LadyCrimson

I'm assuming it's because of covid, but there's a serious lack of newer movies to rent or that come to things like HBO etc. Most are low-rent B flicks (US or otherwise) or a few indies doing VoD releases. So I tried Netflix's Project Power (haven't finished it, I watch while pedal-exercising). Has a good cast. It's a ton better so far than Bright. Still, I feel like I've seen too many things like it. The first 40 minutes feels like setup and introduction, which seems too long for that. But it's decent enough to give a try if one is into its concept at all. I think this is a good time for an 80's/early 90's fave film binge.

I'm a bit North of Hurl so temps are a bit more moderate (I was very close to Morgan Hill for 15 years tho) but yeah ... we tend to get one or two weeks of 90F+ weather a summer, often broken up into 2-4 days at a time, unless we get the late fall heat wave. Most of the time day to day it's more like 78-82F where I am maybe. Humidity tends to be on the lower side but not this week. Humidity+heat kills me - which is why I won't be old-age home-ing to the popular Flordia locations or similar. Last night was tropical thunder here. Lightning show/thunder/rain for a long time in the wee hours while still a warm night. Not typical for the area and always interesting when it happens. Edit: my personal heat tolerance is about 80F and that's if I'm sitting still indoors. Which is why I have a wall A/C unit in my room - high-tech heats up a room in no time to way past that (hubby has one too to keep his pc/servers cool).

Time to toss some more magazines and old notebooks and other paper-y things, make room on shelves! ...giant C+ or C++ or something textbook, outta here! (other things too) ...no, can't toss that. Or that. Or that. ...dangit.

So I'd found a brand of kim chi (they're in Oregon) sold via Amazon. Make it fresh when you order, bag it, send it to you. Came in 3 pounds. Store bought jars I've had were 14 oz I think, and I could eat two of those in a week easily so 3 pounds didn't seem like a huge stretch. Anyway, turns out 3 pounds is a lot (filled a giant mason jar) since after an initial binge week the amount eaten can drop heavily. Was dubious about online kim-chi but this is good stuff, I'll buy it again ... if I ever finish this jar. Still have almost 1/4 of it left. (originally full to the lid, time period minus 2 weeks while I was sick/not eating much...)

Leftover tomato/hamburg. veggie sauce left. Cut up eggplant, cook in pan a bit, put that chunky sauce on both sides, flip it around a bit, put cheese on top, flip it some more. Yummy, but washing the pan was a reminder why I don't apply cheese in most cooking processes. Not just the pan/sink/drain mess but it ruins/wastes any dish scrubber/sponge. Just keeping on keeping on. Day to day. A lot of minor home improvement/rearrangement or replacement of lots of "things" lately, from kitchen stuff to tables to shelves to chairs. So much we have is 15-20 years old and it's time to throw out and get new and better suited to current needs. Except mother's Pyrex (glass) bakeware/bread pans. Pyrex seems to be less quality (or less quality control at any rate) every decade (manual can openers are another thing like that). Never getting rid of those mom originals (40+ years old/super heavy use and still fine).

I don't remember Dungeon Siege 2 looking like... oh wait.

Been occasionally watching The Chef Show via Netflix. It's the one with Jon Favreau, his "chef" and some famous guest star appearances. I wish they focused a bit more on the making of food and less on the guest stars but it's kind of entertaining for 30 min. chunks. But lord, 65% of the meals made would give me a heart attack. Like, frying a 1/2 pound of bacon where you can see an inch of liquid grease in the pan and then he ADDS TONS OF BUTTER to it then mixing it with some other fatty meat or fried bread or.... I'm sure it all tastes good but I like my meals to be a little less overwhelmingly fat saturated.

If it ain't 8+ glasses of lemon juice/water+ cayenne pepper, it ain't a real cleanse. I rarely ate bread per se - my goliath is white rice. Y'know, (mostly) meat and (cabbage/bok choy other) veggie stir fries over a mound of plated rice. Now I'm not supposed to eat white rice (at least not much of it). 3 slices of whole grain bread a day. 1/2 sandwich or with a tiny bit of jam or put my veggie mixes on it. Sigh.

My solution to backlogs is not to develop a backlog. You don't save money, so to speak, if you never actually play/use those things you bought on sale. Such always reminds me (in an offhand/parallel way) of those old folks who would spend a dollar+ in gas to drive across town/city to save 25 cents with a coupon. That said, I'm kinda the same way these days regarding often installing a newly purchase game that I think I might be interested in (since there is rarely a "new" game I'm truly interested in), but then by the time it downloads/installs, I'm doing something else or don't want to play, and it'll sit on the PC untouched for ages. At some point you just have to either: --admit you're not going to play it any time "soon" and just uninstall it --force yourself to play it for at least two hours, or maybe two sessions of 2 hours. If, after that, you still never go back to it for weeks/months, uninstall it and consider it off the backlog.

Kodachrome - another one of those movies in the Netflix watchlist for ages. Finally got around to watching it. I love Ed Harris, so to me he's the best thing in the movie. I also like (well done) "road trip" films. This one is ok but drags occasionally and is overall rather downbeat (Ed Harris' chr. is not a lovable one). I was expecting father and son, but was given father, son, and a nurse (with a predictable side of romance stuck in that could have done without). I liked the nostalgia related to photography and 35mm (35mm film cameras seem so small/light now vs. the bigger DSLR's). I remember putting in the film, winding it up...taking a picture and manually pulling the lever to advance the film...memories. Anyway, maybe a 7/10.

So...more diet stuff. Sorry, it's become my life (eventually I'll have it all worked out and I'll stop thinking about it). I can eat some starchy carbs, right, just very limited amounts per meal/day, because starchy carbs = high Glycemic Load (how much/high blood sugar may spike). According to the 'net (and we all know the 'net is never wrong), a baked russet potato would/could have a higher GL than ... a doughnut (not that I care, I almost never ate potatoes anyway). Thus diet is now high veggies/high fiber and low starch and sugar carb foods (I learned too much fruit isn't great...). "Starchy beans" tho, are supposedly good or at least a lot better so that would be a filler most would use. My personal problem: I hate starchy beans. Hence one reason why I don't like/don't eat typical burritos, chilis, etc. Hearty soups and casseroles - 99% of recipes call for one or more of the following (seemingly making up about 90% of the meal): --lots of potatoes --lots of beans --tons of white/egg pasta --lots of rice (often white rice) --lots of meat/sausage/bacon etc. (I want min. protein and low-med. fat, at least in shorter term) So...hm. Use lean hamburger or white chicken (and less of it) vs. other meats. Use mushrooms and eggplant (I love eggplant) instead of beans. Try brown rice (not fond of that either but...). On the bright side, I treated myself to a pizza - eggplant, sausage (they never put tons of it on anyway), artichoke hearts, tomato. Ate one piece. Scraped the topping off a 2nd piece (too much "white bread") and put it on whole grain bread. 90 minutes later, blood sugar was still "reasonable." Cool. I can still eat pizza (just can't have meat-junk pizzas...). Huzzah!

*idea flash* I know! We have enough concrete slab patio area in the backyard - just need to cover some of it, then put an exercycle out there (with a cover for it too). Then I could ride it while staring at the trees in the backyard, watch/listen to the rain, etc. Hey hubby, get on that. (rain/sun cover).

Don't really have the home footprint space for typical exer-machines. The house is tiny, 980sf (built 1950's), w/almost no closet space, and bedrooms are stuffed with tech and desks, 1 car garage has washer, hubby's work table and giant shelves of "stuff" and the smallish front living area with table, shelves, TV/furniture. There's like no large open floor space at all. The backyard is bigger than the house, ha. That's why I bought my heavy duty pedals-only thingie that you can use sitting in a desk chair you already have. It works quite nicely actually, but as I said ... I'm lazy. I did re-arrange my "office" so it's easier to use it (don't have to move it around the desk/out of the way all the time, maybe slightly more motivating that way).

^ Hubby had two monitors, then three, then around covid and work at home, four (27"/1080's), now he's obsessed with testing 55" 4k TV's (so he can have 4 1080 programs on one screen for all his work at home remote desktop and other stuff). I wonder if he'll go blind from all the glare from less than 2 feet away. Of course, like I should talk. I'd steal his 55" if it would fit on my desk w/my other stuff. Hasn't been very long but after diet adjustments and body healing, blood sugar is already pretty low (100) upon waking and tolerable a couple hours after eating (200 +/-). Gives me hope I might be one of those who someday could maybe not even need insulin shots (some oral meds maybe). Diet's overall no problem. But exercise ... Without specific activity/friend hobbies like I did in my youth, on my own I've always been lucky if I got off my arse and did 30mins twice a week. Everyday? pffffft. I'm trying but at the moment more like 30-40min light/moderate every other day. Plus I'm still muscle-weak (excuses...). Did gain back a few pounds (mostly water weight I'd guess) but my legs/hips are still sticks, I can barely get my knees/upper thighs to touch when standing. Better than skin and bones now but still ugh. Anyway...lab appointment in 3-4 weeks for them to check the triglycerides. Hoping with body healing/pancreas not going crazy and all of that, that those will have gone way way down too. Maybe closer to "normal" even.

Borderlands 3 - apparently they patched the game so Legendaries now appear in vending machines. Of course I had to check that out, and yup, they sure do. Way too often. Sometimes 5 at a time. Seriously Monty Hall. And they're pretty cheap to purchase, as well. Of course, those very rare ones (with the parts/Annointments you want) would still be very rare and likely better off still farming certain bosses for those few (the Legendary loot pool is too RNG large and most are trash). Still ... they really need to lower the odds for the machines. Must be like 30%-40% chance to spawn one/more. It does however make it easier to get some Mayhem10 Legendaries, since you can farm machines and not fight a single thing, until you get something that can help survive M10 to farm bosses for the ideal things/versions.

^ I think Borderlands type games are about as "shooter" as I'd get on a controller. I'm half-comfortable with that level of it by now, where you side step to adjust aim a bit, more than you "turn". But if you then get on KB/mouse you're reminded how much more precise, faster and easier it is, how much less often you miss, etc, even with something like Borderlands.

The Outpost (Prime rental) - the very tight frame cropping for this film made me wonder if it would've played better in a theater (or at least "widescreen") vs. 16:9 cropping. Maybe it was a director thing tho. It's not that there were extreme face close-ups but you know how most framing has some emptiness to the sides that's not very important to a scene? This movie had little of that - it's a strange sensation is all. Anyway, it's a war film and for most of its run time it bounces back and forth between a bit of sudden firefighting and the soldiers talking in soldier-y ways re: their post, lives, that are supposed to pass for characterization and bonding etc. Then a big fight towards the end. Some shaky cam in spots but not excessive. Looks good and actions are filmed well enough but doesn't really have arcs, plot in a normal sense, imo. Not awful, but not really worth the rent fee, save it for a freebie someday. There is a brief bit before the halfway mark that was super funny tho. Most interesting thing (to me) is watching Scott Eastwood. Occasionally he sounds so much like his father it's uncanny. I've a loose eye on him for a bit - don't think he'll ever reach Clint's abilities/level but he may do fairly well over a long span if he's picky about his roles.

Vivarium. Very Twilight Zone-ish, but there's a reason why most of that series was less than half an hour long. Film has an interesting (if not particularly original) concept/ideas and it's on the surface creepy at times, but it's stretched too thin (and without much characterization, seemingly purposefully) and you'll get a little bored trying not to fast forward. Also, there's no concrete answers given and most of what is given you've already guessed before it's halfway through. Ambiguous/largely unexplained is fine but this isn't satisfying.

At least there's lots of little walking paths around here, amidst all the office industrial places, that are just 5 minutes away or whatever. Most of the time I simply walk out the front door and walk some blocks tho. Easier. Phone cameras still suck, imo. Could you spend more time/effort/settings to make them come out better in some conditions? Probably. But half the time you can't see the screen well to frame (too bright outside) or hold it steady enough so why bother. Shrink it enough and it looks ok... ha. Best for middle-closer distances. Hence, food blogs and selfies, right. Squirrel!

I laughed heartily at that one, thanks. One thing that tossed up a flag and stubbornness on my part was she was prescribing a 2nd cholesterol/heart prescription on top of the one they already gave me, because of the triglyceride level while in the hospital I guess ... "to make sure we get that down." But how do you know I need it if you don't have me come in and run blood tests to see what the levels are NOW or another week from now? I can't check for that one at home. I don't want a 2nd med that does sorta the same thing on top of the first without knowing if the first one has been ineffective, y'know? And it's only been like 5 days. Diet and more exercise might help it a lot on its own over a month or so, too. It's not just me, right? That's stupid?

Hubby: "Can I listen in on your "phone doctor appointment" this afternoon?" Me: "Sure, speakerphone it is." 15-20 or so minutes later: Hubby: "About the only thing I learned from that was, you need to request a different doctor." Couldn't understand half of what she said (very thick European accent I think), she was obviously not comfy on the phone, and wasted half my time trying to sales pitch me on other services and non-diabetes tests like mamograms vs. focusing on my immediate health concerns. I think they're more concerned with "LIkes" and trying to make people not badmouth them than anything else. What happened to the days when ppl like me could get ill, see a doc, grab some meds, maybe a follow up or two to check stuff, and that was it. They left you largely alone. Everything's part of a "program" that they keep trying to hustle you into now.

Went to the local farmers market store (been around for 30 years). They had Rainer cherries. OMG I love those. I always called them "white cherries" - like "white peaches". Anyway, never liked Bing/purple cherries. But Rainer's ... I bought two bags and have to keep myself from eating more than a handful a few times a day. One of those truly nature's candies.

Lunch (crumbled meat is ground turkey) Snacks. To keep the sweet and snack cravings in control fruit is great. And a couple large tablespoons of vanilla ice cream, softened and mixed with lots o berries works well as a tiny treat. I may not be that impressed with "FOUR CAMERAS" in the phone but it does take better pics than the tablet at least.

Dear Diary: Hospital stay w/no physical access to spouse made me finally think about/cave in and get a working cellphone account. So I got me a Samsung Galaxy A51. Not the most rational choice for my purpose but the perky young sales rep didn't have to work hard to convince me. Should last me 4-5 years without changing it, if not more. I put hubby's cell on it and now it shall sit forever plugged in on a shelf for emergencies or when hubby wants to call and ask me if it was this bread or that bread I wanted from the store. It's a fairly powerful mini-tablet I guess. Salesguy was so excited about it had FOUR CAMERAS in it. I took a picture with it and eh. Maybe I will use it to send 50 short texts to hubby every day (even if he's just over in the next room) because he hates texts. Hehe. I prefer my 10.5" tablet for mobile styled media/game activity 1000% more, this phone will only be for true mobile use. I do like being able to easily video-call with one button but hubby hates doing that too so... Spent the past couple days getting my "exercise" running all over towns looking for lifestyle change supplies and things vs resting and recuperating. Had to sit on the floor in the BestBuy for a while and ended up with a cluster of sales reps asking if I wanted a chair. Done now. Next couple days I am going to do .... nothing.

That would be me as well. Every time I've tried onboard I just can't stand it - likely it's just their drivers/softwares differences, but onboard always sounds tinny/screechy or muffled or awful in some way (using the exact same "desktop speaks"). When I built my rig last time I gave it a shot again and same thing. Toss in one of my many soundblasters and suddenly those same $50-$100 speakers sound fantastic (for what they are, I mean, I'm not looking for/expecting audiophile sound in my gaming personally)).