EPTGoals for the Week
Exercise/Personal Goals:
3 Running or Cross-training sessions:
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/6/66/GreenCheck.png)
2 Weight-lifting (Starting Strength) sessions:
5 Mental Discipline sessions:
Gaming Goals:
Log Write-Ups of Blood Bowl and Dominions 4 games:
Log CS:GO practice sessions, and Ranked results:
Log Hearthstone Drafts/Results:
Maintain 4+ win average:
Monday 6/30:
Damn is it fun to power clean!! There's nothing quite as rewarding as hearing that thwack of the bumper plates hitting the ground and then the slight bouncing clatter (which I should minimize by pressing them into the ground... whoops). Ever since the lift coaching session, the cleans feel much more comfortable. "Slow" on the way up and "Back" during the explosion put me in better alignment than ever before. I'm able to catch with much more confidence!! On top of all that, I'll be increasing my max for the year in the coming clean session.
Something in the combination of yesterday's caffeine intake and overall exertion level kept me up late into the night and disrupted my sleep cycle. I got maybe 5 hours of sleep in the 8 or so I was supine on the bed. No caffeine today after noon. I'm thinking it was the Starbucks I had during the doggy outing.
Tomorrow will be a dedicated rest day! I'm probably going to need it as the last stretch of days have been more taxing than usual. Also, my dance card is pretty full tomorrow so squeezing in exercise might be a problem. I'm driving the wife to the airport at 4:30am-6:30, going to work from 8-noon, lunch, 1-3 playing some Dreadball (as a precursor to...), a gigantic board-game party from 3pm-sleepy time. Should be awesome!! Very much looking forward to it!
Played a CS match with my brother and led the team. Some questionable rounds on my part, but it was lots of fun.
Today's mental prep will be affirmations. I'm so tired today that self-hypnosis or visualizations would have just put me to sleep...
Tuesday 7/1:
This Tuesday update wasn't written on Tuesday. Here's why:
The day started off at a sprint when I was awoken at 3:15 by a very agitated tiny Chinese woman telling me her flight had been cancelled, there was no way she'd make it to see her family, the sky was falling... etc etc. After a half hour stewing in the bed, she got up and starting making phone calls. I tried to go back asleep but was awoken at 4:15 when she announced that she was able to finagle a flight out of an airport an extra 30 minutes of drive time away. So, we leave at 5 (me driving) and I get back at 7:30 for work at 8:30. I manage to snag a quick nap in there before work.
Work comes and goes and I meet up with my friend for a game of Dreadball in which I get trounced thoroughly by the Judwan! It was awesome! They just completely demolished my female corporation. We packed up that board game and headed over to a friend's house for an extended board game and futbol extravaganza. Puerto Rico and Powergrid were the games of choice and we enjoyed them at a deliberate pace over the next 8 hours. If that sounds slow, well, it was. My gaming group suffers from analysis paralysis. To be fair though, the times did include eating grilled burgers on the porch, puppy maintenance, and much shouting at the TV during extra time.
I pack up my games in my custom built storage box. In this box, I have Dominion and 3 expansions, 7 Wonders, Munchkin Zombies, The Resistance, and Game of Thrones The Card Game. All told, this is probably over 2000 cards. Each of the Dominion ones were individually sleeved. Imagine the plethora of cards spread to the wind down a steep hill. Imagine the custom built inserts and box splintered and spread everywhere. Imagine picking up all of the cards on said hill amid battling swarms of mosquitos and directing two-way traffic.
Oh yes... this is how my day ended when I forgot to take the box down from the roof of my car....
Wednesday 7/2:
By comparison, there's no way today can be worse :-) (famous last words I know...). I slept like a baby last night with everything that happened, so I have that going for me!
Today, I played a Blood Bowl game that was sadly cut short by the shitty Cyanide servers!!! Uuuuughh.... In truth, my Chaos team was being vivisected and stymied at all turns by a very good Skaven player who was up by 2 TDs on turn 12 when the server cut me off. I'm hoping that an administration win gives me a Man of the Match bonus and some winnings because my team cannot afford to miss out on any XP. I'm not getting hits on people like I need and have yet to get any level-ups. The Skaven team I played had multiple level 2s already 3 games into the season. Grrr... Oh well. The other player was magnanimous and a great sport about everything. Hopefully, if the admin loss doesn't give XP, we'll be able to reschedule.
Ok.... Time to move and accomplish things.... Time to get up from the computer.... Time to move.....
Finished off the night with some practice and some impromptu exercise! I took the puppy for an extra long walk and then I sprinted the hill near my house a couple of times to get the HR up.
Thursday 7/3:
Today was a bit better! I taught myself to sew a simple backstitch and fix my exercise armband. It took longer than expected as the velcro kept destroying the cheap string we had available, so I had to make a Wal-Mart run for some better string.
Exercise for today was a tennis wall session which was perfect for the day. Set the watch for a 20 minute session and let the puppy walk around the park a bit. It's actually a really good way to get him out of the house as well. I'll definitely be looking to do that again.
Last big goal of the day is to get a good mental prep session. If I do that, i'll be happy with today's effort.
Friday 7/4:
Work was cancelled due to a tropical storm, and my brother and I had the first day off together is almost 6 months. What did we do? We played 8 hours of CS:GO! It was fucking awesome!! I know now that I am definitely under my skill group with my silver 2 ranking. When playing with my brother I carried our team by and large... I was always well represented KDA wise and in objectives. After getting his ten wins with me, he was placed in Star 1, so I'm feeling much more secure. I also leveled up during those games to silver 3. Bittersweet, but whatever :-). Was a lot of fun!!!
Saturday 7/5:
Good lifting session today! Very nice! I also got in a couple of good practice sessions and self-hypnosis! Very good day all-in-all. Played two CS:GOs tying one and failing to carry 4 scrubbies. I hate those games where you have twice the kills of the next highest teammate. Oh well... what can you do?... (other than improve).
Next week, I'm probably going to trim down this big post to just the reference sections and post the daily updates in the comments. It will be a bit different of a look, but might work out better long term.
Also, I'm contemplating trimming the HS section as I just don't enjoy the game as much as I had hoped. It's just not as interesting, varied, or skill-based as CS:GO. When trying to farm daily quests, I had to lose for 2 hours straight to get down to a MMR where my shitty lock and shammy decks had a chance... So frustrating. The barrier for entry for up and coming F2P players is pretty prodigious these days.
Sunday 7/6:
Sunday was a pretty good day! I woke up early and ran first thing, which was actually great for my energy level throughout the day. My fear was that my energy level for the concert later would be too low and scattered, but it was generally good. After the run, I had a rather long practice session and self-hypnosis before heading out to the afternoon concert. Near the end of the concert, some chop fatigue set in, but I re-focused on efficiency and it settled down.
After the concert was a complete wash though. I had 2 hours to prep for a Dungeons and Dragons session (I'm the dungeon master). I didn't prep anything beyond what I had done previously, and planned on improving my way through the session. In the past, I've felt like the group needs a stronger guiding hand, but they did very well this session. As a group they shine in interplay between each other. There's a pair that really brings out the best in each other and they feed off each other's ideas (whether good or not). Anytime they come up with an initiative together, I almost always support whatever they want just to keep that interplay going.
Hearthstone Reference Section:
7/4 Rogue Draft:+ Show Spoiler [Reactions while Drafting] +
#4: Good draft thus far! I went for defias because he's such a good low turn drop... Have plenty of time to pick up the second eviscerate... hopefully.
#5: A middling row... I have no reliable way of activating Acolyte or Gurubashi... Ogre is just a safer lower risk card.
#12: A hard row... probably going to go with the silver hand as it's such a good 5 drop.
#13: Hard row again... went with the eviscerate just to be sure i got the second.
#14: Well, I already have an assassinate so I'm told that I shouldn't take assassin's blade, but the card is so much better than the others. Southsea has upside when I have a weapon out though... let's go with the blade for now.
Rest of the picks seemed pretty straightforward.
CS:GO Reference Section:
6/30: W; First on team.
Did some headshot-only DM. (Getting better!)
