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Y2/D292 - Better today..
Jan. 2nd, 2022 09:18 pmLess coughing, not as tired, and not blowing nose - methinks this cold is departing with 2021.
Interesting - my brother's friends have all come down with COVID. Niece's boyfriend's family caught COVID (they went to Utah for a ski trip). My family got the head/chest cold. Director of Religious Education at my church tested positive for COVID, and they've gone back to live-streaming and are no longer doing in-person services. My family? We just get colds and the flu. LOL!
NY State has a 22% infection rate. Queen's (where my workplace is located) has a 24% infection rate, and Kings (where I live aka Brooklyn), a 21% infection rate. Good news, I'm probably immune at the moment. And I've plenty of masks. Considering buying more of the KF94 which work the best for all day wearing. I can't breath in the KN95 after two - three hours.
And they are all fairly the same anyhow.
I finished Wheel of Time - it's okay. And it is self-contained. You can watch the first season without fear of much of a cliff-hanger. It kind of wraps up the first season's arc, but leaves itself open-ended for S2. Kind of like what the Expanse and Smoke and Bone have done. For the record? I prefer the fantasy series on Netflix to the ones on Amazon, they've more "punch" to them. This was kind of boring and slow in places. Also male protagonist was kind of dull. The best characters are the supporting ones.
The female characters are interesting, my favorite was the Wisdom, Niaveen, and her protegee, Erigwen (sp?). It has diversified casting, but, I wish they'd done a slightly better job of it - the female and male protagonists are white, and the bad guys are POC, and the supporting are POC. I'd have flipped it around a bit.
Unless you are a fan of the books or into epic fantasy? I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. I've not read the books - couldn't get into them. (Kind of burned out on epic fantasy by the time I was aware of them. I was busy reading Andre Norton, McCaffrey, Tolkien, Lewis, and lots of folks that I can't remember off the top of my head. I binged fantasy in my teens and early twenties - so 1980s and early 1990s).
Also watched The Lost Daughter - directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, starring Olivia Coleman, Ed Harris, Dakota Johnson, and Peter Sarsgard.
It's based on a Elena Ferrante novella of the same name. And...it reminds me a lot of those slice of life feminist literary novels that I read as a English Lit Major in the 1980s, either by Virgina Woolf or Kate Chopin.
I explained the plot, such as it is, to my mother over the phone this evening...
Mother: So there's no plot?
Me: No, not really. It's a character piece. One of those slice of life stories?
Mother: I'll skip it then.
It's filmed in such a way that it feels like there is going to be a plot. Very creepy film, and kind of unsettling. I kept waiting for something horrid to happen, but it never does.
Mother: It's jumpy?
Me: Yep. I was tense throughout.
Mother: So you keep watching - to see what happens.
Me: Yup, and nothing does. They never even explain some of things she does.
Mother: I've read the author's books - her books are kind of like that.
The story is about an English woman, Leda, by way of Boston visiting an island in Greece. (Although it didn't feel like Greece - since everyone spoke English, including the caretaker of the place she was staying. I had to look up - because I honestly had no idea where she was.) Leda is an English Lit Professor away on a holiday in Greece. She interacts with a family, and spies a young mother who she identifies with - perhaps too closely, causing flashbacks to her own motherhood. The interaction which is rather brief, and in snippets, and not eventful, disturbs and unsettles her.
( spoilers )
The film is shot from Leda's perspective, and Leda is clearly off - since everything about the island has an air of menace. She's jumpy, and ill at ease, so it feels a bit like a psychological thriller - except nothing really happens, and we're just jumping at shadows.
Coleman is good. But I was bored. I don't know why the critics love this film so much. I think because it subverts the trope - by well having nothing happen? LOL!
From that - I discovered Showtime was free for a month on Apple TV, so I tried Yellow Jackets - which is about a Canadian High School Female Soccer Team who on their way to Nationals, their private plane crashes, and they are stranded in the Canadian wilderness for about 19 months. Only a handful survive. Suffice it to say - they don't handle it well.
The story takes place in flashbacks - so we're in the present, 2021, and in the past, when the crash happened, in 1996. (Non-COVID reality - there's no pandemic in this reality.)
It's basically Lord of the Flies meets Alive but with Teen Girls. Then, the survivors dealing with what they did to ahem survive - twenty years later. Compelling, if gruesome. I mean murder and cannibalism are heavily implied and kind of shown.
Stars Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Melanie Lanskie.
***
There's a lot of content out there. If you've got recs - feel free to share, I'm trying to narrow it down.
Will most likely try The Witcher S2 next, since I loved S1 and have been waiting a long time for S2. But I may finish Yellowjackets first, and try Dexter, as long as I have my free trial.
**
Not done much today. Church via streaming was all about setting some sort of goal, intention or selecting a word for 2022 that would be your theme for the year. I'm not a fan of New Year's Resolutions. The last two years it was to be kind...and I'm not certain how well I accomplished that one.
The speaker at church (church is basically music and a lecture (often more than one) so I don't know why streaming would be an issue - it's kind of set up for it), anyhow she said how she'd set the word bold for 2020. ( Read more... )
Anyhow, the word I was given or heard in my head during all of this...was a bit of a surprise. This is the word I was given to focus on and to be the theme of 2022...
JOY
Yep, not forgiveness, not calm, not gratitude, not kindness, not bold, not brave, not intention...not love. Just JOY. To look at the world with joy. I told this to mother over the phone.
Mother: So you decided to take the advice or creed of your Caribbean cab driver?
Me: To be grateful and joyful about my health, my family, my life, my city and my ability to do the work I enjoy within it as long as I can.
Mother: Yes, that's not a bad idea - to find joy in the small things and everyday wonders.
Me: No, it's not. Forget all this living with intention crap, I'm just going to find joy in the day to day, and the rest will follow.
Random Picture of the Night...
Interesting - my brother's friends have all come down with COVID. Niece's boyfriend's family caught COVID (they went to Utah for a ski trip). My family got the head/chest cold. Director of Religious Education at my church tested positive for COVID, and they've gone back to live-streaming and are no longer doing in-person services. My family? We just get colds and the flu. LOL!
NY State has a 22% infection rate. Queen's (where my workplace is located) has a 24% infection rate, and Kings (where I live aka Brooklyn), a 21% infection rate. Good news, I'm probably immune at the moment. And I've plenty of masks. Considering buying more of the KF94 which work the best for all day wearing. I can't breath in the KN95 after two - three hours.
And they are all fairly the same anyhow.
I finished Wheel of Time - it's okay. And it is self-contained. You can watch the first season without fear of much of a cliff-hanger. It kind of wraps up the first season's arc, but leaves itself open-ended for S2. Kind of like what the Expanse and Smoke and Bone have done. For the record? I prefer the fantasy series on Netflix to the ones on Amazon, they've more "punch" to them. This was kind of boring and slow in places. Also male protagonist was kind of dull. The best characters are the supporting ones.
The female characters are interesting, my favorite was the Wisdom, Niaveen, and her protegee, Erigwen (sp?). It has diversified casting, but, I wish they'd done a slightly better job of it - the female and male protagonists are white, and the bad guys are POC, and the supporting are POC. I'd have flipped it around a bit.
Unless you are a fan of the books or into epic fantasy? I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. I've not read the books - couldn't get into them. (Kind of burned out on epic fantasy by the time I was aware of them. I was busy reading Andre Norton, McCaffrey, Tolkien, Lewis, and lots of folks that I can't remember off the top of my head. I binged fantasy in my teens and early twenties - so 1980s and early 1990s).
Also watched The Lost Daughter - directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, starring Olivia Coleman, Ed Harris, Dakota Johnson, and Peter Sarsgard.
It's based on a Elena Ferrante novella of the same name. And...it reminds me a lot of those slice of life feminist literary novels that I read as a English Lit Major in the 1980s, either by Virgina Woolf or Kate Chopin.
I explained the plot, such as it is, to my mother over the phone this evening...
Mother: So there's no plot?
Me: No, not really. It's a character piece. One of those slice of life stories?
Mother: I'll skip it then.
It's filmed in such a way that it feels like there is going to be a plot. Very creepy film, and kind of unsettling. I kept waiting for something horrid to happen, but it never does.
Mother: It's jumpy?
Me: Yep. I was tense throughout.
Mother: So you keep watching - to see what happens.
Me: Yup, and nothing does. They never even explain some of things she does.
Mother: I've read the author's books - her books are kind of like that.
The story is about an English woman, Leda, by way of Boston visiting an island in Greece. (Although it didn't feel like Greece - since everyone spoke English, including the caretaker of the place she was staying. I had to look up - because I honestly had no idea where she was.) Leda is an English Lit Professor away on a holiday in Greece. She interacts with a family, and spies a young mother who she identifies with - perhaps too closely, causing flashbacks to her own motherhood. The interaction which is rather brief, and in snippets, and not eventful, disturbs and unsettles her.
( spoilers )
The film is shot from Leda's perspective, and Leda is clearly off - since everything about the island has an air of menace. She's jumpy, and ill at ease, so it feels a bit like a psychological thriller - except nothing really happens, and we're just jumping at shadows.
Coleman is good. But I was bored. I don't know why the critics love this film so much. I think because it subverts the trope - by well having nothing happen? LOL!
From that - I discovered Showtime was free for a month on Apple TV, so I tried Yellow Jackets - which is about a Canadian High School Female Soccer Team who on their way to Nationals, their private plane crashes, and they are stranded in the Canadian wilderness for about 19 months. Only a handful survive. Suffice it to say - they don't handle it well.
The story takes place in flashbacks - so we're in the present, 2021, and in the past, when the crash happened, in 1996. (Non-COVID reality - there's no pandemic in this reality.)
It's basically Lord of the Flies meets Alive but with Teen Girls. Then, the survivors dealing with what they did to ahem survive - twenty years later. Compelling, if gruesome. I mean murder and cannibalism are heavily implied and kind of shown.
Stars Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, and Melanie Lanskie.
***
There's a lot of content out there. If you've got recs - feel free to share, I'm trying to narrow it down.
Will most likely try The Witcher S2 next, since I loved S1 and have been waiting a long time for S2. But I may finish Yellowjackets first, and try Dexter, as long as I have my free trial.
**
Not done much today. Church via streaming was all about setting some sort of goal, intention or selecting a word for 2022 that would be your theme for the year. I'm not a fan of New Year's Resolutions. The last two years it was to be kind...and I'm not certain how well I accomplished that one.
The speaker at church (church is basically music and a lecture (often more than one) so I don't know why streaming would be an issue - it's kind of set up for it), anyhow she said how she'd set the word bold for 2020. ( Read more... )
Anyhow, the word I was given or heard in my head during all of this...was a bit of a surprise. This is the word I was given to focus on and to be the theme of 2022...
JOY
Yep, not forgiveness, not calm, not gratitude, not kindness, not bold, not brave, not intention...not love. Just JOY. To look at the world with joy. I told this to mother over the phone.
Mother: So you decided to take the advice or creed of your Caribbean cab driver?
Me: To be grateful and joyful about my health, my family, my life, my city and my ability to do the work I enjoy within it as long as I can.
Mother: Yes, that's not a bad idea - to find joy in the small things and everyday wonders.
Me: No, it's not. Forget all this living with intention crap, I'm just going to find joy in the day to day, and the rest will follow.
Random Picture of the Night...