Quinn Chrest

Made it through security! Minot bound in an hour for Christmas. Now to find a cocktail bar and read a book.

Some app ideas that I’ve shied away from in the past involve some simple database tables but I didn’t want to pay to deploy one or worry about hosting one locally that is open on the network. For some reason, I didn’t know SQLite existed. For those of you who also have been under a rock like me, SQLite is a database engine that is self-contained within an application stored as a data file. Found out it’s popular in mobile development with IOS and Android applications. Giving the SQLite3 node package a go on a step tracking/logging application I want to build.

I wanted to give myself the challenge of recreating a game in Javascript! Took it easy for the first go around with Snake. Used the PixiJS library for rendering and handling the game loop. Wrote up a basic overview with some code documentation over on GitHub. Also deployed it on GitHub pages if you wanna give it a try!

Repo: https://github.com/QuinnChrest/Snake

Deployed at: https://quinnchrest.github.io/Snake/

Hey it’s been a while… Life’s been busy, but here’s some cookies! I made some cake box cookies like I used to make with my mother. Easy peasy recipe! You just need a stick of butter, one egg, and a box of cake mix at 350 for 10 or so min. Strawberry and lemon are the ones shown below 👇

Making homemade scones with Rosalin and Tim! I made blackberry lime and Rosalin has white chocolate and strawberry in the oven.

In Fargo for the last Bison home game of the season with my old man! ROLL HERD

Super proud of my friend Blair for completing his Warrant Officer training! I attended his graduation ceremony at Camp Ripley this morning to congratulate him on his efforts. Thank you for going above and beyond the normal call of duty.

We are 8.5 hours into When We Were Young 2023 and I’m hitting the wall! Gotta rally for Blink-182 and Green Day.

Went to Anoka Vintage Fest with Aunt Heidi today. Had a great time and found some cool stuff! Wanted to share some of the haul. I got a Naruto shirt to match my Naruto sweatpants and a Tokyo-themed shirt. Loved the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Nintendo Power poster. It is unfortunate that it originally came folded so there are creases, but it is cool nonetheless. Got a great deal on the medieval chess set which is made in Italy. A couple of the pieces are a little broken but I can fix that with some super glue and modeling paint. Finally, rest his soul, I found a Jimmy Buffett greatest hits CD. I grew up listening to Jimmy Buffett with my father so his music holds a special place in my heart.

Had my Bison sweatshirt on for game day! Caught bits and pieces of Missouri State game while I was out. Dad was a bit concerned after their recent performance but it looks like we stomped them out 38 - 10!

Happy Birthday to Rosalin! Had a wonderful dinner at Jax to celebrate. Also Jax was so awesome. I had a grin across my face the whole evening.

Hey, it’s been a while. I have been super busy with career advancements, working on health goals, and juggling a social life. I don’t think it’s going to get any easier, but this sort of busy chaos has been a blast.

Currently out walking on Victory Memorial Parkway and I thought why not walk and talk. This means the whole blog post is being dictated while my phone listens. 🤷 I don’t know. Seems pretty self-explanatory.

The first thing that pops into my head is how busy I’m going to be in the coming months. I’ve booked out most of my weekends but the thing I’m most excited for is going to Vegas again over the weekend of the 21st. I was able to snag some tickets to When We Were Young Fest 2 and my best friend Brandon is meeting me there. It’s a music festival with a bunch of alternative rock and teen angst bands. Looking forward to seeing blink-182 and Games We Play. Also, while I’m there, I’d like to go to Zack Bagans Haunted Museum and try to get a tour of that new giant sphere venue. The clips from the U2 concert looked phenomenal.

On the health goals front, I have been counting my calories for the last month or so and keeping a fitness diary. This has been a huge help and since starting I’ve dropped some more weight along with two and a half inches off my stomach. Woohoo! For weightlifting, I’ve been doing the strong lifts 5x5 and really enjoying that as well. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been and my working sets have increased by 30 lb in the last few weeks. Thanks to everyone for the recent compliments. It helps me realize that I’m still making progress even though I myself don’t see it sometimes.

With the return of federal student debt, I’ve kind of given up on owning a home for a few more years. I think it was a bit ambitious of me to try and buy a home at 26 anyway 😆. I love living with Rosalin and Kurt and I’m sure they’re not in any hurry to get rid of me, but I would like to move into my own space sooner rather than later. So I started looking at apartments in the area and I’m happy to see the prices are coming down a bit.

This last weekend I got to go to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival with my good friends Blair and Connor. Kind of routine for me at this point to go once a year. This time wasn’t that great due to the high humidity and heat. It was difficult to find shade with no clouds in the sky. But I indulged on the cheat day and had pork chop on a stick, mini pancakes, and fudge filled banana bread along with plenty of mead. We ended with a viewing of the medieval jousting. To escape the heat we scurried off to Mall of America where I finally bought myself a pair of HOKA’s. They are these very comfortable shoes that have been recommended to me by Heidi and Lance. They’re a bit more expensive than what I would spend on shoes normally, but they’ve been worth it.

I think I’ll wrap it up here with a thank you if you’ve made it this far. I have family members that have mentioned they would like to get emailed when I post on my blog so maybe I should look into setting something like that up. After getting home from this walk I’ll look over the post and add links to anything I’ve mentioned that I feel is linkworthy. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your week!

OMG I didn’t realize how much counting your calories mattered. I was just kind of guesstimating through my day before and was getting annoyed with how inconsistent my results were. Turns out I was underestimating how much I was actually eating. I started counting my calories last week and eating at a higher deficit and it is working out pretty well for me. Starting up a new lifting regiment this week as well with the Strong lifts 5x5. Including a cool picture of the Victory Memorial Monument I took over the weekend.

Hitting Cardio goals this week! Managed to crank out two 12 minute miles at 5 mph on the treadmill this week. This is the third time I’ve done this since the beginning of my fitness journey. I don’t think I was this in shape in high school or maybe I just didn’t try as hard then 😂

This year I joined my Aunt Heidi, her husband Frank, Uncle Lance, Christa, and Eric for my first-ever visit to the Minnesota State Fair! To beat the traffic and get good parking we left to get there at 7 AM which is not a fun time to be awake on the weekends but we managed. Didn’t have much planned for the day other than checking out some new food items this year.

After getting our Pronto Pop breakfast in we went to Shanghai Henri’s to get the Crispy Lutefisk Steam Bun. For those Norwegians out there that had to try this horrible fish chemistry project at family holidays know to stay away from this stuff but I actually enjoyed it. Along with the Asian sauces was that pungent fish flavor that reminds you of dried fish or fish jerky. I know that sounds gross to most but I enjoy this weird stuff.

Needing a drink to wash down the lutefisk we ran over to the Schells booth to grab their Grainbelt Blu slushie. They power about a 3/4 of a pint of Grainbelt Blu and then top it off with a slushie making it a refreshing drink for a warm day that lets you be a kid again gulping down a slurpee. While walking around with our adult beverages we stumbled upon a pelts and taxidermy booth. I had to snap a picture of these cute guys in the canoe.

With full bellies, it was time to check out the vendors at the grandstand. It was fun to look at all the stuff but I’m unfortunately not in the business of buying overpriced knickknacks. I did catch a few laughs looking at comedic items that say “Ope!” and “You Betcha”. Took this picture outside of the grandstand with Lance on the left and Heidi and Frank on the right.

At one point I could feel my Norwegian ancestor calling me and from across the way, I spotted a Lefse stall. Knowing what I had to do I grabbed a couple with butter and white sugar to share with the others. Lance said my Grandpa Milo would be proud of me having Lutefisk and Lefse :).

Also, had fried gator bites that reminded me of chicken gizzards, and of course, I had to have a bucket of Martha’s chocolate chip cookies. Maybe I should retitle this blog food I ate at the state fair since that’s mostly all we did was eat lol. By the end of it we had walked about 8 miles and I snapped this picture as we were about to leave. You could tell everyone was getting tired! From left to right is Me, Frank, Eric, Christa, Heidi, and Lance.

Switching up the work out routine. Wanted to try something different to compare results with what I was doing before. Especially since I’ve been having trouble pinning down a consistent routine that I like. Going back to the basics! Walk and hit 10k steps a day with 3 lifting days. Wish me luck!

Pretty proud of myself! Got one of my private student loans paid off before the federal ones kick back in.

I’d like to put a spotlight on one of my favorite youtube channels HealthyGamerGG. I would say in my generation there is a mental health crisis of many degrees with those affected not having the tools to handle it and people can be uncomfortable or unwilling to seek therapy/help. Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Alok Kanojia created the channel to assist those in the online space by imparting his knowledge in a way that makes sense to those who escape into the online world. I enjoy listening to his content as I go about my day and it has helped me be more introspective. I specifically really enjoyed his talk titled “Why Your Sleep Schedule Sucks (And How To Fix It!)” because god knows we could all use some more sleep 😂.

www.youtube.com/@HealthyG…

Got new glasses in the mail from Zenni. First time ordering glasses online and I’m really happy with this new pair especially since they were only $65!

Unfortunately, I contracted the plague from those little germ balls known as babies. I will return to posting soon but I have a word of advice to avoid misfortune that has been done on to me. Don’t eat food that was offered to you after the baby took a bite no matter how cute they offer it to you…

Working remote this week in my hometown so I can visit friends and family. My father, Tim Chrest, has been brewing beer for years now and he grows his own hops in his garden. This year the hops are going crazy and he has a jungle growing in his back yard!