#probably gonna do random gp with a mix of gp challenges or something

[simulatedtrait]

ivy russell, majoring in dance performance

[daveywankenobie]

There are some teeny tiny little things in everyday life that probably mean nothing to anyone else – but to me they’re epic moments of success.

As I type I’m sitting in the back of a car full of people.

To most people this is the short straw and something of a raw deal because sitting in the front seat is infinitely preferable.

The back seat is cramped and it has three men on it who are shoulder to shoulder – however (even though it’s very cosy) I’m just chuffed beyond words that I’m one of them and able to sit here without feeling like I’m taking up more than my fair share.

My seatbelt is on, I have loads of leg room, I fit comfortably in my seat and I’m able to put my knees together.

None of this was possible a couple of years ago.

Furthermore I wouldn’t have even been in someone else’s car in the first place.

I’d have been driving myself to my destination to avoid the embarrassment of trying (and invariably failing) to get a seatbelt on in any car other than my own.

The reason I’m in this situation is that I’m out if work today on a team building exercise and I’m staying for the evening in hotel Stratford-upon-Avon.

Oddly (although I live only 15 miles away) I’ve not spent much time in Stratford. I know next to nothing about the history of the place or the more nuanced elements of it’s character.

That may be about to change…

(Author spends the day doing things and then continues writing his blog the next day.)

Well – although I’ve not had much sleep (largely related to coffee) I’m in a pretty good frame of mind because yesterday contained another real triumph too. It turned out that simply sitting in a car was the least of the things I had to be happy about.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The hotel was pretty neat – and waaaay higher up the comfort scale that I’m used to, because if I was paying for this myself I’d definitely have been looking for a B&B!

Normally I don’t really feel at home when every surface is covered in marble – but I made the best of things and resolved to grin and bear the hardships that life had seen fit to throw at me.

The day didn’t go too badly in this respect either because rather out of the blue I got a nice little room upgrade due to a mix up involving duplicate card keys. As I let myself into what I thought was my assigned room it turned out that I was strolling into a colleague’s room very unexpectedly!

Thankfully (although I’d surprised him) he’d already hidden the body he’d almost certainly been disposing of and there was no other significant embarrassment.

After a chat with reception to make up for this they hurriedly moved me to the top floor and into a king size with a view!

The team building event was all very useful and all the people there (a lot of whom I’d heard of but never met) seemed very happy to meet eachother – as well as willing to tuck in and enjoy the seemingly endless food that the company and venue had laid on.

As a Slimming World focused guy this all looked extremely off limits (I did have an egg and a bacon roll, but threw away the bread and the rind) – so I instead focused on the fruit and grabbed a few apples.

However there was one really great perk.

Unlimited coffee!

Lunch was pretty similar – and while there was a buffet style arrangement with a cheesy baked pasta with deep fried wedges and breaded scampi there was also a lot of fruit and chilled meat.

Once again I made a healthier choice and grabbed a load of watermelon, some carrot and pepper sticks, a little pasta and some ham.

This filled a gap (I did go back for more) and along with (far too much) coffee managed to see me through the day.

After the event’s workshop my company had also organised a fun team building GPS challenge that would split us all up and force us to head out on foot to explore around Stratford-upon-Avon.

The idea behind it was to learn more about the people we were with, make us work together and go on a ‘guide free’ guided tour. If I’m honest I couldn’t have been happier about this – as it had already proved to be a little hard to fit in my usual amount of miles and steps with everything that had been going on.

We were presented with a GPS enabled tablet – told to head for any of many ‘locked’ areas on the map and work though the challenges that we found there.

They wouldn’t unlock until we arrived, and along the way we could earn extra points with general knowledge and business related multiple choice questions.

As soon as we set off I realised I’d been matched up with three pretty fit and extremely competitive people who were all frequently breaking into a jog to get from A to B. As soon as we left the building and they immediately took off like a hares at a greyhound race in the direction of the most distant locked point on the map.

The amazing thing (this kind of thing still surprises me) is that I was able not only to keep up but felt perfectly comfortable when I did.

As we navigated around the sites of interest, took photos, staged funny videos and chatted to random members of the public as part of the challenges that kept unlocking I became aware that I was really enjoying the energy of it all.

My pulse was racing with excitement rather than exhaustion!

As the two hour deadline assigned to us ticked down it also became apparent when the tablet started pinging that we were narrowly ahead in the rankings. When all of a sudden the scoresheet disappeared we realised that very little stood between a total loss and a resounding victory – so we rushed even more.

By the time we were back in the room we were looking at a lot of other pretty tired people – some of whom seemed to be really flagging – whilst others were similarly energised.

One of my day to day team members had been with another group and they had been very close to our score.

We eyed eachother suspiciously…

Who had beaten who?

As the winners were announced, and funny pictures or videos from the day were thrown up on the projection screen everyone seemed on the edge of their seats and the table with the four of us actually seemed like we were literally on the edge of our seats.

Then our names were absent.

The announcer callout out the table behind us and one by one put the winning medals on another team….

We looked at eachother.

What the heck?

How had that happened?

We were SO close!!!

Was the tablet broken?

Had our score not uploaded?

Then the announcer turned to them and said ‘and take those medals off and give them to the REAL winners – whose score was over 100 points higher – and pointed to my team!!!

We only went and frikkin won the whole thing!!!!!

After a lot of laughter and congratulations (as well as commiserations) we all headed beck to our rooms to get ready for our evening’s activity – which was a meal at the rooftop restaurant in the RSC.

Once again this is waaaaay swankier than I’d normally go for – and because we were such a big group we ended up spilling over from one huge table into another room – which looked like King Arthur should have been the guest of honour…

The food (which in my case was ordered in advance) was a pretty stress free SW experience – because although not everything I’d be eating was perfectly in plan it was as good as I was going to get.

I had the mackerel for a starter (with rhubarb and celeriac), and the chicken and bacon for a main.

I’ll be honest and say that this didn’t touch the sides – and despite my best intentions I ended up eating the complimentary biscuits in the room later that evening (2 large chocolate cookies and 2 ginger nuts) which must have been absolutely loaded with syns.

However – I’m not going to stress about it.

Life’s for living after all.

Since I don’t drink alcohol I went to bed well before the (rather well oiled) party finished in the bar that evening, in the hope that I’d get a good night’s sleep.

However – this wasn’t meant to be – and probably because of being in a strange bed combined with all of the soft and diet drinks I’d been having (alongside buckets of sparking water) I was awake pretty much all night.

By 5.30am I decided to give up on sleep and go for a walk along the river and around the town before breakfast at 6.30.

There was practically no-one around except me – so I just had to take a shameless tourist selfie outside Shakespeare’s house, and also outside the really odd Christmas shop thats open ALL YEAR ROUND right opposite it.

(why?….)

Whilst mooching around I also noticed that near the RSC all of the houses had rather unique door knockers!

How cool are these?!!!

After taking snaps of people’s front doors I wandered back along the peaceful riverbank and back to the hotel for the start of the breakfast window.

I scared the life out of the lady on the booking desk who (thanks to my recent Clarkes Shoes purchase) didn’t hear or see me coming at all. Yaaay for comfort and sneakability!!!

Faced with a lot of choice and at the same time feeling rather tired and worn out I once again tried to food optimise – but this was tough.

Buffets can be good for things like that – as long as you try and keep the ratios right – and broadly speaking I think I sort of managed it, but my willpower was at a bit of a low ebb.

I’m not gonna lie – I went back for seconds too.

But you know what – all in all I had a great time!

I met a lot of lovely people, won a challenge I’d never have had a hope in hell of even competing in previously and got to explore Stratford a bit more.

All in all internet it was a really welcome break from the norm!

Davey

P.S. thats not the only break from the usual because I’m not weighing in today. In a minute I’m heading off to yet another engagement. More on that in a later post 🙂

GPS hunt There are some teeny tiny little things in everyday life that probably mean nothing to anyone else - but to me they're epic moments of success.

[thenerdytomboynewb96]

Samantha Allan Park Ch. #5

Chapter #5

All week I had been trying to read the documents that were held on the flash drive, and every time I began to read anything, my computer was hacked by whoever was on the other side. I basically had to run every time I finally got everything set up and started. Tonight was the last chance I really had to view anything on that drive. I had visited all the locations I been brought to except for the university that Jay attends, and I was running out of disguises. I didn’t know anything about make-up except for how to make my skin look lighter or darker with concealers and foundation, and I had basically used all my wigs and contacts. Since tonight was my last chance, I decided to just go as me. I had a feeling some type of confrontation was coming soon anyways because of how fast this person had been hacking into whatever computer I was using. Their speed and skill made it clear that they were catching up to me, so tonight I made sure to dress appropriately for a fight.

I wore a sporty gray t-shirt underneath a black zip up jacket, denim colored jeggings, and black tennis shoes. Tonight, just like the past few nights, I carried a backpack on my back where on the inside I was sandwiching my tonfa in between a few AP textbooks, and on an outside holder on the back was holding my skateboard, which at the moment was condensed into one thin rod that could extend when a button was pressed. This way I looked like I was just an everyday college student while at the same time I was prepared to defend myself. I also made sure to wear my ring with the blade inside just to be safe. I also had a small pouch inside the bag that had the basics: phone, keys, etc.

It was about nine at night when I left my apartment. Jay was meeting up with some friends to work on a project for one of his classes and told me that he wouldn’t be home until sometime tomorrow afternoon, so I was free to leave and come back home whenever. I decided to take advantage of this and leave later in the day than usual in order to try and mix up when I was leaving to go view these documents. I even skipped school yesterday and still the hacker was ready and waiting for me, and they even stole back some of their documents. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with the flash drive after tonight. Maybe I would plug it into a random computer somewhere and just give this person back their information. It was interesting, but it didn’t seem like anything illegal or anything that I would want to hold onto.

Theme: Skillet (Feel Invincible) Skillet (Resistance)

I walked out the back door of the building and made sure it closed all the way and locked. I began walking down the alley when I heard a noise, the sound of something falling. I stopped and stood still, I thought that this might happen. From what I heard, the sound came from further behind me down the opposite side of the alley. I couldn’t tell if this person was by themselves, or if there were multiple people. Luckily, there was a manhole cover a few steps away from where I was. I took a breath, let it out, and darted forward. I picked up the cover and launched it behind me. I don’t know who it was, but I heard a male voice say “Whoa!” and then saw a large dark figure duck and dodge the cover. I wasn’t able to get a good look at the guy because I was already sliding down the ladder that lead into the sewers.

At this point I was just running blind, trying to remember the paths I had gone down this same time last week and trying to avoid them since that would lead me right back to where this person was staying. Hopefully, the further I was away from their main home location, the safer I would be. Right now I was mentally thanking my coach for making us run so many laps and hills during practice, because right now all that training was really paying off.

My main problem was that I had no idea where I was. None of these tunnels seemed familiar, but hopefully that meant I was nowhere near where their base was. Suddenly, I saw some light coming in from the top right side of the wall.  I ran over and looked up through the sewer drain and saw that I must have been under a road near one of the quieter parts of town. I lifted up the drain cover and looked around. I was at a street that was surrounded by small local shops and food markets. No wonder it was so quiet, no one shopped at these places this late on a Friday night.

I went into my bag and pulled out my phone and pulled up a GPS system. I typed in the name of the first street I saw and realized I was actually pretty far away from where I had started running. I then checked the time and saw that it was now 9:20. Dang, I ran pretty far within that amount of time. I put my phone away as I was mentally bragging about how proud I was of myself. In doing so, I had lost my focus, and because of this ridiculous screw up, I hadn’t realized that I was being watched.

I heard the sound of something fly through the air, and the next thing I knew, all the street lights had been blown out. If I had been focused then I would have been prepared for what came next. I went to reach for my tonfa when I heard someone shout “wait, no!” and that fast everything went dark.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I heard some faint noises as my eyes started to open, or at least they tried to open, why couldn’t I open my eyes? As my senses started to come back, I realized that I was wearing a blindfold. I made sure to keep completely still so that whoever had hit me wouldn’t realize that I was beginning to wake back up. I tried to listen carefully to what was going on around me. “You could have been a lot gentler dude.” “She threw a manhole cover at your face! What twiggy girl has the strength to do that?! And her accuracy to! She threw it so fast and her aim was so spot on I actually thought it was gonna hit you!” “Aww you do care.” “Now is not the time for jokes you little-” “Enough! We need to figure out how we’re going to handle this.” “Yeah, since not using force sure worked well, right fearless?” “Oh, and please share how you punching her in the jaw worked out as a much better plan for us.” “Yea man, no wonder she wanted to run away.” “She ran away BEFORE she even saw us, she was never going to handle the situation peacefully!”

So far I had heard three different voices talking. It seemed that the voices were coming from behind me, so my back must have be facing my kidnappers. I felt a bit of a rocking, so I assumed I was in some kind of vehicle, probably the van I had seen in their hideout the other night.

“Well no offense, but if someone hadn’t been goofing off then she never would have heard us in the first place and we could have handled the situation better.”

Okay, now there had been a total of four different voices, so four vs. one, fantastic.

Sam gently tried to move her wrists to see what she could get her hands on. When she moved them backward, she felt something soft. It felt like she was sitting on a couch. That was a bit odd, but then again, there was nothing normal about any part of this situation. It felt like there was just rope tied around her wrists, so she gently started to lean back some, as if her limp body was just moving slightly due to the fact that she was in a moving vehicle. Once her back was against the couch, she then began pushing her finger against the trigger on the ring. It took a few minutes, but finally the blade popped up. While the four voices continued arguing, Sam slowly began cutting away at the rope that kept her wrists bound together.

“So sir fearless, what’s the plan now?” “We take her back to the lair and we’ll talk to her there. I’ll decide what to do next based on how that goes.” “That’s it?!” “And what do you suppose we do then?” “Well first I saw we challenge her! Let’s see how she likes it when we throw shit her way! Then we keep questioning her until we get some answers!” “And if that doesn’t work?” “We go back to using force, that’s what lead us to finally capturing her!” “Well technically it was my planning tha-” “Yea yea I know that your genius is why we were able to track her down, but if we let her keep running then-” “Maaaaaaybe we could have actually talked to her?” “You have no right to talk since you’re the reason she got away in the first place!” “Whoa! Chill bruh……..okay maybe it was my fault a little bit, heh.” “A LITTLE BIT!? Are you seri-”

Before Raph could finish his sentence, he froze as he saw the girl that had been behind them stand up. She was facing the back of the van while Mikey sat in a chair against the back of the couch, so the two had their backs to each other. The girl’s arms were free, and as she stood up she swung her right leg around as she turned her hips to her left and rotated her whole body around. As she swung, her right foot went up in the air. She moved so fast that Raph couldn’t do anything to stop the girl from slamming her foot right against Mikey’s face. Now Raph was more furious than ever. Deep down he had thought that maybe things would have gone better if Mikey hadn’t accidentally slipped and dropped one of his nunchucks and startled the girl, but now all he believed was that this girl was pure scum. If she was really innocent, then she wouldn’t have just kicked his baby brother in the face.

“THAT’S IT!” Raph charged towards the back of the van, but right after Sam had attacked, she immediately turned, ripped of the blindfold, and ran towards the back of the vehicle. Before Raph could get to her, she had already opened the door and swung around to the other side.

Raph quickly backed up, not knowing how to react. He so badly wanted to chase this girl down, but at the moment they were on a highway, and if he wasn’t careful then someone might see him and his brothers through the opening in the back of the van. Luckily there were no cars behind them at the moment, but to Raph’s surprise, the girl was no longer hanging onto the back of the door anymore.

Once Sam had officially gotten out of the van, she tried reaching for the ledge of the roof of the vehicle. She swung herself to the side and was able to get her hand on the ledge. She then swung hard to the right and was able to also get her leg caught on the ledge as well. She carefully pulled herself up onto the top of the truck. Sam had no idea where she was or what to do when suddenly she saw that a refrigerator truck was driving towards them in the oncoming lane. She slowly began to stand up, preparing for a quick and risky leap.

“Donnie where’d she go!?” Leo began to panic as things continued to get out of hand. “I don’t know I haven’t seen her…yet.”

As Donnie was scanning his mirrors to see where the girl was, he saw a figure move from the top of their truck onto the ladder on the back of a larger truck passing by. Donnie stopped the vehicle and sat there staring at the mirror in shock. “She jumped” he said with a dropped jaw. “SHE JUMPED!?” Raph was beyond pissed. He couldn’t wait to start fighting this girl since obviously she had some strength to her and all night she had been asking for a fight. “Dang that chick has a good foot on her, sucks I learned that the hard way though. Ow!” Raph quickly got a cold soda can from the fridge in the back of the van and handed it to his brother. Mikey took the can and smiled. “Hey thanks man!” he said as he opened the can and started to take a sip. Raph flicked his brother on the back of the head. “It’s for you to put on your cheek not to drink!” He rolled his eyes and looked up towards his other two brothers in the front seats. “So how do we get her back now?” he snarled. “Don’t worry, I’m already tracking her coordinates based on the directions that truck is able to follow. A truck that size can only follow select routes coming up, and I know a short cut that will lead us to her.” And with that, the brothers sped away in the van, mentally preparing themselves for what could possibly come next. ______________________________________________________________________________

Once the truck had lead me back to the city, I jumped off at the first red light it stopped for. I winced from the pain in my foot. I was used to foot injuries, but wow that was a hard hit! It felt like I had just run up and kicked a bowling ball. I never expected the kick to hurt my foot anywhere near as much as it did, but luckily I could still walk on it, there were just some sharp pains when certain spots hit the ground. I had experienced similar feelings during some of my soccer games and the pain now was about the same as then, so I just needed to carefully keep walking it off and then I would be okay. Once I got onto the sidewalk, I immediately got my tonfa and put them in the side holders of my backpack, making sure that this time I would be prepared for an attack. I started walking down the sidewalk and looked around at the shops and street signs. I had been here before, but it had been a long while, so overall I was in unfamiliar territory. The next thing I knew, all the street lights went out again. Really? We were going through the exact same routine as last time? I stood completely still, waiting to hear any type of sound. It was incredibly quiet for what seemed life forever. I refused to move unless I heard any suspicious sounds, since running away the first time obviously was the wrong choice based on the conversation I had heard in the van. I now regretted making that decision, but at the time I just quickly reacted to what could have been a dangerous situation. How was I supposed to know whether these guys wanted to peacefully chat or not?

After what felt like years of waiting, I heard the slightest sound of footsteps coming from behind me. I instantly pulled out my tonfa and spun around in time to block what I assumed was an arm that was aiming to hit me in the back. I pushed off and slid backwards some while trying to keep my balance. I heard footsteps quickly coming towards me, but since I didn’t know what this person looked like, I had no idea where to aim a hit. For now I decided to try and fight defensively until I could gain any type of intel on what this person looked like or how they fought, or at least that WAS the plan until I heard what sounded like a sword being unsheathed. Shit, this was bad. I heard the swish from the movement of the blade coming from the right, so I dodged to the left and began to run. I had no idea what direction I was running in and tried to use my tonfa to feel around me so that I wouldn’t run into something.

I felt a wall on my right and just continued to run straight, hoping that it would lead me somewhere safe. Lucky me I ran into a dead end in a dark alley. Now I was really scared and was afraid of what my brother would do to himself if he found out I had been killed. I tried feeling around for anything I could throw and to my surprise I found a pile of bricks. I must have been near a construction zone of some type. I ran along the wall until I was in a corner, and once I heard footsteps again I began launching the bricks in that direction. I still couldn’t see, but I could hear the sound of the swords connecting with and breaking the bricks.  Wow, this guy had to have some muscle to him, and incredible strength in durability to the blades as well if he could actually break the bricks with his swings. I reached down for another brick, but I felt nothing. I kept moving my hands around on the ground as I began to panic, this couldn’t be the end for me already. I stood back up in order to defend myself, but it was too late. As soon as I was up I was hit on my temple, and once again everything went dark. ______________________________________________________________________________

As I started to gain consciousness, I felt a huge pain in the back of my head. I was really feeling the effects of getting hit in the face twice within about an hour.

I could tell that I had been blindfolded again, but this time my hands were bound with twist ties rather than with just rope. I could feel that I no longer had my ring on either, I figured that that was going to happen. I listened for the voices that I had heard earlier that night. I heard them, but they were very faint, hopefully meaning that they were further away from me than they were the last time I woke up. My surroundings were still and I thought I heard the sound of running water, so I assumed they had taken me back to their hideout. I couldn’t tell from sound alone where exactly I was located within the gigantic room, so I wasn’t sure what I should do. This time I woke up on my side rather than sitting upright, so I tried to gently move my legs around to see if there was anything I could feel that would give any type of clue as to where my location was. I also tried reaching my arms forward, since my hands had been twist tied in the front instead of the back. I couldn’t feel anything, so I rolled over and faced the other direction and tried again. My foot kicked against a wall, and when I tried to scoot back I hit another wall, so I was probably in one of the corner spots within the large space. My foot seemed to be feeling a little better now, so that was a good sign at least.

The water now sounded like it had been coming from behind me, so I was guessing, based on what I could remember from last week, I was probably in the corner that was almost directly across the room from where I had entered when I came here alone. I listened for the four voices again and they still seemed to be coming from farther across the room. As scared as I was of being punched again (I don’t know how much more of that I could take) I knew that I had to take this chance to escape. I was able to stand up by leaning and pushing off the walls. I lifted my arms upwards in a straight position over my head when I heard a rough male voice yell “OH COME ON! AGAIN!?” followed by loud footsteps coming closer towards where I was standing.

I then quickly and swiftly yanked my arms down, pulling my elbows in towards my sides as I did so, and was able to break the twist ties. I spun around and yanked off the blindfold as I tried to face my body in the direction that I was about to run to, but once the blindfold came off I stood there in shock.

Standing in front of me was a giant, intimidating, weapon holding…turtle?