singedsun

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.

My sister came over on Tuesday, we Postmated some brunch for ourselves and then while we waited for it to arrive she helped me go through all the clothes we have for the boys. I was able to send her home with one thing for the baby out of the bunch, which I'd hoped would be more -- although I think when I go through the second room I'll find more small clothes she'll be able to have.

We took a break for lunch to talk and chat for awhile and then we went through both spare closets so she could look at the leftover LulaRoe clothes I have from when my best friend and I briefly sold it. It's just been sitting there forever and for awhile I had the patience to sell it on clearance sites, but I just got tired of the upkeep. So it's been taking up the spare closets for a year. I'm planning to send some of it to ThredUp, which I think I've mentioned, I'm hoping that since they all still have tags on them they'll accept everything I send in. We picked out a bunch of slightly larger stuff that'll work for her as her pregnancy shows. I know she and her husband don't have a lot of money right now and so a lot of it will go towards getting baby stuff. So she seemed really happy to be taking home a bunch of clothes for herself.

My best friend was supposed to keep my company on Wednesday, but couldn't make it because she was getting over a cold. A good choice since she wouldn't have been up to her best and I don't need the potential of taking on a cold in addition to my recovery. It was too bad because Wednesday was probably the best I've felt in awhile, because I finally decided I felt okay enough in bed to sleep there. I got a good amount of sleep and didn't wake up in extreme pain. I spent the day picking up a few small projects and then watching Gentleman Jack on HBO. THAT SHOW.

I could probably write a whole separate thing on how much I really fell in love with that show. I don't know if they're planning to do a second season of it, but I really hope so. I'd love to seen Anne and Ann together and happy at Shibden. I did a little reading up on Anne Lister after finishing the series today, because I knew a little about her but wanted to read up on what happens to them after. I was sad to learn how few years they got together after they were finally together. Anyway. It's so very good and I'm sorry it took me this long to get to it.

Matt took me out for a nice dinner Wednesday night for my birthday. It's the first time I've had red meat in... a long ass time. We've been pretty good keeping to our vegetarian meals during the week and I've only occasionally been eating turkey or pork on the weekends. I've been off chicken for years. The steak I got was a fantastic cut of prime rib and I ate about a third of it, happy to take home the rest to eat this weekend. Dinner was really nice treat but I'll tell you the real reason we went to this steakhouse for my birthday was the dessert. They have the best key lime cheesecake I've ever had in my life and cheesecake is like my favorite type of dessert. It comes with this amazing blackberry sauce, these lime drops, candied coconut on top of fresh berries and a side of pina colada sorbet. It's *chef kiss* -- so amazing. They only carry it in the summer months, so lucky for me that my birthday is in the summer. Even if I hadn't felt well enough to go there and sit for an hour or two for dinner, I was going to make Matt go get me the dessert from there for my birthday, it's all I wanted. And I enjoyed every indulgent bite.

Thank you for those of you that sent well wishes for my birthday, they were much appreciated!!

I went to bed last night, pretty early after we got back from dinner and managed to sleep something like twelve hours; making up a little I think for all the nights I've been up late in the past week and a half. It backfired a little because I woke up stiff and still tired and a bit foggy over all. I ended up finishing off the last two episodes of Gentleman Jack, having a late lunch and going back to sleep for several hours until Matt came home. Thankfully I was up long enough to feel alert to watch the wedding oneshot of Critical Role tonight, which is why I'm still up late tonight. I did a little writing on my commission story during the livestream, and might do a little more here before bed. It's due at the end of the week but I've got a fourth of it written now, and really clear direction on where to take it, so it should go quickly.

Despite my knee being a real pain during the convention, I still had a ton of fun at GenCon. As I mentioned before, I just had to listen to my body and pay attention when I knew either the pain or the normal exhaustion of being around people all day was getting to me. I've had Fibromyalgia for more than 15 years now, so that second part gets easier all the time.

We drove up Wednesday, a pretty easy drive all things considered. It's about an eight hour drive, and we only stopped a few times for breaks and food. We rented a car this year in order to save our new car on the mileage. We also learned our lesson last year and had our tickets shipped to us in advance. Matt's event tickets didn't come in the package though, due to something he likely didn't check when buying them so after we arrived at the hotel he went up and had to stand in line for them. It's a hella long line though, even on Wednesday night the end of the line was all the way outside the convention center. I was just thankful not to have to stand there. Last year I was sick as a dog when we arrived, but you can only get your badge with a license so I had to stand in line for my own badge and I was miserable.

Anyway. If you want descriptions of the games I had lined up, I did a little of that over in this post. There were only three of us for Thursday morning's game of Illimat but the benefit was that we got a pretty personal and in-depth explanation of how the game plays. It's a pretty easy game to pick up and I enjoyed having time to play a few rounds kind of stress free. We spent just an hour or so playing so afterwards I had enough time to meet up with a friend and wander the dealer's hall for a little bit. My knee wouldn't take too much wandering and my friend went to gather some food for her friends who were in a game so I went outside the dealer's hall to the massage booth and had myself a nice, relaxing massage. It was great. It at least let me relax a bit before my afternoon Honey Heist game.

The afternoon game of Honey Heist was... chaotic to say the least. There were two pre-teens in the game without parents, and a married couple, me and another guy. The GM was clearly pantsing the story, which isn't abnormal for that kind of game, but he didn't do the best job of keeping the group together or on task. He did try and make us all feel involved in the story, but there was a lot of plots at odds and about halfway through, I was kind of wondering why we kept going because we'd more than met the goal of our mission. It was an okay game, but I'm not sure I'd say I had a good time. The funniest part though was that at the table next to me was a guy I work with. I didn't really get to talk to him for more than a few minutes, so I look forward to chatting with him this week to see what he did with his GenCon. I know his table was playing Dark Heresy, which is a game I've always been interested in trying out.

While I waited for Matt to finish the fencing class he signed up for, I stepped into the Hacking in Media panel I had a ticket for. I didn't stay for the whole thing, but it was a definitely interesting take on how the media portrays infosec and hacking, and if they do it again next year, I absolutely want to go back. Once Matt was ready though we headed back to the hotel room and while I tried to stay up for a little while, I inevitably fell asleep watching YouTube and just crawled in bed.

Friday I only ended up going to my morning game, which was a game of Masks called Phoenix Academy. We had a full table for this one. It's a game where everyone plays a teenage superhero. I played a archetype called The Janus, the kind of hero that's doing their best to keep their real identity a secret, even at their high school for superheroes. This was a really fun adventure, we had a great GM and everyone at the table was really nice, accommodating and willing to work within the story. Once we got going, I really enjoyed this one and while I don't think it's something I'm likely going to play again, it was definitely worth trying out.

After my morning game I just knew that there was no way I was going to make it through my afternoon game, I was tired and a little overwhelmed by how many people were in the room I was in at other games. Plus, Friday night was the Critical Role live show and I figured it'd be a great time to rest before that, because it's SO LOUD and there's SO MANY people in that theater. So I took a nap at the hotel before meeting my friend for dinner and then heading to the live show.

THAT LIVE SHOW THOUGH. It was really good. Of course my knees hated the balcony seats, but other than that, the show was amazing. I love seeing the cast live and listening to the audiences reactions to what's happening in the game, which I feel like just heightens the exciting moments. If I could go to more of their live shows, I totally would. Since I can't I just have to hope they keep doing the ones at GenCon every year. I was dead tired after the show though and in a good deal of pain, so getting back to the hotel and getting to sleep.

So the first two days were pretty great. This is a long post though so I'll cover the second two days later, in which there are more game shenanigans. I also want to talk about the games we grabbed while we were there and when I thought I won something. Look for more soon.