Today is our 15th wedding anniversary.

I can’t get enough of your love, babe.

You’re my best friend.

You and me, together, we can do anything.

Bullgrit

I don’t have time to write much, today, so I’m making a lazy-man’s post. This is awesome:

Bullgrit

Yeah, I know. I haven’t been updating here much lately. It’s because of my P90X regimen.

No, I’m not being paid a dime to talk about the workout.* It’s just a major part of my life for these three months. Between maintaining the proper diet every day, every meal, every snack, and working out every day for 1.5 hours, P90X is as much a part of my every day as my family and work. At least for these three months.

Before I started this routine, once we got the boys to bed at night, I’d go to my office and write/work as I needed and wanted. Now, though, once we get the boys to bed at night, I change into my workout clothes and put in the workout DVD. A sweaty hour and a half later, I’m getting into the shower, exhausted. Out of the shower, I’m ready to fall into bed. That’s usually around or after 10:00. And our mornings start at around 6:00.

So there just really isn’t time for me to sit at my computer and write up a blog post. I miss the writing. And I have a backlog of things I want to write about — a long, long backlog. I have so many stories and ideas floating around in my head, it drives me crazy at times.

I’m just starting week 11 (of 13). Last week got really screwed up because I was sick a couple days. I was really ill on Tuesday, so much so that I was home in bed the entire day with flu-like symptoms. I, of course, missed my workout that night.

Wednesday, I was not sick as a dog, but was still not well. I went to work for the afternoon, but I was tired and still a little achy. I skipped my workout that night, too.

Thursday, I felt close to normal, though not 100%. I was eating normal again, and I tried to workout that night. But I just couldn’t get through the whole routine. I completely ran out of steam. It wasn’t like being tired from the exercise, it was just no energy at all — like a terrible case of lethargy. I felt bad mentally and emotionally for not being able to get back into the workout like I should.

Friday night, I tried again. Happily, I was able to complete the workout that time. Saturday night is the “rest” day for the regimen, but I debated skipping the rest and trying to do something to make up for the misses earlier in the week. But I ended up resting anyway.

Sunday night, last night, started my new weekly pattern, so I was determined to get back into it. I did the scheduled workout, and though it was hard — probably as hard as the first week I started P90X — I did manage to complete all the exercises, including Ab Ripper X.

I feel like I’m back in the routine now, and I’m raring to go again. (Tonight is Plyometrics.) But man, being sick and missing a few days really did a number on my energy and routine. I didn’t gain back any weight, (eating almost nothing for the day I was really sick probably helped, there), and my muscles don’t look like I lost anything for my down time. So maybe that stumble in my 90 days didn’t hurt my goal too much.

Though I’m enjoying the workouts, and I’m loving the results, I will be glad to reach the end of the 90 days so I can go into maintenance mode — I can workout just 3-4 nights a week. That’ll let me have some evenings free again to write and play, again.

* Edit: After I wrote this, I realized this isn’t exactly true — that is, I’m not making a dime directly talking about P90X. The ads on the sides of this page are generated by GoogleAds, based on text in my posts. So if someone clicks on those ads, technically I will be “paid a dime” for talking about it.

Bullgrit

We were a newly formed game group, in our fourth game session (second session with me DMing). I was running a basic dungeon crawl in a moderate-sized dungeon. The Players seemed to be enjoying the play, but we were still getting to know each other’s play style.

As a DM (and as a Player) I prefer to let the dice fall as they will – I don’t like fudging for or against the PCs. I explained this to the Players before I started DMing.

The PCs (five 3rd level characters) had delved pretty far into the dungeon, battling through orcs and ogres and wolves, and a few other critters. They had left a path of death through the dungeon. Once the more organized denizens of the place discovered they had invaders, a large force went through the place looking to kill the adventurers.

The PCs had just battled a couple of ogres, and they were hurt and expended. They decided they either needed to head back out of the dungeon, or they had to find a safe place to hole up. They stepped out of the ogre room, intending to backtrack through the corridors.

They heard a lot of commotion down the hall from where they had come. It sounded like a lot of orcs. The orcs were following the trail of bloody battles through the dungeon.

The party had to get away, but they hadn’t explored further than were they were right then. In their worn condition, they didn’t think they’d survive a fight with a bunch of orcs, so their only option was to try to move through the unexplored halls to hopefully get somewhere they could evade or hide from the enemies coming.

They opened a door across from the ogre room and found a long hallway. They hustled through the door and closed it quietly behind them. They moved down the hall, coming to the end where they found what looked like a one-way secret door – secret from the other side. They heard the door behind them open and orc voices wondering if the invaders had gone this way.

The adventurers opened the door before them, and found it lead to outside the dungeon. They hurried through the door and out of the dungeon.

I could see in every Player’s expression that they thought I had just orchestrated – fudged – their escape. It was too perfect a set up, and too perfect an escape route – right where they needed it for the most climatic escape scene. There were even a couple of groans about how it was too perfect.

“Here, look,” I said. I used a couple of pieces of paper to cover parts of the [printed, not hand drawn] map they hadn’t explored yet, and showed them just the part they could recognize as the ogre room (a unique room with a pit trap in the center), the corridor where the orcs were coming from (with a penciled X where they had left a dead orc patrol), and the hall with the one-way secret door at the end.

The Players looked at the map and saw that I had not fudged any of it for their escape. They laughed, one hooted, and a couple high-fived. The escape scene had happened naturally, and fairly.

That was a critically important moment, for me, as a DM. For those Players, and for me, that was a very fun scene only because it wasn’t orchestrated to be cinematic. It defined our relationship as DM and Players – they knew things in the game would happen naturally and fairly.

Strangely, I’ve met Players who don’t want to “see behind the DM screen” at all, ever, even to prove things are “fair.” I’ve met Players who want the DM to roll dice behind the screen so they can’t see the results. I’ve actually had another DM tell me that showing the map to the Players in the game above was wrong.

Bullgrit