Happy New Year?

It's New Year's Eve again. We're all about to put 2020 behind us and step boldly, or, more likely, tentatively into 2021. I thought before we get to that, a little look back might be in order. While I wasn't blogging at all last year, I did write a little Facebook post last New Year's Eve. Here's what I had to say:  

"I personally cannot wait for the spectacularly shitty year that was 2019 to end. Losing Smitty. Dealing with all the new complications from having IBS. Having to choose to leave a pretty decent job because of those complications, and how I was flat out told I could never expect to be promoted because of them. The nightmare job hunting in New Jersey has been since then. The financial struggles and the arguments that go with them. Losing all faith in the idea of writing as anything more than a pipe dream. Copious unaffordable but unavoidable dental work. Yes, goodbye 2019. I will not miss you. 2020, please be better."  

Sixty-six days later I was in the ICU, and a week after that we went into a lockdown for a pandemic that hasn't ended yet. So, I think it's safe to say 2020 wasn't better, by any stretch of the imagination. Copious medical debt that I'm still struggling to find a way to pay even as some of it makes its way to collection agencies, continued unemployment, no social life at all... yeah, it's been a rough year. For everyone. No MCU content at all? Absolutely brutal. And let's be honest here, 2021 isn't likely to be much better, at least not until we're a good chunk of months into it. But that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead of focusing on this year's shitshow and how much of it will bleed into next year, I want to talk about the good things that came about this year, because there were some, as well as what there is to look forward to next year.  

So, let's see the good! Despite what initially started it off, I'm ending 2020 healthier than I've been in probably a decade. I've lost fifty-four pounds now. The cat we got towards the end of last year, Hannah, really blossomed into a full-blown member of the family this year, personality and all. I can't imagine how we'd have gotten through all the time stuck at home without her and George. And in a way, I'm thankful for all the forced time at home. After we adapted to it, it really led to a lot of fun memories. What else was good this year... well, The Mandalorian single-handedly saved Star Wars. I got my wife more into horror movies. I've started blogging again. Occasionally, anyway. I've gotten into Dungeons & Dragons with a fun group of people... over Zoom, of course, and am enjoying the creativity involved in being a Dungeon Master, coming up with my own stories to play out. It's the most creative I've been in a while now.  

Yes, 2020 did have its upsides. And while the pandemic and everything associated with it won't be magically disappearing once the clock strikes midnight, with the vaccinations beginning, there is an end on the horizon. Hopefully. There are things to look forward to in 2021. Reunions with family and friends. A return to the things we used to take for granted, with a new appreciation for how easily things can be taken from us. More new MCU content than you can shake a stick at! And of course, with the new year comes the resolutions. For my part, I have three:  

1.) To keep doing what I've been doing in terms of my health and weight; to continue managing my diabetes, to hopefully be taken off even more of my medications, and to hopefully lose another six pounds, dropping to an even 190lbs.  

2.) To read more. Without a word of lie, I used to read on average fifty books a year. This year I think I read three. I need to get back to reading more, for the joy it brings me, for the motivation it gives me to write more, to get back to myself in that regard. Which brings me to number three...  

3.) To find balance. I swear, only the wording of that is inspired by the Karate Kid marathon we've been doing this week before season three of Cobra Kai drops tomorrow. The truth it, much like a lot of people out there, this year has really thrown me for a loop. I've lost myself a bit. But it's not just this year, it's been longer than that, going back to at least last year, if not even longer. I need to find myself again, find whatever is missing, find... balance.  

I think that's enough rambling from me for now. It's time to go watch some Twilight Zone. I wish all of you out there a happier, healthier 2021! 

31 Days of Halloween: Week 4 - The Final Recap

Halloween has come and gone and the nightmare of Election Day is still upon us all. Seems like as good a time as any to see how the final week of our 31 Days of Halloween went, and recap the experiment as a while while we're at it!

The final week kicked off with the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror on Day 24. I have fond memories of seeing this in the theater at about one in the morning with my heterosexual lifemate Chris, both of us sitting there in our hoodies with the hood pulled up over our heads because the movie was freaking us the fuck out. Thankfully, while I still enjoyed it this time around, it didn't have the same insomnia-inducing effect on me. Marisa said parts of this scared the crap out of her even though it was a slow burn, so that's a win.

The remake train continued on Day 25 with the 2003 version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, another movie I saw in theaters with Chris that got to us so much that at one point fairly early in he tried to leave the theater. I just think this is a really effective remake. The wife thought this was just okay and since she has seen the sequel it wasn't that impressive.

We had to switch things up on Day 26; we were supposed to watch a movie called Emelie, but Netflix removed it sometime in October. At this point I had already used up all the alternates I had planned, so I scrambled a little before settling in a classic that had slipped my mind, Hellraiser. I still enjoyed it, despite how campy and over the top the acting is. Marisa liked some of the special effects, especially for its time, but the movie didn't do much for her.

For Day 27, we finished off the Welcome to the Blumhouse movies on Amazon Prime by watching Nocturne, which I thought was the best of the quartet by far. It has the scariest plot, the darkest ending, and the acting and production were both really good. Marisa really loved the musical aspects of this and thought it was a good movie.

Day 28 brought us to an actual Halloween movie, Halloween. Specifically, Rob Zombie's 2007 Halloween remake. I know, why didn't we just watch the original? I dunt know, I dunt really have a good answer for that other than that I have this on Blu-ray so it was the easy choice. I know not everyone agrees, but I enjoy this version, the backstory it gives, and it's focus on mental illness. This one got a thumbs up from Marisa overall, although she didn't like Zombie's oversexualized style.

So for Day 29 we finished up the Rob Zombie Halloween Duology with 2009's Halloween 2. I didn't like this one that much when I first saw it, but this time around, just a day after watching the first one, I liked it more and could better appreciate the themes running through both of them. Still not sold on the ending, though. Marisa liked the mental illness aspect of the story and the way it connected Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

We got in one more new movie on Day 30, His House on Netflix starring Doctor Who's Matt Smith. I had to put a horror movie starring my favorite Doctor on the list, especially since Marisa's favorite was included in Fright Night. Unfortunately, his involvement in the movie was definitely oversold as he wasn't in it much and, while I liked the idea of what they were going for, the movie itself kind of bored me, although I did like the ending. This one was much of a bit with Marisa than it was with me, she thought it was an effective thriller overall with great twists.

That brings us to Day 31. Halloween. The main event, The Exorcist. A movie I've only seen once in my life because I was way too young and way too Catholic when I first saw it and it freaked me out like nothing else. Finally watching it again, I was underwhelmed. I don't know if it hasn't asked well or if I over-hyped it in my mind way too much, but for whatever reason it had no effect on me at all. I was a bit disappointed. Marisa however quite enjoyed it and thought it was freaky and scary as hell.

So there it is. I'll post the full list of what we watched below since it changed a bit from the original plan. Overall I enjoyed spending a month with daily horror, especially with my wife, exposing her to more types of horror and just horror in general. For what it's worth, out of all the movies and shows we watched, Marisa thought The Stuff was the worst, Haunting of Bly Manor was the best, and Nightmare on Elm Street was the scariest. And if nothing else, it got her more able to watch a horror movie in the dark!

What We Watched:

Trick 'r Treat

The Prophecy

The Strangers

Monsterland

The 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)

The Monster

Hubie Happen

Would You Rather?

Leprechaun

Helstrom

Nightmare on Elm Street

Evil Eye (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

The Autopsy of Jane Doe

Malevolent

Fright Night (2011)

The Amityville Horror (2005)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

Hellraiser

Nocturne (Welcome to the Blumhouse)

Halloween (2007)

Halloween 2 (2009)

His House

The Exorcist

The Regimen

So I realize since I've returned to blogging I've been kind of a two-trick pony; posts have either been about Halloween or my new life with diabetes. If you haven't been happy about that, well, this post will disappoint you, because it's another diabetes related post. But it's the last I have planned, I swear! I've talked previously about how sick I was, how I got my diagnosis, and how I've bounced back, and I've also talked about all the lasting damages I've had to deal with. When I talked about how I bounced back, I mentioned how my new diet has led to getting into better shape and a lot of weight loss; I've lost 48lbs now, and it's still doing, albeit more slowly. I've had plenty of people ask what I've been doing, so I thought I'd let you all in on a typical day and the things that I've changed to get where I am.

When I first wake up in the morning, I get a 12 ounce glad of water and take my first pills of the day, a Pantoprazole for GERD and acid reflux, and a multi-vitamin. I've been taking that pill for three years now, but the multivitamin is new, as is the glass of water. You'll see a theme here eventually.

A little while later I'll get ready for breakfast. First, I'll check my blood sugar, make sure things are normal. Normal for me in the morning is between 100-110. If it's in that range, I won't check again for the rest of the day; if it isn't normal, if it's high, I'll adjust my meal plan for the day and check again later. So after checking my blood sugar, I'll take my first Metformin pill of the day and have breakfast, usually a bowl of cereal with nuts for extra protein, or a yogurt, again with nuts. Sometimes it'll be waffles or pancakes, and I'll add a stick of string cheese after for protein. And sometimes it'll be a spinach and cheese omelet with toast, no addition needed. In any case, it'll be accompanied by another 12 ounce glass of water. I try to keep breakfast to somewhere between 30 to at most 40 grams of carbohydrates. I've never been a big breakfast person, so this alone is a big change.

A few hours later, it'll be lunch time. Lunch is usually a sandwich, either PB&J or cold cuts off we have any, with chips or crackers on the side, or sometimes some sort of frozen meal, again with chips or crackers on the side, depending on the carb count. I usually try to keep lunch to between 30 to 50 grams of carbs, bringing me to between 60 to 90 grams for the day so far, which is less than my daily maximum total. I also now take a Jardiance pill with lunch. And, like breakfast, lunch is washed down with a 12 ounce glass of water, and I'll usually get another glass after I'm done.

Sometimes after lunch my wife and I will go for a walk to get some exercise in, or I'll ride the stationary bike we bought a few months ago. I used to ride the bike more often, but it scares the hell out of George, which keeps me from doing it, as silly as that sounds. In any even, a walk or bike ride will be followed by another glass of water.

That brings us to dinner, which could be any number of things. It's almost always a combination of a protein, carb source, and vegetable. So it could be chicken or fish, or very, very rarely beef, with rice, pasta, mac'n'cheese, or sometimes fries, and there's usually kale or spinach, and more infrequently string beans or broccoli; usually it'll total anywhere between 40 to 60 grams of carbs, which will bring my daily total up to the 100 to 150 range, still well below the 180 max amount I'm allowed in a day. With dinner, I'll take another Metformin and an Atorvastatin. Dinner will also be accompanied by a can of soda... sugar free, of course. And dinner will be followed by dessert. Yes, I'm still allowed dessert! I usually have a good 30 to 50 grams of carbs allowed at that point, so there's absolutely nothing wrong with grabbing a pair of cookies, a few spoonfuls of ice cream, or a pack of peanut butter cups, as long as it's controlled. It's all about portion size, not taking in more carbs than my body can process, especially in one sitting.

Finally, an hour or two before bed, with the carbs I have left I'll grab a protein bar and another glass of water (for a total daily water intake of at least 60 ounces, sometimes 72 or even 84), a Lisinopril pill, and a protein bar. The protein bar is to make sure I have a few slow-processing carbs in my system close to bedtime to prevent hypoglycemia overnight, which could theoretically happen because of all the meds.

So there you have it, that's the regimen I've been following more or less since March. It's how I've gotten my diabetes under incredible control and how I've lost all the weight I have. It really all comes down to carb counting, portion control, and keeping things balanced. And of course, just like any diet, letting yourself cheat sometimes to keep yourself from falling off the wagon hard. That's why there's some Skittles waiting for me on Halloween!

31 Days of Halloween: Week 3 Recap

Time to recap the third week of the Halloween horror marathon my wife and I have been doing, so let's dive right in!

This week's update starts off with Day 17, where we watched the "classic" horror flick Leprechaun, starring a pre-Friends, pre-nose job Jennifer Aniston. I've always thought this while series was ludicrous but fun in some spots, including this one. Marisa thought this was silly and predictable, but fun for what it is.

For Day 18 the plan was to binge Helstrom, the new Marvel horror show on Hulu. We made it through two episodes before I couldn't take anymore and had to stop. Not because it was scaring me or anything, but because it was just so fucking dull. Marisa was enjoying it though and thinks it's more interesting than I do, so we'll finish it off at some point. It was basically cancelled before it ever aired so there will only ever be these ten episodes and I've watched every other Marvel show, regardless of quality, so why stop now. 

Day 19 brought us to I've of the big guns, A Nightmare on Elm Street. It's of course I've of my favorite classic horror movies. I was hoping this would be one of the ones that Marisa would actually enjoy, while also hoping it would scare her at least a bit. This one freaked Marisa out, so mission accomplished!

We went back to the Blumhouse on Amazon Prime for Day 20 and watched the third of their four new movies, Evil Eye. Much like the first two we watched, this wasn't scary, but I liked it best of the three so far, it had a more interesting plot, better acting, and actually wasn't boring. I think this is the first of this anthology that I liked more than my wife did; she liked that it focused on another culture and was interested in that aspect but that's about it.

I made an unscheduled change on Day 21. We were going to watch Rebecca, a new release on Netflix, but it's apparently not a horror at all and is also getting terrible reviews, so I subbed in the last of the alternates I had waiting, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, which I had never seen before. This was easily one of the best movies we've watched so far, and one of the creepiest. Great acting, great plot, fun effects, and a suitably chilling ending. Marisa found this one informative and educational, which I'm not sure was the point, but she liked that it was basically House with a demon corpse instead of a patient.

Day 22 was a movie called Malevolent, which was a pretty dull disappointment, honestly. I think I fell asleep at one point. The ending was pretty twisted, which was fun, but other than that it was a dud. This is another one Marisa liked more than me and liked the twist, which she did not see coming.

Lastly, Day 23 was the 2011 remake of Fright Night. I threw this on the list not because it's scary but because it's fun and I knew my wife would love the cast, especially David Tennant. As expected, she loved this one.

I'm not sure enough fear is being generated here so far, honestly. Hopefully this last run of movies will change that; we're starting off the final week with remakes of both The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, ending up in Halloween day with The Exorcist. Yeah, there should be some scares coming up!

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.