Thursday, June 30, 2016

Quick Hits – June 2016

In a departure from prior months, I actually left my house in order to consume some entertainment.  In a special feature, I am doing a review on a live musical theater performance that I saw with my cousin.  This will replace one of the TV series reviews, which I only had one of this month anyway.  Additionally, both movie reviews come from movies I saw in an actual cinema rather than from the comfort of my couch.  I used to love to go to the movies at a teenager, but as an adult I rarely go.  The theater is too crowded, too expensive, and too much hassle to be as much fun as it was growing up.  In general, this month was more about reading than watching the screen again.  I am really enjoying reading, and I am so glad to have shifted my focus toward the written word for a while.

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

Musical Theater:  Kinky Boots
The Kennedy Center regularly offers shows from every genre of performing arts but until recently, I have almost exclusively seen ballets.  I made the decision to expand my horizons which is how I have started taking in some musical theater performances.  Kinky Boots caught my attention because it was a show starring drag queens featuring Cyndi Lauper music.  I thought that sounded like the epitome of fun and promptly invited my cousin along for the ride.  I loved it.  The story is about a man who is facing bankruptcy for his inherited shoe factory.  He tries to save it by focusing exclusively on fancy stiletto boots reinforced to support a man’s heavier weight, inspired by his new drag queen friend.  Misunderstanding and intolerance muddy the waters for a while, but eventually everyone comes together to make a product they can showcase in Milan at the shoe fashion show.  This production was everything I hoped it would be.  There was great music, with my favorites being a slow ballad called Not My Father’s Son and the first act finale Everybody Say Yeah.  There was a good plot, focusing its themes on believing in yourself and tolerating others.  There were some incredibly funny moments, with me especially sympathetic to the awkward girl crush scenes for the main female lead.  Best of all, there were bright costumes and flashy performances by the drag queens.  If you want a couple hours of sheer fun, I highly recommend giving Kinky Boots a try.

TV Series:  Supernatural:  Season 9 (2013)
Season 9 managed to keep my interest and attention by maintaining the qualities I loved so much in Season 8.  This season is still about angels and demons but it focuses on power struggles in each realm.  King of Hell Crowley is threatened by the presence of a Knight of Hell (basically a super demon) named Abaddon.  On the other side, God’s former scribe Metatron throws all the angels out of Heaven and takes over ruling as the new god.  The angels on Earth are all forming factions competing with each other as well as trying to figure out how get back to Heaven.  Castiel has been humanized and is on the run from some of the angels who blame him for Metatron’s move.  Meanwhile, Sam was seriously injured in last season’s finale, and Dean asks for help from a loner angel Ezekiel who may not be as friendly as he seems.  Once Sam is on the mend, he and Dean work with Castiel and Crowley to try to restore the normal order of things.  There were two negatives in this season that took away some of the fun.  First, Metatron and Abaddon did start to wear on my nerves by the end of the season as neither has the complexity that make Crowley and Castiel fun additions.   Second, they killed off one of my favorite secondary characters of all time which made me rather angry.  I rallied though and count this season as a success.  Of course the funny episodes are my favorite, so keep an eye out for Dog Dean Afternoon as the best example of humor.

Movie:  Captain America:  Civil War (2016)
I went to the movie theater to see this one with my husband.  We have a hard time agreeing on movies to see together, and currently our common ground seems to be superhero movies.  Captain America:  The Winter Soldier was one of my favorites in the Marvel series, so I was extremely excited to see the newest one.  My takeaway was that this movie was a lot of fun, but it was not anywhere near as good as its predecessor.  My biggest complaint was that the movie felt very chaotic.  There were non-stop action sequences, a multitude of characters, and too many storylines jammed into the mix.  I know it is a superhero film which requires the good guys to fight the bad guys, but I just felt like there were too many fight scenes and not enough dialog or story progression in between.  Plus some of the action scenes were simply hard to watch.  I literally wanted to close my eyes during parts of the movie because I could not focus on the screen it was such a blur of people/things flying everywhere.  Supposedly this was a Captain America movie, but they had so many superheroes in it that it felt more like an Avengers movie (I know this is a common criticism, but it is true).  Most of it focused on Captain America and Ironman, but things kept getting side-tracked into these sideshows of characters:  hello Spiderman, here is Antman, introducing The Black Panther, Vision makes dinner for the Scarlet Witch, etc.  I really think this should have focused more on Captain America and the characters already associated with his trilogy and anything necessary to the actual storyline.

That brings us to the actual storyline, where I do not know exactly what they were trying to accomplish.  The Civil War in the movie title refers to a split between Captain America and Iron Man over whether the Avengers should sign the Sokovia Accords giving the United Nations oversite of the group.  They never actually resolve anything of this question before Captain America becomes a fugitive for trying to help his friend Bucky escape prison long enough to clear his name from a bombing that he did not do.  The bad guy that framed him is out there on the loose intent on destroying Bucky, the Avengers, and a group of five other Winter Soldiers that no one knew existed until now.  On top of that, there are several side stories involving how much responsibility each Avenger holds for damage caused during combat, unknown history between Captain America and Ironman, a king’s son who becomes his own superhero to get revenge for his father’s death, a random kiss between Captain America and Agent Carter, Iron Man’s philanthropy with the MIT students caused by guilt in his own history, and shifty allegiances for certain characters.  In the end, the bad guy after Bucky was caught, but there really was no resolution to almost any other plot point brought up in the movie.  I really feel like this should have been two movies.  The first one a Captain America film focusing on the revenge story that involves Bucky and the other Winter Soldiers.  The second one an Avengers film focused on the Civil War between that characters that comes to a decision one way or another.  The side plots could be factored in where appropriate and actually addressed with meaning, or dropped from the narrative completely.

Even though I just posted a rather lengthy breakdown of what I disliked, I want to emphasize that this movie is still worth watching.  It has a lot of the qualities that draw people to the Marvel Universe.  The characters are those we have grown to know and love.  The action is fast-paced and full of cool little scenes (I mean Captain America drags down a helicopter by himself!).  The dialog is sprinkled with the humor known for each character (sarcasm for Ironman, naïve questions from Captain America, etc.).  If you like the enthusiasm and cinematic qualities of the Marvel films, then you will like this movie too.  I honestly feel they just bit off more story than they could chew in two and a half hours for this one.

Movie:  Me Before You (2016)
Last month, I wrote up a review of the book on which this movie is based.  I loved the book.  Previews of the movie led me to believe that I would really enjoy the movie too.  I was not let down.  Although the movie does leave out a lot of details from the book, the core of the story is still there.  Most of the changes appear to be necessary to streamline the story into an acceptable length for a movie.  Although everyone will wonder about some cuts, I felt that few of them really undermined the main message of the movie:  rethinking first impressions, overcoming obstacles, knowing what you want, and accepting things that cannot be changed.  I also think they did a reasonable job of transferring characters intact from the book to the movie, particularly Lou, Will, and Patrick.  The ending is still as sad and strong yet full of hope for Lou’s future as the book.  The book was a tear-jerker, and the movie was the same (I have never before seen an entire theater full of women get up and go to the restroom afterward).  If you love the book, see the movie, but definitely bring your tissues.

Book:  Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1979)
I picked this book from a Buzzfeed article about the scariest books people had ever read.  While this book failed to scare me, I did find it a very good read.  I have never read any Peter Straub before, but I found his material (or at least this book) very much like Stephen King who I have read a lot.  Although he is generalized as a horror fiction writer, I found this particular one despite the name to be much more supernatural thriller than ghost story.  The first part of the book sprawls with many characters, storylines, and general chaos.  As we near the end though, everything pulls together in a fantastic way.  Even early when I was confused, I was hooked and could not wait to figure out what exactly was happening.  The ghosts are much more complex and encompassing than the spooks I was expecting, leaving me clueless about how it would all end.  Indeed, it wraps up in a moment that seems too good to be true, and makes me think the story might not really be over at all.  Although I was somewhat disappointed that this did not give me the thrill I was hoping to find, I am still really glad I read the book.

Book:  Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (2016)
I picked this one for my May Book of the Month subscription.  This book was very fun to read.  It is marketed as a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but I would classify it more of a homage to the original than a retelling.  The author modernized and Americanized it, taking the action to Cincinnati, Ohio.  The big plot points of the original overlay the story, but there were changes to many of the subplots.  Some were for modernization’s sake, such as making Cousin Willie a step-cousin to help modernize the idea of marrying cousins.  Others I do not understand, such as Catherine de Bourgh as a feminist crusader who Liz interviews and admires rather than a relative of Darcy’s that opposes the marriage.  The changes were enough to take the story away from being a true retelling, but nothing that made the book unenjoyable.  Overall I thought Ms. Sittenfeld did a fantastic job on the characterizations of the Bennets, the Bingleys, and the Darcys, modernizing the details without losing the nuances of the original characters.  The story progressed very quickly to the expected conclusions.  Along the way the reader is provided with laughter and amusement.  Unless they are a Jane Austen purist, I think any fan would enjoy this fun Pride and Prejudice inspired novel.  It is a perfect summer beach read.

Overflow:

Movie:  Grandma (2015) – Yes

Book:  Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella (2009) – Yes

Book:  Perfect Days by Raphael Montes (2014) – No.  I do not know if it was the writing or the translation but this book was incredibly flat.


See you next week!

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Trying Thursdays

A few weeks (months?) ago, I made the comment that I might try to switch my blog posting night to Thursdays.  I have decided to move forward with this plan.  I do not know if it will stay Thursday or not, but Wednesday is becoming a bit difficult for me.  If one thing is not working well, it makes sense to try something different.  Obviously this blog is up today, Wednesday, but next week I will start posting on Thursday nights.

When I started the blog, Wednesday seemed like the ideal night.  My husband was in class, and I had the house to myself.  When his class ended, he did not sign up for any more onsite night classes.  For a while, I was doing a decent job of pushing him back from the desire to spend all Wednesday nights together.  Usually I compromised by watching one episode of the current shared TV show with dinner, and then spending an hour finalizing my blog and posting.  As long as the blog was written before Wednesday, I could easily make this work.  I was considering switching to Thursdays though because that was his bar night with a friend, so I usually had the house completely to myself.  Then, he made plans to host a Pathfinder (I think that is the right name) game at our house.  I originally thought this was perfect because he would be occupied with his friends all night.  I would be free to spend as much time as I needed blogging.  Unfortunately, I am learning that a Pathfinder session involves six guys making a lot of noise in my front room.  I lose the workspace I usually use, being forced to go downstairs to the basement or upstairs to my bedroom.  Neither of those options is particularly comfortable for spending time on a laptop.  I also do not escape the noise in either place, so I am finding it distracting when doing my work.

My new plan is to give Thursdays a try after all.  However, the day is no longer as perfect as I originally thought it would be when I made the initial suggestion.  Because he is doing the Wednesday night games, my husband has decided to stop the Thursday nights out with the friend.  I have been spending the first half of my Thursday nights watching TV with him.  Then, I go upstairs to put on a face mask and read before bed.  I do not want to lose the pamper time, so I am going to have to push back on the TV time.  Hopefully, this will go over well enough seeing as I have stressed the Thursday is my quiet night.  Maybe he will even be bored by himself for a night and start up the night out with a friend again.  If I get too much pushback or interruption from him though, the blog might go back to Wednesdays.  Or perhaps I will switch to taking my laptop to work with me so I can go somewhere else in the evening to finish my work.   For now, we give Thursdays a chance to work.


See you next week on Thursday!

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Baby-Palooza

I just spent a wonderful weekend at Baby-Palooza.  Most of my family converged in the Pittsburgh area for a summer visit.  We had a very busy weekend consisting of a hockey game on TV (Penguins won the Stanley Cup!!!), a trip to the zoo, a night making s’mores, a big family picnic, a puzzle-thon, a baptism, and a lunch at Applebees.  The most exciting part of the weekend though was all the babies.  There were three babies to be exact.  I had my fill of feeding, playing, rocking, holding, and cuddling.  Now I am going to indulge in a little bragging to end the experience.

The first baby in attendance was CP.  I wrote a blog about his struggle with NF1 and cancer in December.  CP is a little over two years old.  Age-wise this makes him more a toddler than a baby, but the illness has delayed his development so he is still very baby-like in some ways.  The good news is that CP seems to be doing better with stable results from the latest round of testing.  CP has a good amount of energy and is making progress in his various physical and occupational therapies.  He loves to go walking, but he needs some help navigating unfamiliar territory.  His favorite game is to tell people “Boo” and have them respond “Oh you scared me”.  I was his special buddy this weekend, and he let me have several opportunities to walk and play games with him.  His smile and laughter will just brighten up anybody’s day.  I really hope that the treatments work their magic so we can enjoy CP’s company for many years to come.

The second baby that visited was PR.  PR is my cousin’s new baby.  She is seven months old.  This is the first time I have ever met her.  She was one of the happiest, cutest babies I have ever known.  The whole weekend she was in a good mood.  She loved all the attention, even by all these people she did not know.  She is a big fan of being in her bouncy chair and in her walker.  She is probably teething soon as she constantly drooled and chewed on anything in her reach.  She had a weird fascination with toes; you could actually see her face brighten whenever she got close to someone’s feet.  The cutest thing about her though was when she got excited about something.  She would shake her fists, peddle her legs, and rock her whole body.  She literally danced until she got whatever had brought on the excitement.

The final baby was my niece T.  This is my second time seeing T.  The first was back in April when she was almost a month old.  As a newborn, she of course did not do much but eat and sleep, so interacting with her on that trip was not much fun.  Now she is three months old, and so much cuter.  She is a fairly happy baby, who likes to smile at people who are paying attention to her.  Her favorite pastime seems to be waving her arms and kicking her legs.  She really liked the little pink Taggie blanket I bought her and attempted to chew on several of the tags the whole time.  When T is unhappy she likes to make this pouty face that looks just like her mom; they have the same wrinkly chin when they pout.  It was T’s baptism we all attended this weekend.  T was a beautiful baby in a ruffled gown that made her looks like a giant peach puffball.  I am so excited to see T get older and become even more interactive.  I just wish I would be around to see more of it.  For now, I am enjoying all the shopping in the baby section I can do.  One last thing, I am happy to report that my sister seems to be accepting motherhood more now than when I first wrote about baby T a couple months ago.

I think I am done talking about babies for the week.  My mind has just been preoccupied with babies though, so naturally I had to share them with everyone else.  Babies are so exciting for our family, because it has been a while since we have had any young ones around.  Being able to see all of them, especially the two from so far away, was a great way to spend a weekend.  I cannot wait for my next trip to see a baby, probably T but you never know.


See you next week!

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

I Wish I Could Quit You (Facebook)

I have a confession to make.  I hate Facebook.  Every day, I consider deactivating my account.  So far I have resisted, but it is so tempting.  There are only a couple reasons I do not disconnect.  One is that most of my family uses this as a contacting and planning platform.  If I want to know about picnics, events, occasions, etc., I feel the need to stay connected.  Also, I use it as a backup messenger for chatting with my friends when AIM stops working, which is unfortunately happening more and more frequently.  Even with these two uses though, I am considering just pulling the plug and finding other ways to keep in contact (like texting or *gasp* actually talking to people).

There are three major reasons that I want to pull away from Facebook.  The first of these is that it is one of my biggest time-wasters.  I have almost two hundred people on my friends list, and together they fill my newsfeed with enough stuff to take up hours of my time.  While I have very little against any specific type of post, when multiplied by hundreds they all become annoying and overwhelming.  There are too many pictures of cute kids to view, too many announcements to acknowledge, too many quizzes to take, too many political debates to consider, and too many memes to find amusing.  Sometimes it is nice to know what is happening with the various people I know (and I do actually know on some level 99.9% of my friends list), but the truth is most of the posts have little impact on my day-to-day life.  I have tried unfollowing almost everyone, leaving only family and close friends, but it still provides enough newsfeed activity to eat away all my time.  Plus, Facebook advertising just keeps getting more prominent the longer it exists.

The second reason I dislike Facebook is that it makes me feel left out of things and disgruntled.  There are two ways this manifests itself.  For one, people I know have events or do things together, and my first thought is why was I not invited.  It does not matter how much or little I hang out with the people involved, where they are located, or whether I have even expressed interest in whatever it is.  Logically, I know that my friends and family do things without me all the time, and that this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  I still cannot help feeling slighted when I see pictures or comments of the fun though.  The other way this affects me is envy over personal accomplishments.  People of course highlight their achievements, promotions, awards, special gifts, awesome vacations, etc.  This leaves me with a feeling that nothing good ever happens to me.  Again, my rational brain knows that people post more of the good than the bad/mundane.  Also, this is a compilation of good across many people, not one person who has an extraordinary life.  Yet, I cannot help feeling like life passes me by as I trudge through another day at work while everyone else is enjoying it.

The final reason I want to quit Facebook is that it fosters an unhealthy attachment to people who are not that relevant to my life.  I find myself looking for updates on situations or digging for more information on people when I should not be that involved.  For example, I have one of my high school crushes on my friends list.  I saw him about six years ago at my high school reunion, and since then I have found myself hyper-aware of his Facebook activity.  He was extremely nice to me at the reunion, but he never made any attempt to contact me afterward.  Given that I live six hours away and have married someone else (reunion was prior to my meeting my now husband), I think it unlikely there will be any relationship established in the future.  Yet, I am entirely too concerned with what he is doing and even more so when it is with his new girlfriend.  Another example is a woman, also known from high school, who lives reasonably close and who shares a lot of similar interests to me.  I watch her posts feeling like we are close personal friends, but truthfully we are not.  Since she does live fairly close, I have attempted to invite her to a few things, but she always turns me down.  Clearly, the distance is still too far for her, or she is just not interested in being more friendly.  And yet, when I see her Facebook contributions all I can think is why are we not better friends and end up stalking/liking all her posts.

What about you?  Can you relate to any of these concerns?  Do you have any suggestions on how to make it better?  Should I just deactivate my account?  I really think it might be time for me to pull the plug on it.  It will free up time for other things (blogs, reading, writing, cleaning, talking to people in real life).  Plus, I think it will make me happier in the long run to focus on doing things myself, not watching what other people are doing.


See you next week!

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Feeling Good – Front Room June 2016

As the title indicates, I am feeling good about the progress in the front room.  I managed to do a lot of work in both the cleaning and the designing phases.  I put the comparison photos below as usual, May 1 on the left, June 1 on the right.  There is a bit of accumulated mess in the area because my husband cannot seem to grasp the concept that I am trying to clear the front room out and keeps leaving things around.  There are the painting supplies from when he fixed our front door this weekend, although some of this will probably be needed soon to paint the room.  There is also some fishing gear, a lawn chair, and some boxes that need to go away.

I managed to sort through a lot of junk this month.  I relocated some of the things in the room, including a container full of my husband’s clothes, a box of Christmas ornaments, and the carpet cleaner.  I have gone through all of the remaining boxes in the room and now know what is in each of them.  All the ones currently stacked in the corner are full of pictures, books, knick-knacks, etc. that will most likely be unpacked into the room once finished.  On the office side of the room, I only made progress on the piles of paper next to the desk.  A lot of this was old schoolwork which was trashed.  A portion of it went upstairs to be read more carefully since some of it might be useful in the future.  I am getting close to being done with the initial cleaning that needs to be completed before the redesign work can begin.  A lot of what is left in the room just needs to be packed up for temporary storage while we paint, because ultimately most of what is left will remain in the room when completed.

I also made some progress on the design portion of the project.  I realized that I was probably not going to make it back out to Tyson’s Corner any time soon to visit Crate & Barrel or revisit West Elm and ZGallery.  Instead I decided my best move was to look at the websites.  I found two lines of furniture at West Elm that I think are going to be the basis of my room.  The first is the Bliss Collection which consists of sofas and chairs.  I ordered some swatch samples from which I picked the Microfiber in Mink as my likely candidate.  The other is the Industrial Modular Collection which consists of desks, shelves, and stands.  I also have a couple ideas in mind for an office chair and end tables from the West Elm website, but I may look at the other places again to see if anything would mix well.  I want a glass display case to organize my pretty things, which I will probably order from Ikea.  I am also interested in adding some adult bean bags from www.lovesac.com.  In addition to furniture shopping, I went paint shopping.  I picked up a bunch of blue paint samples from Home Depot, narrowed them down to three, and painted swatches on the wall (you can almost see one on the left in the living room shot).  I think I have already eliminated one of these colors, so I just need to figure out whether I like Behr’s Blue Bird Day or Behr’s Spacious Skies better.

In June, my main goals are to paint the room and to start making some purchasing decisions on furniture.  I am reliant on my husband to do the painting because I will need help moving the desk and painting the ceiling of the room.  Plus, he has mentioned wanting to switch out light fixtures and wall plates at the same time.  Aside from painting, I need to measure the room and put together a tentative furniture plan.  I probably will not order everything all at once though.  I think I want to start on the office side with a desk, some shelving, and file cabinets.  I need to do some browsing for rugs and curtains.  I am unsure of a rug on the office side, but I definitely want something on the living room side to help delineate the space.  I want to get rid of those heavy curtains and replace them with something light and airy.  I also need to start thinking about lighting options because that room is always a bit dark and I want it to be bright.

There you have it, another monthly update completed.  I think I made decent progress in May.  I hope June will prove to be just as good.  I feel really motivated and optimistic about getting this project completed now.  I am excited to have my front room ready for use.


See you next week!