 1 Prelude in G Major. Alternately, Interlude from Attack Attack's Someday Came Suddenly album.
If I could be food, I'd be a fruit pie (cherry, apple, etc).
If I could be a part of the body, I'd be the thighs.
If I could be a scent, I'd be the smell of wood.
If I could be an object, I'd be a squishy skein of yarn.
If I could be a school subject, I'd be Spanish.
If I could be a cartoon character, I'd be Hisoka from HunterxHunter.
If I could be a geometric figure, I'd be a rhombus.
If I could be a number, I'd be 3.
If I could be a country, I'd be Germany (or some other mountainous area with flower fields and sheep).
If I was an expression, I'd be laughter.
Steve
If I was an expression, I'd be laughter.
Steve
If I could be a month, I’d be October.
If I could be a day of the week, I’d be Friday.
If I could be a moment of the day, I’d be the twilight moment of the evening, where the sun is below the horizon and peeking bits of pink/red are popping up. When it's night on one side of the sky, and the last minutes of day on the other.
If I could be a planet, I’d be Neptune.
If I could be an animal, I’d be a big dopey dog.
If I could be a piece of furniture, I’d be a big soft comfy chair.
If I could be a drink, I’d be a cup of coffee with cream.
If I could be a musical instrument, I’d be a piano.
If I could be an emotion, I’d be Hygge.
If I could be a vegetable, I’d be brussel sprouts.
If I could be an element, I’d be water.
If I could be a song, I’d be the song that plays during the intro to Chrono Cross (Scars of Time).
If I could be food, I’d be a taco.
If I could be a part of the body, I’d be the eyes.
If I could be a scent, I’d be the smell of coffee.
If I could be an object, I’d be a handheld game console.
If I could be a school subject, I’d be math.
If I could be a cartoon character, I’d be Arnold, from Hey Arnold.
If I could be a geometric figure, I’d be a circle.
If I could be a number, I’d be 7
If I could be a country, I’d be Japan.
If I was an expression, I’d be teasing.
Weekend (with pics!)
Sep. 1st, 2020 06:19 pmSteve and I had an AMAZING weekend. It was just so relaxed and nice.
Friday Steve streamed his curation of his top 10 Games of the Decade (2010-2019). It was so fun, and I teased him a ton. The only thing I hard disagreed with was how long he kept Pokemon Go on his list. He has a channel points incentive called Memory Card, which is where someone asks a video game related question and every tries to answer it. For example, name 10 games where you can jump. I redeemed one after he'd curated his top 10, and as is customary, he asked if I had a question for the group. I said something like, "Name one game that stayed WAY too long on his list" and it was hilarious. Also at one point Courtney said,
and I could not stop laughing. So good.
Overall his list was great for him. There were a few surprises but I know Steve is always true to himself. Me mock harassing him won't actually influence him at all.
Saturday we declined trying any socially-distant hangouts with Courtney, Scott and Nick, and opted for a cute day instead. I slept until 10:30 and then spent the day relaxing and knitting, and playing hearthstone. We ended up watching like 8 hours of Chris Chike streaming Guitar Hero. It was awesome. We also finished our Hearthstone puzzle FINALLY this week!
Sunday I basically knit and played Hearthstone all day, and Steve was surprised into going to Noah's to do the podcast, which disrupted our plans to finish Last of Us 2. We had time to bang one out though and that was 10/10. I need to finish this test knit by like Wednesday and I have a long way to go, so I started just watching all of TL Yarncrafts videos while I worked because she is amazing.
Yesterday while working I heard a super loud THUNK!!!! And it only took me a second to realize a bird MUST have hit one of the windows. I looked out front and didn't see anything, so I went to the back sliding glass door and sure enough, a big pile of feathers was facedown on the ground.
So much excitement for an afternoon!
I meant to focus HARD on the knitting last night, but we got impromptu invited by Ben and Sean, who were visiting for Sean's sister's wedding? Maybe? to sit outside Dmac's house and watch him play ITG. We ordered World Street Kitchen and Milkjam and sat in different parts of the yard and it was a good time.
Yesterday Steve and I had what probably looked like the strangest banter, but it's so us and felt so good.
We were talking about a related topic, but I lightly brought up the "I feel like you gave me an ultimatum about moving and not wanting to leave your friends" situation mentioned a few entries ago. He clarified:
But the point of the post is that Noah messaged me lamenting that he finally met a girl he vibed with, and then she told him after their first "real" conversation that she was poly and in 2 serious relationships. Noah has not had ANY relationship or any of the etc. other than some kissing. He said he knows in his heart that he couldn't do poly, and they agreed not to pursue anything. Noah, while talking to me about it, said that he "felt stupid for feeling special but how could he be special if she already is with two other guys" and again my mind was blown re: monogamists because that's exactly the rationale Steve gave!!!! So I brought up my confusions to Steve.
Which led to a REALLY enjoyable silly banter for like an hour, where we talked in jokes and metaphors about poly and monogamy and cheating and cowardice and TV show portrayals of relationships and it really just feels good to be able to openly talk about our situation without it being a threat or feeling like it's opening a can of worms.
What happened in our relationship is not treated like a bomb about to go off or like if we give it any attention, we'll get sucked into that black hole again. I wish I could remember ANYTHING we said to each other, because it was all hilarious, but I suspect no individual statement would have nearly the same impact as the entire strings of phrases we tossed back and forth. I keep trying to type examples, like at one point he said I should just call every guy Steve because men are interchangeable blurs to me, and it makes no sense and is NOT funny to the layperson (and in fact, would be alarming fighting words in a different context). Just trust me that I was completely tickled the whole time. And so was he.
He just makes me very happy.
We were talking about a related topic, but I lightly brought up the "I feel like you gave me an ultimatum about moving and not wanting to leave your friends" situation mentioned a few entries ago. He clarified:
- He says he meant the whole "I need to play in the hay and sleep with other people while living abroad" and
- If I suddenly decided WE need to move across the country IMMEDIATELY he would work with me on it if I really absolutely was sure, and reiterated that I definitely mean enough to him to not stubbornly stay here
But the point of the post is that Noah messaged me lamenting that he finally met a girl he vibed with, and then she told him after their first "real" conversation that she was poly and in 2 serious relationships. Noah has not had ANY relationship or any of the etc. other than some kissing. He said he knows in his heart that he couldn't do poly, and they agreed not to pursue anything. Noah, while talking to me about it, said that he "felt stupid for feeling special but how could he be special if she already is with two other guys" and again my mind was blown re: monogamists because that's exactly the rationale Steve gave!!!! So I brought up my confusions to Steve.
Which led to a REALLY enjoyable silly banter for like an hour, where we talked in jokes and metaphors about poly and monogamy and cheating and cowardice and TV show portrayals of relationships and it really just feels good to be able to openly talk about our situation without it being a threat or feeling like it's opening a can of worms.
What happened in our relationship is not treated like a bomb about to go off or like if we give it any attention, we'll get sucked into that black hole again. I wish I could remember ANYTHING we said to each other, because it was all hilarious, but I suspect no individual statement would have nearly the same impact as the entire strings of phrases we tossed back and forth. I keep trying to type examples, like at one point he said I should just call every guy Steve because men are interchangeable blurs to me, and it makes no sense and is NOT funny to the layperson (and in fact, would be alarming fighting words in a different context). Just trust me that I was completely tickled the whole time. And so was he.
He just makes me very happy.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
Sep. 23rd, 2019 11:35 amEveryone needs to go buy and play this game immediately.
It's only like $14, it's not super difficult and it doesn't take very long to beat. It even has a mobile version. No excuses.
It's about a (not hetero) woman coming to terms with her grief after love and loss. It's crazy stylized and has the best soundtrack of 2019.
Think Tetris Effect, honestly.
I'm obsessed.
Go buy it. Turn off the lights, turn up the sound. Enjoy.
It's only like $14, it's not super difficult and it doesn't take very long to beat. It even has a mobile version. No excuses.
It's about a (not hetero) woman coming to terms with her grief after love and loss. It's crazy stylized and has the best soundtrack of 2019.
Think Tetris Effect, honestly.
I'm obsessed.
Go buy it. Turn off the lights, turn up the sound. Enjoy.
Dave stay, ITG, work and tattoo talk
Oct. 3rd, 2018 03:48 pmLast weekend (LAST last, the 22nd) Ben, Sean, and Dave were visiting from Madison. Well, Dave is continuing to visit from Europe but yeah. I can't remember all the finer details but the point is that Sean and Ben were going to Disney World (AGAIN, but this time with Ben's parents) and Dave was going to be alone for a week. Steve and I thought that was nonsense and invited Dave to spend the week with us.
Steve and I have never actually had a house guest stay longer than the weekend, but we DO have a guest room. Dave was such an easy guest: all he wanted to do was eat baguettes, order cheap pizza, play ITG, and talk about ITG and mini golf. He managed his own schedule and kept himself busy while we were at work. In the evenings one or more of us would play ITG. All 3 of us made improvements, and Dave ended up getting 2 new quads which is super impressive. Steve and I did pretty well too. I still need to re-learn officials after not having played them in months while preparing for Cupcake. But even with that, I have improved like 10 scores. I just need to increase my stamina and suffer through hard songs.
That's pretty much been my life! I also started knitting a hat with a super fun technique, SO EXCITED. I've been buying a lot of fun yarn lately. So happy about my yarn. I should knit more.
I've been really really tired still. Even with many hours of sleep, still so tired. I've been working on my attitude AT work (still really struggling with the getting TO work part), and negativity I could be bringing into my job. It's helped this week be better - I think I'm naturally one of the better educators at connecting with kids and making them feel like I care about them and want them to do well - AND that I expect them to give their best. However, I still think I've been struggling at being 100% and not getting bogged down with the annoying things - refusals, bad attitudes, etc. - and this week I decided to take it in stride and not allow myself to get exasperated. Instead I've been infinitely patient and understanding. For example, when Tino said he wished I'd teach at the board and if he didn't get it, come to him individually........... which is literally all I do. Forever. I did that even HARDER today than most days; usually once we get to "work days" I'm working individually and small groups 100% but today enough kids needed help that I went for a class re-teach. But I listened patiently and told him that tomorrow I will do just that. lol. We're working on 2-step equations and I know that's a challenging topic and requires a lot of thinking and effort on their part.
I'm super nervous about next year's group, it sounds like the 6th graders are much lower than this current group of 7th and 8th graders, so I'll have to manage them differently. Trying not to freak out already, but it's like, I'm working so hard at FINALLY building my curriculum binder after having lost most of my online resources when I left SPPS, and next year I'll have to change it probably. It's okay.... one thing at a time.
Therapy appt yesterday went well, but I left here around 2:30 and that is TOO LATE somehow to get all the way around the Twin Cities and at the appt by 3. So I blustered in at 3:05 and had to ask to let me go to the bathroom because I hadn't gone all day hashtag teacher life. Otherwise we had a lot of really good conversation about communication in my relationship with Steve and talking about boundaries and how boundaries/needs/agreements aren't static and we should revisit them regularly to see if they changed and how to modify our needs, etc. She also suggested a different book for me and Steve to review together that is more modern and might be more helpful now that we're not in crisis. I talked with Steve about it on my hour drive home, and I think he also will be looking into individual therapy. He still has a lot of bad moments and we agree it would be good for him to vent or work through some of these thoughts with an impartial and supportive third party.
We've been spending a lot of time in daily contact with Ben/Dave/Dmac/Sean, and have seen much less of our local friends. Noah fell a little off the map for a bit but is back. I've had some minimal texting wtih Courtney and it sounds like Steve talks with JWaid and Nick, but we haven't been hanging out? It's interesting. Noah mentioned to me the other day that it feels like everyone is just being regular old adults and it's disappointing. I imagine that happens in everyone's lives. I remember being a teenager and my mom hanging out with her best friend from high school after not having seen her in like 10-15 years and thinking that was insane! How can you not talk to your best friend?! But now I get it. And Bre and I maintain spotty contact and technology of course allows us to keep up with people without having to directly interact with them often anyway.
Uh I totally dropped the ball on shirts for both Fantastic Beats AND Cupcake. I just like... forgot about them. Whoooops. It's not a huge deal for Cupcake but I feel pretty bad about FB. It's not super like me to forget, but it just feels like I've got a million things I'm thinking about at any given time and my brain just decided that ordering shirts was not a necessity. That and I guess I had no reminders sooooo it's hard to remember.
My great-grandma died a couple months ago and she willed her money to her children, but since my grandpa Jack died a couple years ago the money allotted for him went to HIS kids. My mom sent me $1000 as a nice gesture, and I think that was super sweet. I think I'm probably going to use it for tattoos - I have a bunch of medium-small ideas I just want to knock out quickly here.
1. Something like "Go all in" from this Jim quote in The Office - "Well, you know, you can’t have everything so you gotta ask yourself what makes you the happiest. You just go all in for what’s most important. That’s my new thing." Pretty self explanatory, one of my favorite lines in the entire series, really speaks to me. Probably on my wrist? Somewhere I can see.
2. "A Heart's a Heavy Burden" with either blue Calcifer or the shooting stars from Howl's Moving Castle - I know I have an entire Ghibli sleeve but also this quote is my entire life. Either over my heart, or on my available ribs/side/hip.
4. Booya Moon from Lisey's Story. It's my favorite Stephen King book of all time, and I'm linking the image given on the book jacket for reference, but I think Andy would really like to draw his version or vision of it. I like his art. Probably on one of my thighs.
5. Possibly one of Andy's drawings, because I know how much he likes to tattoo his originals, and one recent one he posted is super good. Not sure where though.
Steve and I have never actually had a house guest stay longer than the weekend, but we DO have a guest room. Dave was such an easy guest: all he wanted to do was eat baguettes, order cheap pizza, play ITG, and talk about ITG and mini golf. He managed his own schedule and kept himself busy while we were at work. In the evenings one or more of us would play ITG. All 3 of us made improvements, and Dave ended up getting 2 new quads which is super impressive. Steve and I did pretty well too. I still need to re-learn officials after not having played them in months while preparing for Cupcake. But even with that, I have improved like 10 scores. I just need to increase my stamina and suffer through hard songs.
That's pretty much been my life! I also started knitting a hat with a super fun technique, SO EXCITED. I've been buying a lot of fun yarn lately. So happy about my yarn. I should knit more.
I've been really really tired still. Even with many hours of sleep, still so tired. I've been working on my attitude AT work (still really struggling with the getting TO work part), and negativity I could be bringing into my job. It's helped this week be better - I think I'm naturally one of the better educators at connecting with kids and making them feel like I care about them and want them to do well - AND that I expect them to give their best. However, I still think I've been struggling at being 100% and not getting bogged down with the annoying things - refusals, bad attitudes, etc. - and this week I decided to take it in stride and not allow myself to get exasperated. Instead I've been infinitely patient and understanding. For example, when Tino said he wished I'd teach at the board and if he didn't get it, come to him individually........... which is literally all I do. Forever. I did that even HARDER today than most days; usually once we get to "work days" I'm working individually and small groups 100% but today enough kids needed help that I went for a class re-teach. But I listened patiently and told him that tomorrow I will do just that. lol. We're working on 2-step equations and I know that's a challenging topic and requires a lot of thinking and effort on their part.
I'm super nervous about next year's group, it sounds like the 6th graders are much lower than this current group of 7th and 8th graders, so I'll have to manage them differently. Trying not to freak out already, but it's like, I'm working so hard at FINALLY building my curriculum binder after having lost most of my online resources when I left SPPS, and next year I'll have to change it probably. It's okay.... one thing at a time.
Therapy appt yesterday went well, but I left here around 2:30 and that is TOO LATE somehow to get all the way around the Twin Cities and at the appt by 3. So I blustered in at 3:05 and had to ask to let me go to the bathroom because I hadn't gone all day hashtag teacher life. Otherwise we had a lot of really good conversation about communication in my relationship with Steve and talking about boundaries and how boundaries/needs/agreements aren't static and we should revisit them regularly to see if they changed and how to modify our needs, etc. She also suggested a different book for me and Steve to review together that is more modern and might be more helpful now that we're not in crisis. I talked with Steve about it on my hour drive home, and I think he also will be looking into individual therapy. He still has a lot of bad moments and we agree it would be good for him to vent or work through some of these thoughts with an impartial and supportive third party.
We've been spending a lot of time in daily contact with Ben/Dave/Dmac/Sean, and have seen much less of our local friends. Noah fell a little off the map for a bit but is back. I've had some minimal texting wtih Courtney and it sounds like Steve talks with JWaid and Nick, but we haven't been hanging out? It's interesting. Noah mentioned to me the other day that it feels like everyone is just being regular old adults and it's disappointing. I imagine that happens in everyone's lives. I remember being a teenager and my mom hanging out with her best friend from high school after not having seen her in like 10-15 years and thinking that was insane! How can you not talk to your best friend?! But now I get it. And Bre and I maintain spotty contact and technology of course allows us to keep up with people without having to directly interact with them often anyway.
Uh I totally dropped the ball on shirts for both Fantastic Beats AND Cupcake. I just like... forgot about them. Whoooops. It's not a huge deal for Cupcake but I feel pretty bad about FB. It's not super like me to forget, but it just feels like I've got a million things I'm thinking about at any given time and my brain just decided that ordering shirts was not a necessity. That and I guess I had no reminders sooooo it's hard to remember.
My great-grandma died a couple months ago and she willed her money to her children, but since my grandpa Jack died a couple years ago the money allotted for him went to HIS kids. My mom sent me $1000 as a nice gesture, and I think that was super sweet. I think I'm probably going to use it for tattoos - I have a bunch of medium-small ideas I just want to knock out quickly here.
1. Something like "Go all in" from this Jim quote in The Office - "Well, you know, you can’t have everything so you gotta ask yourself what makes you the happiest. You just go all in for what’s most important. That’s my new thing." Pretty self explanatory, one of my favorite lines in the entire series, really speaks to me. Probably on my wrist? Somewhere I can see.
2. "A Heart's a Heavy Burden" with either blue Calcifer or the shooting stars from Howl's Moving Castle - I know I have an entire Ghibli sleeve but also this quote is my entire life. Either over my heart, or on my available ribs/side/hip.
4. Booya Moon from Lisey's Story. It's my favorite Stephen King book of all time, and I'm linking the image given on the book jacket for reference, but I think Andy would really like to draw his version or vision of it. I like his art. Probably on one of my thighs.
5. Possibly one of Andy's drawings, because I know how much he likes to tattoo his originals, and one recent one he posted is super good. Not sure where though.
Tags:
- counseling,
- dance games,
- friends,
- life,
- love,
- maplewood middle,
- me,
- oops,
- relationships,
- steve,
- tattoo,
- work
Oh no, I’ve been falling behind! This is legit like old habits - I cycle from posting every day to posting a couple times a month. I promise I’m going to write those entries about Ben and Sean’s and Bethany’s wedding!
I’ve been really busy with preparing for work and the Florida trip. I’m in the airport right now waiting to board. We got an email notification that MSP airport is experiencing longer than normal wait times so we were encouraged to get to the airport super early, which we did. The line was long but not too long and we got lucky because they were training a bunch of new people, thus holding up the line, so a woman opened up a secret check for us to go through and we didn’t have to deal with the practice searches of the new staff. Score!
Monday was the benefits training and initial overview for ISD 622. it was a super long day but also really necessary. I’ve never been at a benefits meeting where people asked so many questions about the different insurance plans before, and have had the person try really hard to answer the questione. Some people seemed like they were getting annoyed, but then would be like “wait what??” at some of the answers. What it really boils down to is, unless you are doing the high deductible, there are two competing plans and it all depends on your organization and willingness to risk not having enough money if something big were to happen. Personally I prefer to have the comfort of paying only $23 per paycheck and $25 copay no matter what (the insurance here is good, as promised). I am really looking forward to star looking for a therapist, and there doesn’t seem to be specific restrictions on it, so I’m gonna double check with member services and get right on that. The dental and vision are good too - dental is completely free and you can get your teeth cleaned 4 times a year if you want, lol. I have annoying eyes with vastly different prescriptions so good vision insurance definitely helps. For my last pair of glasses I paid over $500.
Yesterday was a short training at Maplewood Middle, and as usual I was totally into it and excited, but Molly, my EBD counterpart, had a lot of concerns and questions (classic me, assuming everything will work out and thinks of nothing), especially regarding the people in our group completely new to teaching. A lot of her concerns I had thought will be answered next week during all-staff training. We’ll see!
Admin of course projected a super positive image of the school and talked about how most of the staff have been there more than 5 years and made me really excited and looking forward to it (and I’m still high on the fact that I have my own classroom. Guys it’s a BIG DEAL). Afterward I asked Taylor, the autism teacher, about it. She was subbing all over the place in the school starting in the winter (she was in the peace corps and got kicked out because she started dating her neighbor and got pregnant. They gave her like 3 days notice... awk) and she said it’s the same as every other school - that gen ed is a shitshow but that SpEd is really strong. Goooood. It makes me nervous about co-teaching but at worst I’ll be annoyed for awhile that I’m a glorified para and eventually I’ll take advantage of the extra time to work on paperwork and stuff.
It looks like I have a small advisory class that will be combined with someone else’s, who just happens to be a gym teacher I worked with when I was a para in the district. Cool!
My pull-out math is 7th and 8th grade only, which is good and bad. I’m glad I don’t have all 3 grades because it becomes impossible to manage all of the standards and kids get disserviced, but again my experience with algebra is zero.
My classroom is looking really good, just a few things to finish taking care of next week!
I’m super motivated to get the “go to the gym [yoga] 12 times per month for a discount” because I’ll still get 12 times in even with this 5-day vacation and going to Ben and Sean’s once this month. It’ll be super doable if I go to Brandi’s classes twice a week and a random one whenever. I went to yoga in Stephanie’s class yesterday. It’s been awhile since I’ve gone to one of her classes and I really enjoyed it. We were working on loosening the hamstrings and doing splits practice. It was awesome. She also always does a guided meditation at the end of class, and today she had us focus on the feelings we feel when we think about “our heart’s desire”. I was overwhelmed with the big full happy emotions of being grateful for my life and having Steve there and being Ben and Sean’s moai* and just being so happy with my profession and plans for the future... maybe my eyes started leaking some. But even then I was grateful for the fact that I can feel emotions so intensely now, because it signals to me that I’m keeping my walls down and being open, when I spent so long closed and hard.
After yoga, I went home and said hi to Steve and Nick and Scott. Well, I’d already kind of said hi to Scott earlier when he showed up unannounced and I was in the bathroom and didn’t know he was in the living room, which looks down the hallway to our bathroom and bedroom, and I walked out pantless because I needed to put on yoga bottoms. I was so surprised to see him standing there that i just autistically said “HI SCOTT SORRY DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE THERE” and was annoyed at how embarrassed I was because like, it’s just my ass lol. I think it was the being caught off guard. AND I was indignant that Steve didn’t like text me or knock on the door because he knew I was getting ready and Scott was seriously lucky I didn’t walk out fully naked???
Soon after I got home I mustered up the energy to okay ITG, since it will be the last time to practice for Cupcake for the next five days! After warming up and adjusting to my newly loosened hamstrings, I had a pretty good day. Kept my heart rate up and played through a ton of the songs. Ultimately I played nonstop for an hour and a half, which is usually when my shoulders start to hurt really bad and my legs get tiredness. I had a lot of fun and got a couple new scores.
( Pics for posterity )
I still haven’t been able to pass any of the 12s and I’m nervous about my ability in tournament. I’m just hoping that everyone gets nervous and chokes, lol. At the very least I just don’t want to look like a fool who is out of her league.
Okay, gonna board soon!
I’ve been really busy with preparing for work and the Florida trip. I’m in the airport right now waiting to board. We got an email notification that MSP airport is experiencing longer than normal wait times so we were encouraged to get to the airport super early, which we did. The line was long but not too long and we got lucky because they were training a bunch of new people, thus holding up the line, so a woman opened up a secret check for us to go through and we didn’t have to deal with the practice searches of the new staff. Score!
Monday was the benefits training and initial overview for ISD 622. it was a super long day but also really necessary. I’ve never been at a benefits meeting where people asked so many questions about the different insurance plans before, and have had the person try really hard to answer the questione. Some people seemed like they were getting annoyed, but then would be like “wait what??” at some of the answers. What it really boils down to is, unless you are doing the high deductible, there are two competing plans and it all depends on your organization and willingness to risk not having enough money if something big were to happen. Personally I prefer to have the comfort of paying only $23 per paycheck and $25 copay no matter what (the insurance here is good, as promised). I am really looking forward to star looking for a therapist, and there doesn’t seem to be specific restrictions on it, so I’m gonna double check with member services and get right on that. The dental and vision are good too - dental is completely free and you can get your teeth cleaned 4 times a year if you want, lol. I have annoying eyes with vastly different prescriptions so good vision insurance definitely helps. For my last pair of glasses I paid over $500.
Yesterday was a short training at Maplewood Middle, and as usual I was totally into it and excited, but Molly, my EBD counterpart, had a lot of concerns and questions (classic me, assuming everything will work out and thinks of nothing), especially regarding the people in our group completely new to teaching. A lot of her concerns I had thought will be answered next week during all-staff training. We’ll see!
Admin of course projected a super positive image of the school and talked about how most of the staff have been there more than 5 years and made me really excited and looking forward to it (and I’m still high on the fact that I have my own classroom. Guys it’s a BIG DEAL). Afterward I asked Taylor, the autism teacher, about it. She was subbing all over the place in the school starting in the winter (she was in the peace corps and got kicked out because she started dating her neighbor and got pregnant. They gave her like 3 days notice... awk) and she said it’s the same as every other school - that gen ed is a shitshow but that SpEd is really strong. Goooood. It makes me nervous about co-teaching but at worst I’ll be annoyed for awhile that I’m a glorified para and eventually I’ll take advantage of the extra time to work on paperwork and stuff.
It looks like I have a small advisory class that will be combined with someone else’s, who just happens to be a gym teacher I worked with when I was a para in the district. Cool!
My pull-out math is 7th and 8th grade only, which is good and bad. I’m glad I don’t have all 3 grades because it becomes impossible to manage all of the standards and kids get disserviced, but again my experience with algebra is zero.
My classroom is looking really good, just a few things to finish taking care of next week!
I’m super motivated to get the “go to the gym [yoga] 12 times per month for a discount” because I’ll still get 12 times in even with this 5-day vacation and going to Ben and Sean’s once this month. It’ll be super doable if I go to Brandi’s classes twice a week and a random one whenever. I went to yoga in Stephanie’s class yesterday. It’s been awhile since I’ve gone to one of her classes and I really enjoyed it. We were working on loosening the hamstrings and doing splits practice. It was awesome. She also always does a guided meditation at the end of class, and today she had us focus on the feelings we feel when we think about “our heart’s desire”. I was overwhelmed with the big full happy emotions of being grateful for my life and having Steve there and being Ben and Sean’s moai* and just being so happy with my profession and plans for the future... maybe my eyes started leaking some. But even then I was grateful for the fact that I can feel emotions so intensely now, because it signals to me that I’m keeping my walls down and being open, when I spent so long closed and hard.
After yoga, I went home and said hi to Steve and Nick and Scott. Well, I’d already kind of said hi to Scott earlier when he showed up unannounced and I was in the bathroom and didn’t know he was in the living room, which looks down the hallway to our bathroom and bedroom, and I walked out pantless because I needed to put on yoga bottoms. I was so surprised to see him standing there that i just autistically said “HI SCOTT SORRY DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE THERE” and was annoyed at how embarrassed I was because like, it’s just my ass lol. I think it was the being caught off guard. AND I was indignant that Steve didn’t like text me or knock on the door because he knew I was getting ready and Scott was seriously lucky I didn’t walk out fully naked???
Soon after I got home I mustered up the energy to okay ITG, since it will be the last time to practice for Cupcake for the next five days! After warming up and adjusting to my newly loosened hamstrings, I had a pretty good day. Kept my heart rate up and played through a ton of the songs. Ultimately I played nonstop for an hour and a half, which is usually when my shoulders start to hurt really bad and my legs get tiredness. I had a lot of fun and got a couple new scores.
( Pics for posterity )
I still haven’t been able to pass any of the 12s and I’m nervous about my ability in tournament. I’m just hoping that everyone gets nervous and chokes, lol. At the very least I just don’t want to look like a fool who is out of her league.
Okay, gonna board soon!
63//Double yoga and sick burns
Jul. 5th, 2018 12:09 pmI’ve been getting into more of a gaming mood lately. Steve gave me a stern lecture the other day about how I’m just wasting my summer doing nothing, and he’s right. It’s like I get so paralyzed worrying about wasting it that I just... waste it. Ugh, it’s the worst, I’m the worst sometimes.
So I started a bunch of laundry and played Hearthstone. Hearthstone is great, but it’s not finite. You can’t “beat” it. I felt like I should choose a game I can beat. I decided I wanted to keep playing Persona 5, as it was just getting good and I had beaten the second dungeon, but I was surprised to find that my save data wasn’t on my profile. I thought it was because we upgraded to a PS4 Pro and my data just wasn’t downloaded yet. I figured I’d wait until Steve got home to figure that out, and looked at other games instead. I seriously considered playing Bloodborne, but I was in the mood for a pretty, ambient game. I settled for A Girl and Her Robot because it looked like a pastel-y version of Ico.
I played a decent amount of it, and Steve got home right as the game switched from being a gentle, quiet game of exploration and puzzles to an impossible action game. After getting literally nowhere with the boss, I looked it up, and someone wrote my exact fears out. The game ruins itself by becoming focused more on battles and talks about how the boss fights are insanely difficult for no reason (not fun and challenging but because of bad and clunky controls and the way in which you have to start over). I quickly decided that was as far as I’d want to go in that game.
I asked Steve about my save file and...he discovered that WHOOPS. He only copied HIS save data over. Uh ohhh. I got some decent autism because I just cannot imagine starting all of that over again. My lost social links and, to a lesser extent, personas. And the beginning of the game is SO TEDIOUS with the handholding. I really need to mourn and process, and Steve does not handle guilt very well, so he needed tending to at the same time I was trying to wrangle in my grief. So he kind of melted down, frantically putting the game in and saying he was going to play up to where I was (lol I was definitely over 20 hours in, probably even over 30). I kept telling him it wasn’t the same and wouldn’t be the same, but I appreciated his willingness.
Eventually I talked him down enough from the ledge not to kill himself while I was at yoga, but not THAT far from the ledge. It’s just a game, I’m sure I’ll get enough steam to start it over eventually. But I had two hours of yoga planned for tonight and I needed to leave. I called Steve on my way there to check in, make sure he didn’t nope off into the sunset like he was at high risk of doing.
First up was Brittany’s Hatha class. It ended up being just me and one other, who is another instructor there. It’s nice to be comfortable with the teacher, because on days like this when no one shows up, I can get targeted attention. Brittany really pressed me to push out of my shoulder sockets and worked my arms so hard in various poses while in plank. We also did a ton of half-moon/Warrior 3/standing splits stuff. Brittany is a gymnast and obsessed with handstand, so everything we do with her really works towards that. Which is fine for me because even though I’m terrified of handstand, the stuff I do with her is really challenging and makes me feel like I’m trying for something.
Right after that was Hannah’s tune-up class. Thank god it wasn’t demanding because I could barely hold myself up on all fours - my shoulders and arms were just DEAD from Brittany’s class. It was a good way to spend the hour. Prior to class I talked with that other instructor, whose name is Brandi, and she is a special ed teacher in SPPS, at one of the high schools. So we have a lot we can talk about. That was cool.
After yoga, I went home and immediately needed food, so I whipped up some (yep) fried egg sammies and simple fruit smoothies, and Steve showed me his new trick in Mario 3. He and Noah are trying to learn to speed run that game, and Steve wanted to start by learning the fastest, silliest way as a means to get acquainted with the game. He is hilariously bad at the general game, but he’s decent at the wrong warp (look it up, it’s very entertaining and takes only a couple minutes). I asked if I could try the first part, and omg the controller he was using was weird! It wasn’t an originally controller and it felt like the inputs were slightly off. He gave me a regular controller and the B button basically did not work at all. Ugh. Come ON controllers!! But it was really cute and I was curled up in his lap while we played.
After that we spent the rest of the night enjoying Super Monkey Ball speedruns. So fun, so good. After all that yoga and late-night eating though, my processing and memory were SUPER off. It was really silly. I kept asking questions about the runs that they literally had just talked about, and I kept forgetting or mishearing what Steve was saying (in a funny way). At one point Steve spluttered, “What is the MATTER with you?? You’re like, Flowers for Algernon!! Get it together!!” Which caused me to laugh for like 5 minutes straight, and laugh about every time I thought about it for the rest of the night. And when we were getting into bed, I took out my hair, which had been in a bun. Steve took one look at it and notified my that I looked like Solid Snake. Which elicited another huge burst of laughter because I knew EXACTLY what he meant. God I love him. :D
So I started a bunch of laundry and played Hearthstone. Hearthstone is great, but it’s not finite. You can’t “beat” it. I felt like I should choose a game I can beat. I decided I wanted to keep playing Persona 5, as it was just getting good and I had beaten the second dungeon, but I was surprised to find that my save data wasn’t on my profile. I thought it was because we upgraded to a PS4 Pro and my data just wasn’t downloaded yet. I figured I’d wait until Steve got home to figure that out, and looked at other games instead. I seriously considered playing Bloodborne, but I was in the mood for a pretty, ambient game. I settled for A Girl and Her Robot because it looked like a pastel-y version of Ico.
I played a decent amount of it, and Steve got home right as the game switched from being a gentle, quiet game of exploration and puzzles to an impossible action game. After getting literally nowhere with the boss, I looked it up, and someone wrote my exact fears out. The game ruins itself by becoming focused more on battles and talks about how the boss fights are insanely difficult for no reason (not fun and challenging but because of bad and clunky controls and the way in which you have to start over). I quickly decided that was as far as I’d want to go in that game.
I asked Steve about my save file and...he discovered that WHOOPS. He only copied HIS save data over. Uh ohhh. I got some decent autism because I just cannot imagine starting all of that over again. My lost social links and, to a lesser extent, personas. And the beginning of the game is SO TEDIOUS with the handholding. I really need to mourn and process, and Steve does not handle guilt very well, so he needed tending to at the same time I was trying to wrangle in my grief. So he kind of melted down, frantically putting the game in and saying he was going to play up to where I was (lol I was definitely over 20 hours in, probably even over 30). I kept telling him it wasn’t the same and wouldn’t be the same, but I appreciated his willingness.
Eventually I talked him down enough from the ledge not to kill himself while I was at yoga, but not THAT far from the ledge. It’s just a game, I’m sure I’ll get enough steam to start it over eventually. But I had two hours of yoga planned for tonight and I needed to leave. I called Steve on my way there to check in, make sure he didn’t nope off into the sunset like he was at high risk of doing.
First up was Brittany’s Hatha class. It ended up being just me and one other, who is another instructor there. It’s nice to be comfortable with the teacher, because on days like this when no one shows up, I can get targeted attention. Brittany really pressed me to push out of my shoulder sockets and worked my arms so hard in various poses while in plank. We also did a ton of half-moon/Warrior 3/standing splits stuff. Brittany is a gymnast and obsessed with handstand, so everything we do with her really works towards that. Which is fine for me because even though I’m terrified of handstand, the stuff I do with her is really challenging and makes me feel like I’m trying for something.
Right after that was Hannah’s tune-up class. Thank god it wasn’t demanding because I could barely hold myself up on all fours - my shoulders and arms were just DEAD from Brittany’s class. It was a good way to spend the hour. Prior to class I talked with that other instructor, whose name is Brandi, and she is a special ed teacher in SPPS, at one of the high schools. So we have a lot we can talk about. That was cool.
After yoga, I went home and immediately needed food, so I whipped up some (yep) fried egg sammies and simple fruit smoothies, and Steve showed me his new trick in Mario 3. He and Noah are trying to learn to speed run that game, and Steve wanted to start by learning the fastest, silliest way as a means to get acquainted with the game. He is hilariously bad at the general game, but he’s decent at the wrong warp (look it up, it’s very entertaining and takes only a couple minutes). I asked if I could try the first part, and omg the controller he was using was weird! It wasn’t an originally controller and it felt like the inputs were slightly off. He gave me a regular controller and the B button basically did not work at all. Ugh. Come ON controllers!! But it was really cute and I was curled up in his lap while we played.
After that we spent the rest of the night enjoying Super Monkey Ball speedruns. So fun, so good. After all that yoga and late-night eating though, my processing and memory were SUPER off. It was really silly. I kept asking questions about the runs that they literally had just talked about, and I kept forgetting or mishearing what Steve was saying (in a funny way). At one point Steve spluttered, “What is the MATTER with you?? You’re like, Flowers for Algernon!! Get it together!!” Which caused me to laugh for like 5 minutes straight, and laugh about every time I thought about it for the rest of the night. And when we were getting into bed, I took out my hair, which had been in a bun. Steve took one look at it and notified my that I looked like Solid Snake. Which elicited another huge burst of laughter because I knew EXACTLY what he meant. God I love him. :D
Tags:
- couple chronicles,
- funny,
- gaming,
- geek,
- guilt,
- love,
- me,
- relationships,
- steve,
- yoga
59//Pokémon Go and Cuties
Jul. 1st, 2018 01:48 pmBen and Sean asked if we wanted to go with them to Mall of America to do some raids and walk around, and that they had Mike in tow as well, and of course we agreed happily. I wanted to spend the day walking around the mall with Steve today anyway! I gave Sean the weaving supplies back, showed her my scarves, and we talked about how amazing the colors ended up working together. We tried to do a legendary raid by ourselves, but we just barely couldn’t do it. If we had one more person it would have been perfect. Oh well! We decided to wait until the mall to try again. It was raining pretty hard, but we must have driven out of the rain cloud when we actually got to the mall.
Since it’s still a weekend, of course the mall was packed. Sooo many people. The good about this is more likelihood of people to do raids with. The bad part is always needing to be distinguished others. Lol. First thing: food. I was quite hungry by the time we got to the mall, and suggested BurgerBurger. It’s like our go-to place now for food at the mall. It’s just so good and meets the requirements for both Steve and myself. Sean got food at Chipotle and brought it back. I ordered an impossible burger with onions and a side of fries. It was so delicious. The fries in particular were amazing. I ate slightly too much, but I didn’t completely overdo it. As a result though I was full for quite awhile after.
We did a ton of walking around, spun lots of stops, dealt with issues of too many items, complained about the trading system, and did two raids. I only was able to catch one Regice, and it’s not very good, but at least I got one. Roselia’s are also more likely to be shiny, and I caught three. Eventually everyone had at least one, yay!
When we decided to leave, I realized I was super tired. Like, the food and the walking and the excitement really tuckered me out! So when Steve and I got home I requested a nap watching GDQ VODs. And it was a gooood nap. I slept so well. After I woke up, Steve suggested we watch some of the runs we missed that we wanted to catch. I suggested the Mario block, and that ended up being really good. It also made me want to run Super Mario World again, and Steve mentioned that Noah wanted to try to learn co-op Mario Bros. 3 together. We ordered a pizza and that was tasty. We also finished the Pokémon Blue/Yellow run.
I noticed that this year, there were a lot of runs that weren’t “official” - for example, the run failed or the rules were violated, and everyone was so gracious about it. Like they’re not taking them as super serious as years past. Which I love. Like, a marathon run is NOT supposed to be a world-record run. It’s cool if it happens, but it’s supposed to be more of an opportunity to talk about and show off all the hard work these runners put in. For example, on the finale, Puwexil forgot to grab a character in Final Fantasy 6, thereby nullifying the 100% run. Or in the race between mitchflower and grandpoobear, if they had different attitudes, the run would have been an awkward disaster instead of a cute display of comraderie and enjoyment. But because they were able to think on their feet and Mitch knew that Poobear didn’t fuck up his game on purpose (twice), they were able to find a way to make the race fun. Like, it’s okay to make mistakes and no one’s gonna hate you for it. It really made this year feel like the best event yet. Plus, the room was packed. A lot of people were there consistently, and the hype in the room was infectious. :D
When it got too late, we came upstairs to fall asleep finishing the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 48 tracks run (which was amazing, by the way. She is really good at Mario Kart). It was such an ideal night.
Since it’s still a weekend, of course the mall was packed. Sooo many people. The good about this is more likelihood of people to do raids with. The bad part is always needing to be distinguished others. Lol. First thing: food. I was quite hungry by the time we got to the mall, and suggested BurgerBurger. It’s like our go-to place now for food at the mall. It’s just so good and meets the requirements for both Steve and myself. Sean got food at Chipotle and brought it back. I ordered an impossible burger with onions and a side of fries. It was so delicious. The fries in particular were amazing. I ate slightly too much, but I didn’t completely overdo it. As a result though I was full for quite awhile after.
We did a ton of walking around, spun lots of stops, dealt with issues of too many items, complained about the trading system, and did two raids. I only was able to catch one Regice, and it’s not very good, but at least I got one. Roselia’s are also more likely to be shiny, and I caught three. Eventually everyone had at least one, yay!
When we decided to leave, I realized I was super tired. Like, the food and the walking and the excitement really tuckered me out! So when Steve and I got home I requested a nap watching GDQ VODs. And it was a gooood nap. I slept so well. After I woke up, Steve suggested we watch some of the runs we missed that we wanted to catch. I suggested the Mario block, and that ended up being really good. It also made me want to run Super Mario World again, and Steve mentioned that Noah wanted to try to learn co-op Mario Bros. 3 together. We ordered a pizza and that was tasty. We also finished the Pokémon Blue/Yellow run.
I noticed that this year, there were a lot of runs that weren’t “official” - for example, the run failed or the rules were violated, and everyone was so gracious about it. Like they’re not taking them as super serious as years past. Which I love. Like, a marathon run is NOT supposed to be a world-record run. It’s cool if it happens, but it’s supposed to be more of an opportunity to talk about and show off all the hard work these runners put in. For example, on the finale, Puwexil forgot to grab a character in Final Fantasy 6, thereby nullifying the 100% run. Or in the race between mitchflower and grandpoobear, if they had different attitudes, the run would have been an awkward disaster instead of a cute display of comraderie and enjoyment. But because they were able to think on their feet and Mitch knew that Poobear didn’t fuck up his game on purpose (twice), they were able to find a way to make the race fun. Like, it’s okay to make mistakes and no one’s gonna hate you for it. It really made this year feel like the best event yet. Plus, the room was packed. A lot of people were there consistently, and the hype in the room was infectious. :D
When it got too late, we came upstairs to fall asleep finishing the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 48 tracks run (which was amazing, by the way. She is really good at Mario Kart). It was such an ideal night.
Because I went to bed so late and consumed alcohol, it was very difficult to wake up today. So instead I opted for sleeping in and recovering, with a brief wake up to watch the Catherine Babel run (god Catherine is SO GOOD). Soon after I actually woke up, Haley came over again to apply for more jobs. I felt like I couldn’t really do anything when she was here, so I just watched SGDQ. There were some pretty fun runs, such as a Mega Man 8 race, where the players ended 4 seconds apart (and it was a heartbreaker because they were neck and neck until one guy got bad luck on one boss that he could do nothing about).
I was really feeling love and affection for Steve, who I just wanted to be home so we could spend time together!! He just has been so cute lately and I love him so much!! After he got home and Haley left, we had some fun that we haven’t done in feels like forever because first my UTI stuff and then my period.
Today is Friday and that means Bring a Friend to yoga!! I couldn’t wait to take him, and even though Hannah was supposed to teach it but got sick, Stephanie was there and she made it a good class. I noticed Steve had his eyes closed most of the time, and I thought maybe because we close our eyes in the beginning to get grounded, he thought you’re supposed to do yoga the whole time with your eyes closed. So I poked him and whispered that he could keep his eyes open, and he whisper-shouted back (in a lighthearted frustrated tone), “I CANT because SWEAT keeping running in MY EYES!!”
It always makes me explode with love and appreciation when he comes to yoga with me, for his own health but also because it’s like, romantic to me that he wants to participate in a hobby I really care about even if it’s not something he’s as into as I am. I’m not like, dragging him along and he never complains. It means a lot to me <3
After yoga we stopped at Whole Foods, where we discovered that Prime members now get special deals, in the same way that co-op members get deals. I’m a Prime member, so that was nice. We picked up a few things (soba, beyond beef burgers for 4th of July, and mochi) and then headed home so I could make dinner.
Dinner was cooled soba with spice and open-faced fried egg sammies. I don’t like tracking my calories, at least not super intensely, but I do appreciate it when I’m unsure about how much I’m consuming. It helped me find out tonight that if I wanted to drink my Starbucks tea latte AND eat a whole avocado that I should cut my noodle serving in half and only use one piece of bread for my sandwich. Thanks, MyFitnessPal. You really did me a solid.
Right now MFP has me at 1959 calories, which is for when I work out a lot, but if I don’t burn more than 400 calories, I try to keep my consumption at around 1600 so that I’m just a bit under and hopefully will continue to lose vs gain or maintain.
The evening was spent relaxing with GDQ, watching some fun runs (the runs tend to get better as the week goes on). There were some pretty cool TAS runs of Celeste and Super Metroid, and there was a fun run of LoZ Wind Waker.
I was really feeling love and affection for Steve, who I just wanted to be home so we could spend time together!! He just has been so cute lately and I love him so much!! After he got home and Haley left, we had some fun that we haven’t done in feels like forever because first my UTI stuff and then my period.
Today is Friday and that means Bring a Friend to yoga!! I couldn’t wait to take him, and even though Hannah was supposed to teach it but got sick, Stephanie was there and she made it a good class. I noticed Steve had his eyes closed most of the time, and I thought maybe because we close our eyes in the beginning to get grounded, he thought you’re supposed to do yoga the whole time with your eyes closed. So I poked him and whispered that he could keep his eyes open, and he whisper-shouted back (in a lighthearted frustrated tone), “I CANT because SWEAT keeping running in MY EYES!!”
It always makes me explode with love and appreciation when he comes to yoga with me, for his own health but also because it’s like, romantic to me that he wants to participate in a hobby I really care about even if it’s not something he’s as into as I am. I’m not like, dragging him along and he never complains. It means a lot to me <3
After yoga we stopped at Whole Foods, where we discovered that Prime members now get special deals, in the same way that co-op members get deals. I’m a Prime member, so that was nice. We picked up a few things (soba, beyond beef burgers for 4th of July, and mochi) and then headed home so I could make dinner.
Dinner was cooled soba with spice and open-faced fried egg sammies. I don’t like tracking my calories, at least not super intensely, but I do appreciate it when I’m unsure about how much I’m consuming. It helped me find out tonight that if I wanted to drink my Starbucks tea latte AND eat a whole avocado that I should cut my noodle serving in half and only use one piece of bread for my sandwich. Thanks, MyFitnessPal. You really did me a solid.
Right now MFP has me at 1959 calories, which is for when I work out a lot, but if I don’t burn more than 400 calories, I try to keep my consumption at around 1600 so that I’m just a bit under and hopefully will continue to lose vs gain or maintain.
The evening was spent relaxing with GDQ, watching some fun runs (the runs tend to get better as the week goes on). There were some pretty cool TAS runs of Celeste and Super Metroid, and there was a fun run of LoZ Wind Waker.
43//My first full day off is a sick day
Jun. 15th, 2018 10:26 pmSo we went to bed around 9:40, and I woke up several times with such bad reflux that I basically was vomiting in my mouth/choking/coughing. If that wasn’t bad enough, at 3am I woke up so cold and couldn’t get warm. I was shivering so much and asked Steve to cuddle me. My joints (fingers, knees, elbows) hurt so badly that I started to cry when Steve held me. He was not warm like I was hoping; he felt cold too. He of course told me that I was burning up and broke into a sweat immediately upon touching my skin. Eventually he went and got me another blanket for myself and gave me some NyQuil, as he had to get up in a couple hours. As I lay there waiting for the meds to kick in, I thought about how when Haley is sick, she just tolerates it. She never puts medication, even OTCs, into her body unless she absolutely must (and the only thing I can think of over the last 5 years was when she got her first UTI and waited until it was a kidney infection to prove to herself it wasn’t going away). I was grateful I don’t have a mental illness that makes me suffer like she does. Eventually the NyQuil started to work and my pain subsided enough for me to fall asleep.
I woke up 13 hours later, well-timed to a concerned text from Steve about whether I was alive or not. I was much better, my fever broke at some point, and my joints were still tender but not super terrible. But I had to spend the day in basically a hangover state, all gingerly moving about and taking it easy.
Haley came over to get a shirt she left over at my place and we laid outside for awhile until it suddenly started to rain. We talked about how I value people who have passion about things and hobbies and interests, and Haley values people who... have passion about their personality? It was really hard for her to put into words and I kind of feel like I know what she’s getting at. The difference I guess is that I think if people have no hobbies or passions, they’re kind of empty and boring, and she feels the opposite - that you’re “deeper” if you are interested only in other people and getting hype from simply being around them, and that if your life is a hobby you have less substance to YOU as a person. It’s actually a very interesting way to look at two opposing perspectives.
Personally I can’t imagine how boring and frustrating life would be if you had to rely on others to entertain you or make you feel fulfilled. You’d experience so much disappointment when everyone fell short of your high expectations and demands. I love having hobbies and sharing in the passion for them. She particularly asked a lot about Ben and Sean and why we like them, because they’re the quintessential “normal” people that Haley wants nothing to do with. It was so hard to explain the good vibes that I get from them, and how we share hobbies but also are different in a lot of ways, and how much I appreciate the way Ben talks about both things he loves and things he hates, and how Sean is observant, responsive, and independent in her own ways and has hobbies that overlap with Ben’s but she also has her own interests too that are unique and cool.
Soon after she left, Steve got home and left again to trade in his PS4 for a PS4 pro, and I showered and got ready for dinner. Soon after, Scott and Nick showed up and we met Courtney, Joe Waid, his girlfriend Megan and Quimby at India Palace. The place was packed and I learned that Courtney always calls ahead, when Steve and I have never done that. They were able to seat us in a weird spot in just a few minutes. The food was delicious as always, though I ate very little because I was still feeling a bit weird. I was pretty quiet, as was most of the group, most of the time. It’s like everyone was having a tired adult day.
After India Palace a few of us walked over to Starbucks for drinks and then headed back to our place. Steve’s plans for his birthday were to play Hidden Agenda, a game developed by the same people who made Until Dawn and played very similarly. Until Dawn is an amazing survival horror game that I insist you find a way to play, because it is SO GOOD. Choices affect outcomes and story. Hidden Agenda can be played as a story or as competitive between people. The group chose competitive, and each chapter in the story, someone random would get a “hidden agenda” to try to make something happen (or not). These events impacted parts of the story, and everyone got to vote between two choices during parts of conversations or scenes. Most choices were majority vote but some were “everyone has to agree” choices.
In the end, the group got a bad ending, but our suspicion over who the identity of the killer was confirmed, and now I want to play through the story to see how my decisions alone would shape the narrative. I LOVE these kinds of games, “choose your own adventure” for the modern day.
It was after midnight when the game ended, and Joe waid and Megan had left around 11, but he texted me asking for updates when the game was over, haha.
Bedtime and Kripp! Tomorrow is Larvitar day in Pokémon Go... and also about 50 million other things we’re doing.
I woke up 13 hours later, well-timed to a concerned text from Steve about whether I was alive or not. I was much better, my fever broke at some point, and my joints were still tender but not super terrible. But I had to spend the day in basically a hangover state, all gingerly moving about and taking it easy.
Haley came over to get a shirt she left over at my place and we laid outside for awhile until it suddenly started to rain. We talked about how I value people who have passion about things and hobbies and interests, and Haley values people who... have passion about their personality? It was really hard for her to put into words and I kind of feel like I know what she’s getting at. The difference I guess is that I think if people have no hobbies or passions, they’re kind of empty and boring, and she feels the opposite - that you’re “deeper” if you are interested only in other people and getting hype from simply being around them, and that if your life is a hobby you have less substance to YOU as a person. It’s actually a very interesting way to look at two opposing perspectives.
Personally I can’t imagine how boring and frustrating life would be if you had to rely on others to entertain you or make you feel fulfilled. You’d experience so much disappointment when everyone fell short of your high expectations and demands. I love having hobbies and sharing in the passion for them. She particularly asked a lot about Ben and Sean and why we like them, because they’re the quintessential “normal” people that Haley wants nothing to do with. It was so hard to explain the good vibes that I get from them, and how we share hobbies but also are different in a lot of ways, and how much I appreciate the way Ben talks about both things he loves and things he hates, and how Sean is observant, responsive, and independent in her own ways and has hobbies that overlap with Ben’s but she also has her own interests too that are unique and cool.
Soon after she left, Steve got home and left again to trade in his PS4 for a PS4 pro, and I showered and got ready for dinner. Soon after, Scott and Nick showed up and we met Courtney, Joe Waid, his girlfriend Megan and Quimby at India Palace. The place was packed and I learned that Courtney always calls ahead, when Steve and I have never done that. They were able to seat us in a weird spot in just a few minutes. The food was delicious as always, though I ate very little because I was still feeling a bit weird. I was pretty quiet, as was most of the group, most of the time. It’s like everyone was having a tired adult day.
After India Palace a few of us walked over to Starbucks for drinks and then headed back to our place. Steve’s plans for his birthday were to play Hidden Agenda, a game developed by the same people who made Until Dawn and played very similarly. Until Dawn is an amazing survival horror game that I insist you find a way to play, because it is SO GOOD. Choices affect outcomes and story. Hidden Agenda can be played as a story or as competitive between people. The group chose competitive, and each chapter in the story, someone random would get a “hidden agenda” to try to make something happen (or not). These events impacted parts of the story, and everyone got to vote between two choices during parts of conversations or scenes. Most choices were majority vote but some were “everyone has to agree” choices.
In the end, the group got a bad ending, but our suspicion over who the identity of the killer was confirmed, and now I want to play through the story to see how my decisions alone would shape the narrative. I LOVE these kinds of games, “choose your own adventure” for the modern day.
It was after midnight when the game ended, and Joe waid and Megan had left around 11, but he texted me asking for updates when the game was over, haha.
Bedtime and Kripp! Tomorrow is Larvitar day in Pokémon Go... and also about 50 million other things we’re doing.
42//Steve’s birthday fun!
Jun. 14th, 2018 03:30 pmSo, the last few birthdays for Steve have been pretty lame. His birthday comes right at the end of the school year, and I’ve either been too busy, or too tired, or out of town every single year since I’ve been a teacher. Last year I was in Madison, the year before that I was in AVID training and getting ready for Ohio, and the 2 years before that I was ALSO either in Ohio or getting ready for Ohio. I owed Steve a good birthday, and I was going to make it AMAZING.
After a lot of consideration, I decided to do a Hearthstone themed scavenger hunt. He’d done one for me in the past, but this was going to be specific to the newest expansion. I spent a lot of time setting up, printing and placing the materials, and getting his presents ready. I was sooooooooooooo excited and couldn’t wait to surprise him. I had chores to do but I was so afraid I’d miss him coming home, so I spent the last hour or so before he got home just sitting outside reading. During that time, his parents dropped by after having lunch with Steve’s grandpa. They just said hi, commented disapprovingly on the tree growing out of the shrub by our house, said to tell Steve happy birthday, and left. Lol.
Soon after, Steve got home, and dopey that he is, didn’t notice right away that there was a scavenger hunt afoot. Gooood, he was surprised. He started the scavenger hunt, commenting on my dialogue (which I wrote in the style of the characters, including phrases they say and including stuff from their lore, like hero powers or cards specific to them.
Among other things:
He had to complete some puzzles
Had to hold down dog pose for 15 seconds
Locate something specific in these envelopes
Find items outside
It was all very fun and challenging, and I threw in red herrings and other silly things. The hunt culminated in playing Snipperclips with me. We played a bit, Steve got his presents (some really neat games - ryakugaki showtime and a dance game for the wonderswan, a funny meme shirt, an Eolian mug, tickets to a Final Fantasy orchestra show in the fall, and some puzzles). Then we decided to get dinner, but instead of Acapulco, we went to Los Ocampos, which was all right. The best part was when I was grumpy that a lady came out to smoke, and my back was to her, and Steve was like, “well, at least she’s HAPPY about it” and I turned to look and she had the frowniest face. It was hilarious.
The rest of the night was spent playing games and having some fun :) I’m so happy to make Steve so happy!
After a lot of consideration, I decided to do a Hearthstone themed scavenger hunt. He’d done one for me in the past, but this was going to be specific to the newest expansion. I spent a lot of time setting up, printing and placing the materials, and getting his presents ready. I was sooooooooooooo excited and couldn’t wait to surprise him. I had chores to do but I was so afraid I’d miss him coming home, so I spent the last hour or so before he got home just sitting outside reading. During that time, his parents dropped by after having lunch with Steve’s grandpa. They just said hi, commented disapprovingly on the tree growing out of the shrub by our house, said to tell Steve happy birthday, and left. Lol.
Soon after, Steve got home, and dopey that he is, didn’t notice right away that there was a scavenger hunt afoot. Gooood, he was surprised. He started the scavenger hunt, commenting on my dialogue (which I wrote in the style of the characters, including phrases they say and including stuff from their lore, like hero powers or cards specific to them.
Among other things:
He had to complete some puzzles
Had to hold down dog pose for 15 seconds
Locate something specific in these envelopes
Find items outside
It was all very fun and challenging, and I threw in red herrings and other silly things. The hunt culminated in playing Snipperclips with me. We played a bit, Steve got his presents (some really neat games - ryakugaki showtime and a dance game for the wonderswan, a funny meme shirt, an Eolian mug, tickets to a Final Fantasy orchestra show in the fall, and some puzzles). Then we decided to get dinner, but instead of Acapulco, we went to Los Ocampos, which was all right. The best part was when I was grumpy that a lady came out to smoke, and my back was to her, and Steve was like, “well, at least she’s HAPPY about it” and I turned to look and she had the frowniest face. It was hilarious.
The rest of the night was spent playing games and having some fun :) I’m so happy to make Steve so happy!
Wow, I've fallen super behind on these, because I've had such crazy busy days with a ton of things that either kept me up too late to be able to write an entry, or worked me so hard I crashed right when I got home. Don't despair; I will write and backdate those entries.
So let's pretend that today is Tuesday. Because this will be posted on the date of Tuesday the 12th.
I slept quite awhile — I failed to wake Steve up in time for morning coffee, but amazing snuggles were had. I had a weird dream right before he woke me up I was having a dream that my coworker Brian and I were "getting fizzy," kind of literally. Brian offered me homemade wrapped candy that was drugs of some sort, and when you put one in your mouth, it fizzed as it dissolved. The spiked candy made me feel warm and fuzzy, like mushrooms. It was all the more surreal because we were simultaneously hanging out but then there were a couple of students there and THEN I needed to go to an IEP meeting that was being held in the middle of a pool? There was a little white dog walking by me, and I was trying to figure out the best way to get to the meeting without apparently getting too wet. Which seemed impossible. The meeting was being held on a platform in the middle of the pool, with a table and chairs and everything. And of course the platform wasn't rigid, but more like one of those massive rectangle floaties used in swim therapy and everyone was seated precariously around the table. Good dream.
( Read more... )
36//Last day of school
Jun. 8th, 2018 12:53 pmLast day of school. I was very late as usual. Brian asked me to either cover for him for something, or test Vincente. I opted for testing Vincente, which worked out best for everyone because Vincente loves me so much and would do anything for me. Testing reveals he does not have a learning disability. He is very smart, too. He was very good for testing, trying his best.
We went to the auditorium and had awards, which were adorable and fun. Then we had field day, which was also very fun. The kids did so many cute activities, and Malik only got mad when the girls won tug of war and he thought I helped them (for the record, I didn’t, I just told them I was going to). He got over that much faster than expected and we had such a fun time. We did kickball, three legged race, water balloon games, and of course the tug of war. As always, pics are clickable for higher quality.
I spent the rest of the day fielding Malik and Vincente and saying goodbye. Malik took my leaving well and said I could find him at the community center this summer, and Vincente kept saying I wasn’t leaving. I found my desk graffiti’d later in the day, which I 99% suspect was Vincente, that said “Leah is the best teacher”. He gave me like 5 hugs, and Malik let me squeeze his shoulder affectionately when I said goodbye. It was very bittersweet.
After all that emotion I had to race home and pack for Madison! That’s right, my day wasn’t close to over.
I downloaded Name of the Wind, our next audiobook adventure. Steve smartly suggested it after we finished game of thrones. If you haven’t read it, you HAVE to read Name of the Wind. It’s slightly slow as the setup happens, but that’s only for the first 3 chapters. Then it takes off, and it takes off fast. I’d say in every session I have teared up from how intense and powerful the book is. It’s amazing, one of the best of all time, Patrick Rothfuss is a ridiculously talented author. I should also clarify that I’ve read his books several times.
We arrived at Ben and Sean’s in time for a late dinner at Cafe Hollander, which Steve and I picked after they told us we are “honorary Madisonites” and are also now residents of their house because we stayed there when they were gone and fed the cats and watered the plants. So honored. It was chillier than we anticipated but we sat outside anyway. I ordered a veggie burger with what they called a garlic aioli but was actually a bad mayonnaise and did not hold a candle to French Meadow’s real aioli.
After dinner we walked around a little playing Pokémon go, and then it was time to head back to the house and go to sleep.
We went to the auditorium and had awards, which were adorable and fun. Then we had field day, which was also very fun. The kids did so many cute activities, and Malik only got mad when the girls won tug of war and he thought I helped them (for the record, I didn’t, I just told them I was going to). He got over that much faster than expected and we had such a fun time. We did kickball, three legged race, water balloon games, and of course the tug of war. As always, pics are clickable for higher quality.
I spent the rest of the day fielding Malik and Vincente and saying goodbye. Malik took my leaving well and said I could find him at the community center this summer, and Vincente kept saying I wasn’t leaving. I found my desk graffiti’d later in the day, which I 99% suspect was Vincente, that said “Leah is the best teacher”. He gave me like 5 hugs, and Malik let me squeeze his shoulder affectionately when I said goodbye. It was very bittersweet.
After all that emotion I had to race home and pack for Madison! That’s right, my day wasn’t close to over.
I downloaded Name of the Wind, our next audiobook adventure. Steve smartly suggested it after we finished game of thrones. If you haven’t read it, you HAVE to read Name of the Wind. It’s slightly slow as the setup happens, but that’s only for the first 3 chapters. Then it takes off, and it takes off fast. I’d say in every session I have teared up from how intense and powerful the book is. It’s amazing, one of the best of all time, Patrick Rothfuss is a ridiculously talented author. I should also clarify that I’ve read his books several times.
We arrived at Ben and Sean’s in time for a late dinner at Cafe Hollander, which Steve and I picked after they told us we are “honorary Madisonites” and are also now residents of their house because we stayed there when they were gone and fed the cats and watered the plants. So honored. It was chillier than we anticipated but we sat outside anyway. I ordered a veggie burger with what they called a garlic aioli but was actually a bad mayonnaise and did not hold a candle to French Meadow’s real aioli.
After dinner we walked around a little playing Pokémon go, and then it was time to head back to the house and go to sleep.
30//Closings, cuddles, and cute couples
Jun. 2nd, 2018 11:09 pmWard 6 is this local hip place that serves amazing brunch food, located on a busy street on the east side of St. Paul (read: not a super great neighborhood). It was one of the catalysts to revitalizing the street, where several new establishments have cropped up and people want to spend their time walking up and down it. The problem with Ward 6 apparently was their business model: serve high-quality, sustainably sourced food from as many local places as possible while keeping prices reasonable. I guess they have been losing money for a couple years, and they’ve decided to close. Such sadness! Steve and I have gone there almost every Sunday for the last at least 2 years. I’m glad that we’ve been supporting the,, and they were always crazy busy on weekends, but I guess the same can’t be said for during the week? I went there twice for dinner and it was packed then, too.
It doesn’t appeal to locals; most of the people I saw there were white people of the sort you find in the suburbs (hi pot, it’s kettle - I have been trained to notice such hypocrisies I am a part of). That’s not to say PoC didn’t go there, but the food there again was to different tastes - whereas every weekend just across the street is a Hispanic family that sets up a roasted corn cart that seems more appropriate. What I mean to say is, everything at Ward 6 is catered to a white perspective of tastes, even if they have chicken and waffles and chilaquiles.
Still sad to see it go, it was bittersweet and only a week’s notice was given. They were out of many of the main items, of course, and it sounds like people who like the place have been pouring in. We enjoyed one last meal and said goodbye.
Picked up a few things at Mississippi Market co-op and then headed home. Because I have so many things I want to do, and so many things I NEED to do, I found myself in the classic Leah anxiety paralysis and ended up snuggling a ridiculous Nero cat basically all day while Steve played ITG and we watched Hearthstone. The cuddles were amazing and made me so happy, Nero was in the snuggliest mood and helped me feel better. I didn’t do NOTHING all day... I went to yoga right away in the morning after a quick cup of coffee with Steve. Hannah’s hot class yay! It felt sooo good to go again. Can’t wait to keep going.
Nick and Scott came over, and I tutored. Dinner was a homemade lentil soup, yum. The Office was watched, Nick continued Uncharted 2, Scott scrolled, and Steve continued Owlboy. I spent the rest of the night watching The Office and working on my entries for the previous two days because I’d fallen behind. I also spent a significant amount of time flirting with Steve over text (using my mac to type and send texts is so fun), which built a stupid amount of excitement and had a fantastic culmination after everyone left. Ehehe.
It doesn’t appeal to locals; most of the people I saw there were white people of the sort you find in the suburbs (hi pot, it’s kettle - I have been trained to notice such hypocrisies I am a part of). That’s not to say PoC didn’t go there, but the food there again was to different tastes - whereas every weekend just across the street is a Hispanic family that sets up a roasted corn cart that seems more appropriate. What I mean to say is, everything at Ward 6 is catered to a white perspective of tastes, even if they have chicken and waffles and chilaquiles.
Still sad to see it go, it was bittersweet and only a week’s notice was given. They were out of many of the main items, of course, and it sounds like people who like the place have been pouring in. We enjoyed one last meal and said goodbye.
Picked up a few things at Mississippi Market co-op and then headed home. Because I have so many things I want to do, and so many things I NEED to do, I found myself in the classic Leah anxiety paralysis and ended up snuggling a ridiculous Nero cat basically all day while Steve played ITG and we watched Hearthstone. The cuddles were amazing and made me so happy, Nero was in the snuggliest mood and helped me feel better. I didn’t do NOTHING all day... I went to yoga right away in the morning after a quick cup of coffee with Steve. Hannah’s hot class yay! It felt sooo good to go again. Can’t wait to keep going.
Nick and Scott came over, and I tutored. Dinner was a homemade lentil soup, yum. The Office was watched, Nick continued Uncharted 2, Scott scrolled, and Steve continued Owlboy. I spent the rest of the night watching The Office and working on my entries for the previous two days because I’d fallen behind. I also spent a significant amount of time flirting with Steve over text (using my mac to type and send texts is so fun), which built a stupid amount of excitement and had a fantastic culmination after everyone left. Ehehe.
Wait, it’s already halfway through the week?? That’s both exciting and terrifying. We only have one more real week left of school and I have so much to do, including a lot of things that require me to test students - not just paperwork typing. I’m definitely fucked again this year with regards to filing... getting access to our special ed files is so much hassle and I hate it! I was also quite terrible with progress reports, though I believe I’m not the only one by far so phew. It just means I’ll have a long Monday the 11th getting everything finished. Lucky for me though, since I only have 6th graders I don’t need to freak out as much as other years, since none of my kids’ files are getting sent along to high schools. That was my big issue in previous years, especially my first one (where I had 10 8th graders omg).
My day was spent feverishly trying to test and get emails sent out, and by the end of the day I had a pretty bad headache, so I came home to a waiting Steve and tried to nap away my headache in the dark. The nap was unsuccessful because I realized I wasn’t tired, just low energy and kind of emotional. Eventually I sat back up and did some scrolling until Steve was kind enough to heat us up some dinner, more potato soup. Yummm. When he was gone I started thinking about how grateful I am that Steve has stuck with me, and how strong he is, and how much I love our life and how much I appreciate him. I mean I think that stuff all the time, but seeing Pat and Aimee for some reason really launched my head into a tailspin about how even though it was just 3 months ago, that all that feels like a completely different life, and I feel so divorced from that behavior, and a life without Steve is such a sad, empty, pathetic version of a life that is so pale and colorless. He makes my life so full of happiness and love, and I don’t want a life where he’s not in it. So all of that has been swirling in my head and he brought me down heated up soup and bread and I just started crying. He asked me what was going on and I tried to tell him, I hope I did an okay job. It’s hard to articulate all of my feelings on the matter and they just get so intense that apparently what I do now is cry. Lol.
After I calmed down and we talked about it, we ate our soup and enjoyed Kripp playing some Hearthstone, exactly what I want to be doing with my life, and precisely who I want to be spending that time with. Soon after, Nick came over. We chatted for awhile about this and that, and then put on The Office while Nick continued Uncharted and I got scolded for continuing to scroll and not knit, which was so valid. I really would rather be knitting, I think it’s just that I love the iPad so much, it’s hard to transition away. I knit a good chunk more rows on my LYS shawl. I’m about 1 and a half repeats from doing my first color change. The Hedgehog fibers yarn is GORGEOUS and soft and I love working with it. I continue to encourage everyone to take up knitting, it is such a fine hobby AND YOU GET TO USE WHAT YOU MAKE (or gift it, whichever). Like you make an actual textile and it is amazing, and super impressive to non-knitters. To be fair, a lot of it IS impressive. But still. ;)
YarnHarlot posted an entry recently where she was able to take horrible, cheap dishcloth yarn and weave two very nice scarves out of it, and it has made me even MORE excited to learn weaving with Sean next weekend at Sow’s Ear. Another fantastic use of yarn, can’t wait.
Noah and I texted a bit about our food consumption and MyFitnessPal. Noah is realizing that MFP underestimates calories and overestimates exercise. I explained that with my Apple Watch , my scores get wonky as the watch actually tracks my true activity, which can lower (or raise) my total amount of food to consume for the day. It’s kinda cool but also kinda confusing. I’m just aiming for a specific range at this point until I get a better grasp of my activity levels. But Noah sent me a super cute text that ended with, “thanks for excitedly doing this with me, it’s keeping me motivated to become a thinner dood.” Awwww. It was so sweet, but more starkly put into perspective how he lives in the middle of nowhere with only white racists and teenagers as company, and I want to be a good friend! And you KNOW how much I love a good motivational health regimen. What better way than with friends who need support?!
I forgot to mention yesterday that Steve and I went to Stephanie’s Yoga Flow class for anniversary and that was super good and fun. She moved a bit too fast for my liking, and she was as dopey as ever. I prefer classes with slightly less poses in favor of holding to get a deeper stretch. If you’ve ever tried to hold a pose for even 45 seconds, you know that *less* poses does NOT equal *easier* poses. Moving too fast just means that you can’t settle in, make sure you’re doing the pose correctly, with all its micro adjustments and muscle fatigue. But it was good to go for anniversary, and I really want to find a class that works for Steve. Maybe I’ll take him to hot yoga, since that’s the same poses every time and they are slow and drawn out. But still the opposite of easy.
Now I’m about to head to bed. Nick is still here but I think he def needs to head home relatively soon because he has to work, and Steve will probably stay up playing Owl Boy on the Switch, which we just got in the mail yesterday. Looks good so far!
My day was spent feverishly trying to test and get emails sent out, and by the end of the day I had a pretty bad headache, so I came home to a waiting Steve and tried to nap away my headache in the dark. The nap was unsuccessful because I realized I wasn’t tired, just low energy and kind of emotional. Eventually I sat back up and did some scrolling until Steve was kind enough to heat us up some dinner, more potato soup. Yummm. When he was gone I started thinking about how grateful I am that Steve has stuck with me, and how strong he is, and how much I love our life and how much I appreciate him. I mean I think that stuff all the time, but seeing Pat and Aimee for some reason really launched my head into a tailspin about how even though it was just 3 months ago, that all that feels like a completely different life, and I feel so divorced from that behavior, and a life without Steve is such a sad, empty, pathetic version of a life that is so pale and colorless. He makes my life so full of happiness and love, and I don’t want a life where he’s not in it. So all of that has been swirling in my head and he brought me down heated up soup and bread and I just started crying. He asked me what was going on and I tried to tell him, I hope I did an okay job. It’s hard to articulate all of my feelings on the matter and they just get so intense that apparently what I do now is cry. Lol.
After I calmed down and we talked about it, we ate our soup and enjoyed Kripp playing some Hearthstone, exactly what I want to be doing with my life, and precisely who I want to be spending that time with. Soon after, Nick came over. We chatted for awhile about this and that, and then put on The Office while Nick continued Uncharted and I got scolded for continuing to scroll and not knit, which was so valid. I really would rather be knitting, I think it’s just that I love the iPad so much, it’s hard to transition away. I knit a good chunk more rows on my LYS shawl. I’m about 1 and a half repeats from doing my first color change. The Hedgehog fibers yarn is GORGEOUS and soft and I love working with it. I continue to encourage everyone to take up knitting, it is such a fine hobby AND YOU GET TO USE WHAT YOU MAKE (or gift it, whichever). Like you make an actual textile and it is amazing, and super impressive to non-knitters. To be fair, a lot of it IS impressive. But still. ;)
YarnHarlot posted an entry recently where she was able to take horrible, cheap dishcloth yarn and weave two very nice scarves out of it, and it has made me even MORE excited to learn weaving with Sean next weekend at Sow’s Ear. Another fantastic use of yarn, can’t wait.
Noah and I texted a bit about our food consumption and MyFitnessPal. Noah is realizing that MFP underestimates calories and overestimates exercise. I explained that with my Apple Watch , my scores get wonky as the watch actually tracks my true activity, which can lower (or raise) my total amount of food to consume for the day. It’s kinda cool but also kinda confusing. I’m just aiming for a specific range at this point until I get a better grasp of my activity levels. But Noah sent me a super cute text that ended with, “thanks for excitedly doing this with me, it’s keeping me motivated to become a thinner dood.” Awwww. It was so sweet, but more starkly put into perspective how he lives in the middle of nowhere with only white racists and teenagers as company, and I want to be a good friend! And you KNOW how much I love a good motivational health regimen. What better way than with friends who need support?!
I forgot to mention yesterday that Steve and I went to Stephanie’s Yoga Flow class for anniversary and that was super good and fun. She moved a bit too fast for my liking, and she was as dopey as ever. I prefer classes with slightly less poses in favor of holding to get a deeper stretch. If you’ve ever tried to hold a pose for even 45 seconds, you know that *less* poses does NOT equal *easier* poses. Moving too fast just means that you can’t settle in, make sure you’re doing the pose correctly, with all its micro adjustments and muscle fatigue. But it was good to go for anniversary, and I really want to find a class that works for Steve. Maybe I’ll take him to hot yoga, since that’s the same poses every time and they are slow and drawn out. But still the opposite of easy.
Now I’m about to head to bed. Nick is still here but I think he def needs to head home relatively soon because he has to work, and Steve will probably stay up playing Owl Boy on the Switch, which we just got in the mail yesterday. Looks good so far!
Tags:
- aww,
- becoming healthy,
- blogging,
- couple chronicles,
- deep thought,
- friends,
- gaming,
- hug,
- knitting,
- love,
- me,
- noah,
- relationships,
- steve,
- work,
- yoga
Today was the beginning of Second Weekend, yay! Steve has the week off and I have Monday off, but I’m also taking tomorrow off - I’d like to say it was pre-planning for our anniversary, but I didn’t actually look at the date before I decided I was going to take it off. Just luck!
We took our time waking up, and then I made us some smoothies following Rawvana’s 5-day plan. The smoothies are mostly “green” and I know Steve likes fruit smoothies, but I thought it would be fun if we followed the plan together for the week to jumpstart our health process. Guys, the smoothies are hilarious. They make 60 ounces of liquid. Howwww are we expected to drink that much at one time?? I hate consuming a lot of liquids at once, and if you take too long with smoothies, they get frothy and thick, almost chunky. Steve was able to get his down and then decided to go mow the lawn. I decided to get going on lunch and try to finish my smoothie. Lunch is a Mexican salad, and it’s really good when you actually measure the ingredients right. I had a mishap where I actually used way too much cumin for one set of the salads and it made for sooo much intense salty flavor. But it was all right. Even though Steve took over an hour on the lawn, I still wasn’t finished with my smoothie by the time he came in. He stood over me while I finished it (lol) and then we ate our salads. Other than the extreme saltiness, it was good!!
Next on our agenda was to go to Steven Be yarns, because they were having a 25% off everything sale. Steven himself was there, along with his mom, and she is a very old first-generation German immigrant. She even referred to her marriage as “I married an American”. She told a slightly awkward but funny story about how her friend or sister had encouraged her to buy Steven a Barbie doll, and she refused and bought him a truck that he never played with, so for his next holiday the friend bought him a Barbie, which he loved and played with and made clothes for. His mom had her own yarn shop and obviously passed all that down to him. They made a book together and it was really cute, but the items in there are too intense for me - extremely textured, chunky yarns, flamboyant colors and combinations. But the stories in there were pretty neat.
The thing that is just a little too much about Steven Be isn’t that the store is overwhelming with choices - because even though that’s true, I love seeing so many options and samples, it’s that everyone is trying to be so helpful that it feels like when you’re at a garage sale and the sellers are eyeballing you hard while you look at stuff and you feel a huge pressure, like they’re gonna take it personally if you don’t like everything. I ended up only buying one skein of yarn, a beautiful gradient that I wanted last time but was too expensive for a single skein at $61. With 25% off plus 2 more percent bonus, it was far more reasonable.
It was hot as as balls out, my car sitting at 103*, but we really wanted to do some Pokémon Go. This week’s Advneture Week, where you get crazy experience for spinning stops you’ve never visited, so we drove around that area of Minneapolis for quite some time to find stops. Oddly, we found a cemetery that was just FILLED with stops. Feeling a little weird, I drove in there and we slowly drove past the stops we could, but eventually we got out and walked around to get the rest. We marveled at some of the massive headstones, sculptures, and crypts that were there, noting that as people stopped being able to afford the luxury of headstones (or as cultural views of grave sites shifted), many more recent sites only have the small flat slab. It was an interesting way to spend a half hour! There’s even a gym in the cemetery?? Just seems a little inappropriate, but I’m not complaining too much, we got so much experience from that one area.
After that, we drove around a bit more, stopping at random place for more pokestops and debating whether or not to get ice cream. Initially we totally were going to and even came across a random ice cream shop, but literally when we were going that way, the weather changed to be ominous, windy and dark, and threaten rain.
So we finished the raid we were doing in Pokémon go and decided to head to The Wedge for a couple of things. As I was turning the car around, I saw a couple people walking down the street. My head thought, “oh, that looks like Aimee!” And it took a few seconds for me to realize Oh wait, that’s Pat with her! And THEN my brain started to panic, because we were turning around right in front of them and ohmygodwhatiftheylookintothecarwhatdowedothen?! Steve didn’t look up or over to see them, and they didn’t look into the car. We drove for a few blocks while my brain screamed with anxiety and adrenaline, and I debated whether to tell Steve. I made a basic pros and cons list, because I was the only one of the four of us who knew this happened, and what a crazy near-miss it was. We had JUST been on that street, and if we were 20 seconds later getting into the car or they were 20 seconds earlier, we would have walked right into each other. And it would have been the worst. I never want to run into either of them, anywhere. Too scary, too awkward, too terrible. In the end I decided to tell Steve, because I didn’t want him to think I was keeping something from and I also wanted someone to share in the “what are the odds”?!?! Because we were in the most random of areas, AND make a joke that the universe turned the weather so that we would leave the area before disaster struck.
After a bit of conversation and talking it through, I think Steve and I got to an okay place (it of course brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings for Steve), we got to the wedge. We picked up a few things, like half and half, sprouted bread, tea and crackers. After that we decided to head home.
Home was cooking dinner, which was a potato soup. For this soup I ended up using all of the remaining red bell peppers (pretty sure we bought 12), a bunch of potatoes and sooo many Roma tomatoes. While that cooked, Steve and I watched Hearthstone and played a game of rummikub, which I narrowly won after an entire game’s worth of being crazy behind.
We took the soup downstairs for more Hearthstone, and it was so hot for so long, lol. Finally we got to eat it and it was delicious, but a lot. It’s crazy how full liquids can make you. I bullied Steve into drinking all of his broth, to encourage water intake and flushing out his system. When he let his food settle enough he decided to play ITG. I think he had a decent day, he was playing some challenging songs the whole time, and some new ones we’d never seen before that seemed pretty neat.
I was working on knitting, but for some reason when I wound the ball I was using, there must have been a tangle that happened deep within the ball, because my yarn kept catching on itself and getting twisted. Instead of dealing with it and being more and more annoyed, I went to get to the root of the issue. Turns out something just went horribly horribly wrong, because I never did pinpoint on specific thing, and I ended up needing to cut the yarn because I needed to weave the yarn in and out of itself - it had just gotten so insanely twisted up! It took an hour and a half (aka the rest of my night) to resolve, but NOW the yarn is ready to be used nicely.
Also during the evening, after dinner, I gave Steve his anniversary gifts. As always, I had so much fun getting gifts for him. I like to vary it up between gifts on his Amazon or backloggery, unique gifts and gifts that are practical. For him this year, I got:
-tickets to a Final Fantasy music show that we’ve seen before, because it’s local and intimate
-new wallet, handmade from Etsy and Splatoon themed
-a new mug for his new job, with an Undertale theme
-a KitKat sampler from Japan, with really fun flavors
-the newest Kirby plush, ice Kirby (he’s trying to collect them all)
-a Hollow Knight figurine, super gorgeous and neat, also from Etsy
-a complete in box copy of Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones for GameBoy Advance. I was so damn excited for it because the box is like MINT, and I knew how much he’s been wanting this game.
-a card I ordered from Catana comics with a heartfelt message inside
He of course loved the gifts and was so happy about the card. We love giving gifts to each other and I’d been waiting SO long to give them! My big gift this year of course was this iPad I’m typing on, and I love it, but I know he was feeling a little weird about getting one big thing (he did the same thing at my birthday when he gave me my Apple Watch) because we’re so into these many thoughtful gift situations, but I am eternally happy about having both and it has just as much sentiment as the other ones. So much loooove.
We took our time waking up, and then I made us some smoothies following Rawvana’s 5-day plan. The smoothies are mostly “green” and I know Steve likes fruit smoothies, but I thought it would be fun if we followed the plan together for the week to jumpstart our health process. Guys, the smoothies are hilarious. They make 60 ounces of liquid. Howwww are we expected to drink that much at one time?? I hate consuming a lot of liquids at once, and if you take too long with smoothies, they get frothy and thick, almost chunky. Steve was able to get his down and then decided to go mow the lawn. I decided to get going on lunch and try to finish my smoothie. Lunch is a Mexican salad, and it’s really good when you actually measure the ingredients right. I had a mishap where I actually used way too much cumin for one set of the salads and it made for sooo much intense salty flavor. But it was all right. Even though Steve took over an hour on the lawn, I still wasn’t finished with my smoothie by the time he came in. He stood over me while I finished it (lol) and then we ate our salads. Other than the extreme saltiness, it was good!!
Next on our agenda was to go to Steven Be yarns, because they were having a 25% off everything sale. Steven himself was there, along with his mom, and she is a very old first-generation German immigrant. She even referred to her marriage as “I married an American”. She told a slightly awkward but funny story about how her friend or sister had encouraged her to buy Steven a Barbie doll, and she refused and bought him a truck that he never played with, so for his next holiday the friend bought him a Barbie, which he loved and played with and made clothes for. His mom had her own yarn shop and obviously passed all that down to him. They made a book together and it was really cute, but the items in there are too intense for me - extremely textured, chunky yarns, flamboyant colors and combinations. But the stories in there were pretty neat.
The thing that is just a little too much about Steven Be isn’t that the store is overwhelming with choices - because even though that’s true, I love seeing so many options and samples, it’s that everyone is trying to be so helpful that it feels like when you’re at a garage sale and the sellers are eyeballing you hard while you look at stuff and you feel a huge pressure, like they’re gonna take it personally if you don’t like everything. I ended up only buying one skein of yarn, a beautiful gradient that I wanted last time but was too expensive for a single skein at $61. With 25% off plus 2 more percent bonus, it was far more reasonable.
It was hot as as balls out, my car sitting at 103*, but we really wanted to do some Pokémon Go. This week’s Advneture Week, where you get crazy experience for spinning stops you’ve never visited, so we drove around that area of Minneapolis for quite some time to find stops. Oddly, we found a cemetery that was just FILLED with stops. Feeling a little weird, I drove in there and we slowly drove past the stops we could, but eventually we got out and walked around to get the rest. We marveled at some of the massive headstones, sculptures, and crypts that were there, noting that as people stopped being able to afford the luxury of headstones (or as cultural views of grave sites shifted), many more recent sites only have the small flat slab. It was an interesting way to spend a half hour! There’s even a gym in the cemetery?? Just seems a little inappropriate, but I’m not complaining too much, we got so much experience from that one area.
After that, we drove around a bit more, stopping at random place for more pokestops and debating whether or not to get ice cream. Initially we totally were going to and even came across a random ice cream shop, but literally when we were going that way, the weather changed to be ominous, windy and dark, and threaten rain.
So we finished the raid we were doing in Pokémon go and decided to head to The Wedge for a couple of things. As I was turning the car around, I saw a couple people walking down the street. My head thought, “oh, that looks like Aimee!” And it took a few seconds for me to realize Oh wait, that’s Pat with her! And THEN my brain started to panic, because we were turning around right in front of them and ohmygodwhatiftheylookintothecarwhatdowedothen?! Steve didn’t look up or over to see them, and they didn’t look into the car. We drove for a few blocks while my brain screamed with anxiety and adrenaline, and I debated whether to tell Steve. I made a basic pros and cons list, because I was the only one of the four of us who knew this happened, and what a crazy near-miss it was. We had JUST been on that street, and if we were 20 seconds later getting into the car or they were 20 seconds earlier, we would have walked right into each other. And it would have been the worst. I never want to run into either of them, anywhere. Too scary, too awkward, too terrible. In the end I decided to tell Steve, because I didn’t want him to think I was keeping something from and I also wanted someone to share in the “what are the odds”?!?! Because we were in the most random of areas, AND make a joke that the universe turned the weather so that we would leave the area before disaster struck.
After a bit of conversation and talking it through, I think Steve and I got to an okay place (it of course brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings for Steve), we got to the wedge. We picked up a few things, like half and half, sprouted bread, tea and crackers. After that we decided to head home.
Home was cooking dinner, which was a potato soup. For this soup I ended up using all of the remaining red bell peppers (pretty sure we bought 12), a bunch of potatoes and sooo many Roma tomatoes. While that cooked, Steve and I watched Hearthstone and played a game of rummikub, which I narrowly won after an entire game’s worth of being crazy behind.
We took the soup downstairs for more Hearthstone, and it was so hot for so long, lol. Finally we got to eat it and it was delicious, but a lot. It’s crazy how full liquids can make you. I bullied Steve into drinking all of his broth, to encourage water intake and flushing out his system. When he let his food settle enough he decided to play ITG. I think he had a decent day, he was playing some challenging songs the whole time, and some new ones we’d never seen before that seemed pretty neat.
I was working on knitting, but for some reason when I wound the ball I was using, there must have been a tangle that happened deep within the ball, because my yarn kept catching on itself and getting twisted. Instead of dealing with it and being more and more annoyed, I went to get to the root of the issue. Turns out something just went horribly horribly wrong, because I never did pinpoint on specific thing, and I ended up needing to cut the yarn because I needed to weave the yarn in and out of itself - it had just gotten so insanely twisted up! It took an hour and a half (aka the rest of my night) to resolve, but NOW the yarn is ready to be used nicely.
Also during the evening, after dinner, I gave Steve his anniversary gifts. As always, I had so much fun getting gifts for him. I like to vary it up between gifts on his Amazon or backloggery, unique gifts and gifts that are practical. For him this year, I got:
-tickets to a Final Fantasy music show that we’ve seen before, because it’s local and intimate
-new wallet, handmade from Etsy and Splatoon themed
-a new mug for his new job, with an Undertale theme
-a KitKat sampler from Japan, with really fun flavors
-the newest Kirby plush, ice Kirby (he’s trying to collect them all)
-a Hollow Knight figurine, super gorgeous and neat, also from Etsy
-a complete in box copy of Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones for GameBoy Advance. I was so damn excited for it because the box is like MINT, and I knew how much he’s been wanting this game.
-a card I ordered from Catana comics with a heartfelt message inside
He of course loved the gifts and was so happy about the card. We love giving gifts to each other and I’d been waiting SO long to give them! My big gift this year of course was this iPad I’m typing on, and I love it, but I know he was feeling a little weird about getting one big thing (he did the same thing at my birthday when he gave me my Apple Watch) because we’re so into these many thoughtful gift situations, but I am eternally happy about having both and it has just as much sentiment as the other ones. So much loooove.
It was a bit of a lazier day, getting up later but not too late, still before 11. Noah wanted to maximize his game time and probably ease the strain on his budget, so he requested a quick breakfast. They went out and got BK, and brought me home a bagel from Caribou. I really took my time easing into the day, reading PostSecret and journals/blogs, and getting my list for meal prep for this week. We agreed that beginning tomorrow we’re gonna tackle the correct eating HARD and I like to support us by finding delicious and not-too-complicated of recipes, though I’m still struggling to find enough food in a day to support a grown man vs an average-sized woman.
After I caught up on my entries, I went downstairs and joined the boys in the rest of the day of gaming. Steve continued to play random games, Noah continued to play Dragon Warrior 3, and I continued in Persona 5. Noah got to the almost end of his game, and I beat the second dungeon in Persona 5. We ordered a pizza a few hours before Noah had to go home, and Steve and I went to pick it up together. We of course then played a little Pokémon Go on the way. I kept my pizza consumption relatively low, 2 pieces of pizza and like 4 pieces of the breadsticks (they’re smaller). I always think about when I was growing up and we basically rationed our food - a Jack’s pizza with the fluffier crust would feed me, my mom and sister. Bethany and I would each get two pieces of pizza, and Mom would get 3, and if one of us was still hungry MAYBE they’d get the last piece, but we’d often either split it or Paul would eat it along with whatever he ended up eating. I think about how Mom was always only eating the 3 pieces and how I should also be fine with that many, not more, when eating pizza. Lol.
Eventually Noah randomly announced that it was time to go. He packed up his stuff, put the couch back where it goes, and we headed out. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced drinks (green tea lattes for me and Noah and an Americano for Steve) and hit the road. I finished the thumb on one of Mom’s gloves and spent the rest of the time telling the boys about memes and other things on my Facebook page.
We went to find a couple stops and a gym after dropping Noah off, because Steve had a Pokémon Go quest to spin stops he hadn’t before. That was fun. Oh hey, do you notice when my entries have the accent in the word Pokémon and when they don’t? That’s how you can tell whether I’m typing the entry up on my iPad or my work laptop - iPad autocorrects and the laptop doesn’t. :P
Steve and I talked a bit on the way home about how we’re feeling about the relationship, when Pat’s name comes up in conversation with friends and how it makes us feel, and what direction we feel like we are moving. It was a good conversation... we talked about striking the balance between moving on and not pretending like it didn’t happen, and how we are making the relationship stronger and some things we have noticed in the positive. I apologized again and tried to impress upon Steve just how much he means to me. We talked a little about how the other day he made some comments that I felt blindsided by and I had gotten really upset, and how we can handle the situation better moving forward.
Steve just notified me that he makes fun of me in his entry about being so hype for grocery shopping, so that’s cool, lol.
So after we got home Steve put on some Hearthstone and I entered in the recipes into MyFitnessPal. I also had been entering the food eaten this weekend and came up with 2400 calories per day for myself. Whoops. I should definitely be consuming between 1700 and 1900 per day, depending on if I’ve exercised. I KNOW I’ve been consuming at least this much on average, which would easily explain my weight gain. Not that I’m surprised in any way, and I’m sure there are plenty of days it gets even higher than that!
Seeing that info really helped me feel like it would be good to go for a walk. We didn’t take our whole route because Steve was getting some chafey legs, but we did about 3.5 miles. The local middle school just got a new playground installed at the end of last summer, and I’d only been there once with Haley and Steve hadn’t seen it at all, so we climbed the high tower and went down the slide, I pushed him in the fun slidey swing and we took turns on the rope swing. It was sooo fun. Then when we got to the field path, we saw the first fireflies of the season!!! Fireflies are so hype. They’re romantic and pretty and make it feel like you’re somewhere magical. In the peak of their season, the completely dark field (there are NO lights on in that area) is just lit up with sparkles. Steve showing me his firefly field is one of my most favorite memories of our relationship. Today it was like 10 fireflies, but they’ll get there.
I was more tired than I thought I would be once we got home, so we settled into bed after putting the groceries away, and watched Kripp play Hearthstone. All in all I’d say it was a solid day!
After I caught up on my entries, I went downstairs and joined the boys in the rest of the day of gaming. Steve continued to play random games, Noah continued to play Dragon Warrior 3, and I continued in Persona 5. Noah got to the almost end of his game, and I beat the second dungeon in Persona 5. We ordered a pizza a few hours before Noah had to go home, and Steve and I went to pick it up together. We of course then played a little Pokémon Go on the way. I kept my pizza consumption relatively low, 2 pieces of pizza and like 4 pieces of the breadsticks (they’re smaller). I always think about when I was growing up and we basically rationed our food - a Jack’s pizza with the fluffier crust would feed me, my mom and sister. Bethany and I would each get two pieces of pizza, and Mom would get 3, and if one of us was still hungry MAYBE they’d get the last piece, but we’d often either split it or Paul would eat it along with whatever he ended up eating. I think about how Mom was always only eating the 3 pieces and how I should also be fine with that many, not more, when eating pizza. Lol.
Eventually Noah randomly announced that it was time to go. He packed up his stuff, put the couch back where it goes, and we headed out. We stopped at Starbucks for some iced drinks (green tea lattes for me and Noah and an Americano for Steve) and hit the road. I finished the thumb on one of Mom’s gloves and spent the rest of the time telling the boys about memes and other things on my Facebook page.
We went to find a couple stops and a gym after dropping Noah off, because Steve had a Pokémon Go quest to spin stops he hadn’t before. That was fun. Oh hey, do you notice when my entries have the accent in the word Pokémon and when they don’t? That’s how you can tell whether I’m typing the entry up on my iPad or my work laptop - iPad autocorrects and the laptop doesn’t. :P
Steve and I talked a bit on the way home about how we’re feeling about the relationship, when Pat’s name comes up in conversation with friends and how it makes us feel, and what direction we feel like we are moving. It was a good conversation... we talked about striking the balance between moving on and not pretending like it didn’t happen, and how we are making the relationship stronger and some things we have noticed in the positive. I apologized again and tried to impress upon Steve just how much he means to me. We talked a little about how the other day he made some comments that I felt blindsided by and I had gotten really upset, and how we can handle the situation better moving forward.
Steve just notified me that he makes fun of me in his entry about being so hype for grocery shopping, so that’s cool, lol.
So after we got home Steve put on some Hearthstone and I entered in the recipes into MyFitnessPal. I also had been entering the food eaten this weekend and came up with 2400 calories per day for myself. Whoops. I should definitely be consuming between 1700 and 1900 per day, depending on if I’ve exercised. I KNOW I’ve been consuming at least this much on average, which would easily explain my weight gain. Not that I’m surprised in any way, and I’m sure there are plenty of days it gets even higher than that!
Seeing that info really helped me feel like it would be good to go for a walk. We didn’t take our whole route because Steve was getting some chafey legs, but we did about 3.5 miles. The local middle school just got a new playground installed at the end of last summer, and I’d only been there once with Haley and Steve hadn’t seen it at all, so we climbed the high tower and went down the slide, I pushed him in the fun slidey swing and we took turns on the rope swing. It was sooo fun. Then when we got to the field path, we saw the first fireflies of the season!!! Fireflies are so hype. They’re romantic and pretty and make it feel like you’re somewhere magical. In the peak of their season, the completely dark field (there are NO lights on in that area) is just lit up with sparkles. Steve showing me his firefly field is one of my most favorite memories of our relationship. Today it was like 10 fireflies, but they’ll get there.
I was more tired than I thought I would be once we got home, so we settled into bed after putting the groceries away, and watched Kripp play Hearthstone. All in all I’d say it was a solid day!
