Adjusted Reality

I like description in threes (she’s a lean, mean, fighting machine who needs a tall, cool, and frothy pint of beer…doesn’t that just flow?), and lists in fives (the last five fruits I’ve eaten have been grapefruits, oranges, grapes, peaches, and strawberries…just gives enough variety to get to know a person and their tastes), so five random things it is!  Just to have some sort of outlet from my randomness, I’ll save them up to be a decent chunk of post instead of just an offhand “Hmmm, I went to the store today and saw the cutest little mini-peaches called donut peaches“.

1.  Tuesday’s run was a new personal (adult) best mile run time of 8:55.  I’m only 1:05 away from my best time ever, 7:50, which was in junior high school.  I’m improving between 5-10 seconds most weeks, so I’m not too far away until I hit a wall.

2.  I just watched The Big Lebowski for the first time.  Yeah, I know, I’m terribly late to the party.  What an awesome movie.  Some days, I just wish I could be the Dude… totally oblivious and in a white-russian-and-illicit-substance fog.  Someone at least needs to bring the wearing of bathrobes as a overcoat into style.

3.  Tuesday also was my first day at the new gym.  There are soooo many machines, it’s unfathomable that they could ever all be full, but I’m used to the office gym which has one treadmill, a bike, a rickety elipse which I won’t touch, and a perpetually broken stairmaster.  I did go around 6:30, so I’ll see if I change my tune today when I head there closer to 5.  The funniest thing is – they have alarms on the weights, so if you drop them, it makes this obnoxious air horn sound (trying to embarrass the lunkheads who grunt and drop weights, the gym is all about not being pretentious).  This guy would totally do it on purpose.  I’m totally frightened that I’ll do it on accident.

4.  Had a great conversation with an ex-coworker of Zliten’s Wednesday night.  I love talking psychology with people that can talk it back – it totally wakes my brain up. It’s also incredibly inspiring to hear about someone who beat the odds just by getting into his own head and solving the problem. Totally reinforces my ideals that people can do amazing things just by giving their mind a chance.  This has totally started the wheels spinning for a post or series of posts, but worthy of note immediately.

5.  Why is frozen fruit just so good?  I had a snack of frozen strawberries and frozen grapes last night while I was waiting for Zliten to decide he was hungry enough to grill us some dinnah.  Amazing.  And they don’t go bad!  I’ve had these grapes for 3 weeks now and they are as delicious as when I first got them.  Seriously, if you’re having issues with sweet cravings or just want something quick that doesn’t go bad and is healthy for you – frozen fruit, baby.

If you haven’t read Part 1 first, go there to read about how I got a really fat ass and had a blast doing it.

So how did I actually transform from a hardcore gamer to… whatever it is I am nowadays?  It started with the purchase of a REALLY GREAT TV, and obtaining a DVR.  From 19 to 57 inches comes pure love. This was also right around the time Network TV started getting good again. It didn’t help that we were also both in newbie game designer jobs, which meant lots of MAKING games, not much time for PLAYING games. And when you’re playing just about the same thing you’re working on 50-100 hours a week, sometimes you need to do something else. ANYTHING ELSE FOR FUCKS SAKE, NO MORE ELVES AND ORCS!!!! When elves and orcs become your reality and livelihood, shows about dead people and games about real life are much more of a fantastical escape. So, we became tube zombies most nights of the week and playing weekends (when TV sucks and most of your friends are online then anyway).

Moving to Texas really put the proverbial nail in my gamer coffin.  First of all, we moved a packed 2 bedroom apartment into what was really a junior one bedroom.  My desk ended up in the corner of the dining room, and Zliten’s ended up in the space between our kitchen counter and the couch, just about in splashing range of the kitchen sink.  At least he could see the TV in the living room instead of just hearing it and staring into the corner like a bad, bad girl.  The reason we had that set up was I had the laptop (referred to henceforth lovingly as lappy), so I could dork from the couch.  However, that doesn’t work so well for gaming for a long period of time (long sessions on the old couch killed my back – my chiropractor said that laptops kept his business thriving and I believe him!), after a few hours of EQ I would have to beg off in pain and we’d do something else.

Then Zliten started working crazy man hours in preparation for a project launch, and I just don’t like to play without him, so I usually got home, made myself dinner, turned on the tube and dorked on the lappy until he got home.  I think the boredom actually got me up and out to the gym eventually, which was a GOOD thing, but weekdays were for TV, and weekends were for going out.  Since our place was so tiny, we couldn’t entertain (I think we had P over once, T+V over 2 times, and mostly just for the pool), and frankly, we were uncomfortable there, so we were never home.

The biggest change was going from almost complete shut ins to social animals.  In San Diego, we would go out MAYBE once a month to a party, a bar, or just to hang out with friends.  We didn’t have a core group of peoples the whole 6 years we were there – you know, the friends you pretty much count on having plans with during the weekend unless you hear differently.  Our core group was our guild.  It’s totally weird to move to another city and go from homebody to social butterfly, it’s usually the opposite, right?  Even though in San Diego we didn’t hang out that much – all the San Diego transplants to Austin sort of formed this tight-knit bond and instead of being friends of friends or acquaintances we’d see at parties, we all started hanging out.  A lot.  Like, Friday drinking at someone’s house, Saturday going downtown, and then Sunday doing errands and then a BBQ.  Where do you fit gaming in there?

Then the amazing happened, we found the perfect house for the perfect price in the perfect neighborhood.  The only problem was – it needed TONS of work just to make it livable.  Right about that time, I got serious about calorie counting and the gym.  It was horrible timing, of course, but I knew if I made it through the first 2 months I could make it through anything.  So after work, we would head to the apartment, eat dinner, workout, head to the house, paint/clean/fix/etc, and then head home exhausted and do it all again the next day.  With weekdays like that, and weekends with our social schedule, there was zero game time.  We consoled ourselves that once we moved in, we’d have time!

Once we were settled, things just didn’t take a turn for the better game-wise.  There was just never a good time.  We always had something to do with the house, whether it was just cleaning up or finally painting the bathroom, or unpacking and organizing – it was hard to justify a whole day of playing.  That was, if our friends weren’t over.  Now that we had an awesome space to entertain, we had people over constantly if we weren’t out and about.  I think we got one good night of playing with our guild before the people we were closest to cancelled their accounts because they didn’t play much either.  Then it was a whirlwind of family around to see the new place, it felt for a few months we were either cleaning in preparation for, spending time with, or cleaning up after family visits.

By early 2008, it was just a habit not to game much.  I hadn’t had my desktop hooked up for months by then, and I hadn’t patched up anything on my lappy in ages.  There was a period that we were hardcore into Rockband, but after a while that went by the wayside as well.  Oh, Rockband.  The game that helped me get 3 boys into skirts…

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the awesome rocking, and also how un-fat I have gotten since February.

Ok, moment over.  Basically since then, my life just doesn’t have room for much gaming.  Sure, I play here and there, but I’m becoming one of those people who I thought were in the minority – gamers that didn’t want to play games that took time.  A game has a lot of value to me if I can either A) play it at work from a browser in 5-10 minute increments to kill time B) doesn’t take coordinating a lot of people to do something together OR C) is easier to play with people IRL than online.  Instead of dinging 65 (yes I know I linked it before, but you know you want to watch it again) lately I’m lucky to ding 25 in PuzzleQuest on the DS before I get bored with it.

So how do I get my fix nowadays?  Well, I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look hardcore, but it really just functioned to let 3 of us play the same MMO in the same room, otherwise we probably just would have hung out and done something else.  But it looks damn good on the TV, doesn’t it?  Other things that keep me from twitching lately are Ikariam, poker on my DS, and the simple fact that I’m just too worn out after a day of work and the gym and dinner to do anything but watch Netflix, or Stargates, or West Wings, or whatever’s been DVR’d.  Sometimes we just sit outside and enjoy our patio and watch the sun set and swat mosquitos.

I think it’s also that gaming, for the San Diego years, was a way to live in relative poverty and not be so down about it.  I mean, we could barely afford food besides ramen some weeks, but we could entertain ourselves on 20 bucks a month for 2 subscriptions to EQ.  Living as a high elf who had the power to mesmerize anything with her beauty and sparkly sprinkles from her fingers felt GOOD to someone who could barely stand the way she looked in the mirror and had no power to do ANYTHING as a peon Quality Assurance or Customer Service grunt.  Buying upgrades in the bazaar helped me feel better that I could not afford to, nor fit in any clothes I wanted to buy.  I also had the unique experience in which it did not hurt my career, becoming familiar with the world and it’s lore helped me fall in love with a world enough that I grativated to working for and under it’s spell for almost 5 years, going from peon to producer.

Now, I don’t have such problems.  Sure, money is pseudo-tight right now due to circumstances beyond our control, but it’s not so bad – I don’t have to eat ramen and drink well vodka, thankyouverymuch.  I’m not having issues making a minimum payment on my maxed out credit cards, or taking direct deposit advance to make the rent check clear.  We are years away from that happening, and if it comes to that, I hear manwhoring pays well.  I may not be the most commanding person in real life unless I’ve had a few drinks, but my name IS fifth from the top on our newly released game credits, and it’s not because of alphabetical order.  I look in the mirror and don’t think – gee, I wish I looked like my avatars, I think – hey, you’re looking good today, woman!

So it’s not so bad, I guess.  Just like I’ve had phases where I was ridiculously into games, right now, I’m just not there.  I still play, I still enjoy, and yeah, I still long for the time, the will, and the reckless abandon to live it, but for now, I’ll enjoy the stolen time I can and have faith that someday, something extremely compelling will pull me back.  For now, I’m off to the gym to play the treadmill game.  It’s pretty grind-tastic, you have to keep running in the same spot over and over until your progress bar fills up.  But, just a bit more to go, and I can unlock these hot little black satin pants with flames on the butt that I’ve been saving since college for such an occasion that I want to show off my “hot ass” as such.

Last week, my workouts started to really suck, and I knew it was time to take a break. The last time I felt like this – I bruised my heel and injured my ankle. The time before, I got a really bad cold (I even stayed home from work, which is completely NOT normal for me). It was coming up on 4 months since I took a significant break from working out (more than 2 days in a row off, or less than 5 days in a week) so I declared this holiday weekend a mini-vacation for my muscles. I spent the long Labor Day weekend resting my poor tired stumps of legs, and beyond some swimming and shopping, my butt stayed firmly planted in a comfy seat.  Like the bad olive, I gave myself permission to “do what I want”!!

Additionally, I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted and not count calories. I ate french fries two days in a row, and red meat more often than normal. Thankfully I did not decide to have french fry salad as pictured over there, which looks disgusting!  There was whiskey, rum, wine, champagne, and beer. However, yesterday, even though I was still in “eat whatever I want” mode, I sought out the salad bar and for dinner we had some homemade shrimp stir fry instead of fatty, greasy food. I estimate that I had around my maintenance calories each day, maybe a little bit more. Yesterday morning, I felt really awful and sluggish, but after a day of veggies, veggies, and more veggies, I’m feeling great.

Mentally, I needed a break from worrying about everything as well. For the most part, I stayed away from just surfing the web, which just eats hours of my day if I let it. I lost myself in a game for hours to the point where it screwed up my sleep schedule. That being said, I slept in until after 11 am one day, and made it until about 10 am two others. I spent two afternoons at the pool and replenished my stores of vitamin D and now have some color instead of my pasty office tan (see, look, a little color in the cheeks there). We had a nice, small BBQ gathering. We went shopping and picked up some shoes (because I sooo needed some shoes, let me tell ya, heh) and other assorted things. It felt like a super long, eventful, but also relaxing weekend. Perfection.

I can tell it did me good, because I intentionally chose healthy food yesterday and today, and I woke up yesterday feeling like it was time for a workout. My calves and hamstrings are still a little tight (so obviously I needed the time off), but my neck is the most tense area right now, which is a sign that I’ve been doing more sitting than I should, and it’s time to move. Tomorrow, it’s right back into the swing of things, and for the first time in a while, I’m more than ready for it. I’m not dreading work like I have been since we started working overtime on and off, I’m not dreading my workouts like I have been the last few weeks, and I’m not resenting going back to my calorie counting tomorrow, I actually welcome it. I also took a break from even stepping on the scale, but today I’m weighing in at 171, which is not bad.

How do you know you might be overtraining?

• You have trouble sleeping or feel exhausted a lot of the time (check!)
• Muscle pain and soreness beyond normal or that lasts longer than normal (big check!)
• Lack of motivation and energy (check!)
• Sudden inability to complete workouts (check – couldn’t do 4 miles without walking last week!)
• Headaches
• Lack of appetite (yeah, not so much for me…)
• Elevated morning or resting pulse (don’t keep track but I bet I had that)
• Weakened immune system (no sickness, thank goodness)

So how do you prevent it?

• Warm up before your workout and cool down properly (I’ve gotten better at this – you can’t just break into a run and you can’t just stop and get off the treadmill)
• Make sure to eat something before and/or after exercise (I usually eat some fruit about 30 mins before and then have dinner soon after)
• Stretch! (I do a short stretching routine after running but I’m bad about it otherwise unless I’m getting my yoga in)
• Schedule recovery periods in your routine (I do 5 days a week, which is generally great, but coming off extended hours at work and stress, I needed a break)
• Get adequate sleep (I get grumpy if I don’t get my 7-8 most nights, so I’m ok here)

There’s a lot of other information out there, so check it out if you’re feeling like I did, and give yourself permission to take a break, even if it evokes some strange and irrational fears that rattle around your brain.  I did not negate the progress I’ve made in the last month, I did not lose muscle tone, and I did not do anything to harm myself or my routine just by getting off the grid for a long weekend.  I gained 1 lb over the weekend, which I am about 99% sure is water retention from salty food yesterday and my body rehydrating itself after my attempts to pickle my liver with alchohol, and will be gone in a day or two.  I haven’t worked out yet, but I don’t think I’m going to suddenly only be able to run a 12 minute mile again or only do 12 pushups.  I did not have to hurl myself headfirst into the grill like the poor chalk elephant pictured here.

So even though it felt self indulgent and lazy to consider it at first, I know it was a needed rest.  I feel relaxed, refreshed, and ready for anything.  I’m going to take it (somewhat) easy this week with my workouts and really push the yoga that I’ve been neglecting.  Next week, though, I’m really ready to kick it up a notch and I’ll be back later in the week to share my September workout plan.

My third grade teacher, when reading through some of my “journal” we were told to write in every day, introduced me to what was to be my fate – “jack of all trades, master at none”. In my 8 year old wisdom, I was a little offended that she said I wasn’t a master because dangit, I was going to be the best gymnast/waitress/math teacher/actress/dancer/artist – whatever my obsession of the week was. I was so into it, it was my dream, and I lived it and loved it and would be the best EVAR… until the next week when my “oooh shiney” mentality took me elsewhere. Some people just knew what they wanted to do when they grew up since birth practically (like Zliten), but I wanted to do EVERYTHING. I wanted it all, and I wanted to be the best at it.

While, sure, I’ve never won any olympic gold medals or waitress of the year awards, I have surely done a heck of a variety of things in my life. I have explored many, many facets of my soul. I’ve been athlete-Quix (hi there again, good to see ya), artsy-fartsy-Quix (trying to conjure you up again but my muse is elusive, that bitch!), logical-Quix (hi 2 u job), creative-storyteller-Quix (hi 2 u, secondary part of job), competitive-Quix (she never goes away), beatnik-poet-Quix… and many, many other Quix variants out there.

One of those interests that is really at my core is games. There is so much I love about the aspect of games of all types. First of all – you PLAY a game. Game = fun. Sure, I’ve had unfun times working on and even playing games, but you can’t really ever take the unfun too seriously because – you are PLAYING. And about the unfun part, that’s probably another soapbox for another day. Then, for better or for worse, competitive-Quix comes out to play, which is why Zliten and I only play co-op games. It’s just better because neither of us are good losers and I’m pretty sure there has been an utterance or two of “say my name, BITCH!!” after a rousing game of cards. Or, right as I’m about to win my first drunken chess game, the pieces magically get displaced by Zliten and we can’t continue the game. Or – the ridiculous stompings at Starcraft I was dealt OVER AND OVER. But as they say, the couple that plays together, stays together, so we play TOGETHER now. In games that do not involve me vs him.

This particular phase of gaming obsession started about six months before college graduation when I played the hell out of the Sims until the sun came up, Sega Swirl, and found and got ridiculously addicted to acrophobia and gamesville (which is not what it used to be – they used to offer huge prizes for all their games and $5000 was a huge draw for a broke college student when the other option was homework). After somehow keeping it together to a tune of a 4.0 senior year (I pretty much just took the year off sleep to make time for school, partying, and gaming) and moving out to San Diego, I got really really really really into EverQuest. We worked and played, and that was life. Hanging out with friends meant hanging out in guild chat (mostly with people we knew from work, but we met some other people along the way). We didn’t even have a real, functioning dining room table or anywhere to eat, we just ate at our desks. Our computers were easily the most valuable things in the apartment.

The game we were into changed from month to month but we were always pretty “hardcore”. We never were close to catassing or poopsocking (click on these at risk of being disgusting with humanity), but many a delivery pizza were accepted by one of us as quickly as possible as the other was manning all the characters so we didn’t die. We got sick of EQ after a while and picked up Dark Ages of Camelot. Then as SOE stuff came out we’d play those games (PlanetSide, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest II) hardcore for a while and then jump to something else. A typical Saturday was waking at the crack of noon, getting a delivery order of cheese stix with ranch, a chicken ceasar salad, a cheese pizza, and hoagies and fries for each of us, and cracking open a bottle of some adult beverage and playing until we couldn’t see straight or stay awake. No wonder my ass ended up the size of Texas, right?

But even staring at that last paragraph in disgust – I have fond memories of those days. Try it once. Give yourself permission to be a complete and utter waste of space to the rest of the world. Eat ridiculous amounts of fattening food that is brought to your door. Get so into something the lines of reality and virtual reality are blurred and you dream about it when you close your eyes. Don’t leave your chair except to perform biological functions (I do not condone or support poopsocking) and refill your drink. Make sure that drink is good and stiff, too!

Now, I don’t wish to get there again every day like I used to. I like not having to hide behind a sexy elvish avatar because I felt so horrible about the way I was taking care of my body. My friends are not pixelated, I can actually reach out and punch them when they make fun of me when we are hanging out! A big day out does not just include a trip to the grocery store or target. But there is a real commitment to playing games that you don’t realize until you’re trying to get back into playing something after a hiatus. As much as those days hold a dear spot in my (now much less prone to a coronary) heart, I just can’t spend a full day doing it anymore. We tried having a shut in gaming session one weekend, and put in a respectable 9 hours Saturday, and got to 4 hours Sunday and gave in and did something else. And that’s just playing Final Fantasy XII taking turns.

I’m not sure I’ll ever recapture the days where my ass was attached to my computer chair, swigging down knob creek, singing slurred 80’s songs into teamspeak, wolfing down Knockout Pizza (which apparently has gone WAY downhill since we left), and killing the same thing over and over for hours just to watch a little progress bar move to the right. But I’m a little disappointed in myself that things have gotten this far to the other end of the spectrum.

How un-nerdy am I now? Find out in Part 2, coming soon to a blog near you.

One of my new favorite things to do is rock climbing, though last time it was almost literally a pain in my ass.

Saturday afternoon, the workout options for the day were DDR and pushups or less DDR and rock climbing, and since climbing is much more fun than pushing, off we went. I was almost an idiot (gosh…) and forgot how taxing it was and didn’t rest after my cardio, but after a rest and a shower and change, we were off to Main Event to hit their rock wall.

Last time we had gotten our rocks off for free, but even paying for it – 6 bucks per 30 mins to cover everything (8 for 1 hour, 12 for 2) – is a good deal in my book. Here is video proof that I climbed rocks, even though it’s got the same sideways affliction as the last video, it cuts off just before I ring the bell at the top, and you see kids 1/3rd my age kicking my butt. I am in the way-too-orange tank top.

So from one climbing newbie to another – let me give some tips.

• If you have the option to pay by time increment, start with the lowest one the first couple times out. 30 mins sounds like wimpy stuff to those of us who can do an hour of cardio without batting an eye, but you’re using unusual muscles unless you live on top of a mountain and regularly have to make the commute that way.
• Stop when you get tired and can’t really hold on anymore. It’s no fun to keep falling off, and if you’re at that point, you WILL get sore for days.
• You need the shoes and harness, you can probably get by without the chalk if you’re trying to save money.
• Don’t let the kids who climb up the wall ten times faster than you discourage you at all. They probably weigh half what you do and just got done climbing a tree before they rolled into the joint.
• If you’re a parent who’s taking their child to go rock climb, for god sakes, FREAKING GIVE IT A TRY YOURSELF. All the parents were just sitting around watching and we were the only people who could legally buy alcohol in a bar on the wall. The only way to have energy like a kid again is to act like a kid again – aka HAVE FUN when fun is presented to you.
• Wear lose clothing. It looks like I screwed up by wearing tight jeans but they were super stretchy. I would have been better served in loose shorts but I hadn’t shaved my legs that day and didn’t want to frighten the kids with my wildabeast legs.
• The first time you climb up, just go up a few feet and repel down so you know what it feels like to do it from 30 feet (or more) up. I went up all the way and climbed most of the way back down because it freaked me out to jump off a wall about 3 stories up. Once I did it though – it was my favorite part of the climb!

There is a lot of info out there if you’re just getting interested in climbing. Some sites really take it seriously and talk about what to eat before climbing and all that, but as you probably know, if you’re going to scale up a wall indoors for 30 mins you probably don’t need to be that into it. Maybe if you’re going to climb this thing…

All I have to say is that if you get a chance to go, do it! It’s a workout, it’s fun, any able bodied person can do it, and you feel like a kid again! Don’t worry that you’ll suck at it, you probably won’t be nearly as bad as you think. I know I doubted my ability to get even up the wall once, and there I was, scaling walls non-stop for 30 mins. I might even drag Zliten and company back this weekend if this actually includes climbing as well. So go climb a rock already!