aka Blog v4.0
This season’s viewing schedule:
Tuesday:
The Gifted (FOX)
Mid-season replacement shows, time/day TBD:
The Orville
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
I’m more than half a season behind on all the CW DC shows, and frankly I was getting tired of all of them, so they’re totally off my viewing schedule. I may end up binge watching them, or switching to them as my morning exercise show. We’ll see.
None of the new shows interest me. Though I may end up checking a few of them out over the next week or so.
Friday afternoon.
I still didn’t feel 100% this morning, so I stayed home.
I managed to shower at my usual time. The new scale still says I’ve lost about 8 pounds since the stone appeared. Surprisingly I can see and feel a difference in my face and my clothes.
I made breakfast, eggs, which I hadn’t had in about a week. Most of this week was 3am-4am wake up calls to urinate and rehydrate and falling back to sleep until about 7am-8am. Though I did manage to have oatmeal on Wednesday.
I decided to do what I meant to do last weekend, and went out to get a haircut. On reflection this should have been done Thursday afternoon, since I was in the area, dropping off the stone to my doctor’s office.
On the way home I stopped by Best Buy, since there was an email from after 11pm last night, telling me that Spider-Man for PS4 was available. I was asleep at the time.
Once home I popped in the Spider-Man disk, and marveled (heh) at the speed which the game was downloading, minutes instead of HOURS.
I began to watch Iron Fist season 2, which seems better than I was expecting it to be. I then jumped back to the PS4 and entered the download code for the pre-order bonus stuff, including Peter’s Infinity War suit.
I then started to play Spider-Man. It’s fun, but I only got [redacted] before I stopped, though I wasn’t feeling anything wrong with my hands. The PS4 controller just seems more comfortable in my hands than the XBox controller. We’ll see if this changes as I try to play the game further.
I went back to Iron Fist. The first episode was good, and I’m currently in the second. I don’t think I’m going to binge this over the weekend, since there’s other stuff I need to do.
I made the congratulatory frozen pizza that I bought earlier this week, to be eaten post-stone.
I think I’m going to finish this IF episode and either take a nap or do some miniatures painting.
And that elliptical looks like it’s been waiting for me to get back on it.
If you’ve read DC Comics in the past 26 years, you’re aware of the Death of Superman storyline.
It’s a classic. One of my favorite stories to pick up and read over again.
It was one of the few times that I cried over a comic book story.
Yeah, they killed Superman. But you knew he’d be back. It just took over a year for him to return in the comics.
This year, DC/WB Animation came out with an adaptation of this story, and it’s far better than I expected.
When you pair Obi-Wan Kenobi and Peggy Carter together in a movie, along with Mycroft Holmes and a bunch of beloved stuffed animals, you know I’ll come a-runnin’.
Christopher Robin is the first movie in a long time that had me laughing and crying equally, sometimes at the same time.
I couldn’t relate to the title character because let’s face it, I’m still a kid at heart.
But to watch him interact with some of my best friends from childhood (at some point after Kindergarten, we had the whole gang from the 100 Acre Woods) just made me smile with tears of joy, though there were a few moments of real sadness.
The voice acting was great, it was a pleasure to hear Peter Capaldi as Rabbit.
And two songs that I had hoped would make it into the movie, did. One is obvious, about a certain bouncing animal, the other almost made me jump out of my seat from pure surprise and happiness.
I highly recommend seeing it. Go now!
Today is the 50th anniversary of one of the best monster movies ever made.
This was one of the first ones I remember watching on TV, probably on the tiny 13-inch black and white set in my parent’s bedroom.
And probably on the 3:30 Movie on KGO Channel 7 in San Francisco.
Between the weird ‘metal’ aliens (Kilaaks) and the 11 Toho monsters and the Moonlight SY-3 (I still want a toy of that) there’s very little to not like about this one. It’s campy and silly at times, just like a classic Godzilla film should be.
My favorite part is when the Kilaak leader begins to gloat near the end, and then Godzilla smashes into their secret base.
It’s like, “naw, b*tch, we comin’ for you, too!”
This was one of the few classic Godzilla films that I got to watch with Dad, sometime last year. He found it just as silly as I do, but entertaining.
What I found amusing was that the English subtitles did not match the English dubbing for a good portion of the movie.
I watched it over the weekend, not knowing that today was the actual 50th anniversary. I may watch it again tonight, just because.
The last time I built a model of the Starship Enterprise was over 35 years ago, and it was the movie refit Enterprise. She still hangs from the ceiling in my bedroom.
Today I built a snap-together Original Series Enterprise, pre-decorated.
A couple of years ago I introduced Dad to Person of Interest. He liked it right away. We would watch a couple of episodes every few weeks or so, maybe every two months.
We got to the introduction of Shaw in season 2 before Dad passed away. I wish he could have seen the rest of season 2, when the finale actually took place in Hanford, Washington’s nuclear plant, where he worked while he and Mom lived up there.
Today I got to Season 3, episode 9, where I experienced the biggest TV shock since Marie Warner shot her fiancée on 24.
And I cried. Mostly for what happened in the story, but also a good cathartic cry for my Dad.
That cry seemed to clear my head and shook me out of a funk I’d been feeling for a couple of weeks now.
And I came to a decision about something.
I’m not going to move to Sacramento.
There’s a position open in our agency’s office up there. I was supposed to go up there these past couple of days to check it out, but a sore back stopped me from going Wednesday, and Thursday I didn’t feel well in the morning.
Maybe this was a sign.
I figured stress was responsible for both days, and once I sat down and made the conscious decision to no longer consider the Sacramento move scenario, I felt a great weight lifted from me.
I have enough to deal with around this house, disposing of so much of Dad’s and my own stuff, I don’t feel that the added stress of moving was needed.
I felt that I needed to move out of this house ASAP, partly because of the constant reminder of where I found Dad on the steps, every time I walk by them. But over the past couple of weeks that feeling has lessened. I’ll always have that painful memory, and the time will come when I will move out of here, but that time is not now.
For the moment, I feel less stressed than I’ve been in a couple of months.
I still need to go see a therapist to cope with grieving, but I think I made some headway on my own.
This monstrosity has been sitting in my house for the better part of 4+ years. With the release of the 6th edition, in a smaller box, and the upcoming re-release of OGRE miniatures, my interest has gone up a bit in the last year or so.
Today I cracked open the Designer’s Edition for the first time in years, and found a bunch of unpunched counter sheets, which I proceeded to punch, along with reorganizing a lot of the smaller counters into ziplock bags. The smaller counters were loose in the box and spilling over and out of the compartments that I had placed them in.
Earlier this week I found an unassembled OGRE Mk. III-B in metal, which I probably picked up during some sale at Steve Jackson Games when the original OGRE Designer’s Edition Kickstarter was running. I proceeded to put it together, and tonight I sprayed some primer on it so I can paint it up.
OGRE tanks usually have 4-letter names, so of course this OGRE will be named…
PORG
Heck, the two main batteries scream PORG!
At least I have a paint scheme figured out.
Dark brown hull, light brown/orange around the batteries/missile silos/treads, silver/metallic detailing. And maybe paint the nose/mouth in front.
Spider-Man was the second comic book super hero that I liked as a kid, after Superman. My first Spider-Man comic had a cover by John Romita and interior art by Ross Andru.
I later got a copy of The Origins of Marvel Comics, and that’s where I first saw Amazing Fantasy #15, the debut of Spider-Man, by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
It was a different look from what I was used to seeing, to be honest.
When I was 11, my parents bought me a set of paperback books that reprinted the early days of Marvel Comics, with the first 6 issues of Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk, and the first 12 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man.
And that’s when I really fell in love with Ditko’s work.
I think he’s why Doctor Octopus is my favorite Spider-Man villain.
Ditko also created other favorites of mine, including Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle and Doctor Strange.
The one character that I had no idea that he had a hand in creating?
Squirrel Girl!
All I really knew about the man was that he was a recluse, often compared to J.D. Salinger.
Coincidentally, The Catcher in the Rye is my favorite book that I read in high school.
Today news came out that Ditko had died late last month.
This loss hurts a lot because of his contributions to comics and to my personal development in my tastes in comic book fandom.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Ditko. Thank you for all you did.