Rainbow Dragon's Lair

[Deadoks]

I have a headache reading all that nape problem things... I only have one name and family name andnit's perfect.
My grandfather broke the chain of the use of the same name for all man in the family because of such problem he had sometime. Only the middle name were different.
Bless him!
So all ancestor are called "Henri + family name + middle name" wtf... He changes it by switching for my father that is "Marc + family name + middle name Henri" as middle name are not official and used it's way easier for my father and his 3 brothers. For me my father just dropped the Henri as he doesn't like it.

 

[Mianevem]

I use my second given name too (I can't call it my middle name because we use the Eastern name order), but I've never had too many problems with it. That might only be because the reason my parents decided on this order was that it... sounded better. So my name isn't too long, and it's rhytmical, so clerks don't get it wrong either. Sometimes people who've only seen my name written down but haven't yet been introduced to me call me by my first name, but such misunderstandings are easily cleared. It helps that even in official emails, I state my full name in the introduction, but only sign it with the name I actually use.

 

[graoumia]

I have a headache reading all that nape problem things... I only have one name and family name andnit's perfect.
My grandfather broke the chain of the use of the same name for all man in the family because of such problem he had sometime. Only the middle name were different.
Bless him!
So all ancestor are called "Henri + family name + middle name" wtf... He changes it by switching for my father that is "Marc + family name + middle name Henri" as middle name are not official and used it's way easier for my father and his 3 brothers. For me my father just dropped the Henri as he doesn't like it.

My grand father was named henri but he only had daughters, so no more henri here. Such a mess with names, even before birth of the children, most of the time we kept it secret

 

[Desa]

Names are fun. I was born in a different country than the one I grew up. Birth country has the habit of conferring both parent's family names upon the baby, so too with me. Luckily that never gave legal problems, since it is just an extra family name around here. My first name is the one people call me by.

 

[Maegaranthelas]

My grand father was named henri but he only had daughters, so no more henri here. Such a mess with names, even before birth of the children, most of the time we kept it secret

I guess you're all lucky he didn't go for Henriëtte xD

I once met a girl who's name was Hansje. Her dad's name was Hans. It honestly makes me kind of angry. That may have been a common naming convention a century ago, but naming your daughter 'little me' is gross in my mind and makes me think you'd rather have had a son :')

Watching trends in naming conventions can be really fun though. In the past decade a surprising amount of people nearby have passed on the regular flower names (Jasmijn, Roos, Iris) and just called their daughter Flower (Bloem)

 

[graoumia]

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

@Nevetharine I am sorry your family gives you grief about your name. In my book, trying to exert influence over any human being who is not yourself regarding the name that human being chooses to use to identify themselves in the world is BS. (The only exception being babies who have not yet matured enough to choose for themselves.) Stirring up grief for someone who is adopted and trying to honour their family of origin in their name is especially heinous.

I don't use my legal name socially or professionally. I write under the name Laura Rainbow Dragon. My friends know me as Laura Rainbow Dragon. This upset my parents for a long time--especially my father, though I think he had more or less come to terms with it in the end.

My legal surname is very common in Canada. The name Laura is also very common here. My legal first name is more common in England. (The reason my parents addressed me by my middle name in fact is because close friends of theirs have a daughter who is four months older than me, and they gave her the same first name as my parents gave me.) When I was in uni there was a woman with the same first and last names as me who lived in the same residence building as I did. Mail delivery sometimes screwed up and sent me her mail. When I worked in film production in the Toronto area there was another woman who worked in the same department as I did with the same middle name and last name as me. I have thus far only identified one other person in Canada who had the same full legal name as I do, and she is many years dead at this point. But even there I was not unique.

There's only one Laura Rainbow Dragon though. I've never found a reference to Laura Rainbow Dragon that wasn't referring to me!

I have considered changing my name legally. But it's not an inexpensive process. When I was younger, I couldn't afford to do it. By the time I could, 911 had happened, and people were more suspicious. I thought having a name change on my record could potentially cause me problems if someone were to do a background check on me and be weirded out by the name change. (I freely tell people why I use the name Laura Rainbow Dragon. It's no big secret. But still it upsets some people.) At this point I think a legal name change would definitely be more hassle than it's worth. My friends respect the name I choose to use. Everyone else doesn't matter. With writing it is common to use a nom de plume. So it's never been an issue there. Most of the time, using my legal name for legal matters and my chosen name for everything else works. (When people actually listen to me and use the name I've asked them to use!)

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

the reason my parents decided on this order was that it... sounded better.

That was my parents' excuse too. But I wish they'd made Laura my legal first name. The phonetic flow of my name is irrelevant since no one ever addresses me by my full legal name. My parents certainly never did! (They got upset when I started university and tried to switch to using my first name too--even though it was still one of the names they had given me!)

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

I guess we can at least all be thankful none of our parents named us X Æ A-Xii !

 

[graoumia]

I guess we can at least all be thankful none of our parents named us X Æ A-Xii !

Yes, it is a positive way of thinking It can always be worse

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 14:

60 Days of HIIT: day 9
Power Hold: day off
Ankle Recovery: 2 x DP, calf raises one-legged
Talk to the Hand: DP (each side where applicable)
Hand Tendons: 2 x DP
running: day off
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

Was late getting out with Shelby for our walk this day, due to dealing with the banking fiasco (plus other chores done this day). I was ready for dinner after our walk, and don't much enjoy running late in the evening during the winter. So I decided to skip my run this day and finally do Day 9 of 60DoH instead. Which I could have just done on Level 1 at any point really, to get it over with. I could add 3 minutes of cardio on top of anything. I'm just still in a "so long as I do something" kind of frame of mind. Life is stressful enough right now, due to the whole soon-going-to-lose-my-home situation. And yes, I have a solution that will keep me off the street. But it's still going to be a HUGE adjustment, result in significant losses (but also significant gains), and require a lot of work to make happen. So I'm just not putting pressure on myself re: less dire matters at the moment. I did a workout this day. And Shelby got her walk. That's good enough

writing: craft study
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 20,596
story-a-week challenge: 4 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 4 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 2008
consumable YTD: 48,697
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 91,080
deficit: 42,383

A short day on the writing work front. I got lots of other things done though. Dishes. Laundry. Didn't accomplish what I'd hoped to accomplish re: the banking, but at least I got started the process of fixing the problem that is preventing me from moving forward on that front. Also did a bunch of food prep: rice, quinoa, tuna salad, a curry. Today's curry involved using up more stuff from the pantry. A mango chicken cooking sauce. (Don't know why that was in there. My mother would never buy anything curry. And I wouldn't normally buy a mild curry, which this sauce was. Possibly it was a gift from a friend.) Canned waxed beans. Canned hearts of palm. Canned water chestnuts. Plus chicken from the freezer. The hearts of palm were way too salty. (I tried to rinse them off. But they were still too salty.) The waxed beans were pretty much tasteless. The water chestnuts were fine, and the chicken. I also added onions, ground coriander, and a large spoonful of ground cayenne. The end result is edible enough, and I guess all of the tasteless vegetables add least add some fibre. I've run out of freezer leftovers now. So I'm thinking I will try to make Cooking Day a regular one-day-a-week thing. When I'm walking Shelby until 5 or 5:30 PM and then doing my run after, I'm too hungry to cook something from scratch afterward. Doing all of my food prep on one day, and then having leftovers to eat throughout the week, worked well for me when I was cooking just for myself in the past. So I'm going to try to go back to that now.

French: Netflix

Today my brother asked me to cancel the Netflix subscription. I guess he has decided our mother is not likely to recover well enough to be able to benefit from it anymore.

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 102
Consecutive days of French study: 1184
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 21

 

[Mianevem]

I guess we can at least all be thankful none of our parents named us X Æ A-Xii !

Yes, it's certainly better to be named after your father than after your father's favourite aircraft.

 

[Sólveig]

I guess we can at least all be thankful none of our parents named us X Æ A-Xii !

I have bad news for you: Venezuelan names are even worse than that. In fact, I can tell you right now that we are not very different from the good ol' conquistadors themselves. The issue is that, instead of putting the entire population of a town, we combine all the names into one, creating some unique things that defy all languages known on Earth. It is especially worse by the names that pretend to be English in origin, but they're not, they just sound English. A comedian joked that we have a million ways of writing the name "Stephanie," including numbers and "at" symbols (you know, the '@'). Vladi1000 (a mispronounciation of Vladimir; it replaces the last R with an L, so it is "Vladimil," and "mil" is the number 1000 in Spanish) became a meme back in the day because a couple of kids got in a fight, and the kid filming the whole thing said at one point "¡Na güevoná, Vladimil!" and it became a joke in the country. And if we go back to the comedian, he also said (I don't know if this is true or not) that some people, as he went around asking people's names and stuff, in one of his shows, these people laughed way too much, and he noticed it. At the end of the show, he chased them and asked them what is it that they hid. One of their parties was called "Nomis Ravilob." He didn't put much attention to it, and even said that's a Slav name, but they said nope. "Nomis Ravilob" is "Simón Bolívar" backwards.

I could tell you all about Superman Ramón too, and yes, that's a real person.

 

[graoumia]

It is crazy

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

not very different from the good ol' conquistadors themselves.

Good grief!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 15:

60 Days of HIIT: day 10
Power Hold: day off
Sore Feet: 2 x DP, did the calf raises one-legged
Wrist Pain: DP (each side where applicable)
Hand Tendons: 2 x DP
running: day off - too windy!
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

writing: business history
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 20,596
story-a-week challenge: 4 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 4 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1480
consumable YTD: 50,177
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 93,104
deficit: 42,927

Did a bunch of writing this day that does not count for either of my challenges (because it was private writing). I let myself get into an unhelpful headspace this day, so did a couple of hours of journalling to pull myself out of that.

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 103
Consecutive days of French study: 1185
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 22

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

It turns out the person who requested the Star Trek: Picard discs after me requested discs 1 & 2, not discs 3 & 4 as I had thought.

When the library purchases television show series, they break each season up such that only 2 discs are together in each case. In the case of Star Trek: Picard, season 3 contains 4 discs. So one can sign out discs 1 & 2, or discs 3 & 4. One can sign out all 4 discs at once, but this counts as two separate items. (Which is a non-issue. The library lets me sign out 50 items at once, or something ridiculous like that.) One simply has to request the first two discs, then go back to the same item in the catalogue and add another request for the third and fourth discs. Which I had done. Because when I requested the discs, the system was showing that all four were available and on the shelf in a different library branch. There were no other requests in the system except for mine. But when the discs were pulled, only discs 3 & 4 were sent to me. Discs 1 & 2 were signed out to someone else.

Say what?

Yeah. Someone had grabbed discs 1 & 2 after I had placed my request, and the library holding the discs had allowed them to be signed out to that other person. Which is not supposed to happen. But mistakes get made. Anyhow...

Discs 3 & 4 came to me first. And I let them sit on the hold shelf until discs 1 & 2 were returned by the other person and transferred to my branch, so I could sign out all 4 discs at the same time. (The sign-out period for DVDs is only one week. But one can also let items sit on the hold shelf for a week before picking them up, and at my branch usually a bit longer than a week, because the staff are slow to pull items that have been held for too long to put them back into circulation.) I had assumed that the request that came in for the season 3 discs after mine was from the same person who'd jumped the queue and grabbed discs 1 & 2 ahead of me, who had then later requested discs 3 & 4. (From the patron end of the catalogue we cannot see which specific discs were requested. Only the number of holds for discs from that season.) But no. It was a request for the first two discs in the season.

If one hasn't returned an item within a couple of days of its due date, the library system here now automatically renews it for you. I was surprised to see yesterday that my sign-out of discs 3 & 4 had been renewed, but not my sign-out of discs 1 & 2. So now I have an extra week to re-watch the back end of the season. -- But only until Tuesday morning if I want to re-watch the first 6 episodes. So I still need to get my but in gear and get my writing done early this weekend if that is going to happen!

And yes: this is how sad my life is these days, that getting to keep a couple of video discs I've already watched for an extra week is what excites me now. I will be very happy to finally get out of this town--even if I end up (as I most likely will) couch-surfing for a time.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 16:

60 Days of HIIT: day off
Power Hold: day off
running: 3 km
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

writing: business webinar
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 20,596
story-a-week challenge: 4 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 4 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1878
consumable YTD: 52,055
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 95,128
deficit: 43,073

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 104
Consecutive days of French study: 1186
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 23

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 17:

60 Days of HIIT: day 11
Power Hold: day off
Posture: 2 x DP
Ankle Recovery: 2 x DP, calf raises one-legged
Talk to the Hand: DP (each side where applicable)
Hand Tendons: 2 x DP
running: day off - too cold
hiking: 6 km with Shelby, 1.5 km errands

Last weekend one of Shelby's dog-walking friends had told us he'd seen a Great Blue Heron on the sports fields behind our local high school. We do get them in town sometimes, because there is an (albeit small) area of suitable habitat for them at the storm water pond and mini-marsh at the south end of town. A high school football field isn't such great habitat though. And a heron hanging out in such a location is a bird rather more habituated to human environs than is good for it.

On this day, Shelby and I saw the heron for ourselves. This time it was standing around on the front lawn of a house in the subdivision we walk through. When we got too close for comfort, the bird did fly off--so it at least appears not to be injured. It only flew so far as the roof of a backyard shed on a property a couple of houses away. Not sure why this bird seems determined to hang out in a suburban environment. It's not an ideal place for it at all. I hope it will be okay. Great Blue Herons are magnificent birds.

writing: research, craft study, short story
new fiction words: 507
fiction YTD: 21,103
story-a-week challenge: 4 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 4 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 607
consumable YTD: 52,662
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 97,152
deficit: 44,490

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 105
Consecutive days of French study: 1187
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 24

 

[Maegaranthelas]

Mum and I were once walking through town and stopped when we noticed some people had put a very nice heron statue by their ornamental fish pond.
And then it ate a fish xD
We both giggle every time we walk past that house

 

[graoumia]

Mum and I were once walking through town and stopped when we noticed some people had put a very nice heron statue by their ornamental fish pond.
And then it ate a fish xD
We both giggle every time we walk past that house

Last weekend one of Shelby's dog-walking friends had told us he'd seen a Great Blue Heron on the sports fields behind our local high school. We do get them in town sometimes, because there is an (albeit small) area of suitable habitat for them at the storm water pond and mini-marsh at the south end of town. A high school football field isn't such great habitat though. And a heron hanging out in such a location is a bird rather more habituated to human environs than is good for it.

On this day, Shelby and I saw the heron for ourselves. This time it was standing around on the front lawn of a house in the subdivision we walk through. When we got too close for comfort, the bird did fly off--so it at least appears not to be injured. It only flew so far as the roof of a backyard shed on a property a couple of houses away. Not sure why this bird seems determined to hang out in a suburban environment. It's not an ideal place for it at all. I hope it will be okay. Great Blue Herons are magnificent birds.

We had exactly the same experience on a beach in Martinique, i was really wondering if it was a real heron or not, i was chasing a crab, moving very slowly. And we also met this guy, at the same place, this article say that this green heron is used to come everyday at this place of the zoo :

https://www.facebook.com/zoodemartinique/photos/a.592564287552362/2403704079771698

And here we can see some heron around too. I like them

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

@Maegaranthelas @graoumia yes, herons are expected where there are fish. This one has been hanging out in neighbourhoods without ponds though. And this time of year the herps are all hibernating, and the insects are too. Great Blue Herons will reportedly eat small mammals. But those are harder to find in the winter here too. This guy must be finding something to eat. But I don't know what or where.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 18:

60 Days of HIIT: day 12
Power Hold: day off
running: day off - too cold
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

A wimpy day on the workout front. But at least I did something.

writing: research, short story
new fiction words: 2986
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 3320
consumable YTD: 55,982
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 99,176
deficit: 43,194

Got my story for week #5 finished and turned in with 2.5 hours to spare. I need to start doing better on this front! Also: this was supposed to be a fun super-hero story--total fantasy! And yet it ended up being a research-heavy project. Leave it to me to go down the research rabbit hole (or short-tailed shrew hole, in this case) for a superhero story!

My wordcount for the week was short again, but at least an improvement over previous weeks. I will get there!

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT - far, far too late! I need to do better on this.

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 106
Consecutive days of French study: 1188
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 25

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 19:

60 Days of HIIT: day 13
Power Hold: day off
running: day off - weather was fine. I was just too tired on account of staying up late Sunday night.
hiking: 7.5 km with Shelby

This was a holiday. So Shelby and I went out for our main walk in the morning. We were a bit late getting out for the morning crowd. But we still saw several of Shelby's friends.

writing: craft study, story planning
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 702
consumable YTD: 56,684
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 101,200
deficit: 44,516

Spent far too long this day trying to re-locate some video lectures I knew I had on heist fiction (which I had listened to previously but not paid too much attention to at the time, since I wasn't considering writing heist at that point in time). I did find them. And they were helpful for planning the story I want to write this week. But the search meant I stayed up far too late again last night.

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT - far, far too late! I need to do better on this.

I'm going to try to push through today and stay awake until reasonably close to a normal lights out time, in the hope of resetting to my normal schedule tomorrow.

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 107
Consecutive days of French study: 1189
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 26

 

[NancyTree]

Good to hear about your mom's transfer!

And about the name thing: my parents named me by my 3rd name. I always use my legal 1st name for vacation and stuff, because no one understands the difference between first name, and litteral 1st name.
Also, my initials together make a Dutch men's name, so when I came to a new GP, he called me from the waiting room as Mister ...

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 20 update on my mother:

The doctor who did her intake assessment in the new hospital said she arrived there in worse condition than the previous hospital had described. When my brother saw her, he too thought she was in worse condition than when he had seen her two days previously in the other hospital.

The last time my brother saw her in the previous hospital, he had spent over an hour trying to feed her and got her to eat about half a cup of an enriched frozen dessert. The doctor in the new hospital did not think she could swallow safely and wanted to put an NG-tube back in.

She is back in isolation now. The reason my brother was given this time was that she had tested positive for a MRSA.

My brother does not think she has recognized him since she has been in the hospital near him. Most of the time she is asleep. When she is awake, she only half opens her eyes. But at one point on Saturday she appeared to be more alert, so he asked her if she knew who he was. She indicated no. He told her who he was, but she appeared not to comprehend the information.

The new hospital is still assessing her so has not offered much in the way of opinion yet. They are still searching for a cause of her low level of consciousness. They have done a CAT scan (testing for seizures) and will do an EEG today or tomorrow. They are also testing for both a UTI and constipation. Both issues can cause cognitive problems in elderly patients. (I saw this first hand in my father several times. He experienced multiple UTIs which rendered him fully psychotic.)

My brother reports that it is much easier for him to connect with our mother's doctors in the new hospital since he is able to visit there in the morning when they are doing their rounds.

 

[Maegaranthelas]

I am so sorry your mother's health is in a shambles again.
But thank goodness your brother can now actually get information from the doctors!
I would lose the plot if I had been given so much contradictory and vague information as at the last place.

 

[MadamMeow]

Really sorry for your family. Hoping the new location will help make some things easier at least.

 

[Nevetharine]

 

[Fremen]

 

[PetiteSheWolf]

HUgs for the not encouraging news, but better communication, and check / recheck is good. Thinking of you, your brother, your mom regularly.

 

[Anek]

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Thank you:
@Maegaranthelas
@MadamMeow
@Nevetharine
@Fremen
@PetiteSheWolf
@Anek

I don't know if the hospital transfer will have any impact on our mother one way or the other. But it is clearly better for my brother and his family to have her there. And I think she is being given the best possible chance now. That's all we can ask for.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 20:

60 Days of HIIT: day off
Power Hold: day off
Posture: 2 x DP
Sore Feet: 2 x DP, did the calf raises one-legged
Wrist Pain: DP (each side where applicable)
Hand Tendons: 2 x DP
running: 3 km
hiking: 6 km with Shelby, 4 km errands

writing: genre history, story planning
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1360
consumable YTD: 58,044
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 103,224
deficit: 45,180

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

A short day on the work front, due to the need to catch up on missed sleep, plus a grocery run. On the other hand: I bought a bunch of healthy food, didn't buy any junk (not even the potato chips that were on sale!), and I got my sleep schedule almost back on track. So a good day overall.

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 108
Consecutive days of French study: 1190
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 27

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 23 update on my mother:

Her consciousness level has improved some since she arrived in the new hospital. But it's still worse than the last time my brother saw her in the previous hospital. She reportedly occasionally speaks single words now ("hello" or "no"). But my brother was there for 90 minutes today, and she did not speak to him. (Her eyes were open when he arrived. But she later fell asleep. I don't know for how long she was actually awake while he was there.)

The new hospital has assessed her swallowing again and decided it is safe for her to have puréed food. But they are not expecting her to take all of her nutrition or fluids that way. So she is having some food by mouth now, but also is being fed via the new NG-tube.

None of the tests the new hospital did showed any reasons for concern. Which means we still don't know what is causing her current low level of consciousness. It could be there was a problem, which has since cleared up, and she is improving now as a result. Or it could be these are just fluctuations around her new baseline. She tested negative for infections. She tested negative for seizures. (But they are keeping her on an anti-seizure med in case something is going on that they were not able to detect.)

There's still no prognosis or recommendations from the new hospital, since they don't have enough data to go on yet.
So we wait.

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 21:

60 Days of HIIT: day 14
Power Hold: day off
Posture: 2 x DP
Ankle Recovery: 2 x DP, calf raises one-legged
Talk to the Hand: DP (each side where applicable)
Hand Tendons: 2 x DP
running: day off
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

It was late by the time Shelby and I got out for our walk. Too late to see any of the usual suspects on the trail behind the school. But we did meet up with her puppy friend Lily on the fit park trail. And on the way home we saw Bingo (the dog that now lives in the house that used to belong to the elderly lady who both Trudy and Shelby used to visit). Poor Bingo is a young dog who very much wants to be friends with Shelby. But Shelby does not pay attention to him at all. When I told Bingo's human the reason why Shelby is so interested in his house (because the elderly lady used to give her treats!) he decided to start bringing treats out for Shelby too. Fortunately this does not happen every day. The new home owner is a much younger guy with a life that doesn't revolve around waiting for my dog to visit him. Most of the time when we walk past his house, he's not even home. But when we do see him, Shelby is fixated on him, waiting for her treat. And she ignores poor Bingo.

By the time we'd finished our walk it was dusk, and the wind this day was bitingly cold, and I was still tired from having messed up my sleep schedule on the weekend. So running did not happen. I did, however, get a bunch of food prep done (black bean brownies, banana muffins, chia pudding), and I washed most of the dishes that had piled up.

writing: craft study
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 252
consumable YTD: 58,296
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 105,248
deficit: 46,952

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 109
Consecutive days of French study: 1191
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 28

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 22:

60 Days of HIIT: day 15
Power Hold: day off
running: day off
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

This was not the best day on the weather front. Rain came and went, and the forecast was not up to date on when it would be raining and when it would be dry. Shelby and I ended up getting out late for our walk again as a result. We did not meet up with any of her usual friends, but she did make a new friend: a small white dog who was very friendly who was out for some exercise in the yard of an apartment building that we walk past.

Due to the late hour, and fog that was thick enough to significantly affect visibility, I once again skipped my run.

writing: craft study
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 0
consumable YTD: 58,296
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 107,272
deficit: 48,976

Zero words written this day. But I did spend almost 5 hours on craft study. Not all of that was useful. (The instructor has a tendency to ramble and did so a LOT in some of the videos I watched this day.) But I did get the information I wanted out of it.

I also got some more cooking done this day. Made a huge pot of chili with garlic, onions, tomatoes, six types of beans, carrots, cayenne, and Italian herbs. Yum! I also made chickpea zucchini nuggets and cooked a pot of rice. I was going to make some naan bread. But then I decided garlic naan bread would be so much better. So instead I roasted a garlic in preparation for making the bread another day. I also got through the remainder of my dishes backlog (plus all the new dishes I dirtied from the past two days' cooking).

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Evidently I had not recovered from my late nights on Sunday and Monday, because I ended up crashing in the afternoon and taking a long nap. Which then resulted in my not getting to bed on time this night either.

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 110
Consecutive days of French study: 1192
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 29

 

[Lady Celerity]

You're making some smart food choices, Laura, well done. You've inspired me to get back on track with mine. Praying for you, your mom and brother.

 

[CODawn]

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Thank you @Lady Celerity & @CODawn .

@Lady Celerity I am certainly trying on the food front. The universe may be knocking me around on other fronts, but good health is one blessing I still have in spades. So I do what I can to protect it!

February 23:

60 Days of HIIT: day off
Power Hold: day off
51 side jacks for @Fremen 's birthday
21 lunge step-ups for @roman 's birthday
running: 3 km
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

The temperature dropped rapidly this day. So I got out for my run early and then Shelby and I made sure to get out for our walk right on time. The wind was fierce. But we were brave!

writing: business webinar
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1053
consumable YTD: 59,349
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 109,296
deficit: 49,947

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 111
Consecutive days of French study: 1193
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 30

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 24:

60 Days of HIIT: day 16
Power Hold: day off
Posture: 2 x DP
Sore Feet: 2 x DP, did the calf raises one-legged
Wrist Pain: DP (each side where applicable)
Hand Tendons: 2 x DP
running: day off
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

Shelby and I went out late afternoon for our walk, even though it was a Saturday. Most of Shelby's friends meet up in the park behind the school mid-morning on weekends. But it was bitterly cold in the morning, and had warmed up to a windchill of only -8 by late afternoon. And I am a wimp about the weather. We still had a nice walk though. We met up with Shelby's spaniel friends Bailey and Casey in the subdivision, and a new golden friend, Molly in the woodlot. Molly was sweet (unsurprisingly for a golden) but her human is unfortunately a BDO. (There was a big pile of on the woodlot trail that had not been there when we'd entered the trail, and there weren't any other dogs on the trail at that time except for Shelby and Molly. DOs like Molly's piss me off. There's a freaking garbage can right at the trail head! Scooping the poop is not too much to ask!)

No run this day, due to the cold temperature, and it being late in the day by the time things warmed up. Plus I had a lot of video content to watch for genre research (which I was able to watch during most of my DAREBEE w/o, but obviously would not have been able to watch while out running).

writing: genre research (mostly watching films, but a bit of reading)
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 24,089
story-a-week challenge: 5 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 5 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1074
consumable YTD: 60,423
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 111,320
deficit: 50,897

I did a lot of writing work over the course of the week. But did not write any actual story words yet. Which is not a great pattern. Research and learning is good. But not at the expense of actual writing! Something to work on for next week. In the meantime, Sunday will be a push now to get my story for this week written. (Which is another sort of practice, I suppose, at building a skill that's not at all bad to have--even if it's not so much fun to have to use it.)

I also did a bunch more cooking this day. Made another chicken curry with the last of my cooking sauces (a Madras sauce this time, so nice and spicy) plus more canned vegetables: water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, asparagus. (Goodness knows whatever possessed my mother to buy canned asparagus!--Okay. I do know. She was lazy and did not like to do work to prepare vegetables. She liked the asparagus that I cooked. But she complained every time, because I roast the spears whole, forcing her to have to cut them up to eat them.) The tinned water chestnuts and bamboo shoots still have some nice crunch to them. The asparagus is unsurprisingly mushy and tasteless. But I'm sure it still has some nutritional value. And the curry overall is fine. I also made chocolate orange cranberry scones and tofu onion quiche. So I'm well set for food now and can just eat leftovers on Sunday and concentrate on my writing.

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 112
Consecutive days of French study: 1194
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 31

 

[Deadoks]

x50

for you(r mother)!

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Thank you @Deadoks .

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 25:

60 Days of HIIT: day 17
Power Hold: day off
running: day off
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

Shelby made a new friend: a pug named Charlie.
I did not run because the wind was bitter, and I had too much work still to do on my writing.

writing: short story
new fiction words: 5428
fiction YTD: 29,517
story-a-week challenge: 6 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 6 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 6045
consumable YTD: 66,468
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 113,344
deficit: 46,876

Whelp. I finished story #6 for my story-a-week challenge with ~ 95 minutes to spare. I think this was my latest finish yet.
It was a tough slog to get finished due to the day being so long. (I was awake for over 20 hours this day. I ate an entire extra meal and then some to help me stay awake so long.)

I spent a lot of time this past week studying a new-to-me genre with the intention of writing my story for the week in that genre.
I did not quite succeed at that. But I did write a story I'm happy with and create a new story world and a bunch of new characters I'm interested in exploring further. So win there.
As for the new genre: I will keep working on learning it. Just at a more manageable pace that doesn't push all of my actual writing words work to the end of the week!

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Got up early for gaming with @'rin and @sleep_twitch .
Went to bed way late due to working late on my story.

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 113
Consecutive days of French study: 1195
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 32

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 26:

60 Days of HIIT: day 18
Power Hold: day off
running: day off
hiking: 6 km with Shelby

The weather was pretty nice during the afternoon this day. But I had messed things up with my antics the day before. I needed sleep! Also: my body is pretty good at digesting reasonable amounts of most things that are GRAS for human consumption. For example: I can eat 1/8 of a batch of black bean brownies a day, every day, for weeks on end and have no issues. However, eating 1/4 of a batch of brownies, plus two slices of tofu quiche, plus tofu chia pudding, plus baked beans, plus chili all on the same day did not make my digestive tract very happy. So Shelby's walk happened late this day (after dark) and running did not happen at all. It's nice to have multiple options for healthy food in my kitchen. But I really need to work a few more items into the rotation that do not include beans!

writing: genre research, also decided some things re: my next short story, but did not start on the actual words yet
new fiction words: 0
fiction YTD: 29,517
story-a-week challenge: 6 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 6 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 509
consumable YTD: 66,976
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 115,368
deficit: 48,392

A short day on the writing front, mostly due to needing to catch up on sleep. I already have a plan for this week's short story, however. And this day I decided on who should be the POV character--who's not someone who I had initially thought of as using as a POV character in this series at all. But I think he's the perfect choice for this story, and giving him some time in the POV chair will help me to flesh the character out more.

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Another late night, unfortunately, due to so much sleeping during the day. I really need to do better on my deadlines so I'm not trashing my sleep schedule to meet them anymore.

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 114
Consecutive days of French study: 1196
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 33

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

February 27:

60 Days of HIIT: day off
Power Hold: day off
running: 3 km
hiking: 6 km with Shelby, 1.5 km errands

Double digit temperatures this day. I think it got up as high as 17C at one point! Shelby and I waited until our usual weekday time to go for our walk, in the hopes of meeting up with friends behind the school. No one was there though. It was still 15C by that point, yet we had the whole park to ourselves. Ah well. Shelby and I still had a nice walk. And on our way home we did meet up with Buddy and the two Pomeranians who live on our block. One of the Poms is old and grumpy and does not like Shelby. But the other one (the smaller one, who's even smaller than the cat and would basically be a two-bite brownie for Shelby to eat) LOVES Shelby. She goes nuts when she sees us, barking and sneezing and running about and jumping up to kiss Shelby on the face. The Poms' human calls the small one Lacey. But I call her Flibbertigibbet.

writing: short story, genre research, craft study
new fiction words: 998
fiction YTD: 30,515
story-a-week challenge: 6 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 6 of 54 completed
new consumable words: 1388
consumable YTD: 68,364
target YTD for 2024 words a day in 2024: 117,392
deficit: 49,028

Started writing my short story for the week. I had planned for this to be a story about how the final member of the team joins the team, told from the POV of one of the original team members. But it turned out the POV character for this story wanted to talk a lot about his own backstory and how he and his sister joined the team. And that story got the flavour of this week's story a lot closer to what I'm going for for these characters. So now I'm thinking perhaps everyone will end up getting an origin story. We shall see.

French: Netflix

GOBOT
GBOT

Streaks:

Consecutive days of working out: 115
Consecutive days of French study: 1197
Consecutive days of no solo gaming before work: 34

 

[Nevetharine]

17C is NOT high. Lol. I'd freeze over and die.

Well, maybe not. It gets -6C here, but by then I'm stuffed up with sweaters like an alaskan and I just shiver in a bundle in the corner.

 

[Deadoks]

17C is NOT high. Lol. I'd freeze over and die.

At 17°C I'm out in the garden sipping a fresh tea on the terrasse wearing a short sleeve shirt and thinking if I should put the swimming pool out and fill it with water

 

[Nevetharine]

At 17°C I'm out in the garden sipping a fresh tea on the terrasse wearing a short sleeve shirt and thinking if I should put the swimming pool out and fill it with water

Try that in 41°C. Which is more my kind of weather. My body only starts getting warm at around 37°C

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

17C is NOT high. Lol. I'd freeze over and die.

17C is very high for Ontario in February. It's not a record. But it is rare for it to get that warm here in the winter.

At 17°C I'm out in the garden sipping a fresh tea on the terrasse wearing a short sleeve shirt and thinking if I should put the swimming pool out and fill it with water

Yup!

Try that in 41°C. Which is more my kind of weather. My body only starts getting warm at around 37°C

Here, at 41C, if you have air conditioning you call any of your neighbours who don't have AC and invite them to come over and sit in your house so they don't die.
If you don't have AC yourself, and you don't have any friends with AC who invite you over, you go to a public place that does have AC, like a library or shopping mall and spend your day there.

At 41C Environment Canada issues Extreme Heat Warnings telling everyone to get the frak out of anyplace that does not have AC and go somewhere that does. They tell you to keep your children inside, refrain from doing any physical labour outside, check on your elderly relatives to ensure they have not died of heatstroke, and assist anyone who may need help in getting to an air conditioned location to do so. Hospital emergency departments go on alert to prepare for the influx of heatstroke patients they are going to get. 41C is considered a dangerous health hazard here.