(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Loving Peaky Blinders. Appeal is lost on co-workers, but not on my immediate family members. Mother and Bro have ripped through the episodes along with me. We're all loving the series. It's rare that all three of us agree on a television series. Maybe two of us, but not always all three.

Mother posted on FB that she is happy that the Chiefs won last night, apparently she watched the game. Co-workers were also discussing the game, and happy they won. I stayed out of it. I didn't watch and am blatantly ignoring their win - even if the stupid Empire State Building decided to light up in their colors, after having lit up in the Eagles colors the night before - to much controversy. I'd prefer the Eagles.

Extended family is Eagles, Mother is Chiefs, no clue about brother.

Hmm. Texted Bro, to see if he was into the Chiefs like Mother. Apparently not.

Bro: I don't follow football. When is it?
Me: You don't? LOL! That's so cool.
Bro: Haven't in 20+ years, not since I was 15. Too many commercials.

[See? We are related.]

Co-workers are on to me - they know I don't follow spectator sports. Five things you should know about me?

1. The appeal of most spectator sports are lost on me, particularly sports that involve balls. I get bored easily. I may dabble, but I don't truly follow.

I will follow soccer, basketball or baseball on occasion. And I've been known to watch a football game once in a blue moon.

My family isn't really into spectator sports. My brother watches and follows soccer, but not football. My parents followed tennis. Mother will watch just about anything.

2. Not a gamer. This includes: board games, card games, video games, ball games, pretty much anything that is competitive. I've played chess - I find it very boring. Backgammon, also kind of boring. Card games - I'm good at but I forget the rules. Blackjack - I can't count to save my life. Monopoly, traumatized me when I was a kid. Video Games - The appeal is lost on me. RPG - too math oriented and rule oriented. Dominoes - too easy.

Mother is the family member who adores games. Bro is too competitive. My father and I didn't like games and lost interest quickly.

I think we may have played Clue the most as a kid, that and trivia pursuit.

Not a fan of competitive activities - I think I got traumatized as a kid or something?

3. I tend to like solo sports or endurance sports/activities, and puzzles or pattern games. Such as running (can't do it now - so walking/hiking), swimming. Watching skating, gymnastics. Dance - anything with dance in it.
Games like Tetris, Wordl, Dominoes, Majhain tiles, pattern games.

***

Vitamin E isn't reducing the hot flashes. It was helping for a while, but still getting them. Maybe not quite as frequently? Hmmm.

I am trying to figure out if there's a connection between chocolate, caffeine, and sugar to hot flashes. I know there is between alcohol and hot flashes - one of the reasons I stopped drinking alcohol.

Been told red wine is good for blood sugar. But it just gives me bad hot flushes, heart burn, and headaches.

I don't drink alcohol any longer. Or rarely, and only on social occasions.

***

Started the audio book Spare by Prince Harry and the e-book, Within these Wicked Walls - which is a re-imagining of Jane Eyre, except in Ethiopia, with an Ethiopian Exorcist, and a cursed lord in a haunted house. Actually outside of the name Rochester, there's relatively little resemblance to Jane Eyre, which works for me. I don't understand the point of redoing classic literature.

The Jane Eyre trope - is the gothic governess trope. This isn't that.
It's more of a Beauty and the Beast trope...or saving the cursed boy, similar to the original Snow Queen, or again, Beauty and the Beast.

It's swings heavily towards horror though, which interests me. What may turn me off is that it is also YA. But we'll see.

I may go back to Sabriel. I don't know yet.

***

After I watch Peaky Blinders, I'm going to attempt Picard again - in preparation for S3. Also need to retry The Magicians, and Last of Us (Twitter is all agog over Episode 3 - apparently it blew them all away.)

Comments

[cjlasky7]

If kid bro hates all the commercial time in a football game, there's an easy solution: DVR the game and fast forward through the commercials, replay time outs, halftime, the two minute warning... even the huddles, if you're so inclined. I blasted through both games in a little less than 90 minutes each and didn't feel like I missed anything. (Especially not the network commentary.)

(The trick, though, is to start watching the recorded game around the start of the actual 4th quarter. That way, nobody can spoil the final score beforehand. If the game goes to overtime, you could conceivably catch up to the end of the game in real time. That was a distinct possibility in yesterday's Bengals/Chiefs game.)

[shadowkat]

My brother has Apple Television, he doesn't have cable. He cut the cable chord several years ago.

He'll watch the World Cup (he's a soccer player - played it throughout school and was on an intermural soccer team in grad school, also did pick up games when he lived in NYC in his 20s and 30s). And the occasional tennis match (he played tennis, and our parents were/are into tennis).

[mefisto]

I thought Ep 3 was the weakest one. It was not bad, in fact it was well-done. It was just the first one which I felt was too long.

[shadowkat]

Interesting - it's getting rave reviews on Twitter. Granted most of them are soap opera actors and not exactly experts. Alan Sepinawall, professional television critic, seemed underwhelmed by it.

[mefisto]

I wouldn't say "underwhelmed", I just found it dragged in the middle to the point where I fast-forwarded a couple of times. As I said, though, it was all well done, just a bit too much time spent on collateral characters.

[yourlibrarian]

My family rarely all enjoyed the same shows either. It's probably why Star Trek was my first fandom.

My partner is very bitter about the Bengals losing as that's his team and they weren't contenders for a very long time.

I don't know about sugar and chocolate, but caffeine is definitely connected to hot flashes (as is alcohol).

[shadowkat]

Hot flashes did dwindle when I stopped drinking and cut back on caffeine consumption (ie. tea and chocolate - coffee, I can't do.)

I'm sorry the Bengals lost too - I prefer them to the Chiefs.

Weirdly, we did like the same shows a good percentage of the time. We all watched Star Trek. My parents liked the show and drug us to the movies. We also all liked Star Wars. And both my brother and my mother watched Buffy. So did my sisterinlaw and niece. None were fans of it like I was. But I like a lot of shows they don't (teen supernatural soap operas and a lot of fantasy shows, sci-fi shows, and superhero shows, also anime), my brother likes situation comedies (neither my mother nor I can watch), and mother likes sports, NCIS, and mysteries on PBS (that often bore me). So, varies.

[yourlibrarian]

My mother had problems with hot flashes but so far I have heat sensitivity but not what are traditional hot flashes. I suspect it's because she was a coffee drinker and I never have been (she rarely had alcohol) and I rarely have caffeine.

I also started cutting back on sugar pre-menopause whereas she had a sweet tooth so perhaps you're on the right track about that being a contributor. I daresay stress makes a difference too.

[shadowkat]

IDK. I don't drink or rarely. And outside of chocolate and tea, no caffeine. I'm thinking possibly stress and sugar? Also, diabetes could be a factor? My mother had them until she got diagnosed with hyper-thyroid and it was fixed. Same with a friend of mine. But thyroid seems to be fine.

In my 30s-early 40s - it was glutens causing it. I went off all grains and cut carbs? They went away.