March 30 Updates
Welcome back everyone! As always, it is great to see you. It was sort of a frustrating weekend but we cover the good and the bad here so get comfy and let’s discuss the latest.
A Meh Weekend
Let’s start with the weekend. It will definitely go down as a meh weekend. For one, Teresa came down with the flu, so movie night was cancelled. Hopefully she is better soon.
That’s okay though! Even though the main Saturday plan got cancelled, I had a great event lined up for Sunday - the latest meetup of the Pittsburgh Hounds group.
The Sunday event was taking place at a place that is a bar and a dog place. So they sell alcohol, but they also have a big outdoor enclosed space where your dogs can run around off leash. I had never been and was pretty excited to go.
I think I’ve covered this here and there on the blog, but my sleep schedule has become a late-night schedule as of the past few weeks. I’ve been going to bed around the 3am-4am range. In a typical day (today included), I briefly wake up around 830am to feed Pancake and Podo as well as take Podo out for a pee, and then I go back to sleep until sometime in the Noon - 2pm range.
As such, it was going to take some determined effort to wake up for this Hound Meetup - the event started at 10am, which means we were getting picked up at 9:40am, which means Podo needed to have already done a full walk by then. Erika didn’t even consider attending this - no way, she said. Way too early. I was determined to take Podo though. He has the time of his life running free and screaming his head off at these events. He’s such a good boy I owe it to him.
So anyway I make all these arrangements and arrive at the venue at 10am, and I find out that you need to present your dog’s vaccination records to enter the event. Somehow I missed this in the event description…probably because the fine print of the event is on Instagram and I refuse to use Instagram when the sole purpose is following the Pittsburgh Hound group. Since I live down the street from one of the people who organizes the events, I just find out about the events through them.
Normally this would be fine, except the vaccination records happened to be in Erika’s email, not mine (Pancake’s were in my email, which added to the sense of bad luck around this whole thing), and Erika was passed out asleep so my several calls to her did not reach her.
So, Podo was super-duper excited because obviously by the time we’re inside the building being told that we can’t actually attend the event, he sees what’s going on and is losing his mind over how awesome this is going to be…and then we had to just walk home. It was the most significant let-down I’ve felt in a while. Not to mention it was a three mile walk home, since we had gotten a ride from the event organizer, and they needed to, you know, run the event.
That was what largely defined Sunday. It wounded my soul to not be able to bring Podo to this event. That’s life though. It was an honest mistake on my part and I tried. We’ll be ready next time.
So, that was the weekend. A cancelled movie night and a botched Pittsburgh Hound meetup. Not the best time I’ve ever had.
Work Updates
Let’s take a peak at the work stats from last week, which was week two since our mini-reboot taking place in March here:
Readers of last week’s post saw that I am workshopping a six week schedule. After the six weeks, you take a week off. You get one day off during the first chunk of three weeks (called a personal day), and another in the second chunk of three weeks. You also get one half day per week. The goal is to work our way up to doing two hours of each discipline per day. We are taking weekends off.
420 is a meaningful number under this organizational system, because it’s working two hours per day four days a week, and 60 minutes per day on the half day. That’s 120 × 4 + 60 = 420. First of all, that is another surefire sign that I made a good decision in re-ordering my pot card last week (it still hasn’t gotten here yet). Second, it shows that last week we actually did all the game dev work that we set out to do. That was good.
Speedrunning saw a slow re-introduction, which is what I was expecting. The part of me that doesn’t really want to do any work at all knows that any number higher than 0 will get the more productive part of me off our collective backs for the time being, since at least we showed an improvement. Of course, that strategy only works for so long, since we now need to try and keep inching our work up as we close in on two hours a day per discipline.
This week is already showing some signs of time crunch. I had to dedicate most of yesterday to talking through work plans with Erika since, simply put, she’s having trouble acclimating to me starting to work more. It means I’m not as available to hang out - especially since I’m still doing the vast majority of the house chores, including all of our cooking. I’m also taking Podo on a two mile walk any day that it’s warm out since I want the kid to get some exercise. Weekdays are getting busy.
This resulted in yesterday being my choice for the personal day of this three week chunk we’re in. Working at night the way I had been wasn’t really working for Erika anymore. I think in order to do everything I’m trying to do, I’m going to have to start waking up a lot earlier, even though I would really rather not. As such, I’ve been up since 8:30am today. That’s part of what I talked through with Erika yesterday. If I sleep late I end up working late, and I think Erika and I have a history of hanging out when she gets out of work that we’re missing now that we haven’t been doing that.
It’s back to the early mornings for me. Timing aside, last week was a pretty good work week. Game dev is chugging along and has seen plenty of updates recently. We just need to keep putting in our two hours a day. Speedrunning is still being built back up, so I’m shooting for 30 minutes today.
Nine Pounds in Nine Weeks
The modest weight loss of 2026 is still going strong. Our seven-day average weight dropped by 0.7 last week, bringing us to an even nine pounds lost over our nine weeks of consistent effort. Here’s the data:
I mentioned that my pot card is on its way here in the mail. I think I’m going to try and have some pot this weekend in place of my usual quart of ice cream on the weekend cheat meal thing I’ve been doing lately. Trying to outpace a quart of ice cream a week in a weight loss campaign isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and having pot around will be a good motivation to give up the other vice for a weekend. Wish me luck. This continues to be slow, but we’re still inching downwards.
I think that’s it for now. I’m feeling a bit dull at the moment. At any rate I’m off to start game dev for the day. Have a great week everyone. I am rooting for you.
Wednesday Update
Okay it’s 9:30am. I’ve been up for an hour. I wound up going back to bed and sleeping until 2pm again yesterday, so today is really the day that I’m changing my sleep schedule.
The dopamine-now version of Robbie (named Rob, for the uninitiated) actually filed for breach of contract yesterday. Technically he’s right. During the last major negotiation, we clearly stated that wake up time was NOT going to be regulated. This is the sort of thing that dopamine-now Rob gets grumpy about. Honestly I see his point. We laid out a clear plan to sleep in and do work late in the day, and just because Erika didn’t like it, we’re now going back on the agreement like it’s no big deal.
As such, the following reparations are being made:
No work on Tuesday, March 31 due to the unexpected renegotiation of contract forced by Robbie changing the policies surrounding wake up times
Wednesday April 1 will be devoted to changing sleep schedule. Since changing sleep schedule constitutes work that we did not know we would need to be doing, the change of sleep is itself the work for the day. Regular work schedule will resume on Thursday April 2.
While not tied to work, while we’re here ironing out some ambiguities in the self-contract, yesterday Robbie mentioned higher up on this blog page that we might try to not have ice cream this weekend since we’re most likely going to have our pot card by then. Again, this was not the way the original deal was drawn up. We will be getting ice cream this weekend as usual per the one quart of ice cream per week section of the ongoing agreement.
That is all. Have a great day everyone. I will be back to work tomorrow, shooting for 2 hours of game dev and 30 minutes of speedrunning. See you then.
Thursday Update
Wow…what a day yesterday was. After checking in here in the morning with the news that I was going to take an extra day off, I took Podo for a walk. When I arrived back, I noticed that my new medical marijuana card had come in the mail.
Seems like pretty good timing to me. It was a very nice day out yesterday, so I made the 1.6 mile round trip walk down to the good ole pot store.
I bought the strongest pot they had, loaded the largest bowl I possibly could, and took a rip. This was probably around 2pm I’m guessing.
For people who haven’t been closely following my pot journey, I took just about the full year of 2025 away from pot. I stopped in early January, and then didn’t smoke again until November of that year. Then I had pot for about a month - basically from Thanksgiving until Christmas, and then I took another extended break. Yesterday, April 1, was my first day smoking pot since Christmas day of 2025.
WOW. I got stoned beyond what I imagined was still possible for me. For the first maybe 10 minutes I was sitting and watching Erika play a run of Slay the Spire II, and then I was like OH….I need to lie down. I then laid in bed and basically reprocessed my entire life. In a good way though.
One thing that happens if you get really, really stoned, is what you’re experiencing in that moment is SO different than your normal day to day life, you’re really able to easily view your day to day life as an outside observer. This is something that gets lost if you smoke all the time. Eventually the difference between being high and not high narrows and these sorts of insights disappear.
Almost immediately, I was able to see how tense I constantly am in day to day life. I am a walking stress ball. On some level I kind of know this, but being first-day-of-college stoned and experiencing that release of tension really put a spotlight on it. Like, dude. I need to be less fucking tense about everything.
I was able to empathize with my day-to-day self as an outside observer too, though. There’s endless reasons to BE tense all the time. This isn’t entirely unwarranted tension, it’s just not helpful. The world is a scary place. It’s hard to live in constant recognition of that fact, so it needs to be tucked away for our collective sanity…but the world is fucking bonkers. What the fuck, everyone.
I was able to appreciate Erika during the super high. Erika is my partner in our navigation of life, and I really owe everything to her. I am always trying to be a better partner to Erika, but I think I might be able to do that and have better outcomes post super high.
I was definitely able to appreciate both Podo and Pancake during the super high. Podo simply sat on the side of the bed for the entire 2 hour reprocessing of my life. The kid has no idea what is going on. He’s truly innocent, and I love him for that. Pancake is innocent as well, but she’s innocent comma grumpy. Still great don’t get me wrong.
Another oddity of this super high is I didn’t just launch into habitual pot use. I actually haven’t smoked again since that one super high, and it’s now 3:30pm the next day. Yes, 24 hours without smoking pot while it’s in the house might not sound like a long time to you, but it’s pretty surprising to me. IDK. Maybe I’m getting somewhere with this whole moderation thing? I think it was very acutely clear to me how much more valuable pot is if you use it very, very infrequently while contained within the super high. That combined with simply not having the emotional capacity to reprocess my entire life a second time in such short succession, and I’m kind of good with pot for now. We’ll see what the future holds.
Anyway yesterday did take on a party atmosphere after I picked up pot. Erika drank some tequila, we ordered take out, I had ice cream, the kitchen was left a disaster. It was a whole thing. It was very restorative and nice.
I also slept for 15 straight hours by the time I went to bed. I slept from 9pm to Noon the next day. Erika has pottery tonight, so I am still planning on working today since I should have some extra time with her out of the house. For now though I need to go clean this apartment. I might check in later today. TBD. Have a great day all.
Friday Update
Okay let’s see here. The weekend is taking form. I think I’m going to be hanging out at Maggie’s house tomorrow, and movie night got moved to Sunday for this week. Then the first Bollywood dance class starts on Monday!
This week was definitely a flop as far as work goes. I’m not going to lie…I don’t feel that bad about it. Maybe that’s good actually. The cycle of trying to work and then not working as much as I wanted to and then feeling bad about it isn’t the best loop that I spend my time in. We’re going to just vibe the rest of this weekend, and then shoot to be back strong on Monday. We can do this.
I did have a bowl of pot yesterday. It was fun. It was probably like 0.8 * the strength of the first experience. We’re going down the slippery slope. BUT, no one said you have to go down the entire slippery slope right? Like, I acknowledge that yes that’s what tends to happen, but I’ve also been feeling more positive vibes with pot this go around. Maybe if I keep checking in here and blogging about where on the slope we’re at, we can avoid barreling all the way toward the bottom. I do think I’ve gotten SO much positive out of this two day non-sober stretch. But it’s up to us to limit the downside. I’d like to think I’m optimistic, but not naively so.
The recent history is one bowl on Wednesday, and one bowl on Thursday. I’m probably going to have one bowl today, one Saturday, one Sunday, and then try to not smoke during the work week. We’re not in over our head yet. We’re just smoking a bowl and watching Love on the Spectrum with Erika. Things are good.
Speaking of Love on the Spectrum, some of the content there is way, way too relatable. The show definitely has some representation issues and it’s not perfect, but I have to say I do love it. The new season is on Netflix now.
A few weeks ago I blogged about rediscovering my early-life love of ‘professional wrestling’ like the WWF. After that deep dive, I wound up buying three pieces of Bret Hart memorabilia which means that my wardrobe right now is like 10 different tie dye shirts, two Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart shirts, two hoodies from Target, and one Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart hoodie. For non Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart enjoyers, Bret retired from pro wrestling following an injury in 2002, or 24 years ago. Everytime I walk around my neighborhood in these Bret Hart pieces, some older gentleman - almost always driving a pickup truck - will yell out the window to compliment what I’m wearing.
It kind of got me thinking about the weird overlap with toxic masculinity my interests naturally have had over time. I went to Wharton, I loved wrestling, I had a long stretch in my mid 20’s to mid 30’s where I loved power lifting, I’ve always liked NFL Football a lot more than I’m comfortable with admitting. Upon further reflection, I think I’ve decided that it’s actually not that weird, because really toxic masculinity eventually does a full rotation around the heterosphere and becomes pretty gay. And really, that’s the point where I like it.
Back to Love on the Spectrum, I can easily picture one of these characters turning and explaining to the camera that their wardrobe is 10 tie die t shirts and 3 pieces of memorabilia from a wrestler that retired in 2002 that they just recently got re-obsessed with. Actually, for people watching the show, what Logan wears on his first date is almost exactly what I regularly wore on my dates in my twenties, including on my first several dates with Erika.
One other thing I wanted to share here, is that my hand is really messed up. I try not to make too many excuses on this blog, but I think I’ve mentioned before that my right hand suffers from pretty extreme eczema flare ups, and we’re in that zone right now. This presents the biggest issue in the world of speedrunning. My right hand is an integral part of that operation.
Right now I’m wearing a nitrile glove smothered in vaseline pretty much 100% of the day, including the entire time I’m asleep. Honestly, it sucks. And honestly, it really does make me not want to work on speedrunning.
So again, not to make excuses but I just wanted to share that piece of information to help contextualize the lack of Mega Man 4 progress on here lately. I need to accept the condition my hand is in and just do the best I can with the hand. I see that as the path forward. But it’s also just a pain. Basically to start speedrunning, I have to remove my glove, wash my hands so that all the vaseline is removed, and then speedrun with my cracked hand. And basically right from the moment I start speedrunning (with no glove on), my hand will start to very rapidly dry itself out to the point of eventually being in pain and even eventually bleeding. It’s gnarly.
I do have another doctor’s appointment lined up for this Tuesday, but I’ve had this issue on and off for years - it just happens to be at one of its worst points right now - and it’s very hard to actually treat this. Thank you for listening to this complaint about my hand health. Maybe it will help me overcome it. I wish you the best of luck with whatever weird skin bull shit you’re probably dealing with, because in my experience, almost everyone has something.
That’s it for today - have a great weekend everyone!