Too Much Etsy For Christmas! :p

I just checked in on our primary Etsy account and saw that, on it alone, Sean and I made over $6k more in sales so far this December than last December. We also made over 1/3 of our annual Etsy income in the past 24 days. Etsy is supposed to be one of our smaller side hustles, yet it seems to have taken up quite a bit of time lately. On top of everything else, it's looking rather apparent why I've felt so short on time lately. 😆 The sales have finally chilled now though, and I'm BEYOND ready to celebrate the holidays in peace! Hope you all have an equally relaxing, comfortable Christmas and are able to make the most of this end to 2020! 

Supernatural is Over: The End of An Era

Sean and I finished the last episode of Supernatural last week or so, soo...what is life now?

Thanks^2 to Daniel Gonzales for the sweater!! 

#carryonmywaywardson

I Just Read Robinson Crusoe — First Time in Twenty Years

My childhood nemesis, finally taken down!

When I was in 6th grade (around 11 years old), determined to expand my vocabulary, I inserted this book between my nonfiction extracurricular reading selections. (I was a total Hermoine type back then.) At my school at that time, students were able to earn bonus points of a sort for passing quizzes on whichever books from the school's vast library selection they elected to take on. Each book had a grade level rating from 1 to 12+, based on the approximate grade a student would likely need to be in to adequately comprehend it's material. Discovering Robinson Crusoe was a 12+, I was captivated. Nearly all the other 12+s I'd come across had been nonfiction.

I was well and truly out of my depth, but my relentless stubbornness wouldn't let me let it go. Despite Robinson Crusoe's old language, sailor's jargon, and geographical references I was entirely unfamiliar with, I refused to give up reading the damn thing. No joke, I had to read the freakin book THREE TIMES before scraping a pass on the quiz.

Over 20 years later, I've now come across the book again by chance, having recently found it cast away 😜 on the sidewalk in my neighborhood amongst a pile of carelessly discarded clothes and other unwanted items! Being the avid book reader I once was seems like a lifetime ago now, but I obviously had no choice but to take up the challenge the universe was so blatantly suggesting by placing this book at my feet after so long. There really seemed to be no other option but to take down my old foe — the author, Daniel Defoe — and thoroughly get to the bottom of exactly what he was trying to communicate here.

Though there was no final quiz this time, I couldn't not be sure to absorb every last drop of content possible within the pages' words, so I can't deny that the read did take me a short while and quite a few trips to Google and Google Maps, but I do feel like I've indisputably done it justice. Now, what more of a fitting ending for Robinson Crusoe than to be delivered from the destitute state it was in on the hot sidewalk down the road and find salvation, by my rescue, with me. 😂 I'm not sure I can imagine anything more appropriate.

Going forward, perhaps I'll aim to keep a book nearby for moments when anything more productive or enticing is out of reach or out of the question. 🤔

Note: Robinson Crusoe is an old book which, I've found, contains very dated and morally controversial views.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe

I Passed My First 21 on ITG - 10/20/20

I got one! 🎣  I'm just scraping my way into the 21s club with HAUNT Sampler Mix, but gotta start somewhere.

This was probably my longest set in a very long time. It unexpectedly ended up being over 4 hours because Sean Gee was out running what turned out to be over 20 miles at the time 😳, and I didn't want to feel like a lazy ass, so I just kept grinding. Some highlights:

-My first 21 pass, obviously

-39 Girls Coast Stamina songs, including:

-Crab Rave Marathon @190bpm (1.52x) - normally not noteworthy, but I was already incredibly tired by then and not ready for the drop back to 190

-Unexpected SDE on some really easy song toward the end of the set

Here's the video of Haunt:

[In The Groove] JOKR - HAUNT Sampler Mix [21] 77.63%
https://youtu.be/K0xS2pEJhP8

Cowboy Trails for the Army Ten Miler Virtual Race 10/11/20

I won a free entry to the Army Ten Miler virtual race! I wasn't about to go out and run ten miles on my own today though, so I summoned Sean and we went out to earn that finisher's medal together.

The race started today and could've been completed any time within the next week. We both woke up pretty exhausted today, but it wouldn't have seemed much like a real race if we just did it whenever we felt like it, so we found a hard trail from the horse riding place in the Red Rock area and started up.

I think the trail (or combination of trails?) was called Cowboy Trails and the pinnacle was a breathtaking view of Vegas in the distance from a flag (technically wind sock)-topped summit with a nearby picnic area complete with astroturf. On the trail and in the area, we spotted gypsum, a baby bearded dragon, lots of lizards and chipmunks, wild ass (roughly a dozen donkeys), and all the horses at the horse riding place near the car.

Huge thank you to Sean for taking me out and sticking with my slow ass for three long hours. ❤ We definitely both deserve a medal now. 🏅😄

Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/9SlCmTZOvab

100 in 100 Days Challenge: Done!

10,000 sit ups plus 100 days of planks, arm circles, splits, and miles complete! 

Roughly 100 days ago, Sean came up with a challenge: to do 100 pull ups every day for 100 days. He invited me to choose my own 100 day challenge and join him. I opted for 100 sit ups per day each day. As an added challenge, we each did at least 1 mile on foot — walking or running — per day (yes, that's often more than usual for me). I also worked on planks, the splits, and arm circles every day and Sean did push ups, sit ups, and other work outs between pull ups. Other Facebook friends joined in with their own challenges as well. 

So, to wrap up our last day of the challenge the other day, Sean and I went to our gym for the first (and possibly last, due to the current state of the world) time since maybe spring or winter. For my last mile(s), I opted for a 30 minute, 3.5 mile treadmill run, including warm up and cool down time. 

As for challenge results, Sean and I will be getting progression videos up on YouTube eventually. In the meantime, I'll just say that I'm unquestionably feeling like a stronger and more flexible me than 100 days ago and I'm excited to push on going forward. :)

Thank you so much to those of you who joined us and huge congrats to those who stuck it out through this challenge. WE DID IT!!!

5 Hour Workout Yesterday: ITG, DDR, Running, and 100 Day Challenge

After work yesterday, Sean and I spent roughly 5 hours working out. Here are the details:

ITG: I decided to check out the Girls Coast Stamina 3 pack. With difficulties ranging from 9 to 19, I played two of the three 19s (including Dodgeball for the billionth time 😂), kept working on my footspeed with some easier stuff, and messed around with a few good-sounding songs to warm up and for breaks between harder ones. I still have the 222 bpm 19 to get another day. A lot of fantastic packs have come out recently too and SRPG4 is reopened, so that should help with dance game motivation for the next few months. 

Running: Relaxed 1.5 mile jog. Doggies came with me for the first part but got tired after a few minutes and started refusing to move, so I dropped them off halfway before jogging on a little more. Though this wasn't much, it was a nice way to break up the workout session and actually get out of the house for a few minutes today, plus the baby steps back into regular running feel good.

DDR Extreme Pro: Sean and I played a bunch of Oni and other 1x stuff — something it's taken me 17 years to come around to and appreciate. Our trips to the Mesquite, NV DDR Max 2 machine in recent months have me improving at old school DDR a little and finally finding a little enjoyment there again! (We've been spending ~4 days per month in Mesquite these past several months, and their old Max 2 is one of the best ways to exercise there when it's over 100 degrees outside.) Despite their worsening pad issues, I did Maxx Unlimited on extra stage and some challenging songs, such as Insertion, while playing Oni with Sean last visit. Back on my own pad last night, it was easier than ever before. I still can't do lots of stuff I try on Oni, I'm not good at DDR by any means, and I probably won't get into playing very regularly again, but I'm having fun dabbling when it's presented to me. :)

100 in 100 Days Challenge: I'm getting the left-foot-in-front side splits pretty regularly now. I'm still inconsistent with other splits, can't quite get on the floor other directions, and always feel sore. Not much else to report except that I feel a little healthier and stronger thanks to the daily miles and various exercises. With less than 2 weeks left in this challenge, it's time to start thinking of the next thing to keep my fitness goals on track! 

From my Maxx Unlimited extra stage pass in Mesquite. 😂:

East Coast Stamina 9 - Lower: 3rd Overall / 1st Female

Now that I'm getting back on my feet after East Coast Stamina 9, I guess it's about time I share the video of my set and post about how I did!

As for results, I placed:

-3rd out of 58 overall in Lower. (In reality, I'd say this means I was 21st place out of 76, as there were 18 people in Upper.)

-1st place female out of 14 in Lower. (Amy was the only female in Upper, so this should technically place me 2nd female out of 15.)

Video: JOKR - East Coast Stamina 9 - Raw Output (ITG ECS9) on YouTube https://youtu.be/5aKohk3jldY

My ECS9 set this past Saturday literally floored me. I gave it all I had, finishing my 7 song max/1 hour set with one 19 and six 18s. (I'm used to taking longer breaks between songs when I play, so this was as much as I could've demanded of myself.) Though the support I got from Sean Gee and friends in the Twitch chat and elsewhere was what really inspired me to push through the pain, my biggest achievement was unquestionably not quitting when times got tough, and ooohhhhhh did they ever! The FA (well, lack thereof) says it all. 😂 Anyway, MASSIVE thanks to Sean for playing coach and supporting me, Jean-Philippe Moal for the song recommendations when I needed them most, Ian Pyles and all the other contributers for making this all possible, and all the friends who messaged and joined in on Twitch to hang with us and cheer me on. Maybe if you guys cheer harder next year, I'll do a set of solid 20s or 21s. 😝❤

Stamina RPG 4: Final Results

While stamina is always in season 'round here, and ECS9 is now underway, SRPG4 is now done and dusted. I won't pretend that I achieved great things; in fact, I was relatively disappointed in my performance this year. I didn't make any huge gains or exceptional breakthroughs. What I did do, however, was give it my all every chance I got to play. Perhaps that all-or-nothing attitude — playing either hard or not at all — was actually what held me back, or maybe I'm just getting old and eating too many corn dogs. 😄 Either way, it seems I'll need a new strategy going forward, and I'm all ears for any suggestions and constructive criticism people have to offer! For now though, I'm just going to allow myself a moment to smile over the small wins — that I made some footspeed progress, that my stamina probably didn't get any worse, that I stayed in fairly decent shape amidst all the event cancellations and everything going on in the world, and that I stuck it out with you guys through SRPG4 from start to finish! I managed to pass a new 20 called Space Box For Business too. Thank you to everyone who participated for keeping me company in the rankings and to everyone else who cheered me on, despite how silly my dance pad shuffling must've looked to many of you. Now, on to ECS9!

Charleston Peak Summit: North Loop up & South Loop Down - 7/17/20

Sean did this hike last year and had been wanting to take me since, as I'd never been. I was appropriately reluctant and terrified, but I agreed in exchange for him teaming up with me for the ECS 8.5 ITG team tournament recently. Was it worth it? Welllll....maybe ask me once I've had my rum and like 17 hours or sleep. In the meantime, here's how it went:

We woke up yesterday and got our mile and the rest of our 100 in 100 Days daily challenge in. (More on that later!) Then we munched a bunch and stayed up all night working. At 5:30am or so, we took off to Mount Charleston to hike up. An hour drive and couple of Rockstar energy drinks later, we were at the trailhead!

The hike took us nearly 19 miles in a little over 9 hours. We hiked up 4,769 feet to an elevation of 11,863 feet at the summit.

Tbh this was one of the hardest hikes I've done. It probably doesn't help that I can't remember the last time I did a notable hike or tried more than a slow, 1 mile jog max.

Some hike highlights:

•We passed the remains Sean had told me about of the airplane that'd crashed into the side of the mountain years ago.

•We encountered an expansive forest of trees, dead from an old fire and extending for miles in seemingly all directions, a couple of miles or so into our South Loop descent.

•There was a small clearing that was swarming with large dragonflies! We had no clue why, but it was quite a sight.

•Aside from smaller wildlife, we encountered a wild horse near the South Loop trailhead.

After like 18 hours without food (beyond a few chips), we grabbed some Burger King and headed home to Netflix and knock tf out. Sooo...lots more pics later. We've been up since who knows when yesterday, and I'm destroyed, so it's way past time to grab some Zzz's.

^My Strava type-up from the hike. Pics are now up on my Facebook. Vids coming on YouTube soon!

Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/Rlt31IcOd8

And Sean's: https://www.strava.com/activities/3778103309?utm_source=com.twitter.android&utm_medium=referral

ECS 8.5 ITG Team Tournament: July 5th marathons AND raw output with Sean

The day after Independence Day was the final day of the ECS 8.5 ITG team tournament. I'd been meaning to enter, but time had gotten away from me, so I woke up on July 5th with a mini hangover and no team. :( Fortunately enough for me, there was a husband but one room away from me when I realized this. Hmmm... Needless to say, I'm now massively indebted to him. In fact, he's cashing in on that debt by making me hike like 16.6 miles up Mount Charleston and back next week or so. x.x

Anyway, after doing most of our 100 in 100 days challenge (see my post on that for details) that day, we hopped on ITG to squeeze our 3 half hour or so marathon segments and 4 hour raw output session in juuuust before the 9pm PDT deadline. Here's how that went:

-Sean did one marathon segment, getting nearly 98%

-We did raw output. Though we'd both exercised a lot two days prior, my legs were still much more fresh for it than Sean's. I've been playing ITG singles while Sean goes for runs, plays PIU, or plays ITG doubles this year and Sean already had a marathon segment down. Also, he had far more pad and machine issues than enthusiasm so this was more my thing. That said, he stepped in and knocked out a couple of 14s for me in addition to eventually convincing me to spare my legs and cut the session short when we knew we would already be fine on points as far as qualifying for shirts. (It was getting late, I'd done eighteen 16s and 17s with an average difficulty rating of 16.44 between them, and we had other things we still needed to do, e.g., work and the 1 mile minimum for our 100 in 100 days challenge, so it was for the best.)

-The machine got laggy and even stuttered and froze halfway through my marathon segment. Lucky for me, it started and caught up again without causing me to fail. I was able to finish, though the sound was messed up and the charts were significantly off sync for the second half. At some point, perhaps we should consider upgrading our setup from the computer we found at a thrift store and shoved in our machine. Lol I'm kinda curious if my timing would then get back to being at least as good as it was roughly a decade ago.

-We restarted the machine, and it was pretty much fine, so Sean wrapped up our entry by doing the last marathon segment, finishing with another near 98% score.

Finally, we squeezed in a couple of celebratory drinks, A LOT of food, a much needed bath, and our daily mile. Speaking of that mile, we almost felt as if we were getting paid a bit to work out when we took our dogs out to get that small distance in with an around-the-block walk and came home $20 richer after finding a bill someone had dropped in the road. Not a bad conclusion to a very sweaty day!

4th of July in Vegas!

Our day:

-Went to the park with dogs

-Did a bunch of work at home

-Drove to the crazy busy Lake Las Vegas area and parked in a turnout with everyone else (all properly socially distanced) to watch fireworks

-Pulled over and admired more fireworks all across the Vegas skyline on the way home

-Used app deals and got two kids meals and two Rodeo Burgers at Burger King for ~$2 total

-Climbed on the roof at home to watch the fireworks in our neighborhood

-Ate and got pretty tipsy in the backyard while lighting our own fireworks and watching everyone else's in the neighborhood and the distance

Dinner Date!

Sean and I got hungry and were feeling pretty meh, so we had a short-but-sweet, improv dinner date, complete with a quick go on Crash Bandicoot and a few songs on two dance games we'd never tried before. Back to work now but feeling much more 😊!

8 Year Anniversary: Social Distancing in the Desert, Nayla's Zoom Party, & Bad Solo Dancing

Today started in a completely unexpected way: with Sean sending me to grab something and that something being a note that started me on an incredibly creative and sweet scavenger hunt, leading me around the house and eventually to a little anniversary gift that he'd promised he wasn't bothering with this year. The gift was labeled from "Sausage" (one of our dogs) though, so I guess he did manage to keep his promise, and I owe our dog some treats as a thank you. :p The gift: The Jungle Book: Rhythm and Groove PS2 game. I didn't even know such a game existed! No clue how our dog always manages to find such rare items for me.

Sean's mom is apparently better at celebrating our anniversary than I am too because the next thing on our agenda was opening a card she'd sent, wishing us a happy bronze anniversary and concealing a bunch of money she'd sent for us to spend on a nice meal! (In light of the current state of things — Coronavirus and all — I think that will amount to a lot of take out. Haha) THANK YOU!!! ^_^

Deciding to celebrate away from home today required a combination of a little thinking outside the box and willingness to leave things to chance. Our initial plan was to drive 1 hour 15 minutes to Roger Spring hot spring to the north of Lake Mead. We'd never been before and had been wanting to explore a couple of other sights on the way to it. The location was so remote, we didn't see any reason not to go or for it to be closed. Still, we didn't get our hopes too high and were ready for disappointment, so when the road entering the Lake Mead area was entirely closed off, we did little more than laugh.

We headed back the way we came and then continued to Arizona, assessing our options along the way. They didn't make it easy on us. It seemed all entrances to Lake Mead were closed as was nearly every other nook and cranny of desert road we could think up where others don't normally venture much. The roads to little places like White Rock (where we had yet to explore), Willow Beach, the Gold Spike hot springs trail, and everything else we could think up were barricaded. Even the Hoover Dam Lodge was fully shut down with the roads into it closed off, its power out, its parking lot empty. (There would've been nothing for us to do there anyway but it was just strange to see.)

Finally, not long after crossing the border into Arizona, we gave up and went to u-turn, but curiosity got the better of us just as we were doing so. Across from us was one of the first open roads we'd found since leaving Boulder City. We couldn't tell where it led but it didn't look like the sort of road most people would ever give a second look to when driving by. All you could see from the highway was a rocky, unpaved entrance that instantly turned off and was sign posted with a warning — something about there being nowhere to turn around ahead or it being a several mile-long dead end or something. I couldn't resist. Apparently, it was called Black Joe Mine Road. 4x4s were recommended, but we didn't get more than maybe half a mile on it before I started seriously doubting that it was traversable for your average 4x4, and our cell service there was spotty at best. Still, I had to know where the road led, so we decided to park and hike out into the near-silent desert to dispel the mystery.

We couldn't have been much luckier with the weather: ultimate cloud cover with light, intermittent sprinkles of rain. Had we gone one day later, the sun would've ripped us a new one.

As the road vanished into the distance and the trail wound up, down, and around the rocky hills, we became increasingly surrounded by a rainbow of flowers, many I'd never seen before, particularly not in the desert. I had no idea any part of the nearby desert area I now call home was capable of such vibrance! Of it all, however, the most odd plant life we encountered must've been this vivid, orange, string-like vine that, at first, I honestly mistook for plastic netting. It was so thin. I'd assumed someone had abandoned a net in the desert and that it'd caught on the bush I'd spotted it on and melted into place. As we walked onward though and I became more observant, I soon noticed the strange, orange plant engulfing vast areas of desert, clinging, in particular, to all the other plant life it could grab hold of. It was so strange, I could hardly believe I'd lived so close to it for 13 years now without ever before seeing, or at least noticing, it. There was no shortage of other awe-inspiring sights during our little adventure, but all paled in comparison, in terms of strangeness, to that orange plant.

After an hour of walking, we found another vehicle. We wondered how it'd made the trek up and thought the owners were pretty brave for daring to attempt it. As we approached, however, that stopped being the most curious thing that came to mind. The vehicle had a Colorado license plate, a broken windshield, and no owners in sight in any direction. We deduced that they must've driven up recently, cracked the windshield on this or another such road, and decided to hike, likely up the nearby mountain, today.

Our first trail seemed to end there but there seemed to be another trailhead just in front of the vehicle. There was also a trail headed off to the right. We opted for the one to the right and walked til it reached what seemed to be an end. With a field of flowers that may not have been lavender (I have no idea what they were) covering what could possibly have been a trail to our left and a dead end at a large hill with a dry riverbed in front of it ahead of us, we eventually opted to go right. There was no sign of the mine that we assumed the road had been named after, but I can't honestly say we looked very hard either. Instead, we decided to wander back this new way, adjacent to the riverbed until that seemed to either vanish or maybe just get left behind by our wanderings. Our sense of direction didn't fail us though. In hindsight, I suppose we might have had to put some effort into getting truly and utterly lost between all the geographical giveaways. Still, it was fun to loose the path for awhile.

Other noteworthy moments from our hike included:

-Finding a good-sized lizard, who was too cold to move himself out of the way, in our path. Fortunately, Sean saw him before our shoes got to give him a less pleasant greeting, and we were able to relocate him to a more choice location.

-Stopping for a short picnic, where we scarfed down a couple of well-earned pb&js while paint markering a nearby rock to commemorate the moment. (If you're pissed about us writing on a rock, feel free to see yourself out from here! :D)

We reached our vehicle again after being away for 2.5 hours. Obviously, celebrations were in order so we busted out the shandy, snacks, more food, sausages (for dogs), and 90's Megamix dance hits for a sort of tailgate party. 🥳 A couple last rock-defacings and shenanigan-partakings later and we were headed back towards our comforts at home.

As we reached the Nevada border again, we saw highway notice boards announcing things such as, "ENTERING NV - SELF ISOLATE FOR 14 DAYS - STAY AT HOME ORDERS IN EFFECT" Well....you can't really socially distance much harder than we just did.

Back at home, we didn't let the fun die. Amongst other things, we spent our evening with friends (virtually, via Zoom) and solo dancing like the loners we are. Lol

It was our friend Nayla's virtual graduation party so we joined in to celebrate and hang online with her, her sister, and dance game friends. Getting silly with Jackbox games and the big bottle of whiskey Sean and I had handy were just a couple of the things that made it so fun. It was so nice getting to catch up and see some familiar faces.

Later, Sean and I busted out Just Dance 2016 and Hip Hop Dance for the 360, as I don't think we'd played either before, and got to laugh at each other's horrible dancing. XD What's a spouse for, right? Anyway, we had an early morning this morning but a fairly late night at the end of an awesome, if impromptu, celebratory day.

So...What's in store for year 9 then? 🤔

*Please pardon any and all grammatical errors as I was not an English major and have no intention of spending the rest of today proofreading. :p

I Finished My First Online Classes: Financial Trading & Cryptocurrency!

I just finished two online classes with Shaw Academy: Financial Trading and Cryptocurrency! My final assignment scores were 99% and 96%. I know this is just one small step in the ultra marathon of life but each step makes me a little stronger, takes me a little further, and is therefore worth celebrating. 🥳

Work Hard, Play Harder..AT HOME

Bbq, booze, Netflix, and hookah at 1am bc we had a long ass day and being at home isn't gonna keep us from our work hard & play harder lifestyle. For those of you living like this right now, til the next time we can get together for a round of drinks, cheers from afar! ❤🍻

Our 2019 Travel Stats

Taking a major hiatus from travel in order to give domestic life a try and focus more on work, last year was a SLOWWWWW one for Sean and me. We still ticked off some cool, new places and revisited plenty of old ones as well though!