Not the best photo I took today in a technical sense but the best for personal reasons... I haven't documented Brown-headed Nuthatches in the yard since we lost the last of our oaks in Hurricane Katrina 19 years ago!
Today's #Project365 centered on two fledgling House Sparrows I saw placed in a dark corner by their mom before she left them...
"Lil bro, I got a bad feeling here. Mama ain't coming back."
"How'm I the lil bro? We the same size."
"Point is, we gotta get our own food now."
"Oh, wonderful, just how I wanted to wake up today."
(They did eventually go to the feeders on their own.)
When these two flew down to sit together on the back of my office chair, I knew I had the image for today's Project 365.
(These are rescue borbs, Nyota the Lovebird was found after Hurricane Isaac in 2012, 27-year-old Cockatiel Boobear outlived his first owner & came to me with significant grief & crying issues-- they've both been doing great for years)
"my garden is crispy frozen & i blame you"-- nonetheless, this hummingbird spent the night in the garden (i saw where she perched) so she'd be here at first light for first drink from the feeders
So, it's the first of January again, and it's time to lay out my plans for my #Project365#2024Project
It's going to come in two parts this year, because it's touching on a sensitive topic, so some of the posts will have a CW, and some hashtags to filter them.
Top level is #2024Project. Someone asked if they could join in on a daily project, and I said sure, that I'd use a top-level hashtag for anyone who wants to join in at a "daily project" level, but doesn't want to join in the actual project. Feel free to use this one in your daily project posts. I could even make a list, if you want!
Project level is #2024HealthProject. It's just a daily check-in for accountability on getting healthier, and for the folks who want the accountability thing on this in particular, and asked if they could join in.
I'll be using two separate hashtags to separate the personal posts. The second ones will also get a CW.
The first will be my daily check-in #HealthyAllie2024, with two goals:
Drink 2L of water per day, in addition to other liquids. I don't drink enough water. I have a notated drink bottle which will at least let me know how far I got each day.
A minimum of Five minutes of exercise six days a week, with Sunday as a "rest" day, increasing by five minutes per day each month, with a goal of doing a minimum of 60 minutes of exercise per day by December.
I'm really trying hard not to overcomplicate this, because I don't want to give myself an extra burden by committing to lengthy exercise reviews, but I might make some comments.
The second will come with a CW and be hashtagged with #LessAllie2024. Will be at least monthly, and it will be about weight loss. The hashtag & CW are for the folks for whom this is a triggering subject, so they can mute it. I'll explain more in a separate post.
Gonna unpin my old project post, and pin this one, and off we go again.
January 20, 2024 - Day 20 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 20
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: >60m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Indoors
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
Crashed out this afternoon, then dragged myself out to the supermarket, and spent over an hour shoving a shopping trolley around the supermarket. Learning to recognise that even that is exercise. It also left me too wiped out to go for a "proper walk". Bed now.
January 19, 2024 - Day 19 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 19
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 6m
Exercise: Walking
Location: Outdoors
Distance: 0.56km
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
I did not account for how much on-call would screw with me this week. Every day has been "just drag myself outside for five minutes". I'm physically and emotionally wrecked.
Comments:
This was the follow-up to yesterday's work. Lots of long overdue cleaning up the edges of the lawn in the front yard. Who wants to do more than the basic mowing when the house is about to be knocked down?
It's more than that though... part of this change and caring more about myself is that it feels like it extends beyond me now.
January 23, 2024 - Day 23 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 23
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 2L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: (see comments)
Exercise: n/a
Location: n/a
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR: n/a
Comments:
Writing this on the 24th. There was no active exercise yesterday. There was incidental exercise, walking through a shopping centre, and that was probably 5-10 minutes.
Yesterday was a hard day, not just because the lack of sleep, but because I had complex conversations with the psychologist, followed by a disaster of a dentist visit (I was prepared for the worst, and yet things were actually worse).
I went to the shops between these two appointments.
Got home, and what started out as a brief chat with my wife around 6pm turned into one of those conversations that went on until almost midnight.
It was well after 10pm before I noticed the time, and my exercise window was closed. Exercise too close to bed, and it wakes me up.
January 24, 2025 - Day 25 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 25
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1.25L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 0m
Exercise: n/a
Location: n/a
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR (avg): n/a
Comments:
Starting the day at 8:15am with a stressful call to the ATO, then dealing with Centrelink, lead into a workday that was completely upended by events, and interrupted by the plumber showing up, and then me having to head into the city for an event, only to get home and have to have another heavy duty conversation... I didn't find 5 minutes. By the time I realised, it was too late (I could exercise for five minutes, but then I wouldn't get to sleep until 2am).
January 27, 2025 - Day 27 - Check In
Total Check Ins: 27
Water goal: 2L
Intake: 1L
Exercise goal: 5m
Actual: 0m
Exercise: n/a
Location: n/a
Distance: n/a
Pace: n/a
Steps: n/a
Kcal burned: n/a
HR (avg): n/a
Comments:
Writing this on the following day; in the back of my head, the thing I've been worried about is what would happen when I got sick. It feels like I do that a fair bit, with a penchant for colds and other respiratory games.
Yesterday afternoon, I started sneezing, then coughing, then my eyes turned red, and it's either some kind of allergy, or I'm coming down with something. Again.
Within an hour or so, I'd crashed out in bed for a couple of hours. Then got up again around 8:30pm. I did not manage to get my "5 minutes" in.
I'm feeling about 70% this morning, and not sure whether to get out and push myself, or just rest. If it's just allergies, then rest isn't going to do much, but if it's my body teetering on the edge of another URTI, pushing myself could end badly.
1/365: Zaraz po pracy - obowiązkowa rundka po okolicy i takie letnie popołudnia to ja kocham. Dostrzegłem jedną rzecz: Jeszcze połowy lipca nie ma , a już rozpoczęły się żniwa. Przynajmniej będzie można polować na polskie 🦬
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
December 27, 2023 - Day 360 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 389
Game: Strange Brigade
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 28, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 42m
Strange Brigade is a solo or co-op action-adventure third-person shooter, set in Egypt in the 1930's.
I'd been sitting on Strange Brigade for a while, because I've previously played one of the Zombie Army games by the same developer (Rebellion), and it so thoroughly creeped me out, that I had no desire to go through it again.
But with access to the game via my son's Steam account, and a spare Steam key, and it being the middle of a sunny day, I thought I'd give it a shot.
You play as one of four members of the titular Strange Brigade, a special unit of the British Government tasked with dealing with supernatural entities.
One of the options is Gracie Braithwaite, a brawler, and a red-headed Lancashire lass. One of the things I've learned from my family tree, is that great-grandmother was from Lancashire, and was described by my grandmother as "a Lancashire lass", and it just felt right to choose her.
In terms of the gameplay, while it bears some basic similarities to the Zombie Army Trilogy (because zombies are heavily featured!) and it uses the same Asura engine as ZAT, it styles itself heavily after pulp movies of the 1930's, with an overly chirpy English narrator providing running commentary.
The game is bright and colourful, unlike the spine-chilling environments of ZAT, and I found Strange Brigade a far more enjoyable experience - at least once I remapped the rather wild control scheme.
Nothing like hitting the shift key to run away from a zombie, only to drop a grenade instead.
I had a bunch of fun with Strange Bridgade; it's pretty:
March 16, 2024 - Day 441 - Humble Choice Supplemental 1
Total NewPlays: 476
I didn't skip over reviewing the 3rd & 4th games in this month's Humble Bundle, I just decided not to add extra workload on what was already an incredibly exhausting week.