Tag: 2024

Sidequests Week 5

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

For this week, my sidequests included telling a friend I was thankful for them, doing something to support my health or prosperity, and brewing a special drink.

I told a few friends that I was thankful for them, but mostly because I’m awful at being nice, I took a picture of the card and texted it to them. One of them just hearted the message, and the other resulted in this brief conversation:

The card conversations were specifically from BoredWalk’s Delve Deck. A few years prior to that I had also gone through The Shame of Life cards. I would text one every day to a handful of friends and we would have brief conversations giving our answers for the cards. I was a little inspired to go ahead and splurge on a new set. I wasn’t sure on the cards I had been considering so I did a search for conversation cards on Amazon and I’ll be trying the SO… cards next. It’s a shorter deck of 52 cards, but there’s a few different volumes/types, so as I reach the end of one I can buy the next, and take up at least half the year annoying my friends with random questions.

If it hasn’t become inherently obvious, I really love card prompts/games/challenges/extras. I’m not even sure why.

For the special drink! The weather in Oklahoma has been quite warm this week so it wasn’t quite the time for a brewed drink, but I had cream I needed to use and decided some legit cocoa was the way to go.

For cocoa, I’m a little loose on measurements and you can really probably proportion the ingredients however you want. Typically I use the cup I’m going to drink from to measure my cream and then add a tablespoon of cocoa and a tablespoon of sugar, but I wanted two cups so I used up my entire container of cream, and went ahead and did 3 tablespoons of cocoa, 3 tablespoons of sugar, and a tablespoon of instant espresso because why not? Put over medium to medium low heat and wisk constantly. Constantly!

It’s going to look like a hot mess at first that doesn’t seem like it will ever come together. Then it’s going to start to blend a bit better, but you’re going to think it still mostly looks like cream. Keep going. It will eventually darken and thin out, except for a light film that covers the top. It will quite legitimately look like cocoa. That’s when it’s ready. Also great with dehydrated marshmallows mixed in, but I didn’t have any more! Alas.

As for something to support my health or prospertiy, I figured it could be something small since these were supposed to be daily cards originally. I keep a habit tracker and try to do certain things most of the week, or at least a few times a week. I committed to choosing two of those habits and actually maintaining them the entire week. Specifically drinking at least 20 ounces of water daily and taking my allergy meds/supplements (calcium, vit d, fiber, collagen) daily. It’s not a huge thing, but I’ve been trying to not leave the stupid weekly pill tray full for weeks on end, and I did actually finish it out this time – it’s almost like an accomplishment?

Also:

Sidequests Week 4

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

My sidequests for this week were pretty simple ones. I was to take a virtual tour of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, learn out to say hello in a different language, and take 5 minutes to visualize a positive future for myself.

I had to Google the Smithsonian one, as that wasn’t something I was aware existed. Apparently there are several available to choose from. I browsed the exhibit about the Wright brothers. It’s interesting, and the image quality is high enough that you can read most of the text through the exhibit with the exceptions of really small text set further away from the designated “standing spots” or the occasional area where there is glare from lighting. It’s a fun idea that gives a broad strokes feel for the exhibits on display, but a poor substitute for actually going. For one, I like to get close and look at things, and read everything. There are also screens that looked like they had video displays for the exhibits, and seeing a picture of something from a few different angles is not quite the same as looking at it in person.

Also, I’m the sort of nerd that loves going to museums. If you really like those particular subjects and lack the funds to go, it’s a suitable substitute, though, and worth checking out.

For learning to say hello in another language, I used Google again. (Google has all the answers, right?) They’ve got their list of languages you can translate, and I kind of browsed some of the options to look at them. I found that there were some that I already knew but had never really thought about. Most interesting to me was Italian. Apparently, similar to Hawaiian “aloha,” “ciao” can mean both hello and goodbye. I had only ever understood it to be a goodbye, so that caught me a little by surprise.

While I technically already knew the word, I did manage to recontextualize it properly, and understand it more in line with its actual meaning.

The last one is the hardest for me. Not because I have a hard time being positive, but more because I have a hard time being specific. Most of my life I’ve had a very lax attitude about my personal direction. I’ve always felt: if it happens, it happens. Great! If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen. Also great! I don’t mind the idea of falling in love – but if I don’t find a lover, I’m not going to rush and settle just to have ticked marriage off the box. Similar with having kids – I don’t mind the idea of having kids, but I’m not going to get into a tizzy and go get knocked up because I feel I have to.

They’re nice futures to have, but not necessary ones. And those are just the two major examples that people are likely to wonder on most, but I have a similar attitude towards most things in life. So trying to specify what I want in a “positive future” is hard to pin down, because as long as I’m enjoying myself I don’t care.

Things that would be nice and positive: a windfall of money, which would help anyone. How many people would ever turn down an extra cash windfall? Although this also ties into the recent writing prompt that wordpress posted for Bloganuary!

Bloganuary writing prompt
What would you do if you won the lottery?
View all responses

A fun daydream that everyone has. What would you do if you won the lottery? I would likely be too nervous to initially spend it. I would sit on it until I understood how it affected things tax wise. It also depends on how much you won. If the take home was roughly $1 million dollars, I could live on that quite comfortably for 20 years, but any big expenses will cut into that semi-retired life quite dramatically. Buy a new car? Have a new house built or pay off my current home and make improvements to it? Or any number of big money splurges that cuts into that take home will result in less time that I can go without working.

Of course, if you got someone to help you manage your financials and invested properly, and refrained from blowing it all at once, you could live quite comfortably without having to work again.

So, without work, what would I do with my time? I’ve heard plenty of people gripe about their retirement when they felt useless, but I’ve never had that problem. I would love having more time to take classes on interesting things and visit places I haven’t been. I love working on art and writing projects. I love sleeping in, and reading and playing games, and watching movies and shows. I could go to the gym in the middle of the night when it’s dead quiet, and spend time learning new recipes without having to worry about how long cooking and clean up will take, because I have to wake at a specific time to be at a specific place for a specific set of hours in a day.

As for more attainable positive things – I would like to try to vegetate less and work on my projects more within the next year. And lose weight. And finish my story I started last year and begin the editing process so I can maybe slap it on self publishing on Amazon near the end of the year and accomplish a life long goal of mine to publish some bullshit. Those are also all positive things.

….I took several more minutes than 5 to visualize all that. But it works!

Sidequests Week 3

On By MaryIn Sidequests1 Comment

For this week, my sidequests were to Visit an aquarium or pet store (or watch relaxing fish videos), to learn a new word and use it in a sentence (another new word! grr), and to make something with my hands.

I deliberated on what to do about making something with my hands at first. I initially thought I should do something creative or artsy, but wasn’t really feeling it this week. So in the end, I made cinnamon rolls. I had a cinnamon roll recipe I used to use as a kid, but it was made from a biscuit recipe, so it made something heavy and crumbly which was good but not quite what I want in a cinnamon roll. So late last year, I decided to finally look up a recipe that was a little more yeasty and fluffy and I made proper cinnamon rolls for Christmas. Since the yeast packets were sold in threes, I decided to use another to make more cinnamon rolls for myself this week.

The recipe that I use for the dough can be found here at Sally’s Baking Addiction. Like most recipe sites of the sort, there’s a lot of preamble. I don’t get it either. But it’s a simple recipe and yields a nice dough.

For the filling, I use a different recipe. Specifically the one I found here. I had looked for it separately earlier last year, and now mostly just stick to it.

And for the cream cheese frosting, I mostly improvised my own thing. It’s basically just one part sugar and butter to two parts cream cheese, softened and stirred until smooth. (I think I usually use 1/4 c sugar, 1/4 c butter, and 1/2 cup cream cheese).

I made them early on in the week and had them for dinner. (Hey, I even made a post about how that was successful adulting!) I did not take a picture though. I do intend to make at least one more batch though… I have one last yeast packet to use up, after all.

The next sidequest was to learn another new word. This was a little easier, using the Merriam Webster word of the day again.

This time I didn’t even have to wait as long to find one as I did with oneiric. On the one hand, the word sounds familiar enough, and I know I’ve used “bunk” to refer to an idea in the same way, which likely has its basis in this word or a similar origin. But I’m uncertain that I’ve ever heard bunkum itself. As for using it in a sentence… “She dismissed his entire story as bunkum and interrupted him immediately, demanding the truth.”

Does that suffice? I think it does.

And then the last bit! I could see how the alternative of watching fish videos or visiting a pet store is nice for the sidequests, because it’s not always easy to get out to an aquarium. But I was visiting a friend in Tulsa this week, and she loves visitng her local aquarium near there, so it was a great excuse to go. I also bought her the Sidequest Deck, and she decided she would start doing one card on her days off from work. By a hilarious coincidence, she pulled the same aquarium card as well. “I guess we were fated to go.”

So we visited an aquarium.

It’s not a massive aquarium, but the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks is still a fun spot to visit. They’ve got an indoor carousel, a gift shop, and several interactive displays where you get a chance to touch or feed some of the animals. A significant portion of the exhibits are dedicated to local aquatic wildlife, such as catfish, bass, gar, snakes, frogs and the like. They also have a few beavers, a few otters, and some less local and oceanic wildlife, including piranha, a massive sea turtle, and a shark enclosure that you can walk through. It’s very kid friendly as well.

We didn’t spend as much time there as we did the first time they took me, mostly because we were a little pressed for time. After the aquarium, we went to the Van Gogh Immersive experience, which is an exhibit that discusses Van Gogh’s life and works and influences. Afterwards, you can go into a large room where a 30 minute video is looped across all the walls and floor that plays images of his work and quotations of things he had written in letters, set against music, sound effects, and the occasional reading of those quotes. They had a VR thing just outside the room (it cost extra and we were too hungry to stay too long), a coloring station, and a few other things that we didn’t explore fully. It was quiet in the exhibit, likely because it has been running there since last year and we decided to go shortly before it shut down, specifically to avoid crowds.

….That doesn’t have anything to do with the Sidequests, but it was neat, damn it!

Sidequests Week 2

On By MaryIn SidequestsLeave a comment

For the second week, I drew some pretty simple cards. My sidequests included taking a break from tech for 2 hours, drinking 5 cups of water, and learning a new word.

The tech break was easy. I just curled up with some comics and read for awhile.

Drinking 5 cups of water was a little harder. First off was the interpretation – does it matter what size cup I choose? If I mostly drink bottled water, should I drink 5 bottles of water? Or should I measure out 5 literal cups? In order to be technical, I decided on 5 literal cups. 1 cup of water is equal to 8 ounces which is roughly 240 ml, multiplied by 5 is 1200 ml total to drink. The bottled water I tend to buy comes in at 500 ml per bottle so finishing 3 bottles of water in a day seemed practical to completing the task and being a little safely over. And I managed to complete that.

Learning a new word is a little harder. I decided to google “word of the day” several times last week to see if someone’s word of the day was something I wasn’t familiar with, but didn’t have a lot of luck. Checking again today did finally net me a new word that I wasn’t familiar with through the Miriam-Webster Dictionary website’s word of the day:

So, last minute save! At least I didn’t have to pull out a dictionary and start browsing from A.

Sidequests Week 1

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My Hero’s Journal sidequests for this week included decluttering a space in my home, discovering a new sci fi thing to get into, and to do a 10 minute stretch.

I started by reaching out to a fellow nerdy friend of mine.

I asked for a couple of recommendations, and his suggestions were either the Expeditionary Force book series or The Expanse. So I figured I would download and read the first book of Expeditionary Force by Craig Alanson. It’s interesting enough – has a little bit of a Starship Troopers meets Mass Effect vibe. Humanity gets pulled into a galactic war that has been ongoing for centuries, and the Expeditionary Forces are the members of the military of several UN countries that are sent to prove themselves to their new allies. I’m still only halfway through the first book, but I’ll likely work my way through the entire series over the next year or so.

In general, I’m a fairly clean person. The most cluttery parts of my home tend to be the storage areas, such as the closets or my bookshelves. That being said, I’ve gotten really bad about just leaving things on my paint desk rather than putting them away properly, so it looked like this beforehand:

After straightening the items out, throwing away the garbage, and putting some of the random things where they belong (or at least, shifting them to a bookshelf… as I said, another bad clutterzone for me), it now looks like this:

It probably still looks a bit more cluttery than other people would like, but at least it’s just down to my painting supplies and blank canvases and nothing unnecessary. Since I would like to paint more this year, it’ll be nice to start off with a space I can actually work in.

And last of all – the 10 minute stretch. I kind of put that one off for last. In order to figure out what stretches I would like to do, I used darebee.com. First I ambitiously thought, “Stretches? Stretches aren’t too hard. I’ll just choose normal for the difficulty.” After getting halfway through my first selection, I realized, “Oh, I am a fucking fat stationary lardass, why did I think I could do this?” and I did a new search under light difficulty to find a workout. I’ve always liked darebee because I’m not super knowledgeable on a variety of workouts and having a resource that tells you a routine and has visual aids and videos is very helpful. It’s a good starting point for a beginner, or if you are more advanced and just want to try something different, they’ve got loads of workout plans to choose from.

This is the stretching routine I ended up going with. It technically comes to a bit under 10 minutes, but since I had worked halfway througha different one also, I figured I had completed the quest, if sloppily. Most of their workout programs are set up visually like this with very simple directions. When it gets into the workouts, it also tells you how many reps to do of each. They function entirely on donations so if you use them and find you like what they’re doing, consider throwing a couple bucks their way.

Also I am not very stable and 30 seconds seems to take forever when you’re doing some of these on a hardwood floor without a mat of any sort. And you have old lady knees.

So, one week down on my year of sidequests!