Summary

I competed for the first time at the USPA Drug Tested Emerald City Classic hosted by DOP Strength Gym in Kirkland, WA on May 18th, 2024.
Here's my Instagram post with videos of my third attempts and a photo with my participation medal (I was the only 110kg submaster male lifter).
I went 9/9 with no red lights, broke my gym PRs on squat and deadlift, and had an awesome time. I competed in the submaster 110kg class in raw full power, weighed in (24h before) at 105.7 kg, and totaled 545kg. I planned to take very light openers, big jumps for my second attempts (15kg for squat and deadlift, 10kg for bench), and then smaller jumps (7.5kg for squat and deadlift, 5kg for bench) for my thirds, and I stuck to that plan. All of my lifts felt great and moved fast except for my third bench, which was a little bit of a grind. My strategy paid off because I had a much more enjoyable day going 9/9 a little light, compared to how I would have felt if I had missed any of my first or second attempts--which I saw happen to plenty of other lifters.
The gym was a little crowded with 60 lifters in 4 flights but the meet was super well run, with good vibes all around. The meet director was super clear at the rules briefing and the spotteloader crew absolutely hauled ass and the whole meet was over at 3 pm. I also got to see several master's lifters set state and national records, including a 72 year old woman, so that was awesome to watch.
My friend and training partner, who is an experienced master's lifter and meet judge, showed up to handle me and that made a huge difference in my experience. He really helped me a ton with understanding the pace, timing my warmups, loading the bar, chalking my back, cheering me on, telling me when to rest, eat, hydrate, everything. He really did a fantastic job.

Prep

I took Steve DeNovi's free 3x Bench - Conventional Deadlift program and ran Block 3 and the peaking block (10 weeks), with modifications to the accessory selection and split to make it 4 days a week. My weekly split was:

• Mon: Primary squat, OHP, pull ups, bicep curls
• Tue: Primary bench, secondary deadlift (cluster singles), chest supported rows, face pulls, tricep pushdowns
• Thu: Secondary squat, paused squat, tertiary bench (Larsen press), lat pulldowns, DB incline press
• Fri: Primary deadlift, paused deadlift, secondary bench, bent over rows, lateral raises

I really enjoyed this program and got a lot out of it. I felt like the peak timing was just right for my meet.

Squat

Squats felt great in prep. My training max for the first block was 425 lbs and I upped it to 435 for the second block. I didn't feel like I under or overshot any of my prep lifts, my RPEs felt accurate.
There was a little confusion about whether squats would be done on a 25kg squat bar or a 20kg power bar, but they ended up using the 20kg Kabuki power bar. The knurling felt great on my back.

1. 170kg. The main thing in my head was to take my time setting up, which I did, and I think it helped calm my nerves. When I unracked, the bar tilted to the right slightly, but I was able to level it out as I walked out. Stance felt solid, got a strong brace, weight felt light and moved fast.
2. 185kg. Better unrack. Felt lighter than I expected.
3. 192.5kg. Beat my gym PR of 415lbs. My handler said my third looked like it moved better than my second. I felt a cramp in my right inner hamstring as I locked it out though, and it's feeling sore today. I felt in control the whole rep but I think I kinda dive-bombed it and went a little too deep and that over-stretched my hammie. Looking back at the videos, I think I rushed the descent on all my squats, even though I had been practicing a slower descent during prep. Something to work on cleaning up before my next meet.

Bench

I kind of wrote off bench for this meet since I made poor progress in prep. For the first 5 week block my training max was 265 lbs and I felt like I was undershooting, so I increased it to 275 lbs, but once I started hitting singles at 250+ they weren't moving well and my butt started coming off the bench. I fixed that issue late in prep by setting my feet further back. My left shoulder had also been bothering me a bit lately, plus I started getting some tennis elbow on my left from the bent over rows or something. So I went with attempts I knew for sure I could hit, and didn't get too excited for bench. I also really felt that bench was a natural "valley" between the peaks of squat and deadlift, in terms of the energy level of the meet.

1. 100kg. A gimme attempt just to practice the commands for real.
2. 110kg. This was the best bench single I've had lately--setup, foot placement, arch, unrack, controlled descent, pause, and press, everything felt solid and it went up so fast that my friend who was working the scoring table shouted "Put some weight on the bar!"
3. 115kg. Unrack felt great, controlled eccentric and pause felt good, got a fast press command, but I think my back slipped a little on the pad, which was kind of slick, and I didn't get enough leg drive, and forgot to cue bar path, so I pressed it straight up off my chest and hit a sticking point, then my back cramped up and my arms started shaking. I barely got it locked out. I originally wanted to aim for 120kg on my third attempt but now I'm glad I didn't because I for sure would have missed it.

I'm pretty satisfied with just getting 9 white lights on bench because I was so worried about my butt popping up or having a brain fart and jumping the start or rack command, and those things didn't happen.

Deadlift

Deadlifts are my best event (long arms) and the pauses and cluster singles in DeNovi's program really helped dial in my setup and make me stronger off the floor. Having access to a deadlift bar in training was nice, as the whip might have thrown me off if I had only ever trained on a stiff bar. Liquid chalk + hook grip + Kabuki bar = unlimited grip.
Toward the end of prep I changed my setup to get rid of my dynamic "hip pump" wedge and just sink straight into my starting position, set my hook grip, and just patiently "leg press the floor away." This change really paid off because it helped me get the most out of the deadlift bar and made my lockouts a breeze.
I was worried about the back cramp during my third bench interfering with my deadlift, but as I started warming up, my back felt fine, however I was feeling that third squat in my right hamstring. Thankfully the pain subsided once I got warm again.

1. 215kg. Felt light, as it should have, like a last warmup. Not much else to say.
2. 230kg. My handler said "earn your third attempt!" I executed my setup and pull exactly like my first attempt and was surprised by how fast it broke the floor and how easy the lockout was. I heard someone say "that's a good hinge!"
3. 237.5kg. I almost went for 240 but kept it conservative because I was worried about my hamstring. I kinda regret holding back now. I took a couple extra seconds to build up a really hard brace before methodically executing my setup. Just as the bar passed my knees they shook a little, and the crowd started cheering for me, but the bar didn't slow down at all so I knew I had it in the bag for 9/9 and just felt ecstatic.

A spectator walked up to me afterward and gave me a really good compliment--he said my deadlifts looked like a hydraulic machine!

Next steps

Now that this meet's behind me, my main training priority will be getting my bench up. I'm going to reevaluate my approach to frequency, volume, specific vs. hypertrophy work, and my diet.
For squat, I think I'll continue doing pauses and maybe add tempo descent work or something to break my dive-bombing habit because I don't want to pull a hammy with a heavier weight at my next meet.
My deadlift feels locked in, so I'm not going to fix what isn't broken. I want to work in some RDLs in my offseason since I haven't done them in a while, but that's it.
There's another USPA meet at the same venue in late September which is kinda soon but I'm really tempted to do it so I can go in more confident, open a little higher, set some new meet PRs, and get my money's worth with this USPA membership. It's about 17 weeks away now so that's enough time to have a few weeks of offseason before another prep cycle.

Looking for advice/thoughts on setting up ClickUp to manage both work projects and "life admin." I'm using the Personal Workspace Layout and have no collaborators.
I know that it's helpful to start as simply as possible and add complexity as it becomes actually needed. The thing is, I'm importing a few projects already underway (plus a lot of small tasks of varying value), and want to avoid defaulting to my familiar old systems without assessing whether they're actually working for me, or are a good fit for ClickUp.
Assess my setup and give me feedback on where to go from here! I've included a ton of detail on my current setup below. If it's TL;DR, my more general question is: Tell me how you set up ClickUp to handle both work and life admin projects. How are you using categories, status, priorities, tags, and task types? I'm having trouble figuring out how to use them, especially since there seems to be a lot of potential overlap between them. Or, what advice do you have for migrating to ClickUp with a couple complex projects already underway, plus a lot of small tasks?
For context, here's how I have ClickUp set up right now. It's pretty simple but I'm still not clear whether it's the right approach (and FYI, I'm not wedded to it at all), plus there are still lots of components that don't neatly fit anywhere in my current setup:

• I have ClickUp divided into three spaces: Active Projects (multi-step projects with clear outcomes and/or deliverables), Areas of Focus (task lists divided up by a broader work or life "area"), plus a space I'm ignoring where archived projects and messy old things live..
  • Under Active Projects, I have folders for each class I'll be teaching (and because it's summer, right now they're split into prep work for upcoming classes, and wrap-up for the couple last to-do items left over from the spring).
  • Under Areas of Focus, I tend to keep lists of professional admin and personal life admin tasks that aren't part of a larger project (like paying bills or rent.

Next, there are a few different types of things I'm trying to plan and keep track of. As mentioned, I'm not really sure how I should be thinking about them through the framework of categories, status, priorities, tags, and task types.

• Active projects with a specific, concrete outcome. Mostly these projects are longer-term things, sometimes with several potential paths they could take depending on results of earlier tasks, but other times they're just 1-2wk projects that have lots of little steps I need to keep track of. Some real-life examples on my list right now:
  1. Work: Set up a class I'll be teaching in the fall. I need to do a bunch of prep work for this, some of which is pretty clear (set up course homepage and revise syllabus to include XYZ things; revise grade breakdown using these rules, & implement breakdown in Canvas), and other of which is fairly inchoate (e.g. review these five texts and decide which to teach; find an open-source subject-specific text; refine course structure as needed based on the texts I end up using). Then, there are semi-ongoing tasks that will come into play once I'm actually teaching the class (e.g. prep/review the thing I'll be teaching next week; set up assignments due next week so they're ready to go when the start date rolls around; grade assignments X, Y, Z; a weekly review of the syllabus & update deadlines as needed). Then wrap-up tasks that happen pretty routinely at the end of the semester, and one-off "respond to X's grade query email" type tasks. (Many of these things could be part of a template, but I don't need to cross that bridge yet.) How to organize the giant project of "put together, teach, and wrap up X class"? What's the relationship between the big project full of kinda sequential steps and the small "Answer X email" tasks that I mostly put into a project manager so I don't forget about them?
  2. Work: Various small professional development projects that in the past I've thought of as a series of sequential tasks, e.g. "Apply for X grant" (in this case, small individual artist grants for $1k-$20k, not big, collaboratively-written NSF grants). Under "Apply..." is a list of five different pieces I need to put together, one or two of which will need multiple rounds of refinement, while the rest will be relatively quick and easy. This type of project usually comes together in a couple weeks or less, and typically I'll have several active at once. (I usually have a dozen others on my radar at any given moment, but only decide to apply for 1-2 at any time. I keep up with these deadlines via a Google Sheet and a sticky note on my Mac desktop, and in the past only brought them into a project manager once I'd committed to a specific deadline-driven thing, or if I needed a reminder to check on one that has a deadline that varies annually.)
  3. Personal: Research summer travel possibilities, map out a timeline that fits scheduling constraints and mode of travel (one subtask that's a small project in and of itself: research buying a fiberglass camper shell for truck, & if that makes sense to do we'll drive, otherwise we'll fly or take the train). This is still in the research stage, so there aren't many actual tasks yet, but will be in a month or so.
  4. Avocational: Facilitate a large, slow-moving bylaws revision project for an organization I'm involved with. I'm at the beginning stages of this one, but have a pretty good idea of the different stages of this project and what the path to completion will look like. It'll be a big project once it gets off the ground, but for now it's just in the "assembling ideas" stage.
• Ongoing & one-off tasks with varying priority levels (e.g. things I need to do regularly vs. things I'd like to do regularly but don't necessarily get to).
  • Necessary Tasks like paying rent and bills, which are typically pretty straightforward and non-negotiable. Also things like updating the finances spreadsheet I share with my partner, which ideally happens weekly but which realistically I don't get around to more than once a month if that.
  • One-Off Tasks that start cropping up, especially once the semester is underway (e.g. "Answer X email"). Some of these are essential, others don't need to happen (but should for a smoother semester), and plenty are totally optional but worth doing if I have the time. When I'm bogged down, I don't want to think about those totally optional tasks at all, but when I'm feeling pretty unencumbered, they're worth tending to.
• Other things I can't figure out how to classify/organize:
  • Backburner tasks & projects, both work-related and life admin. (How to label and filter backburner tasks that I need to do "soon" vs. "eventually" vs. "maybe, someday, who even knows"?)
    • Some of these are important but not yet active (e.g. applying for that aforementioned grant, for instance, which I don't need to actively think about until next spring when the deadline approaches, though I do often start drafting/refining materials in advance, so it's nice to have a clear holding place for those).
    • Others are aspirational (for instance, "Organize the garage" is a backburner task that will turn into a full project once I start working on it & actually identifying specific subtasks, e.g. put specific thing on FB Marketplace, or buy a set of storage bins). I'd like to clearly delineate between this sort of thing; I don't need to see "Organize the garage" unless I'm doing a big review of the backburner items once a month or so and moving a handful into active projects/tasks.
  • Mosquito tasks: These tasks should happen "soon" or "eventually," but they're not urgent and if they end up never being completed at all, that's usually nbd. Realistically I might do them in the next couple weeks, but probably not in the next few days. These kinds of tasks are helpful to keep in ClickUp so they stay on my radar (and one benefit of that is that for a task like "Email so-and-so to ask X question," I'll often end up drafting half an initial email in a comment, then forgetting about it for a few weeks and coming back to find that email already half-drafted). Mosquito tasks include:
    • Reminders (to check on an important or not-so-important upcoming professional deadline that hasn't been posted yet, & to keep doing this until that concrete deadline appears, at which point it turns into an actual task; upcoming birthday reminders; to get a book back from someone who'd borrowed it, etc).
    • Personal CRM, my most frequent mosquito task. I've done fieldwork around the world and consider keeping in touch with friends/colleagues/informants from faraway as part of my professional responsibilities (but not urgent whatsoever), so I like to keep these things on my radar without letting them distract me from my active, necessary tasks & projects.
    • Ideas, possibilities, and other inchoate things that ended up in ClickUp when I migrated from Todoist, some of which are basically just notes-to-self, and other of which are smaller tasks/projects that I may someday pick back up, all of which I feel sentimental about and don't want to get rid of even though I'm not going to sort through them regularly. These pretty clearly fall under "backburner" and "maybe, someday, who even knows." (Should I break the "Not Started" status into "Backburner: eventually" and "Backburner: maybe, someday, who knows" to delineate these?) Feel free to ignore this category!
  • A Morning/Evening Routine that should reset every day, regardless of whether I've checked every item off from the previous day. (This is probably the only sort of task I want to reset like this, and honestly it's pretty low-priority.)

Give me advice on how to organize all these things, please! Or just tell me about your ClickUp setup for work and life admin projects! Or give me advice for migrating to ClickUp with a bunch of tasks and a couple complex projects already underway, rather than starting from complete scratch!

I’ve been at the Huntsville Westin and Element for 25ish days now split between them (the element said they only had a room for 20 nights so I switched over since it’s the same building). I stay at this property roughly 4-5 months out of the year for work and this will be the last time. It’s never anything huge but it’s always something. First my tvs wouldn’t work at the element, then my remote stoped working (not a battery issue) and was never returned so I was left with one for both tvs. Then one of the outlet covers in the bedroom is missing. Now I just went to order food up to the room at the Westin and half of the menu is missing(pages are ripped out) and the phone’s info card is gone as well. This property used to be great, I don’t know if it’s new management or what but over the past few months this place has gone way down hill.
To add, it was a suit at the Element that was missing an outlet cover. I just don’t see how this kind of stuff happens and just goes unchecked.

Hello everyone!
So, a month ago with my family we started watching this show. We just watched season 5 episode 4, and I'm obsessed. I thought it'd be fun to share my thoughts so far haha. I have 5 seasons worth of comments, so bear with me. Please don't spoil anything!!

1. Season 2 was my favorite. I miss that cast (specially Shane and Dale, they were so much fun) and the dynamics were great. Also, Hershel, Maggie and Beth were introduced! Although to be honest, I wasn't a fan of them back then, except Maggie. This season also featured the 2nd most shocking moment in the series for me which is the barn scene. I was stunned.
2. I was surprised to hear Andrea is pretty disliked... I thought she was insufferable the first two seasons but I loved her in season 3 and her death actually got me. She was just trying to do the right thing, although she did make some mistakes. Honorable mention to the episode where it's just her trying to get to the prison and the governor chasing her. That was the most intense episode so far, it had me sweating.
3. It shocks me how anyone can die at anytime. I obviously knew the show had a rep of killing every character lol, but I expected the main characters to die at season finales. When Lori AND T-dog died in the SAME episode and it being just the 4th of its season???? Also, it's weird how some minor characters live longer than some protagonists. (Beth outliving Lori for example is crazy to think about)
4. The governor was just such a piece of shit. Hershel's death was such a shocking moment oh my god, although I had been expecting it since he was given a lot of attention during season 4... It still hurt a lot.
5. I find it weird how no one grieves for the dead. I get they're used to it, but, besides Lori, most deaths aren't mourned as much as I'd expect? Take Hershel, for example. They mention him here and there but I'd think Maggie would be more affected by it. Idk.
6. The cast we have right now is pretty great. I like everyone, but I used to despise Carl (I blame him and Lori for what happened to Dale lmao) and Tyreese was annoying in season 4. He got better. I think I'd say my favorite is Daryl and maybeeee Maggie.
7. Michonne's connection with Carl is so sweet. I absolutely adore their interactions. Same with Carol and Daryl.
8. What was up with Daryl and Beth... that was kinda creepy since Daryl is like 30 years older than her. I hope it was nothing romantic...
9. Maggie and Glenn split from the group to go with Abraham, Eugene, Rosita and Tara... I'm not sure how I feel about that, specially since Maggie didn't see Beth again.
10. Rick is unhinged. I'm afraid that with Hershel gone, Rick's humanity left as well. I get he's trying to protect his people but still...
11. I fear for Beth's life. She's in the hospital right now and she found Carol! Daryl has to be there as well. I hope they rescue her because that place is creepy af. I like Beth a lot, I think season 4 really developed her character. I truly feel sorry for her.
12. I was expecting Terminus to be a ruse. I can't believe they killed Gareth so quickly, though. I thought he was going to be the villain of the season. Not sure where the season is going now.
13. Okay, for this final thought I want to share my most shocking moment...

WHAT THE HELL LIZZIE. WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL. My mouth absolutely dropped when I saw that scene. I thought she was going to let herself be bitten but IT WAS MUCH WORSE. Once that happened, I knew Lizzie was a goner. She wouldn't survive in that world. Still, that was so terrible oh my god. What does TWD have with little girls dying??
Okayyy I think I'm done. I'm going to be completely honest with you, I spoiled myself some things like:
Glenn's death. Everyone was talking about that when it first came out so I inevitably heard about it.
Daryl and Carol making it to the end (freaking star+ literally spoils that with its images) Same with Rick, since he has his own spinoff now lmao.
I don't know much else. I'd love to know what you think and answers any questions you have! If you're interested I might update this as I keep going. I'm definitely going to watch one today lmao.
Cheers!

I woke up on a big brown table with chairs surrounding it in a windowless room. I slowly open my eyes and start looking around, when i become fully aware, i move off the table and collapse on the ground due to my numb legs. I get up after a minute and attempt to leave through the door which is locked.
“Hello there New comer!” says the anonymous voice echoing the room. I startle and crash my hands and back onto the wall next to me.
“Hello!? Who is that!? Get me out of here!” I scream but no response.
“I have 5 questions i would like to ask you, if you don’t mind answering them you’ll be let out in a jiffy!”
I attempt to break open the door but i ultimately fail and collapse to the ground.
“Fine, what are the questions.” I ask out of breath and frustrated
“Ok! First, What is your name?” The anonymous voice says
I sit there on the floor scoffing at the stupid question.
“My name? My name is-“
I pause. My memory is faint and as hard as i can i cannot fathom a name that i can call mine.
“Wha- What??” i whisper to myself trying to remember my name.
“What the hell did you do to me? I don’t know my name!! What did you do!?” I yell to the voice
“Ok, so that’s an unknown. Next question what st-“
“what is my name get me the fuck out of here!” I yell distressing trying to find a way out of the room.
“What state were you born in?”
I put my hands to my head shutting my eyes trying to remember but fail.
“I- I don’t know!! What the fuck did you do to me get me out!!” I yell desperately to the voice speaking from above. “Who are you?? What did you do to me??”
“Question three, Are you able to name any U.S state?”
“What? If i can’t name the one i was born in how am i supposed to name any?” I desperately say while commencing to sob.
“Please attempt to name a state.” The voice says condescending.
“Uhm i don’t know?? Uhm… Florida!! That’s a state right?? Is that the state i was born in?”
“Florida. Question four, what is or was the color of your mothers eyes?”
i start to sob on the floor not knowing the color of my own mothers eyes. I can’t even remember my mothers name or what she looks like. I signal with my shoulders that i don’t know and continue to sob
“Ok unknown, final question, please name one fun fact about yourself.”
“Fun fact? A fun fact about me is that if you don’t let me out of here i’m going to fucking kill you!!!” I yell as i grab a chair and throw it against the door.
“Please attempt to name a fun fact. If you do not know please say unknown”
“Unknown i don’t know!! Is it over let me out!” The door bolts open to a man in a suit standing at it. I jump and fall to the floor scared for my life.
“Good job newcomer! You passed! I’m sure you have a lot of questions if you wouldn’t mind sitting here i’ll explain everything to you!” The man says
I get up and sit in the chair facing the man keeping him far enough away from me.
“Am I dead? Did you grow me in a lab? Are you going to kill me…?” I say quietly and desperately
“Excuse me? Oh God no of course not, you thought we just grew a human and put you in a tie and everything? Haha that’s a good one” The man starts flipping though some papers and starts reading from a script
“So, your name is Luke M! I’m sure you’ve been itching to know that. My name is Daniel S. You have been hired to work for Barrett industries and have underwent the procedure splitting your work and personal life memories. This is called the work-life balance and is our main core principle so you aren’t stressed about things happening in your personal life at work, and work things in your personal life!” Daniel looks at me with a smile on his face waiting for my response.
“What…” i sit there staring at him attempting to process this. “Wait. Wait. So i’m stuck here? if i will never remember anything from my personal life that means i’m.. stuck here??”
(inspired by show: Severance)

Hello, I’ll try and keep this as short as possible. I’m the youngest of 6. My parents split up when I was about 2, so all my memories of my dad are of him living separate from us. As a result, I never had much of a relationship with him. There was always drama or something happening so we just never developed a close relationship. I see him as my dad and am cordial, but I don’t go out of my way to talk or see him. I now have my own family, and while he would appreciate to see my kids I keep him (and to be fair most of the rest of my family) at an arm’s length from my kids.
A few years ago, my brother was all in on sorting through my parents wills and such since they are now getting up in age. In that time, my brother told me one of the things my dad was firm on was that I’d inherit his house. As a kid and growing up, he always would say things along the lines of it being “my house” but I just figured it was another lie. Apparently, it was serious. I told my brother that I appreciated the sentiment, but I believed someone else should get the house. I live 4 hours away from my hometown, and the house has never been in what I would call great condition. Aside from the logistical side, I also just don’t value the house because we don’t have that dynamic. To me, it’s just something to make him feel better over the missed relationship between us and I just think it would be better for one of my other siblings who actually had him in their lives to get it. There’s one who lives in the same town, and another who lives maybe 30-45 mins away.
I told my brother this and was instantly shot down. I was told that he didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t want it, and he didn’t want to inherit the house because he was already listed as the power of attorney for all his other accounts and such that he worried about some sort of a tax issue if everything came to him. No matter what I said, the rebuttal was always I was going to get it whether I wanted it or not.
Is there a way that I can circumvent my family and just refuse it? Again, I’m fine and prefer someone else in my family who’s closer to just take it. But basically as it stands there’s no changing it while he’s alive due to my brothers refusal.

Race information

* **What?** Colfax Half Marathon
* **When?** May 19th, 2024
* **How far?** 13.1miles
* **Where?** Denver, CO
* **Website:** [https://www.runcolfax.org/races/half-marathon/\](https://www.runcolfax.org/races/half-marathon/)
* **Finish time:** DNF

Goals

Goal Description Completed?
-------------------------------
A 2:30 *No*
B Finish better than last year *No*

Splits

Mile Time
------------
1 12:12
2 12:40
3 13:18
4 12:47
5 13:54
6 13:37
7 14:43

Training

For this year, I really wanted to do better than I did last year, so I switched training plans from 80/20 to Coach Jenny's Advanced Half Marathon. I ended up doing most of the training despite having to deal with a current legal matter in relation to a family member's passing. It has been my sanity while dealing with lawyers and the courts.
I ended up running a total of 339.37 miles in preparation for this race and I cross trained with Pilates 2x a week. I mostly stuck to Zone 2 training and I started out the year running 14:26/mi in Zone 2 to my last run before this race at 12:16/mi, so I can tell you that Zone 2 training really does work. Just got to be patient, put in the miles, put your ego to the side, and stick with it.

Pre-race

I had been struggling with a sore throat since Friday afternoon, and I tried to brush it off thinking it might be allergies. The sore throat turned into nasal congestion on my right side over Saturday. I took NyQuil to try and get some sleep Saturday night since I was already nervous about doing the race and trying for a better time. Only ended up getting about 3-4 hours of sleep.
I also did Featherstone Nuitrition's carb loading protocol of loading up of 700 grams of carbs from Thursday - Saturday in preparation for the race.
I woke up at 3 a.m. to do my routine of getting my last carb load in of some Tailwind and a couple of slices of bread and some massage gun work on my calves. My throat was still bothering me and I was still dealing with the congestion. I figured at that point that I was going to at least try and run this race since I trained up for it.
Got to the race around 5:30, and did the usual routine of going to the porta potties, warming up, and stretching while having some conversations with people around me.
Then it was time to line up and then get the race going.

Race

The start of the race was a little chilly since there was cloud cover. I knew it was going to be hot because it was supposed to be in the 70s by 8 o'clock according to the forecast. Being that this is my third go-around on this, I knew how hot I was going to get on the ashphalt and I was starting to worry a little between being sick and the heat what this race was going to be like.
Mile 1 was okay, but I knew I was going way too fast and the pacer I was trying to follow was also going way too fast. I felt okay for the most part. The clouds broke apart and the sun came out and started warming things up.
Mile 2 was also okay even though there was that incline that went past the high school and there was at least shade from the trees.
Mile 3 was when I started feeling more sick as I went up the hill to the zoo and the heat started to get to me.
Mile 4 - 5 was the zoo, and it was cool seeing the animals but I was starting to get on the struggle bus to make it through. I was starting to feel crappy and my gels that I normally take without any issue were beginning to make me a bit nauseous. I was starting to pour cups of water on me at aid stations to try and cool me off.
Mile 6 was when the thought of DNF started to come up as I ran past the museum and started back up the hill past the high school. The heat plus I started to really feel sick was making me crack.
Mile 7 was when I ended up calling it after I got caught up with a run/walk group that was running for one minute and walking for one minute. I figured I would try to power through the race with them, and I just couldn't keep up. I really started to feel like poo at that point, and I decided that it was best for my health to bow out.

Post-race

I am pretty sad about how things went since I trained and improved so much for this race and that my longest training run was 15 miles, so I know I am capable of running this distance.
At the same time, I know that I could possibly have screwed myself up pretty bad if I kept on powering through just to say I finished.
I ended up having my husband pick me up from where I bowed out of the race, got breakfast, and then took some more NyQuil to crash three hours. I'm not much better since I still have the sore throat and congestion. We're supposed to go on a vacation tomorrow, but I don't know if that is going to be happening either. :(
I can at least say that I tried and I went over halfway point of the half-marathon. Personally, I think I should have not have started and just admitted to myself that I am sick and that today was not going to be a good race day.
Not sure if I am going to get on this horse again, but I have until January next year to think about it. I did finish the two previous times although with what I would consider crappy times.
I do feel that this race at times is cursed for me in some ways since it seems like I'm dealing with major life events while trying to train for this race. I might do the 5k if I sign up for anything Colfax related next year. We'll see depending upon my life circumstances, but I know I'm a stubborn person and I really do want to conquer this race at some point in my life.
I think if I do end up signing up for this race again next year that I am going to do way more hill training and figure out way to simulate the heat on asphalt during the winter since that is the part of the race that has nearly broken me the last two times I ran this race.
I really wanted to make this race my best HM yet, but I know we all can't anticipate getting sick before a race. These things just happen, and unfortunately today wasn't my day.
Hope that others who did run today had an awesome race and congrats to everyone who finished or at least tried.

Clan Starship [VSTR] AND [LSTR] is recruiting for Destiny 2 & beyond! We are an established gaming community with experienced players looking for new members. Our clan has members from all walks of life & we are founded on inclusion & mutual respect. We are looking to bring people on to strengthen a core group of players & grow with great members. Come & get your seat aboard the Starship today! Don’t want to leave your current clan but still want to see the discord & all The Starship has to offer? The Starship Discord is open to all so feel free to reach out!
What We Offer

• 18+ community that is active both in-game & out.
• Platform agnostic
• New player friendly & looking to help Guardians take the next step to end game.
• We have a team of vetted sherpas, guide creators & curated guides with almost any activity to help you with end-game PVE & PVP content.
• We have both PVE & PVP players, though we would skew slightly PVE (about a 60/40 split depending on the season)
• A social, high-functioning discord with bots, polls, discussions, and general good times. Events & clubs! We run PvP Tournaments, Gambit Tournaments, Fashion Shows, Scavenger Hunts, Clan Rumbles, Book Clubs, Game Clubs & more!
• A varied group of gamers! Play more than Destiny? Want to discuss the new hotness? Looking forward to Marathon? Spreading Democracy in Helldivers 2? We have it all & we want to grow even more!
• Clan Starship started as Vexian Starship & has been around for 5 years & we plan to be around for the next 5, & the 5 after that, & the 5 after that, & the… You get the idea, we’re established.

Who We’re Looking For

• No toxicity, drama, bullying, etc. We are a mature group & we’d like to keep it that way
• Social & willing to team up! We require discord membership & we do expect general participation as we put in a lot of work to ensure there is always something happening on the Starship.
• Any skill level & playstyle is welcome! We want to help you get to the next level and/or find people at your current level if you’re already towards the top!

Location/Time Zone

• Any location is accepted. We are largely made of USA & Canadian Guardians with some European & Australian representation as well! We are spread out across all the USA so you can find players within your timezone or next closest time zone.
• Most common times that people are on is from 5 PM EST to 1 AM EST though you can find many morning & afternoon players. (Morning raids are a speciality of some members)
• We have voice & text activity within the discord every day of the week so there is always a good time to play aboard the Starship.

Vexian Starship is currently full but you can still join the discord & join our sister clan below!
You can apply to Lubraean Starship here! https://www.bungie.net/7/en/Clan/Profile/5230869
Please note that there is no difference between the two in-game clans, they all fall under the same banner as Clan Starship & is mostly just a name preference!
Either way, we’d love to have you aboard Clan Starship! Please ensure that you message me on Discord when you apply so we can get you a Discord invite! You can message me here as well but I may be a little slower at getting to it. Your application will not be accepted until you join the discord. Esfjord is my Discord username.

I genuinely had no idea the depth this season would have. I just finished my second rewatch, watching edits, and reading people's analyses and metas. Nic was right when she said this season was romance because, wow, I’m speechless at just how much there is to their story. It keeps you going back, thinking, and pondering. To the point that I'm not as mad as I was about them splitting up the season. We're really able to take in these four episodes, unpack each scene, each character, and each expression because everything has been so purposeful.
On my second rewatch, it struck me that it wasn't the kiss that awakened Colin's feelings. I wouldn't have thought so until someone mentioned on twitter it wasn't the kiss Colin has a flashback of before he goes to the ball. it was the scene Pen wraps his hand with a cloth. I rewatched the show after that to pay closer attention and wow did so many things stand out to me the second time around. Maybe it was the candle that sparked that memory, but even then, was her wrapping his wound so significant to him that it prompted him to go to the ball, interrupt her dance, cause a scandal, and then chase her carriage?
Colin's behavior towards her has been odd the entire season. First, Penelope not responding to his letters messed him up. It made him realize that although he's always cherished her as a friend, she had a much more profound impact on him, and he didn’t notice until she was no longer there. He tries to talk to her, but she walks away, giving him the cold shoulder. He is left shook.
He sees her at the ball in her stunning dress. He keeps staring at her, so aware of her, constantly tracking her. Then she leaves, running up the stairs and passing him. He leaves his friends behind to go after her, despite their advice not to concern himself with her. They have that moment where he tells her he misses her, but in a much different way than he would have spoken to her last season or the season before that. "If you're going to make it, say it. I miss you." Not "I missed you," but "I miss you."
This distinction is crucial. "I missed you" implies a past tense, a temporary void that has now been filled. "I miss you," however, conveys a present, ongoing longing. It shows that his feelings are current and that her absence affects him deeply and continuously. This moment is pivotal because it reveals a more vulnerable and sincere side of Colin, one that he hasn't shown to others this season.
Colin is showing a different side of himself to everyone this season, including his own family. He's trying to present a more composed and assertive version of himself to the world. Yet, Penelope is the only one with whom he truly feels comfortable enough to be his genuine self. She makes him feel safe, allowing him to drop the mask he wears for others. With her, he can be kind, sensitive, and unguarded.
This sense of security that Penelope provides is significant. It’s clear that Colin values her presence not just as a friend, but as someone who understands him on a deeper level. She brings out the best in him, the parts he might be afraid to show others for fear of appearing weak or overly sentimental. In Penelope’s presence, Colin feels seen and accepted, which is why his declaration of "I miss you" carries such weight. It’s not just that he misses her company; he misses the person he is when he’s with her.
Then he seeks her out and comes to her house, gives her the big speech, and tells her he wants to get into her good graces. They go out, and he tells her to practice on those gentlemen. When she stumbles over her words, he just smiles so fondly at her. At this point, I don’t think he’s aware of his feelings, but I do believe he's starting to realize just how much he likes her. He really, really likes her. And he missed her so much, and being around her again is literally lifting his spirits.
One of my favorite moments is when they are at the market. Colin brings up the story of when they first met, leaning in and saying, "teasing me. Mercilessly, in fact." When he follows with, "I think I know why," it stands out to me because you can just see how different he is when he's with her compared to anyone else this season. Even with his family, his light is dim, and there is a cloud hanging over him. But with Penelope, especially in this scene, it's like a man who finally saw the sun after being stuck in endless rain. At this moment, I don't think he knows he likes her romantically, but he likes her even more than he did before. He notices how she makes him feel. He loves their banter and how clever and witty she is.
Penelope freaks out when he says this because she thinks she knows, and she keeps on walking. They are momentarily covered from each other by the rugs, and then Colin pops out and continues his sentence. Everything about it is so playful and flirtatious, even if unconsciously at this point. He’s just having so much fun, and it’s very different from how he used to interact with her before. That moment when Penelope says, "I should get back," leaning in and adding, "before we are noticed," is significant.
Then we have the moment when Colin says, "I've been eagerly awaiting your visit." By this point, he’s addicted to her. The interactions they had at the market, especially at the end, left a lasting impression on him. I see this as Colin testing his feelings, wondering, "Let me see if that was a fluke or if I actually like her." This moment is crucial because it reveals Colin's internal struggle and growing realization of his deeper feelings for Penelope. He’s no longer simply enjoying her company as a friend; he’s beginning to seek out her presence because it brings him genuine happiness and comfort.
This shift is evident in his behavior. Colin’s eagerness to see Penelope isn’t driven by a sense of duty or friendship; it’s a personal desire. His anticipation of her visit shows that her company has become something he craves. This is no longer about teaching her anything; he just wants to spend time with her, and you cannot convince me otherwise. Colin knows that teaching Penelope how to attract a husband doesn’t look right, as he mentions to Eloise. He is aware that his actions could be misinterpreted, and yet he persists. This indicates a level of emotional investment that goes beyond mere friendship or mentorship.
When Colin invites Penelope to the Bridgerton house and places a hand on her back, it’s a bold move that borders on scandalous. In the societal context of their time, such an action is highly intimate and could easily lead to gossip and speculation. Colin is well aware of this, which is why his decision to proceed regardless is significant. It shows that he’s starting to prioritize his personal feelings and desires over societal expectations and norms.
In Season 2, when he grabbed her hand and took her into a secluded room, he genuinely saw her as just a friend and didn’t see anything wrong with what he was doing. But this scene is different. Colin is aware that his feelings towards her are changing, and he doesn’t care about the impropriety. He just wants to be alone with Penelope. This awareness marks a turning point in Colin’s emotional journey. He’s beginning to accept that his feelings for Penelope are evolving into something deeper and more romantic.
His actions, such as eagerly awaiting her visit and ensuring they have private moments together, reflect a subconscious desire to explore these feelings further. He wants to understand the depth of his emotions without the interference of others. This need for privacy and his willingness to bend societal rules for her indicate just how significant Penelope has become to him. He values their time together, not just as friends, but as potential romantic partners. Colin’s behavior suggests that he’s on the verge of a profound realization about his true feelings for Penelope, setting the stage for further developments in their relationship.
Then we get to the moment that solidifies for me that he knows to some degree what he feels about her. When Penelope tells him his eyes are beautiful, he is visibly aghast, speechless. Jungshook. The compliment is so unexpected and disarming that he doesn’t know how to respond. Instead, he picks up his lemonade and chugs it down like a man who hasn’t had a drink in days. This reaction is significant because it shows how much Penelope’s words affect him on a deeper level. It’s not just flattery; it’s a moment of genuine vulnerability for Colin, revealing that her opinion of him matters more than he realized.
Now, let’s delve into the moment where I believe he realizes he likes her. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it and rewatched their moments with a different perspective if it weren’t for the flashback. The moment she wraps his hand is so intimate and romantic. She wraps his hand slowly, and he watches her intently as she does. There’s a tenderness in her actions that goes beyond mere care; it’s an unspoken connection. She continues holding his hand and slowly folds it, kind of caressing his fingers. This gesture is filled with unspoken emotions, and Colin feels it deeply.
She looks at him intensely, and he meets her gaze but looks down immediately, starting to fiddle with the end of the cloth like he’s nervous. This moment of eye contact is loaded with significance. Colin’s nervousness is a telltale sign that he’s starting to realize his feelings for her. He doesn’t pull away until she mentions his writing, and he gets overwhelmed. Despite all that, and even though he’s upset she read his journal, he asks, "Will I see you tonight?" This question is crucial. It shows that, despite feeling vulnerable and exposed, he craves her company. He just wants to spend time with her.
Even when he’s upset that she read his journal, his first thought is to secure more time with her. "Will I see you tonight?" is not just a casual question; it’s a plea for connection. Colin’s desire to spend more time with Penelope, even when he’s feeling vulnerable, underscores the depth of his feelings. He’s starting to recognize that his attachment to her is not just about friendship or companionship; it’s something much more profound. This realization sets the stage for the unfolding of his realizations and the emotional journey Colin is about to navigate.
Then the ball happens. Colin looks around the room for her and gives her a sexy smirk when he sees her. This smirk is significant because Colin typically reserves it for women he's flirting with, albeit usually in a fake and uncomfortable manner. However, this is the only time the smirk feels genuine and actually comes off as sexy instead of forced. The flirtatious "Good evening" from Penelope is everything, honestly. When she asks how his hand is, he replies, "All good, thanks to you." Sir, all she did was wrap it with a cloth; please be normal. At this point, he's fully aware he has a crush on her. He no longer views her as he did before. His entire demeanor is so much more different compared to their other lessons. There is an intensity to him when he's talking to her that wasn’t there before.
When Penelope talks with Lord Remington, it’s interesting that "Jealous" by Nick Jonas starts to play now and not after the kiss, when she converses with Lord Debling on many occasions where we know he's jealous. When Pen tells him she enjoyed her time with Lord Remington, he responds, "I'm certain he did as well," and he gets a bit awkward. Someone on Twitter mentioned that when Penelope was flirting and trying to engage with others, Colin wasn't jealous, but the moment she is herself and comfortable, his jealousy kicks in, as we saw in this scene. Someone said he's trying to gatekeep her lmao. He sees her smiling and enjoying herself—a part of herself she only shows him—and he can't handle it. Hence, why I believe they chose to play that song at this moment.
This moment is crucial because it highlights the shift in Colin’s feelings. His smirk, which is usually a façade, becomes real and filled with genuine affection when directed at Penelope. His awkwardness and jealousy when she talks to another man further emphasize that his feelings for her have deepened. Colin is no longer just a friend offering guidance; he’s a man who realizes he has a crush on her and is struggling to navigate these new emotions. The music choice underscores this emotional turmoil, perfectly capturing the internal conflict and realization he is experiencing.
And then everything else proceeds that leads to the kiss. I, like so many others, believed this is where he realizes his feelings for Pen. Someone on Twitter mentioned how his eyebrows furrowed and his lips quivered. When I first saw it, I wondered why this kiss would warrant such a strong reaction from Colin. At this point, it was just a kiss that Pen asked for in a moment where she thinks she is ruined and will never find a prospect. But upon rewatching, Colin's visceral reaction to the kiss, as evidenced by his furrowed eyebrows and quivering lips, suggests a deeper emotional resonance than he initially realizes.
Penelope tells him it would not have to mean anything, but for him but it did. He knows his feelings towards her have changed. If it had been just a kiss because she asked for it, it would have stopped after the first time. Just a fleeting moment of physical contact between friends. But they kiss a second time and it's from his pov this time. It's slow sweet and oh so romantic. It's a catalyst that triggers a flood of suppressed emotions and desires within him. In that brief instant, the walls he's constructed around his heart start to crumble, allowing his true feelings for Penelope to surface. it wasn’t a kiss that awakened his feelings; it was a kiss that confirmed it. And not just confirmed it, it made him realize it wasn't just a crush he developed this season but it brought all his dormant feelings to the surface from the past as well.
TLDR: I think he was aware that he liked her when she wrapped his hand specifically and the kiss made him realize that it wasn't just a crush—his feelings run much, much deeper than that.

I just finished the RBC Brooklyn Half yesterday, after a 12-week training program. I’d built up a lot of expectations for the race, for a whole host of interrelated reason (that I’ll unpack in the body of this thing); all those expectations, unfortunately, caused me to get carried away, and made my experience of the race overall 1) unenjoyable while I was running and 2) disappointing after I finished.
I’m a teacher, and I frequently relay this paraphrasing of a Confucius quote to my kids: “We can either learn how to act by imagining consequences and reflecting, which is best; or by watching others make mistakes, which is hard (though not for us). The most difficult way to learn is through experience, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.” One of my top-upvoted comments of all time is in this sub, telling people to not ruin a race for themselves by over-fixating on time-goals at the expense of enjoying their race.
And yet—

Race Information

• Name: RBC Brooklyn Half
• Date: May 18, 2024
• Distance: 13.1 mi
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• Time: 1:38:2X

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Sub or Equal 1:32	No
B	Sub 1:35	No
C	Finally Pace Myself Properly	No

Splits

Split	Pace	Time
5k	7:04	21:55
10k	7:20	44:42
15k	7:12	1:07:03
20k	8:23	1:33:03
Finish	7:55	1:38:2X

Background Context

I started running in Oct of ‘22, and caught the bug. I ran a half in April of ‘23 in 1:47, and loved the distance. I built base over the summer to ~30-35 mpw, and then trained for the Philly Half in Nov of ‘23. Ended up getting a 1:38:0X in that race, which was really exciting. More exciting was that I approximately even-split that race — my second half took ~30 seconds longer than the first. I left that race feeling exactly how I wanted to — like a washcloth wrung out completely. I felt like that race & time represented the absolute best of my ability, given my current level of fitness; and I felt like I tried my best the whole way through.
Last important piece of context re: diagnosing this race’s disappointment: between Oct of ‘22 and Nov ‘23 I went from ~240 lbs avg to ~195 lbs average. My lowest weight dipped to the high 180s, but I stabilized around 190 pretty quickly.

Training

I used Runna to train for Philly and really enjoyed the experience. My organizational skills are pretty lacking, and I spend 100% of them in other areas of my life — so I enjoy using an app that offloads some of that cognitive lift for me, fully worth the sub during training blocks.
As far as milage, I managed:

Week	Miles (Ran / Goal)
1	25 / 33 mi mi (missed 2 runs from travel)
2	32 / 36 mi (missed 1 run b/c travel)
3	38 /38 mi
4	12 / 20 mi (deload, missed 2 runs from illness)
5	28 / 38 mi (missed 2 runs from illness carried over from previous week)
6	40 / 40 mi
7	43 / 43 mi
8	23 / 23 mi
9	50 / 43 mi (extended 2 easy runs by ~3 miles apiece)
10	43 / 40 mi
11	29 / 35 mi (missed 1 run due to illness)
12	23 / 23 mi (including race).

As I’m sure you can already see, I missed a meaningful amount of runs due to illness/other life interruption. Concurrent with all this is the fact that my wife is due with our 2nd child in, well, like a week and a half from now; so a lot of the missed runs in weeks 1-5 also reflect a dramatic net increase in my responsibilities b/c of my wife feeling out of it / not being able to get as much done as normal (no shade at all; she’s literally building a new human that wasn’t there before). Overall I got ~92% of all milage done, running 388 miles during these 12 weeks. Mistake #1: I didn’t adjust my time goals in light of missing workouts; I figured if I just worked harder to “catch up,” I would be fine.
The plan included 2 quality sessions a week — 1 tempo run and 1 interval session, and the weekend long run frequently had pace thrown in. I vastly prefer tempo to interval running — personally, I cite being ~200 lbs as the reason. Once I get going, it’s easy to keep going, but frequent stops & starts just burn energy that I can’t afford to lose. Mistake #2: as I trained, my weight went from the high 190s to the high 200s, and I raced at ~207 lbs. I wasn’t consistent w/ nutrition during training, and the associated stress of my job, as well as parenting & chores usually handled by 2 people being done mostly by me — I often used lil’ snacks as a quick dopamine fix (adhd heads out there, you know what I’m talking about.)

Pre-Race

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to run the race in the first place — my first daughter (now 7) was born at 36 weeks, and I anticipated my second needing the same (choleostasis enjoyers, rise up). Instead, though, this baby seems primed to go the distance — so I got equal parts excited and nervous to be able to deliver on all my training.
I’d cut my time by 9 minutes from my first to the second half, and tried to be conservative in aiming to cut ~5 minutes between these cycles — so I aimed to run 7:00-7:05 for the race, dipping into the 6:55s if I felt good at the end of the race, and set my A goal for 1:32, and my B goal for 1:35. Mistake #3: I didn’t have any serious qualitative goals, and my quant goals were made too far in advance to be realistic. I also wasn’t proactive in adjusting my goals based on how training was going — despite advocating for that same thing in posts on this sub.
Man, it’s so easy to say smart things, and so hard to actually do them.
About 10 days before my race, I came down with a cough thing that sapped a bit of my energy. Kept me up at night, and sapped ~10-15% of my energy on a given day. The Wednesday before my race I asked my wife, “Do you think 3 days is enough for me to be back at 100%?” And I want to say to other runners out there: if you’re having to ask that question, go ahead and adjust your goals. We’ll tag that as Mistake #4.

The Race

Gorgeous morning. I live ~1.5 miles from the race start, so I walked over to Franklin and then jogged the remaining ~1 mile to the start as a warmup. Skipped bag dropoff for the same reason I don’t like checking bags while flying, did a quick pee (quick pee, long portapotty wait time), and went over to the corral.
My whole “thing” as a runner is that I’m deceptively fast — that is, that I’m most commonly the least-fit looking person out of the people running equivalent paces to myself. When I started running, that gave me a bit of imposter syndrome; any more, I draw on it for motivation. So as I was waiting in Corral C to start, I realized I felt a lot of pressure — to be able to deliver on being fast, to prove that I’m actually fit, whatever. No one outside of myself cares, obviously. But that’s now how this stuff works.

The First 10k — Would’ve Been Great If This Was a 10k

My pacing plan was as follows: don’t exceed 7:00 pace at any point in the first 7 miles; aim for ~7:30-7:45 going up Prospect Park’s big hill; use the downhill at 10k to catch my breath; and use the last 7 miles down Ocean Ave to winch down on speed if I was feeling good, or just hold around 7:05 if I was spent.
I was able to hit the first half of this plan pretty well, as my splits up top suggest. But I could tell, starting as I ran around GAP and into the park, that I was working too hard — the effort I was expending was too much. As I reflect on it now, I realize I was probably in ~1:35 shape (~7:15 splits); but I stubbornly refused to drop down in pace. I noticed my heart rate was in the high 170s as I ran through Prospect Park, where my HM pace usually puts me at 165 on the dot. I tried to tell myself it was race excitement + caffeine. [Arrested Development Narrator Voice: It wasn’t.]
I hit the 10k mark at 45 minutes pretty much on the dot. My 10k PR is 44:0-something. This is when I realized my pacing was probably a bit on the screwed side. I’m fairly capable with distance, and am better at medium-exertion-long-distance than I am at hard-exertion-short-distance (my 10k predicts a slightly better 5k time than I currently race). I thought to myself: “Well, you can always just drop down a bit and hold. What’s the worst that can happen?”

The Worst That Can Happen: AKA You’ll Feel Pretty Silly When You Try to Tell Your 38.5 Week Pregnant Wife That Your Last 6 Miles Were Quote “Unimaginable Suffering” And It “Felt Like It Would Never End”

I had been under the impression that Ocean Ave would be a “gentle downhill,” but had never run it prior to the race. This, dear reader, is a lie. Somehow, the last 6 miles of the race are entirely uphill; or at least, that is what it’ll feel like if you go out 5% over your current level of fitness.
The sun really started to get to me; and while I’d had water & nutrition, my gut wasn’t enjoying it, and I didn’t feel energized or like any second wind was coming. I specifically remember that Mile 9 felt like it took 20 minutes to finish; the last 5k of the race simply wouldn’t arrive.
I pulled off to the side to slow down; first to 7:30, then 7:45, then 8:00, with no respite. My legs were heavy despite feeling fueled — I was just dyin’ out there. My wife had been texting encouragement during the race, and I managed to send her back from my watch at mile 9 “all goals are now out the window,” and it was just about finishing — first, to finish without walking. But I took 2 30-second walk breaks when the fatigue felt unendurable — pulling off to the side and counting down from 30, while getting passed.
That was another feature of the race that made it so challenging — that same dynamic of “being deceptively fast” that I mentioned above came back to bite me, as I got passed continuously by people who’d raced their fitness, rather than their goals, in the first half of the race. That demoralized feeling was incredibly difficult to handle. I hadn’t, before today, understood why someone would quit a race; and now, even though I didn’t quit, I get it.
As I passed mile 11, I realized that, while my initial goal was fully out the window, I could still PB the race, even though my pace between miles 9 and 11 was more than a minute off my goal pace; I’d just need to hold approximately 8:00 pace, and I’d be right up against my prior PB. That didn’t make anything any easier, but it did make me feel like the suffering had a point.
Got an encouraging text from my wife, found some other folks at ~8:00 pace, and tried to lock into that pace next to them. And then I just sort of suffered to the finish line. I don’t know what the views looked like; I’m not sure what the race atmosphere was like. I wish I’d paced myself better so I could have experienced that fully.

Post-Race: Why Don’t They Tell You That You Have to Walk Up Stairs To Get Out of Cyclone Stadium BEFORE You Go Into the Stadium?

Got medal, got water. Drank about 5 consecutive cups of water, and then exited the boardwalk. Texted my wife that it’d been really hard but I finished, and right as I did, a critical mass of finishers arrived such that cell service got knocked out for everyone. Thus began the Long Night of The Soul for me at Cyclone stadium.
I walked in, walked around, realized there wasn’t anything I wanted to do in there, and then tried to go back out; at which point I was told “Exit is out that way,” and I said, “I can’t just go back out? I gotta go upstairs to leave, after running a race? That’s the rule?” The guy who told me didn’t deserve my sass; and I deserved to not go up stairs. Oh well.
I managed to get up the stairs without cramping up (though it was close). I went and looked out over Surf Ave, at everyone walking to and from the race, and just got to sit with my thoughts for a bit. I got myself a bit choked up & had a very dignified little cry at this realization, which I think does fully distill my feelings about the race: “I feel like I tried my hardest, but I don’t feel like I did my best.” I think that we often treat those two statements like they’re interchangeable, but there’s actually a bit of space between those ideas, and my race fell into the gap between them. I both tried very hard the entire time, but also, I could have done a better job pacing myself and picking target times. That disappointment is rough.

To Do Better Next Time

So to conclude this whole long sad love letter to learning: some takeaways, ranked from Most Transferrable (re: life skills) to Most Specific.

1. Actively listen to ya dang body, fool

Self-explanatory: by setting a goat at the outset of training, and then sort of driving toward it without respect for a lot of recently-added stressors in my life, I didn’t end up running any faster — I just made the running I did do kind of miserable. Next time I intend to use HR & Effort (together!) as a better indication of the pace my body feels comfortable running during the race. We say so much “Trust the taper,” and I think here I’d benefit from reminding myself, “… buuuut the taper doesn’t make impossible things possible.”

1. Don’t invest so heavily in the quant goal

I got very invested in how proud I would be if I managed to achieve the goal, and that forward-projecting is part of what caused me to overshoot the goal in the first place. Next time around I want to have a process goal to the tune of “Enjoy the race while trying to wring out your body like a washcloth.” Or something; I have time to plan.

1. Lose 15-20 pounds.

I’m 5’9; I’m strong and I’m heavy. My running has kind of been those two vectors pointing against each other the whole time. But I think I’m at the point where, if I want to be able to sustain 7:00 speeds for more than a 10k, I need to lose some of the excess weight I’m holding onto. I could also do strength training, but I’ve got a baby on the way; heart tells me that getting 7-10% lighter will be a lot easier than getting 7-10% stronger.
So that was training, goals, and next steps. Hopefully, by seeing my mistakes, you’ll be able to avoid them yourself in the future. Hopefully!
Made with a new race report generator created by herumph.

I moved to a new state with my husband about two months before he deployed. It has been very difficult making friends as I work from home. Even before deactivating my social media, it was very difficult making friends using social media group pages. He has been gone several months and while it hasn’t been easy, because I’m constantly alone, I thought it was going okay.
He emailed me last week, after going radio silent, telling me how much he is struggling and how unhappy he is. Shared that a lot of it is my fault. He doesn’t feel comfortable opening up to me and never will. To preface this, this happened after 5 days of no talking after a “fight”. I put it in quotes because I was genuinely trying to avoid a fight. We were talking on messenger. He was giving me one or two word answers to everything and I started getting frustrated. So I told him I was gonna let him go and to have a good night and I love him. He asked me what he did wrong and I told him nothing. He said I love you too and immediately logged off. I messaged him back explaining that it felt like I was trying to pull teeth talking to him and I know he is exhausted and stressed so instead of hurting my own feelings I would rather get offline. He never opened the message. I also sent him a screen shot about something funny his brother shared with me so he could get context about what I was asking and knew it wasn’t a big deal. But again, he never opened the message.
Five days later is when I received the aforementioned email; he was purposely ignoring me. He had promised me multiple times before that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing again (this was now the fourth time) and this one was by far the longest. I sometimes struggle knowing how to respond because when he shares that I’m upset about something, he gets the context completely wrong. For example, he thinks I get mad at him for talking to his family. That’s not true at all. I get upset that we get to talk for what seems to be a few hours online, and he’s not really participating in sharing anything. I have to ask questions, I get one or two word answers back and that’s it. I try not to push but sometimes I need the communication to feel connected. He doesn’t tell me he misses me, he doesn’t call me babe or honey (he used to) I know he is struggling, and I’m by no means saying I have it worse, but on the boat, he has explicitly told me that he doesn’t like anyone, he doesn’t trust anyone and he absolutely hates this command. I don’t really have any friends but my isolation is not quite self induced.
I responded to his email explaining my side of things, and apologizing for not creating a space for him to feel comfortable to talk to me. That’s literally all I’ve tried to do but he just seems to feel pressure when talking to me. I genuinely believe his stress, anxiety and lack of sleep are highly contributing to his emotional and mental distress. Add that he is in a combat zone and I’m sure its worse. He won’t tell me that though, usually just says he’s not at all worried or makes a really dumb joke about it.
I all but begged him to please let me know if all he needs is space, that I want to support him but the silence is torture to me. I have an anxious attachment style (he is avoidant) so I tend to think worst case scenario. So I requested that he please put my mind at ease that he’s not considering ending our marriage.
Three days later he sends me a very long email talking about how he is not looking forward to coming home, and isnt because we couldn’t get thru a deployment without fighting; that he wants to go to his childhood home to see his family. That we don’t want the same things. That I’m happy where we moved to and he is not. He only chose these orders and the last orders to be close to his family. He hates that I don’t get along with his family and that I don’t really want to move there when he retires.
Let me explain that he lives in a very tiny town where there isn’t even a grocery store. I literally would not have a career within an hour of his town. We had agreed that we could live an hour away, like one of his brothers does and it would still be close enough to his family. Also, his family has been quite rude to me. I have been mending fences with them for the sake of my husband. I don’t care where we live in the grand scheme of things, but I still need to have a job and his father and that side of the family very much abuse alcohol. They are also very ignorant and racist. My husband already struggles with over drinking. That’s not something I want to raise a family around as they can be verbally abusive when drunk, and you never know what’s going to trigger them. They have no goals nor aspirations in life, and that’s okay, but I do/ we did… I thought. My husbands goal is to retire from the service and go home. I was willing to go close (1-2 hours which he had agreed) to his home because I have a while before I can retire.
He proceeded to talk about how he was miserable with his ex wife and doesn’t want to spend six year with me, like he did with her, thinking marriage was supposed to be an unhappy union. That he stayed with her that long because he didn’t want it to fail; also because she convinced him things would get better. They never did, in fact I believe there was some infidelity on her side. He continued on about nonsense, like how he wants the mirrors in our house to stay but I wanted to change them and he has completely given up on having a say on how to update the house we bought. For the record, I left the mirrros the way he wanted. I picked paint colors I knew he would like.
Next, he mentioned how we had gotten in a fight right before moving and in haste, I told him to leave me there. he considered that we do end it then but we agreed to keep going because even though we struggle with communication, we do love each other and want to continue our marriage as overall we are pretty happy.
He ended the email explaining that he has not been happy for a while, has been struggling and while we work good together, he doesn’t believe we are right for each other. That I need to look within and figure out if I am happy in the relationship. That he doesn’t care about my answer but he is not at all happy.That he will never be able to communicate the way I want and he has made more changes for me, like attend couples counseling and anger management, than he ever would have for anyone else.
There are still a few months left to this deployment. I literally have no idea where that leaves me. I’m hurt as shit. I’m angry. I’m confused and frustrated. Not once on this deployment have I even mentioned splitting. Month two was the first time he mentioned divorce. We got past that hurdle and month three he mentioned that we should consider getting pregnant when he gets back. Then some stupid issue comes up and the cycle of being angry and fine continues. In fact, I all but beg him to not leave me when he has these outbursts. I feel stupid.
He is not one to ask for help. He clearly needs help but I have no idea what to do. It’s clear he doesn’t want anything to do with me.

So… I (25F) committed to attending a camping trip for Memorial Day weekend with my cousins/extended family, all on my dad’s side of the family. Lots of celebrations happening with them, I.e. one cousin just got home from being in the Air Force, one is having a baby shower, and three of my cousins are graduating from college. Here’s where things get complicated… I just learned that my dad and his current wife will be there. I can’t really back out now. And I don’t want to feel guilty for backing out of it. I haven’t seen my cousins in 4 years, they’re all like my brothers that I grew up with before my parents split and going NC with my dad. I really miss my extended family. But I don’t miss my dad and his wife. My dad doesn’t even know that I am planning on going. I need to know what strategies work when it comes to being in the same space as NC parents? What strategies could I use if he tries to bring something up with me? Or perhaps, managing anxiety? Whatever has worked for you, please share. Thanks and well wishes.

You never know the pull of a small town until you trade your entire life to live in one.
Dazzling city lights made way for grassy fields blanketed in soft sunsets, local papers filled with names I knew by heart. When the honeyed hair of the local florist came out in patches due to the stresses of life, sixty people brought steaming bowls of food to ease the ache. A singular church brought the townsfolk together, and perhaps that was the most foreign part of it all to me.
I was a kid, so I watched the entire thing unfold through the innocent lens of child, keenly watching the camaraderie of this town really peak outside the doors of that church. It didn’t look like much, a steepled dream imagined by the townsfolk of before, but it meant everything to the people. I even understood that back then, even though I didn’t quite buy the concept of a god yet.
The Sundays were a monotonous part of our week, only pedalled by my parents who desperately wanted to fit in with the town’s culture. They wore their masks well, nodding in the right places as we sat in the same pew every time, my father often discreetly checking the football scores in the sleeve of his jumper. Nothing ever happened in that tiny town, and then everything happened all at once.
It started with the miracles. Our pastor, Pastor Jon, liked to have the troubled souls of that week sitting in the front row so he could clutch their shaking hands one by one, channelling the energy of God through him in the hope that someday, hope could be brought to those lacking in it. It was a brief affair, usually just the joining of skin and a short prayer, but that Sunday was different. Rain hammered against the roof, leaving Pastor Jon’s prayers lost in the low, threatening rumble of thunder.
It meant when the sun shone through the clouds and caressed the face of a pained Wilson Brewster, it already felt a welcome intrusion.
“May your broken leg heal quickly,” Pastor Jon smiled warmly, steeling a hand on the calf of the waiting boy.
He, like me, was just a child. He didn’t feel the urgency of the situation, he was probably only grateful his throbbing leg wasn’t pulsating with pain anymore. He breathed a quiet ‘cool’ and that would have been that, had his parents not asked exactly what was cool about his leg being touched later that night. The news spread like wildfire - as per the medical centre, his parents said, Wilson Brewster no longer had a broken fibula.
There was some debate, of course. My parents mumbled in the kitchen about how clearly he’d never had a broken leg, and how odd to make him hobble around in a cast if that was the case. The sentiment was echoed tenfold, until something a little more tangible happened that changed the course of that town, and our lives, forever.
Pastor Jon didn’t mean for the glass to shatter in his hand during service, nor did he mean for a chunk of it to embed itself in his palm, gushing reams of blood racing down his arm in a bid for the floor.
“Gross!” one of the kids shouted with glee, the rest of us paling as crimson spilled from his wound. He was a deer in the headlights, utterly unprepared as we all looked on in awe. This was not how church usually went - this was quite the deviation. Several people stood to help, but they needn’t have bothered, because the divine was ready to intervene.
“Oh dear,” Pastor Jon muttered in a panic, using his bloodied hand to block the intense ray of sunlight threatening to stream through the glass into his eyes. It bathed the blood in a golden glow, and quicker than it had gone in, the chunk of glass began to slide from the wound till it smashed to the floor, exploding into a million pieces. That was not the crescendo, though, rather it was the sight of his skin tightening and knitting together - months of work in a moment - blood congealing and leaving behind nothing but memories of a wound.
“Pastor?” Mary-who-makes-the-blueberry-pies breathed, reaching out to touch him with bulging eyes. Pastor Jon could only open and close his mouth uselessly, his voice barely coming out in a whisper when he did finally speak.
“It’s a miracle,” he wheezed, and by all accounts, I suppose it seemed it was.
I was young, but I remember the bustle - the town was as I’d never seen it. The people of the church had vowed to keep it our little secret because, as Pastor Jon said, we had been given a gift and it was not appropriate to turn it into a spectacle. This gift was sporadic, though. People queued through the double doors of that church, sobbing and praying for their own slice of God, but few were to be given it. Little Laurie Lee and her dislocated jaw cleared up within the hour. Farmer Noel had a sudden epiphany about what the lottery numbers were to be.
Our town was blessed.
For two days, we marvelled. The rest of the world can have a piece later, we reasoned, but this was for us, just for now.
The church was fuller than it had ever been, people spilling out into the back and waiting with baited breath, snippets of conversations could be heard, and as they had been for the last two days, they all echoed one another.
“-a believer. I mean, Aunt Lillian said it was the light. The light closed up his wound, there and then!”
“-jaw. I saw her get hit with the cricket bat! Terrible thing, little lamb was inconsolable. And then next thing I know, she comes here and those shards are just welded back together again! Well, I told Janie-”
“-need to make the church bigger. Look at everyone! If only-”
So when Pastor Jon stood before us practically trembling with glee, it was hardly the weirdest thing that had happened all week. His voice was thick with emotion, eyes darting manically around our congregation.
“I have a message,” he breathed, and the crowd gasped at the connotation of it. I remember my father swearing, a low rumble of expletives I didn’t usually hear falling from his lips. I didn’t fully understand what this meant, but the atmosphere in that room morphed in a heartbeat.
“Tell us,” Christie Baker cried, hands clasped as tears welled in her eyes, “Oh, please tell us!”
Pastor Jon visibly shook, holding a trembling hand outstretched as if to reach us all. “He came to me last night,” a single tear raced past his cheek and made a home on his lip, “He spoke to me.”
“Praise God!” a man cried from next to me, and I shuffled closer to my father at the sudden burst of noise.
“It is… Him,” Pastor Jon uttered in a blissful exhale, sending the room bursting into chaos. Tears, cheers and prayers filled the space, but my father just clutched me tighter and my stomach churned uncomfortably. It took at least ten minutes for the room to quieten, but when it did, he had their rapt attention. “I am told that I will be His vessel. I will pass on what must be passed. We are not to spread the word, yet - only our pocket of civilization is ready. Only ours.”
You could replicate what happened a thousand times, and somebody would mess it up, sending a message of the divine to their great aunt in Auckland. But not us. That secret stayed within the confines of our town for the sixteen days hell shined upwards at us. Everybody had a thousand questions, but Pastor Jon only hushed us. “You must trust me,” he said, tone more regal than I’d ever heard it. And trust him the people did.
So on the second day when he returned to church and his eyes were dark-rimmed, nobody questioned it. He was chosen. Who knows what that does to a person’s sleep cycle? The following day when he went for his morning walk and the smile didn’t quite reach his hollow eyes, that was fine. He was a vessel, not a performer. And then that morning at church when he addressed us and kept rubbing the angry red welts on his wrists, who were we to ask questions of God’s messenger?
Nothing went terribly wrong until the baptisms. We all wanted to be part of this - even my anxious parents who signed me up to be bathed in holy water - and so we queued towards the front of the church, eager to hand ourselves over. I was second in line, right behind Mrs Awkins who had been the school nurse for the last 26 years, apparently. She was gleeful as Pastor Jon set up, speaking rhymes I barely listened to as I bounced on the balls of my feet, eager to go next. My stomach flipped at the words, knowing that my turn was only seconds away. People wouldn’t usually queue, but this was different. It was all different, now.
“I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
I didn’t expect the awful fizzing noise the liquid made as it hit Nurse Awkins’ head, nor did I expect the guttural wail that fell from her lips as she clawed at her own scalp. Smoke billowed up from her disappearing tresses and as I was yanked backwards, I caught a glimpse of her exposed skull. Most people will go their entire lives without the smell of burning flesh lingering in their nostrils, but not me.
“I- No! That wasn’t- oh!” Pastor Jon had cried, tired eyes bulging out of his head as people leapt to their feet to assist.
It was carnage, but not carnage I witnessed for long. My mother’s grip on my arm was vice-like, her eyes swimming with terror I know still plagues her to this day. I recall my father on the walk home, murmuring to my mother in low tones I wasn’t meant to hear.
“This isn’t right, Rach’. Jesus, did you see her? That was almost our son!”
My mum’s voice was shrill, the sound of her heels clacking against the pavement not quite masking her voice. “The police will be called - we don’t even know if she’ll survive! I think I’m going to throw up.”
But she was wrong on both counts. She didn’t throw up and the police weren’t called, because we rallied together. This was bigger than us and bigger than Mrs Awkins. Sure, nobody else tried to get baptised, but this was a blip. People surmised that the almighty didn’t want her as part of his flock, that she hadn’t been a believer when it mattered. Nobody was to utter a word about it, and because church was every morning now, my parents were almost too scared not to go. As a child, I didn’t understand it, but all these years later, I think I’d have bent to the fear of the almighty as well.
But it wasn’t the almighty who knocked on the door.
It became all the clearer that morning when Pastor Jon turned up with eyes so sunken and empty that we startled at his presence.
“Pastor.. Pastor, are you feeling alright?” one of our neighbours fussed, “Will you be okay for service?”
Pastor Jon didn’t answer. It was almost as though he didn’t hear her as he dragged his feet up to the front, turning so slowly towards us that it almost felt eerie. A large, jagged and bloodied cut spanned the entire back of his neck, disappearing behind him as he eyed us all, one by one.
“He’s here,” he murmured, words that on paper, should have sent the entire church reeling with joy. But you could hear a pin drop. You could hear any soul whisper in the large room, and yet his utterance only caused goosebumps to spread across my skin as a sort of icy stillness washed over me.
“He’s… here?” a woman in the front row asked, and Pastor Jon took too long to answer. An unnatural, slow smile spread across his face as he tilted his head towards the source of the noise. He didn’t respond, instead slowly lifting his hand to his lips, letting his finger linger there for a moment. When nobody spoke, he let his mouth fall open and began to chew loudly on the finger, drawing gasps from the crowd.
“Don’t look,” my mother shimmied closer to me and lifted a trembling hand to my eyes, but I could see through the cracks in her fingers. Pastor Jon continued to sloppily chew his finger, eventually snapping his head up and inhaling sharply as he spat blood out of his mouth.
“Your bodies are so fragile,” he sneered, lifting his dripping finger to the skies, causing several people to leap from their seats and make a bolt for it. My mother was one of them, and with horror, I watched as the Pastor’s eyes scanned the room and locked onto mine, tilting his head. “Stay,” he hissed with bared, bloody teeth, and we did. Not through choice, but rather, a sickening whoosh of air that skimmed past our faces and forced us all back down.
“What’s going on?” someone shrieked, but we weren’t to know, not really.
Pastor Jon only smiled blissfully, reaching his arms outwards as if to accept us. “I’ve come to bless you all,” he whispered mockingly, fingers outstretched as the sun hit the stained glass to the left of him. But it was all wrong. Sunshine streamed in and as it hit the red of a decorated sunrise, an image which had been there years before us, the colour changed. It was only moments until the church had the appearance of being bathed in blood, shimmering red bouncing off every surface to create the illusion we were all swimming in hell.
Nobody spoke.
Those who didn’t quite make it to the doors stood frozen; we who remained in our seats cowered in the heaviest kind of fear. Red drowned us and we clutched one another, eyeing Pastor Jon as though he were a wild animal. Finally, someone dared speak.
“Where is God?” he murmured, eyes swimming. Pastor Jon’s neck snapped towards him as he licked the blood from his finger, shuddering. When he spoke, his words were cold, distant. As though they were from somewhere else entirely.
“He hasn’t been around for a while.”
There was no time for his words to punch at my stomach, because in no time at all Pastor Jon was crumpled on the floor, wailing as he regarded his chewed, bloody finger. The bone was exposed and yet nobody helped him as he looked at us pleadingly, too many eyes on him as his whimpers turned to whispers. When he spoke, we listened.
“You need to keep coming to church,” he breathed, a single, bloody tear trickling down his cheek, “It will be worse if we don’t.”
So we did.
The Sunday Fair was cancelled, and pies that had been baked to share in sunny gardens went stale and grew mould. People packed duffel bags and made for their cars, arguing fiercely with those who decided to stay. My mother and father disagreed, but their argument was far more muted.
“Please, we have to go,” my father pleaded, shaking his head as I watched from the shadows, “Listen, I don’t know what the fuck that was-”
“I can’t explain it,” her voice was shaken, quiet, “But I know it will be worse if we go. I know it. Please just trust me. Trust Jon.”
So as my father always did, he believed in my mother. Each day in church was torturous, everyone sitting rigid with fear as Pastor Jon read slowly and shakily from the bible, bruises littering his gaunt body. When the holy book in his hands would launch into flames, he’d calmly drop it into the bucket of water he’d prepared and retrieve a new one. One time, every window in the church smashed and we all winced, ducking to avoid the onslaught of glass.
Darkness watched us.
We all felt it, and I know it visited members of the flock in the shadows. I was plagued by it one particularly torturous night as I lay in bed, blanketed in darkness with the covers pulled up to my chin. I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling I was being stared upon, squeezing my eyes shut as laboured, wet breaths left my body. But they weren’t my breaths.
I’d realised it straight away, that my hurried gasps for air didn’t match the gargling, strangled heaving that echoed around my head. From under the covers, I didn’t know much, but I knew one thing - the uncomfortable, heavy presence laying on my legs was my only source of comfort. Through all this, I reasoned, that if my beloved dog was with me, hell itself couldn’t come and claim me.
But I was wrong, because outside, my dog howled into the night.
Terror like that wasn’t something I’d felt before, and as my stomach bottomed out, I stopped breathing altogether. It must have sensed my fear, because those gargling breaths heaved closer and closer to my face as it dragged itself up my body, inch by inch. The smell of rot and ash burned into my nostrils, a horrific weight settling above my nose as my lungs started working again, so quickly that I would surely die then and there. If it had a face, it was twisted and pressed into mine, the thin bedcover my only source of protection.
But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move, so I let it pant gravelly air into my face, let it lay on top of me for hour after hour, till the birdsong indicated morning had come. All night I sobbed stifled cries, chest shaking as I squeezed my eyes shut and felt it pressing into me. Felt it hating me, felt it wanting to rip its claws into my stomach and pull out my intestines. But it didn’t. And when I awoke late the next morning - I must have passed out through fear alone - it was gone.
The rest is all a bit of a trauma-soaked blur, to be honest. I know my parents couldn’t understand why I wasn’t speaking the next day, why I barely reacted when evil finally descended that morning at church. The rest of the townsfolk screamed for their lives, ran as fast as they could, but I just stared with a hollow, broken gaze. As the rivers of blood waterfalled down between the pews, I watched Pastor Jon’s eyes grow dark as midnight, empty and soulless as he bellowed inside those four walls and called upon something worse than any of us could likely ever imagine.
I recall the fire starting, remember Pastor Jon’s slack jaw as he regarded us all so horribly, moving jaggedly towards my family with a growing demonic, gleeful grin.
“I remember you from last night,” he’d uttered darkly, but his voice came out in a thousand jarring layers and I could see hell in his eyes.
“Leave us alone!” my father tried to shield us, lifting a crucifix and wielding it towards Pastor Jon as though it would protect us. He simply laughed, an awful noise of horrific dissonance that I still sometimes hear alone in my bed at night. In complete horror, my parents could only watch as this thing wrenched the crucifix from my father’s hand, grinning as his jaw split and shattered each second he opened it impossibly wider. The sound of his bones cracking reverberated as his skin split and his mouth gaped, wide enough to drop the crucifix right into his waiting, blood-soaked mouth and swallow it, right in front of us.
When he met our gaze, his broken jaw hung limply from his face, sad morsels of skin stitching a once-good man together. Whatever blur those hours were, that, I remember.
It was an anti-climax, really, because while I expected him to descend upon us all and rip us into thousands of pieces, he simply boomed his words, jaw still hanging as his evil spoke directly into our souls.
“When I return in 20 years, it is not just your small town that will bleed.”
Pastor Jon has been missing for 20 years. I’m not sure when he started his countdown, but I awoke this morning with a dread so sickening that I’ve barely stopped emptying my stomach. If it’s over and the earth turns to rubble, I hope somebody finds this and can at least piece together why it all came to a sad, premature end. We townsfolk kept our vow of quiet for this long, but there comes a point when silence is deadly.
I think today, Pastor Jon will be found.

(19M, 5'9 155 lbs.) Hi, this is gonna be a bit long, but let me explain the entire situation so far:
Going back about a year or so, I started noticing an elevated heart rate above what I usually would have. I have an apple watch that allows me to check my heart rate, and around this time I started to get notifications that my heart rate was above average (in the 120s to 130s range while resting as opposed to my normal 60-80 range). This happened a few times along with some very minor chest pain / tightness, however after laying down for a few hours / going to bed it would usually return to normal. Around the same time I got diagnosed with anxiety and ADHD and placed on an SSRI to help my anxiety after trying ADHD meds and not liking them. I never really had any incidents with high heart rate after that, so I had assumed it was just anxiety causing it (and that may still be the case). A few months went by and I ended up starting college and got myself a girlfriend. As I ended up finding out, SSRIs, while great, have the unfortunate side effect of erectile dysfunction, so I weaned off my meds so I could prioritize my love life. There were a few incidents after this where my heart rate was above average, but again I just chalked this up to anxiety, as it would usually go away on its own. At one point I went into my on campus doctor's office just to verify my heart was okay after an elevated heart rate the night before, and they gave me an EKG which came up clear. Months go by, and things are fine, besides a slight uptick in anxiety. Unfortunately however, my relationship began to crumble and my anxiety skyrocketed, and we eventually broke up, which led me to talking to my doctor and getting placed back on anxiety medication. However, I really didn't like how SSRI's impacted my libido, so after trying a few more SSRI's I was placed on Buspirone. I love Buspirone, and it's made a noticeable difference on my confidence / reducing anxiety. When I take my full dose at once (30 mg), I tend to get a bit dizzy / nauseous, however when split up into 10 mg taken at breakfast lunch and dinner I have no noticeable side effects. I will say (and I don't know if this is in any way important but I'm just naming everything possible), I have noticed that since stopping the SSRIs and starting Buspirone I tend to ejaculate VERY fast which is abnormal for me, and although I would like to fix that it is not my main concern. Moving on though, after about a month or two after being placed on Buspirone, we get to where my heart problems start. As someone who had never used any substances my entire life, leaving home and going to college gave me the freedom to try new things, and although I know it's not great, on weekends me and my friends will get together and drink or occasionally smoke weed / take an edible. I was worried at first about interactions with my medication, but after some research all anything online could tell me was that I may get drunk faster / more nauseous and dizzy, which wasn't too big of a deal for me. I had tried weed earlier in college and didn't like the way it made me feel, however after being placed on Buspirone I decided to try it again and actually enjoyed the feeling, so I started doing it more on the weekends as opposed to just drinking, which leads us to the incident. Me and some friends had just sat down to watch a movie, and all taken an edible. Time passed, and I started to notice that my heart rate was extremely elevated, way more than I was usually used to. I checked my heart rate, and found that my watch was displaying an average of 160 bpm. At first I thought I was just having a bad high and tried to calm myself. I laid on the floor and put some ice on my forehead, but nothing was helping. I checked my heart rate again and saw that my watch was displaying 190, which really freaked me out as that was way higher than I had ever seen before. I had my sober friend call Public Safety for me, and they came to my dorm room and did a basic check up on me. They said that I had a fever, and when they took my heart rate they got something in the 160s range. Their explanation was that my anxiety, when combined with being high and likely being sick made my heart rate elevated, which made sense at the time. I went into my college's health services to follow up the next day since my heart rate was still elevated (in the 120s-130s range), however they again told me it was probably just anxiety. A few days went by and my heart rate was STILL above average, so I decided to double check with my real doctor off campus. About a day before this I had also stopped taking my medication to see if it could be the cause for my elevated heart rate. The doctors took my vitals and immediately noticed that had very high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate, to the point where they sent in a second doctor to recheck my vitals and make sure it was correct. After talking to me and having me give a run down of my symptoms, they had me schedule an appointment with a cardiologist and told me that if I ever experience chest pain and a heart rate above 100 bpm that wouldn't go down to go to the hospital. I had also told them about how I stopped taking my medication and they told me that that was fine and to tell the cardiologist about it. About a week passes, and I have my cardiologist appointment in a few days. I had been up the night before working on my final exams, so I hadn't gotten much sleep, and besides a breakfast sandwich that I had for lunch I hadn't eaten much either. I had been experiencing chest pain all day, but I assumed it was being caused by my lack of sleep, so after classes I went and took a nap. After a few hours I woke up, and immediately noticed that I still had chest pain. I checked my apple watch, and my heart rate was displaying roughly 90-110 bpm while laying down, which on top of the chest pain made me worried since my doctor had told me that that was cause to go to the hospital. I called my parents to tell them about it, and they drove to the school and had me sit in the car and eat some food they had made to see if it would help at all. However, even after this, my heart rate was still above 100 bpm and I still had chest pain, so my mom made the call to bring me to the hospital. While on the way to the hospital, out of nowhere my heart rate increased to about 170-180 bpm, which freaked me out. We arrived at the hospital, and they immediately gave me an EKG to make sure I wasn't going to drop dead. During this time, I also was shaking a lot and couldn't make myself stop. Eventually they took me into a room and decided to run some tests on me. The tests they did are as follows: BASIC METABOLIC PANEL, CBC WITH DIFF, TROPONIN NH, D DIMER DEEP VEIN THROMB LEVEL, TSH REFLEX, X-RAY CHEST PA AND LATERAL, and ECG-12 LEAD. While I'm not a doctor, from what they told me and from what I can see, everything turned up pretty normal. My potassium was a smidge low, as well as my MCV and MPV, and my Monocyte (absolute) was a tad high, but generally nothing to worry about. The website where I'm viewing my test results display my ECG as abnormal and an attached document says I have left atrial enlargement as well as sinus tachycardia, but they only mentioned sinus tachycardia in the hospital so I assume that it was just the machine reading my test results and giving its own diagnosis. Long story short though, I left the hospital a few hours later, and although I still had a slightly elevated heart rate they said I was fine to go about life normally and to follow up with my cardiologist. Cut to the present, and I just met with my cardiologist a couple days ago. I gave him the general rundown of the above story (but didn't mention the edible as a precursor to the 190 bpm heartrate as my mom was in the next room over and the door was wide open), and after checking my vitals he told me that although I did have an elevated heart rate and high blood pressure, my chest pain probably wasn't a huge concern and that he wasn't too worried it was anything life threatening. He told me I could resume taking my meds (which I had temporarily replaced with ashwagandha supplements while I waited for the appointment and have since stopped taking), and had me wear a little device that monitored my heart rate for 24 hours, which I'm set to return in a couple days. He also told me that when I returned it he would check my results and give me an echocardiogram and go from there. So, with any luck, he should be able to figure things out then. However, I wanted to post this to see if anyone could help me get any ideas on what it could be that I could run by him to help speed things up. Oh and one last thing, if you can't think of anything in regards to what could be causing my elevated heart rate, I actually would like to know why I'm ejaculating so fast so I can fix it because its gotten to the point where I can't even enjoy masturbating because of how fast I cum.
In case I missed anything, here's a list of my symptoms (although I have no idea if they're all correlated):
- High heart rate (anywhere from 90-190 bpm)
- High blood pressure
- Chest pain / tightness on my left side and does not hurt more when I breath in / out (every now and then pain extends to my neck and shoulder)
- Frequently tired
- Insomnia (could be correlated with the above symptom lol)
- Get out of breath faster than usual
- Anxiety (already had this though)
- Mild depression (probably from my breakup)
- Lack of motivation (probably from my ADHD)
- Very rare and random spasms in my neck
- About 10 pounds weight loss in the past few months
- Headaches (could be from the meds)
- Sexual Dysfunction
- Minor rash under my eyes that’s been coming / going
- Eczema / rash flare ups past few months above my eyes, on my inner elbows, on my hands, and on my neck that I’ve been able to get rid of with a steroid cream
- Wrists, elbows, knees and ankles (although many joints in general) tend to bother me / crack a lot
- Glands under my neck are frequently swollen
- Rashes on the tops of my feet and toes
- Multiple gray / white hairs appearing in the last few months
- Probably something minor that I'm forgetting but if I can't think of it it probably isn't important (will update this list if new symptoms arise)
Brief family history:
- Grandma (moms side) has rheumatoid arthritis - Grandma (dads side) had multiple sclerosis - Great Grandma (moms side) had Alzheimer's - Aunt (moms side) has an undiagnosed heart problem - Aunt (moms side) has rheumatoid arthritis and Reynaud's, inconclusive testing for lupus - Aunt (dads side) has something? something to do with swelling of feet and ankles? not too sure - Mom had anemia
​
My personal theories (I'm not a doctor though so obviously not too sure): Autoimmune Disease + Dysautonomia: - From a list of symptoms, I have experienced all of the following at some point over the last month: Lightheaded when standing up, nausea, brain fog, fast heart rate, high blood pressure, changes in bowel movements over the course of the past few months (both constipation and diarrhea), fatigue, sexual dysfunction, chest pain and discomfort, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sleeping problems, dizziness, sweating a lot, watery eyes, frequent headaches, changes in body temperature, drooling (when I sleep), mood swings, anxiety, and sensitivity to light. Based on this a potential theory could be an autoimmune disorder on top of a heart condition? Also explains the elevated monocyte (absolute) levels. Serotonin Syndrome: - I was doing research and discovered that Buspirone, when taken with other medication that increases serotonin, can cause serotonin syndrome. After another google search, I found out that weed can increase serotonin levels. The only hole in this theory is that I stopped taking Buspirone after the initial spike in heart rate / blood pressure but had no noticeable changes.
TLDR: I have a high heart rate and blood pressure and can't figure out why

So my husband and I have been having lots of trouble the last 2 years, for various reasons, and from my side, my BPD has flared up worse than ever before, and I can't seem to get a hold of it. He sorta moved out a month ago, he is on the property and we have kids together. We eat as a family almost every day. Anyway, back in November, He bought me/is a new stove as a physical anchor to help establish hope. The thing is, with this emotional separation, my hope comes and goes. I was cleaning off the stovetop and just started crying. It was supposed to represent hope that we would make it through, that we were determined to make it work. And again we are in some sort of limbo, where I don't know what's going to happen. Anyway, sometimes when I use the stove i feel hurt and anger, and hope and love. I feel like he has given up and that I haven't tried hard enough. I am literally spiraling and sorta splitting about a freaking stove. I keep telling myself that it's just an appliance, an inanimate object. That the emotional connection with it is just a narrative that we built, and is just in my head. That doesn't really help, I usually just feel stupid after I calm down. But I needed to get it off my chest, needed to confess my stupid spiral to someone, even if it's not important to them. Thanks for reading this tale from someone with bpd who can't control her emotional reaction to a fucking stove.

TIME:
Wednesday’s (Occasional Friday) at 20:00 GMT +1 for 2-4 hours, recurring.
REQUESTED:
1 New member for “The Wayward Wanderers”. 1 of my 3 groups roaming Nexovius.
I am looking for 1 more player so we get the group back to six. Have posted quite recently in LFG where I had found 2 great players. 1 player to fill the gap of 1 party member leaving due to wanting to switch to a different tabletop system. 1 player so the party will be of similar size of 6 players like my other 2 groups roaming Nexovius.
Unfortunately did the second player I had found through LFG run into some serious scheduling problems with his work changing his shift. Disallowing himself from being able to participate on the Wednesday sessions, he left shortly after thanking everyone and saying his goodbyes.
But The Wayward Wanderers of Nexovius still require 1 additional member! Will you heed the call?
The First big arc has concluded and 1 of the new players has already been integrated into the group. The party is currently standing at a crossroads and are about to head deeper into Cardolenor. Giving the new player plenty of room to enter the party.
STILL READING? NICE!
HOMEBREW WORLD INTRODUCTION:
Welcome, brave adventurers, to the vast and diverse world of Nexovius. Once united, the races that inhabit this world have been torn apart by conflicts and betrayals, leading to a fracture of trust. As a result, they have chosen to split up and establish their own communities across the realm.
In the era known as the Time of Great Factions, the world witnessed the rise of powerful alliances and the establishment of trade routes that connected the scattered settlements. The prominent factions that emerged during this period include the Exalted Bastion, Mirage, Fynelenor, Bhar'Baduhr, Chi'Lokk, Gur'Rul, and Mïrë. These factions quickly realized that they were interdependent, relying on one another for sustenance and resources.
While civilization thrived and pushed back the forces of darkness, monsters still lurk on the outskirts of civilization, haunting the busy trade routes and taking refuge within the many dungeons and caves scattered throughout Nexovius. To combat this menace, mercenaries are hired to protect the caravans that travel these routes, ensuring the safety of the valuable goods.
However, even as the races sought to coexist and prosper, the world of Nexovius faced new trials. The enigmatic Mïrë, along with the rest of Argentus, retreated into obscurity, their voices lost to the winds of time. A global pandemic cast a shadow of despair for a quarter of a century, testing the resilience and perseverance of all who remained.
From the depths of the ocean emerged Ternion, an ancient force that stirred the waters and disrupted the delicate balance of power.
In the midst of these struggles, the EoS, a collective of powerful wizards and sorcerers, came together to form a place of knowledge and trade—the Eye of Omniscience. This center of learning and commerce became a beacon for those seeking wisdom and an avenue for the exchange of ideas and goods. Knowledge itself became a valuable commodity, sought after by all.
Innovation also thrived within Mirage, giving birth to the invention of the Arcane Caravaans—a revolutionary means of trade and travel. These caravans traversed land and sea, further enhancing the world's interconnectedness and facilitating the exchange of goods and ideas. However, the frequent use of land trade routes attracted the attention of lurking monsters, necessitating the employment of mercenaries to safeguard these valuable caravans even more.
Though the different races can be found scattered throughout the world, each faction has a dominant race that shapes its culture and ideals. Certain races may face discrimination and mistrust
Brave adventurers, the world of Nexovius awaits you, teeming with diverse cultures, ancient secrets, and challenges that demand your valor and cunning. As you traverse its lands, unravel its mysteries, and forge your own destiny, may you find your place amidst the tapestry of races, factions, and the ever-changing tides of fate.
Will you answer the call?
WHO AM I?
My name is Kane (28) and I’ve been a gm for almost 2 years now with my real life group and our 1 year anniversary with the 2 online groups all wandering around in Nexovius is coming up. Having a humble 48 sessions +2 one-shots under my belt in total, but who keeps track am I right... Beside Dming I work several days a week and attend a master of architecture and urbanism at university.
WHAT KIND OF DM AM I?
I like making a lot of maps for my party to immerse them more in the game. I also 3D-print mini’s for my offline group their, NPCS and monsters they encounter. Online I make use of Owlbear Rodeo and make tokens and maps to immerse the players.
I’m the kind of DM who thinks the immersion and fun are the most important aspects of a good game of dungeons and dragons. I’d love to immerse my players in my world and fulfill their wishes and needs in a fitting way in the campaign, through combat and interesting story telling. I try to implement backstories as much as possible within the story. Always trying to make each player feel unique and important within the story. So if you ever got some ideas you would like to discuss with me feel free to do so and we’ll see how we can make it fit within the narrative. Be reasonable with this and don’t start asking for unreasonable requests. The campaign will a good mixture of serious roleplay and humor. I try to roleplay/combat like 60/40 I’d say. Might be the other way around I think it heavily depends on where the party is within the story.
HOW ARE WE PLAYING?
We'll be using owlbear rodeo for the V.T.T. and Discord for voice calling. Using various maps, imagery and theatre of the mind.
CROSS-PLAY HOMEBREW WORLD
I’ve set up a discord server called the Chronicles of Nexovius wherein a lot of information about Nexovius will be displayed for your party. Think about maps you obtain/certain, NPC’s you met, monsters you have encountered, information about the world, cultures, locations and its inhabitants. You can always make your own notes of course. Currently we have 3 groups roaming around in Nexovius. If you would join I would highly suggest checking out as much as you can to read up on what happened so far. Or don’t and be surprised along the way.
The discord server I host functions as a hub for all three the groups to hang out in and discuss the world and whatever pops up.
The idea is to have multiple parties take on an adventure within the world of Nexovius. Wherein together with other parties you slowly fill in this chronicle. Your party saved a king? It will come up in the timeline. Another party went rogue and are now wanted. It will now be displayed on the timeline. A meteor crashed somewhere? It will now be displayed in the timeline. Want to sell this item your party doesn’t use? Sell it on the grand exchange, a place where you can buy and sell goodies to the other parties! This way you experience more from the world you are playing in. Making it feel more alive, interactive and immersive. I also like to come up with one-shots taking place in different regions of the world. So you fully get a feeling of what happens in other parts of the world. It also allows you to play together with party members from different groups.
We’ve had a one-shot where the party had to extract an orc-chieftain from Borealis and it’s legion of warforged. Currently we’re scheduling part 2 (Two-Shot Technically) of a desert-race through The Scorch a mystical desert of sorts.
SETTING?
Experienced and new players are both very welcome.
High fantasy, Gritty realism/middle, Early Steampunk/medieval
Custom crafting/gathering system
Rules are guiding. Changes will be written in the homebrew rules to make it more fun and fitting per group!
WHAT WILL THIS GAME BE LIKE?
It’s an open world like RPG wherein the world map is provided and the party can go wherever it pleases by foot or by caravaan. The map is provided with a lot of Points of interest. During overworld travel there is also a chance of experiencing random encounter like monsters that attack the party on the road or an NPC which approaches the party. Based on where the party goes on the map that’s the adventure they might go on based of certain plot hooks. Once the party arrives at a POI I will try to tell a linear story if the party engages with the plot hooks. But the outcome is truly dependent on the actions, words and deeds of the party.
YOUR ACTIONS MATTER AND WILL IMPACT THE WORLD
STILL READING? NICER!
That means I somehow intrigued you. Please use this google form: https://forms.gle/p3X1xDy58h8gEhYG6 and answer these questions to apply.
Thanks for showing interest and hope to be speaking to you soon!
QUESTIONS?
Feel free to comment down below or send me DM through reddit.
THANKS FOR YOUR TIME!

Ok retards listen up. Been seeing lots of degens writing small DD pieces of bullish or bearish shit. Y'all need to read this cos this is the whole fucking thing.
this is also basically my magnum fucking opus so upvote retards.
im also not some financial advisor or whatever just read this and make your own conclusions degenerates. Im not fucking liable lmao but i am balls deep @ .35 average now, its literally all I have on this earth.
TLDR: FFIE DD summarized, Margin wont affect longs the same way as shorts right now. Dont buy shares on margin though and get ready to supply collateral regardless. Short interest is up and some smart retards are on our side. Read the post to raise your IQ from 8 to 9 though. 🐻 🌈s mega fuk and even posting high level bear shit to scare us.
Compulsory 7 rockets so you autists dont start having a seizure or something:
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Basically been seeing posts about "blah blah margin this, short interest this, WS to clever blah". Going to split this post into distinct sections but im no english degree so dont expect any bear bloomberg level shit or something
FFIE is a fucking steal regardless of squeeze. Buy now or be left on a dying planet while we head to alpha fucking centauri.
So basically everyone here knows about FFIE the horsemen of the apocalypse coming to steal shorts lunch money. Some of our whales from the shut down roaring kitty board bought GME in 2021. Collectively we are fucking rich. As a unit, we are an eccommerce wizard, taking GME from a measly 1.3b market cap to over a $5 Billion company. Its now valued at $6.8 Billion, granted anything "meme" now gets money thrown at it like a stripper in a high flying strip club or some shit , so dont listen to me, so it may well be a bubble. Regardless the thing grew like bacteria doing binary fission on agar jelly 🚀🚀🚀🚀.
THEY SELL FUCKING PHYSICAL COPIES OF USED VIDEO GAMES. The market for that is like what? $1?. Electric Vehicles are going to the moon and is basically recession proof because of how clean and cheap is compared to other things for how much you get out of it. Any bears saying that FFIE cant compete with other EV are wrong. The 1,940.1 pound Formula E vehicle will be that hit 0 to 62 mph in 2.95 seconds and have a top speed of 150 mph already slapped heads in. They'll fucking do it again.
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
We regain compliance if we stay above 1$ we finished four consecutive days at 1 BILLION+ volume. This is the literal smell of money. Hold above 1$ it cant go tits up?
Now for some pussy boomer talk (aka fundametals or something).
Last november FFIE announced a cooperation agreement with Master Investment group and Siraj Holdings LLC. Establishing a sales entity in Dubai.
We are still trading at $1.13. The wedbush 1 year price target is $10.20. Over 10x.🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
I hear some chatter about the late 10q/10k filings that are late the reason for the delay primarily relates to staffing-related challenges in the Company’s Accounting group and deferred payments to third party audit consultants who have been assisting. The company is working to compile the information to be included in these reports, and I have no reason to think our boy Jonathan Maroko who is now the Interim Chief Financial Officer won't come through in a big way.
Dude has 17 years of investment and finance experience.
He's a rockstar.
🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
WE got in this for the MOASS and the intrinsic value.
Now I know you autists are starting to develop short term dyslexia or something but keep reading. This could be the most important piece of shit you read in your life. How do you think I feel? My brains overheating just trying to write coherent sentences.
AVG earning estimate for 2023 is -47.97, for 2024 it is -15.39 which is a 67.91% YoY increase in earnings.
Maniacal. Thats all I need to say. The company is going to get to mars before papa musk and wont even break a sweat. When Earnings keep pushing every analyst who donwgraded them is gonna get ditched and upgrades will start to happen.
This is a steal. That implies some future higher price target right? Well here is my guess for a conservative price target based on the information above and also some more I probably forgot cos im a retard.
FFIE can reach a ATH market cap surpassing 5b. Here's where that gets interesting. THe minimum size to post on WSB is a 1.5b mkt cap. If this can reach that at 35$ a share, we can ride the meme wave easily surpassing 100$
I really dont understand the bear thesis. The only bear thesis ( short term this one) was that the stock would lose compliance and couldnt get over 1$ a share. We hit $3.80 from .04 in a week, the bear thesis is looking pretty WEAK.
Bears are betting against:
EV, one of the fastest growing sectors.
Remaining above a dollar when we have 1b+ volume for 4 consecutive days
Jonathan Maroko who has a stellar previous work history and 17 years of experience.
Reddit, twitter, stocktwits, and 4chan apes, now basically a collective whale.
I was in a discord with chinese and korean investors who are with us here and just as bullish They are showing up in force internationally.
We literally have mofos getting FFIE tattoos. You think they wont hold?
🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
All of Social media has now formed a shield wall against the bears
🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Some valid bear thesis left now (the only ones left) -- The planet gets hit by a comet destroying all life on earth.

1. Now some analysis on the short squeeze and some technical data.

Ok everyone on here and their cat, dog, bedbugs and wifes boyfriend knows about the squeeze. FFIE is the most shorted stock of all time and space. The squeeze makes every autist salivate because its basically free money while cucking big money out of like what 1% of their fund.
Although I know all you cucks hate shares, and hate holding, if the squeeze doesnt happen selling is probably the most retarded thing anyone could do. Its literally buy high sell low and you fucking disgust me. STONK ONLY GOES UP.
This squeeze is so monumental that its been sucking sharks in like fresh blood. Ive been in since $.25 with my few shares. If I had more money Id be buying but im just an unemployed full time caretaker of my mother. Im merely a medium for this money made information.
The stats for this stock now short wise are, from fintel:
Short Interest % Float as of 5/18/2024 95.37 %.
Short shares on loan now (This breaks the bearish margin calls affect longs more thesis): 36.3 Million
Shares left to borrow: 9,100,000
Shares left to borrow if we all switch to cash accounts and turn off stock lending: 0
Need rockets 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀:
Ok so now if Reddit now owns an estimated 6-8% of the stock and we all know to move over to cash accounts now to avoid margin calls, we should be minimizing longs getting margin called. If we go to CASH accounts, or turn off share lending the shorts will not be able to borrow our shares to use against us
These shorts are in a circle of hell we cant comprehend and makes satan scared.
🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Cost to borrow is also up, estimated short interest a cataclysmic amount.
🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Seen a lot of talk about Gamma hedging and delta.
Market makers can get squeezed for that gamma, too. The more options open that expire in the money the more shares they will be on the hook to hedge for to be able to provide that liquidity.
Now weve established the likelihood of longs getting margin called is far smaller than shorts, on to the options distributions
We had 89,000 options contracts ITM mid day friday. If we finished above $1.5 that would be 8.9 million shares of gamma pressure shorts went all out gave it everything, and WE STILL FINISHED ABOVE THE DOLLAR.
Next week we have even more people.
🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
Now lets compare this possible squeeze with others.
Bear in mind this is the most shorted stock of all time, but differences in free float change the share price differently.
Kodak went from $2.16 to $33.2
Volkswagen went from ~200 euro to nearly 1000.
Overstock went from ~$21 to $123
Blue apron went from $2.31 to $18
Gamestop went from $3.00 to $485
Gme market cap was 1.3b before it squeezed and finished above 5b
4b puts us at 100$
This shit can happen. Hold on.
Conclusion: Buy shares with cash not margin. Hold shares forever unless the world explodes. hedges bad, Shorts fuk, 🐻 🌈 posting bearish shit are doing weeklies for the second time after they expired red on friday, FFIE to $3.80 without squeeze, FFIE is still a value play, Good luck have
fun.
UPDATE: Short selling is restricted until the 21st credit to u/valaentius for the information
We now own 90% of the float, not 6-8%

Hey I have a 3 year old computer and last few weeks it has been randomly shutting off and restarting, as if it loses power for a split second and comes back. Everything goes black in this split second, monitors, pc etc. I can sit and work, play games etc for 8 hours and it will be fine but suddenly out of nowhere it will happen.
It has been working fine up until this problem randomly started a few weeks ago, and with googling and all that I suspect the issue is with the PSU, even tho its only like 3 years old.
A friend suggested I should fiddle or atleast check my voltage settings in BIOS and compare ram voltage and cpu voltage with the recommended values and then stress test it. My question to you guys is what do you guys think I should do, and if I should do this BIOS thing is there a guide on what to do as I have never done this before and where can I find these recommended values?
My specs are below:
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
ASUS ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING
ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3090 GAMING OC 24G
VENGEANCE LPX 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3600MHz C18
Corsair HX850

This is a rant post/story. I'll try and keep it short, but it'll still be long lol.
I work at a non profit thrift store. I'm the recieving attendant (all products are donations, I just decide if we can take it or not based on condition). I've worked for this place on and off for almost 10 years. I generally like it, I've known most of the employees for a long time now. I started working for the store again about 1 year ago and at this point they have a new assistant manager.
First off I give credit where it's due. The man's a hard worker, and takes his job seriously, you could argue too seriously. But when I started back up I had a few workers and couple of volunteers pull me aside and say things along the lines of " this guy has a big ego and is a bit of a power tripper, just try not to let it get to you so much" I appreciated the heads up so I was at least somewhat prepared lol. I definitely picked up on it when he would address himself as "assistant store supervisor" anytime someone called or he spoke to a customer who had questions or complaints. Always going by his job title instead of his name. Since I'm the younger one he always calls me by my first name in kind of a demeaning tone, or talks to me like I'm an idiot for having questions about certain items like I should know what name brands are good or worth more. Hey it's all just items to me right? I learned to just placate him and keep basic conversations neutral like video games and old movies. Seems to work the best.
I remember my boss had to have a conversation with me about my dependability due to health reasons and asked if I feel I'm being overworked and want to consider cutting back to part time? She had called me to her office to talk about this and the assistant manager (Mr. Ego) was happy to follow her in the office with me in hopes I'd be reprimanded.You could just see his snarky grin lol. I stepped into her office and she told me to shut the door behind me. She told the assistant manager it was a conversation between just her and I and that he didn't need to be there. I swear you could almost feel his disappointment that he wasn't included in this "serious matter".
Time goes on, he is who he is, work relationship got quite a bit better to my surprise honestly.
They hired a new employee about a month ago and now she's unfortunately had to experience it herself. What happened was a guy showed up with a chair in his van and I couldn't really get a good look at it so I went ahead and told him to pull up to furniture recieving and they get the final say. The new girl does a little bit of everything so she was just curious on how things worked in recieving so she was helping me out. Apparently the guy with the chair had told the people in furniture recieving that the lady said we would for sure take it and before they could even get a good look he dumped it off then sped out of there. Her and I were in the middle of recieving more stuff so we didn't even know what had happened.
Suddenly he comes back to main recieving and straight up yelled across the room for everyone to hear, Hey! Calling her by name. You don't ever tell people that we'll take furniture without looking at it first! Just send them to furniture recieving and let them decide because now we have a trash piece of furniture taking up space because you told him we'd take it without question! Then he went to the office and slammed the door behind him.
This lady is about 35 years older than him btw (So much for respecting your elders). So I did what others had done for me and pulled her aside and said "try not to let it get to you, he's more angry at the overall situation" her response was very valid, "there's two sides to every story and that it's his job as a manager to keep his emotions in check instead of calling her out in front of everyone and embarrassing her like that" I agreed and again tried to tell her to brush it off.
This all took place when our main manager was away at a meeting otherwise he never would have went completely ballistic over it. At least not in front of everyone. Main manager comes back a couple hours later. The assistant manager pulled the new girl aside more privately which he should have done in the first place to ask exactly what had happened. The new girl asks if I can come because I was there too as a witness? In my mind I'm thinking don't bring me into this, me and him aren't exactly best friends lol. But I went with them anyways, as I was there and would want someone to have my back too I guess. He asked her what she noticed about the chair? At first we didn't notice anything. Then he spun it around and there was a big tare along the seems which split the leather really bad. He then asked me how it looked in his van. I told him the nice side was facing us and we couldn't move the chair to get a better look hence why we had him go to the loading dock otherwise we would have turned it down then and there. He was a little more cooled off at this time so just told us if you see that vehicle again to let him know right away.
He likes to play store "security" like a hot shot lol. I'm going to try and be nice but he's a stereotypical power tripper with signs that you'd expect. He's almost completely bald at 35 (we're guys, just let it go man it happens to a lot of us lol) he's about 100 lbs overweight maybe more, around 5'4 the size of our sweet little old lady volunteers, lives with his parents (which I won't pitch him too much shit for because things have gotten very expensive, especially if you're single), doesn't drive, I wouldn't be surprised if he's never spoken to a woman by himself let alone kissed one.
I mostly think it's because he feels inadequate. He has 3 brother's all in law enforcement. His oldest brother is a Sherriff deputy his 2nd oldest brother is a police officer in Seattle and his brother who's only a couple years older is a corrections officer. His father is a military vet. Meanwhile he ended up being a college dropout assistant thrift store manager at 2 different thrift stores including our current one. I just think he should look for another line of work. I think it could be beneficial for his sense of self worth and overall mental health to see a therapist. We all have bad days, but come on man we work at a thrift store we're not burly construction workers or loggers lol, just calm down a little ya know lol.
Anyways thanks for reading my long rant post lol. Wishing everyone true happiness ✌

Sorry in advance for formatting I’m on mobile.
Some background: me, my brothehis gf my sisteher fiancé and my mom and her husband all lived together. We all split rent but my mom got hurt so she left to live with my other sister while she healed. That left the rest of us and we tried to keep the house together. My sister and her fiancé ended up leaving after we planned to stay together for a while longer while we figured out what to do. My brother had a falling out with my sister and her fiancé and ended up losing the job he had with her. they are currently on bad turns. I ended up quitting my job when I got burnt out and went looking for a job maybe a week later. Meanwhile I was driving everyone around while we job searched. I couldn’t keep car payments and my car ended up being in useable anyway.
My brothers childhood best friend moved in with his baby mom and baby but they ended up paying no rent because the best friend didn’t tell his baby mom. A bunch of shit happened and we ended up getting evicted. We had tried to go to court to get time to come up with the rent money but we had to send my moms husband who said that if we didn’t have the money at the court hearing that they wouldn’t give us an extension. So we started packing and cleaning and tryna figure out where to go. My sister offered to take Me and I resisted at first but I had no other choice if I didn’t want to go where my mom was. My sister and his gf ended up in a long stay hotel but they have no means of transport expect ubering and it burns a hole in their wallet.
We’re all working now and making okay money. The issue is my brother and his gf never have enough money for things, they need money to Uber, to make sure they make rent to be able to eat etc. and I under stand this so I tend to help them out but the issue is by doing so I never have money myself. My part of rent takes a decent chunk out of my paycheck and everything left over gets siphoned out by the people around me. My brother needing help and my sister asking me for money or helping them out with non shared bills, or just paying for dinner. I have very rarely been payed back.
I have trouble saying no, and I’ve talked to a friend before who has told me I need to keep better boundaries with my family but I don’t know how. I don’t want my brother to suffer and I feel like shit saying no to my sister and him. But I’m tired of the majority of my money disappearing the second I get it. I work hard at a job I hate to make money but I can’t save a single cent. I’ve had times where a decent paycheck was whittled down to ¢18. I’ve had moments where I’ve literally given my last and I’m still asked.
My brother is very apologetic about it which makes it hard to stay mad but I’m building a resentment.
What should I do? How do I put my foot down and not feel too much like garbage?

Axstrom's Notes

1. The list is here: big jump list
2. The draw (1-5548) is 877, 1520, 4754, 5265, 1478
   1. Drawing 5 so there are backups in case of issues, but the jumper gets to choose among 4
   2. 877 is Earth Final Conflict - A TV show whewre aliens come and uplift Earth but have a hidden agenda
   3. 1520 is Investiture of the Gods - A fantasy tale in Zhou Dynasty
   4. 4754 is Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep - a Disney mashup videogame
   5. 5265 is The Fountain - A film about contuinity across time, grief, death, and growth
   6. Jumper chooses The Fountain
      1. Jump Doc
      2. Reddit discussion
   7. Jumper buys access to The Biosphere Supplement
      1. Supplement Doc

Build Notes

1. Drawbacks - None - Part of the point is that you can't have everything
2. Companions - None - This is the journey of an individual soul
3. Origin
   1. Past: Noble - setting the stage for grander thigns
   2. Present: Inventor - striving for progress
   3. Future: Witness - seeing what has become of the world
4. Perks
   1. Noble Thought - free for Noble, stay connected to the people who are affected by your actions
   2. Noble Deed - free for Noble, your actions have greater impact and are remembered and recorded
   3. Inventor's Vision - free for inventor, studying a problem gives increasing insight in how to improve it
   4. Inventor's Intent - free for inventor, your creations are harder to misuse
   5. Improved POV - free for witness, observe / remember events from multiple perspectives
   6. Bystander - free for witness, events can unfold around you leaving you unharmed
   7. All Together Now - merge all your past origins into a complex mind
   8. 500 Years of Practice (Teaching) - mastery beyond mastery of the chosen skill
   9. Soothing Presence - calm strong emotions and suffering
   10. Absolution - If someone genuinely repents, you can allow them to move
5. Items
   1. Meditation Garden - self-explanatory warehouse attachment
   2. Biosphere - Full purchase activates the Biosphere Supplement
   3. Tree of Life Sapling - Grows six immortality fruits per decade, which can (over very long time) grow more trees

Jump Notes

1. I wake up in my room in the warehouse apartments, after shutting myself in without even checking the Benefactor's Lounge the night before
   1. I'm still lingering on the frustration of not cracking the riddle of Allabar, and not being able to solve the problem permanently
   2. But there's no going back, so I commit to facing forward for the rest of the week, and head to the Benefactor room
      1. Once again, there are four envelopes with me, and my big chart of jumps up on the wall, like something from a Kindergarten classroom
      2. As I affix a sticker saying "The Fountain (2006)" to the big chart, a small round outline appears next to it: "Biosphere Supplement available"
   3. On my way to call a team meeting, I catch a surprise outside the apartments
      1. Three of our bard graduates are slowly exploring the area
   4. At the team meeting, I announce my intention to go solo on the next jump
      1. The decision isn't popular, but most of them have waited while I've done gauntlets before, so it's not a big shock
   5. We set up the entertainment room to watch the movie, even though I don't expect that meta knowledge will be much help
      1. For the first time, we don't all fit in the Entertainment room
      2. By count, there are eleven of us (me and ten companions), the Halflings are now up to fifteen after two recent births, and we have nine new bards with us, so we set up a second showing in the evening
   6. Finally, before heading in to the jump, I make one last check of the Benefactor's office to see if there's more information on the biosphere supplement, but though my note has been removed, there is no response, and nothing on the tablet
2. I awake from a deep sleep in a luxurious bed, it is early morning and the sun is still rising
   1. I can feel the absence of my abilities; I am reduced below even bodymod, to the level of a baseline middle-aged man in a world with primitive medicine
      1. Nevertheless, I can feel a gift reaching back in time to me - and as I accept it, I am calmed, no longer distressed by what I have lost
   2. In this time, I have duties, both in the mundane sense of the tasks those around me expect me to perform, as well as a greater sense in which I must try to make this world better
   3. My new gift becomes invaluable in due time
      1. All manner of petitioners and officers come to me with grievances, and each of them are a storm of emotions - no one comes before their Count to declare how satisfied they are with things
      2. In short time, word of my wisdom spreads, and my council is sought by King Ferdinand
   4. I lobby my King with an eye to improving the lives of all involved
      1. It is the lives of ordinary Spaniards that are the measure of his ability as a King, not the mass of his treasury
      2. Colonialism brings with it dangers beyond the obvious, and responsibilities for ages to come
      3. Allowing the priests to destroy artifacts of other cultures does not increase our glory, but diminishes it
   5. Despite my ability to make my case clearly and seemingly overcome all objections, my guidance is rarely heeded when I leave the room
   6. And before long, it seems I have made enemies of those who stand to gain by plundering the New World
      1. They do not discuss the matter with me, or make their displeasure known by facing me down in violence
      2. But as the breath leaves my lungs over dinner, my last thought is that I have been poisoned by a coward
3. I awake from a fitful sleep in a large bed, my wife still asleep beside me despite the chirping of my alarm clock
   1. My first throught is of the date - It is September 7, 1999 - the first day of fall semester
      1. This will not be my first time teaching CS 101, but this time will be different, I can feel the power in my body, my mind, and my soul
   2. I arrive at my office early, of course, and make sure everything is in order - the syllabus handouts are ready, my slides are in order and proof-read, and my TAs have confirmed their preparedness
      1. The lecure hall is large - so many students sign up for CS 101 without any prior programming knowledge, just to see what it's like, or convinced that they will be a natural
      2. As the students file in, they sparsely occupy the massive auditorium, afraid to sit near people they don't know, not fully understanding that for the vast majority of them, this is their first class on campus, their first opportunity to get to know eachother
      3. I exhort them to move towards the front so they can hear and see better, and a few oblige
      4. The first lecture flows like a breeze, the students hanging on my words as I understand what each one needs to hear to understand what the rest of this semester will hold
   3. By semester's end, the students and TAs are in awe, the CS department chair has asked for my materials and told me that spring registrations for CS102 are higher than ever, both of the student papers have run articles praising my class, and the dean of Arts and Sciences has interceded to clear my spring schedule to prioritize my research work on the condition that I teach 101 again next year
      1. I appreciate my grad students and TAs, but I don't have a real family in this life, so I head into the warehouse for winter break
4. I awaken rested and enthusiastic on a beautiful spring day
   1. It is graduation day for the first group of freshman I taught after coming to this jump, nearly four years ago
      1. They have come so far, and I'm fortunate that some of the best have continued to work with me, and three of them will be graduate students working under me starting in the fall
   2. It is also the first day of human trials for the drug, a new anti-inflammatory
      1. We were hoping it would treat chronic inflammatory diseases, but early testing suggests that it may significantly reduce hay fever, which would be great if we can mass produce it cheaply
   3. My reputation at the school has skyrocketed thanks to the combination of my groundbreaking research plus my teaching perks ensuring high instructor reviews as well as students learning and retaining more
      1. My tenure process has been fast-tracked, since the dean is rightly concerned about losing me to another institution
5. I awaken slowly, and awkwardly, as if from a coma, as a cocktail of drugs is released into my body, still restrained on my cryobed
   1. Our vessel, the Cyllene, is essentially a large asteroid with a hole carved in the middle, stuffed with propellent, equipment, supplies, expansive aquaponics facilities, and a relatively tiny living area
      1. Cyllene was said to have nursed and protected Hermes, as this vessel must nurture and protect us, the first observers, and hopefully, colonists,
   2. As my body and mind resume normal function over the course of 90 minutes, I get a slow trickle of updates on the status of the Cyllene and our mission
      1. The mission clock says it's 202 years since we left Earth, but thanks to time dilation, Earth has experienced 221
      2. Computer Block 5 (of 8) is currently undergoing automated reconstruction as the block with the highest error correction rate at the time the last automated reconstruction completed
      3. 1575 individuals are currently in cryosleep, and 25 (including me) are active, all sufficiently healthy
      4. I am still Dr. John Axstrom, revered teacher and groundbreaking computational pharmacologist, but my consciousness seems to have jumped forward a few hundred years, skipping past the development of miracle cures, life extension medications, and cryogenic preservation of humans
   3. As I realign with my memories and identity, I remember why I'm here
      1. If colonization proceeds, the coming generations are going to need exceptional teachers if they are to learn their place in the universe, and I'm one of the best there ever was
      2. Our mission is expected to take about 750 years from departure to arrival, and though the vast majority of that time is spent in cryosleep, we take shifts being "awake" to ensure systems are functioning and keep eachother mentally and physically healthy
   4. Since the monitoring systems will throw a fit if I straight up disappear from the vessel, I take a long ride out to the external "observation" check, out of the range of most of the sensor systems
      1. There's not really much to observe in deep space - it's like the night sky, as the ancients saw it with no light pollution, but from a different perspective
      2. Here I quickly form a stunt double duplicate, hand over my electronics, and duck into the warehouse
   5. The warehouse clock confirms my suspicions - I'm nearly seven years into the jump
      1. Since it looks like this isn't going to take nearly 1000 years, the team hasn't been going full-stasis mode
      2. The bards have been poring over J-Borg's personal library as well as the impressive collection of the warehouse media room
      3. But the reason I came is the Tablet of the Free - I'm stuck on a large but still confined deep-space vessel until my scheduled return to cryosleep - how is that supposed to entertain the boss?
      4. After confirming nothing interesting is in the warehouse, I head back to the observation deck, and stash the portable door I've been using back into hammer-space before re-merging with my stunt double, and taking the long trip back to the living area
6. I wake up to an unfamiliar synthetic beep - apparently the Cyllene's version of a doorbell
   1. When I open the door, one of my crewmates tells me that our directional antennas have picked up some unusual RF activity that seems to be coming from our destination system, and they want me (as the on-shift programmer) to help the astronomer, comms, and operations staff to help make sense of it, and ensure we're not about to get nuked by a magnetar or something
   2. Initial findings were sparse and inconclusive - just occasional pulses of a signal that must have been very strong and highly directional at the time of transmission, to reach us so far away
   3. But I had access to diagnostic tools that the astrophysicists and comms staff didn't, for all their training and equipment: a series of perks specifically for teasing out the needles of relevance from the haystack of noise
      1. And as I looked at what we were seeing, and what we weren't, the answer became clear: these radio bursts looked just like a primitive form of RADAR
      2. At first my colleagues on the Cyllene were skeptical, but the evidence kept mounting, with 4 additional series of "pings" being detected in the next six weeks
   4. With the spectre of extraterrestrial intelligence hanging over the Cyllene, our XO followed protocol, and ordered the full complement to be wakened from cryosleep to assist in the work to come
   5. Within six months, we had fabricated and installed a much larger purpose-built directional antenna array on the surface of our asteroid hull, and reports of different signals were coming in almost daily
      1. We needed all the extra hands, even our mining and terraforming experts were lending a hand with signal analysis and attempts to form patterns
      2. The whole crew felt the urgency and wondered at the situation - temporally, it would mean that their early experiments with RADAR and initial RF broadcasts would have happened at about the same time as humans did those things on earth, and if they developed at the same rate as us (a big if), they would likely be more advanced when we arrivedd than humans were when we left (and thus the technology of our vessel), and would almost certainly see us coming
   6. The coming months flew past, each bringing further confirmation of suspicious, but with it frustration, as we had been unable to extract a coherent signal - the broadcasts we could pick up didn't appear to be using either amplitude or frequency modulation
      1. More than once I brought signal samples to the warehouse team, but they were just as stumped as us
      2. Even more "esoteric" means didn't work - we tried every variation of "Tongues" and "Comprehend Language" spells on printed, audioized, and even engraved versions of the RF signals we caught, but they all failed and the representations seemed full of too many discontinuities
   7. I could feel my new Inventor's Vision working on the task of how to decode these signals, and about two years after the first pulse was detected, I had my breakthrough
      1. The signals didn't represent continuous audio (like human radio) or even piece-by-piece visuals (like rasterized video), but something of each, and a little weirder
      2. They were composed of many (from seven to three hundred, and not consistent at all) micro-audio clips
      3. It was like making an ultra-low bitrate recordding of the voice of every singer in a chorus individually, and transmitting fifty milliseconds of one, then fifty milliseconds of the next, and so one, in serial, and then starting back again with the first voice
      4. We couldn't figure out why they did this, but once I was able to identify the break points between each "voice", I could layer them on top of eachother to make a composite audio version
      5. And that composite audio could be played, and was a viable candidate for magic translation
   8. The entire vessel went wild when I demonstrated the isolation and recombination of the signals to produce audio
      1. The sound of the thing was somewhat like the sound of multiple birds, frogs, and crickets in a forest, in very brief clips
      2. Of course, I didn't reveal that I had access to magic translation - I figured the comms and signals staff (and the one cryptographer) should have to earn their pay
   9. The remaining year and a half was spent in intense research, for them, while I mostly slacked off and tried to make conversation with the people doing important work on this front, since my actual mission here was to "observe" as humans of this universe underwent a sort of assymmetrical first contact
7. I awaken in my weird little pod bed in my weird little capsule room for the last time, perfectly aware of the remaining hours in this jump
   1. After the initial excitement died down, the majority of the colonists were put back into cryosleep, with only the decoding specialists and those "on shift" like me staying active
      1. There has been a lot of anxiety around the Cyllene for the last few months - we are clearly a colony ship and the intelligent inhabitants of that system probably do not want to be colonized, and may well be easily capable of destroying us
      2. There were discussions about trying to reverse course and head back to Earth, but we could do that any time, and the closer we get, the more information we can gather about the system and its inhabitants
   2. It would be cruel to try to skim supplies from this vessel even if there were something I wanted aboard, so I just wait my time out, helping where I can and secretly translating any communications we receive when time permits
      1. So far it has all been rather uninspiring, which makes me even more curious what kind of species would develop radio technology but not transmit any fiction or speeches or poetry
   3. When it's almost time, I once again make the long trek out to the Cyllene's observation deck alone, and split off a Stunt Double, who can at least stay here for a month, while I slip into the warehouse
      1. When I enter, J-Borg greets me and informs me of a message at the Benefactor's lounge
      2. The note on the door says "Supplement Pending - please attend as soon as possible", so I go in to check it out
      3. With the choices all locked in, the door unlocks and I head out to meet with the team
   4. With the memories of my time in Spain finally restored, I realize how I had been trying to communicate with myself all along, but failing
      1. The need for calm communcation and education will never end - among our closest neighbors or with a civilization 300 light years away
   5. We have the traditional group dinner in the commons, and discuss what's going on
      1. The team did end up spending most of the time in stasis, and the formerly-newborn halflings are a little over a year now biologically, learning to speak and walk
      2. When I mention the Biosphere supplement and how I wasn't allowed to consult them, they naturally asked when it would apply, but it hadn't even occurred to me that there were now definitely too many of us to wait out warehouse changes in the entrance hall, so I checked with the central control
   6. Afterward, no one was complaining when the doors finally unlocked and we were able to leave the commons hall, only to find that the door led to an outdoor path with a natural-looking sunset on the horizon
      1. I didn't want to spoil the whole setup yet, so I said we could tour in the morning, and turned off a number of the facilities and systems for the night, to give me some time to understand what options were available before letting my companions go wild with them
      2. Fortunately, the obvious items like the tree of life and factory complex were on other islands, that would be difficult to reach without the transport disks running
   7. And then I went to sleep again, wondering what the next awakening had in store for me

Notes on the Fountain Jump Doc

1. Honestly this doc has been on my to-try list since I saw it - I really enjoyed the movie and gladly rewatched it again when it came up in my random draw.
2. The author took some liberties with the source material, which makes sense because of how focused on Thomas the story is, and the extensions largely make sense
3. There were a few confusing things in the jump, such as how you get essences and what powers you bring with you into each phase of the jump, but a close reading makes them clear enough
4. The jump has a few really standout purchase
   1. the inventor's intention is the answer to a lot of concers that "do-gooder" jumpers are likely to have in their careers
   2. the full tree of life is an amazing item - the ability to grant perfect health and immunity to aging within a regrowing item solves a lot of problems
   3. 500 years of practice is amazing if you have a particular skill or art in mind - literally centuries better than the "10 years of practice" equivalents that you find din many other jumps, and has a lot of potential to synergize with other perks that scale off your skill in a particular area
   4. Biosphere is super cool if you want your fiat-backed warehouse to grow into something more
   5. The Dagger of the Path is a great example of a conceptual weapon, and something I probably would have picked up if I had a bunch more points
5. How you're supposed to interleave the three eras is a little unclear, and maybe I'm not a creative enough author to pull it off. I don't believe SJ Chan ever got around to writing a fictionalized account of jumping to it, unfortunately
   1. If anyone else has done a good jump fiction of this jump, please let me know
6. Overall absolutely a fantastic jump. Obviously a great option for anyone who likes the movie or wants to solve one of the specific problems available
   1. I'd especially recommend it for an early-chain jumper because of the generally low danger level and great variety of rewards

Notes on the Biosphere Supplement Doc

1. I knew this was something I wanted to pick up when I first read the fountain jumpdoc several months ago
2. I use the "Personal Reality" warehouse which was co-authored by SJ Chan, and this supplement feels perfectly tailored to supplement that
3. There are lots of good pickups for people with various interests, or those who just want to keep their options open
   1. Observation Deck seems like the real must-have since a lot of the other buys are controllable through it
4. The structure of the biosphere was a little confusing at first - I thought that there was an island, a void around the island, and a hard shell, and wasn't sure why you'd want to increase the shell thickness, but further reading cleared that up
5. On the whole, a good pick up, especially considering it only cost 400 CP in the jump, and normally buying warehouse upgrades with CP has a very unfavorable conversion, but in this case, the biosphere purchases all seemed cheaper than they ought to be.

(Builds to come in a separate post due to length restrictions)