Meet Oliver and Flipmo — Our Snake Plants

Sean and I caved and got matching snake plants (dracaena trifasciata) for our desks the other day. We picked a couple of $1 pots up for them at the 99 Cent Store. I named mine Oliver after Oliver Queen (aka Green Arrow, the superhero) because he's pointy like an arrowhead and also green. 😝 Sean named his Flipmo because Sean is Sean. Lol

The room Sean works in gets a lot more light than the room I do does, but if we both manage to not kill these plants first, I'm totally going to take mine in for sunny playdates with his from time to time. 😄

Backstory: I've avoided owning plants for years now because Sean and I typically travel too much to care for them. Though I continue hoping that the homeboundedness of this moment will be short-lived, I figured now was at least as good a time as any to start working on my green thumb. I'll worry about care for the plants in our absence when we come to it.

There are quite a few other spots around the house that could stand to have some life breathed into them. While I don't plan to have a house full of only snake plants, I do have a couple of spots in mind and names picked out for two more: I'm hoping to find slightly bigger ones with the right "personality" and name them Jake and Draco after Jake "The Snake" Roberts (the wrestler) and Slytherin's own Draco Malfoy from Harry Potter. 🐍 🐍 😂

 

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!!!