This that and taking Tuesday off...
Jun. 2nd, 2026 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatTook the day off for an annual skin cancer checkup - only to realize that my organization provides up to four hours for cancer screening on the way home from the check up. It's too late to change it now, might as well just continue taking the day off. Scheduled a follow up for next June, but around 4:45 pm, so I don't have to take the vacation day. They took a biopsy of one of the moles on my back - which looked funky under the magnifying glass.
It was a female doctor (which I actually prefer for this sort of thing - one of the nice things about the 21st Century is there are more female doctors), and she was far more thorough than the previous doctors (all male) that I had. I'd learned not to do the Zoodoc, Dermatology Walk-In Clinics after one of them misdiagnosed shingles.
I'll find out about the biopsy towards the end of the week - but she seemed unworried.
Afterwards, walked to Bryan Park and took the F from the front of Public Library, because Grand Central has become an insane maze with the pretty but horribly confusing signage. Breaking Bad and various co-workers weren't wrong - it has corridors that go nowhere. The signage is incredibly confusing. And I almost got lost hunting the exit. So on the way back, I chose to forgo it. (I tend to avoid Midtown Manhattan like the plaques nowadays.) On the way to Bryant Park - I took 41st Street - there was a series of gold plaques with quotes from poets and authors embedded in the sidewalk (NYC and LA are into embedding plaques with names or quotes on them in their sidewalks. NYC does historical references and quotes from authors, while LA does the Hollywood Walk of Fame - with various television and movie stars names embedded in stars on the sidewalk. Personally, I prefer NYC's take on this - but then I'm allergic to LA, I'm a New Yorker. New Yorkers are allergic to Los Angeles). It was hard to stop and take photos of them, because of all the young adults with their cell phones walking past.
But I managed to do it anyhow - so here's three of the plaques beneath the cut.
Bryant Park had free Yoga - and a Yoga Check in Point. I thought they were doing it on the lawn or in the park, but nooo - it was on the concrete stone platform in back of the NYPL, and in front of the restaurants, at the top of the steps leading to the park and green cordoned off lawn.
All these people were sitting or lying on thin yoga mats and blankets on the concrete platform. See? This is why I don't do yoga classes and do it at home, if at all, instead. I need more padding than that. Although lately best I can do is chair yoga. Maybe its just me? But doing yoga on concrete looks kind of painful? My knees hurt just thinking about it.
I was going to do a museum or the NYPL, but it was 9:47 am, I was hungry (ate at 6:30 am, doctor's appointment was at 8:30 am) and my knee had begun to bug me. So I went home.
Even if I didn't make it to a museum or the gluten free bakeries on the upper East Side as originally planned? I got stuff accomplished. Came home and did laundry. Listened to an audio book while doing it. And took a long walk around 4pm, after which I treated myself to a Coffee Ice Cream (Cold Brew) Milk Shake from Carnval Ice Cream Shop, which is a neighborhood and South Brooklyn staple.
Passed a lot of rose bushes on my walk. Been seeing a lot of roses this year. Roses do very well in New York, they love the climate. Flowers love the climate. If you like flowers or trees or greenery - New York is a great state to live in.
**
Television
* I finished my comfort re-watch of Buffy - thinking I'd get a reboot (but no such luck, we shall speak of it no more) - and have moved on to a comfort re-watch of the early 1990s X-Men Animated Series (which is streaming on Disney +/Hulu. I apparently didn't see all of it the first go-around. I thought I had. I missed the better episodes. There's some really good episodes in that series. The Phoenix arc is actually quite good - and fits the old comics rather well - and is very close to the Jack Kirby art in places. I didn't remember that it was quite that close to the original version - the original version is still better. It's an interesting story - because various men attempt to control and confine the cosmic power of the Phoenix Force and fail miserably. Even Xavier isn't able to do it without Jean's help. The animated series in some respects is more feminist than the comics. That said, Cyclops is written unevenly, and is often out of character. His main power or the reason he's the leader - is his ability to strategize in any situation, and under pressure - he can think outside the box, and figure out a way to get out of a situation with the least amount of damage to all concerned. The series doesn't quite get that across? Instead he's portrayed as "Dad" or the annoying "Boss" or "authority rep" and it doesn't sync with most of the comics at all. X-Men '97 does a better job with it.Also Wolverine is written out of character at times, and a bit too much like Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry and Drifter characters. Storm is underutilized. (Some people think he's the best character - they tend to be male and into Clint Eastwood...so...I found him to be incredibly annoying and repetitive.) And Gambit is creepy. But other than that - it's a lot better than I remembered. And the animation improves as we go, by the third season - it had some astonishingly good animation. The first season is horrible from an animation perspective, but there are some excellent bits in there - the Phoenix Saga has good animation, as does some of bits here and there.
The X-men was my comfort serial before Buffy. The difference between the two - is I have more content with the X-men, and it's not dependent on actors or one original creator. It's a comic book soap opera that has been going on since the 1960s. OTOH - I prefer the Buffy fandom. The X-men fandom is highly contentious, fractious, and borderline insane. Even the creators are wary of them. There's no scarier fandom than a comic book fandom. I dip my toe in the water of it occasionally - then jump far away, and go back to lurker status.
I've stopped reading and getting the comics again (I was only getting the digital version). Now, just watching the animated series - and started that this past week. I got nostalgic all of a sudden, and felt a craving for it.
*Rivals - this is really funny in places. It does farce well. And sex comedy well. I prefer British satire and comedies to American satire and comedies. I don't really know why exactly? Maybe things are just funnier when delivered with a British accent? Or the Brits just do farce and satire really well? I'm on S2. Also the Taggie/Rupert romance is oddly enough working for me? It shouldn't - but the actors make it work? Also the actress playing Taggie comes across as mid-late 20s, not 21, and the actor player Rupert comes across as early 30s. He doesn't quite come across as old enough to be her father or as old as Aidan Turner and David Tennant. It also helps that he hasn't slept with Taggie yet, and is sleeping with Cameron - pretty much everywhere including the steps. (As an aside? I can't imagine having sex on steps as being all that comfortable? Painful, yes. Comfortable, no. (Yet so many movies and television shows do it there - I keep feeling sorry for the actors or their body doubles. Ouch. Now, that's where they could use AI generated actors). See? This is the problem with sex scenes - you have to make them interesting. They are kind of boring in of themselves. It's just two bodies grinding for about ten minutes, then screaming out, and calling it a day. So, to mix things up a bit or make it more interesting - you have to get creative. On steps. In a tub. On a saddle with a riding crop. I kind of felt like I was watching soft-core porn - except with better looking actors.)
* Midnight Mass - I keep trying to watch it, but I can't get into it. I keep getting bored. My difficulty with it - is I don't like or care about any of the characters, nor find any of them remotely interesting - which is kind of a requirement for anything I watch, read, or listen to?
It's definitely a requirement of the horror genre. If you don't care about any of the characters - then there's no emotional investment - and you won't care if they are in danger or killed off - which means the show isn't horrifying or scary.
It was a female doctor (which I actually prefer for this sort of thing - one of the nice things about the 21st Century is there are more female doctors), and she was far more thorough than the previous doctors (all male) that I had. I'd learned not to do the Zoodoc, Dermatology Walk-In Clinics after one of them misdiagnosed shingles.
I'll find out about the biopsy towards the end of the week - but she seemed unworried.
Afterwards, walked to Bryan Park and took the F from the front of Public Library, because Grand Central has become an insane maze with the pretty but horribly confusing signage. Breaking Bad and various co-workers weren't wrong - it has corridors that go nowhere. The signage is incredibly confusing. And I almost got lost hunting the exit. So on the way back, I chose to forgo it. (I tend to avoid Midtown Manhattan like the plaques nowadays.) On the way to Bryant Park - I took 41st Street - there was a series of gold plaques with quotes from poets and authors embedded in the sidewalk (NYC and LA are into embedding plaques with names or quotes on them in their sidewalks. NYC does historical references and quotes from authors, while LA does the Hollywood Walk of Fame - with various television and movie stars names embedded in stars on the sidewalk. Personally, I prefer NYC's take on this - but then I'm allergic to LA, I'm a New Yorker. New Yorkers are allergic to Los Angeles). It was hard to stop and take photos of them, because of all the young adults with their cell phones walking past.
But I managed to do it anyhow - so here's three of the plaques beneath the cut.
Bryant Park had free Yoga - and a Yoga Check in Point. I thought they were doing it on the lawn or in the park, but nooo - it was on the concrete stone platform in back of the NYPL, and in front of the restaurants, at the top of the steps leading to the park and green cordoned off lawn.
All these people were sitting or lying on thin yoga mats and blankets on the concrete platform. See? This is why I don't do yoga classes and do it at home, if at all, instead. I need more padding than that. Although lately best I can do is chair yoga. Maybe its just me? But doing yoga on concrete looks kind of painful? My knees hurt just thinking about it.
I was going to do a museum or the NYPL, but it was 9:47 am, I was hungry (ate at 6:30 am, doctor's appointment was at 8:30 am) and my knee had begun to bug me. So I went home.
Even if I didn't make it to a museum or the gluten free bakeries on the upper East Side as originally planned? I got stuff accomplished. Came home and did laundry. Listened to an audio book while doing it. And took a long walk around 4pm, after which I treated myself to a Coffee Ice Cream (Cold Brew) Milk Shake from Carnval Ice Cream Shop, which is a neighborhood and South Brooklyn staple.
Passed a lot of rose bushes on my walk. Been seeing a lot of roses this year. Roses do very well in New York, they love the climate. Flowers love the climate. If you like flowers or trees or greenery - New York is a great state to live in.
**
Television
* I finished my comfort re-watch of Buffy - thinking I'd get a reboot (but no such luck, we shall speak of it no more) - and have moved on to a comfort re-watch of the early 1990s X-Men Animated Series (which is streaming on Disney +/Hulu. I apparently didn't see all of it the first go-around. I thought I had. I missed the better episodes. There's some really good episodes in that series. The Phoenix arc is actually quite good - and fits the old comics rather well - and is very close to the Jack Kirby art in places. I didn't remember that it was quite that close to the original version - the original version is still better. It's an interesting story - because various men attempt to control and confine the cosmic power of the Phoenix Force and fail miserably. Even Xavier isn't able to do it without Jean's help. The animated series in some respects is more feminist than the comics. That said, Cyclops is written unevenly, and is often out of character. His main power or the reason he's the leader - is his ability to strategize in any situation, and under pressure - he can think outside the box, and figure out a way to get out of a situation with the least amount of damage to all concerned. The series doesn't quite get that across? Instead he's portrayed as "Dad" or the annoying "Boss" or "authority rep" and it doesn't sync with most of the comics at all. X-Men '97 does a better job with it.Also Wolverine is written out of character at times, and a bit too much like Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry and Drifter characters. Storm is underutilized. (Some people think he's the best character - they tend to be male and into Clint Eastwood...so...I found him to be incredibly annoying and repetitive.) And Gambit is creepy. But other than that - it's a lot better than I remembered. And the animation improves as we go, by the third season - it had some astonishingly good animation. The first season is horrible from an animation perspective, but there are some excellent bits in there - the Phoenix Saga has good animation, as does some of bits here and there.
The X-men was my comfort serial before Buffy. The difference between the two - is I have more content with the X-men, and it's not dependent on actors or one original creator. It's a comic book soap opera that has been going on since the 1960s. OTOH - I prefer the Buffy fandom. The X-men fandom is highly contentious, fractious, and borderline insane. Even the creators are wary of them. There's no scarier fandom than a comic book fandom. I dip my toe in the water of it occasionally - then jump far away, and go back to lurker status.
I've stopped reading and getting the comics again (I was only getting the digital version). Now, just watching the animated series - and started that this past week. I got nostalgic all of a sudden, and felt a craving for it.
*Rivals - this is really funny in places. It does farce well. And sex comedy well. I prefer British satire and comedies to American satire and comedies. I don't really know why exactly? Maybe things are just funnier when delivered with a British accent? Or the Brits just do farce and satire really well? I'm on S2. Also the Taggie/Rupert romance is oddly enough working for me? It shouldn't - but the actors make it work? Also the actress playing Taggie comes across as mid-late 20s, not 21, and the actor player Rupert comes across as early 30s. He doesn't quite come across as old enough to be her father or as old as Aidan Turner and David Tennant. It also helps that he hasn't slept with Taggie yet, and is sleeping with Cameron - pretty much everywhere including the steps. (As an aside? I can't imagine having sex on steps as being all that comfortable? Painful, yes. Comfortable, no. (Yet so many movies and television shows do it there - I keep feeling sorry for the actors or their body doubles. Ouch. Now, that's where they could use AI generated actors). See? This is the problem with sex scenes - you have to make them interesting. They are kind of boring in of themselves. It's just two bodies grinding for about ten minutes, then screaming out, and calling it a day. So, to mix things up a bit or make it more interesting - you have to get creative. On steps. In a tub. On a saddle with a riding crop. I kind of felt like I was watching soft-core porn - except with better looking actors.)
* Midnight Mass - I keep trying to watch it, but I can't get into it. I keep getting bored. My difficulty with it - is I don't like or care about any of the characters, nor find any of them remotely interesting - which is kind of a requirement for anything I watch, read, or listen to?
It's definitely a requirement of the horror genre. If you don't care about any of the characters - then there's no emotional investment - and you won't care if they are in danger or killed off - which means the show isn't horrifying or scary.