Starcraft II mostly, a kind of descriptive review

Life is pretty good at the moment.

Everything seems to be going just fine. I am extremely happy in my relationship and I also got into Gold league in Starcraft II.

I reached one of my goals without trying that much. I was playing Starcraft II in order to do my video game hula hoop exercise routine. Hula hooping gets really tiring when you do it for a long time, so I ended up winning a lot of my games. Out of the blue the above image popped up onto my screen. I was speechless.

I don't really see much difference between the Gold league and Silver league. Except the fact that a lot of players I am versing think they are much better than what they are. I feel comfort that I can admit that I am not that great, hence not being delusional. Sometimes players can say the odd nasty thing about my ability, but I'm not too phased. I'm in Gold versing Gold players, not a Master! My ability, just like their's is not going to be that fantastic. It is kind of like a toddler telling another toddler that they are a noob in walking. It just sounds stupid.

So far my wins are greater than my losses, which is a good sign. However the game has changed a little bit too. A new update made it both easier and harder. It is easier because it lets you know how many probes you are mining at a mineral line and also the game starts on its own. There are also quite a few stats so you can see some of the factors that could have made you lose or win. It makes analysing a game much easier.

The hard thing about the new update is that it is harder to scout your opponent. If they are building something, you cannot click on it to see what it is. You have to scout long enough to see the finished product. Also, you cannot see your opponent's upgrades. Before you could click on their army and see how much armour and weapons they had in upgrades. Now it is harder to judge whether or not you can take on their army, because that information no longer exists. On the flip side, though, it also means your opponent doesn't know your upgrades either.

I have mixed feelings about the update. I like that I can analyse my games better now. I don't like how the game just starts on it's own. I don't see why the game has to automatically make my workers mine. It is one less thing I have to do, but I don't really want the game to play it for me.

Didn't really intend for this post to be about Starcraft II, but it just happened.

My gardening is going really well with my tomato plants flowering and everything else growing strong. I'll eventually post some photos, but can't be bothered hooking up my camera to the computer.

I also recently did the Color Run. That was fun. I like getting dirty.

Geneology

For some time now (years) I have been meaning to create my family tree.

I started collecting photos of my relatives and asked for birth dates and names. And then things got too difficult and I stopped.

Recently my brother sent me a whole heap of photos he collected from my cousin when he visited Portugal a year or so ago. I had no idea he collected the photos and only now did he have a look through them to send.

There is heaps of information right there. I know my grandmother's father's parents name. I know that my grandmother was named after her mother, and like her, died too soon. I never met my grandmother from my dad's side, so seeing photos of her is great.

She was so beautiful.

Now I am obsessed to know everything that I can about everyone. I have a whole lot of photos, some I have no idea who they are. I visited my mother and went through the photos with her to see if she recognised anyone. She then let me know some of the family stories.

A very interesting story is one from my dad's side. About my grandfather's sister and my grandmother's sister. They both got impregnated by the same man at the same time. He then married my grandmother's sister because she was the youngest, and abandoned my grandfather's sister with a child. He then had more children with my grandmother's sister. This means that my grandfather's niece and my grandmother's nieces and nephew are half siblings. Here I was thinking that these people were only related by marriage. Nope, there is the same blood running through there on both sides!

Below I created a diagram in order to figure it out visually. I had to be a little bit creative with the family tree structure...

Then I asked my mother about one of her cousins. I asked who his mother was. I was confused because I knew that my great grandmother only had one surviving child, which was my grandmother (mother's side). I knew she had half siblings as her father moved on to another two women, so I was wondering if this particular cousin of my mother's came from one of those half siblings of my grandmother. Nope, it is more complicated than that. I had to go back to my great great grandmother. She had two children with a man, and then another child with another. Her first man also changed partners and had a daughter. That daughter of his then had another daughter and that person is the mother of my mother's cousin.

Thing is, I call the children of my mother's cousin my cousins. So I would like to include them in the family tree.

With all this in mind, drawing up a family tree will be a bit of a nightmare if I want to include everyone I know!

However this information journey is pretty cool. Just recently found out that my mother was present at my grandparent's wedding. They got married after having four children. I thought these kind of things only happened in the most recent generations. Guess not!

Starting what I never finished

Lately I have been doing some things I have planned to do in years.

One of those things is the print out a selection of my digital photos to put them in albums from 2004 until today. I planned to do this about 3 years ago when a bunch of photos got deleted from my computer, which I was lucky to have on CD at the time. The CD was slightly scratched and it took awhile for the computer to read it. I thought, "that was a close one, but one day that CD is going to fail."

Three years later (and many computer upgrades) I have started what I failed to start (and therefore finish). So far I have managed to print photos from 2004-2006. It turned out to be 385 photos and $74. Six more years to go... And counting.

I can only expect there to be way more photos in the coming years. Back in 2004-2006 my SD card was 512Mb big and I didn't have as much freedom to insanely point and shoot. I then acquired a 2gb card at around 2007. This is where things are going to get interesting (or extremely annoying considering I have to go through them all and select the best ones.)

It is also quite awkward. During 2004-2010 I was with my ex. There are a lot of photos that he is in. I have been cutting him out of a few, but he will always end up in some. I have to accept that he was a part of my past and I can't erase him completely.

It is also quite noticeable how big my boobs have grown since then.  

Holidays, plants and heatwaves don't mix

The past two and a half weeks I have been overseas.

This means that no one was around to water my plants for that entire time. Furthermore, during one of those weeks there was a heatwave of temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius.

Before I left I had been battling with caterpillars. They were taking over and that was my main concern. Now I don't have to worry about caterpillars because most of the plants are dead.

Dried and brittle. It was a sad sight. My lush lettuce has turned stiff. My tomato seedlings crisp.
Everything brown.

A year ago I learned that water is vital for plants to stay alive. This time round I learned that you should have a watering plan when leaving for holidays, due to the fact of lesson number one. They absolutely do not survive without water.

All has not failed yet. My basil plant from a year ago is still alive and well. I think I have trained it to handle extreme conditions, because it cannot bet on ideal ones.

My lemon tree is still living, just a little bit sad...

I think I can salvage my chocolate mint as there is a little bit of green on one of the areas. However it is going to take a long time to repair.

My Youngberry still has a bit of green, so may survive also.

May need to do a bit of replacement shopping...

Water. Very important for plant survival!

The video game/ hula hoop exercise routine

I have been meaning to get more exercise in my life.

Ever since I got myself an office job and stopped partner dancing I have been easily putting on weight. Even though I am only 63kgs with a height of 169cms, I still feel like I could be more fit.

Problem is that most exercise routines are boring.

So I thought about what would motivate me. Firstly, I would like to get better at Starcraft 2. Secondly, I have a hula hoop I have hardly used.

My thought it that if I use hula hooping as punishment for every Starcraft 2 game I lose, then it will motivate me to get better and also have me hula hooping.

The routine below:

1. Play Starcraft 2.

2. Each game lost is 1 minute of hula hooping.

3. If losing games in a row, double amount of hula hooping each time (e.g., lost 2 games in a row, 4 minutes of hula hooping [1 + 1 = 2; 2x2 = 4]; lost 3 games in a row, 10 minutes of hula hooping [ 2 lost games = 4 mins; 4 + 1 = 5; 5 x 2 = 10].

4. Hula hoop non-stop until all time completed.

I was losing a lot of games recently so thought that I would get a lot of hula hooping done because of this. The moment I decided to do this I have been winning my games. I guess this is a win win situation.

Tomato plant transfer 1

About 4 days ago I transferred my sprouting tomato seeds into their own little tub. I was a bit hesitant doing this because I was afraid that I would kill them all.

I didn't, as per below. A photo taken today.

They have started to grow their true leaves. Last year this is the point where I failed. I hardly got any true leaves and the plants just died. This time they seem quite strong.

It seems like I have no room to fail.
As I transferred one of the sprouts, the root completely snapped off. I thought there would be no hope for that sprout, however I still placed it in its own tub out of respect. After awhile it shrivelled up a little bit while the others kept upright. I was sure it was dead. I left it be and visited it the next day to mourn my loss. To my surprise it was no longer shrivelled, but completely upright. The little guy is not doing excellent and looks no different from the rest.

Even with no root, I was able to successfully transfer a sprout. This really boosts my confidence in gardening.

I made sure there was enough feed in their new placement too.
In each tub I added premium soil and soil for seeds and cuttings. In between the two different soils I added a tomato feed, so that when I created the holes to place the sprouts, the roots would have full access to the feed. I am unsure if doing that really helped with the survival or the fact that I have been watering them everyday.

When my other plants died last year I asked for some advice from a person I know. She told me that a wise person once told her that the key to the survival of a plant is:

1. Water it
2. Give it sunshine

At the time I though that it could not be that simple, but really, it is... who knew?

Ending relationships

For my previous post, I had to look through folders of old photos. A lot of these photos featured my ex and I felt a bit awkward going through them.

I have six years worth of photos with my ex. That is a lot of photos. And it also shows signs of the relationship slowly fading, which made me think about it a bit.

It was not obvious back then, but now I can clearly see my disinterest in the photos. I was not happy.

In the first couple of years I can see happiness in the relationship. It was new, it was my first and I was glad I was in it. It was something I thought I needed at the time.

Then, things were not so new any more. We started living together. So many things irritated me about him, but I thought it was just my hormones. In photos I looked glum and even sometimes grumpy. This was during last three years of the relationship.

Why wasn't it obvious during those three years that the relationship just had to end? Why weren't the signs obvious?

Image source here

Now I would think it would be obvious if I did it all again. But as a reminder, I have created the following list.

When you can be sure the relationship has to end:

1. You feel unhappy with your partner at all times.
2. Your partner has a way of irritating you like no other person.
3. You no longer feel physically or mentally attracted to them. In other words, you feel no attraction to them at all.
4. You do not feel any joy seeing them after not seeing them for a period of time.
5. You rather be somewhere else or with someone else when with your partner.
6. You cannot imagine a happy future together.
7. When you do not want to take any time or energy fixing the relationship because you feel like it is unfixable.
8. When you are constantly thinking whether or not it should end. If you are thinking about it, there has to be a reason why.
9. You cannot find any positives or qualities in your partner that are worth tolerating any negative.
10. When you both do not want the same type of live. 

Image source here

Even though all of the above was true, I still kept at it. I knew I wanted out, but didn't know how to do it. I felt insecure about myself. I felt like no one else would want to be with me. I felt like we had gone through too many years to give it all up.

I felt responsible for his happiness. I did not want to crush him. I did not want to make him feel like I took away a lot of his time. I did not want the blame.

In hindsight, the quicker I would end it, the best it would have been for the both of us. Ending it allowed him to get on with his life, and it allowed me to see what I truly wanted. It was like being freed from a ball and chain.

Ending it allowed me to be free to find someone else. Someone who I never thought would enter my life. Someone who I am with now.

Hopefully the same will happen to him, if it hasn't already.