With some travel to Tucson in the agenda, plus Thanksgiving, plus work stuff, and a social life and all that shit, I was going to have to be fucking realistic about my to-do list for November. I kept the list to short, manageable tasks, and anything else was just going to be gravy.1
- Finish my Linguistics classwork strong and get a solid grade
- Finish writing up the recap of our Europe vacation
- Get My D&D Setting and hooks for my players set up
- Bash out the Tour de Tucson and survive the road trip home
Linguistics Coursework
I’m all caught up! There’s still more stuff due, but not until December 4th. So I’m feeling pretty good about things. I wrapped up my recording of my final presentation on the night of the 29th and uploaded it to my online portal, and I’ve never been more relieved to close my laptop and go to bed for the evening. Completed on Nov. 30th. WIN.
European Trip Recap
I finished the first draft of the post on Sunday the 5th, and then did something odd — I handed it to someone else to review. I gave it to Di to give me feedback on — mostly to look for things I missed, or weird timing issues. Once she was done, I let it sit for a day and did a last pass through it. This is probably the longest blog post I’ve ever produced, and I’m pretty pleased with the end result, which you can read here. Completed on Nov. 7th. WIN.
D&D Setting/Prep
Oh man, chugging along through this this month. One of the hardest things for me in any worldbuilding exercise is naming places. This time around, I was inspired — I used Google Translate and was able to come up with some great place and people names, and that uncorked me. So I’m using Obsidian to organize everything, and in December, I intend to generate a quick PDF with a history of the world, some vague maps, and the current situation, and get it sent off to my players. Completed on Nov. 30th. WIN.
Tour de Tucson
This is something I’d been focused on all year. I started training in June prior to the arrival of my gravel bike and I was doing great until mid-September when I crashed my mountain bike hard, left for almost three weeks of vacation immediately thereafter, and then came home with bronchitis, which kicked my ass for almost six weeks. I didn’t finish the full distance, due to my back issues, but I did enjoy myself, feel super-strong for most of it (particularly on the climb up Pistol Hill). I’m feeling pretty dang solid about how it all played out. And I’m doing it again in 2024! Finished on Nov. 18th. WIN.
Minor/Other Accomplishments
- Nothing notable. I spent this month grinding on my big-ticket items, which paid off nicely.
Blockers
- The usual life stuff here: parenting, relationship, housework, etc.
- Spending five days in the car traveling to/from Tucson.
- Got really sick on Thanksgiving day, even before we ate, so it wasn’t food poisoning. I puked a bunch and then slept basically non-stop for about 19 hours. I suspect I was super-exhausted from the TdT and the drive home (I pushed myself hard on the latter part).
Conclusions
I did a pretty good job of not over-extending myself this month, which might be a first. I also learned a lot about the time commitments for a 300-level class in college, which will be useful as I move forward with getting my next degree.
(Featured image created with/generated by Adobe Firefly 2 Beta. Prompt: A cyborg turkey working in a factory.)