New Music Friday

This week has been stressful at work, but better than last week. Even given the fact that I had to sit up until 4am one night to wait for some failed files to come through just in case something failed that our team had to deal with. Thank goodness everything ran through when the files were received. I've had to hope on after hours three or four of the five nights this week after hours, despite it not being my week to do so and honestly it's wearing me down.

Tonight I watched this really interesting version of The Turn of the Screw live on YouTube that was done via cellphones between two remote actors. I really enjoyed it overall and I think you can still watch it back at the link there. (Not music sure, but live theater is still worth sharing.)

It's not new music but all week to keep spirits up I've been bopping around my room to Marianas Trench on shuffle/repeat which has been a good time. If you've never heard them before, they're a P!atD/boy band-eque Canadian group that's been around since the early 00s. I highly recommend them if you like a good bop. And they've got a good humor about them as obvious from this goofy favorite of mine Pop 101.

However, we come here for new music and I do have a few of those too.

I was excited to check my email this morning and find an unexpected brand new EP from Shakey Graves on Bandcamp! Todrick Hall also put out a small Quarantine EP full of songs to make you dance in your room. I played part of the last song "Mask, Gloves, Soap, Scrubs" for my coworkers this afternoon for a bit of fun. And I can't remember what day the new AWOLNation album came out in the last week, but I had that one for a full day, one of the first things to break up my streak of Fiona Apple days.

A new song from one Julia Nunes today on YouTube, "It's Easy". It's got this chill synth vibe and those good deep Julia vocals. Definitely feel like her lyrics on this are Quarantine inspired, but I'm liking it a lot. I'll need a few more listens, maybe without the video though -- the wonky small face/moving eyes thing is not my style. But I love what she does near the end with the light visuals.

Watch on YouTube

This absolutely S T U N N I N G Postmodern Jukebox version of Pearl Jam's "Black" with singer Courtnie Frazier. This is just so lovely, I love it so much. (Also, if you're the kind of person that likes Scott's piano work, follow his channel too, he's been doing these lockdown inspired themed songs like "I Think We're Alone Now", and they're great.)

Watch on YouTube

Last is this really great cover/mashup tribute to Bill Withers with "Lean on Me" with Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" by the violinst Ezinma. Oh, I love the location and her presence in this performance and her musicality is wonderful. Plus the combination of these songs is really nice together.

Watch on YouTube

To close out I'll link to this special new little version of "The Rainbow Connection" that was recently put out on The Muppets YouTube channel.

I hope you've been having a good week, or as good as can be had. Tell me what you've been listening to?

More Horror Movies

I hope you like these updates/mini-reviews on the movies as I watch them. It's definitely helping me reflect back on what I've watched, I have a hard time sometimes remembering things after the fact if I don't write them down and plot details often just pass on through me after a few days, so it's nice to have a record to look back on.

I did watch a NEW-ish movie this weekend, Underwater which came out just last fall I think and is now available to rent, which we did. Underwater stars Kirsten Stewart as an Engineer on an underground mining rig that explodes after what the crew assumes was a series of earthquakes due to some mining incident. A small group of survivors from their station suit up to cross the ocean floor to another station hoping to find escape pods back to the surface. But something is tracking this group as they try to make it to the other station. Since I'm including this in my horror movie round-up one can assume that strange things abound. This movie gave me very strong Lovecraftian mixed with Alien vibes in addition to the video game SOMA. I really liked this move though, despite some stilted dialogue, if I nit-pick. The tension is strong from the start and carries through.

Resolution
Okay, so I did finish this movie finally. And I STILL can't tell you if I've seen it before. The whole movie is very similar to a subplot in a movie called The Endless and I'm not sure if I've confused them or if I'd seen both. Or if Resolution is just that unmemorable. The basic plot is that a guy goes to this shack in the woods where his friend is living because he's strung out on meth. He ties him up in order to help his friend go cold turkey. But while he stays there strange video and audio records appear in or around this cabin their in. It's like someone is watching them. This movie makes no sense, the ending makes no sense and I only finished it hoping that I'd finally remember watching it before. I didn't... but still feel like maybe I had? So that was a waste of my time and maybe a waste of my time twice. FUN!

The Crazies
Timothy Olyphant as a Sheriff in a small town with a competent Doctor for a wife whom he adores, played by Radha Mitchell. Townspeople start to go a little off, killing people, like zombies but not -- like mind-controlled almost. And it's affecting everyone, passing from person to person like a virus, airborne even. The military step in, picking up townspeople, including our dear Sheriff's wife. Which is really when the movie takes off. From this point we get a small group of survivors trying to get out of town, hoping whatever this thing is doesn't take them next. This movie shows it's age a little bit, it is ten years old. But it's decent. Maybe watching a movie about an airborne virus right now isn't the best timing, but I didn't mind it too much. And I enjoy Timothy Olyphant in these adoring husband roles. I probably wouldn't have watched this on my own, and I might not watch it again but it was fun for an hour and a half.

Ginger Snaps
This teenage Canadian werewolf movie is so 90s it is actively painful to watch. I mean... will I watch the sequel? Yes, 100% I will. But oh my god, it's A LOT. If you don't know, this movie is about two sisters who are like death obsessed living in the suburbs, one of whom is bitten by some creature we as the audience know is obviously a werewolf. As does her sister. Ginger, the newly bitten wolf however spends the first half of the movie both aggressively denying the possibility while experiencing all these strong metamorphic changes representative of both lycanthropy and what are clearly stand-ins for cis-female puberty/menstration. It really doesn't hold up well. But I'm so interested to know where (based on the ending) they took a second movie.

That's it for now, but there's definitely more to come and tomorrow is bad movie night with my friends, provided my migraine subsides. Also, The National Theater has put up their version of Frankenstein with Johnny Lee Miller & Benedict Cumberbatch for this next week and I'm planning to watch that at some point. I have heard that the original staging of this had an on scene graphic scene of sexual assault, but I've also heard that this upload has had that removed and it's maybe only referred to? I'm not sure, but I want to mention it for anyone that might be interested in it too.

Quarantine Hair & Migraines & Writing

Matt asked a few weeks ago if I would give him some blue hair during this lockdown, since it's likely the only time he'd be able to have some and get away with it based on his job since we're working remotely. Everything came in the mail finally at the end of the week, so Saturday while I was still feeling pretty good we bleached and dyed Matt's hair. Of course the smells got to me pretty quick so by the end I had to escape the bathroom to sit in the breeze and sit with my eyes closed. I couldn't outrun the migraine which hit hard when it did hit unfortunately so I spent my night kind of in the dark, watching bits of television as I could manage. That's when we watched Underwater as I talked about in my last post and I finished the last bits of Ginger Snaps.

I gave Matt instructions on finishing up his hair once the dye was on so he came out eventually with an evenly dyed head of dark blue hair. Despite the bleach not being quite even (my issues in bleaching as my migraine settled in, and his impatience to wash it out), once the dye settled on it and it all dried and was styled, it looked perfect. It's dark and from a distance you can barely tell unless the light hits it just right. It took him about a day to really adjust to it, to see it at the angles where he can appreciate the blue and sort of silvery highlights and not just see that he started with dark hair and ended with dark hair. But everyone that has seen the pictures says it looks good on him, so I think we did good. I only wish it hadn't immediately knocked me on my ass for a day and a half.

I spent most of Saturday night and Sunday morning binging the new Amazon Prime show, "Upload". Which is this cross concept of the Black Mirror episode of "San Junipero" and once again I was reminded of a part of the video game SOMA where tech like this is mentioned. Basically, in this world, when you die, you can be uploaded into the "heaven" of your choice. A young man, played by Robbie Amell, is uploaded at a young age by his girlfriend after a fatal car accident. The heaven he's in has Angels, which are customer service/tech service reps for the company running the service. There's 10 episodes out so far, they're about 45 minutes each and they're lovely. I'm totally adding this to my Yuletide bucket at the end of the year because there's SO MUCH potential year. And I can't wait for what comes next.

April was pretty much a blur for me, I had to admit pretty early on in the month that Camp Nano, as much as I wanted it to happen just wasn't going to. I needed to keep myself focused on just keeping the status quo, at home and with work as much as possible and that didn't leave a lot of time for much else. It did mean getting a little behind on my GYWO goal for this month, but I think in the scheme of things that's okay. I should be able to easily catch those up, and depending on how things are looking soon I might try camp out again next time. I've been poking away at an idea document for a different story for a Camp, give myself a little fresh brain space and a little more time away from my Nano story while I still process what all needs to go into the rewrite on that. I'm considering taking that back to November and making it my Nano project again for a full rewrite once I have my finger on the full concept of what's wrong with it. Still pondering.

I did do my sign up for intoabar and am planning to do justmarriedexchange for the summer too. Both of those were a lot of fun last year. Noms are open now for Just Married, so I need to figure mine out sometime this week.

Touching My Face

Now that it's been several weeks since my appointment with the neurologist about my migraines, I'm up to the full dose of the daily preventative medicine we wanted to try. It was a slow step-up process during what is the hardest time of year for me since weather is one of my biggest triggers and summer allergy season in the Midwest is the worst. So as has been obvious from my last posts probably, it's not doing much. He also switch my rescue med over to something different and I've taken it a few times and haven't seen much difference there but I'm willing to keep trying that. I know from experience that sometimes mulit-day migraines just do what the fuck they want regardless of what you do them because the weather is just a pressure system monster outside.

However, the daily med, I think I'm going to have to email him tomorrow about this one. Today I realized that the itchiness I've been experienced the last two days is the tingly/itchiness around the mouth he warned me about as a potential symptom. I've mentioned before I have sensory issues when it comes to feeling itchy specifically so this is a R E A L problem to be sitting around all day feeling like scratching the bottom half of my face off. I need like a frozen face mask to wear all day.

I don't think I mentioned that I decided to go ahead and buy the yearly version of the Downward Dog yoga app I'd been using. They opened it up for free at the start of quarantine and I've fallen in love with it, I'm using it almost daily and it's really customizable so I can get what I need out of it every day or save down days I like to do them again later, since each day is auto-generated. I realized that 30% yearly version was cheaper than paying for 4 months of it, and when I started using the Yoga Nidra option to get to sleep at night too, I realized how much more use I'll be getting out of it that make it worth extra penny. The Yoga Nidra is like a slow stretch meditation that gets you to sleep (which again, can be customized to your liking). When I have to wait a day or two to get my sleeping pills filled by the doctors office, this is a godsend. Especially when I combine it with my headphone face mask. I love that mask.

I feel like I've come around in a quarantine cycle, back where I was a few weeks ago. I'm taking naps after work every day, just worn out like I'm working on pure adrenaline everyday and it runs out sometime after I log off and I have to get a little boost to get me through until bedtime. Dr. Whiskey Voice (as I love to call her) has encouraged post-work naps, considering the work stress I've been under. But tonight I did get to talk to my brother for a little bit, and my dad, so that was nice. And I didn't have to get back on to work after hours which was really nice too (I only worked an hour and a half late but still). But this is kind of where I was a few weeks ago. Tentatively okay, but exhausted. So I'm waiting for another small round of mania as my brain tries to course correct before leveling out again.

I'm so looking forward to having that separate office space finished. I think that needs to be part of my goal for tomorrow over lunch and after work.

No Music Friday

I went to the doctor today and found out that the migraines I've just been thinking are bad due to weather and stress and you know *gestures everywhere* weren't just migraines. Those migraines and some of the symptoms of the new migraine pills I've been taking have been masking an ear infection that I've only now noticed because the pain was radiating into my jaw, which I definitely knew was not supposed to be migraine related. I assumed it was like a low grade cold or something, but no. Apparently my ear canal is extremely swollen and I really should've noticed by now.

I was doing the thing a lot of us with chronic illness due, especially in times of stress, I was ignoring stronger or slightly more overwhelming symptoms and just sort of gritting through the pain because that's what I needed to do to get through the day. I was dismissing them as eh, it's just this, it's just that. Meanwhile I knew I was more tired than usual, that the nausea was more severe than normal and that I was routinely tracking pain levels between 8-10 every day which is uncommon for me for so many days in the row. And I was working through it without breaks because working from home means I can make my situation work better for me, my screen is darker, I have filtered glasses, I can keep the lights off and a heat pack nearby. All things I wouldn't have or couldn't accommodate the same way in the office.

Were this a "normal" situation I would've already gone to the doctor for the migraines alone, knowing they were too much to handle for me. Instead of gritting my way through each stressful workday and then passing out for two hours each night after work because my brain just needed to shut down. It wasn't normal though I after twenty years of living with chronic illness I K N O W better. I just was trying to live like this wasn't getting to me, because that's what I'm good at.

Except now I have to take off work today and maybe Monday, we'll see while I take some rest and some antibiotics and get better again.

We did also take the Duke dog into the vet this morning. She couldn't find anything specific wrong with him either. She suggested based on the way he was acting and holding himself that he likely slipped a disc in his back or at the very least sprained something in his back. She gave him some pain meds and an anti-inflammatory which almost immediately seemed to be helping. If he's not better in a week we'll take him back and get a work up with x-rays done but based on his response already I think that might not be necessary. The fact that he's eating and drinking like normal is still the best sign it's nothing too serious.

So, so new music post from me today and maybe not from this weekend at all. I plan to chill and enjoy Mother's Day if I can. I might put together another horror movie post if I can muster the thoughts for it. Hope you all have a good weekend.

Even More Horror Movies

I come with another round of horror movies, and currently a little less overwhelmed by nausea and migraine pain things to ear drops and meds. I've been collecting other recommendations of good horror movies on Prime and skipping around a bit as I find I need a bit of variety in my horror so there's no like consistency to the type of movies I'm watching here. I'll try to keep my little reviews spoiler-free.

Here's links to my two other posts: One, Two

Since last time I've watched five more movies, and one play, the National Theater's version of Frankenstein with Johnny Lee Miller as the Creature. I did not get to it in time to see the version with Cumberbatch as the Creature role, but from everything I've read online he does much better in Frankenstein's role and OMG does JLM make for an EXCELLENT Creature. He was well worth watching for.

Okay, so the movies, in no particular order:

Hell House LLC
This wasn't on the original list, it was a movie recommendation I got a few times both online and from friends. This I believe is an Australian production about a group of friends led by one particular guy who buys an old haunted B&B to into a Haunted House. It's found footage/documentary style in the aftermath of what happened on the opening night of the Haunted House. So you're watching the tapes of the crew in the build up to the opening as they create the haunts and discover there's more to the house than meets the eye.

I really enjoyed this even though I'm not always into the found footage style kind of movies. The haunting of the crew is pretty great. If you're susceptible to jump scares there might be a few but overall I though this well done and delightfully creepy.

Starry Eyes
I will say this movie should come with some odd content warnings for people that might be important. So CW: self-harm & reference to a non-consensual sexual acts.

This might be one of the most interestingly unique and creative of the whole bunch I've watched so far. Starry Eyes is about an actress in L.A. who is offered a dream role, a gateway role to stardom. To do it she must transform herself. There's a kind of implicit understanding that the production company this role is for is part of something larger, some cult, and they're preparing her to join them. But to do that they're requiring her to cut the toxicity from her life. It's heavy. It's a lot. But, it's so different and I kind of liked what they were trying to do.

The Strangers: Prey at Night
A sequel-ish to the original movies, The Strangers, this movie stars Christina Hendricks as the mother to two teens that she and her husband are moving to some new location so her daughter can start at a boarding school. They stop for a night at a motel trailer park owned by her uncle. Someone knocks on the door, and the game begins.

If you haven't seen the original, I don't think you need to -- the game is the same, but the players are different. This is your typical slasher/final girl type movie, so if that's not your style, this won't be for you. However one of the amusing thing about this one is the music choices the Strangers pick for their kill attempts, this big 80s ballads. The pool scene is particularly amusing. This is just a good time all around for me, but I can be easily amused.

Demon
Another unusual movie. This is a Polish movie about a man moving from London to marry his Polish bride where she's inheriting her grandfather's house. The night before the wedding the groom finds something he things is a body outside the house he thinks is a skeleton and during the wedding the next day, things start to go weird.

There aren't a ton of Jewish dybbuk movies out there, but of the ones I've seen this is maybe the strangest of them. In a way that I did enjoy. It was creepy and haunting. Unfortunately I think the ending was a bit more abrupt than I would've liked, a little too unresolved than all the build up deserved. But if you know Polish or don't mind reading the captions, I think this one is worth watching.

Triangle
HEY LOOK A HEMSWORTH! This was another Australian production with poster art that really doesn't do this movie any service at all. Melissa George stars in this as the overworked, overwhelmed mother of an autistic boy who takes a single day off with a friend to go out on a yacht to meet some of his friends for the afternoon. One of his friends happens to be played by a young Liam Hemsworth. Anyway, an electrical storm takes out their boat and stops them in the middle of the ocean. The come across an ocean liner and board, hoping to find help and instead find a killer trying to take them out one at a time.

This movies is... I don't know what it is. It's better than the art and the description gives it credit for. There's a sci-fi element at play that I was pleasantly surprised for and wasn't expecting at all. I enjoyed it over all.

---

This was a decently good batch of movies.
I did start and immediately stop one movie that's on my list called Blood & Lace. It's one of the older movies on the list about a murdered sex worker who leaves behind a daughter. All the men in the first ten minutes of the movie start talking about how attractive this teenage daughter is and when I heard the words "good breeding stock" I called it quits. Whatever else happens there isn't worth my time.

Movies and other updates

So I'm realizing as I go through this list of horror movies just how much I dislike shark movies. So far there's literally only been one shark movie on the list, I've left it until pretty late in the list because despite being ranked pretty well by whomever made the list I knew I wasn't really interested by the description. Each of these movies, I'm not sitting and watching in one stretch, I'm usually breaking them in half over two nights, sometimes three, depending on how long the movie is or if I've decided to start one particularly late the first night.

I'm on my fifth night with this movie. And I don't care about it anymore now than I did the first night. I only care to finish it. Also frustrated that this is my second disappointing movie in a row, despite picking them from different ends of the list. *grumps about*

There's just something about shark movies that are pretty unappealing to me. I've enjoyed certain kinds... like the Megalodon movie, was a fun thriller because it was more a shark dino and more than just people you know... at the beach. I think I'm just less interested in horror that's people in places interacting with nature that's just... doing it's thing? I for sure wouldn't classify them as a horror movie, they're more a thriller if anything, I think and probably only the chance for gore that would make people classify it under a horror genre? I don't know.

I am feeling somewhat better overall since going to the doctor last Friday and getting meds for my ear. The pressure in my head overall has subsided, which tells me the horrible migraines I was having were likely made 10x worse by the ear pressure than the stress of work or the late spring storms we're having. The pain in my head has subsided enough in fact I can finally tell that there is in fact pain IN my ear, which I couldn't before. I'm still fighting with waves of nausea which is the worst part of this whole thing. Every day off an on, just waves of that inner ear lying to the rest of my body making it think things are moving around when they're not. Could be another week I guess before that goes away? I don't know.

To end, a few links for those who might be interested:

How to be Okay in a Crisis from the YT Channel How to ADHD (which is a very useful channel).

Via Twitter there's a thread about a radio station in Washington state that's playing the same 20 songs over and over again that seem to have been cut so they fit nearly perfectly into an hour. Someone else in the thread put the songs into a Spotify playlist so you can listen to this collection of like 70s Dad rock songs too if you want.

Narrative Telephone is a game brought to us by the cast of Critical Role while in Quarantine. This is the age old childhood game of telephone where one person says something and passes it to the next person, who whispers it to the next person, who whispers it to the next person and so on until the last person says something that may or may not be what the first person said. In this game the cast take turns tell short 30 second stories via video message that they pass on and under supervision of a producer are only allowed to watch once and then record their version once to send on to the next person. The results are adorable and hilarious and great bits of fun that you need absolutely no Critical Role knowledge to enjoy. The stories are not related, so I linked to the most recent but you can watch them back in any order.

New Music Sunday

I started this on Friday, but while I'm feeling better, I'm still not a hundred percent. I'm still not getting all the things done I want to, or when I want to. Which is why this is late again and if it feels short or a little disjointed, that's just where my brain is at right now.

I also spent Friday night trying to record a tiny happy birthday video for my friend who's husband is compiling a bunch of video messages into a bigger birthday video for her actual birthday date in June. Took me an hour an half to be happy with about 20 seconds of content. Had to break for a small break down about how much I just miss my friend. We're both kind of solitary creatures and so we haven't talked much during this whole thing, and I know she's just trying to get through day to day but man I miss her. She's my concert buddy and we had tickets for like three shows that got cancelled over the last two months of shelter-in-place too. I did finally get that message recorded, edited and sent off to her husband.

I was happy to see new albums from both ...And Oceans and Paradise Lost. Whate I've listened to of both were good black metal, perfect for a rock laden Friday morning. And of course the new Haley Williams highly anticipated full album, Petals for Armor.

On ye olde YouTube this week, there's this cover of Fiona Apple's "Criminal" featuring Sarah Dugas.

Watch on YouTube

This great version of "We Carry On" from Killswitch Engage that the guys recorded separately from their own places. The song and this video are great. Even if metal's not your thing, you might still like this song.

Watch on YouTube

Last but not least Kawehi put out a new video this week with a cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", complete with a doggo looking on from beside her on the couch. And if you like this one, check out her cover of "Heart Shaped Box" too. It's from many years back, but still very good.

Watch on YouTube

Anyway. realized that since I missed last week's post there are probably some things I missed there. So if you have new things you're listening to, please share them in the comments!

Just Married Exchange Letter [2020]

( Just Married Letter )

Just a short update

While I'm feeling better, I've pinched something in my arms I think from my now perfect set up in my bedroom where i"ve been working 9-11 hour days for the last nearly three months. So I've been trying to stay off the computer/less typing in general right now and sadly a little less time with my Spartan wife in Assassin's Creed Odyssey. 

Saturday, Matt and I went through the back room and did some cleaning and rearranging and I finally ordered a new desk for myself so I can relocate and not be sitting at my vanity all day every day (which was never intended to be a permanent workspace in the first place). Mentally, I'd always meant this space for like casual browing/youtube and relaxing. It's where my makeup and skin care is and all my witchy stuff, so it's supposed to be a calm retreat in my house. Not the place I'm working and stressed throughout the week. My desk should be here next week, so I'm trying to keep non-work time on the computer to a minimum so I can give my arm/hands a break. 

The good news is that no migraines, even with these storms and no more nausea now that I'm off that one med, and no more ear pain since the ear infection gone. I feel like it's all been incremental improvements, but the last like four or five days I've felt better than I have in like two months. I mean I never even would've been capable of moving stuff this weekend to get that back room ready for a new desk before this week. 

We had a survey go out at work this week about a possible interest in returning to the office. I think both Matt and I, given the way our jobs have been handling this time, are probably home for the rest of the year. There might even be an option for me to stay home longer than that, or move to a more half in/half out of the office work style, which both me and my dogs would enjoy I think. 

I hope you all are doing well. <3 I miss reading all your entries and I miss posting more regularly. 

I did turn in my jukebox_fest fic this weekend, which was really an effort for me to write but I think I'm happy with it. I've got my intoabar assignment which I'm so excited about and I just did my sign-up for for justmarriedexchange. So I'm excited to get back to writing in general in the near future.