RhaenysBee

The Silver Linings Playbook is about so much. (Or you know, I can read so much into it) Sports impact on sports fans lives is just one dimension of control over one’s life. Pat’s dad thinks it’s the Eagles season that stirs his and his family’s fate, Pat thinks it’s Nikki and repairing his relationship with her. Tiffany is the disrupter who is outside of the norm, whatever that norm is for every character and shows that being outside of the norm isn’t necessarily bad or to be frowned upon because sometimes it takes disruption to achieve balance and step forward. Her game night monologue points out that the Eagles are lucky because of her presence in Pat’s life, which is of course bull and her own manipulative way to get Pat back into dancing, but it’s the whole point of the movie. These outside events can be interpreted in any way, and one can spin any narrative. Life is about how you interpret outside events and your own choices, not some predetermined or directly linked sequence of signs or Eagles wins. And for this reason normal Is relative, Ronnie and Veronica’s normal and perfect family life make them miserable and Pat’s desperate attempts to get back to normal only spiral him out and Tiffany who is labeled as the crazy person is the one to (unwittingly) roll the crew onto the right track. You can and should take control of your life, and no matter how outside of norm it may be, it can be good, meaningful and rewarding. It also has the best vibes and most lovable characters. I love that movie so much.

Ah so it was one of those modern adaptations? some years ago I saw a modern adaptation of Hamlet, it was mind-blowing in the positive sense. But I remember the modern adaptation of Hair from high school, it was…. something to see a story about 60s America and hippie culture with all white sets and costumes… I guess this minimalist approach can go both ways. And first row balcony is one of the best places to sit Nooooooooooooo! I thought only this country still practiced this barbaric custom to “make up” for holiday days by working a weekend day. ugh that’s bad, bad, bad. Well strength and loads of coffee to you and the cranky teenagers in those Saturday classes! Just random bits and bobs, funky socks, fuzzy slippers, a couple sets of those trendy glass types , because I have this mental image of me having pink breakfast smoothie from a trendy glass wearing fuzzy socks and something pink. It’s entirely silly but fun and somehow healing. No class, just me swimming at a pool, at my own little pace because I have the fitness level of a snail. First time I went I thought, okay, it’s been 17 years, let’s do a quarter of what I used to back in school…. Ahaha. So next time it was even less and with a break in-between. I do want to work it up to the level that I can do 1000m in one go and that’s still nowhere middle school Rhaenys’s regular swim practice. Oh well, it’s the intent that counts.

America Ferrara’s performance wasn’t Oscar worthy either. (I’ll refrain from forming an opinion about Ryan Gosling, because I’m not a fan of him, I heartily disliked Ken in the movie and I loathed the movie itself and that’s just one too many biases) Now what I don’t get is getting a bunch of nominations and not being like yay cool we did a great job. No, it’s like, GIVEMEMOREWHYISNTITMOREIDESERVEMOREIMOFFENDED. Come on… Barbie couldn’t be more celebrated if it tried, it was a global phenomenon.

Nice! I’ve never seen that in theater before. How was it? Yay for long weekends! Hope you enjoy some down time! Indeed and thank you! Well it was payday today so the self indulgence definitely started swimming is great, it’s been 17ish years since I stopped swimming, never thought I’d love getting back to it so much.

Im not the only one who thinks Margot Robbie’s performance as Barbie wasn’t Oscar worthy, right? Then again, I don’t think anything about Barbie, aside from set and costume design, visual effects and maybe music, and definitely PR team, is award worthy. Either way, no, Margot Robbie wasn’t snubbed of anything and Barbie (along with Margot Robbie) is likely the most celebrated and hyped movie of the first half of the 2020s, and definitely the pop culture peak of the year.

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my not getting a surgery and being rolled back from the OR and sent home. What a weeeeeeird day. Well, one more hour and it’ll be February.

Today is the two year anniversary of Prince William’s death. My last photo of him is time stamped at 12:03pm after which the anesthetic kicked in and the vet sent us out to give him the injection to stop his heart. I date his death at 31st Jan, 12:05pm. I hope he’s resting in peace.

Work is curiously intense for January over here as well. Not a fan of this new way of project management. Also not a fan of doing the project management for not the salary of a project manager. Moan moan. Aww so lovely! what did you see at the theatre? We saw a Somewhere in Europe musical in early January for my dad’s birthday and I’m taking my mom for Fiddler on the Roof on Saturday as her Christmas present. Congrats on finishing the project! Do get some well deserved time off and enjoy a good rest! Today was a rut. I blame myself and binge watching and shitty self discipline and time management. But I also like the idea of blaming the thing on a deeper psychological dimension that subconsciously sabotaged me. Namely, today is the one year anniversary of my first attempt at breast cancer surgery (which failed and I was rolled back from the OR and sent home). Today is also the two year anniversary of my taking Prince William to the vet’s to be put down and carrying his lifeless body into the car and into the pet crematorium in my own bare arms. God what a weird day. I get these flashes of memories of random details at random times. I suppose the takeaway is that it’s been 1 year and I’m still here and still going strong. Resilience is cool and shit. And the silver lining is that in the past year I grew as a person more than I did in five regular years and that yesterday was the 1 year anniversary of meeting my hospital bestie. Anyway, I’m ready to switch to February and celebrate a very pink and very self indulgent Valentine’s Day (which is the 1 year anniversary of my actual surgery). I’ve also gone swimming twice this month and I can’t wait to go again next week. Very therapeutic. what up with everyone else?

Amongst all the Barbie nominations, I have this nagging urge to reiterate that the true award-worthy screenwriting is Buffy. I’m at Hush in the rewatch, but my ultimate favorite will always be the preceding Thanksgiving episode.

I’m listening to an audiobook on the topic titled The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman. It’s 50% interesting and insightful and 50% doomsayer so far. I have learned from Covid and the Ukrainian war, I allow no room in my mind to worry about this vague thing I have zero control over. AI is also the designated over-caffeinated buzzword of the 2023-2024 business years. Agile is kinda slowly becoming the boomer in the room. Anyway, for this reason I’m in an AI related project and I kinda like that for once I’m working on something people give a shit about. So I’m still in the positive fascination stage. I play with chat gpt when I have some time in between meetings and I’ve got to say I’m seriously underwhelmed. It translates better than Google translate had, but it’s rubbish at mostly everything else I tried. The fiction it generates is bone dry and it fails to convince me that it’s able to imitate known writing styles. (I tried to make it write extra scenes for Harry Potter, just because I’m rereading the novels right now) When I tried prompting it to write me a dialogue or a scene for a story idea I have (yes I have always had amateur/hobby fiction writing ambitions but no time to actually do it anymore) takes as much time as writing the actual scene and I would do a job so much better. I guess I would need to prompt the thing for weeks on end with world building and characters and milestones and then after that it could perhaps write a plot out? With awful dialogue? So no, not impressed so far. In terms of assistance, it doesn’t do better than a good old Google search at providing house cleaning tips. It’s terrible at vacation planning and it’s a very boring dietitian that doesn’t even come close to the Pinterest recipe rabbit hole experience. That’s been my short and lackluster AI journey thus far.

I returned The Myth of Normal on audible. Please bear in mind that I called quits on this book after 3 hours, so I have no credibility or business reviewing it. But here’s why I returned it. As we know I have a rather pathological health anxiety. This book turned it on and jammed it up to volume 50. I’m sure someone with a level head can filter and handle the information and implications and professional opinions. I can’t. All I hear from this book is hey here is 100 reason why you are predestined for a lethal illness which you can’t really do anything about because all the root causes are in the past, in fact what you are and do is the reason why you will die of a lethal illness, and if you were and did the opposite that would in fact also be a reason why you die of a lethal illness. Also everything is a trauma, everybody is traumatized and if you think you aren’t you probably still are. Also, if you are a woman these things are statistically more likely to happen to you for liberal reasons. Now, I’m sure this is a skewed and anxiety and hyper vigilance fueled interpretation. But still, a part of my brain is frozen in terror and anxiety. The other slammed on the reverse psychology button and refuses to buy into any of these ideas and spins fantastical narratives about why the author is saying what and how he is saying. Conclusion: I’m very sorry for giving up this book because I’m sure it is for an interesting intellectual adventure, but I’m just too unstable for the content and as it is, it’s doing me no service. Returned. Might give it another chance some years down the line.

I ditched rewatching Harry Potter for rewatching Buffy.

Do you have attached bottle caps in your countries as well? let me put it mildly and say it isn’t quite the packaging revolution I was expecting in the 2020s. Or if I want to put it harshly, what an annoying, idiotic piece of crap invention, I hate it, do aluminum bottles, do glass bottles, do anything but, do better. Ffs.

What about conditioner, hair mask, leave in conditioner and heat protector? Oh yep, female haircare costs a bloody fortune…

Which calls for this ultimate new year quote

Happy New Year, crew! how was your NYE? I did absolutely nothing and it was glorious

Happy New Year from CET time zone

Let’s talk about imposter syndrome in fancy shops. Aka, let me moan about feeling socially awkward and completely out of place in shops with five employees and literally no customers and floors that are cleaner than my contact lenses. the feeling I get is somewhere between Pretty Woman shopping trip and Mr Bean gift wrapping the Cartier necklace for Alan Rickman. And like these people aren’t rude or anything, if anything they are artificially too polite. I don’t struggle so much when the employees aren’t Hungarian, they are more friendly and less judgmental and I feel more comfortable speaking English because that somehow gives us something in common. And I mean, you have every reason to judge me per se, because I have absolutely no business to be in your store but you know if I get a gift from your store and I want to exchange/adjust it or just use a gift card, I’m within my human rights to do so… bleh. I so much prefer getting books, socks and hand creams.

Well I can’t decide if I’m touched or sorry for your poor mind having to go through all my rambles seriously, that’s truly sweet and not deserved

Since I’m unlikely to finish any more books before the end of the year, here’s some of my books from the past couple months: Prisoners of Geography and The Power of Geography both were incredible, insightful and opened a whole new tangible reality. It expanded my knowledge of the world and the put a new angle on my understanding of current events. Definitely a new and additional building block in my critical thinking and I’m truly grateful for it. Highly recommend. Lovely stuff. The New Silk Roads was a bit too much detail for me but it’s possible that listening to it after the above two works, my brain just couldn’t soak up any more of the same. Well not same, obviously, but quite similar. I loved the Silk Roads a lot more, because it was about history. I recommend that to anybody and everybody. This one, check it out, but lower your expectations. The Hidden Life of Trees I’m actually a tad conflicted about this one. I loved the insights and learning so much about trees. But I never love the implied guilt package and moral high ground. Moving past that, highly recommend for the insights and the glimpse into an amazing world. And I re-read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the scientifically proven bestest, funniest, most amazingly paced and characterized Harry Potter book ever in the history of Harry Potter books), and I’m reading Goblet of Fire now.

Why thank you! My only real life skill is picking myself up from the various breakdowns. but hey that’s an important life skill and I’m proud to have it, so yay I have no particular expectations for 2024, but I keep telling myself that out of the biblical 7 bad years, 4 is already down, we’re past the halfway mark so now the remaining three is just something we can handle even on one leg. I’m sure this phrase doesn’t exist in English. Never mind. thank you, you’re are darling, truly!

Congrats on the new job!!! Aw saving… I have vague memories of what that felt like… joke aside, way to go! ah book, hot beverage, sounds like heaven! I tried. Dogs are my life line. no, I’m worse but thanks anyway I’m home now, I showered off these horrendous three days, I journaled my emotions, I’m going to do some guided meditation and relaxation, I was wise enough to have kept my therapy appointment this week in spite of the holidays, and I didn’t drink or take a Xanax, so kudos for me. It’s upwards from here. (I promise I’m not as unhinged as I often sound, I’m just having a bad week or year or… 4 years, really)

Oh boy it’s finally over. tomorrow I’m taking the tree down, just looking at it ties my stomach in a knot. I really really really crave a xanax, but I’ll be strong and instead I’ll do some yoga and meditation and relaxation and watch a Disney film or read Harry Potter or try to pump some endorphins into myself. But first a shower to wash it off, and I really badly need a good cry.

Happy Christmas Morning!

Did I ever the tell ye peoples of the internet about the creature in the roof? he lives above my room, in the left side of the attic. I’m not actually sure he is actually in the attic or in some roof framing. Last time I was here I heard him run across what I assume to be attic floor boards and roll around what I assume to be a walnut. Based on the sound of his running and food, he is most likely a rat or a fatter mouse. However I’m not sure he was particularly repelled by the rodent repellent sound YouTube videos I’d played for him last time. Still, weasel is unlikely and we don’t have squirrels. I can’t hear him right now, it’s a very mild and dry night so hopefully he moved out. Or he is already asleep. Or visiting family for Christmas in someone else’s roof. He might be at midnight mass.