Update for 1/20/2019

Health

😐

My intestines finally calmed down from the long gap in my ulcerative colitis treatments. That’s a relief, especially since I partly blame all my bathroom visits for the slow start to my projects this year. Only partly though.

Housekeeping

😐

I got tired of procrastinating on my apartment tidying, and I got through sorting my few boxes of clothes. Hopefully that’ll give me some momentum for the rest of my belongings. Since I don’t want to put off other projects after this month and I’ve frittered away so much time, I’ll prioritize the boxes that are cluttering my everyday living space.

That’s going to be my experimental policy for now. I’ll dedicate a month to each project, and if I don’t fit the whole project into that time frame, I’m still moving on to the next project when the month changes.

Fiction

🙂

I finished book 3 of the Mortal Engines Quartet, Infernal Devices, and I’m on to the last book. After slowing down for a while because I wasn’t in a fiction mood, I’m back to my usual audiobook pace. I should finish that book this week, and then I’ll comment on the series as a whole.

TV

😎

My new TV has put me back in a TV watching mode. So that’s taking up my dinnertime rather than audiobooks.

I finished season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery (DISC) and the first episode of season 2, which started last week. I’d forgotten they don’t release the whole season at once, so I couldn’t binge watch it. But that’s okay, because there are other shows I’ve been wanting to get to.

In between DISC seasons, I watched a couple more episodes of the original Star Trek (TOS), picking up from where I left off years ago watching the remastered version. “Mudd’s Women”: I liked Harry Mudd much better in DISC, and I could only take the ending seriously if I took it very metaphorically. “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”: This one brings up issues that are relevant to my AI interests, but it handles them in a pretty cursory and clumsy manner. So these weren’t my favorite episodes.

After DISC I decided to try a Netflix show that kept catching my eye, Dark. I’m three episodes in, and it’s satisfyingly mysterious and eerie so far, like Stranger Things mixed with LOST. The music contributes a lot.

My first surprise was that it’s German. The dub is fine, but I found that I felt the cultural differences a little less if I put the audio on German and read the English subtitles instead. I also decided to skip the audio description (which would mean hearing the English dub anyway). I found I wanted the show to happen to me rather than being guided through it.