

Bitter Melon Tofu Stir Fry
Ever since I played Persona 4 many years ago, I've had a fascination with figuring out bitter melon. I tried cooking it a couple of times, with awful results, but I also tried a bitter melon herbal tea that I liked, so I knew it had some potential. Since this seemed like a good time to try out cooking different things, I grabbed some the last time I was in a grocery store and experimented again. The results weren't perfect, admittedly, but they're good enough that I feel g
Workout Recap - Week of April 19, 2020
It seems I went a bit too hard with the anti-poor-posture back work mentioned last week, as I agitated some muscle(s) just under my right scapula. It's no worse than minor injuries I've dealt with before, fortunately, but I did skip out on doing a challenge this weekend to give it a chance to recover. As I've said previously, these days are not a good time to be reckless and require a trip to a hospital. Sunday Type: Pass/Fail One-arm Pull Up Negatives - 2 sets of 4, each s
Languages in D&D
I'd had the idea of a blog post about the use of languages in D&D in the back of my mind lately, and seeing a post on that topic on Goblin Punch this morning was motivation enough to actually go through with it. As evidenced in my previous TTRPG post, I like having language diversity as part of the game. It reflects much of the source material that I like, whether acting as a barrier to specialized knowledge (as Lovecraft's and Smith's common use of sorcerous foreign tomes)
Workout Recap - Week of April 12, 2020
It took a little longer than I'd expected, but my hands are feeling good again. I packed in an extra challenge to help make up for the delay that pushed me into. In other news, sorry to Samurguybri for taking so long to post your comment and reply to it. I'd thought I had Disqus set up to post comments without approval, but it flagged yours for some reason. I've adjusted the Disqus settings to hopefully avoid having that happen again. Monday Type: As Fast As Possible 50 Bu
Living in Interesting Times
There is an old (though far older in apocrypha than verifiable records indicate) veiled insult/curse: "May you live in interesting times". I'd say the present days qualify as interesting on a global scale. It's surreal to be going through such days with an awareness that it'll be recorded in history books (or their future equivalents) for the ages. Did Eurasian/African people in the 1350s have any concept that they were living through Black Plague? Will the likely instigat
Tropin' d20 - BFS
It's been a little while since I've done one of these posts. Let me change that.
Random Trope: BFS
Well, the obvious way to handle this would be to come up with six magic great swords, but that's setting a low bar. In a convoluted reference to Delta rolling an 18 on 3d6 in his most recent Book of War playtest video, how about making lists of six physical descriptions, six magical properties, and six current locations, and then seeing how I can mash those together into so
Workout Recap - Week of April 5, 2020
The best-laid plans.... A late shift in my schedule made me bump my monthly burpee challenge back to today (April 12). I swapped in a pass/fail workout in its place for Saturday, but I must've pushed a bit too hard with the fingertip diamond push ups as I have some lingering soreness in my thumbs. Realistically, I don't expect my ability to do burpees safely would be affected by that, but erring on the side of caution, I'll delay another day and see if my thumbs feel bette
Godspeak and the Fomorian Curse
In the comments to this post by noisms touching on the semantics of titles, user Lich Van Winkle brought up the matter of having varied languages for all manner of creatures. That is a typical practice of mine, and even when I make exceptions for creatures living on a far vaster scale of time and space than humans do, those tend to have exceptions of their own (as I commented there). In thinking on it further during a post-workout shower, I thought my particular approach to
Resources for Keeping Active at Home
I've seen plenty of jokes about people and/or their pets falling out of shape during their time at home, and while I have nothing to say about the latter as my experience with pets has always been with indoor varieties, the former is just silly. Gyms in their modern sense didn't exist for most of human history, and yet studies keep showing how issues related to inactivity have grown more common in modern times despite them.
In other words, during the time when gyms have ex
Workout Recap - Week of March 29, 2020
As I've said a few times in the past, there's something meditative about my pass/fail workouts. Maybe frustrations with certain matters as a result of the current pandemic is part of why I keep favoring them over timed workouts, but I will make up for this week's lack of a challenge workout with bookend challenges next week. Sunday Type: Pass/Fail One-arm Pull Up Negatives - 3 sets of 3, each side (pass) Fingertip Diamond Push Ups - 3 sets of 6 (pass) Bonus: none A rehash of