Digest 20250526

May has been a very busy month! That’s my excuse for no digest updates for most of it. I’ll admit that also playing Two Point Museum is still eating up my free time!

The start of my month had me turn 37, and I actually did write about that day. Mostly because my social anxiety issues were an uninvited guest at my birthday dinner!

The weather heated up and I spent a fair bit of time at the weekends in the garden. I’m going to have to do a garden post soon to share the photos from the last couple of months. I like having them here on the blog to look back over the years and seasons and see my progress!

I also just had my hen weekend, which was fabulous!

Hen 🐔

The big reason I wanted a “hen do” was that it was the perfect excuse to get my good friends together for a weekend where we could just relax together with no partners and no children. We hadn’t spent time together without some kind of distraction in many, many years. Definitely at least pre-COVID but probably a fair bit before that!

Well, I say no children, but one of my friends had her second baby in February! That was touch and go to plan around, but to make it as easy as possible for her to come, we booked a place 20 minutes from her house… which happens to be 3-4 hours from where the rest of us live, but in a really beautiful part of the country! So we had an infant with us (my friend’s husband took care of their three-year-old), but the baby was as good as gold and didn’t fuss much at all!

It was a long drive down there, my friend and a couple of us and with a cooler box of drinks and snacks in the back seat! I was given a little bottle of prosecco and later wine in this plastic cup with a built-in straw that I have to say worked extremely well for car wine! I’m not normally much of a drinker, but this was actually nice. I was excited and feeling taken care of, and it was super sunny weather too!

The cottage we booked to stay in was beautiful. It had gorgeous views and a hot tub! Honestly, sitting out on the decking with my prosecco and elderflower cocktail in the sunshine, talking to my friend of 18 years with whom I’d not had a proper conversation in far too long… it was absolute bliss.

I had requested the weekend be as chill as possible and that we do some kind of simple crafting activity, and definitely watch Eurovision (I love Eurovision!)! They nailed the activities! We did some air dry clay sculpting, some mini Bob Ross paint by numbers and a penis themed jogsaw which was “harder than it looks”! We had to cheat and use the alphabet sections on the back of the puzzle, or we’d never have got it done! It was hilarious to sit around the table seriously describing the specific bit of penis puzzle peice we were looking for to complete.

The penis puzzle and the Bob Ross painting did inspire my clay sculpture of Knob Ross from the jigsaw. Yes, I am that childish! It’s so stupid, it really makes me laugh. Now he is painted and sitting on my bookshelves next to the mini purple mountains painting!

The best bit of the whole perfect weekend, though, was that they had found and bought us all Star Trek: The Next Generation t-shirts with Captain Picard on and Engage! I don’t know if I’ve ever been so thrilled and amazed as when I came down in the morning to see them all in those! My friends are not at all Star Trek fans.. I don’t know if any of them have ever watched a full episode… and they wore these in public for me (well, in Tesco!).

I love mine, I’ll definitely be wearing this shirt in my everyday life! I just have to stop my fiancé from stealing it!

I had the absolute best time. I needed that more than I had realised. I don’t get to see my friends all that often, and we all get so busy with our own lives that these days I can sometimes feel really distant from them. This weekend reminded me how much we love each other, and that they actually do get me! Star Trek shirts, penis jigsaw puzzles and arts and crafts (and no party games!) do make my perfect weekend!

Oh, and let’s not forget Eurovision!

Eurovision 2025 🎤

I would have liked to make this its own post, but realistically.. I don’t have the bandwidth for that.. so I’m jamming it into this one!

Eurovision 2024 was a weird one. That was hosted in Sweden, and the 50th anniversary of Abba’s Waterloo. Yes, the show was stiff and awkward, no members of Abba showed up (just those horrible Abbatars), no Måns Zelmerlöw, they disqualified the favourite to win, controversial Israel were allowed to participate (while Russia are banned), and Martin Österdahl (head of the EBU) got booed!

In contrast, 2025, hosted in Switzerland, felt more fun again, and there were lots of great songs. It’s a shame that Israel still hangs as a dark cloud over the contest, and very nearly won because of the televote. Their song was a middle-of-the-road ballad with pretty dull staging that I cannot believe was anybody’s favourite song (this is a song contest). An incredible number of countries awarded 12 points in the televote, including the UK, which seems unbelievably unlikely! Apparently, Israel ran a massive marketing campaign, which included a billboard in New York (notably not in Europe!). This isn’t against any rules, but it is very unusual for the government agencies to be involved in this, and the current rules allow for 20 votes per person per country, which throws the voting wide open for abuse with political motivations. It’s very difficult to see this result as anything other than political.

The winning entry was Austria, and I thought it was fine, I quite liked it, but I actually felt relieved that they won because it felt like it saved Eurovision. If Israel won with such a lacklustre song after so obviously gaming the system (they have won in the past with some absolutely bangers – Netta’s Toy is one of my all-time favourites, and never forget Dana International!), I do not know what would happen. Likely all hell would break loose, it would be a political shitshow.

It also feels unfair for the Israeli singer. With all the protests and the booing, it must be very stressful, and not in an exciting way, for Yuval. She’d already narrowly escaped death when Hamas attacked a music festival in 2023.

Probably the best thing in the whole night was not an entry but a mash-up by two of the standouts from 2024! Käärijä & Baby Lasagna – #eurodab was fucking fantastic!

KAJ – Bara Bada Bastu (Sweden)

This has been stuck in my head for weeks!

Tommy Cash – Espresso Macchiato (Eestonia)

Apparently, Tommy Cash is famous? I’d never heard of him!

Abor & Tynna – Baller (Germany)

I don’t normally like this kind of music, but I actually thought this was a banger!

Lucio Corsi – Volevo Essere Un Duro (Italy)

I can’t speak Italian, so I was glad they gave up subtitles for this! I thought it was a really sweet song.

As for our entry this year.. I hated it at first, but it grew on me! And I think it is best watched as a performance. I don’t think it deserved nil points! But we’re used to it in the UK!

Movement 🏃🏻‍♀️

So in the walk to Modor challenge, I’m in Imladris (Rivendell) at 524 miles. I’ve maintained an average of 7,600 steps a day, which is really days where I do 10k and days when I do more like 5k! I’ve had a lot of highs and lows this month. The Hen weekend was very low steps, and then I was so exhausted after it, I had to take a sick day, and it took most of the week to feel normal again.

I knew I’d be tired, so I’d already taken the Monday off as annual leave, I didn’t think I’d need a second recovery day! I still could hardly form a coherent thought in my head on Tuesday. And this isn’t from drinking, it’s just all the socialising and being with people 24/7 that drains me!

With the hen weekend, and now my period weekend, I’ve not been for a long run in 2 weeks now, but I’ve been maintaining my twice weekly 30-minute after-work run even though some of those have been more walk than run!

I am so close to completing my Loctus of Borg challenge and ordering my medal!! I’ve only tracked runs for this one, so it feels like more of an achievement. 150km done and only 10k left! I should have managed that by next weekend.

What have I been watching? 📺

We went to see Thunderbolts* a few weeks ago. Loved it.. except the *New Avengers reveal at the end, but then I have a soft spot for New Avengers and that team name means something different to me. I guess they can’t go with calling them Dark Avengers for the MCU though!

I didn’t love Daredevil: Born Again buttttt… Krysten Ritter is back as Jessica Jones for season 2 so I am HYPED now! Those two were my favourite things about The Defenders!

We’ve been rewatching the Jurassic Park movies, starting with the originals and now on Jurassic World 2. The first one is wonderful, the second wildly frustrating because every character except Dr Ian Malcomn (and the tech guy) is a dick and the nonsense in the US at the end, and then the third one was too actiony and I found it a bit boring, I actually can’t remember much about it and we saw it last week!

I didn’t like Jurassic World that much, mostly because I find Chris Pratt’s character cliche and cringe,worthy and I can’t take him seriously. I miss the science nerds from the original movies. Jurassic World (2) Fallen Kingdom is straight up bad, and adding full human clones into the story is just too far for me! I also don’t like all the animal cruelty to the CGI dinosaurs. It’s sad. But I’ll guess we’ll watch the third one….

We’re onto the final fourth season of Westworld. I didn’t really enjoy season 3, but I’m actually into season 4. I think it helps that Delores isn’t Delores, and Maeve and Caleb are a more likeable character pair. Halores doesn’t really make sense to me.. I don’t really understand how a Delores copy + Charlotte Hale + family killed = what we have going on now…

I rewatched all of the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice recently. It’s still so good. Colin Firth just IS Mr Darcy for me. I put it on as some easy TV to do embroidery too (I’ve finally picked up the needle again!), but I got really into it, and stayed up too late watching. It’s put me in the mood to reread the book!

I’ve rewatched Hacks to catch up to the latest season. It is excellent, but sometimes I find it too painful to watch and have to be in the right mood. Season 4 is especially tough to watch, as Deborah and Ava are at war.

New season of Taskmaster! I’m enjoying the exuberant chaos of Jason Mantzoukas and Matthew Bayton make quite a sweet, polite contrast! I love that they’ve added a trap for the contestants who look for a secret task or shortcut under the table!

Absolutely devastated that Wheel of Time was cancelled! Fuck you Amazon!!! The best Amazon original series, and it kept getting better! There aren’t many shows these days I really look forward to new episodes but that was one of them. If I want to see where that story goes, I’d have to read the books, and I really have a gut feeling I’ll hate them… Even people who have gotten through them all aren’t enthusiastic about the reading experience!

Righteous Gemstones has ended now too. I’ll really miss that! I’ll definitely be rewatching it again and again.

The Murderbot TV show is out with the first two episodes, and it’s great so far!

What else?

• I recently learned that the newer Kobo e-readers work in colour, including the ability to colour highlight… and even annotate if you get the Libra with a special stylus. This really appeals to me, especially as I am only buying eBooks through Kobo or Google Books these days. But my Kindle Paperwhite is pretty new and still totally fine, so it’s hard to justify a new e-reader. Especially as the Libra Colour might seem pretty reasonable at first for £209, but then you have to buy the stupid special stylus separately for an additional £60-70! Plus, the case to keep them both together, so the total passing £300 before you know it!
• I got 6 months of Audible for my birthday. Yes, I know, it’s still bloody Amazon, but I think it might be better value for me than paying £12.99 a month for Spotify. I listen to more audiobooks than music these days, and the 15 hours a month limit with Spotify was so limiting. I’m going to try it for a bit and see how I get on, and if I miss Spotify Premium. I’m having good luck with the Library audiobooks at the moment, I’ve managed to queue up the Rivers of London books in my reserves. I’ll only use Audible for things I can’t get through the library.