Another week that felt like a month. The plus side is that many of the people I knew were feeling the same thing. Tuesday felt like it should have been Thursday, which resulted in a week that is a haze. I had trouble sleeping too, which might have added to the overall confusion.
So, I had a doctor appointment last weekend, which didn’t go as badly as I expected. It still wasn’t great and I’m waiting for returning blood tests to make things worse. My blood pressure is high, so I have to check it 3 times a week for a while to see if it’s time for me to go on medication. It’s that bottom number being in the 80’s and 90’s. Going to keep improving the diet and try to start increasing the biking amount to maybe 75 minutes a week. Keep in mind that I bike around 15-18 mph for most of this time, so it counts as intense according to Internet sources. Sounds like it should be improving . . . That was the plan.
Unfortunately, the week kicked off with some massive drama that makes me worried about how these blood pressure numbers look. They started going down by Friday, but the rest of the week was a headache. This really drove home the fact that our health can be influenced by people around us. Selfish and stubborn people who we can’t avoid or eliminate from our lives can take their toll. Sometimes, they start whittling away at your health on purpose. Not saying that’s happening here, but I sometimes wonder if me getting sick or dying is a goal of a few people. Can’t say any more about that without stirring the pot, but you get the general idea.
Another source of stress was my son having trouble with some work. It looked like his grades took a massive hit, but then it was revealed that they weren’t fully counted. As someone who works in education, I should really be able to recognize when this is going on. That part of my brain doesn’t kick in when it’s my own son, especially when I’m already tired from another issues. By Thursday, I was sporting a migraine and feeling like I was dragging myself to the end of the week. Glad I caught a second wind in time for a field trip on Friday.
Speaking of Thursday, I got to take my son to an event at my school. Several of our Life Skills students are on a unified basketball team. This is a small local league where each team is a mixed of special and general education students. The Gen-Ed students usually do passing and work to help the Special-Ed students score. It’s all about having fun and good sportsmanship. Winning is also good and our team is still undefeated. This is the first game I got to go to also, so I was excited. My son is now a big fan of one of my students who is amazing on defense. Really hoping we can go to their next home game, which is a semi-final. If they win that, they’ll be off to the finals. Really proud at what they’ve accomplished.
Not much writing happened here. I did finish the August posts and start working on the September ones. Phi Beta Files only gained 2 new characters. I thought I could design more during school breaks, but I was too tired or busy. I might try for next weekend on that project, but I’m leaning more towards working on the outline for Darwin & the Beast Collector. If I can start writing that by the end of June or early July then I have a good chance of finishing it before the next school year. Still haven’t decided on the publishing schedule for it. Need to reach out to my cover artist too. Got caught up in parenting, working, catching Covid, and other health issues.
Really nothing else to talk about from what I remember. This coming week is going to be busy as well. My son has his Lego Robotics tournament coming up, so this is the last week for staying late to practice. Got a big field trip on Wednesday and various appointments to juggle. I don’t expect to get to any real writing until everything is over, which might not be until next Sunday. That’s why this weekend is about resting and regaining enough energy to make it through a potentially crazy week. Promised my son he could play video games all afternoon after lunch since it’ll be raining, so maybe I’ll work on some September posts during that time. Should probably tackle laundry too.
What am I watching? Still watching ‘White Collar’ when I’m not too exhausted. I think I’ll watch the new season of ‘The Great’ once I’m done with my current binge. Yeah, my life is getting kind of boring lately, but that’s what happens when you start getting near the end of a school year. Everything is crazy busy, but not really exciting to talk about on a blog. I should have Lego Robotics news next weekend though.
Goals of the week:
- Rest up this weekend.
- Watch ‘Gremlins 2’ with my son.
- Help him with homework.
- Lego Robotics competition coming up.
- Work on September posts.
- Start a new puzzle.
- Watch more ‘White Collar’.
- Read more ‘Naruto’.
- Biking and improving diet.
- Really need to get better sleep.
- Keep checking blood pressure and hope it goes down. Really not looking forward the medicated part of human existence.
(Huh. Just noticed that Twitter isn’t supported by WordPress, so my posts might not be going there any more. Really makes me wonder why I keep that app on my phone.)
Legends of Windemere 
Welcome to the blood pressure meds. I used to take three different ones, and I suppose I still do. Some genius made a cocktail version of two, and now I only have two BP pills, but all the same stuff is in them.
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I’m hoping to avoid it, but looks doubtful. My worry is that I’ll be medicated so much for various things that daily life will be a challenge.
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Your post is on Twitter cause I hit the little bird. Yeah, that auto-feed is dead, but you can also hit the little bird to post it. I’ve been on BP meds for 30 years. No side effects at all. If you have to do it modern medicines are great.
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So, I have to tweet it manually? That’s kind of a pain.
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I do your post every day so you don’t have to.
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Thanks.
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Sorry to hear about your blood pressure and dealing with whoever is giving you that drama doesn’t help. I also saw that music video from a friend of mine the other day and it was a decent tribute to The Seventh Seal even though it’s the second music video I’ve seen referencing that movie after No New Kinda Story by Starflyer 59 (which also visually references 8 1/2 in the same video), but that Swedish movie has been homaged, referenced, and parodied a lot for decades.
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I actually didn’t watch the video yet. I listen to a radio station while writing these posts. So, I grab a video of whatever catches my attention the most before I’m done. Not familiar with Tue Seventh Seal. Horror?
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Oh, okay. I thought you would’ve seen the music video prior to posting it, but maybe you only heard the song. Now it’s one of those moments where my Media Studies degree is on display since film history and production was a good chunk of what I learned. The Seventh Seal is closer to dark fantasy and it’s about a knight who returns from the Crusades only to come back to a plague-infested Sweden. There’s a parallel plot of him playing chess with Death as he’s trying to survive and these recurring chess scenes with this figure of Death being a man in a black hood are iconic where multiple things have referenced or parodied it. Even Last Action Hero of all movies involved that version of Death coming into the real world briefly. The Seventh Seal is definitely talked about a lot in international cinema and film history and director Ingmar Bergman is typically in the same conversation of directors like Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, or Federico Fellini back then. I wouldn’t call Seventh Seal my favorite movie of all time, but I can definitely see it influencing a lot of other films decades after the fact.
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Is this the movie that started the whole ‘play a game against Death’? It was usually chess in the times I saw it used. Off the top of my head, I remember ‘Animaniacs’ parodying it and a game against death being the catalyst for the ‘Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy’. Guess that movie influenced a lot within entertainment culture.
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When it comes to chess being the game, then yes. That was the movie that started that specific motif with chess. I forgot Animaniacs parodied it! That also makes perfect sense with Grim Adventures even though I didn’t watch many episodes of that cartoon.
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Loved Animaniacs. It’s what taught me that time began on a Tuesday. 😀
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I definitely watched that show when I was a kid, but I haven’t seen it in ages. I had to look up the reference and I finally got what you meant. Haha! From that same episode, it started out in Sweden which was a nice tie-in because Ingmar Bergman is Swedish and The Seventh Seal takes place in that country. Wow, fridge brilliance!
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I loved how they tied things together in those ways. Even if I didn’t know what was going on at the time. Shame that the old episodes aren’t on Hulu anymore. They disappeared before I could show my son the entire thing.
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That’s definitely good. I wouldn’t have gotten all the jokes back then given how young I was (saying nothing about the adult humor thrown in). They don’t have the old episodes on Hulu? That’s weird because the reboot is still on there, right? What a bummer.
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Yeah. They ditched the originals a few months back. Now only the reboot remains.
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That’s weird. You would think they would keep the old episodes because of the reboot and to introduce viewers who weren’t old enough to see the original to those older episodes. I wonder if it’s some distributor red tape like if WBD has the rights given that Warner made the original series and could only have it on HBO Max assuming if it’s streaming on there.
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I was wondering if WB was moving it to HBO Max. Tiny Toons disappeared too, so that could happen. That or Hulu didn’t want the old stuff overshadowing the reboot.
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That could be plausible with the original series and Tiny Toons. I don’t have HBO Max, but it would be an ideal place for them given how Warner owns that channel and respective streaming service anyway. The Hulu situation could also be a possibility even though there could be piqued interest in the old episodes from older and newer viewers alike.
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I have both services. Haven’t seen them turn up yet. Shame too because I don’t think we got to the Death episode.
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Huh. That’s bummer how it’s not streaming on those platforms. I just have Netflix, so I wasn’t sure which shows were on what service.
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I hope the new week has something of an improvement in store for you Charles.
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Thanks. I hope so too. Though I can already see it’s going to be really busy. Gotta love the final few weeks of the school year.
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Hope your blood pressure stays in check.
For the Twitter, they announced it, WordPress that is, that it will no longer be an option, because Twitter raised the price of their API, WordPress does not want to pay for it, so they are ending the integration. They will however offer automatic posting from WP to Mastodon in the near future. Ive tried it and it is just not the same, it is a little bit confusing, because you have to pick your own server (reminds me of picking a server to play on in a computer game) and then you will be reading and connecting with people from your server. Like i said, very confusing to me, because on the opposite: Twitter is just one twitter, with unclassified segments.
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Blood pressure is staying high, but not breaking 100. Guess that’s a plus. I’m seeing less and less of a reason to use Twitter. How did it go south so quickly? Not that it was amazing to begin with.
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I can’t say for certain, but similar to tumblr, as a user/reader (not an author who is successful on the platform) I manage to avoid what plagues others which is material they don’t want to see. Is why I am always out of the loop.
Can tell you that finding and connecting with readers and other writers for my magazine has been the most lucrative on Twitter specifically.
I do not know how blood pressure is observed in your country, but I have been having trouble with it lately and cannot seem to bring it under 220 (the upper one). They started me on medication, which does not seem to be working. Love that they tell me to just “avoid stress” like you can just clock it off with a button.
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I never figured Tumblr out. As for Twitter, I haven’t had any luck getting sales through it in years. All I attract lately are political people and authors who want me to sign up for a newsletter.
My upper one is around 150 lately. It’s the lower one being in the 90’s that has my doctor worried. I’ve had the avoid stress talk too. Usually point out that I’m not rich enough to do so.
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I mostly use Tumblr as my own eternal mood board, it has brought no readers, or anything over the years.
Id trade you for that newsletter Twitter thing, all I get is being added, with no previous conversation or anything, to a bunch of crypto lists – which I do not even know what they are!
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I forgot about the crypto lists. I really haven’t done much there since February. I wander on to check some accounts my school maintains.
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I know what you mean about a week that feels like a month. I just had ten days that felt more like ten months. I don’t want to trade with you, but I do want to sleep for a year or so. Not likely to happen, but I totally wish it could!
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I have a three day weekend coming up. I will be sleeping so much. Desperately need it.
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