LadyCrimson

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)).

I'm sure there are some places that might illegally "rig" their machines but generally speaking it's the same as any gambling - the odds are just very very poor/stacked against you. You'll maybe win just enough to make you keep chasing and (if you're not an unreasonable addict), you're likely to walk off a little poorer but not extremely much so. I'm not sure coin slots are even around now, they've probably gone all digital making you use prepaid insert cards and $1-$10 pulls I'd imagine. Maybe they have dim backrooms with a few dusty coin slots for nostalgia. Back then nickel slots were just for having the fun of playing them longer without losing much money. You didn't play them expecting to win anything even if you won, so to speak. Quarters could still get expensive pretty fast.

Well, as they say, you definitely can't win if you don't play. I stopped even thinking about it early on, when they changed the way the (Calif.) lottery worked (and multiple versions/winning pools) and the odds went up/against even more ridiculously - like maybe from 1:15million to 1:40million. When it first started/the period Gromnir mentions, it used to seem like someone got the 5 numbers and won a "jackpot" (3-8 million+) almost every week or two. When that isn't happening it's hard to even pretend anymore. *wink* I think I also bought some scratch off tickets super early on when they were a dollar, but never again. Last time I looked I noticed $5 scratchers and the possible prize amount for that one and lol'd. I will however put a lot of nickels and quarters (do they even still have nickel slots? Probably not) in a slot machine while in Vegas once in a blue moon. At least I feel like I'm "playing" something that way.

Today we bought a new fridge, which we've needed a while but now more than ever with what feels like a 3 tons of produce in it. There may be no real diet restrictions but the past couple days it's a strange confusion like I'm almost forcing myself to eat 3 small meals (plus a couple healthy snacks like an apple) but it's not enough calories. But if I have more fruit or the cracky type breads that's like eating little stones or almost anything much over that amount of food, the blood sugar goes up over 250 again (that's very high, btw) and I feel a bit oogy (get very thirsty again, other mild symptoms). Yet don't really have a mental appetite/can't eat a lot at once at the moment. Do I make 8oz of a vitamin/low protein/non-fat milk shake? But that's extra milk sugar and others. Do I eat a peach, has fiber/slower to digest supposedly (then crap snacks anyway)? Eat a small bit o' meat AND half an apple? Just inject a small amount more insulin before your next main dose? Generalized plate rule: divide by quarters and fill each quarter with the different groups (vegies, fruits, protein, etc). Already learned some new tasty veggie recipes. Tossed out any old or junk. Anyway, meal planning overall not hard. But trying to figure out how to get enough daily calories without spiking blood sugar to stupid levels again, at least in these early stages of "recovering" and sussing out tolerances, not so much. Does Kaiser's kitchen deliver ready made meals and can I just eat that? They made decent (small sized) burgers and meatloaf and soups....I'll pay extra, Kaiser. Pretty please?

More or less, so far. Right now it all still feels kooky from the IV mixers and then now being removed from said mixers (I had 6 constant IV drips at one point) but I certainly feel tons better than I did some days ago! I think I remember that time period and you talking about diets. They didn't remove it. After a lot of mucking about, since my test results always seem to confuse docs (I'm lucky that way, haha) they classified me as heavily Type2 diabetic. I was asked so many times if I had a drinking problem because of the pancreas aspect and apparently the first 24 hrs hubby had to keep explaining "she doesn't avoid drinking because she had a past problem, she just doesn't drink/never has." (well, outside of some times 30 years ago) So in the end they don't have a final chicken/egg answer. I'd guess Type2 for some years that had no dramatic symptoms (as mentioned I'm not a big "doctor checkup" person) then mild losing-function pancreas symptoms (fatigue, aches and pains "I'm just getting old") then finally several progressively worse acute attacks over the past year or so. So initially I'm on Type2 regimen - 2 insulin per day. Hoping can get it down to at least one instead. I have no specific diet restrictions outside of the very important portion size aspect and not overbalancing any food/sugar/carb groupings too much any one meal/day. So got lucky there I guess. EDIT: Because they don't allow vistor access at all at the moment, hubby said trying to get docs on the phone once a day to get information about even what they were doing to me was really difficult. He was pretty freaked out. EDITEDIT: Hubby even .... cleaned the house!!

What kind of rig do you play that best game in the world, on? I wonder if the sprites would be too speedy on my main rig, now. One day I'll install DK1 and perhaps finally I will no longer be able to hand grab lvl10 imps effectively.

Death Stranding looks great on the 4k PC. Not much else reason to have bought it twice. Except that I love the damn game. It's like an open world game of meditation. Oh sure sure, there's a bit o' fighting and huuuuge chunks of story scenes but most of it - it's still so strange how delivering packages and planning out your travel structures and routes for efficiency is so ... calming.

Do you bruise easily? Don't like needles? Don't end up here, then. Also, if you don't like hospitals and are convinced you'll be fine in a few days, maybe don't listen to yourself. ...too tired for long details. Was another bout of the back/stomach pain/puking, weight loss etc. Twas acute pancreatitis. I'm at home now. Supposedly I was "close" to dying (triglycerides were through the roof). If hubby hadn't decided I was being too loopy and walked me to the car and hospital I guess I might've. I did have some mighty fine visual and mental hallucinations tho (no fake ppl inserted, sadly). Would make a good paranoia film script, those. Edit: With covid, not a hospital-great time to be generally sick. They checked for 4 or 5 viruses too, zero patient visitors allowed etc. It was interesting

^ When you see ID4-2 and keep waiting for him to make another big speech but then ... They cancelled our local parade and city fireworks display this year, ofc. We could personally partially see them simply standing in our backyard but most people can't.

^ Chemo treatment makes me think of Rheumatoid arthritis? Hubby's cousin got that in in her 30's and she went "downhill" fast, too. She had to get replacement knees five or six years later just to keep mobile. :/

Watched a little film called Searching, from a couple years ago I think. Stars John Cho. Daughter goes missing and looking for clues to find her. A film I've meant to watch for ages and never got around to it. It's entirely shown "on-screen" - pc monitors with "facetime", chat rooms, videos, text msgs, search engines etc as the father looks for clues on daughters laptop and communicates with others etc. They used the tactic pretty well - could have been boring but it's not. The ending was a little too quick and pat but overall effective for its method.

Menopause or other hormones-going-wild potentials could all be playing a factor for me I suppose - although I think most women report weight gain re: pre/menopause, not weight loss. Still, I could be some exception. I dunno. And ofc it's harder/more work (that I don't do) to maintain muscle weight as I age. I've tried pre-bottled Ensure and they're ok but if you use them a lot, price wise they feel like such a rip off (or any similar product). Powder mixes are just ick. Better when you use milk vs. water but still ick. Can't (frequently) use fruit juices for blended stuff. Too much acid.

I don't know if it's called Live but I went from free Hulu to no-commercial monthly Hulu, then dropped it all because really I almost never even open/use Hulu. Also, I hate their (PS4) UI interface. Hate hate hate it.

Dog was best/cutest thing about FO4. Especially the goggles. Lazy week or two. More specifically, grumpy down in the dumps. Just moody cyclic stuff. Lot of mobile games, naps and forcing myself to eat something. Last time I got on the scale it said 122lbs or so (6lbs loss?). Which wouldn't bother me if I was losing it for better reasons. Edit: Below 118 would be getting kind of underweight for me. Anyone have ez higher calorie (that isn't ice cream, ha) food to buy/make for when one has no appetite let alone motivation for cooking? Fruit and bagels has not enough calories apparently. EditEdit: rice in not ginormous servings apparently doesn't have enough calories either

I do Amazon Prime, HBO/Starz through Amazon Prime, a couple other small streaming thru Amazon (like Smithsonian and some classic old b&w series channel) Viki (Korean), Netflix. Still way cheaper than the Comcast cabletv option. Not that I like the separation and monthly fee very much, either (edit - although I do prefer no commercials thus willing to pay for that...) But I've also stopped caring if I miss some new show because I'm not subbed to something. In my case, if I'm not subbed, I don't care enough anyway.

Watched an anime film called A Whisker Away. Because, cats. It's a cute youth fantasy story about a highschooler who can turn into a cat and uses it to escape her family life issues and be close to her crush. Lessons will be learned and all that stuff. Ending is a little lackluster maybe, but it's fairly charming, for the type of genre.

With hubby home almost all the time for a while now, I've come to realize that (on his own, not in "work mode") he does not converse. He announces. "Going to such and such store." "I finally got the network taken care of." "I'm going to mow the lawn before it gets windy." "Think I'll make some sausage brats." This is the equivalent of someone who always announces that they're going to the bathroom, only it applies to everything. And then he stares at me like I'm supposed to respond/converse with anything more than "ok" and seems kind of disappointed if I don't. Now this isn't a complaint - I'm not much of a talker either, tho I do have talkative bursts (hubby does no such thing). I simply really never thought about it before. It's kinda funny. Edit: I guess I need to find more creative ways to respond to such announcements.