State of the Me
Less sick than I was in November and most of December. Still having at least one multi-hour crash a day, and as many as three. Sitting in a chair is not something I can do longterm. Not able to exercise. Have made it to the farmer's market twice since the long dry spell, which is a big improvement. (I have gotten yummy dates and dried pluots from that, too!) Really wish I could replace all the muscles in my legs with new ones that are not crampy and achy much of the time. Arms too, but especially my legs seem prone to this. I should just force myself to walk but I keep actually swooning from exhaustion so that seems like an unpleasant prospect. (Swoon plus treadmill, or walking outside, bad combo.) In general it feels like an improvement though so I'll take it a day at a time.
Today I tried making chickpeas in the rice cooker, since I had some tiny umbrian chickpeas I wanted to try out but I was afraid I'd space out and burn them, and it worked very well indeed. I did in fact space out on them so I would have burned them. I've been eating them with a little olive or toasted walnut oil, salt, and pepper.
I have been FEASTING on dates and walnuts since I made it back to the farmer's market. I had so long without yummy real dates that I got all sorts and am going to town. I should probably calm down (as dates are quite sugary) but it feels like a nice welcome back. One very nice combination is to split open a date and put a piece of walnut or an almond or two in where the pit was. Nom nom nom. The slightly bitter nuts are a nice contrast to the sweetness of the dates. The dried pluots are amazing as well, like candy, though almost too sweet for me. I also have been getting satsumas and persimmons. Who said there wasn't good fruit in the winter? This is awesome.
Re: dairy, I seem to be able to eat kefir and cheese without getting too sick, but I'm back in one of those states where if I eat a full meal of almost anything I'm exhausted afterward, so it's hard to tell. I'm trying not to eat lots of dairy, but not trying to avoid it altogether. Eggs seem to work okay, and I've been experimenting a bit with gluten-free popovers as a result. The second batch came out rather muffin-like, so I haven't achieved true popovers yet, but they're not bad at all. It's really quite easy to make a half recipe in three custard cups, which I like.
Flicking, I've been playing Dragon Age when I am up to sitting in a chair. This is pretty abbreviated so since I've gotten it, mostly I've gone through the various permutations on the origin stories. I like many of the origin stories so I wanted to see how it would go if I took other options. I finished up with that today so I'll now go and do a main plotline story. If I get really curious about other alternatives I may branch as I go; it's easier the way my short term memory works if I do the alternatives right away while they're fresh, otherwise I tend to have a maddening sense of deja vu and confusion. But if I'm not burning with curiosity about other choices I may just follow one path. I'll see where it goes. I'm liking the combat engine pretty well and despite having played all three classes still couldn't name a favorite! They all have their points. So far I'm enjoying rogue the best, probably, especially if I pick stealth -- though I don't like how cutscenes automatically kill your stealth. Mages are of course awesome but the end of a long combat tends to be a little duller than with a rogue. I also really love shield warriors. Archers are also great. So many choices!
I also keep getting tempted by the super-cheap games on Steam (Torchlight was on sale for less than $5 after Christmas... and Jade Empire, which I never played, on sale for $3.75 today) that I'm picking them up as something to try while in bed. Most of them have lower computer requirements so I don't need a beefy desktop to run them. So I have stuff to keep me busy for ages to come, given that my focus time is so limited even while in bed. (It is possible that the make/break decision on Torchlight was made by the ability to send your dog to town to sell excess lewts.)
The other thing we've been doing is getting into D&D. Despite my whinges about the D&D character builder, it is in fact a surprisingly decent tool. Slow as it is on the laptop, I've been fiddling away with it, doing things like building concept parties and a concept character for each class, to get an idea of the classes. Brad and I are playing through Scales of War, too -- he's GMing it and running two members of the party and I'm running the other three, including the primary party talker (so Brad doesn't end up talking to himself all the time!) We've finished the first module and are starting the second and are enjoying it very much. Some things have surprised me (mostly pleasantly) about the way 4e plays as compared to 3e. In general I am finding it nicely streamlined, and I'm actually able to manage three characters, which would have been inconceivable for me in 3e. I like the card system though I feel guilty about the treekilling -- we seem to level so fast that we're printing out a new set of characters very frequently! I don't think I can multiplay characters via iplay4e on my ipod, though. It's been very satisfying to do tabletop again, and I really like the group of PCs we have running through the module and I think it'll just get better as they mature as a party.
About my only 'boo' in 4e is that they fixed attacks of opportunity by making it one per opponents turn... and then turned around and slapped the restriction right back on by making only one immediate action a round. Given that we have a warden who gets oodles of stuff happening from marked enemies all the time, it's sad to go back to the 'sucking up opportunity attacks' metagaming and action starvation from 3e. Other than that it's a lot more streamlined and swashbuckling. If Feng Shui and 3e loved each other very very much and had a child, it might take after 3e more, yeah, but you can see the other parent in there. (Heck, not just Feng Shui... it plays a lot like Shadowfist!)
I've found a few bugs in the character builder but it's surprisingly good at correctly modeling characters, for how fiddly that is. And working on D&D characters is another game I can do in bed.
Today I tried making chickpeas in the rice cooker, since I had some tiny umbrian chickpeas I wanted to try out but I was afraid I'd space out and burn them, and it worked very well indeed. I did in fact space out on them so I would have burned them. I've been eating them with a little olive or toasted walnut oil, salt, and pepper.
I have been FEASTING on dates and walnuts since I made it back to the farmer's market. I had so long without yummy real dates that I got all sorts and am going to town. I should probably calm down (as dates are quite sugary) but it feels like a nice welcome back. One very nice combination is to split open a date and put a piece of walnut or an almond or two in where the pit was. Nom nom nom. The slightly bitter nuts are a nice contrast to the sweetness of the dates. The dried pluots are amazing as well, like candy, though almost too sweet for me. I also have been getting satsumas and persimmons. Who said there wasn't good fruit in the winter? This is awesome.
Re: dairy, I seem to be able to eat kefir and cheese without getting too sick, but I'm back in one of those states where if I eat a full meal of almost anything I'm exhausted afterward, so it's hard to tell. I'm trying not to eat lots of dairy, but not trying to avoid it altogether. Eggs seem to work okay, and I've been experimenting a bit with gluten-free popovers as a result. The second batch came out rather muffin-like, so I haven't achieved true popovers yet, but they're not bad at all. It's really quite easy to make a half recipe in three custard cups, which I like.
Flicking, I've been playing Dragon Age when I am up to sitting in a chair. This is pretty abbreviated so since I've gotten it, mostly I've gone through the various permutations on the origin stories. I like many of the origin stories so I wanted to see how it would go if I took other options. I finished up with that today so I'll now go and do a main plotline story. If I get really curious about other alternatives I may branch as I go; it's easier the way my short term memory works if I do the alternatives right away while they're fresh, otherwise I tend to have a maddening sense of deja vu and confusion. But if I'm not burning with curiosity about other choices I may just follow one path. I'll see where it goes. I'm liking the combat engine pretty well and despite having played all three classes still couldn't name a favorite! They all have their points. So far I'm enjoying rogue the best, probably, especially if I pick stealth -- though I don't like how cutscenes automatically kill your stealth. Mages are of course awesome but the end of a long combat tends to be a little duller than with a rogue. I also really love shield warriors. Archers are also great. So many choices!
I also keep getting tempted by the super-cheap games on Steam (Torchlight was on sale for less than $5 after Christmas... and Jade Empire, which I never played, on sale for $3.75 today) that I'm picking them up as something to try while in bed. Most of them have lower computer requirements so I don't need a beefy desktop to run them. So I have stuff to keep me busy for ages to come, given that my focus time is so limited even while in bed. (It is possible that the make/break decision on Torchlight was made by the ability to send your dog to town to sell excess lewts.)
The other thing we've been doing is getting into D&D. Despite my whinges about the D&D character builder, it is in fact a surprisingly decent tool. Slow as it is on the laptop, I've been fiddling away with it, doing things like building concept parties and a concept character for each class, to get an idea of the classes. Brad and I are playing through Scales of War, too -- he's GMing it and running two members of the party and I'm running the other three, including the primary party talker (so Brad doesn't end up talking to himself all the time!) We've finished the first module and are starting the second and are enjoying it very much. Some things have surprised me (mostly pleasantly) about the way 4e plays as compared to 3e. In general I am finding it nicely streamlined, and I'm actually able to manage three characters, which would have been inconceivable for me in 3e. I like the card system though I feel guilty about the treekilling -- we seem to level so fast that we're printing out a new set of characters very frequently! I don't think I can multiplay characters via iplay4e on my ipod, though. It's been very satisfying to do tabletop again, and I really like the group of PCs we have running through the module and I think it'll just get better as they mature as a party.
About my only 'boo' in 4e is that they fixed attacks of opportunity by making it one per opponents turn... and then turned around and slapped the restriction right back on by making only one immediate action a round. Given that we have a warden who gets oodles of stuff happening from marked enemies all the time, it's sad to go back to the 'sucking up opportunity attacks' metagaming and action starvation from 3e. Other than that it's a lot more streamlined and swashbuckling. If Feng Shui and 3e loved each other very very much and had a child, it might take after 3e more, yeah, but you can see the other parent in there. (Heck, not just Feng Shui... it plays a lot like Shadowfist!)
I've found a few bugs in the character builder but it's surprisingly good at correctly modeling characters, for how fiddly that is. And working on D&D characters is another game I can do in bed.