Digest 20251106 – SciFiMonth, maybe?

Last time I updated, I was heading into a week home alone with the cats, while Husband was away and optimistic about all the things I could do. I did some of them! Obviously, I was not as productive as I’d hoped I might be.

What I had not realised is that yet again he’d managed to book the Diwali week to be away, and around here, that means that neighbours will spend up to a week letting off fireworks every night. I don’t know what it is with my neighbours, but they fucking love an excuse for fireworks. The problem with this is that one of our cats hates them, and her preferred hiding place is under the bed in a spot that is very hard to get to! So I was faced with the choice of keeping the bedroom door shut (as we normally do) and having her scratching at it, or having the door open and having the other cat come in and out, disturbing me all night and screaming into my face at 5:30am. I chose the latter, and I was exhausted for most of the week!

This is not as much of an issue when Husband is here because he comes to bed a lot later than ney, by which time the fireworks have stopped, and he can shut the door!

Thankfully, there were a couple of weeks between Diwali and Bonfire Night this year, so the cat has had a break from nightly fireworks!

A week of telly 📺

Still, I did get my chippy tea, and re-subbed to Netflix to watch a lot of TV while I finished my embroidery project off. This is everything I watched:

• You People : I enjoyed this! I’m not American, Jewish or Black, so I couldn’t relate or speak to any of the specific sensitive cultural elements, but at least on the surface, it was funny and the cast was great. I enjoy a romantic comedy, Ezra and Amira were a couple are solid, and it’s external forces that cause the issues… Instead of immature shit or miscommunication. (Netflix)
• Rebecca (2025) : I haven’t seen any other adaptations, but I did read the book (finally) last year, and the movie definitely took a more romantic aspect. Maxim wasn’t as cruelly cold and indifferent, and the ending scene of them at the end wasn’t bleak and mundane, with her putting a brave face on it. In the book, she ends up basically as another travelling companion to an older, wealthy person, and there is very little growth. The movie has her appear to stay more from choice, and it’s a lot sexier. The clothes were lovely and the cast was good. (Netflix)
• Film Club : This was a very sweet little romantic comedy series starring Aimee Lou Wood and Nabhaan Rizwan. It touched on mental health and family issues, with a single mother and two grown-up daughters… it was a bit like a much sweeter, less toxic version of Such Brave Girls. (BBC iPlayer)
• Leonard and Hungry Paul : Oh my gosh, I LOVED this. It was such a wonderful, gentle series with low stakes and a romantic relationship where any conflicts were quickly resolved with clear communication. And it was funny. Absolutely adorable. It stars  Alex Lawther, who is great (Andor, The End of the F*cking World) and Laurie Kynaston (Derry Girls). (BBC iPlayer)
• Fisk : I watched series 3 and then went back and rewatched it because I love this Aussie comrdy so much! (Netflix)
• Wellmania : I needed more Aussie comedy, so I gave this a go – I usually like Celeste Barber things – and it was pretty mediocre, but fine for a background watch. (Netflix)
• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia : The new season, which was actually, I thought, really great! Some of the more recent seasons haven’t been very good, but i thought this was back on form! (Netflix)
• Apple Cider Vinegar : Still on an Aussie binge, this time a dramatisation of IRL scammer Belle Gibson. I sort of knew this story from an episode of Maintenance Phase, and this was really well done. (Netflix)
• Nobody Wants This : I rewatched season one before diving into season two, which just came on. It is still, as the kids say, “fire” and I was just as gripped the second time! I really enjoyed season two as well, though I’ve seen some negative things about it. I think people aren’t understanding the characters – most people do not change overnight! (Netflix)

Now it is November, I am looking forward to starting to get into the cheese Christmas Rom-Coms!

I need to post my finished embroidery project, I’ll do that separately at some point this week… hopefully.

Movement

The Modor walking challenge is going really well. I am currently at South Deep… and as usual, because I am not a LOTR fan, I have no idea what that means.

I have discovered something of a “hack” for this… because I often walk on the treadmill at my desk, I found that if I was typing a lot then my steps were not getting tracked properly by the Garmin on my wrist, because my wrist would end up resting on the desk top, so I decided to try putting it on my ankle instead.

Well, turns out (unsurprisingly, when I actually thought about it) that that is a lot more accurate at counting steps, and it also means it will track distance (which is good for my Conquerer walking challenge). This has resulted in my tracking about a third more steps when I’m walking on my treadmill, which sort of feels like cheating… but also, I guess it was undercounting my efforts this whole time!?

I still walk for the same length of time (usually somewhere between 30 to 60 mins), so this has resulted in my step count leaping up a bit and has finally put me over my goal of 8,000 a day average!

Running, meanwhile, has been quite inconsistent with the above sleep issues, but I did get back to it last week. I still can’t do 15 mins of non-stop running, but I’m getting there, slowly.

This time of year is more of a challenge though now it’s dark after work, and it’s more likely to be raining at lunch time. I think when we replace the walking pad I’ll get a version I can jog on indoors.

Sci Fi Month

I had this on my radar but then forgot all about it until I started to see posts pop up in my feed! I would like to get involved, but I also might struggle to find the time, so we’ll see. The ideal time to decide to do this would have been 2 days ago, as I’ve just had 3 days off work – but I’ve spent 1.5 of those days playing The Outer Worlds 2, which is a sci-fi game… so maybe that counts anyway!

I love science fiction TV shows and video games – and some books, but I’m harder to please in that area – so I think this would be really fun, I just need to set myself some time to actually write.

I guess I’ve made a bit of a start as – coincidentally – half of my TTT random eBooks post this week were sci-fi books (or adjacent to).

I’m also (still) reading I Cheerfully Refuse, which is a speculative literary fiction book (actually not that different to The Outer Worlds / Fallout in vibe) – what if society as we know it had collapsed, most people were illiterate, and capitalists were otherwise unfettered?

So I am optimistic that I can make Sci Fi Month work … if I can tear myself away from The Outer Worlds 2! (You can see my thoughts on The Outer Worlds’ first game here)

Oh AND … Lego just announced Star Trek: U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D. £350 is very pricey for 3,600 mostly grey bricks, so we are going to think about it. It’s not quite the auto-pre-order we’d anticipated.

Anxiety > Excitement

This week, I have been, yet again, lamenting how my anxiety issues get in the way of my enjoyment of many things I should otherwise be excited about. This specific event was going to see Five (1990s British boy band) on their reunion tour this week – very exciting – but I couldn’t look forward to this because of several anxiety triggers.

The big one was that my friend was travelling up for the event and would be staying with us, which should be lovely. The snag was that I was going to have to pick her up from the train station in the city centre, for which the pick-up area is in a multi-story car park. As you may know, we got a new car earlier this year – the Hyundai Ioniq 5 – and this car is fucking huge (twice the size of my previous cars, which were a Ford Fiesta and a KA) and has a crazy wide turning circle, which makes it tricky to manoeuvre in tight spaces… like every multistory car park in the UK.

It feels like driving a boat to me, and I can’t reverse bay park it well in an open supermarket car park with empty bays on either side, never mind in a busy, tight indoor one between cars.

Thankfully, this particular car park is new-ish, so it is wider than the average in our city (there are some we know we could never get the car in), so that was small comfort, but I still felt physically sick with anxiety for the whole day in the lead up to collecting my friend. I spent the night before watching YouTube videos on parking tips!

When I got there, it was so busy that there were no nice, easy spaces I could slip in, but it worked out that my friend found me while I was driving around looking for a space, so I didn’t actually have to park – and a nervous breakdown was averted.

Later I then had to contend with meeting three strangers (friends of our other friend) for dinner before we went to the concert together. Groups of people I don’t know are another anxiety trigger, plus add in a very noisy restaurant where I found it hard to project my voice.

Still, the actual concert was very fun and I’m glad that I went!

After I dropped my friend off at the train station, the next day (avoiding parking again!), I took some time to practice in a fairly quiet midday midweek supermarket car park with the knowledge gleaned from the YouTube videos. I still can’t nail it, I still haven’t quite worked out visual/spatial clues for the geometry of this car, but I’m feeling a bit more confident. If there is another car coming and waiting for me, though, it does all fall to pieces. I cannot park under pressure!

I will keep practising when I get the opportunity. Part of the problem is that I don’t have any need to drive regularly, so the muscle memory is not coming easily! I used to be amazing at parking because I had tricky, tight drives or lived in Victorian terraces where it was all parallel parking (all be it with a much smaller more manouverable car!), so I am finding this collapse in confidence frustrating.

The Ioniq 5 is an amazing car, I love driving it… until I have to park it. I really wish it were about 20% smaller.

I did get a nice anxiety relief high after all that was done, though – especially knowing I had 1.5 days off work still to actually relax!

My God, have I needed these days off, I am feeling a lot better now. It’s been a good refresh to get me to Christmas!