Quick Hits – February 2016

So here we are on the second month of quick reviews.  It still is not a huge selection of entertainment choices, but I was able to get a few more bits of enjoyment out of this month than last.  Work and other responsibilities seriously get in the way of me spending all my time consuming movies, TV, and books.  Also, most of my free time is spent on two TV series, one I discuss below and one I will include when I get to the end of the season I am currently watching (probably next month).

Warning:  Although I tried not to delve into plots too deeply, there are potential spoilers in the reviews below.  Read at your own risk.

TV Series:  Supernatural:  Seasons 1-6 (2005-2010)

This is the TV show I watch the most as it is the current pick for TV together with my husband.  We have consumed seasons 1 through 6 over the last several months or so.  We both love this show, although it has had its ups and downs over the series.  It is a sci-fi show which mostly trends toward the humorous although sometimes it can veer into the spooky.  I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to horror, and although a few episodes have scared me, mostly I do not have any issues with the program.  I am just going to do a quick run through of the seasons so far consumed.

Season 1:  Two brothers, Dean and Sam, are searching for their father who has gone missing.  The father is a hunter, who goes after scary mythological beings that happen to be real.  As they search, the brothers take on a host of spooks and monsters themselves.  Although they are looking for their father continually and following clues to find him, the first season is very episodic in its format.  The monsters are mostly met and defeated in each individual episode, so viewers do not need to put a lot of effort into the program.  I really liked the first season because I am a fan of episodic rather than serial programs.  I also enjoyed the wide variety of mythology that is pulled into the program.  It also introduces demons which becomes much more prevalent in future seasons.  This season also contains the two episodes that have freaked me out the most in the series:  Bloody Mary and Provenance.

Season 2:  The second season starts to focus much more on demons, specifically the yellow-eyed demon.  Sam begins to show some psychic ability which scares him and his brother, especially since it seems to be attracting the attention of the yellow-eyed demon.  Although we start to rely more heavily on the back story, there are still a number of standalone episodes in the series with new monsters to learn and defeat.

Season 3:  The final battle with the yellow-eyed demon resulted in the opening of a gate to hell and the release of hundreds of demons.  This season follows Dean and Sam trying track down all of them to send them back to hell.  There are still monster episodes mixed into the series, but a lot of the supernatural happenings revolve around the demons.  This season marks the show becoming a lot more serial and much more repetitive and predictable.  It is still enjoyable, but I miss the variety and simplicity the earlier format provided.

Season 4:  This season we introduce angels into the mix.  The angels, particularly one angel Castiel, work with Dean and Sam as they try to prevent the demons, specifically one named Lilith, from breaking the 66 seals that keep Lucifer locked in his cage.  Sam is also working with one particular demon Ruby, who has convinced him to drink demon blood which intensifies his psychic abilities and might be the key to them defeating Lilith.  Again, we still have some monster episodes mixed into the serial demons vs. angels episodes, and I still enjoy these ventures into mythology more.  The show starts to use some wonderfully silly episodes to move the story along, including a great one called The Monster at the End which is about a comic book series based on Dean and Sam’s lives.

Season 5:  Spoiler alert, Lucifer is released at the end of season 4 and the apocalypse has begun.  Season 5 is all about Dean and Sam trying to defeat Lucifer and send him back to hell.  My enjoyment of the series had slipped a bit from the earlier seasons, mostly because I find it hard work to keep the story lines straight and much prefer the mythical creature episodes that previously dominated.  However, season 5 picked my interest back up because they increased the number of funny episodes.  Two of the series regulars, angels Castiel and Gabriel, became a much loved part of the comic relief in this season.  Castiel was too dry in his early appearances, but he was allowed to become more human and imperfect in this season.  Gabriel was always funny, being known as The Trickster when first introduced, but he began to show up with some regularity and always could be trusted to provide a funny episode.

Season 6:  Unfortunately, the uptick in my interest in season 5 came crashing back down in season 6.  Although Lucifer is safely contained again, Dean and Sam are dealing with the aftermath of the apocalypse.  Sam has escaped from hell, but has no soul.  Castiel is engaged in a civil war between the angels, has little time to worry about what is happening on Earth, and has completely lost his sense of humor again.  Crowley, king demon of hell now that Lucifer is gone, is manipulating everybody while searching for alpha monsters in an effort to learn the secrets of Purgatory.  The season is much more depressing than the last and the funny episodes are fewer.  All in all, I would say this season just was not much fun.  I will continue to watch because my husband still likes it and I have hopes it will find its way back to where it belongs.  I just hope season 7 turns out to be better.  Bonus:  Season 6 introduces Corin Nemec as Dean and Sam’s cousin Christian Campbell for a run of several episodes.  He is a horrible actor, but for some reason I always love when he turns up in a show.

Movie:  X-Men Origins:  Wolverine (2009)

The superhero genre is another of the few areas that my husband and I can watch together.  He likes the action and the nostalgic throwback to his comic book days.  I like the fun characters, fast-paced storylines, and the cute guys, and I appreciate that the action never becomes too bloody and gruesome.  While I have mostly kept up with the newer ones as they are released, there are many of the older ones that I have not watched.  With Deadpool coming out, I thought it would be a good idea to watch the original performance by Ryan Reynolds of the character in the first Wolverine movie.  Plus, I figured it would give me some background into the popular title character too.  Before I give the movie review, I want to notate that I have not read any of the comics and so this does not reflect any kind of comparison to the source material.

I would rate this movie as only so-so.  The beginning of the movie felt very rushed.  It is an origins movie, but they raced through the first part of Wolverine’s existence in a series of montages.  I did not really understand the beginning.  Was the sickness related to his mutation or was it something separate?  What was the deal with the guy banging on the door claiming to be his father, and did that matter to any of the actual storyline?  I also did not realize that the other boy was Sabertooth until further into the movie.  I understand that you cannot cover so much time in detail with a two hour movie, but I would have liked to know more about the history that shaped Wolverine into who he eventually becomes.  It might also have helped me to understand what happened between Wolverine and Sabertooth to make them go from brothers to enemies in the space of minutes in the middle of the movie.  Once the storyline moved into the experiment with Stryker where Wolverine received his adamantium skeleton, and the final showdown with Stryker’s ultimate creation Deadpool, it became very familiar comic book territory.  I enjoyed the end of it much more than the beginning.  One final thought, I felt like there were some oddities between this story and the later X-Men movies.  It has been a long time since I saw X-Men so I might just not remember correctly, but it seemed like they introduced many characters during this movie that he does not know when meeting them in the X-Men movie which took place later in the timeline.  Final word, it definitely is not a must see, but it was enjoyable enough if you are looking to watch a comic book movie.

Movie:  The Martian (2015)

My husband picked this one, and I probably would not have watched it without his influence.  That said, I loved it as did my seven year old stepson.  There is some language and some intense life-threatening situations that give it the PG-13 rating, but since we were there to answer questions we had no reservations about him watching it.  There is one scene toward the beginning where main character Mark digs a piece of shrapnel out of his abdomen that was way too long and gruesome for me to enjoy.  However, the rest of the movie was great.  The action moved quickly, bouncing between Mark on Mars, his crewmates in the ship going home, and ground control back on Earth.  Mark handled his rather hopeless situation with good doses of sarcasm and optimism.  There are some intense moments where the outcome is not predictable but I still was rooting for a good ending all the way through.  The acting is superb, especially Matt Damon as the isolated Mark.  Finally, my husband says the science is fairly believable too if that matters to you (I personally would not know the difference).  I would definitely recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good sci-fi drama to watch.

Book:  This Charming Man by Marian Keyes (2008)

This is one of my favorite authors, but this was not one of my favorite books by her.  Marian Keyes is known for taking rather serious situations and addressing them with a sense of humor.  Her books are witty and fun to read, but still make you consider the root cause of the person’s dilemma.  This book tried to deal with domestic abuse and alcoholism, but it lacked the light hand and solid storytelling that her books usually present.  The story follows three women and their relationship to one man (the book jacket says four, but there are really only two tiny excerpts from the fourth).  Because you switch between the women who all go back and forth between past and present, it can become confusing to keep the details straight and to connect with any of the three women fully.  Marnie’s character arc is the most developed and realistic.  Lola’s story was not horrible, but it was written in a choppy diary style that was very distracting to read (I felt like I was speed reading all her sections).  Grace’s was rather boring and I did not understand her angle until the very end of the book.  Additionally, I found the way the story developed a little unsettling.  Although I knew from the beginning that it was about abuse because of the little anonymous stories that detailed it, Keyes did not start connecting it to the characters until more than halfway through the book.  This had the effect of making me feel like I was constantly waiting for her to get to the point.  Bottom line, I was not disappointed I read the book, but I probably will not be going back for another read.  I would say if you are a Marian Keyes fan who reads all her books then go for this one too.  If, however, you are new to her, I would recommend starting with Sushi for Beginners (my favorite) or Watermelon (first of the Walsh sister books).

Book:  Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2011)

This was a surprisingly fun book to read.  My husband got it in a Loot Crate, really enjoyed it, and has been pestering me to read it for months.  I finally caved, and I am so glad I did.  It is a futuristic dystopian book where humanity is dealing with a world destroyed by current policies and where most humans opt for a virtual reality existence over the real one.  The creator of the virtual reality has died and left his estate, including control of the virtual reality interface, to the first person who completes the final video game challenge he created.  In the book, we follow the adventure of a likable young man who attempts to complete the game.  It takes us through his life, both in reality and in virtual reality, as he solves puzzles, goes on quests, completes challenges, interacts with other players, and tries to stay away from the bad guys (an evil corporation determined to be the first to complete the challenge so they can control the virtual reality).  The quests involve many references to 80s pop culture trivia, old technology, and video game history, but there is no need to be familiar with all of it to enjoy the novel.  This is not the most well written book ever, but it was a fast, fun read.  I would recommend it to anyone who is just looking to enjoy themselves for a little while.

Looking back at my month, it seems many of my choices were influenced by my husband.  Hopefully, next month sees me moving on to some of the things on my own list of interests.

See you next week!

Pre-Vacation Blahs

I originally planned to write a Time Management Part 2 - Evenings blog, but I just cannot get myself motivated to do it this week.  I plan to go back to it in the future, so hopefully you will see it soon.

Today, I decided to write about the Pre-Vacation Blahs.  I have been suffering from this common ailment for the past few days.  I am scheduled to be on vacation from work for all of next week.  I will be going back to Pennsylvania for three days at the beginning of the week for my sister’s baby shower.  The rest of the week will be spent in blissful hibernation here at home.  I have no real plans once I return to Virginia, except one scheduled facial on Tuesday.  I have some half-formed ideas to go furniture shopping to start planning for what I want to do with the front room.  I have a few cleaning projects I might try to knock out while no one else is home to bother me.  Mostly, I just plan to read, watch TV, and vegetate.  I just have to get through the rest of this week and I am ready to relax.  Unfortunately, I sometimes find it so hard to get through the last few days before vacation.  I become very restless and unmotivated to do anything, at work or at home.

I think there are two main reasons why I am having such a hard time.  The first is that I am completely burned out.  I really need this vacation, because I have not had a good break from work for a long time.  Although I have had a few non-holiday-related days off during the past few months, none of them have been particularly relaxing.  They have all been too short for me to completely unwind from work.  Plus, I tend to fill them with trips, errands, chores, or socialization of some kind.  The last full week I took off was in August when I took the trip to Seattle.  While that was definitely long enough to relax from work, it was still a busy time.  We spent just about every day with my husband’s cousins, sightseeing, and/or traveling.  I have not had a string of days for just me to do whatever I want in over a year (I think).  I have the trip to PA (which honestly I wish I was not doing).  Then I return to six full days off before I go back to work.  As long as I do not pressure myself to do too much around the house, I should have plenty of time to just relax and recharge.

The second reason I have the Pre-Vacation Blahs is that work is awful before a long scheduled vacation.  I have a list of things that I need to get done before I go away.  My job is a consistent monthly schedule of tasks that are due whether I am there or not.  Anything due while I am gone needs be done before I leave, completed by someone else while I am gone, or put at the top of the priority list for when I come back.  My coworkers are all busy with their own tasks, so while people will take care of any urgent questions that come up, no one will do any of my work unless I specifically ask them to do something.  What is not done before I leave will be waiting for me when I get back as will a ton of unread email.  My schedule is always overloaded, so there really is no good time to take vacations.  None of my work goes away, it all just gets pushed to before and after the vacation (hence why I get so burned out).  It all becomes overwhelming which makes me depressed which zaps my motivation to do much.  This depression follows me home, making my evenings less productive as well.

The Pre-Vacation Blahs are not much fun.  My week off is so close, but it seems like there is still so much work to do before I get there.  I just need to get through two more days of work.  Then, I am off.  While I know all the work will all be there waiting when I get back, I can at least pretend that nothing matters for a whole week.  If I can just make it there, I know I will enjoy myself.

What about you?  Do you ever suffer from the Pre-Vacation Blahs?  How do you get through it?

See you next week when hopefully I will be feeling relaxed and ready to blog!

Time Management Part 1 - Mornings

If you are anything like me, you have trouble with time management.  I feel so frustrated because it seems like I spend all of my time between Monday and Friday, working and sleeping.  There is so little time left for personal things, including both chores and fun stuff.  I have been working really hard to make some changes to my routines to make the most of the time before and after work.  I want to confine work to a normal time period (8:00 to 5:00), make my commutes as short as possible, have some fun in the evenings, and still get a full eight hours of sleep at night.  I am not particularly successful at any of these, but some of the changes I have implemented have definitely made some improvement.

This week I want to focus solely on the mornings.  First, I want to share with you the old routine.  My alarm used to go off at 5:45, but I would routinely hit the snooze button two or three times, resulting in my getting out of bed around 6:20-ish.  I would go to the bathroom and brush my teeth.  Then, I went downstairs where I fed the cats and cleaned the litter box.  Next, I would make my and my husband’s lunches which usually consisted of salads or leftovers for me, a sandwich for him, and some fruit and snacks for both of us.  I would make us each a smoothie for breakfast (coconut vanilla yogurt, chocolate protein powder, a banana, and a little milk…delicious).  I would drink my smoothie while watching one ten minute Youtube video and/or surfing the internet.  Around 7:30-ish, I would go back upstairs where hopefully my husband was completely cleared out of the bathroom.  I would take a shower, fix my hair, put on makeup, and get dressed.  Downstairs I would gather my stuff and head out the door around 8:15.  This would result in arriving at work around 9:00.

My morning routine did not make me happy at all.  I always felt tired.  I was wasting a lot of time and not getting done what needed to be done.  My routine took more than two hours and I could not figure out what was making it so long.  Plus, I was leaving for work really late which was making my commute worse and was forcing me to stay later at night to make up the time.  Looking at my goals, I knew I wanted to both sleep later and leave earlier.  This meant that I needed to take a really hard look at what I was doing each morning and determine what could be either moved or eliminated from the schedule.  I had to make some choices about what were my priorities, but I managed to make enough changes to eliminate an hour.

The very first thing I did was change my alarm to ring at 6:20, and I only allow myself one snooze.  If I cannot wake up in ten minutes, then I need more sleep and have to go to bed earlier at night.  The second thing I did was force myself to shut down the computer at night and not allow myself to start it again in the morning.  Even though I tried to limit myself to checking email and watching one short Youtube video, I had to be honest that I was losing time by clicking on random links that caught my attention.  The third thing I changed was my morning hygiene routine.  I moved my shower to the evenings.  I streamlined my hair (ponytails) and makeup routines (foundation, under eye corrector, and blush…lipstick I put on at work).  I might wish to be model perfect, but I just realistically do not have time to spend on straightening/curling my hair or applying a full face of makeup.  The last thing I did was to condense the breakfast/lunch process which was the hardest since it affected my husband as well as me.  With his reluctant approval, I have eliminated the smoothie and replaced it with granola bars and microwavable oatmeal bowls that can be eaten at work.  Lunch I changed to all prepackaged items which can be easily thrown together in a bag.  They are not the healthiest options, but it greatly reduced a time consuming process.

Now my morning routine looks more like this.  My alarm rings at 6:20, and I hit the snooze button one time before getting up.  I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and wash my face.  Then, I go downstairs where I feed the cats and clean the litter box.  I put together a few items for my husband’s lunch.  I actually do not have to make mine because I put together a week’s worth of grab and go items on Sunday evening to keep at work for the week.  Next, I go back upstairs where I put my hair in a ponytail, put on my makeup, and get dressed.  I am usually out the door around 7:40 which gets me to work around 8:15.

My routine is still not perfect.  I would like to get to work before 8:00 which means I need to leave in the 7:20 range.  To accomplish this, I would need to either wake up earlier or shorten the process even further.  I have made some compromises that I wish I would not have had to make, like the less healthy lunches and the more casual look.  I run into some scheduling issues with my husband as he is not always out of the bathroom yet when I go back upstairs to get ready.  I also still find myself adding extra things to the schedule that eat away the time, including picking up things I see lying around, folding laundry that did not make it out of the dryer the night before, or just plain wandering around in a daze.  I will continue to work on my morning routine, trying to find better ways of doing it.  However, I am proud the improvement that I have made already.

What about you?  Do you find the morning routine hard to control?  Do you have any tips to help me with mine?

See you next week!

Not Much Progress – Front Room February 2016

It has been a month since I declared my intention to redo my front room.  I wish I could say I was really productive during January, but alas I did not make much progress.  I will get into some new pictures and the actual progress report in the moment, but first a little self-defense.  The first excuse I have is that January was a tough month for me.  If you follow my blog, then you already know that January was the quarter close and we had a huge blizzard.  Work and snow-shoveling took much of my weekend time that could otherwise have gone to working on the front room.  The second defense I have is that the room actually got worse than the original pictures.  We did Christmas with my stepson after I took the January photos, so I had more boxes and toys scattered across the floor than what was shown.  So while I did actually spend some time cleaning, it was more clearing the new stuff than working on the existing mess.  Now that the excuses are out of the way, we can move on to the comparisons.

The first picture is the January 2016 picture, the second the February version.  I did actually throw away some of the boxes that were already broken down and laying on the floor of the room.  I also broke down most of the remaining boxes but have not yet removed them from the room.  I did intentionally keep a couple boxes that were a good size for me to pack and move stuff as needed.  I also intentionally kept the kitties’ favorite boxes.  These will probably eventually go, but I did not want to deprive them before I needed to do so.  I know this section does not show much progress, but honestly I will probably focus more on the other half of the room first anyway.

Again, the first one is January and the second February.  This also does not show a lot of improvement.  I did clear up a few things that did not belong in this room from the floor area.  I also went through many of the things on my desk.  This does not make a big difference in the picture, but it does represent dealing with a bunch of documents that I had put aside to read “later”.  I have several stacks of paperwork on this side of the room that need to be sorted through and either filed for safekeeping or trashed.  I have come to the conclusion that I need to surge ahead with some planning and decision-making first.  It will be a lot easier to deal with the paperwork and other stuff in the boxes along the wall, if I have shelves and file cabinets to store kept items as I go through them.  Right now, I feel more like I am moving things around than cleaning them up.

The new picture actually looks worse than the first because there are more jackets and shirts hung on the posts.  I tried to move some things into the closet, but they all migrated back out as they were worn.  Until I figure out something to organize seasonal coats, I think this area is likely to continue to be messy.

This is the one area that I actually did make progress.  I went through everything that was in the closet.  A good portion went back into the closet:  the coats, the bin full of hats and gloves, the outdoor games, etc.  Everything that did not belong in the closet was taken to the appropriate place, like the utility room or the upstairs closet.  The big black bag that was in the shoved in there was actually full of garbage.  Can you believe I have had a bag of garbage in my closet for almost two years?  Luckily, it was mostly packing materials and paper, so it was not smelly and disgusting.  This is now sitting by the front door and will go out with this week’s trash.  I do want to move some shoes from upstairs down to this closet.  I also will eventually need to figure out proper organization solutions so I can get the cardboard box out of there.  I probably will not go back to this space until later in the project though after I have completed some of the otherareas.

That wraps up my progress report.  It might not have been an extremely productive January, but at least I started.  For February, I am going to focus on the office area.  I will continue to sort through some of those boxes of paper.  I also need to start making some decisions on design so I can get furniture ordered.  Hopefully, next month’s progress report will be more exciting.

See you next week!