Other Hobbies - Outside of Gym or Working Out

[MikeBiDude]

On 9/24/2023 at 9:01 PM, youngboldone said:

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

Now a Netflix limited series 

All the Light We Cannot See (TV Mini Series 2023) - IMDb

WWW.IMDB.COM

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3h 48m | TV-MA

 

[+ m_writer]

I know there was one post in another thread, but I've recently been getting into role-playing table top games like Dungeons and Dragons (on Saturday we played a five hour session at a friend's house over homemade peanut butter brownies and pizza and I loved it). The thing that I learned is that there are multiple genres of roleplaying games that are not just Dungeons and Dragons (I played Mighty Morphin Power Rangers as the Black Ranger and Marvel Multiverse where I played Iron Fist) like Vampire the Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, Transformers, Lord of the Rings, and even G.I. Joe and My Little Pony.

And believe it or not, all ages and genders are getting into it at the comic book shop I visit for sessions; I can't tell you how many kids, teenagers, and even Moms and Dads play with their kids (we had one five year old that impressed the DM with his unique ways of solving a problem; the DM actually said "I would have never thought of that").

It's fun to not only be on a quest with others but think of versatile and unconventional ways to get goals done and fight enemies (the DM basically rewards you if you think of a solution that surprises even them).  Also, you plan your history and motivations of your characters and it makes the experience so much richer, getting lost in a character and realizing your role is a part of a grand saga.

Plus, there are sites like Hero Forge that you can design your characters and they can 3-D print them and color them to your exact specifications so you can play with them during the sessions. Here's my two: a human acrobat Monk and a half-Orc, half-human nomadic wizard:

[Luv2play]

On 9/25/2023 at 8:50 AM, Pensant said:

While I rode a bit growing up in the country in Bucks County, I still love wearing the boots! I’m an avid road, mountain and gravel cyclist, love walking and hiking, reading and writing. I also do a fair amount of traveling. Lifting three times a week: modified x-fit. The past year I’ve been especially working on my core, and can now pop out five sets of ten toes-to-the bar. I’d love to resume tennis (I’ll need a coach). Any every year I vow to start piano lessons. 2024?

Love the carpet. Persian I assume. 

[BSR]

My hobby is languages.  As I've mentioned in other threads, I watch a lot of Spanish TV & movies.  Every day without fail, I watch something in Spanish even if it's just a 10-minute YT video.  Some days, it's hours of binging.  I learned Spanish in Salamanca decades ago, but it got woefully rusty until I discovered Spanish TV via Internet a ~decade ago.  My speaking ability is actually (far) better now than it was at the end of my year in Salamanca, and my listening comprehension is at least 10x better.

I also picked up French again after a 4+ decade break in study.  Yikes, more rust than the remains of the Titanic!  I've been doing Duolingo for only 6 weeks, but least I haven't skipped a day so far.  My goal is to be able to watch French series & movies on Netflix without English subtitles.  That's a long way off, but hey, the longest journey begins with the first step. 

And last, I watch YT videos in my original but forgotten native tongue, Tagalog (Filipino).  Unfortunately, my parents didn't know that you could raise kids bilingual and were very worried that I wouldn't learn English.  As soon as I picked up English in kindergarten, they stopped speaking Tagalog at home.  But I still understand it OK and was delighted to find a few great YT channels in Tagalog:  one about Filipino history, one by a guy dedicated to reviving the Spanish language in the Philippines, and one hilarious cooking channel by a super-campy gay guy.

Interesting note:  I can watch Tagalog YT vids at 1.5x speed just like almost every video in English despite very limited vocabulary (my vocabulary in Spanish must be 20x my Tagalog).  I can watch Spanish vids at 1.5x also, but it requires so much concentration that I'm mentally exhausted after 5 minutes.  Learning a language as a child must set in your brain in a way that adult learning simply can't match, no matter how much effort you put in.

Edited May 28 by BSR
Wording

[+ Charlie]

Learning new languages also fascinated me when I was younger. I studied Spanish in high school, German in college, French in graduate school, Dutch when I was having a hot affair with a guy in Amsterdam, Italian because I was an opera lover, and Czech when I lived and worked in Czechoslovakia. The only one in which I could genuinely claim to have become bi-lingual was German, because I kept working at it for years by participating in German conversation groups and taking summer courses in Austria until I was in my 40s, but the problem in learning languages as an adult is that you have to use it or you lose it. The only one which I still use at all is Spanish, because I am surrounded by it living in southern California.