31 Days of Halloween: Week 2 Recap

Time for a quick recap of how the second week of our 31 Days of Halloween marathon is going. Does my wife like the movies? Is she losing sleep at night, worried about the monsters under the bed? Am I? Only one way to find out! Last week we recapped Days One through Eight, let's pick it up from there...

Both Days Nine and Ten were spent at Camp Crystal Lake. My wife had never seen Jason in action, but before we could get to Jason, we had to start at the beginning with Mrs. Voorhees in Friday the 13th on Day Nine. Then we watched Friday the 13th Part 2 on Day Ten. Boy, I'd forgotten how bad that one is. My wife enjoyed them both, liking how straightforward they were and how the survivor was always a girl (she had never heard of the "final girl" trope before). She does she that the first one is better than the second one.

Day Eleven was meant to be spent at Bly Manor, but I had only gotten about four hours of sleep the night before and wasn't up for a nine hour binge, so we flipped the schedule and watched The Final Girls, which was also fitting given Marisa's introduction to the trope over the last two days. I had never seen this one anything it had long been on my list, and I wasn't disappointed. It was clever and a lot of fun, an affectionate spoof/tribute to the slasher genre. My wife thought it was really funny but very predictable and said it wasn't scary say all but she liked how it brought more heart than usual to the slasher genre.

We finally got to watch The Haunting of Bly Manor on Day Twelve. I had been looking forward to this ever since The Haunting of Hill House blew my mind, and I was not disappointed. It's very different than Hill House, more of a slow burn; it might not grab you right away but stick with it, it's worth it. The cast is great, full of talent and chemistry. It's creepy more than scary in a very gothic way. It's hard to say anything more without spoiling things, but I definitely recommend it. Marisa loved this one by the time it was over, but I had to push her through the first few slow episodes. She very much loved the narrative structure and the ending and thought it was very well done overall. We were both just a little disappointed that it wasn't as scary as Hill House but loved it as it's own thing.

For Day Thirteen, we watched Black Box, the second of the four Welcome to the Blumhouse movies on Amazon Prime. This one was moderately better than The Lie, with Sam interesting concept, but the execution didn't live up to that concept and it wasn't scary at all, just a creepy moment here and there. I'm really hoping for more from the two remaining installments. My wife agreed that the premise was interesting and liked it more than I did, even though it was more of a mystery/thriller than horror.

We had to change things up again on Day Fourteen; we were supposed to watch 1408 but I couldn't find it streaming for free anywhere so I swapped on one of our alternates, The Monster. This was a fairly gripping, gritty movie about a mother and her young daughter who have a very fractured relationship, stranded in their car in the woods under attack by a monster. I enjoyed it a lot, although aside from the emotional content it was pretty by the numbers. Marisa thought this was an interesting movie, mostly good but not scary. She wished there was a little more to the fairly abrupt ending and liked the relationship and growth between the characters.

The plan for Day Fifteen, the halfway point, was to break up the horror with a little bit of stupid comedy. Even though things haven't been as scary as we hoped, we stuck to the plan and watched Adam Sandler's new Netflix movie, Hubie Halloween. And boy, did we get stupid comedy. It's stupid as hell, but it's also hysterical, and the twist actually psyched me out a bit. My wife really liked this one, she liked the cast, the gags, and said it's just a really fun Halloween movie, and I have to agree.

Lastly, on Day Sixteen we had to change the schedule again. We were supposed to watch Love and Monsters, the new video on demand release, but that just wasn't in the budget. So I went to the alternates again (only one alternate left now so hopefully things go smoothly from here!) and we watched Would You Rather, a slightly torture porn-ish flick I'd seen before and it's pretty good overall. Marisa didn't like this one; she didn't like any of the characters and thought they were all just stupid, so she was sort of rooting for them all to die, which just isn't good.

That brings us up to date. Later today we'll be watching Leprechaun, and tomorrow we're going to binge the new Marvel show on Hulu, Helstrom, which was meant to kick off a Marvel Horror line before things changed. I'll have another update for you at the end of the week! In the meantime, are there any horror flicks you've been watching to get into the season? Drop a comment, let's talk about it!

Damages

In my return to blogging a few weeks ago, I talked about my diabetes diagnosis and how recovery has been going. I mentioned the tapering off my medications, the weight loss, and how good my blood sugar levels have been. All of that is still true: I'm off insulin and managing things through meds alone; I've lost forty-six pounds now; my average blood sugar over the last month is 103, over the last two weeks is 98, and my a1c at my last checkup was 4.8. In a lot of ways, I'm healthier than I've been in almost a decade, and feel better than I have in maybe longer than that.

Despite all that though, there are damages.

Being in diabetic ketoacidosis as long as I was caused permanent nerve damage in my hands and feet. Nothing extensive or severe, but I'll get pains in my hands and feet occasionally, especially my feet, sometimes for days at a time before it just vanishes. My hands same feet will also "fall asleep" faster than they used to, and once they go numb it'll take longer than it used to for that to pass.

I also get unpleasant sensations in my chest now. I say sensations because it isn't pain, but I'll feel a throb sometimes, or a dull ache, or some warmth or something, and it isn't like localized to one place. Don't worry, it's been checked out, it's fine; I'm told it's partly due to interactions between the five different meds I'm on now and partly due to the fact that it takes me longer to digest food now because the nerves in my stomach are damaged, and that sometimes doesn't mesh well with my acid reflux.

I'm also dealing with diabetic retinopathy. There's been some damage to the blood vessels in my eyes, which has affected my vision. Things are blurrier than they used to be, especially at a distance. I can stay very easily, very clearly watch TV without a problem of I'm sitting on the couch, but if there's any subtitles or other words on the screen, I can't read them. To use the program guide, I have to get up and stand in front of the TV to see it clearly. I can't get treated for it right now either; I'm on my wife's employer-provided vision plan, but apparently treating this is covered by health insurance, not vision. Go figure. Again, it's not something serious, I'm still good and functional, but yes, there are damages.

That segues pretty well into another big set of damages, the financial damages. Fifteen thousand dollars in hospital bills, a few of which I'm disputing, some I just have to pay, with monthly minimum payments of almost five hundred bucks. Which made as well be a million, they're both equally possible. It's pushed me to start a ko-fi page, linked to this blog on the right there, to ask for help. It kills my pride to have to do that, and I can barely bring myself to actually share the link to that anywhere, but there it is.

Then there are the medications. As I mentioned, I'm on five of them now, and they all have side effects. The big one is that metformin, my main diabetes drug, can (and does) cause diarrhea, which makes it a hell of a thing to have to take twice a day when you also have IBS, let's just leave it at that. In addition to that, every single one of my meds lists dizziness, drowsiness, and lightheadedness as side effects, so as you can probably imagine, I'm dizzy, drowsy, and lightheaded. A lot.

Maybe the most extensive damage of all, though, has been psychological. Other than the usual ways everyone gets sick, I've never been sick before. And except for some sprains, twists, and a deep cut that needed stitches when I was a kid, I've never been injured. So to suddenly find myself laid up in a hospital bed, attached to two different machines and three separate IVs in the ICU, being told by nurses I was probably a day or two away from being on a coma? And to then find out my new condition makes me a prime vulnerable target for the pandemic that was about to take over the country? Yeah, there's been some serious mental damage from that. I've been scared constantly. I'm fighting it and it's starting to fade a little finally, but that fear, that new dreadful sense of mortality laying in that hospital for five days have me, is very much still there.

Yes. I'm doing a lot better than I was.

But there are damages.

31 Days of Halloween: Week 1 Recap

We've reached the end of the first week of the 31 Days of Halloween experiment my wife and I are doing, designed to broaden her horror movie experiences and provide me entertainment for a month, and spoken about at length here. I thought it would make sense to check in every week and let whoever might be interested know how it's going, what we liked and didn't like, and so forth.

We kicked the marathon off on Day One with one of my favorite horror movies Trick 'r Treat, one of my favorite horror movies and one that my wife likes as well. Despite the fact that we've both seen it before, I wanted to start things off on a good note with something we'd both enjoy before getting into the unsorted mixed bag of nuts the rest of the month will be.

For Day Two we watched The Prophecy, one of my favorite Christopher Walken movies. It's been quite a while since I've seen this and... it hasn't aged well. Walken is still amazing in it as a crazy, evil angel, and Viggo Mortensen pops up with a very chilling performance as Lucifer, but the movie itself is more than a little ridiculous and poorly done otherwise. My wife thought this was just okay; it was a little too biblical and dated for her, and not really a horror movie at all in her opinion.

We watched The Strangers on Day Three. This flick made the list because we watched the sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, a few weeks ago and it was really, really bad; I had remembered watching this one in theaters and it was way better, so I thought my wife should give it a try. My wife enjoyed this one and found it pretty creepy, especially how it's loosely based on true events.

Day Four brought us to our first TV show binge of the marathon, Hulu's new show Monsterland, which I reviewed earlier this week here. Much like in my review, my wife only liked a few episodes, specifically the first, third, and eighth. She also agreed that there needed to be more monsters actually involved.

There's a movie from the mid-eighties on Amazon Prime called The Stuff, which is what we watched on Day Five. It was recommended to us by two friends of mine on Twitter, and I have to tell you I have no idea why. This movie was just laughably bad. Low-budget, horribly acted, and just utterly ridiculous. Although, Garret Morris was in it playing Chocolate Chip Charlie, who's hands were lethal weapons, so it wasn't a total loss. I asked my wife what she thought about this and she just groaned at me.

We stayed on Amazon Prime for Day Six, watching a new movie called The Lie, which is the first in Prime's new "Welcome to the Blumhouse" series of movies all produced by, duh, Blumhouse. I wasn't too impressed by this movie throughout most of its running time, finding it kind of dull and overwrought, but there's a twist on the end that really changed things up for me a bit. We both agreed that the acting was pretty good, but the plot was pretty flawed, but disagreed about the twist; she liked it a lot less than I did.

For Day Seven we switched back to Hulu for another new movie, Books of Blood, based on the old John Carpenter series. The movie is set up as a three-chapter anthology, and the first chapter is both the longest and by far the strongest. Honestly, the movie itself would have been much better if that chapter had been fleshed out and turned into the entire movie, but the other two chapters have a narrative purpose as framing devices so I understand why they did what they did. It makes even more sense when you learn this project was initially developed as a TV series and not a movie. My wife liked the anthology aspect, especially how the stories were all connected, but thought the other two stories needed more time. She also agreed the first story should have been its own thing, because there's a lot to unpack in that one.

Finally, for Day Eight last night we watched the 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead, one of my favorite zombie movies and also one of the only Zack Snyder movies I enjoy (please don't come at me, Snyderbros, my dislike of his movies takes nothing away from your enjoyment whatsoever and I'm not here to bash anything). My wife really liked this one, especially the characterization, some of the techniques used to tell the story, and the zombie baby idea. She also complained there was too much violence... but hey, it's zombies.

It's Friday, and this should be one of the better weekends of the marathon. We're watching Friday the 13th tonight, followed by Friday the 13th Part 2 tomorrow, and then The Haunting of Bly Manor on Sunday, which is really the centerpiece of the whole affair. The Haunting of Hill House was just amazing, so I'm hoping for a good time on Sunday!

Monsterland: Too Much Man, Too Little Monster

Anthologies are tricky things. I say this all the time about short story collections, and it's no less true when it comes to an anthology TV series. You really never know what you're going to get from episode to episode. Not every episode will connect with every viewer. Different tones between episodes can be jarring. Different writers and different directors all have different styles. That's especially true about the topic of today's blog, the new Hulu "horror" anthology Monsterland, which has no less than eight different directors (one per episode) and four different writers.

Monsterland is itself based on a short story anthology, written by Nathan Ballingrud. Each story takes place in a different city in the United States, and while I don't know about the book, the show is a mixed bag for sure. Some of the episodes are entertaining and some are decidedly less so. Across the board though, the show's biggest drawback is that it's very light on the actual monsters and very heavy-handed about the idea that people are the monsters. And I mean VERY heavy-handed. It gets a bit oppressive in some episodes to the point that I really, really wished there were less people and more monsters.

Personally, I enjoyed half of the episodes, all four of which were the ones written by Mary Laws, who also created the show for television. Her episodes felt like they stuck the greatest balance between man and monster. I don't know if I recommend the show as a whole, honestly, but I do recommend checking her episodes out; she wrote the first, third, sixth, and eighth, and the first and eighth in particular are really good, especially in how they bookend each other.

Overall, Monsterland is just like your typical anthology: a few hits, a few misses, and a few standouts. You may want to give the show a try, tis the season for monsters and all, but don't expect to be scared.

"Unpromoteable": Why I Left the Best Job I've Ever Had

So here's a post that may piss some people off, but its really a story that needs to be told, and I'll tell you why at the end. It's the story of why I left the best job I ever had after four pretty great years, and did so without a safety net.

But to get to the end, I should backtrack a little. Halfway through the summer of 2017, after I had been working there for a little over two years and had already been promoted and received a few raises, I started having a problem commuting. I would get stomach pains every time I got on the bus in the morning, pains that would lead to panic attacks. It got so bad I started getting off of the bus not long after I got on it and would have to take an Uber to work, at an average of forty-five bucks a pop. We first thought it was stress-related; my supervisor was on leave so I was shouldering a lot at work, had just applied for another promotion and had no idea if it would work out, and, oh, yeah, I was getting married in a month. So no shortage of stress, right? But it persisted, even after the wedding, after my supervisor came back, after I didn't get that promotion (wouldn't be the last time I didn't get that promotion, but more on that later). I started seeing doctors to figure out what was wrong and got jerked around quite a bit; first I was just overweight, then it was gall stones, then I needed to get my gall bladder removed (I was but that wasn't the point, the stones are there but harmless, and I still have my gall bladder three years later).

While I was either leaving doctors flabbergasted or exposing the inadequacies, I was never quite sure, I moved to taking either Uber or Lyft to work everyday, whichever was cheaper on that particular day. So it's safe to say I was spending $200 a week on transit just in the mornings. Keep that in mind as the story unfolds.

Finally, I got in to see a truly awesome gastroenterologist, who immediately diagnosed my stomach pains as acid reflux, put me on a pill that helped with that, and then further figured out through some testing I have "mixed IBS," which is a version of Irritable Bowel Syndrome that expresses itself sometimes as constipation and other times as diarrhea.

It's as fun as it sounds, let me tell you.

We also figured out stress is a very heavy trigger for me, and that's why I was always experiencing symptoms in the morning. Not knowing how long the bus would take, if it would break down, if it would get stuck in the tunnel... even taking Ubers to work, not knowing how bad traffic would be, would we get stuck on the bridge, would I be late, etc. It was all just very bad. The doctor also helped me get social accomodations at work for it to be okay for me to be up to see hour late because of my condition, and for the first year that was fine. I worked hard. I got passed up for that same promotion two more times in the span of a month and got transferred to a new team for what I was told was the express purpose of preparing me to be the next one promoted. So I learned the new team, worked hard, forced myself to sit in an Uber cramped up with pain day after day, because I loved whereI worked.

Let me say that again. I loved where I worked. Did I complain about it? Sure. It's work, that's what people do. But I knew it was the best job I ever had. I loved the friends I had made there. It was the kind of work I enjoyed.

So I worked hard for another year, until the next chance for a promotion came up. In that time, some management changes happened, both in my department and in HR, and they started giving me problems about my accomodations. I don't know if they thought I should just magically be better, if they didn't understand what a chronic condition was, but they didn't want to approve it for another year. The doctor had to recertify, and no matter what he wrote on the form, they challenged it. I had to go back three times. They started counting the minutes I missed, instead of allowing the hour a day. All this was making my condition worse, because again, stress. And through all this, I worked hard. I hit goals. My team succeeded constantly. And when that next promotion chance came up, I still didn't get it. And that's when someone in management finally told me the truth.

Because of my chronic health condition, they considered me "unpromoteable."

That's right, I was told no matter how hard I worked or how good I was, I'd never be promoted because I had a health issue. So I thought it over for a few days, talked it over with my wife; talked about how offer 40% of my paycheck was going to transportation, how my days were twelve hours long, how I was always taking short lunch break to make up for the time I missed in the morning, and how all of it was for a job I just found out after four years of hard work didn't have any interest in giving me a future because of something completely out of my control.

So after thinking it over and talking it over, I gave my notice. Did I have a job waiting? No. Partly because I couldn't figure out how to job hunt in New Jersey while working in Manhattan because clearly committing wasn't an option anymore, but mostly because I couldn't stomach working there any longer than I had to.

That's why I left the best job I ever had. Do I regret it? I regret it had to happen, because at one point a future there is all I wanted; I sure as hell regret not still having the amazing health care they provided now that diabetes has me 15K in the hole and stuck in a miserable, remote- only job hunt, I regret the amount of shit my wife and I have both gotten about the decision and the situation it led to from people with a shocking dearth of empathy, but I don't regret my decision once I realized that future I hoped for there was forever going to be denied me.

I just wish I could find the next "best job I ever had" somewhere that will appreciate me, sooner rather than later.

31 Days of Halloween

 

I've seen a lot of things floating around the interwebz lately about how Halloween is cancelled because of the pandemic, just like everything else has been in the last few months. Well, we here at SSTAS (the "we" being me, my wife, and our two cats, who are of course very invested in my success here, as we all know cats are never disinterested, aloof little bastards) have very strong feelings about Halloween in general, and even stronger feelings about the cancellation thereof:

Fuck. That.

We're going to go in the exact opposite direction of cancelling Halloween and do Halloween every day with 31 Days of Halloween! Thirty-one days of horror-themed programming, a movie a day, with some TV shows thrown in, to make sure Halloween gets its due this year. And I'm not talking about how some cable channels do it, where they show the same seven movies again and again all month long. No, we're doing thirty-one different programs. Don't believe me? See for yourself!

As you can see, there's a nice mix of everything in there, new movies premiering on various streaming services this month, a bunch of classics, a ridiculous comedy or two, a few binge-worthy new shows (highlighted in blue) and what are probably a few controversial choices too... I'm looking at you, Rob Zombie's Halloween movies!

Aside from luxuriating in horror to celebrate the glory of Halloween, another purpose of this is to broaden my wife's horizons when it comes to horror movies; she never really watched any growing up and hasn't seen really any of Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, and all their friends. I've done a good job in the almost seven years we've been together exposing her to more and more, but since she still tries to only let us watch horror flicks in the daytime with the curtains open wide, it's time to really do a deep dive with her. That's why we're starting off light and easy with Trick r' Treat, taking a break in the middle for what I'm sure will be the absolutely ridiculous Hubie Halloween, and then finishing up on Halloween itself with the Exorcist, a movie even I've been too afraid to watch for a long time. I'll probably write reviews up for the new shows and maybe the new movies and do weekly updates about how it's going, what my wife did or didn't like, how much sleep we're losing, things like that.

Of course, this isn't the extent of what we're watching. There's also Halloween Wars and Outrageous Pumpkins on the Food Channel, Eli Roth's History of Horror season 2 on AMC, and of course whatever various Walking Dead shows make it on the air this month, it's getting hard to keep track. And on Halloween after we watch the Exorcist bright and early (because even I won't watch that shit in the dark at night), we'll fill the rest of the day with various things like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and other Halloween themed TV episodes and stuff. And I'm sure we'll get to the alternates I have listed at the bottom of the calendar too. 

So that's our 31 Days of Halloween plan. Got any thoughts on the movies we'll be watching? Or even better, got anything you know YOU'LL be watching this Halloween? Let's talk about it!

P.S. It's been pointed out that the calendar pic above might not be the easiest to read on some devices, so just to make things easier, here's the planned movies and shows in list form:

Trick 'r Treat

The Prophecy

The Strangers

Monsterland

Stuff

The Lie (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Books of Blood

Dawn of the Dead (2004)

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th Part 2

Haunting of Bly Major

The Final Girls

Black Box (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

1408

Hubie Happen

Love and Monsters

Leprechaun

Helstrom

Nightmare on Elm Street

Evil Eye (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Rebecca

Malevolent

Fright Night (2011)

The Amityville Horror (2005)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Emelie

Nocturne (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Halloween (2007)

Halloween 2 (2009)

His House

The Exorcist

I Got the Diabeetus.

So, it's been awhile, right? But boy have I got a story to tell. I know, who doesn't this year, right? Mine starts around Valentine's Day, when I started feeling kind of funky. I was constantly tired. My muscles ached. I'd get numbness in my hands and feet. I was always thirsty and peeing constantly.  I would get ravishingly hungry, but then be tired of eating after two or three bites. I couldn't even make my way through a PB&J. This went on throughout the month of February, a month in which I lost 30lbs. My wife would come home from work to find me in the dark, under a blanket on the couch, fast asleep almost every night. We knew there was something wrong with me, but, without insurance, we hoped we could just go the home remedy route for whatever it was.

So we treated the symptoms. Gatorades for the constant thirst and frequent urination. Protein shakes to combat the hunger but inability to eat, and also the way too rapid weight loss. Of course, this was a mistake, as we'd come to find out, given the sugar and carb content of these things, but we'll get there.

Things started getting really bad as March started. The first Friday in March, March 6th, my heterosexual lifemate was having a karaoke party for his 40th birthday. I was excited, but also nervous as hell given how I was feeling. I got up to shower and get myself ready for the party, and could barely make it through the shower. I felt like I couldn't breathe. My back hurt. I had to finally give in; I called my wife and told her she needed to come home, I needed to go to the ER.

I went to the ER, got checked in, got all kinds of tests, the whole thing, and by later that night I was out of the ER... and into the ICU, where the nurses told me I had one of the worst cases of diabetic ketoacidosis, or DKA, that they had ever seen. They were surprised I hadn't slipped into a diabetic coma. My blood sugar on admittance was 700, and I had an A1C of over 12. So clearly I was diabetic, and the home remedies we tried didn't help any. I spent two days in the ICU, getting my blood sugar taken hourly, getting various insulin doses hourly, going through IV after IV of fluids for extreme dehydration, getting a phosphorous drip. It was hell. I spent the nights alone, face to face with my mortality for the first time. Which sounds extreme, I know, but that's how sick I was. It was close.

So after two days in the ICU, I was moved to the general hospital floor for another two days of insulin and multiple meetings with a diabetic coordinator and a nutritionist. By the third day, I was feeling immensely better. I had an appetite. I was no longer peeing every two hours. I wasn't exhausted. I finally went home Tuesday afternoon with my blood sugar around 200 and a list of medications I could barely keep track of... two different insulins, a diabetes pill, a cholesterol pill... and an overwhelming schedule of when to take them. I had also gained back 14lbs while in the hospital. The food there clearly wasn't that bad.

Now, the adjustment began. New diet. New medication regiment. I was taking 35 units of a daily insulin once a day, and 12 units of a pre-meal insulin three times a day and possibly a fourth time before bedtime if needed. I'm not going to lie and say it was easy; there was tears, hunger, depression, guilt. Even though they said it wasn't, it felt like a death sentence. The first month was hell. 

But it got better. I got used to the new diet, and begin to figure out what I could and couldn't eat without spiking my blood sugar. I even figured out how to still have dessert. And my body recovered. My insulin doses started lessening. After just two weeks the pre-meal insulin went from 12 units to 6 units, and after two months got changed to just as needed, and I've never needed it. The daily insulin went from 35 units to 30 units, to 20 units, to 10 units, to just last week being taken off of it completely. Through it all, my blood sugar has been fine. It rose a little, but still well within normal, safe limits. And what's really made all this possible has been the weight loss. Around my birthday in January, I was 250lbs. Not six weeks later when I went into the ER, I had dropped to 220lbs. When I came out of the hospital, I was back up to 234lbs. Today? I'm at 205lbs, a weight I haven't seen in eight years, at least. Now don't get me wrong, I still have bad days; because of just how screwed up I was, I have side effects I'll never fully be rid of. But overall, I feel healthier than I have in a long, long time.

Of course, things aren't all great. I left the hospital with a flock of bills that totaled over $85K. Since I'm a self-payer, the hospital dialed a lot of that back, but I still have almost $15K in debt to pay off from this, and that's not counting the frequent clinic follow-ups and medications. And this all happened a week before the world went to hell and took the job market with it. Combine that with being in a high-risk group for Covid no matter how well I'm doing, and it's made finding a decent job impossible because I'm limited to remote work only, which has not been easy to find. Things are tight. They're good, but they're tight. That's why you might see if you look to the right of the page a new little widget that says "Support me on ko-fi," because I could use some support. That's all I'll say about that.

I'm hoping to make this a fresh start, a return to blogging. I've got a few fun ideas for posts coming up, a few serious ones as well. And probably some health-related ones as time goes on as well. Hopefully you'll join me for the ride.