Building a Bucket List #57-63

57. Climb the Eiffel Tower

58. Visit Gates of the Arctic National Park

59. Visit Big Ben

60. See the Doctor Who Experience

61. Visit the Sydney Opera House

62. Visit Glacier Bay National Park

63. Visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Building a Bucket List #50-56

50.  Visit the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve

51. Build a Teardrop Trailer

52. Visit the Great Wall of China

53. Knit a Sweater

54. Visit Cape Krusenstern National Monument

55. See the Statue of Liberty

56. Visit Denali National Park

Weekly Weigh In 10/12/15

Just going to drop this here and run.  Life's a little crazy with the day job, class, being the doggy hotel and helping my parents prepare to move. Hopefully, I'll have more to say next week.

Statistics:

Morning Workouts: 3
Lunchtime Weight Lifting: 2
Evening Dog Walks: 1
Bedtime Yoga: 4

Current Weight: 244.6 pounds
Last Week: 244.8 pounds

Weight Loss/Gain: 0.2 pounds lost

Starting Weight: 249.4 pounds
Highest Point: 250.2 pounds
Lowest Point: 238.4 pounds

Building a Bucket List #43-49

Grand Tetons on a Cloudy Day

43. Learn to make Tiramisu

44. Go Camping on Horseback

45. Visit the Grand Canyon

46. Ski in the Alps

47. Learn to Paint with Acrylics

48. Learn how to throw a Pot on a Potter's wheel

49. Visit the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area

Weekly Weigh In Oct 5

I'm still doing battle with the sugar beast but I'm making my way back to healthier eating. I'm working on building consistency and mental discipline.

I'm going to gradually add in a few more statistics to better represent my goals.  The scale is not the end all be all of getting healthy. I need to keep this in mind especially since I'm getting compliments on my weight loss even though the scale is up a few pounds. I must kill the urge to argue with people who think I've lost weight.  The tape measure and increased physical ability is way more important than the scale. Let's repeat that about a thousand more times until it drowns out the cultural focus on the number on the scale.

Statistics:

Morning Workouts: 2
Lunchtime Weight Lifting: 1
Evening Dog Walks: 0
Bedtime Yoga: 3

Current Weight: 244.8 pounds
Last Week: 241.8 pounds

Weight Loss/Gain: 3.0 pounds gained

Starting Weight: 249.4 pounds
Highest Point: 250.2 pounds
Lowest Point: 238.4 pounds

Board Game Spotlight: Pandemic

Pandemic is one of the favorite games of everyone I play with.  One of the strengths of Pandemic is that it is a cooperative game. All the players are working together to cure the diseases that are represented with small cubes covering the board, which is the only way to win the game.  There are, however, numerous ways to lose the game: have eight outbreaks, run out of time (run out of cards in the player deck), and running out of disease cubes to place on the board.

The original Pandemic has really good replay-ability on its own with multiple difficulty settings.  I have the first expansion: Pandemic On the Brink. It adds new event card and player roles as well as new challenges. Virulent Strain selects one of the disease colors and gives it specific abilities with each new epidemic which makes it harder to treat and cure.  Mutated Strain adds a fifth disease that behaves differently from the other four. Bio-terrorist introduces a player role that works against the other players in the game.

My current favorite set-up is to play with both the Virulent Strain and Mutated Strain challenges on an easier difficulty.

I haven't yet gotten a chance to play with the Bio-Terrorist challenge. I hope to change that soon since one of the members of my game group is eager to be the Bio-Terrorist.

You can find Pandemic and Pandemic on The Brink on Amazon or at a Local Game Store

Writing Update Oct 2

I took part of the week off from writing as a self care strategy. The Day Job was particularly demanding of my physical and mental energy.

I'll be sticking to 200 words a day for one more week before continuing to increase my minimum word limit.

Statistics:
Words Written: 651
Scenes Outlined: 0

Works In Progress

Hive Mind (NaNoWriMo 2010) - Editing and Writing Second Draft

55308 / 90000

Thriller - Brainstorming and Outlining

0 / 50000

Outbreak (NaNoWriMo 2011) - Resting

54270 / 90000

Steampunk Seasonal Serial - Writing First Draft

15809 / 50000

A Guide to Inter-species Dating - Writing Rough Draft

1751 / 50000

Shattered Lives - Brainstorming and Outlining

181 / 50000

Greased Gears - Writing First Draft

9326 / 50000