Tag: the handmaids tale

Another Crazy Day

Hope you are all having a happy, fascism-free Tuesday.

I was having a calm, yet somewhat productive day today. The minute I finished lunch all hell broke loose. It became a crazy, hectic, tense, productive day. You know how it is.

Now I am about 20 minutes away from the end of my work day and hopefully things are calming down. Everything seems covered at the moment. Breath in, breath out. You’ve got this, Robert.

I have half a personal day booked for tomorrow. Robin the Cat has a vet appointment. Just her annual check up. I have meetings booked all afternoon though, so it’s going to be busy tomorrow too. At least I’ll have three episodes of Star Wars Andor to plow through before the work day starts. They come out at 9:00 Eastern time tonight. I am ready. There was a new episodes of The Handmaids Tale over night last night. I watched it while doing my morning exercise today. It was excellent. Here’s hoping Andor holds serve on the which-show-about-people-fighting-fascism-is-more-awesome sweepstakes. At this point it’s anyone’s game.

Oh good. 10 minutes away from quitting time and it just started to rain. It’s freakin’ pouring out. Good, good.

Wordle Stats

The first time I got the Wordle word in three tries I got all proud and stuff and posted it to Twitter. The first time I got it in two tries I got super proud and stuff and posted it to Twitter and Facebook. A workflow patter was thus created. That was during a brief period where I was feeling okay about going to Facebook again, entirely due to the weight loss surgery support groups. Now I am feeling down on the whole thing again so I need a new Wordle workflow.

Wordle 474 2/6

🟩⬜🟨⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

That’s right, boys and girls. Now when I get it in two tries, like I did today, it’s going to Twitter and The Blog. Enjoy!

In the immortal words of Barnie Stinson, “this is so going in my blog!”

Last night I was put in command of the television remote control and managed to get caught up on every show I’m currently following. There were three shows that I was one episode behind. I watched ’em all. Andor, Rick and Morty, and The Handmaids Tale. Andor has been my main focus, but after the cliff hanger in Handmaid I might be watching the next episode of that show first.

The plan for tonight is to do something with dinner that I haven’t done since the surgery. We’re going to have some spaghetti. I’ve made spaghetti since the surgery, for Jen and Harry, but I haven’t eaten any of it. Pasta, bread, rice, and rice-like things were the last items to come off of my do-not-eat-these list. Well, sugar is eternally on that list but as of now it’s the only thing left.

Pasta has been off of the do-not-eat list for over a month, I just haven’t felt confident enough in the universe and my tiny, rebuilt, mangled stomach to give it a go. I haven’t had bread or rice or quinoa either. I can if I want, I just haven’t. Tonight I am going to have a tiny little serving of spaghetti. Cross your fingers that it doesn’t make me sick. I expect it is going to be friggin’ epically delicious. I hope so, at least.

Week 22

Hello and welcome to week 22! The week where I did not weigh in. I weighed in yesterday. I was thinking of doing it today, but if I don’t then we’ll get an extra day when I weigh in next week and maybe that will give me a more impressive number. Or not. Who knows. As long as I keep moving in the right direction I really don’t care how fast it goes. Though in this case bigger is, if not better, more fun.

I think we may have weathered a storm at work. Fingers crossed, right?

I watched half of last week’s That Pedal Show while doing this morning’s exercise. I should have watched The Handmaid’s Tale. A new episode is out but for some reason I keep thinking new episodes come out on Thursdays, like Andor. Wait… is Andor out on Wednesdays too? Shit, is there an Andor that I haven’t seen? I gotta start writing this shit down. Ugh! Lunch is going to be an hour late today. Maybe I’ll be able to watch something during lunch, but I usually try to avoid TV during work hours.

Crap. I just checked Disney+. There is a new Andor today. Grrrrrr.

Anyway, my walking is done. I still need to do the weights and the elastic. I didn’t do them yesterday because I was too busy, but I’ll do them today.

22 weeks and 140 pounds since surgery. I still can’t believe it. It’s starting to feel like a fairy tale. Some kind of make believe. It’s almost too good to be true. My next check in at the clinic is October 18th. I wonder how much I’ll weigh when that day comes around.

Stuff Going On

We made an appointment with an air conditioning maintenance company a few months ago as part of the still unshared cellar disaster story. They had to cancel the first appointment and today is the day they rescheduled too. They didn’t give us a window of time until early this morning. At 6:30 I was still in bed and Jen let me know the window was opening at 7:00. Yikes! It’s 7:30 and they aren’t here yet. Now I am just hoping that they don’t ring the doorbell while both Jen and I are in meetings. That would suck. Also, there’s an AC built into the bedroom wall. I am going to get kicked out of my bedroom/office for a while. That hasn’t happened in about a year.

I have a few short meetings today and it’s possible one might line up with the visit. I was thinking, I have mentioned things at work a couple of times recently and I think I am going to stop doing that. Like the cellar shit show, work should be exempt from the oversharing. Good.

There’s a new Loki today. Episode one was kind of a clip show but it did a great job of setting up the story. It was excellent. I am really interested to see where it goes. We need to figure out how we’re going to get everyone into the same room to watch it. There’s also the season finale of The Handmaids Tale. This show is so good it’s hard to explain. I haven’t a clue how they are going to wrap it up without having our hero just take a machine gun and go all Mikey Corleone on all of her enemies. We’ll see.

It’s 7:45. Still no sign of the AC folks. I’ve got my mask at the ready for whenever they get here.

Tuesday Night Nana Sitting

Last night was okay. My brother told me that my mother had slept most of the day so I was a little nervous that she’d be up all night, struggling with back and leg pain. Nope. She went to bed not long after her 8pm meds and slept most of the way through the night. I was ready for sleep around 10, but ended up staying awake until 11. I woke up to go to the bathroom a bit before 5:00am and ended up sitting up for half an hour before trying to sleep again. All together I got about 6.5 hours of sleep, and that’s pretty good for a night on Mom and Dad’s two-seater.

I did manage to watch this week’s Handmaid’s Tale this morning before work. So the misery porn show switches gears and gives us a tear jerker that at the last minute morphs into something really dark and scary. In other words, a pretty friggin’ great episode. Again.

Okay, it’s 9:00am now and I am signed in to work. Let’s get this day rolling, shall we?

Misery Porn

I am up to date with season four of The Handmaid’s Tale. I listened to a podcast today (House Podcastica) where they discussed the first three episodes. One of the hosts referred to the show as misery porn.

All through the first three seasons I was looking for the words to describe the show, and that was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, House Podcastica!

Nana Sitting Wrap Up

I’m still at my mother’s house. I’m not sure what time the change over is happening tonight, but it’s probably soon. Let’s wrap up what we accomplished.

Four meds deliveries, three today and one last night. Three loads of laundry. Three song ideas, all of which are in 7/8 time which is glorious. One movie, Joker. Holy shit was that good. Two episodes of The Handmaids Tale. Holy shit is that show good. An episode and a half of That Pedal Show mostly focusing on Uni-Vibe effects but also Harmonic Tremelo. Uni-Vibes are cool. Harmonic Tremolo is cool too, I guess, but I’m not really a tremolo guy… though the amp I’m recording with this month has one (volume based, not harmonic based) built in and I’ve been sort of looking for a place to use it. Three bags of recycling taken out. Three calls from Dad. The last couple of cans from the 12 pack of Diet Pepsi that I brought over last week finished. Sleep… not so much.

Is that everything? It’s all I can recall off the top of my head.

Almost Bed Time

The Red Sox lost, I did a load of laundry, my mother sat up for about an hour before going back to bed, I watched an episode of That Pedal Show that is making me want to go into cellar storage and find my cheap uni-vibe pedal, I wrote the music for another song that could possibly make good use of a cheap uni-vibe pedal, and the first episode of season four of The Handmaids Tale has some seriously dark shit in it.

I’ll be turning in soon. Here’s hoping my mother sleeps through the night. She was asleep when I got here. She woke up a couple of hours later thinking it was morning. I asked her if she wanted dinner as she was fishing out a package of instant oatmeal for breakfast. Hashtag, le sigh.

Prep for a Binge Watch

I’m Nana sitting at my parents’ house tonight. I just gave her dinner and her evening pills and we had a quick phone call with my dad. Dad seems okay tonight but Mom is having a rough day. I left my house at a couple of minutes past 6:00 tonight and I will be here until around dinner time tomorrow night. I’m trying to think of what I am going to do with my time while I’m here. The Red Sox are on right now and they just coughed up a lead to the Rangers in the third inning.

I’m thinking about some May music ideas. I’m doing the RPM Challenge record one song each month thing. In March I started five or six songs and then waited until the last minute to finish anything and as a result I only finished one. I have four more ready to mix but I haven’t gotten around to them. In April I started one song early in the month and then waited until the last week to do anything. I started a second song and that’s the only one of the two I finished. In May I am thinking of getting back onto the album-in-a-month bandwagon and seeing if I can crank out 10. No promises, but here we are on May 1st and I’ve already got one underway.

I could work on music while I’m here, but let’s be realistic. I’m probably going to watch TV on my iPad. I have one episode of The Flash to watch but I’ll wait on that one and watch it with Harry, if he wants. There are a couple of Supergirls to watch but I’m kinda not feeling it. (note: The Red Sox just tied the game at three in the top of the fourth inning) The fourth season of The Handmaid’s Tale just started on Hulu and they released a few episodes on the first day, I need to watch those. I’m into the third season of a rewatch of Community so I could try some of those. There’s one other idea that popped into my head earlier today.

Harry was humming the theme from the second episode of WandaVision. Hmm… If I’m going to be here all day tomorrow, and the chances of me sleeping much tonight are somewhere between slim and none… might I be able to watch the entire season of WandaVision in one extended sitting? Nine episodes, roughly 30 minutes each… I might do it. If for no other reason then to hear the Agatha All Along song in context one more time.

It might happen.

Way Too Close to Home

Yesterday I wrote about how I watched the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale and how the dystopian future of a religious police state felt a little too close to home in today’s socio-political climate?

I just watched the second episode.

The show takes place in Boston.

My home town.

Now it’s politically too close to home and LITERALLY TOO CLOSE TO HOME.

Holy shit snacks.