Under the boardwalk
I'm beginning to get suggestions for things to add to my 52 challenges. More than one person has suggested sky diving, which makes me wonder whether it was a mistake to not have a complete list when I started this endeavour. Actually I like most of the suggestions and I definitely enjoy the conversations about what other people would have on their list. My friend Kevin has mountains on his. I could relate to that, except I fear his challenge would involve running up them. Janet has suggested archery. As she's a close neighbour I'm a little nervous about that, but I like the idea.
I've also been discussing with Phil whether I should attempt to finish one of the many computer games from my youth that I never completed. And which of those might actually be achievable. There's Ant Attack or Jet Pac, but I feel I made quite a lot of progress on those, and may even have finished them. There's also Jet Set Willy, but I never got anywhere near completing that, and possibly never would - although I do actually have a port of it for the old Cambridge Computer Z88 that I have with me here in Canada.
I think the one I really want to tackle though is Lords of Midnight. That one I spent a lot of time on but never beat, but it felt do-able. Also, I have a copy of it here. No ZX Spectrum to play it on of course.
(BTW There’s a bit more about the games I used to play on Diderot here: https://diderot.world/hive/655e6e0bbe164c92d7e53612)
In the meantime, for this week I’ve been focussing on keeping my new habits on track and learning some woodworking skills.
The woodworking was actually all compressed into this Sunday, when Roger (my very patient tutor for the day) and I began work on a new boardwalk for the garden. The intention is to build a boardwalk to link two new paths we've already added to the garden. The difficult bit is that we have to take the boardwalk over multiple tree roots and adjust for the height difference between the two parts of the garden, all while keeping the wooden path level. Also, to increase the challenge we decided to use the wooden ladders from the old play fort that was already in the garden.
After a lot of measurement, sawing, hitting and quite a number of drill holes and screws, we managed to get the base complete, ready for the planks to go on top. Despite being mocked by some for our lack of progress, we both think we did a good job!
Roger also brought over a book to help me progress my woodworking technique. I'm tentatively thinking about building a garden bench. Chrissy has even said that she might like to help.
Meanwhile, to keep track of my habits I've started using a habit tracker on my iPhone that I first downloaded years ago called, appropriately enough, Habit Tracker. I like the integration with my Apple Watch and the overall visual presentation of it. I'm using it to keep track of my piano practice, chess study, French listening and writing for Diderot. I'm also keeping track of my reading (I've started to use Goodreads for that as well), and stretching - although that's part of my general fitness training that I haven't included in this set of challenges because I've been doing it for quite a while already.
So far I'm on track with all of my #52in52 habits. But I am only just over a week in. I've just realised I should add daily walk to the things that I'm tracking, instead of just using my fitness app. Don't worry, although it's not on the list below, I've been out there every day so far.
