September 2021 Update: Second Verse, Same as the First

[kylaraingress]

Well, the first week of October was very busy, which is why this September update is a bit delayed. September overall was relatively calm, however. More under the cut.

News:

In the greater world, most of September was just dealing with the news: Texas abortion vote, COVID getting worse, the fires in California, the flooding, and of course another earthquake. We found out that one of our downstairs neighbors had died of COVID, and I'm a little concerned that we found out via rumor. Another COVID-related thing is that I'm one of those people having really realistic dreams, and there was a couple of days where I had to spend a few moments assuring myself everything was real.

On a personal level, Kate's health is going well. She's lost a lot of weight since the surgery. She had another eye appointment and may need to have surgery in her other eye. We celebrated her 4th year of being Kate (I gave her flowers like I do every year).

My health is okay, outside of the dreams. I'm due an eye appointment, and I got the flu shot. I've been napping a lot, but am blaming it on exhaustion. Mentally, I'm doing pretty okay all things considering. I also have fallen head over heals for Mango Pepsi (exactly what it says on the tin: Pepsi, with a hint of mango).

Neko had her annual comprehensive exam, and was NOT happy about it. She peed in fear as we got her to put in the container. We also had to give her the dewormer mediation ourselves, as Banfield employees were basically 'we don't get paid enough for this!' (which I don't blame them: she was hissing and bitey as we gave it to her).

Work:

On the work front, Kate was voted shop steward of her work union. We're both hoping this will go better than when she did it as a school bus driver. My work is going okay. I found out I'm going to have to go to Huntington Beach late October for their conference they are doing in person. I'm a bit concerned, but....

Personal:

I had a bit of a meltdown when I found a Facebook page for "LA Fandom", which is basically what I've been doing for Geeky Los Angeles. I thought about giving up, as it had started in August and already had 200 likes, but I couldn't find anything outside of the Facebook page. So I purchased the domain GeekyLosAngeles and have been working on getting the website up and going.

I attended Annenberg Pet Space's Critter Carnival (you can see some of the photos from it on my Instagram) and we toyed with getting a dog, but it wasn't meant to be. I've also been playing around with the new version of Google Drive for the computer. Kate has a friend in an online Star Wars group that makes props for a living and made her a 'Pinkie Fett' (a Boba Fett but in pink) on her 3-D printer. Finally, I also got together with a friend of mine for a dinner outside, and it was good to see her.

Media I've Been Consuming:

Nine Perfect Strangers: I actually had gotten screeners for the first six episodes of this limited series, and I was intrigued. I ended up watching the whole thing with Kate. I liked it for the most part: loved Luke Evans in it, and the show has just added to my 'Melissa McCarthy is growing on me like a fungus' thing. I wasn't real pleased with the ending, though.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine: ended its run for a number of reasons. I can't say I wasn't sort of glad, as I really didn't like the whole "Amy wanting to be pregnant" plotline from last season. But hey – got to see Marc Evan Jackson in a cop uniform, and they did a pretty decent job of acknowledging the awkwardness of being a cop show. (Speaking of which, we finally gave up on The Rookie.)

Only Murders in the Building: I'm still trying to decide what I think of this show. I don't dislike it, and the podcaster in me is feeling called out by some of those jokes, but at the same time it hasn't really 'grabbed' me.

Kate and I caught Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in a theatre and enjoyed it thoroughly. Along the same lines, I watched the Star Trek Day live stream, and ended up finally giving Star Trek: Lower Decks a try. I'm enjoying it thoroughly, but can only watch an episode or two at a time before I have to switch to something else.

I'm tentatively excited about the Babylon 5 reboot from Straczynski (but only because he's directly involved and some of his Twitter threads about it have made me go 'okay, I'll give it a try).

We tried Y: The Last Man but got frustrated easily by it. In other sci fi, I finally got around to watching Hackers, which ... that was something. ;-)

We loved Apple's filming of Come From Away: we had caught it in LA a couple of years ago and I was blown away by it. The filming was well-done, never 'reminding' you of the cameras but still letting you see that it was a stage production, if that makes sense.

Thanks to Andrew Scott's involvement, we watched The Pursuit of Love (dear lord it was depressing), and we of course HAD to watch Kate which was popcorn fun.

I also purchased the Road 96 game for the Switch and have been playing around with it. I alternate with playing Skyrim, and – of course – my mobile games. I bought the Oatmeal's Exploding Kittens mobile version, and that's also been entertaining.

And that's September. Gonna be uploading some photos to my Flickr album hopefully this week, and I actually have a couple of TikTok ideas that I just need to sit down and actually do. ;-) Hope you're all doing okay!