Angela

I paid off my student loans today.

To celebrate, I'm going to get myself a lovely umbrella. My current umbrella, as much as I love it, is showing wear. I've had it for at least 10 years. So it's probably time.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1793009219/elegant-green-and-white-lily-floral

Today is The Perfect Date.

I've been weirdly sick. Again.

I was really fatigued, I had what felt like the beginning of an ear infection, had strange muscle pain (it felt like I'd severely strained some muscles, but I had not exerted myself), and was having a lot of trouble thinking. No fever, no cough, no sore throat. Some sneezing and eye irritation but I thought that was due to allergies, and I started taking allergy meds.

I was really concerned because the symptoms were so odd. But as soon as I listed of all my symptoms, he literally jumped up and said he knew what was going on.

Adenovirus, apparently. He checked my eyes, because one of the main signs is eye irritation, and what he saw confirmed his suspicion.

He gave me something to reduce inflammation and said I'd probably start feeling better soon just based on how long I'd been experiencing symptoms.

And he was right. My mind is recovering and the fatigue is lifting. I'm feeling a lot happier now that I'm not scared something weird is going on. February was the anniversary of my lumpectomy, and this month is the anniversary of when I had radiation. So "paying attention to weird symptoms" is more on my mind right now.

Anyway. If you didn't know, adenovirus can apparently manifest a little strangely. If you feel like you have pink eye and your brain is misbehaving while you're literally to tired and sore to do anything, it might be this.

A while back, I bought an inexpensive metal outdoor chair from a consignment shop. Today I put cushions on it and sat outside to read in the sunshine. The weather is pretty perfect for that. I mean, I needed a jacket, but it's sunny and pleasant.

So. Successful test! The "sitting outside" chair does a nice job of facilitating me sitting outside. I hope to do more of it (I am chronically low on Vitamin D and this is part of how I will be mitigating that).

My son is cracking me up. Every time he wants to wheedle his way into or out of something, he says, "Teeeeeeeeeeth" in a very specific, mournful way.

His pain from his braces has diminished quite a lot, so he's doing much better. When he does this now, it's for comedic effect.

My son got his braces put on this past Friday. He was very brave and did not complain at all. It was really hard to watch him go through that.

The first day was not that bad, pain-wise, but Saturday and today have been rough. I would say it started kicking in around midday Saturday (at Science Olympiad) but I had remembered to bring painkillers and he got through it.

Today he's still got some pain, but it's mainly a "weird" feeling that is bugging him. I am hoping that by tomorrow he'll be nearly back to baseline.

He's not a big soup fan, but he's going to try some today. We'll see how that goes.

Only about 18 months of this...

When we were gearing up for this new campaign, The Husband was looking through our stock of minis to pick his NPCs and found one for my half orc.

We had one that worked great for my character. I actually got this one a long time ago (before we were married, because I remember painting her at his apartment). I think this mini was for the first Fighter I ever played.

This time around, we are playing gestalt characters, and she is a Favored Soul/Fighter. Instead of swords, she carries a heavy mace, and her deity is St. Cuthbert.

I am so pleased he located her so I get to play her again. Half orc ladies are not super common.

I'm not a great painter, but I like how she came out.

#Dungeons&Dragons3.5 #TTRPG

Oh, Star of Bethlehem, you are so pretty. But please stop invading the native plant beds.

I've done some crafty stuff this weekend, which feels nice.

I got a lot of knitting done at the Science Olympiad - the campus this year was a lot easier for students to navigate so I wasn't ferrying kids to their rooms. I could stay in one place and do my knitting while keeping an eye on things.

I got to the point in my Clapotis scarf where I could drop the first stitch, which is awesome. It's still looking very nice - I like the yarn and colorway a lot. But this yarn suffers from what I see a lot in yarn of this type - every now and then, I run into a spot where it's just two lengths knotted together. Not cool!

I have been clipping out the knots and rejoining the yarn with a less visible method. It's fine.

I also did some handsewing today. I have a coat that I like a lot and wear pretty much every day, and the lining had gotten torn. My son was chasing me and grabbed the back of my coat, which caused the woven upper part of the lining to come loose from the satiny part of the lining (the woven part is kind of loosely woven, and it just came apart).

I sewed further into the woven section and reattached it to the rest of the lining. It looks better than I thought it would and I hope it will hold. If I don't put it through undue stress I think it will be okay.

I wish I had taken before and after pictures. It really looked bad, to the point where I was careful about taking my coat off around people. But now you cannot tell it happened.

It would have been even better (probably stronger) if I had dug out the sewing machine and done it that way, but I'd been thinking that for weeks and just haven't done it. I decided to get it done now. I have a real problem letting the "perfect" be the enemy of the "good." But I overcame that today, and now my coat is repaired. And I have one more chore crossed off my list!

We are at Science Olympiad today, and I'm so pleased that I learned the correct lesson from last year.

Last year, the kids were all told by their coach to bring a sack lunch, but not all of them did, so the parents who were there ordered a bunch of food from a nearby restaurant, which was Cane's. We got chicken strips and a couple of "boxes" of lemonade. But Cane's didn't have plates, they would only give us little cups, and no napkins.

Our kids ended up eating on paper towels we liberated from the bathroom. I know. I KNOW!

THIS YEAR, I brought a bunch of paper plates (left from Thanksgiving), a bunch of plastic flatware that was individually packaged (our Chinese restaurant always includes them and we rarely use them), a bunch of red solo cups (also from Thanksgiving), and a fresh roll of paper towels.

I saved the day. Lunch had indeed not been organized by the coaches. One mom made an executive decision and ordered a bunch of pizzas. And then she realized we were going to have a similar situation as last year (except these bathrooms don't have paper towels).

But no! I ran out and grabbed my tote of stuff and it was all fine. Plates for everyone! Flatware if you need it! Paper towels, suitable for wiping your hands and face, or the odd spill.

We also brought a bunch of writing utensils and a calculator because they are picky about what kind of calculator you can use in each event, and I don't trust the school to remember what my kid will need for his events. Those have been put to good use, and not just by my kid.

I am also keeping a mom who couldn't be here up to date. Her son and mine have been friends since kindergarten, and they have a couple of events together today. I sent her a picture of them in their lab coats and goggles, told her he did get fed, and updated her on how his events have gone.

I have been up since 4 a.m. I'm going to be so happy to get home to my bed.

Last time we gamed, we finished our long campaign in Pathfinder 2nd edition. Our party confronted and defeated Treerazer, an ancient demonic entity that had made his way to our world and was trying to remake it for himself.

It was a pretty tough fight, but we had done a lot of good things during the journey to this point, which meant that we had allies we could call upon in the final battle! We did not know this was how it was going to work, so it was pretty cool to see our prior good deeds get rewarded in that way.

We were able to call on one faction to completely distract him for a round (so he didn't attack any of us), we were able to get another ally to injure him, and there was another ally that would heal us all by 80 points apiece.

So that all helped a lot. Then we did a nice job with our parts - the Wizard had the right spells prepared, the Fighter had a newish feat that let her knock someone out of the air (handy when your opponent is flying), the Champion had an aura that came in WAY handy, and I managed to get the Big Bad to critically fail a save against my first spell, so he was taking round after round of persistent damage. And it was even MORE than normal, because it was damage he was extra vulnerable to. The persistent damage alone did over 100 points to this guy. That was really satisfying. Plus, he was vulnerable to Cold Iron and my warhammer was very effective.

One of the first things that our enemy did was cast a spell that gave him hit points back every round. The Wizard caught on and used his spell to "detonate" that magic. He did that even though everyone else was going to get hit when the detonation went off. We all voted for it because we knew we had to get rid of that regeneration.

It's a running joke that the Wizard is always blowing my character up (it's happened twice, so it's not really a thing. I just like to act like it is). So this time we milked that for all it was worth and I found it hilarious.

The detonation worked, and the regeneration was eliminated. That was awesome.

There was one point when I had to rush across the field of battle to heal the Fighter - she took a couple of nasty hits and wasn't going to last at that rate. But other than that, none of us were in extreme peril. Not like I had expected us to be, anyway. The Champion kept getting critted, but she had something that let her roll to see if it was truly a crit, or if it was just a regular hit. And dang she was rolling well with that! I think she transformed three critical hits into regular hits, and that made a big difference.

It was a lot of fun and we didn't get done until an hour and a half later than usual. It was a LONG fight, but it was a really good final battle for this saga. The DM did a great job and we all had a good time.

Our next adventure starts today. We will be playing D&D 3.5. I'm going to play a half-orc. We were told to each pick two classes, so I'm a Favored Soul/Fighter. We'll see how it goes. I have no idea what the campaign will be about (maybe an actual dungeon?). The Husband will be our DM and I'm really looking forward to it because he's my favorite DM.

#Pathfinder2e #TTRPG

Arg. My wheelbarrow has a rusty patch. I'm going to try to save it. We have rustoleum primer from a previous outdoor project, and I have some rustoleum green enamel spraypaint. The wheelbarrow is green (the same green? DOESN'T MATTER!).

I think this patch of rust was hiding under a crack in the paint and that's how it got so big before being discovered. I'm a little afraid that if we brush or sand it down to repaint it, we're going to sand right through the bottom. Well, if that happens, it happens.

Though now that I think about it, the handles are probably the first thing to fix - one of them got a crack soon after we bought this one, and it steadily got worse through the years. I have replacement handles now - we just need to detach the old ones and put the new ones on. We'll see how that goes. If it can survive getting new handles, we'll tackle the rusty part.

@Wolf@social.incognoble.com Thank you! That's very kind of you to say.