I still haven't even gone new clothes shopping! Ahhh!!!

Tomorrow a new school semester starts. And while I'm only taking two classes this semester, even just two classes often somehow has me feeling overwhelmed. In fact, historically, when I usually take two (or more) classes, I end up dropping one of them. It's almost always the same, I start of the semester excited and for the first couple weeks I'm on top of things. Then there's some sort of slipup and I find myself playing catch up in one (or both) of the classes, but I never really feel like I'm catching up and then at the last minute I withdraw from one of the classes. 

I thought when I quit drinking, I'd break this cycle. But so far that hasn't proven to be true. Honestly, I think the best way for me to break the cycle would be with meds. I say that because that's what multiple health professionals have told me. Unfortunately, the current top leadership in the military seems very against said meds and I think it's only a matter of time before they start med-boarding people out for taking those meds. So much as I can do my job to a degree that my supervision is happy with, then I'll have to keep avoiding said meds. And hoping for the best in school.

The funny thing (again, not ha-ha funny) about it all is how I feel like an absolute failure for still working on a degree I started over fifteen years ago, but how I'd tell anyone else in my position they're anything but a failure so much as they're still trying. I've watched people start their schooling after me and finish graduate degrees in the time it's taking me to get a bachelor's. And some of those people are absolute idiots, yet they were able to focus enough to do the work and get the degree. It's disheartening. Yet if a friend came to me in my position, I'd tell them the only failing is when you stop moving forward. The moment you're in is just one point in your life and you only fail when you stay in that point; keep moving and you'll at least get somewhere. 

But whatever, when I try to tell myself those same words, I just feel like and idiot talking to himself. 

Anyways, class one if the Art of Math. Essentially a math class made to take math out of math so people not good at math can get their math general education requirements. This will be my second time attempting this class, the other time being last summer when I tried it online and couldn't follow along with anything. So this time I'm taking it in person. I suck at math. I need an adult to be able to talk to face-to-face when I begin to struggle. Hopefully this does the trick and I can never take a math class again. (Especially since if I don't pass this one this time, I'll have to retake the remedial math class before I can take a math class that counts again).

The other class is Historiography. Essentially the study of studying history. This will be my third attempt and in a reverse from my normal, this one will be online while the other two attempts were in person. I'm my own worst enemy for this class. The last two times (and so I imagine this time) there was one big paper due at the end of the semester requiring a lot of research. I had grand ideas for these papers and spent a lot of time daydreaming writing a really great paper. But I never really got to the studying and would just end up dropping the class. I'm not actually happy to do this class online, but I'm hoping to just get it done.

If all goes well and I break my self-imposed curse I should only need three more classes to graduate. At the most. Of course, with UAA, that's subject to change as I think my degree plan is based on an old catalog and I wouldn't be surprised if they say I have to change it to match something more recent, but that's a future worry and I need to focus on the present.  

Song of the Day

Return to Black Tail Rocks

 

The jagged edge center-right was today's goal and in what would be one of the most technical hikes I've done in a long time, we made it to the furthest part of that edge. 

See, I've done Black Tail a few times now, but I've never made it all the way to the final peak. Usually I do this hike earlier in the year and there's always been too much snow left between the last peak and the next-to-last peak for me to go all the way. I really wanted to change that and today I did. 

As you can see, the weather wasn't exactly amazing hiking weather. But considering how quickly I tend to feel I'm overheating, I was a bit thankful for it. As soon as we started going up Baldy (the route most people use to get to Black Tail, though I have read about another way I'm thinking I should check out next summer) I was sweating. And not just a little bit. 

It took way longer than it felt like it should have to get to the final peak, but I blame them on the hike being more technical than I remembered and the weather. Wet rocks make for slow going when one is trying to keep from injuring themselves.  

Thankfully (and probably obviously), no one was injured and we made it back OK. Got to deal with some passing clouds, but that's just one of the joys of being in the mountains. And with a path as well worn as Black Tail, there wasn't much chance of getting lost even in cloud cover.

Overall, a great hike and one of my top ten for the area. However, you may notice there's no pictures of Hamlet in this one. That's because the couple times before when I tried to take him on this hike, something about the rocks here always tears his paw pads up. I don't know what it is, some other hiker once told me the peaks are made of shale as opposed to the granite further down and that's what's doing it. But I've seeing other dogs up there without any noticeable issues. Regardless, I have to leave Hamlet home when I do this hike and for that reason I don't do it as often as I'd like. 

Song of the Day 

Magic: The Gathering: The Hobbit, a set review. By a subpar player.

Pretty sure I said it before, but if not, this was the set I was most excited for in Magic's 2026 lineup. And now that we've had a couple weeks with the set, I think I can safely say this set was my biggest disappointment in 2026. Now to be fair, I didn't have much hope for the TMNT set or the Marvel Superheroes set, so those two couldn't really disappoint me. And I also don't have any hope for the coming Star Trek set, so that's not likely to disappoint me. The only other set left to come out this year will be Reality Fracture and while I don't expect much from it, it would still have a lot of work to do to disappoint me the way The Hobbit has.

I know a lot of players say this set shouldn't be compared to the Lord of the Rings expansion as they were released during different eras of Magic and intended for play in different formats. But my disappointment is less from card design (though there is some of that) and more from the treatment of the source material. LotR felt like it was really paying homage to the books; The Hobbit feels more like it's just taking ideas from the book. The best way to explain the what I mean in that difference is looking at the movies from the respective titles. The LotR movies felt like true adaptions of the books trying to capture them in all their epic glory while The Hobbit movies felt like a pathetic cash grab. That's how these two sets feel different from each other to me and I'm just thankful WotC didn't try to make The Hobbit set into three separate sets. 

Don't get me wrong, there's some good cards in the set and I'm sure some of them will eventually see regular play in formats outside of commander. But overall the set is just meh. How the set continues to sell is beyond me. I mean, I get that the collector product is selling - that's just the world of collectable card games these days and the scalpers and speculators that dominate the higher end of the market. But even the cheaper product is being bought up, seemingly by people hoping to open one or two cards that're worth the cost of a pack. Or maybe it's just a lot of people that don't know better and they're buying it up thinking they can use play product to get into scalping cards themselves, but if they're buying play product after the set has officially released, they're behind the curve. Which is fortunate for retailers as there seem to be a lot of these fools about. But I digress.

Anyways, I'm bummed to be bummed about this set, but happy to not feel the need to buy up a whole bunch of it.  

Song of the Day

Random bedtime thoughts

 Need to sleep. Got things to do in the morning. Lots to do over the next week and a half. Not sure when I'll get a good night's rest again. 

Thought about buying a ticket to see Nick Offerman at the state fair. Then I saw the price and decided against it. For that kind of money, I can get a lot of Magic cards I'll likely never play with. I definitely need to see more live stand-up comedy though. But I'm already seeing Modest Mouse at the fair; no need to see two shows there. Especially at those prices.

The weather has been shitty lately. And I don't know if it's that causing me to be in a sour mood these past few days or something else. Something deeper. Or maybe it's just me turning into an old man that likes to be mad at the world cause I don't know what else to be. I hope that doesn't mean I'm turning back into a republican.  

I don't feel like I've wasted this summer, but damn it still feels like it's coming to a close too fast and there was so much more I was hoping to do.  

Song of the Day 

Little personal victory lap

 Finally got my jog back up to three and a half miles, which to me is the point I like it at on the treadmill before I enter myself in any 5ks. Not that I have plans of entering into a 5k any time soon, but it's nice to feel like I could finish one if I did. Actually, I'm just waiting to find out if I'll be deploying in the near future and if not, I fully plan on signing up for the next 5k I can. 

 I've been trying to tell myself I don't actually like running - I'm just doing it cause I know it's good for me or to prove something to myself. But I think I actually do like it, at least somewhat. I've gotten to this point where when I get on the treadmill, I feel like it's just me vs. me and once I've gotten moving, I've already overcome the hardest part for myself (which is getting out of bed and getting on the treadmill). 

I really wish I could apply that mentality to other aspects of my life. But instead I often see it as me vs. those around me. And if I'm unsure of my chances at winning, I often just avoid whatever it is. Though really, ideally even, I wouldn't even see so many things as competition. But that's a whole other conversation.

Anyways, I finally feel like I'm getting back to being one of those annoying people that calls running a hobby again. And I like that feeling. Just hoping to keep with it (again).  

Song of the Day 

Compared to my time management, my money management isn't that bad

 I don't know where all the time goes. It absolutely baffles me how I feel I have so little time to do the things I want to do, especially during the work week. I swear when I was younger there was always so much more time, even when I was active duty. I remember working at Lakenheath and often putting in 10-hr work days, living 30 min from base, taking classes that took up my evenings, and still finding me-time most days. And I feel like I just don't get that anymore. 

These days I wake up close to 9 am, I work out, and then by the time I'm done getting ready for work, it's time to go to work. Then I get maybe an hour or so when I get home before I should be getting to bed to get a decent night's sleep and most of that is spent tidying up and trying to get a few things ready for the next day so I have a little less to worry about in the morning. 

I do know that some of my "lost" time is due to trying to get proper sleep (i.e. 7-8 hours) as I've gotten older, as opposed to the 5-6 hours I felt was OK when younger. But I still feel like there's a couple more hours in the day that have gone missing for me over the years. 

And really, I think a lot of what it is, is that just like my money, I nickle and dime my time away. Even without Facebook and Instagram, I find myself giving up five or ten minutes just doomscrolling on my phone. Multiple times a day. Then there's the "I just need to rest for a minute" breaks that turn into fifteen minutes of staring off into nothing. But on the other hand, a lot of those "nickels and dimes" of time can't really just be added together into one block of time for doing something else. Fifteen minutes wasted before work can't be added to fifteen minutes wasted after work to give myself thirty minutes to sit down and watch a show. Which makes time management feel all the more pointless. So much as I'm making it to work on time, everything else feels kinda secondary.  

Song of the Day 

Refocusing on finances, already

 Not that long ago, I talked about needing to focus better on my finances. Mostly on paying down (and ideally paying off) debt. And for a little while, I was doing pretty good not spending where I didn't need to spend. I even managed to avoid the FOMO for the new Magic set. At least for a little while. This past weekend, I caved.

I didn't buy as much as I was originally planning, but still spent more than I should. How did I justify it to myself? I didn't even bother. I knew as I was buying it that I was being foolish with my money. That the cards, and most of the product, would be there later when I was in a better financial position. And even if I ended up missing out on a "one time thing," there'll be more one time things to come. Yet some foolish part of my brain was telling me I needed to get some of these cards now. And I went with it.

I also bought other little things throughout the week last week (mostly snacks) that were completely pointless and a waste of money. Snacks being doubly so as I'm trying to lose some weight and while I've been jogging and hiking a decent amount, I've let my diet continue to be rather poor. Granted, it's not the worst that it's been and I know I don't have it in me to make it the best it could be, but I'm still leaning more toward the bad stuff than the good. 

Now I'm not here just to beat myself up, there were some small wins. Most notably yesterday when I went to a game store intended to buy a decent amount more of Hobbit product and then  when I got there I stopped myself. And today after getting some groceries I stopped myself from running back out "just to go look if something was still in stock" which is personal code for "if I see this thing, I'm gonna buy it and if they don't have it, I'll buy something else." 

The small irony being had I focused on paying off (and not adding back) my debt when I was in a better position to do so (like my last deployment), I'd right now be in a good position not only for buying more gaming stuff, but I could also start working on turning some of my Magic hobby into a side hustle. Though ideally instead of worrying about gaming or side hustles right now, I'd be planning some epic hiking trips, both in and out of state.

Song of the Day