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tk9336 · 3 years ago

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My Curatorial Internship at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago!

I began my Curatorial Internship on 6/7/21 bright and early as I drove my first day waking up at 5AM as I live in Wauconda, IL a northwest suburb of Chicago. MSI is in the heart of downtown Chicago, so the drive is usually an hour and half accounting for traffic. That sucked big time, so I took the train for the rest of my time so far. Luckily I only have to be in the office Monday/Tuesday which is bittersweet: my train ticket is $10 a day, parking at Barrington Station is $3.50 daily but what kicks my wallet in the teeth if my Lyft bill, usually around $50 from Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago to MSI and back. Thankfully my internship is paid thanks to Studio Institute which is my sponsor, a grant MSI received and SI how I found out about the position for the summer. I thought I would be working with a team of interns since this is a big project I am a part of, but believe it or not I am the sole Curatorial intern! It felt good to know that I did well in my interview and it wasn’t just a hunch, and to have the honor of being the sole recipient! Its been a number of years since there was a curatorial intern and with this in mind I knew I was going to work hard to pay them back for their faith in me. I do not say this lightly, as I am 28 years old now and opportunities like this I have learned are not offered to just any one off the street.

The Project? MSI is digitizing roughly 1,000 artifacts to be shown online on their website (COVID was a strong motivator for this as it hit Museums all over the world. They are passionate about reaching their audience!) Collections has over 35,000 artifacts to keep track of, and all it’s history is just written or printed in a large Accession’s Archive, and there is digital archive to work with. I am going to help with what I am assigned with gaining invaluable professional research experience, with a strong focus as well in writing for labels and anything else that is thrown my way! I am also making this blog conjunction for my school, Loyola University Chicago of which helped me get this position. This will be a long post, so buckle in as I share my weeks to bring you, and me up to date for next week, 7/19/21!

Week 1: 6/7-11/2021 | This position is 4 days a week, for a total of 28 hours. Part-time. My round-trip however with commuting turns a 7 hour work day into a 12 hour day from when I wake up until I drive home from Barrington Station. Thankfully the two days I work from home is a bit easier on commuting from upstairs to downstairs!

Monday: HR/Orientation/Introduction to Collections by Alexis, the talent manager at MSI. Your standard job introduction, but my first at a Museum.

Tuesday: In-depth Museum tour/explaining the research and writing work I would be doing/assisting Kathleen (Collections Director) in the vault*(storage, vault sounds cooler) cataloging.

Wednesday: Photographing Bike exhibit for transcription/beginning research work on first Accessions project on Firefighting artifacts by find corresponding files in Accessions archive, reading the materials in each folder to find relevant material to write in description about the item to put online. I scan the documents I find relevant, so that I can do that additional research and writing at home. This will be the plan going forward (research/cataloging the vault on Monday and Tuesdays) but there are plans to have me assist on additional projects and duties within the department and MSI as a whole.

Thursday: With the information gathered from scanning documents from each accessions folder, then at home I can look over each stapled bunch of materials of each item and then add bullet points of relevant information in a word document. That can then be shared with the Director, Curator and assistant curator to help them use the most relevant materials to weave the labels needed to put online for this historic artifacts.

Week 2: 6/14/18/2021 | Fridays are not included as that’s when I attend Zoom meetings with the program directors and liaison for Studio Institute which has over 40 interns around the country in Museums across the United States. I won’t lie... I got the best assignment in my opinion! This was tailor made for me! As an older student I am FULLY aware of what a incredible privilege it is to be paid to do something you truly love down to your bones.

Monday: I start at 9:15 but my train was late to unforeseen circumstances. I emailed my supervisor I would be in a hour later than usual and she appreciated the heads up. I continued pulling folders from the accessions archive, then scanning relevant materials. I would then staple the gathered materials and kept my work in order to mirror the worksheet log I was given for the artifacts in the fire fighting exhibit.

Tuesday: Getting in at my normal time I continued, and finished the worksheet log I was given for the Fire Fighting exhibit. I now have a large amount of material to review on my days working from home to provide bulleted points of relevant material that will assist the Collections team create the labels needed when selected materials are uploaded online. I would do five files at a time to stay organized and not bite off more than I could and get "lost in the sauce" as we would say in the Army. That way, a steady rhythm was established and I could better gauge my time per batch.

Wednesday: I worked from home continuing my task of added bulleted information points on artifacts. I am assuming that the items that have a extensive amount of reference materials will be those making the cut to be uploaded online once the project gets to that point. Made up the hour lost on Monday due to my train out of Barrington, IL running late.

Thursday: Still grinding away by going through the research materials I assembled from the archives in MSI to add bulleted points of relevant information on artifacts to make the lives of the Director, Curator, and assistant easier allowing them to focus on more advanced research and other duties.

Week 3: 6/21-25/2021

Monday: Continued transcription of the Fire Fighting Exhibit. Nearly finished with it. Working from home is getting better as I am getting a better pace of work and less distractions.

Tuesday: I was able to get some opportunities for front-facing guest interaction and educations as I gave my first MSI tour. Two individuals from my organization, the 501st Legion, came down from Green Bay for a Chicago vacation. They had seen my positive posts about being at MSI and wanted to come see it for themselves. I asked Dr. Saridakis if I could learn how to give a tour on my own, to which she agreed. In my inaugural tour I took them around the great hall's exhibits, being careful to focus on items of which I had some background in to better give a small education on the artifacts. My strength is in the Hall of Transportation in which houses the Spitfire, Stuka and new Boeing 727. On the floor I pointed out the Millburn and Tesla electric cars as well. After going at what seemed a quick pace, we made our way over to the Hall of Bicycles, and weaved back to the floor. I took them to U-505 which is my strongest exhibit. Military history is my focus, and I don't ever tire of going to see U-505. In the most surprise to my guests, they were granted a behind the scenes walk-through of Collections in which Dr. Saridakis kindly donated her time to open the vault for us. She accompanied me, but gave me the reigns to get a feel for my first guided walk-through of Collections which is a duty all in the department should be familiar, and comfortable doing. I feel I did well for my first time, and gained experience in doing the same for the following day for a larger, planned tour by mHub. I took my guests out to lunch where my supervisors did a few weeks ago. It ran over time, so I'll make up the hour later at home.

Wednesday: Today was the day of the big planned of tour by Chicago tech company, mHub. My supervisor was not available in the morning so I filled out some other documents and found other work to do until she came in. This was sorting through the former archivist's boxes of files and articles looking for relevant materials that would be of use to the registrar. I had been doing this the day before as well before my guests came in at 11AM. There was a A LOT of material, but there was plenty of relevant stuff, including a complete file on the cars, and motorcycles in the MSI collection which included a recent appraisal of each item in inventory. I found the motorcycles of interest and made copies for myself to be of use on future behind the scenes tours (you pick a handful of items scattered at various checkpoints to engage with guests about. There just isn't enough time to go row by row.) mHub was scheduled for 3:30, but didn't not come until 4ish. My recent work with the fire fighting artifacts proved critically relevant as one of the guests was working on technology for fire fighters to pull up a 3D schematic on a app to see where the beams, and wiring is without them having to hack through the walls to find it. He was very much interested in the various fire fighting artifacts and thankfully I was a part of his group throughout the tour. Exhibitions engineer Jeff brought out two 1930's Ediphones, and while he was setting up I had a lengthy chat with him regarding his duties and responsibilities at MSI which proved insightful.

Thursday: I wasn't as productive today as I wanted to be in part to some distractions in my personal life. I will make this time up on Saturday. Continued work on transcription of relevant facts to the fire fighting exhibit

Saturday: I finally finished the fire fighting exhibit items and look forward to trying my hand at writing short labels based on returning to the material I have. This label writing experience will be invaluable in such a professional capacity. It will be nice to have this skills honed, refined and on a professional level. I trudged the remaining artifacts, and put more time off the clock to finish so I can begin on my favorite exhibit, U505 on Monday!

Week 4: 6/28-7/2/2021

Monday: I came in and had my weekly 10AM meeting with Voula, and moved onto U-505/WWII items. Same as with the fire exhibit, finding files in the accession archive, scanning relevant materials to take home for work at home.

Tuesday: I continued scanning, and gather materials. At 1:00 PM I took photos of all the labels in the U-505 exhibit for transcription by one of the volunteers, Mary. I then at 2:30 I worked with Director McCarthy cataloguing some more artifact ranks in storage. At 4:10PM I asked if I could get a photo handling a textile artifact for both the experience of doing so and seeing one of U-505's flags not only in person, but to carefully handle, and touch. Director McCarthy and Dr. Saridakis both kindly indulged my request and it was a truly awesome experience for me. I also learned that there is a later train than I usually take. That bit of info is helpful just in case I ever miss the 5 o'clock train out of Chicago back to my home train station of Barrington, IL!

Wednesday: As I did with the firefighting exhibit and items, I continued bulleting down relevant facts and information. I created a new word doc just as I done previously with the Fire Fighting artifacts.

Thursday: Continued transcription. I look forward to trying my hand at writing some labels and short descriptions. I still can barely believe I am being paid to work on items I already love learning about.

Saturday: Made up 1 hour from Thursday.

Week 5: 7/5-9/2021

Monday: Unpaid holiday for MSI employees. I am going to work half a day today so I only have to work 4 hours later in the week to make up for today. I am going to look over my U505/WWII artifacts and see if any really stand out as candidates for getting labels and descriptions.

Tuesday: I came in Tuesday and had my weekly meeting with Voula. Since the program is half-way over at this point the decision for now is for me to focus on the U-505/WWII artifacts and to also focus on writing a few labels for some of the Fire Fighting exhibit artifacts. I also took photos of all the labels in the U-505 and will transcribe that exhibit to it is available in a word doc to be transferred to the digital site - one day. I then worked with Kathleen in storage to continue cataloging artifacts, in three hours we nearly inputted over 200 artifacts.

Wednesday: I came in and got to work on transcription since there are no more additional accession files to pull and scan. MSI has just brought on a new assistant curator for a year to help with the digitization of the archives and storage. It is a daunting task! But one that will streamline Collections at MSI and make pulling artifacts extremely easy and hopefully foster some excitement from the public online to see items that otherwise sit in a dark, temperature controlled room. I also had the honor of getting to write a pitch to put up a "pop up" U-505 exhibit up in downtown. That was very exciting to me, along with the confidence gained because of the trust to do that. I wrote a few drafts to which the Director edited down. Very happy to be useful with a project that is extremely relevant to my interests.

Thursday: Continued transcription of the U-505 exhibit and writing a few labels that will then be edited by the Curator. Being directly involved in what the public will learn from a artifact is very cool to me. Improving on working remotely, efficiently - making a decision right away in the morning after a shower to begin work is a great guard against procrastination and working late to fairly submit the hours for the day. A regular schedule when self set and stuck to is extremely effective.

Saturday: Continued work on the U-505 items from home.

Week 6: 7/12-16/2021

Monday: I started working right away after waking up. I want to finish my transcription of the U-505 exhibit which includes every wall panel, all artifacts and everything else in between. I went past midnight and just hit a stride, "in the zone, so to speak."

Tuesday: I worked through the night while on a roll. I didn't look at the clock, I just kept going! Reminded me of the old all-nighters I used to pull. I was excited to be finally complete with this project. I took it upon myself to transcribe the entire exhibit since it only existed on the walls and printed material. With it digitized this will be a tremendous help to the department. I finished it and even double checked Flickr for any photos I may have missed taking myself. I only missed only small panel, but all quotes, stories, artifacts... everything came to a 50 page, 20,000 word document. I look forward to seeing Voula's reaction when I print it out tomorrow! I also made a copy of just the artifacts for MSI so when they want to put some online they'll know what is theirs outright. In my previous job I worked 10 hour shifts so this felt familiar, I enjoy doing four 10-hour days to hit 40 back then and enjoy 3-day weekends. This is less hours, but I am grateful none-the-less to have the time to use for other projects, books and hobbies.

Wednesday: Voula's reaction to the massive transcription was great. I also placed the document in SharePoint so that anyone in Collections can access it. I am sure it will be a great aid in the future when a quick reference is needed for U-505. Today was also the MSI Employee picnic which was great. I took a couple pictures and video. Sodexo made me a Angus half pound burger which was great. I sat by myself since I came after our intern/departmental MSI zoom meeting held by Talent so we could learn how MSI is a collaborative effort and chat with the heads of other departments which was cool. I followed and email Mike Welsh to set up a tour of what Construction and Grounds does around the Museum. Most folks went to the picnic at noon, and our meeting didn't conclude until 1:10PM. Thankfully though Voula stayed a little after and we chatted at the table I was at. MSI redid the Smart Home area and it's a very nice shaded, little park. Definitely never been there before as a guest. Very cool to be a part of the "in-crowd." I took a longer lunch to take it all in.

Thursday: Since I busted my butt Monday into Tuesday and enjoyed yesterday I only had to do two hours today. I sat in the other half of the MSI intern/departmental Zoom meeting which featured Collections/Exhibitions and HR. I had the best chat with Exhibitions and the public relations managers. I will send emails to follow up with both of them as I find their work fascinating, and might as well - only here for a short time and it be an absolute waste to not take utter advantage of it. I cleaned up some of my Word documents and doubled check for syntax errors.

Thats it! You, and me, are now all up to date! I will continue to make weekly postings until its conclusion! I will also add some photos in the following posts, this is a long post so stay tuned, it will be less dense.

#museum of science and industry #Loyola university chicago #chicago #curator #intern #firefighter #u505

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cregames645 · 4 years ago

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theonyxpath · 5 years ago

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This week we’re releasing the core rulebook for Dystopia Rising: Evolution into both stores (the traditionally printed version) and on DriveThruRPG with the PDF and physical book PoD versions.

When Mighty Matt McElroy brought up the idea of talking to the DR folks, the only thing I knew about Dystopia Rising was that a fair number of people I knew with good gaming taste enjoyed getting dressed up in Mad Max style gear and heading out to its live action events. I did see a ton of DR players at several Mid Winter Conventions leading up to sitting down with Michael and Ashley, so I had an inkling of the setting, at least.

Talking with them, and subsequently taking a deep dive into the already existing material made me impressed by what they had accomplished, and pretty sure that we could create an evocative TTRPG version. My big concern with any new game is whether we’ll be retreading ground we’re already covering, and while we had touched on post-apocalyptic milieus, we had not yet gone all in.

The chance to work with a post-apocalyptic setting, and then to adapt the Storypath System, which was just in its infancy when we decided to use it, combined for a very exciting project on both the setting and system levels. The final result, which you’ll be able to get on Wednesday, delivers both those things, and combines them, in ways we had only hoped to achieve when we first decided to make the game.

Eddy, as developer, was able to take the base Storypath System and, as we had hoped with the System, tweak it and add in elements like scavenging/building rules to better portray the setting.

Scion Companion art by Andrea Payne

So, the question has come up as to whether this post-apocalyptic opus is appropriate to offer right now. Certainly, a lot of folks are feeling like they are living in a plague movie right now, and I’d certainly understand not wanting to be reminded of that.

One of my thoughts about DR:E since first reading Eddy’s text, is how the setting demonstrates the adaptability of humanity in the face of seismic changes to civilization and society. DR:E isn’t set during the fall of society, but after humanity (in a wider definition of that term) has begun rebuilding. Which in its own way is a positive message that we can use in challenging times, like now.

Plus, there a a lot of different zombies to fight!

Along the same lines, as the rebuilding of communities is very important in the game, so are the live-action communities that have been built have been the key to DR’s success all these years. We like art imitating life imitating art, so in the interest of the tabletopDR:E‘s community we’ll be opening its Community Content site next month.

Now, as a bit of an aside, we’re not sure how many stores are actually going to be able to order this, get it, and then sell it. If they have an online store component, and you’ve been buying from them that way, please let them know that their store can get copies from Studio2 and IPR. And if you don’t have a store option right now, you too can direct order.

They Came From Beneath the Sea! art by Brian LeBlanc

How Are We Doing?

A question we share with old friends, co-workers, family far more now, and with good cause. We asked our developers, in two “town hall” group meetings last week, this very thing.

Mostly, our creators are doing okay, with varying degrees of focus from day to day (hour to hour?) on their projects. So far, two of our creators have been diagnosed with Covid 19, and so far they are doing okay. We also fielded some concerned questions as to the state of Onyx Path these days.

So far, so good. Like I’ve mentioned these last few weeks, our variety of sales channels have helped us, and we’re still rolling along with our projects even while being responsive to the challenges in the lives of our creators.

And in this taxing time, it is also tax time.

In terms of the work that we’re not just still doing but are really excited about, here’s an interview with Dixie, Neall Raemonn Price, and Monica Speca talking about Exalted Essence, a pretty innovative and important project that they continue to pull together. Lots of new details from the book in this interview: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/exalted-essence-dev-team-interview

Let The Streets Run Red art by Michael Gaydos

Finally, as a personal example of finding ways to find the fun while being shut-in, this Easter I created an Easter Bunny scenario for the Gloomhaven boardgame for my kids, and their characters chased him through maps of the city streets, dodging the Easter Eggs he was blocking their way with. Each egg they picked up corresponded to a plastic egg with prizes inside I was hiding under the game table!

It was fun, plus I got an even better appreciation for how the designers set up and balanced Gloomhaven. Which I’ll consider as we review our own games, but it’s worth noting that info came through a diversion. Sometimes that’s what we need; we need to come at things indirectly. Even moreso when under stress.

Here’s hoping we’re providing you folks with a similar break, and a similar chance to explore new ideas…not to mention our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

We’ve cancelled the Legendlore Kickstarter for the time being. While we wait for that happy day, here’s a fantastic Legendlore interview with developer Steffie de Vaan, hosted over at High Level Games! https://www.highlevelgames.ca/blog/legendlore-rpg-from-onyx-path-publishing-an-interview-with-steffie-de-vaan

We’ll get Legendlore back on KS as soon as we can, and meanwhile we are building the M20 Technocracy Reloaded Kickstarter!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday is the Onyx Pathcast‘s 100th full episode! Huge congrats to Dixie Cochran, Eddy Webb, and Matthew Dawkins! Here’s to another 100!

This week, the Terrific Trio present a brand-new episode of Scion Actual Play! So if you’ve ever wondered how Scion plays – this is your chance to hear it in all its glory!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

As we mentioned last week, Virtual Horror Con took place raising lots of money for charity! If you haven’t already, do check out their website https://www.gehennagaming.com/, and if you missed some of their actual plays of our games, please check them out here:

CofD Mortals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdPfkI0FLFk

Trinity Continuum: Æon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7masQukyjQ

Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13UtpbAFAfk

And here’s Gehenna Gaming’s Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/gehennagaming

If you’re self-isolating or locked down, you can always tune in to our games this week. A few of our usual hosts are having breaks due to the situation in the world right now, but we’ve got plenty coming over the next few days, including V5, Scion, Pugmire, Changeling: The Lost, Changeling: The Dreaming, Mage: The Awakening, Scarred Lands, and a Dark ErasWerewolf: The Forsaken chronicle!

There are also several shows not yet on the schedule that are revving up to fill in for those who need a break right now, so please check out our Twitch channel during the week and keep an eye on Onyx Path social media for announcements of new programming!

This week you should really check out the new Scion game we’ve got going on our channel. You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed!

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Trinity Continuum – Aberrant: Community Service: https://youtu.be/51-Y_Diaefg

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/uysogPwNFOM

Vampire: The Masquerade: Blood City – Chicago by Night: https://youtu.be/MKoMRxi9x0w

And still more Trinity Continuum – Aberrant: Community Service: https://youtu.be/5SXY7Q-Z80M

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Have you checked out the Botch Pit‘s gaming transcripts? Have a look on their clean, beautiful website, and check this one out for a Chronicles of Darkness game: http://thebotchpit.com/new-england-by-night-season-1-session-01-im-not-making-anyone-a-supernatural-yet-transcript/

https://ift.tt/3b89G4W

More new Occultists Anonymous for all you Mage: The Awakening fans:

Episode 96: Other Mages With the dark gift of a vampire’s patronage looming over their heads, the cabal seek out the names and identities of mages they think are appropriate sacrifices to the vampires’ bloodlust.https://youtu.be/3m0-va-JvdM

Episode 97: Short Straight The cabal gathers together their collected grimoires in one place, checking for further magical resonance and consult the ghost of a dead mage for further information.https://youtu.be/fjG2wPalY-s

Here’s the Story Told Podcast with an excellent interview with Dixie Cochran, Neall Raemonn Price, and Monica Speca on the subject of Exalted Essence: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/exalted-essence-dev-team-interview

Garblag Games have commenced a new series of Mage: The Ascension, which has got off to a rocking start right here: https://youtu.be/yN47_NjYxtA

And if you loved V5 Chicago by Night, tune in to Junie von Esch’s channel to watch her group play through some Vampire: https://www.twitch.tv/junie_von_esch

Roll the Role continue with their Scarred Lands Gauntlet of Spiragos actual play! Roll the Role is a fantastic show, so please do give them a look: https://www.twitch.tv/rolltherole

And the bizarrely named Scabby Rooster continue their actual play of Scion, right here on their Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/scabbyrooster

One of Matthew’s personal favourites, Devil’s Luck Gaming, continues their Werewolf: The Forsaken chronicle over here: https://www.twitch.tv/DevilsLuckGaming Please do give them a follow!

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

Update: the devs are working on the updates for the roller in both Android and iOS; here is the rundown from them:

1) Redo the UI for system for Android. It will look the same as the current design. My goal is to have something ready by Saturday to send out to the Facebook users, asking them if this fixes the issues. This will be a beta type thing. This will break several of the fancy dice.

2) If the above worked out and the android users give all the clear, we’ll redo the graphics system to fix the fancy dice that got broken. We’ll do another Android beta through Facebook. This might take up to two weeks, as my schedule allows.

3) If everything worked well, we’ll release to Android for real at that point.

4) Port all of the existing stuff to iOS and release on that.

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

Deluxe Exalted 3rd Edition continues its fantastic sale at IPR, soon to be joined by Game-Line Bundles! Check them out!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This week the Dystopia Rising: Evolution core book will be available in PDF and PoD versions on DriveThruRPG on Wednesday, and the physical traditionally printed books will be available in stores via Studio2 and IPR!

No one knows how long it’s been since the world was blasted with nuclear radiation and became infested with the undead. The survivors of the Fall were the first strain of deviation of the human condition and were able to make it through the rapidly spreading epidemic. Finding a community of decent size in this world is rare; finding one that has any concept of equality or morality is rarer still.

Oh, and people have the unnerving ability to come back from the dead, regrown from the very virus that destroyed the world.

Some highlights of Dystopia Rising: Evolutioninclude:

Rules for creating characters for 24 different Strains, variations on humanity that survived the Fall.

Details on the powers of faith and psionics.

Advice on running action-adventure stories, webs of personal intrigue, and procedural investigations.

Dozens of antagonists, including a variety of zombies and raiders to use in your series.

Welcome to the Evolution!

We’re also offering the Dystopia Rising: Evolution Gaming Screen on Weds!

Conventions!

Though dates are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s our current list of upcoming conventions:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

V5 The Faithful Undead (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

The Book of Endless Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Editing

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Indexing

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Scion Titanomachy – Wrapping up contracting.

Tales of Aquatic Terror – Contracted.

TC Aeon Terra Firma – Most of the art is in, maybe all of it.

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – Tweaking some art re: WW art approvals.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

WoD Ghost Hunters

Aberrant – Contacting and contracting – wrapping up half-pagers and portraits.

Pugmire Adventure

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant – Rolling along.

Legendlore – Kickstarter on hiatus.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Art and graphics ready to go.

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Contagion Chronicle

Vigil Watch

Duke Rollo Book

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart

Pirates of Pugmire

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – Inputting proofing comments.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Awaiting 2nd proof notes.

Scion Companion – Tweaking art re: proofing notes.

At Press

TC Distant Worlds

Night Horrors : Nameless and Accursed – Awaiting Errata.

Dark Eras 2 – PoD proof shipping.

VtR Spilled Blood – PoD proof shipping.

Dystopia Rising: Evolution – On Sale this Wednesday!

DR:E Screen & Booklet – On Sale this Wednesday!

DR:E Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Geist 2e Screen

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Reviewing Indexing.

Geist 2e Anthology – PoD proof ordered.

C:tL 2e Oak, Ash, & Thorn – Awaiting Errata.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Happy Birthday! to the 5th Doctor: in 1951 Peter Davison was born. He’s looking at me right now from my 2020 Doctor Who calendar, as April is the month he appears in this year. Must have been a tough assignment following Tom Baker after the 4th Doctor had been burned into people’s minds for 8 years. Yet, for many, Davison’s Doctor is Their Doctor, which is the way it should be – so kudos to him for creating another version and era of the classic character!

#Onyx Path Publishing

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cindylouwho-2 · 5 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, May 24 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles I came across since the early May report, although some may be older than that. Due to a need to get my taxes filed, and a continued busy jewellery business, I don’t expect to be able to do another update for a few weeks. You can follow me on Twitter for important breaking news, though!

Have any topics you would like to see me cover in more detail? Drop me a line here on Tumblr, or email me through my website.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Small businesses can survive the pandemic and beyond, if they learn to provide what customers are now looking for. From desks to 3-D printed face shields, to including toilet paper on your takeout menu, to moving online, acting quickly has given these businesses hope. ABC also did a piece on this topic. [text & video; mentions Etsy & masks] Here’s another article discussing adapting to pandemic ecommerce “new normal”, with interviews with staff from Etsy, TechStyle and Zulily.

Ecommerce is about to get way more competitive (it probably is already), & arguably the retailers who will succeed are the ones who already put plans in action, including advertising plans. (mentions Shopify, Google Shopping & Etsy.)

Facebook and Instagram will now have “Facebook Shops”, which are free to set up. Sounds like it will be a slow rollout, though. Many take this as direct competition for marketplace sites such as Etsy, but it will probably also have a large impact on small website builder sites such as Indiemade.

ETSY NEWS

Etsy’s first quarter for 2020 was good, but April was astonishing by any standards; I covered it all here.

Etsy Payments will soon be available to sellers in Turkey, Malaysia, & Mexico. This will likely be welcome news to sellers in Turkey in particular, who haven’t had an easy way to accept payment for Etsy orders since PayPal left Turkey a few years back. It looks like this move will be optional at the moment for those 3 countries, unlike those of us who are forced to use EP if it is available in our countries.

Etsy gave some listing credits and ad credits to shops who had substantially lower than normal sales in late March through April; the credits don’t kick in until July, though.

Etsy is beta-testing a new listing video tool. You can join here; if you want more info first, here are some details. Note that the videos must be quite short, and will not include sound.

Etsy is still getting some good traction from the face mask initiative: “I would argue they were just in the right place at the right time," says Kodali. "When you think of who is able to consolidate the power of a million sewers in the country, the only answer is Etsy." However, they are also getting some criticism for masks taking forever to arrive, if at all. The slow customer support is also annoying many of these new customers that the CEO was so happy to attract, with little to no response from Etsy.

The Wall Street Journal did a well-received article on people buying food (mostly baked goods) on Etsy [paywall]. Other sources have picked it up, although some are a bit skeptical about safety.

More trend info directly from Etsy: first, summer at-home ideas with Dayna Isom Johnson [podcast links with transcript]. It also covers what to do for socially-distanced celebrations. “[P]eople are taking what they would typically do for a birthday, but then doing it virtually. So many people love paint night parties and I've actually seen quite a few paint kits that Etsy sellers are creating. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate your birthday and still have that experience of expressing your creativity and having fun with your friends, but just through a screen.” Also, “tie-dye is blazing hot right now.”

Second, craft supply sellers get their own trend article for a change. Supply searches close to doubled in April, with “346% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for “diy”. Many buyers are making their own masks with supplies from Etsy; “2,089% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for “elastic”. Do read the whole article if you want to spin your shop in this direction, as there is a lot of good info included.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google pushed out a core algorithm update starting May 4, which finished rolling out on May 18. It seems fairly large, maybe the biggest in some time, and may have hit more areas than other recent core updates. They did take some criticism for releasing it during a pandemic. Possible targets aren’t agreed on yet by the people tracking it, but could include cryptocurrency, travel, real estate, health, tech, finance & dating. Or maybe we shouldn’t rush to pick winners & losers so quickly? News media changes may be affected by the regular algorithm reaction to people reading a lot more news these days, and some ecommerce companies had a boom that could affect their rankings. This article discusses Etsy among other companies, who might have benefitted from the update. [I’m not sure on the Etsy complaints, as I have been seeing multiple links for some searches for well over a year now.]

Link building is generally the hardest part of Google SEO, in part because you aren’t allowed to do any of the obvious things that might get you easy links. Anyone confused about the rules & the benefits should check out this guide for 2020.

While you can learn a lot from general SEO guides, if you have a Shopify site, this guide provides some specific SEO tips.

LinkedIn managed to de-index itself from Google on May 6, at least for the United States. Here’s one theory. Well-paid webmasters for major internet companies can still screw up, it turns out.

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails)

If you are one of those organized marketers who plans their campaigns ahead of time, here are 5 content marketing ideas for June.

With so many people not working as much as usual, this might be a good time to start a podcast. Gizmodo has compiled instructions on doing it cheaply.

The best time to send an email depends on the purpose of the email. For example, “General site traffic emails have always been most effective mid-week — mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Mondays and Fridays tend not to perform as well” while “A general awareness campaign can be sent almost any time to be effective.”

Refreshing your evergreen content can be more productive than producing new content. That has some really good ideas for many types of businesses produce

Facebook bought Giphy, and while it will still be available to people without Facebook-owned accounts, it will be integrated directly with Instagram.

Instagram is testing new fonts in its Stories feature.

Twitter is enabling users to see how many people quoted a tweet, but so far only on IOS. They also have a new test where you control who can reply to your tweets.

LinkedIn is rolling out both video events and polls, but maybe it is too late to get a big bump from either change?

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS)

Online advertising can be expensive; here are some stats on the cost of various search engine ad clicks as well as a bit on social media.

Google Merchant accounts now let you compare your prices to other sites and also look at trends in clicks.

Here is a good brief overview of the new free Google Shopping listings, including the 3 main reasons the author believes Google made this change. Here is another much longer overview, with screenshots for those not in the US, and info on how to set this up for your website. The PayPal integration is now available.

Online advertising clicks seem to be bouncing back from the worst of the pandemic, according to several sources, including this one. It is still far too early to tell if this will last, however.

YouTube has re-conceived its premium ad program, now called YouTube Select.

If you have ads that slow down people’s computers or drain batteries by being too “resource-heavy”, note that Chrome is going to begin blocking those in August. “Chrome will filter ads based on the following thresholds: 4MB of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage in any 30 second period, or 60 seconds of total CPU usage.”

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING

Seeing all hits to one page in Google Analytics is a lot easier if you exclude the URL query parameters (but note that sometimes they are useful, such as for various pages on Etsy.) If you like the idea of filtering your GA results in general, here is another tutorial on that.

If you want to do A/B testing on your website, here is a fairly straightforward introduction to Google Optimize, which is free to use.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS

Many online companies had a good first quarter despite the pandemic, including Shopify, which beat income estimates and saw its stock rise 5% after its first quarter report. “New stores created on the company’s online platform jumped 62% between March 13 and April 24 as many brick-and-mortar businesses migrated online.”

Shopify rolled out software that allows its users to more easily do curbside pickup orders. “...Shopify was already in the process of redesigning its POS before the coronavirus, but decided to accelerate the development of a few new features, namely fulfilling curbside pick-up orders and home delivery. Shopify said that by the end of April, 26% of its merchants with a brick-and-mortar presence were offering local delivery or buy online, pickup in-store, compared to 2% in February.”

Rolling out for the US first, Shopify is also getting into financial products, offering a new debit card which you can use to receive your sales income on the same day you earn it. Shopify Balance can be described as “a merchant account with no fees and no minimum balances.” It’s also setting up an instalment plan feature for customers.

Also new with Shopify: a Pinterest app for turning all your products into shoppable pins.

An Amazon VP quit - very publicly - over the company firing several whistleblowers and labour organizers. “Amazon declined to comment.” The company is taking heat for those issues as well as poor management of and information about how many employees have tested positive at various warehouses. Several employees are known to have died of COVID-19 so far.

Amazon has extended its order performance suspension exceptions for the pandemic to May 31. Which is a good thing, because it seems that buyers are leaving more bad feedback than ever before [soft paywall] “More than 11 percent of reviews left for sellers in the past 30 days are negative. That’s nearly twice the level of frustration vented by shoppers regarding Amazon’s third-party sellers during the holidays, when customer anxieties spike over not getting presents on time”. eBay extended some seller protection changes until July 19. [note: if you sell on these platforms outside of the US, lease check for your own country’s rules, as some of them are different.]

Amazon Handmade sellers from the US got a boost from a new local makers page and the accompanying blog post. [I was unable to find any similar promotions for other countries; seems like a missed opportunity]

Buyers in Canada and the US are trying to get class-action lawsuits certified against Amazon for their policy preventing/discouraging its vendors from offering lower prices elsewhere. This article includes the US class action complaint paperwork.

If you are wondering about Prime Day, Amazon is apparently going to try for September, but there is no official announcement yet.

eBay will be changing the fee structure for sellers using managed payments, including charging one fee on the entire transaction instead of separate commission & processing fees.

USPS, complaining of deficits and being pressured by Trump, is reportedly reviewing its package delivery contracts with large companies such as Amazon. “According to the Washington Post, over the last few weeks the USPS has been seeking bids from consulting firms to reexamine what the agency charges companies like Amazon, UPS, and FedEx. Contracts are generally reviewed on a yearly basis, and analysts have repeated warned that suddenly raising package prices that drastically would cause more bad than good, not just for the USPS or Amazon, but for small businesses and individuals too.”

Square has created an easy online checkout option that works without being connected to a website/shop. (US only)

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Google has introduced a new Trends-like tool that covers recent top product searches by the amount of growth. Yes, it is free!

Gen Z wants to see “fun and exciting advertising” during the pandemic, because they are bored. They are apparently not really fond of “things are different now” ads. Also: “A survey taken seven weeks ago indicated that younger consumers were more likely than older adults to say they wanted to see purpose-driven advertising that showed how companies were helping others.” Actually, Gen Z isn’t alone in wanting something different from commercials right now

Consumers want to see companies taking positive action and supporting their employees during the pandemic - and claim they will remember who did a good job, so they know who to support with purchases.

Not surprisingly, mobile usage is up during the day time since the pandemic was declared, and people are also staying online later during the week. Web browser usage is up, and more serious news and information is getting attention.

There will likely be many more bankruptcies as the effects of COVID-19 ripple through the economy, but some businesses don’t have enough cash flow to go bankrupt. [text & video]

Canadian retail sales were down 10% in March compared to 2019, but many things went up, including general merchandise stores (6.4%) and online retailers (40%). Note that the online numbers didn’t include sales made from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca and delivered in Canada, so ecommerce was actually higher than that. In the US, March retail sales were down 8.7%, but April looks like it turned around for many ecommerce sites.

MISCELLANEOUS

So-called “cookie walls” are not enough to comply with the EU’s privacy laws. “[I]n order for consent to be legally valid under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) there are specific standards to meet: It must be clear and informed, specific and freely given. Hence cookie walls that demand ‘consent’ as the price for getting inside the club are not only an oxymoron but run into a legal brick wall.”

Website layouts (and even other elements) are starting to look like each other more & more.

#search engine optimization #EtsyNews #content marketing #smallbiz #ecommercetips

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fourcountriesfourmonths · 6 years ago

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Weirdest. Thanksgiving. Ever.

Welcome to the last rural week installment of this blog! Sorry it’s taken me a while to get around to writing it…in the midst of the final crunch these days.

To start off last week - Monday was a national holiday and because of course we still had class, we got to experience an empty city. There may have been minimal lunch options available, but we were thankful for an empty bus ride in the morning. We had a cool opportunity that night to interview our host mom as part of our research methods class and we got to learn a lot of things about her life here in Argentina that we wouldn’t have otherwise. On Tuesday we headed off to our final rural stay in the town of San Antonio de Areco, about two hours outside of the city of Buenos Aires. Unlike our last two rural stays this one didn’t feel quite as authentically “rural Argentina”. The most rural parts of Argentina aren’t accessible by a couple hour bus ride so we settled for this town, known as the Capital of Tradition for its gaucho heritage which is their version of a cowboy. It felt sort of like a cross between a ranch town and a beach town in the midst of its off-season. We got to see some gauchos in action, running with horses and wrangling a cow, and heard a little about their history. We participated in a traditional asado (barbecue), getting to see how they cook the meat, and then getting to taste the DELICIOUS food. We met with members of the municipality who talked to us about the three pillars of their strong local government which work to try to keep members of the community within San Antonio de Areco. They do this through initiatives regarding housing, education, and job opportunities.

In general, the week was a nice break from the usual schedule…for once we had a decent amount of free time and minimal assignments to work on! The group was divided up into two hostels for the week and it was so much fun to be living with more of the group again. We had a lot of group meals, played games after dinner (if you want a super fun game look up Salad Bowl and get on playing that ASAP), went on runs, and my hostel had a tiny little pool which we utilized at the beginning of the week when it was a scorching 92 degrees out! Those first few nights in a 10 person room with that heat were something else, but it was nice to be surrounded by some of my closest friends again.

Thanksgiving also fell during this week and boy was that a day from start to finish (or what I’m going to refer to as “The Thanksgiving Shit Show”.) For reasons that I can’t disclose because they aren’t my story to share, I was up for most of the night on Thanksgiving Eve and had to deliver some unpleasant news to the larger group in the morning. Because of this discussion, my lack of sleep, everyone being a weird place from not being with their families for the holiday, along with starting the day with a “what we’re thankful for” share that made me especially sad, the day was off to a bit of a rough start. It was also the first day it had rained the entire week and by rained I mean torrentially downpoured. Half of the group had to walk in the rain to visit a clinic and my half of the group visited the local hospital, but the combination of having a not very informative tour, on top of all the other things that had already happened that day, everyone was in probably one of the lowest spots collectively we’d been at this entire semester. But wait the day is only half over! After we had lunch things were starting to look up as we headed to our case study visits. Maternal and Child Health got to meet with a woman who spoke to us about the “respectful delivery” program that Areco uses as its birthing model. Women are giving a lot of power over their deliveries and are able to choose not only who is with them while they give birth in terms of support, but in what way they want to deliver: the traditional method of lying down, squatting holding onto suspended fabric, or seated on a type of chair. This was an incredibly cool interview and was full of all the things that get me SO excited about women’s health. The woman touched on a lot of what I’d learned and read about for a research paper I wrote my freshman year of college, the business of birth in hospital settings and unnecessary interventions, and it got me JAZZED. After coming out of that meeting I was beginning to ponder if being a doula or having a job that is more directly involved in this niche of women’s health would be something I’d consider in the future. Who knows, but very cool!

As you can see the day started to turn around from there and it ended up containing one of the most fun memories I think I’ll have of this trip: our makeshift hostel Thanksgiving. When I hopped out of the shower, some of the girls in my hostel were busy decorating the place with balloons and candles and drawing those hand turkeys for everyone that you make as like an art project in elementary school. Music was playing and everything was all of a sudden incredibly festive. People from the other hostel started to arrive and then our country team showed up with loads and LOADS of chicken, salad, bread, mashed potatoes, and apple crumble that they had gotten catered especially for us to simulate the holiday. We ate and drank wine together, sitting on the floor and laughing about how the day had completely turned around. Throughout the week one of the student-run committees had decided to organize a superlative/paper plate awards ceremony for the dinner and had sent out a form called The IHP Dundies (for you Office lovers out there) so people could fill it out and vote for their fellow peers. They presented the awards after dinner and the range of tailored awards based on peoples personalities and inside jokes was absolutely HILARIOUS. I got the “most likely to be reincarnated as an otter award” because of my love for water and the way I rub my eyes apparently? Sam has been telling me throughout the entire semester that when I rub my eyes I look like a small mammal and everyone always FREAKS out when I do it so it was hilarious and fitting that I had to do a demonstration for the whole group once given that award. After that, another girl organized an activity where we all attached papers to our backs and wrote messages to each other (kind of like a year book) which just kept the love right on flowing. Even the clean up process was fun as Tess and I worked an assembly line of dishes and others cleaned up the dinning room area. It was honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time and I was so grateful to be able to be celebrating Thanksgiving in this non-traditional way with this group of 30 that I’ve gotten to know so well over the semester. For a day that started off with tears and included so many bumps in the road, it sure did turn out to be an a-okay day and for that I am thankful.

When the week was over, we traveled back to the city and got some lunch at a fun dumpling and beer restaurant, then attempting to go to a sports bar to watch the 2nd game of a rivalry fútbol series that was taking place in the city. Unfortunately, some rowdy fans threw things at one of the teams’ busses and the game got delayed and rescheduled which was a bit of a bummer because we wanted to take part in that part of the culture here before leaving, but what can you do. That night we did the full on Argentine going out experience which started with me leaving my house at about midnight to start meeting friends and ended at about quarter to 6 in the morning with the sunrise before heading home to sleep. Glad I can check that experience off my list - not a sustainable lifestyle at all! Finally on Sunday, after approximately four hours of sleep (from 6:30am-10:30am) my roommate and I ventured to the San Telmo market to explore for a bit, and then later, joined by my pal Carlie, we head to La Boca to see a colorful street called Caminito that was reminiscent of the original immigrant housing that once stood there. There we ate empanadas, looked at art, and talked about the semester thus far.

It’s really crazy to me that in a few days I will be starting the final week of this program and I’ll be back home with all you people and the cold, cold weather once again. I’m really looking forward to being back, but know that the transition is going to be hard, especially because some of my closest friends will now be dispersed all over the U.S. and across the globe.

I’ll post the blog from this week in a few days, thanks again for reading. Love you!

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a2hostingblackfridaysale-blog · 6 years ago

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memorylang · 5 years ago

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Closure | #31 | March 2020

For the few days we shared back together at Mongolia’s capital, my cohort and the one above us got about as much closure as we could.

In my original conception of these blog stories, #31 might’ve been our heroic return to Mongolia featuring its 31st cohort. Unfortunately, as of writing, it’s too early to know when that might be. So, the evacuation journeys continue nonetheless.

In these stories I take you through the end to my days in Mongolia. Tuesday, March 3 kicked off with sessions at the Peace Corps office to get my evacuation group up to speed. Meanwhile, we awaited the arrivals of our friends from more Volunteer evacuation groups. We hoped they’d arrive before the March 5 early-morning flight 49 of us (over half Peace Corps Mongolia’s Volunteers) would board.

These events happened while our senior cohort hurriedly worked through their Close of Service conference.

First Morning: The Situation

Tuesday morning, I loved hearing from our American staff our country director and her director of programming and training crack so many jokes. It felt weirdly uncharacteristic of them, compared to their full formalities when we first met them last June. But our 'unprecedented’ times warranted this. Honestly, their lighter gravity made circumstances more bearable.

My cohort friend Monday night had advised I bring my spare candy, since she said her group definitely appreciated it. So I brought mine. Our training director, the kind woman I passed on the stairwell the afternoon before, gave her warm smile.

Now, on to business. This morning, my cohort’s second evacuation group gathered in the kitchen. To emphasize the severity of Mongolia’s national crackdown to prevent COVID-19, our staff couldn’t even rent a larger venue. Public groups couldn’t surpass three to five people. So, we tad over a dozen crammed into Peace Corps office’s kitchen/break room for our sessions.

Staff definitely expected my cohort could return. Hence, we would go on administrative hold, a status in which we remained Peace Corps Volunteers while stateside. They confirmed nationally canceled flights led to our leaving. The U.S. Embassy would update monthly whether Mongolia became safe to reenter, and our staff would inform us accordingly.

Our country director imparted her guess (verbally bolded and underlined), our administrative hold could be how long.

Her guess quelled my concerns somewhat, since I could fix a figure to my limbo. But she made very clear, no one could predict the future. Like our director of programming and training (DPT) said, situations change rapidly. So, our director of management and operations, also American, gave us a résumé workshop to our non-competitive eligibility, if we come to that.

By the way, to our amazement, our DPT and our hardcore Peace Corps medical officers had all been through multiple Peace Corps evacuations. They also returned later to complete duties. That comforted me. (Even the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer I met in the States after Christmas experienced evacuation!)

Meanwhile, our sweet programming and training assistant was kind as ever. She beamed at my usual enthusiasm for Mongolia’s awesome snacks we had during tea breaks. I’d really miss our staff.

Warm Reunions

Later that afternoon, I heard loud applause down the hall.

I’d just signed my reimbursement form and checked out a Mongolian language textbook from our language and cross-culture coordinator. So I walked down and stepped into a meeting room beside one of my regional managers.

Our senior cohort was celebrating their certificate ceremony.

I felt so happy, seeing so many together. I hadn’t even met some before. Other senior evacuation groups hadn’t arrived yet, but those here were many. Many felt glad to see me, too. I felt relieved it felt mutual.

My manager and staff smiled, saying I’d get this ceremony next year.

Catching Up

Afterward, my evacuation group 2 amassed to head a bit downtown.

We needed to wait in a terribly long line for notary services. I enjoyed chatting with my friends, though. I liked learning about the places and experiences my friends saw across Mongolia. I heard about Chinese dramas worth seeing, too.

Afterward, I got dinner with friends, including both the Catholic friend I roomed with Sunday night and the senior cohort Volunteer who studied Byzantines. I felt amazed we hadn’t talked about the Byzantines before, considering I love their history.

Coincidentally, our trio ate at a little restaurant my host brother took me to visit the weekend after I swore-in as a Peace Corps Volunteer in August. The small place reminded me of my research trip to 臺灣 Táiwān, where I sometimes ate in modern little Japanese-like places.

We chatted on all sorts of topics. The Byzantine studies Volunteer and a friend in his cohort had come to visit my city some time ago, working on their dorm mentorship summer camp I met on behalf of, near Tsagaan Sar. Our Byzantine studies friend considered doing a third year with Peace Corps Mongolia, depending on its situation.

On our way back to the hotels, I joyfully ran into even more familiar faces. I swung by a store with them before meeting up again with the senior Volunteers, in their hotel. I loved those deep conversations with the guys—fun mentors. But still, they had Close of Service papers to finish.

Final Full Day in Mongolia

My last full Mongolian day, Wednesday, March 4, was indeed a full one.

That day, I’d basically empty my bank account, purchase actual ankle bones, enjoy my last supper of Mongolian food and stay up through the night with senior Volunteers.

This day began like the one before—me, lingering at breakfast to see who I may.

Then my Monday friend joined me. Masks on, we embarked on our banking quest to empty accounts. Easy enough. Then we walked back to the Peace Corps office. With staff and our our cohort’s evacuation groups 1 and 2, we had our final briefing, group farewell, and photo.

Midday, I left to lunch with a squad including my kind sitemate. (She’s the one who called me when I climbed my apartment building’s staircase the Wednesday before.) Our group enjoyed a shortcut, thanks to a Peace Corps medical officer who knew the way—so nice.

With my sitemate were our fellow cohort friends she spent her weeks stranded in the other province with. Also, a local friend of ours joined us. She came all the way to the capital to say goodbye—Awww! This was my same English teacher friend who saw me off, Saturday evening. She even brought a friend from an Australian volunteer group. I chatted with him. Turns out his office was right below our Peace Corps Mongolia one! I enjoyed some spicy Central Asian dish as my meal.

After lunch, some of us went shopping. My English teacher friend was so great, helping us hail taxis and navigate. She happily saw I still wore her copper bracelet gift. At last, I got to see Mary’s and Martha’s. I bought some actual /shagai/ ankle bones, not just the consumer plastic ones. Neat!

Close of Service Feels

I left early and hustled back to our Peace Corps office. I wished to see the senior cohort after their Close of Service ceremony. My cohort couldn’t attend, due to such limited space. But, staff didn’t mind me coming after.

I shed a few tears on my walk. I felt awed, people I barely knew mattered to me so much. One from their cohort was already leaving by the time I reached the Peace Corps office building’s gate—just in time, I thought.

Wish granted. When I got upstairs, people were beginning to filter out. I loved their gorgeous outfits and getting to hug them. Most Volunteers in the senior cohort were only a year or few older than me, but their life experiences and perspectives molded among the best parts of my service. I would really, really miss them.

My Resource PCV I saw Monday directed me to find my other Resource PCV, too! I felt so happy. The two of them trained me and my cluster in Номгон /Nomgon/ last June through August. They were fantastic.

In the moments that followed, I mingled with senior cohort friends, more than I could count, filtering through the lounge. I met some for the first time. Even that senior TEFL friend I got dinner with Monday passed by. She shared with her cohort friends what a coincidence she received a silver дээл /dehl/ just like the one my host family gave me! I was wearing mine this last day, commemorating my Mongolian life’s end. So nice~

Gratitude

After COS’d Volunteers left, I returned to my hotel to relax. I ran into even more friends from my cohort, who just arrived from central Mongolia. I just loved these people.

Anyway, back in my room, I reflected. I considered how I’d insist it felt crazy to receive so many parting gifts.

I enjoyed such things as the cashmere jacket in Mongolia's signature blue, the copper bracelet from the Copper City I served, a miniature wooden replica of Mongolia's national морин хуур /morin huur/ instrument, a trilingual storybook about Chinggis Khaan, a shiny magnet of the Mongolian countryside, replacement wallets and a key chain of Mongolian styling, an artistic bookmark, Mongolian ankle bone pouch, travel gear adorned with horse images, and snacks, unhealthy and healthy.

Well, while still making sense of all that, I considered Chapman's five love languages idea. In that view, I prefer quality time (like long talks and walks) and physical touch (hugs). I usually give words of affirmation (cards, letters) and do acts of service (loving volunteerism).

So, I supposed, maybe these are why gifts feel odd…

But, I remember in situations like evacuations, quality time becomes harder and physical touch, impossible. Affirming words might appear in cards, but service acts, too, are challenging. So, gifts are a last, lasting way to show love.

Peace Corps Mongolia gave us two more blank thank you cards, in case we’d last words. Having penned my other three before I left for the capital, I dedicated my final two to the philosophic medical community who taught me about Mongolia’s traditions and to my Peace Corps staff.

Hello, Last Goodbyes

I came by the Peace Corps office one last time that evening before dinner. These hopefully temporary goodbyes felt weird, unsure we’d see each other again. My regional manager who accepted my staff card said goodbye with a big hug. Later, when another of my regional managers was leaving, she thanked me for my card, having read it, too. She looked forward to my cohort’s return and would be in touch.

That night, I joined a group of senior Volunteers seeking Mongolian food for their last Mongolia meal. Fortunately, the senior Health Volunteer with great taste in music (from my evacuation van ride) was leaving the Peace Corps office when I visited, and he offered I walk with him. Unfortunately, our group miscommunicated which restaurant to meet at, so we all wound up in two. Fortunately, our smaller groups were fine for Coronavirus standards.

I enjoyed Mongolian classics like цуйван /tsuivan/ and хуушуур /huushuur/ (like those at Naadam). They couldn’t beat countryside home cooking, but they tasted nice. The restaurant was Modern Nomads. I met our colleague Davaakhuu’s Australian Volunteer friend Zach, too!

Late that night while coming back to our hotels, I ran into another group of my cohort friends, who just arrived from the west. I felt ecstatic. I saw them at last. I met for the first time senior Volunteers who served in the west and advised me, despite us never having met in person. That’s often how Peace Corps Mongolia life goes...

I felt grateful that through our evacuation, we met.

The Ending Night

Paralleling my Wednesday before, during which I stayed up through the night, I did so once again. And while this time I needn’t stress over packing, I felt instead not wanting to sleep when I could still see friends for final hours. And they were staying up, too.

I continued on to my cohort’s hotel, where I saw even more cohort friends who made it from the west. Amusingly that included my cohort’s D&D party members, completing our fellowship.

After getting my fill with my cohort, I returned across the street to spend the rest of my night with the senior cohort. Although many in my cohort mightn’t return soon to Mongolia, our senior cohort officially closed their service. My fleeting hours left with them felt cherished.

We gathered in a familiar room, seemingly identical to the one where I stayed during my weekend after swearing in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Peculiar. I’d watched a kitten there. Thus, I recalled my first weekend a Peace Corps Volunteer alongside this last.

I loved seeing many from the senior cohort cycle through with mine. Health Volunteers signed yearbook-like sheets for each other. I found it sweet.

Many from the senior cohort insisted, too, I’d be great to have on as a Resource Volunteer for future Peace Corps Mongolia Trainees. That warmed my heart. I felt glad they felt glad I could help the future cohort, that fateful day I’m back to serve.

We took farewell photos, those of us who wouldn’t see each other soon. I said bye to them, who felt like my teachers, mentors and siblings. The rest would be with me within hours, at the airport.

Time to Go

I swung by my hotel room around 3 a.m. to shower and tidy my last things, with an ample time before departure. I figured if I stayed up long enough, I’d feel tired on my flights, too.

I considered having to repack from receiving 'too many' Mongolians’ gifts not a bad problem…

No matter how much food I tried to give away, by the time I left my city, I still had so much people sent me with. So I’d liberally given out food from my colossal bag. Admittedly, some came in handy on the road Sunday and Monday, since we didn’t stop to eat. But even in the capital from Monday to Wednesday, I avoided buying much, to keep trying at my immense haul.

Thursday morning, I’d little enough I could relegate the rest to my small IKEA backpack personal item to fly with. In a sobering thought, I realized, I’d with me all the food from my apartment that I hadn’t either donated or left. Supplies that once could have lasted me weeks, I reduced in days.

Beyond my room, I heard rumblings about my building of others leaving. Our 5 a.m. or so time came.

Down and Out

That Thursday, March 5 morning—what a blur.

In our hotel, with bellhops’ help, we hauled down our luggage to the lobby and checked out of rooms. We received sack lunches in exchange.

Then my group crossed the street and crowded in the other little hotel’s lobby for temperature checks. 49 of us gathered this morning. After checks, we heaved our luggage below or aboard the charter bus and clambered on.

Peace Corps staff present took roll and wished sincere goodbyes. They really didn’t want to see us leave. They’d be in touch.

Our bus pulled away. I looked out my right window. I saw waving a clump of our cohort friends who arrived from the west and either woke up early or stayed up late to see us off. I felt glad they came all this way for us. They’d be off in a couple days.

Up next, I share calmer stories flowing through me, reflecting in transit back on experiences leading to the airport and its stressors. For, at last, we’d be up in the air. We began this journey to the west.

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me~

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dhofberg · 7 years ago

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Where does the money go? 11/26/2027

If you have been following the blog, you have already heard some of the stories of the refugees we meet in the clinic. And a bit about the meetings I have been to for Interagency Communication. So by now you probably get it that the flow of money from the EU to the Greek government for the shelter and protection of refugees ( I have heard the number 400 million Euros), is not a stream that is easy for volunteers or refugees or most NGOs to follow.

There are Greek agencies that are set up to help refugees get registered, have health assessments, set dates for asylum interviews. But they ate woefully understaffed. The office in Lesvos that awards asylum seekers an AMKA ( like a social security number), is open a few hours of the day and can process about ten applications a day. There are between 70-150 new arrivals on Lesvos a day, so we are not even counting arrivals to other places in Greece. The medical clinic run by ERCI in Moria can see about 40 patients a day, and if you don’t yet have registration papers, you might have to wait weeks to be seen in a clinic, unless you are deemed an emergency case. Pretty much everyone who has just been through the traumas of fleeing a war torn country, paying smugglers to put them on a perilous journey across the sea, feel that they have some urgent needs. And most of them have some unrealistic expectations about what life will be like when they reach Europe.

Yesterday we finally went back to Moria camp where we had worked in January 2016. You might remember that that was immediately before the transition camp became a detention center because of the Shengen rules applied to asylum seekers when the borders in Europe were closed. We had been told we would never get in there, they no longer allow small NGOs to walk in, so I devised a plan to get in. Because I have been communicating with a dental relief program from U.K. and also a Palestinian dentist at One Happy Family to develop a small dental education program for the children at OHF, I thought she might be able to get me in to the camp the week that her team was coming to Moria to provide emergency dental care there (toothache=extraction).

It turns out the way we got in, was by walking straight in he gate, right in front of three or four Greek policeman, without hesitation, so basically got in on chutzpah. They didn’t stop Michael either who was walking right behind me, so I suppose we looked like we knew what we were doing?

One doesn’t take photographs in the camp as it can endanger refugees, and also probably the reputation of the Greek police and government. It was shocking to see that this place we felt was grim in 2016, was now holding more than three times the number of people ( between 6-7,000), built up with more ISO boxes ( container housing would be a stretch, especially compared with the ones pictured last year in Bremen), small family tents lining every pathway. Some of the areas were orderly and relatively picked up. But many were on a muddy gravely hillside, hopelessly studded with the refuse of living. The cyclone fencing is where clothes drying happens, of that I did take a few pictures.

We made our way through people living their lives in tents, some smiling kids, women carrying basins of water from the bathrooms to wash clothes. We have heard that the water only runs for certain hours, and the shower is usually cold. I can’t think why this is, there is a lot of water on this island. After a quick walk around the camp, we made our way up to the “fourth level”, where the medical clinic has an office. We were able to speak with one of the volunteers there who explained their triage and appointment process. Communication between the health care agencies is really important. We need to know, in Doc Mobiles clinic for instance, if we can refer a patient to a specialist or not. If Doc Mobile is here long enough, and makes the right connections, they might be recognized enough for KEELPNO to accept their referrals. They do accept some from ERCI, so at present, we might refer someone back to the ERCI Moria clinic to be seen and then referred to KEELPNO, who might then be able to do the needed referral. Can you imagine in an American or British health care system, you go to a doctor and they say, yeah you have terrible psoriasis, I’llrefer you to another clinic, where you might have to wait two months to get in, and then they see you and say, yeah, true you have REALLY bad psoriasis, and we will refer you to KEELPNO and they might give you an appointment with the specialist in a few more months.

I use this example, because the fellow I saw with really bad psoriasis, had arrived here a few weeks ago. But he had no medication, and though he had been seen at Moria, they gave home some ineffective low potency steroid creams, which did nothing, and he was near to be kicked out of his tent because his tent mates ( none of them his family or friends, men traveling alone are often forced to share a four person tent with men they don’t know), thought he was contagious.

Doc Mobile has limited funds, but we are seeing 40-50 patients a day and there are times when we can make something work out for a patient like this man. We bought him some of the medication he needs, and on Monday when the pharmacy opens I am hoping to find him the rest. We are trying to find contacts in Kara Tepe ( the camp for more vulnerable persons), and see if there is any way to facilitate his transfer. He needs to be able to bathe his skin regularly to keep it from becoming dangerously infected. I don’t know if we will be successful in getting him relocated, but I know he will get some help from us, and the day after I first saw him he came back to One Happy Family community center and gave me the warmest smile and thanks. There is a gesture that these people use to thank you, the hand over the heart, that is unmistakable in its meaning. And that afternoon I saw him hanging around the construction of the new greenhouse at the center, and by the end of the day he was helping the crew.

One Happy Family Community Center is run and built by and for refugees with the help of Swisscross, Israid, The Hope Project and others. Yesterday they allowed some journalists in on a Saturday afternoon to do some filming and interviewing. There was a photographer from Hamburg, Where Doc Mobile hopes to do some fundraising. I met for the first time in person, Kai Wittstock, the man who conceived and is the main director of Doc Mobile. A gentle, middle aged German guy, with no medical background ( the story of how he started docmobile included in an earlier entry),he successfully persuaded me to stay and see patients on a Saturday when I had planned to stay home to avoid the film crew. The journalist-videographer also put me at my ease when she assured me no patients would be filmed unless they agreed to be and had this explained to them through a translator. I was also interviewed by a journalist from Chicago, I have no idea what paper he works for. He said he’d send me an email letting me know what he wrote, but so far I haven’t heard from him. It will be great if this results in money for Doc Mobile, One Happy Family, Israid.

For my friends and community who have donated money for refugees, this is where it has gone so far. Doc Mobile for medicines I bought in US at Costco and brought with me . Wish I had brought more Prenatal vitamins, melatonin, throat lozenges, things that make people feel cared for when they don’t really need prescriptions. Humans For Humanity for their work bridging the gaps in feeding and clothing new arrivals before they are registered asylum seekers and for being a happy pleasant place for refugees to come and help. To the independent carpenter gang of three who built the Hope Project’s medical clinic at OHF , self funded and now on their way to Serbia to do more ad hoc construction. As more money has come in from home, by Bob’s report, I will also make some donations to OHF especially it applies to the school and dental education, and perhaps to Bashira for contraceptive information. I am honored that I was trusted with these funds, and I feel certain it will all be put to the best use for the benefit of the refugees. ( Okay, the carpenters might use it to fill their truck with petrol to get to Serbia, and maybe a few beers, but that money came out of my wallet anyway).

So that’s where your money goes, wish I could be more clear about where the 400 million Euros goes. Hope you are enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend and giving thanks for the roof over your head, a warm bed, a hot shower, and your loved ones close by.

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mnranger5 · 5 years ago

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Time for a Change (19 weeks), 10/6/19 - 2/16/20

Its now December 16, 2019, and I am writing this blog about a third of the way into a physical activity and weight loss program that Dyan and I kicked off in October – for good reason.

It was September 30th, a beautiful afternoon, in Whitefield, NH. Dyan and I were on the final leg of our roadtrip through the Northeast. We had just rented mountain bikes and embarked on a mountain trail ride that was a bit too aggressive for our abilities.

As we dissected the mountain course, it became abundantly obvious that we (mostly me) were horribly out of shape. We couldn’t ride down a hill without huffing and puffing. Multiple times we had to get off our bikes to walk them. The aches and pains the activity left on my body were more fitting for a 90 year old. Something needed to change.

The following Monday morning, October 6th, we were home from our trip, and getting ready for work. I stepped out of the shower and took a few moments glancing over the curvaceous sponge I’d become. I stepped on the scale. 244.5 pounds. I didn’t believe it, so I hopped off the scale to “zero” it out for good measure. I was expecting 230ish as if that weight was somehow much more acceptable. I jumped back on the scale. 244.5 flashed at me again. Good Gravy! Literally, I looked like I had gravy in my veins! I don’t check my weight often, but this was the first time I had ever been over 240 pounds in my life. What a porker! If I was a bass, I’d be the fish that all the anglers wanted to catch! I was disappointed, ashamed and generally felt like I had let myself go. I mean, I had been eating junk food non-stop, and played more PS4 than I cared to admit. Based on that kind of lifestyle, this weight should have come as no surprise to me, but oddly enough, it did. I was 5.5 pounds away from being TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY POUNDS! My BMI of 35 was firmly situated in the middle of the obese category - no danger of slipping down into the “overweight” category. In fact, I needed to lose 74.5 pounds to get into the “healthy” category. Something needed to change.

As luck would have it, Dyan must have been having the same thoughts (although, she is a skinny mini with nothing to worry about). After getting ready for the day, I headed downstairs where Dyan was busy answering emails and drinking coffee. With good morning pleasantries out of the way, Dyan indicated she wanted to start working out. Tonight, she planned to go on a run after work. I told her I was 100% on board and wanted to run with her. This was the beginning of a very active routine we’d get ourselves into.

Week 1: The Pounds Start Coming OFF

That evening, we ran around Cobblestone Lake one time, which was a 1.4 mile run. Surprisingly, we both made it around the entire lake without needing to stop for a rest.

The following day, we were both so sore. Our legs hadn’t had activity like that for years. But we went for another run. Once again, the plan was to go 1.4 miles. I didn’t make it. A little over half-way around the lake, I thought I was going to die! I was out of breath and my legs were on fire. The way I was feeling was all the feedback I needed to justify quitting this routine.

But to make matters worse, Dyan and I also began eating a more healthy diet and in a more structured schedule. I eliminated sugary pastries and carb loaded breakfasts. Lunch was almost always a turkey or ham sandwich, and dinners were generally just a MUCH smaller portion (than I typically would eat) of our normal dinners. Snacking was out of the question, as was second dinners around 9PM. I craved like a pregnant woman, and my stomach growled nearly all day. I easily cut 1,000 to 1,500 calories out of my usual day. It was so hard during the first week. The pantry was loaded with snacks for school lunches, like Rice Krispies Bars, Cheese-It’s, Chips A’hoy Cookies, Pringles, and tons of other goodies. Not sure how, but I remained disciplined. In the first week, I lost eight pounds. Ending Weight: 236.5.

Week 2: I Lost 10 Pounds!

We started pushing our limits on running. We were going around the lake between 2-3 times per session. In five outings, we ran a total of 16.47 miles, with 4.11 miles being our longest run. Dyan is a much faster runner than I am, so I generally have to try and pace us if we are going to run my speed. Comfortably, I can run an 11:30-12:30 minute mile. More of a jog, but at least we are finally being active. In the second week, I lost three pounds, and 11 pounds total. Ending Weight: 233.5

Week 3: This Isn’t So Bad, a New Goal has been Set

This was the week I finally started to enjoy my runs. No longer were we just going around Cobblestone Lake, but we were branching out into adjacent neighborhoods which had meandering trail systems. The runs were less frequent, but a bit longer than the previous week. We had three runs going for 6.02, 3.79 and 4.36 miles respectively. I felt so good during the six mile run that I made the decision that I was going to run one of the big Minnesota marathons in 2020. In the third week, I lost 2.9 pounds, and 13.9 total. Ending Weight: 230.6.

Week 4: A Setback that was Worth It

This was a tough week. Due to the excessive running we’d been doing, Dyan had some pretty serious knee pain which relegated her to the elliptical machine at our office gym. I was able to run four times this week at 3.21, 7.11, 4.81 and 2.61 respectively. The seven mile run was a beast that took an hour and 22 minutes to complete. But that wasn’t even the toughest hurdle of the week. I had been doing so well on my diet, but that was about to change. Jeremy, Scott, Dave and I all took a trip to Kansas City for the Chiefs vs. Vikings game. It’s hard to imagine a boys trip that doesn’t involve unhealthy food. It’s not like we were going to tailgate with a nice cobb salad. Nope, we went all out on this trip. Beer, BBQ, Brats, Baked Beans, Queso, Burgers and bacon wrapped little smokies. It was a diet buster, but absolutely worth it! From sunrise, to a Chiefs victory, we had an amazing time.

In the fourth week, I surprisingly still lost 1.6 pounds, and 15.5 total. Ending Weight: 229.

Week 5: Going Harder

We started bringing the kids to the gym with us. They LOVE working out with Mom and Dad!

I was back at the grind pushing myself harder on my workouts. I ran five times for 5.21, 4.5, 4.05, 4.03 and 5 miles each. It was a total of almost 23 miles, and I had pulled my average mile/min down to the low 11’s, which is really good for me. I was running faster, and feeling good. With 12 Bars of Christmas t-shirt events and Thanksgiving coming up, this was the calm before the storm. During the 5th week, I lost 2.1 pounds, and 17.6 total. Ending Weight: 226.9.

Week 6: A New Routine

This was the week of the first 12BoC Happy Hours. With a busy schedule in the evenings, and it getting downright cold outside, I was relegated to running on my lunch hour on the treadmill at our BCBS gym. I thought I was going to hate working out at lunch which would require showering in the locker room, but it actually isn’t so bad. I was able to run six times this week for a total of 24.14 miles. But given the menu options at the bars/restaurants at the 12BoC events, my diet suffered a bit. During the 6th week, I lost .8 pounds, and 18.4 total. Ending Weight: 226.1.

Week 7: I Lost 20 Pounds!

More 12BoC events this week, that normally would have packed the pounds on in previous years. But this year, I had a secret weapon. I was burning those extra calories off with lunch time runs on the treadmill. Five runs totaling more than 21 miles. And I was trying to eat kind of healthy while at the bars. Buffalo chicken or BBQ chicken salads were my favorite. Not completely healthy, but better than burgers and wings! During week 7, I lost 2.5 pounds, and 20.9 total. TWENTY POUNDS LOST!!! Ending Weight: 223.6.

Week 8: Jogging turned into actual Running turned into Hip Problems

This may have been the toughest week of the entire program. More 12BoC happy hours, Thanksgiving and an injury. Running continued all week, and probably a bit too aggressively. I ran 6 times for 28.4 miles. My pace has quickened as I was pushing 9:30-10:00 miles. I was crushing it, or so I thought. But silently, the running was crushing my hip joint. Toward the end of the week, I had a very sore hip and lower back which I wish I would have identified sooner (more on that later). Since we didn’t have all the kids until later in the evening on Thanksgiving, we delayed a giant Thanksgiving dinner until Friday afternoon and it was glorious! Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, cranberries, flakey biscuits, apple pie and homemade whipped cream. We had leftovers for days. A couple of my co-workers recommended boiling the turkey carcass for several hours and making turkey noodle soup the following day. We tried it. And I will never leave another turkey carcass go to waste. The soup was phenomenal! In the 8th week, I lost .6 pounds and a total of 21.5 pounds. Ending Weight: 223.

Week 9: Healing and 12BoC

It took several days to wrap up all the leftovers, so we were still not eating the healthiest. But, snacking was still prohibited and we were doing really well keeping to our meal schedule. I ran 9 total miles the first two days of the week, fighting through the horrendous hip pain I was feeling. Had I been listening to my body the previous week, I would have rested. I knew this program would be a grueling fight, but never really knew what to expect. I had some pain over the weeks, but nothing like this. I’m no doctor, but I’ve self-diagnosed myself with hip bursitis. Basically, hip bursitis is common in runners that “over-do” it. I think that’s what I’ve done. Recovery time is several weeks. That shut my running down the rest of the week.

This week was also 12 Bars of Christmas!

Josh and Melanie came for the extravaganza, and we had a ball prancing around 1st Avenue on Friday night. This was the first year of planning without Kyle, who retired because he wanted to spend more time with his family. Totally respectable, but we sure missed his expertise when it came to relationships with the bars. From here on out, it’s just Jeremy and I doing the planning! This year we went over $130,000 that we’ve been able to donate to Children’s Hospital and Clinics of Minnesota!

Before Josh and Melanie headed home, we had a game night with all the kids, which was an absolute riot!

Despite the two slices of pizza sitting on my plate, week 9 saw me lose 3.5 pounds and a total of 25 pounds. Ending Weight: 219.5.

The past 9 weeks have consisted of a fairly strict diet, 150 miles of running and have a resulted in 25 pounds of weight loss. My size 38 waist pants fall off my hips and my favorite belt needs a new hole drilled in the leather. I am finally wearing my size 36 pants from 5+ years ago and am getting close on the size 34 jeans! We’re off to a great start, but this is just the beginning of the journey. This doesn’t end until I cross the finish line of the Twin Cities Marathon and reach a healthy BMI. Something has finally changed!

Week 10: Healing Continued and Dyan’s Magic Beans

This was my second consecutive week of not working out. My hip was so sore I could hardly walk. A trip to the orthopedic specialist was in my near future. But Dyan suggested I try something simple, like Tylenol. In my head I’m like, “There is no way Tylenol is gonna help this issue!” But, I took a couple of extra strength Tylenol on Monday evening after work. By bed time, I was walking just fine, and couldn’t feel any pain. I am sure it’s just masking the pain. We’ll see how I feel in the morning. Much to my surprise, I got out of better with my hip feeling 100%. What the heck? Two 500mg Tylenols took away every bit of the discomfort I was having. Dyan was right in a really big way! Had it not been for her, I would have suffered through the pain another day or so and then had a hefty doctor bill.

Even though the pain was gone, I continued resting for the remainder of the week. Overall, I took off 12 days from running. This meant I really needed to watch my calorie intake if I was planning to continue losing weight. Watching what I eat while I am at work is easy. I generally get busy with my day and don’t have crazy hunger cravings. I generally skip breakfast, have a salad for an early lunch, and then hold out until dinner. Later in the evening is my biggest struggle (7-11PM). After I eat dinner, I crave more food. Like crave hard. I’ve broke a few times and had a small snack here and there, but I generally hold strong and try to go to bed before I give into those cravings! During week 10, I lost 2.2 pounds, and 27.2 total. Ending Weight: 217.3.

Week 11: Flirty Thirty

This week marks a milestone in my weight loss. On Tuesday morning, the scale surprised me with a 214.3 pound reading. This reading means I surpassed the 30 pound weight loss mark, and was easily the lightest I have weighed in 5-6 years. I was ecstatic. For good measure, I strutted into the closet and grabbed my only pair of size 34 jeans (purchased in 2011) that I still own. I pulled them on, and they fit! A bit snug in the waist, but I was dead set on making them work! I am so excited, and proud of how much weight I’ve lost in the past two and a half months.

As big of an accomplishment as this was, it was only the 2nd day of the week. A week which marked the beginning of Christmas vacation for Dyan and I, and the kids. The kitchen was constantly full of treats like peppermint brownies, caramel corn, puppy chow, sugar cookies and candy. I knew that the next two weeks would be brutal for my weight, because I planned to enjoy the holidays with the family. So, the remainder of the week, I indulged in all the tasty treats and put a little bit of weight back on, relinquishing my “30 lb” badge. Hopefully, I’d earn that badge again soon. After the new year, there’d be no flirting with 30. I’ll be playing for keeps!

With Thanksgiving, 12BoC and the hip injury in my rearview mirror, I was ready to get back on the treadmill and burn up some mileage. After talking things over with my boss, who is a BIG runner, he suggested I not run more than 3 days in a row. He suggested a cross training routine that was designed at strengthening my core muscles so that I could better avoid injuries to joints and muscles. I should also point out, he is not the first person to tell me this. Dyan has been preaching this for the past month. When the new year begins, I am planning to take up their advice. I did end up running five times for 15.4 total miles. I lost .9 lbs. in week 11, with a total weight loss amount of 28.1.

Week 12: First time in a long time my weight went backwards

Christmas week was absolutely wonderful. Dyan and I spent almost the entire week home with the kids. While the warm, rainy weather didn’t cooperate for skiing, we were able to do lots of other things like see Jumanji 2 at the theater, drop off 12BoC donations to the Children’s Hospital, and go to the zoo. The ONLY downside to being home all week is that I was exposed to all the delicious goodies circulating through the kitchen. And there was no way I wasn’t going to live in those moments! Week 12 ended up being the first week since the beginning of October I actually gained weight. I added .8 lbs in week 12 for a total weight loss of 27.3 lbs. Going into week 13, I am about 4 pounds over my lowest weight last week. The days of attaining and relinquishing the 30 pound badge seem so long ago.

Now that the holidays, and vacation time are just about behind us, my weight should start to go down again. And it better because I have some money riding on it! I’ve entered a weight loss challenge for weeks 16 - 24 (Jan 20 – Mar 19) with dozens of other people at BCBS. During that 8 week period, I have a goal of losing 7 pounds. If I am not successful, I lose my $50 entry fee. If I am successful, I get my $50 entry fee back plus a share of all the other entry fees of those that did not meet their goal.

Week 13: THIRTY; We meet again

The final week of the Christmas/New Years Break had some up’s and down’s for my weight loss. My diet did really well on the days other than New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day – which happened to be in the middle of the week. That meant my weight fluctuated quite a bit, with the beginning of the week being low, middle of the week (New Year’s) being high, before settling at a lower weight toward the end of the week. I lost 2.7 lbs, for a total weight loss of exactly 30 pounds! Here is a little perspective….

30 pounds is equivalent to the weight of:

Three and a half gallons of milk

200 eggs

21 Chipotle burritos

¾ of a bag of water softener salt

2,000 Berkley 7” Powerworms (my favorite fishing bait!)

A spare tire

91 baseballs

1,204 Oreo Cookies

5,760 Sour Patch Kids

All of my XL size clothes are too big. All of my size 38/40 dress pants are huge. The only pants that fit me now are my size 34/36, and unfortunately, when I bought those pants, the in-style look was “relaxed wide-leg” (circa 2011-2014). With today’s skinny, tapered trend, my old pants look silly! I have a feeling Dyan and I will be going clothes shopping fairly soon.

We worked out 6 out of the 7 days this week with a couple of walks mixed in with runs. My total distance was 23.41 miles. One really fun walk was a Saturday morning hike through Lebanon State Park. What started as a quick little jaunt around Jensen Lake quickly turned into a much more daunting trek. The weather was beautiful with sunshine and 30 degrees, so we continued past Jenson wandering through the woods and around several more lakes before finally junctioning with a return trail back to where we parked. The hike, lasting one hour and 36 minutes, through 5.55 miles of packed snow and ice, created some treacherous walking conditions. But, we accomplished the journey with no falls! Also this week I started to cross train a bit by doing 30 minutes/8.2 miles on the recumbent bike. I am hopeful that the bike and some other cross training will take some of the pressure off my hip and knees.

Week 14: Autopiloting back into a normal routine

It’s the second week in January. I’m finally back to work on a regular basis – which means eating a bit more healthy and working out more regularly. Probably the most uneventful week of my journey so far. I ran a total of 9.82 miles this week and biked another 8.65 miles. I lost .8 lbs. in week 14, with a total weight loss amount of 30.8 lbs.

Week 15: Birthday Week Trap & Unhealthy Competition

Just when I thought all the big diet traps were over, I forgot about probably the biggest trap of them all. My birthday week. And making this diet trap even bigger is that we had an extended 3-day weekend due to MLK Day. That meant more time at home which mean more time to get caught in the cookie jar – or in my case, more time to get caught eating cheesecake!

I had a solid start to the week, logging nearly 12 miles in just 2 runs and losing 4.8 pounds. However, the week didn’t stop on Thursday! I gave back most of those weight loss gains between Friday and Sunday. On Friday night, amidst a snowstorm, we went out to dinner with Mike & Rachel eating delicious calamari (w/ hot pepper giardiniera) along with salads, steaks, burgers and prime rib sandwiches. It was an amazing dinner. Next up was a Bad Boys for Life at the Lakeville movie theater, followed by an evening of gambling at Mystic Lake. And when we got home at 2AM, we also indulged in late night Taco Bell!

On my birthday, Dyan had intended to take us all skiing, however, with the snowstorm the previous night, Welch Village was closed. Therefore, we spent the day at home hanging out together before heading over to GameWorks arcade at Mall of America.

The girls racked up tickets which they used to buy stuffed animals and candy.

For my birthday, Dyan got me a whole cheesecake with assorted flavors and the kids sang me happy birthday while Josh Facetimed!

And then on Sunday, Mike and Rachel invited us over to watch the Chiefs game. There was beer cheese dip, 7-layer taco dip, cream cheese salsa dip and grilled party wings. Oh, and beer. I felt like I put on 5 pounds that afternoon. It was an awesome game, and the Chiefs won! We looked hard, but never saw Alissa and Jeff who made the trip to KC for the game.

The Chiefs are Super Bowl bound! And we are now hosting a Super Bowl Party in 2 weeks. That sounds like another BIG diet trap! For the week, I lost 1.3 lbs. with a total weight loss of 32.1 lbs.

Also this week, I started my BCBS weight loss challenge. All participants weighed in on Friday. Back in week 12, I indicated my goal would be 7 pounds lost over 8 weeks. That was not aggressive enough for me. I have upped my goal to 10 pounds. In order for me to hit that goal, I am going to have to be around 202 pounds by March 19th – and there is $50 on the line, so I really need to keep a serious workout regimen and stick with my healthier eating. And to add even more incentive, my boss and my vie president asked me if I wanted to go in on a three-man side bet. It’s an additional $50 buy-in. The person who loses the most amount of weight during the competition takes all. This is going to be really tough however. My boss won the 8 week competition last year losing 16 pounds over the 8 week period – and that was without any side bets. Therefore, I am sure he’ll easily be able to lose that if not more this time around. In order for me to win the side bet, I think I’ll have to lose about 24 pounds total during this 8 week period – that is three per week and probably unrealistic and unhealthy. So, here’s to some unhealthy competition!

Week 16: Gym Rat

I’m not a “gym selfie” kinda guy, but seeing as there was nobody else in the gym on a late evening workout, I got a little daring!

This picture, taken on 1/23/20, shows me with 35 lbs. of lost weight. I’m kicking myself for not taking a “before” picture, when I was 244 lbs. in October. During the week, I had a 9.6 mile bike ride sandwiched by four runs for 18.55 miles. My diet was going well, and I was killing it on the scale. For the week, I lost 2.4 lbs. with a total weight loss of 34.5 lbs.

Week 17: A Super Sick Trick on my Body

I haven’t been sick since the spring of 2019 – one of the longest stretches ever for me to stay healthy. But an upper respiratory infection finally caught up with me this week. I was out of commission. Nearly the entire week. I wasn’t in the mindset to work. I was in no mood to workout. All I wanted to do was lay on the couch. The ONLY benefit to this is that I wasn’t hungry, whatsoever. I know I should have been eating, but just didn’t feel like it. So I didn’t. And it paid off on the scale. For the week, my weight tumbled 3.2 lbs, which now ranks as my third highest week for weight loss. My total weight lost is 37.7 lbs.

This week was also SUPER BOWL week! I usually don’t get into the Super Bowl hype, but this year is different than any other I’ve ever experienced. Because for the first time in my 41 years, the Chiefs were playing! Even though I wasn’t feeling the best, we still made a Super Spread of food. There was 14 hour smoked pulled pork nachos, homemade pickled jalapenos, pigs in a blanket, creamy chocolate chip cookie dough dip with pretzel thins, Chiefs cupcakes, and a Giant Patrick Mahomes Cookie! Regardless of the outcome of the game, we won on party food! The game was a nail biter, with he Chiefs losing for most of the game. But Patrick Mahomes dominated the 4th quarter when the game was on the line, throwing two touchdowns and leading the Chiefs to a third game clenching score. The Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV 31-20. The best Super Bowl Sunday of my life!

Week 18: Giving Up Some Gains

My body was craving calories this week as it looked to bounce back from such a big calorie deficit the prior week. I could not seem to satisfy my appetite, no matter what I ate. Not even Chipotle, which I will admit I had. And it was delightful! I did make it back into the gym, but only three times for treadmill runs totaling 14.9 miles. All around, I felt sluggish during the week. I wasn’t doing my diet any favors, and I wasn’t crushing it at the gym like I wanted to. For the week, I added .3 lbs lowing my total lost to 37.4 lbs.

Week 19: The Anatomy Of A Workout That Has Led Me To Shed 40 LBS!

This whole diet an gym routine is very hard work and takes an enormous amount of will power that quite honestly I wasn’t sure I had in me. Through week 19, this journey has lasted 133 days. In that time, I’ve worked out 68 times (51% of the days). 95% of my workouts are spent on the treadmill. During those workouts, I am average 4.49 miles per session.

Generally, my runs all start the same. The warm up walk (0 - .25 miles @ 3.5 mph) is sore. My joints ache and muscles tend to tighten up as they brace for the intense session that is beginning.

I then move into the initial shock of the run (.25 - .50 miles @ 6.0 mph) where it begins to feel like I’ve never run in my life. My legs feel creaky and week, and aren’t quite sure what my body is asking them to do. I hit the side rail of the treadmill occasionally, and bounce off the front handle bar as my body looks for a comfortable rhythm. I get a little self-conscience. It feels like I am blazing across the desert like the Roadrunner, but I take one glace at the mirror to my side to see that my Roadrunner impression looks like a middle aged overweight guy huffing and puffing over a light jog. My finger tips and toes are oddly cold and I am highly aware of what’s going on around me. Like I notice everything (i.e. signs on the wall, tv station, fan oscillation) and everybody (i.e. others on the treadmills, weightlifters, people who would rather watch TV than workout, security guards, janitors) as my mind attempts to adjust to the workout.

After half a mile, I begin to settle into a breathing and running rhythm. I focus on my music playlist, timing my breathing or strides to the beat of the music. During this part of the run (.50 – 1.50 miles @ 6.5 mph) I feel my very best. I can cruise through this section of the run without ever looking at total distance or time elapsed. I’m no longer cold. I’m getting warm. My forehead and neck are beading with sweat. I am feeling really good, so I bump up the speed…

At this point in the run, I must look like the roadrunner (1.50 – 3.00 miles @ 7 mph). But I glance in the mirror again, and now I look like the same jogger, only covered in sweat. I am literally dripping. I feel the cold drips off my face hitting my thighs. The burn in my muscles and the ache in my joints have returned. My breathing is audible. I test my heart rate and it comes in at 170. Every minute, or .1 miles, I am glancing down at distance and time elapsed. When will this end? I tell myself that I will end early today, at the three mile or 30 minutes mark….whichever comes earlier. But like a cruel trick, neither the half hour mark or 3 miles seem to be getting closer to being accomplished than the other. By 2.75 miles or 27:30 I am dying. As I close in on 3/30, I begin to negotiate with my body to possibly go 35 minutes? It’s good for me…

There are other people on the treadmills, and I don’t want to be the guy that starts after them, runs a slower pace, and then leaves before them. Nope, not me. So I continue (3.00 - 3.25 miles @ 7.5 mph) my personal hell, running faster at this point than any other point in my session. But I don’t last long at this pace. I go through another negotiation with my body. What if we shoot for 36, 38 or possibly even 40 minutes. In exchange, I will reduce the pace substantially?

My body reluctantly agrees (3.25 -3.75 miles at 6.8 mph). At this point, I ballpark most songs in my playlist at 3 minutes each. So I focus on running song to song. Unfortunately, I hit a couple of songs that are barely over 2 minutes. Morale killer when you think you’ve run for 6 minutes but it’s only been 4. I am getting close to the end of my workout though. My clock watching turns full OCD. Like I glance at it every 15 seconds.

I begin to think, another quarter mile would only be another two and a half minutes. I can do that, right? So I keep running (3.75 – 4.25 miles @ 6.8 mph) for one more song. But this song is almost 5 minutes and now I’m closer to 4.25 than I am to 4.00 miles in distance. I push further, but I tire significantly.

My body has been through enough finish line tricks today. I’ll just do a nice gentle quarter mile cool down (4.25 – 4.50 miles @ 6.5 mph). The problem here is that my body was expecting a cool down in the 4 mph walking pace, not the 6.5 mph jogging pace. I run funnily. Like my body all of a sudden forgot how to run. Even though it’s still a running pace, the slower motion makes my legs feel light, loose and I definitely have lost some control over them. I feel like I am starting to limp and I am pretty sure my stride is quite uneven. My body had been on autopilot for the past 40+ minutes, and now it’s like it just gave up and is making me think about every step. Now I am in control of my legs, and it’s not going well. I skip song after song, looking for the perfect one to bring me home. But there is never an adequate song. My body hates me at this point and won’t give me the pleasure of crossing the finish line to a song that it likes. So there I am, legs flailing, mouth breathing and listening to an annoying advertisement when I finally cross the 4.5 mile finish line. It wasn’t pretty, but it’s done.

This week, I ran 4 times for 19.33 miles. This was a great week on the scale too. Not only did I lose weight all week long, I did a great job of maintaining my diet and exercise routine over the weekend, which has been the biggest reoccurring pitfall on this journey so far. Generally speaking, I do really week with diet and exercise during the seek, but then I give back a substantial amount of my gains over the weekends. Not this week! For the week, I lost 3.6 lbs lowing my total lost to 41 lbs.

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skeksissquid · 5 years ago

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Progress Blog: Weeks 12 - 12-10-19

Over the last week, I have done quite a bit of work, in my opinion. First, I finished working on the skull and the UVs on it work incredibly. I also learnt that the reason that Terry was taking so long was solely because I was creating his UVs wrong, and created too many seams and too much project from view. Either way, I had to redo the UVs on Terry due to there being too many surfaces pieces for the UVs to be readable on Substance painter, so I also took the opportunity to change Terry’s position so that they are on their side with the wound exposed, and bent the legs in the proper positions accordingly, with some distortions, unfortunately, but I was able to try to fix said details as much as I could, but one leg is skinnier than the other with the foot being skinnier as well, which I couldn’t fix due to time issues. But after changing the position of the body, I ended up starting and finishing the new UVs relatively quickly. After accomplishing this, I fiddled around with a bit of Substance painter and added a texture for the skull model as a test so I can see what the system is like. unfortunately, the resulting texture didn't turn out too good, but it was a pretty good stab at what I was trying to learn. Afterwards, I started to mess with Terry’s textures, and it led to me spending a lot of yesterday, specifically the second half, trying to find what brushes would best fit Terry’s hair type, specifically on his face. Also, with yesterday, I learnt more about how to export UVs and materials properly thanks to Destin and I going through trial and error trying to decrypt Compton’s sword demo, and since the both of us couldn’t really figure out what was happening, I ended up going to Mr. Compton and asked for help. Turns out that you are supposed to have one UV with all objects linked to the material with that UV, which was different to what Destin and I attempted, having multiple materials, and multiple UVs. I did learn though more about why people rarely do and work have multiple UVs on a single object, but since I don’t have the time, nor the need, I probably won’t be researching into that until after break, or over it. Anyways, back to Terry on substance painter; In an odd way, its similar to a sort of mix between photoshop and brush to an extent, but the goodies within this program will be much preferred at this point to photoshop, especially with tools like veins. Its kind of mesmerizing to watch the lights go, but with heights applied to the tool, it can create really good depth, which I used on Terry to good effect.

So in Summary:

- Thursday: Worked on the skull, and started UVs

- Friday: Finished skull UVs, repositioned Terry, started and finished UV mapping Terry, started substance painter with the skull

- Monday: Exported Terry, learnt about multiple UV layers in Blender, as well as exporting, started working on Terry on Substance painter

- Tuesday; Worked on Substance Painter with Terry

Skull (front)

Skull (side)

Terry (front)

Terry (side)

Terry (top)

What I hope to accomplish next week:

- Mainly just further learning Substance painter as well as learning how to properly import and prepare objects in unreal to be finished, (also hair for the quills on Terry)

- Finish Terry (FINALLY!)

Problems I might run into:

- I might run out of time before the game is judged and it might be scrapped

- Unreal might take a while to learn

- As per usual, might get distracted

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docandprof · 7 years ago

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Why Did This Week Suck and Not Suck so Much?

Salutations good sir!

Man this week was a rollercoaster of emotions. Honestly probably one of the hardest weeks I have ever endured. But before that, lemme take a hot sec to answer some of your questions and comment on you. First and foremost, I'm SUPER proud of you and how much of an adult you are becoming! Your life seems, if not more than, as crazy as mine does. It always brings a smile to my face when you tell me how you are breaking out of your shell in more social and professional environments because when it’s us and the gang, you are more than sociable, so I see it as more the world is getting to see the true version of you, a dorky pensive goofball. Even though this wasn't in your post, because we talk outside of said blog, I was really happy that Lyss was able to go see you two and spend some time with ya. I can’t wait to see you all for Thanksgiving, which is just a few short weeks away!! Also, when are you coming home for that? I'm gonna be in Iowa from that Tuesday until maybe Friday morning so I wanna see you when I can before I have to leave again. You might have to share me with Jaynie at that point because I'm not gonna have tons of time to see everyone. Ummmm your question for the week was kinda hard because I would want everything to be magical. Buuuuut, if I had to choose, I would probably go with something inconspicuous like a magic watch that when you open it or interact with it in whichever way the player sees fit, a portal opens from which you can pull/store anything like Hermione's bag. Or it’s imbued with some sort of element and you can get creative with what it can affect, like you click it and you turn into a flame-man or different parts of you take on the characteristics of the different elements a la Ben 10. So yeah, something like that.

Now for my week in retrospect! Let’s see, Halloween here at school is more of a big deal on the weekend (Halloweekend is what they call it) because that is when all the parties are, so I stayed in and studied and did work like a good lil noodle. I did dress up in my Superman onesie while I did work so that was kinda in the Halloween spirit. So lemme just preface what my academic week entailed and then we can get into it. Monday: 3-4 page Spanish paper was due, Tuesday: Orgo lab report due, Wednesday: Test corrections due for my Bioclocks test, Spanish essay test, History of Warfare test where like every subject involved some iteration of Charles, Frederick, Philip, Henry or some Pope, Friday: massive Orgo test, big project due at midnight for my Brain Damage class, and another assignment for said class. And inbetween all of those things, I had to study for all 3 tests, perform a continuous sleep study on myself, help mediate/console 2 friends who are dating/like each other but being stupid so I'm being the good friend who listens and tries to help, AND still dealing with my own emotional shortcomings. Ok got the picture? Simple enough? Good. OH! And I planned out the rest of my classes for the rest of college in order to be prepared and efficient for class registration, which is tomorrow for me.

So I did what I had to do and I buckled down, studying and working on everything while trying to be a good friend for these two love birds. Now I think the earliest I ever got to sleep this past week was 3 in the morning, and I woke up at 8 every day, so my body was really pushing its limits. I didn't really feel stressed out in the beginning of the week, which is normal for me. You know me better than anyone, so you know that I'm pretty calm under pressure and don't panic, which I just consciously realized is all God. I always knew that everything I did wasn't by my own strength and that I am extremely blessed and favored, but it never really registered in me that the reason for my stress-free life is because I have faith in God that he will take care of me and everything will work out in accordance with his plan and if God provides for the birds, why would he not provide for his own beloved children. So that was pretty cool to actively know that. Now back from my sermon of the week to our previously scheduled programming. Totally ok during the week, and then Thursday hit. I was feeling like crap, like actual crap, no figure of speech there or excuse to include some profanity, I was really not feeling well. But I had already asked Nidhi if she wanted to go get breakfast that day at 9 because I haven't had a real breakfast in forever. I ate like 3 bites before I started to feel worse. So we do breakfast and then move to go do work. Standard stuff, studying, tried to eat a lil something for lunch, couldn't. So I went back to the house and kept studying until I finished the notes and felt like I had an ok grasp on the material. Later that day, my friend Jordan came over and we were studying together and she would ask me a question about something, but I just had no idea how to answer, so we moved on to the practice test which we both usually do pretty well on. But we couldn't even make it past the first question without having to look everything up and I was getting really frustrated at that point because I had been studying for over a week. Now at this same point in time, in addition to the friends in love problem thing, I was getting frustrated with myself over this whole Jaynie situation because I'm me and I haven't told her how I feel and it has been eating at me for a bit and she has been busy so we hadn't been talking a lot and you know how I get attached to the people around me, so not talking to one of my favorite people was pretty frustrating. And we were talking at the time of my failure to even attempt the practice test and I was telling her that I was getting frustrated amongst other things. She asked me what was wrong and if I wanted to talk about it, and I said yes and no because it’s complicated and I wanted to tell her everything but it’s hard to tell her some of the reason for my anxiety was because of her and my feelings for her so that worsened things on my end because she could tell I was losing it, so she used my own advice I gave to her earlier that week against me that I needed to talk to someone and not internalize my feelings. So at that point I kinda just lost it and left the house to go on a walk. I was gonna call you because I tell you everything, but it was like 1 in the morning at that point and you were asleep, and I was gonna call my dad because he and my brother have a close relationship and I know that he will always be up and willing to listen and give me some advice, but I didn't do any of that. Instead I called Jaynie. I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew that I had to hear her voice. Luckily she answered, and I was initially just gonna call and say thanks for helping me through it and that I was gonna call my dad afterwards, but I never did and we ended up talking for a little bit and it felt really good. She knew that the best way to calm me down was to ask me about other stuff like the crappy dodgeball game and some other stuff to get my mind off things and it was really just what I needed. We didn't really address anything else major, even though I really wanted to bring us up, but I didn't and after we were done on the phone she sent me nice text telling me that I always had someone to call and that I don't always have to be perfect. So outta my ashes of a first mental breakdown came some solace and some good in that one call. But yeah, that was my week.

As for this upcoming week, I'm pleased to announce that Jaynie will be coming back for the weekend because I invited her! Nidhi is dancing in the Diwali showcase on Saturaday, which is an Indian festival thing and she is super excited to do it, so I figured it would be a nice surprise if her best friend came into town to see her dance. But we are ALSO going to another concert after Nidhi’s dance and that is gonna be fun because we know the band personally. More on them later in the recommendations. And so we had this all set up to surprise Nidhi, but things kinda got twisted around logistically, so we had to tell Nidhi about it since Jaynie is gonna be staying the weekend with her and she didn't wanna just blindside her like that, so I told Nidhi what was going on and she was so happy, so I'm pretty excited for this weekend for 2 reasons, which are pretty obvious and need no further words ;). The only thing I have to get done this week is to write a research paper for Friday, but I think that’ll be ok. Life is on the upswing right now.

Ok recommendation: this band we are seeing is called Arlie, and the guitarist was the RA of the floor my friends and I hung out on all the time last year in Memorial and we are good friends with him. But they just signed a record deal, and they have their single out on Spotify right now and it is actually decently popular with like over a million listens already, so check out Arlie and their single because I think you would enjoy it. Question of the week: have you ever thought about watching Silicon Valley on HBO? I have seen the first episode and am wondering if you would like to watch with me? Oh, I also have watched all of the Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3 play throughs on IGN, so praise the sun for that!! Now that I have once again plot dumped on you, I bid thee farewell.

With all my love,

the doc

P.S. - don't forget to tell Dev happy birthday!!

#arlie #diwali #firstmentalbreakdown #itisdone

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paranormalhousewife · 5 years ago

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Last week when I wrote the post “Bye Bye Fat Girl” it was a way for me to tell myself I was serious about the weight loss this time. I wasn’t expecting the response I got from all of you. So many comments, emails, Facebook messages, and more and all were positives messages. Thank you everyone for all the encouragement and advice. You have no idea how much I appreciate it. The support I feel this time makes me actually believe that I can achieve my goals.

It has been about a week since that post and I have been working hard to make changes. I realized that I need to make small gradual changes in order to be able to carry this long term. Small steps will be easier to accept than going cold turkey and cutting too many things at once or going crazy with tons of exercise. The two big things I have been focusing on this week are being mindful of what I’m eating/ drinking and increasing my exercise.

Previously when I tried to lose weight I tried tracking food with My Fitness Pal. My Fitness Pal is great but it never really pushed me to do better. When I am tracking my food I can keep my calories under what it recommends but it doesn’t really help me with choosing a healthier food option versus another food. I did my research this time and I found My Net Diary. My Net Diary offers much more than My Fitness Pal does.

When I enter in a new food or log meal, My Net Diary will pull up the nutrition facts like My Fitness Pal but, unlike My Fitness Pal, it gives me a food grade. By using the food grade I can see quickly what is a good food choice and what isn’t. On more than one occasion I have had to decide between two different foods that were around the same calories but because I had the food grade, I could tell which one was actually a healthier option. Another thing I love about My Net Diary is that isn’t just how many servings am I taking in. It breaks it down in other measurements such as cup, tablespoon, teaspoon, ounce, gram, milliliter, or package. Since Jeremy is gone I can take the time to actually measure out each part of my meal to know what I exactly I am eating. The more I use something the better I get at eyeballing the measurement.

There are two things I don’t like about the app. The first is that it likes to change what weight I put in. It will add or subtract .2 to .4 pounds. I keep track of my actual weight with the MY Weight app because it is more reliable. The second thing is that while the database is quite large for American foods, it is lacking when it comes to most Japanese foods. I use My Fitness Pal to scan the labels of Japanese foods to figure out the calorie count and then I find something comparable for it in the My Net Diary. It’s not perfect but it helps be mindful of what I am eating.

I have been working on cutting down on how much sugar I have. Since I am cutting out soda I have been trying to focus on drinking tea more. I have been trying to increase my water but drinking just water is boring and tasteless. Since I am a southern girl I love super sweet tea. I calculated that when I make our pitcher of tea which is 4 liters big I usually put 3 cups of sugar or more. This week I have started making individual glass of tea and I have been cutting back. I stuck a tablespoon in our sugar jar so I know exactly how much I am using. As of today I am using 3 tablespoons of sugar in a liter (for people like me who can’t do math in their head that is 75% less sugar than I use to use)! This may sound weird but when I get half way through tea I refill it with water can let the tea bag redrew for a bit so I can continuing drinking the tea. I don’t add more sugar to it but it doesn’t really taste that different. I am hoping that I can work my way down to have completely sugarless tea. That is my goal for next week.

I have also been working walking more places and actually being up and moving more. Since my post last week I actually had people on this base reach out to me and say that they would walk with me or exercise with me. The surprising part is there were people messaging me that I haven’t met before that live on this base that were offering to help me get more exercise (I am always surprise when I meet someone that actually reads this blog). I walked to work once last week. I would have walked more but it was raining Friday and on Sunday I needed to run errands before and after work so I needed the car. When I am at work, I really try hard to not sit down. If it’s dead and I am not working on anything I try to pace around the restaurant. I need to get a new Fitbit because my is getting burnt out from getting wet repeatedly from washing dishes by hand at work. I am hoping to find one that is waterproof so I can swim with it.

I have gone grocery shopping twice this week. It was awkward at first scanning each item or looking it up because I didn’t want people to see that I doing it. I don’t know why but it its a little bit embarrassing to scan stuff to check the calories or entering the food stuff into the app when I am eating out with friends. I’m pretty sure that I am not being judge for doing this stuff but it still feels awkward. The more I do it the more comfortable I will feel about it. I just need to make it a habit.

I went to Costco with some friends on Monday. Shopping at Costco in Hiroshima was a lot easier than at the commissary. There was more options for foods at a better price. I bought bananas, vegan veggie burgers (they looked really yummy), pretzel knots, a large salad, and large bag of snack popcorns. The popcorn is for throwing in my bag to have something to munch on if I need it instead of ordering fries or something equally unhealthy. I bought the pretzel knots because they are smaller than the bread I usually use and less calories for making sandwiches. Plus the taste and texture will make it feel more like a treat instead of a diet. I used the knots with the veggies burgers for dinner last night. It was delicious. Next time I am splitting a slice of cheese between the two rolls. I used both slices because it was about to expire and I didn’t want the cheese to go bad.

I have new goals this week to help me achieve my weightless. I’m going to continue cutting down on sugar. I am going to try and reach at least 5k steps each day (I’m averaging 3k steps). I am going to start the running program this week (I got too busy this week).

I am happy to report that I am already starting to see results. For the past two days I have weighed in at 315.6 pounds! That means I lost 7.6 pounds this week! I only 15.4 pounds left before I reach my first goal of 300 pounds by November 1st. Once I meet that goal my next goal will be 275 pounds. I am giving myself lots of little goals to meet so I don’t feel frustrated when I don’t meet a goal that was too big. Yes I want to lose a lot of weight but I need to do it right this time. I really think I can do it this time. My motivation is different, I have a better support system, and I am really researching how I want to do everything.

Small Steps For The Future Last week when I wrote the post "Bye Bye Fat Girl" it was a way for me to tell myself I was serious about the weight loss this time.

#Blogging #Commissary #Costco #Diet #Fitbit #Food #Friends #Goals #Hiroshima #Japan #Jeremy #My Fitness Pal #My Net Diary #Rib House #Tea #Weight Loss

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wildlyhardphilosopher-blog · 5 years ago

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Pet Obedience Classes | Top Techniques

New Post has been published on https://dogtraining.dknol.com/english/pet-obedience-classes-top-techniques/?utm_source=Tumblr&utm_medium=Tumblr+%230+Freda+K+Pless&utm_campaign=SNAP%2Bfrom%2BBest+Dog+Training

Pet Obedience Classes | Top Techniques

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#Hunting Dog Training #Puppy Training Methods

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hrjerry-me-blog · 6 years ago

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Website Insights for a Site That Attracts More Clients

This week I launched my brand new website: actionplan.club

Over the last 20 years, I’ve designed and launched a total of seven different versions of my site.

In the process, I’ve learned a number of things, made a lot of mistakes and gained some wisdom about how to make a website serve your business and help you attract more clients.

Today, I’d like to share a summary of those insights.

A client-attracting tool

That’s ultimately what a website is. It’s not a monument to your ego or something beautiful to look at (although there’s nothing wrong with a visually attractive website).

For independent professionals, a website needs to explain to your prospective clients why you’re the person to help them with their particular issues and challenges.

A Lead-gathering tool

When someone visits your website, they should be inspired to take some sort of action right on the spot – otherwise, the chances of them ever visiting your site again are immensely low.

And that’s why I believe the most important part of your site is its ability to build an opt-in email list. If you don’t have a list, it’s like having a wonderful car with no gas in the tank.

Virtually all my business over the past 20 years has come from email promotions to those who joined the list on my website. When you don’t have a list, you severely limit your marketing possibilities.

Make opt-ins obvious

I can’t tell you how many clients have shown me their website with a tiny little opt-in box that says, “Please join my list,” or some other tepid appeal. And they wonder why they have a tiny e-list.

Fewer people want to join lists these days. We already have too much email in your in-boxes. But if you give away some substantial value, many will still opt-in to get it and join your e-list in the process.

Your opt-in box should be attractively designed and attention getting. And you should use various two-step opt-ins throughout your site. They are like little ads that say, in effect, “Go here and get my valuable free stuff,” which directs them to your sign-up page. Free Stuff

Simple navigation – in-depth content

The biggest change I made in my new website was to dramatically simplify my navigation. My old site had links to so many pages that it become overwhelming to navigate.

But I still have in-depth pages that describe my services. These are the main pages I want my prospects to visit, that explain in detail how I help my clients. Not everyone will read long copy but serious prospects will read much more than you think. Programs (link)

Publish a Blog

For 20 years, I’ve sent out my email newsletter to thousands of subscribers. With my previous website (since Jan 2011) I took the weekly ezine article and also posted it as a blog. Why? Because blog posts are indexed by Google and after seven years I have 355 blog posts on the web, all pointing back to my site. Blog page.

People ask how I’m able to write a new article every single week. My answer is stupidly simple: I make Mondays the day I write my ezine/blog article and it’s usually the first thing I write Monday mornings, even before I check my email. Now it’s become a habit that comes easily and naturally.

Development Tips

Use Wordpress. It took me a long time to make the transition as I’d invested a huge amount of time and money on the previous site. But you can do almost anything you want on a Wordpress site with easily installable plugins. It’s knocking my socks off!

Hire a designer. The average independent professional is not a terrible writer. But most are hopeless designers. If you design it yourself, you’ll probably love it, but you may be the only one!

It’s worth the relatively small one-time investment to get a design that will make your site look both attractive and professional.

Hire a Wordpress developer. Setting up a Wordpress site is tricky technically. My developer understands every little bit of code that makes it run smoothly. Get someone who says, “no, problem, I can do that!”

By the way, sometimes a designer and developer are one and the same person, but these are very different skill sets and few people can do both well.

Learn Wordpress basics. Once your site has been designed and developed, you need to learn how to edit and adjust it yourself. A short tutorial from your developer will give you what you need. Make sure they build that into the fee for your development.

Design Tips

Larger fonts (typeface). These days, computer monitors are bigger than ever. So, small fonts get buried.

Readable type. Don’t make your type so light that it’s a strain to read. I recently looked at an associate’s website and it was literally unreadable because his small, thin typeface was also light grey. It looked cool, but I couldn’t get through one paragraph.

Color scheme. Keep your font colors to black or dark gray, for readability, and then have two main colors for page headlines and subheads. Too many colors detract from the overall look and feel.

And by the way, reverse type or light-colored type on a dark background, are almost always a no-no. It’s not good for readability.

Also, I highly recommend using text bolding to make your key ideas pop out – but only on first sentences of paragraphs. Too much bolding can make it harder, rather than easier, to read.

White space. Text needs space to breathe. Remember, it’s all about readability. So have ample left and right page margins (about 25% of the total width of your pages), space between paragraphs, and paragraphs no longer than five lines.

Also, side columns that contain other content make your main column of text narrower, hence more readable.

Graphics. Various pictures and photos on a web page not only make it attractive, they increase readability. For instance, I like breaking up text on long sales letters with high-quality photos of independent professionals.

The site of a colleague uses beautiful pictures from nature. It really depends on your business and identity.

Remember, there is no perfect way a website should look. The primary considerations are attractiveness and highly readable text.

Web Content

I’ve written about this extensively in the past and even developed a program on this (the Website Toolkit). Ultimately, this is the most important part of your site – what you say and how you say it.

One of my favorite marketing quotes: “Write when drunk, edit when sober. Marketing is the hangover.”

If not drunk, write with passion and abandon. Then go back and tone it down a bit.

Content Flow. Most of us can write coherent sentences, but what style or approach works best for writing website content?

I use an approach called, “Marketing Syntax,” where I put ideas in a certain order or syntax. This can be used for your Home page, About page, and Services pages (which are the most important pages on your site).

The content flow goes like this:

1. Who – A section on who your ideal clients are.

2. Problem – A section on the problems and challenges your prospective clients are experiencing.

3. Desire – What your clients would like to have if they could resolve their problems and challenge.

4. Solution – The actual results you are able to deliver to your clients that fulfill their desires.

5. Credibility – Why you are uniquely qualified and experienced to help your clients.

6. Call-to-Action – What the prospective client should do next to find out more or to meet with you.

What about the process of what you do? Unfortunately, too many websites go too deeply down the “process rabbit hole” where they explain too much about how they do what they do.

Prospective clients are more interested in the results they get from your services and if you’re the right person to help them. Of course, at the end of sales letters (services pages), you can outline a little of the structure of how you work.

This is hardly an advanced course on writing for websites (the Website Toolkit is), but it’s a reliable and simple framework for writing copy that your prospective clients will relate and respond to.

Finally, I highly recommend you hire a proofreader/editor who will undoubtedly find a number of typos, grammatical mistakes, and poorly expressed ideas. It’s worth it if you are to make a professional impression.

I invite you to visit my new website and you can judge for yourself how well I’ve adhered to all of these website tips I’ve offered today.

Cheers, Robert

Action Plan Marketing helps self-employed people attract more clients through action-oriented marketing strategies that get you in front of prospective clients. Get our free report on how you can attract more of your ideal clients at this link: http://actionplan.club/free-stuff.

#prospective clients #website insights #wordpress site #website toolkit #sales letters #site look

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