Author: intothisshadow

The Friday Five for 10 March 2023 – The Oscars
Categories Fansite news

The Friday Five for 10 March 2023 – The Oscars

Answers to today’s questions at [community profile] thefridayfive 

1. Do you plan to watch the Oscars broadcast this Sunday?

Nope. The broadcast is on in the middle of the night in my time zone and I don’t care enough/too sickly to stay up literally until the morning. (Unless I have insomnia that night – then I may watch if I remember it’s on.) I’ll watch some clips later on if anything interesting happens!

2. Have you seen many of this year’s Oscar-nominated films?

I haven’t seen any of them. Everything Everywhere All at Once is on my list of things-to-watch-sooner-rather-than-later because Michelle Yeoh and the genre but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

3. Which movie is your pick for Best Picture?

I’ve no idea! The only one I know something about is Everything Everywhere All at Once, and can probably sort of guess about Top Gun: Maverick (if it’s anything like the original and a typical Tom Cruise fare) and Avatar: The Way of Water (again, if it’s anything like the original). The others I’ve only heard the name of but don’t know anything about them.

4. What are some of your other picks to win Oscars?

I hope Brendan Fraser wins Best Actor because he’s been really great in all the recent roles I’ve seen him in. And either Michelle Yeoh or Cate Blanchett Best Actress just because those two are wonderful actresses I’m quite familiar with who always turn in an amazing performance.

5. What is your favorite movie of all time?

The first thing that pops into my head whenever this question is asked is The Last Of The Mohicans, followed immediately by The Piano. Although I really don’t have just one favorite movie of all time – more like a favorite movie in a genre.

Star Trek: Discovery Ends After 5 Seasons & Star Trek: Picard 3.03 Seventeen Seconds
Categories Star Trek TV & Movies

Star Trek: Discovery Ends After 5 Seasons & Star Trek: Picard 3.03 Seventeen Seconds

Star Trek: Discovery

Star Trek DSC has been cancelled. It will end after the upcoming season 5, which will air sometime in 2024.

I’m… not sad, exactly, but maybe wistful? More in the sense of that there’ll be one less (live-action) Trek in the air, than missing these particular characters and stories. But maybe there’ll be a new (live-action) Trek series coming up! I will miss seeing Sonequa Martin-Green on my TV regularly but she was in TWD and then in DSC and I’m sure she’ll head another tv series soon. I’ll keep my fingers crossed it’ll also be something in the scifi/fantasy genre because that’s my favorite!

I think the characters have been in a pretty good place the last few seasons (because the show obviously isn’t going to address in any real way all the horrible trauma the crew as a whole and the characters as individual have suffered what with war, jumping 1000 years into the future and losing all their loved ones/everything they know, dealing with universe ending threats several times in about a span of five years at the most I’d guess). There are finished character & plot arcs and assuming season 5 follows the style of the last few seasons, with a self-contained season long arc, I think it’ll be in a pretty good place to end things. At least I don’t feel that anything is left open and dangling as the show stands right now and I assume season will be more of the same in that regard. Let’s hope there’ll be no earth shattering cliffhangers in the final episode in the desperate hope to get the cancellation cancelled but that they end it well.

Also five seasons is nothing to scoff at! A lot of series never get past one, so DSC did something right even though not everyone loves it. I myself will always be glad it exists because it certainly gave us Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and probably Star Trek: Picard too 😀

Spoilers for Star Trek: Picard 3.03 Seventeen Seconds behind the cut! Continue reading Star Trek: Discovery Ends After 5 Seasons & Star Trek: Picard 3.03 Seventeen Seconds

Health Update – February 2023
Categories Blog Health Personal

Health Update – February 2023

Good news and bad news!

– had my yearly routine control for Crohn’s Disease in the hospital last week

– my calpro (faecal calprotectin) is somewhat elevated, so looks like I have inflammation in the bowel. But my symptoms have been stable for a couple of years now (better than ever before). No change in medication is deemed warranted right now, but it’s coming up on 3 years since my last coloscopy. So a new coloscopy is scheduled for September/October. Not yay, but needs must.

– iron levels are bad again. They’re giving me another iron infusion, a bigger dose this time, on next Monday. I got the first one last March, in May the ferritin was 80 and now it was low again, only 23. I can’t take iron tablets anymore; I’ve been taking them practically 20 years for about 10 months every year, and my ferritin kept lowering. The iron tablets as well as the liquid version also started to cause worse diarrhea. It took a few years of me pushing and talking about the low ferritin and my symptoms but finally last year and now, I didn’t even have to ask for a iron infusion – it was offered to me! This is good!

– learned that much more research has been done in the recent years in much more IBD patients because IBD is becoming so common, and that the danger of colon cancer in Crohn’s Disease patients isn’t as high as previously thought. Only two times more likely than in a healthy individual of same age. And actually the chances of doctors catching it quickly are much better because of the regular colonoscopies people with Crohn’s Disease have to go through. He said that the chances of me dying from colon cancer is practically zero because everything suspicious seen in a colonoscopy is biopsied and removed so cancer won’t have a chance to develop and spread. The doctor said that if I die from colon cancer, it’ll be because they the doctors and the hospital have royally fucked up. So that was new information!

– in bad news, my right inner thigh started to hurt on Sunday :/ It’s been “feeling” for about a year, but not actually hurting until now. The bad thing is that the pain is exactly like my Mom described her pain before she underwent the hip replacement surgery a few years ago. Good thing is, there’s a chance that it’s Crohn’s Disease related – apparently, often the big joints in the lower extremities can start to hurt when there’s active inflammation which I have right now. I had a bad bout of Crohn’s symptoms on Monday, the day after the thigh started to hurt. Anyway, if it is related to Crohn’s, it’s my understanding that there’s no physical damage on the joint? And that proper medication for the Crohn’s Disease can make it go away. Or that it might just go away on its own – I think I saw somewhere that it might go away in six weeks if it’s Crohn’s related?

But. I’m obese. And being obese is a risk factor for actual hip arthritis. Age is as well, but I’m only turning 49 this year and it’s my understanding that’s quite young? I also have Diabetes and autoimmune disease which are both risk factors so who knows why. I haven’t yet contacted health care about this – I want to get the iron infusion done first, which is on Monday. I also want to see if it hurts all the time, and what activities make it worse and if any make it better. Because they are going to ask about that anyway. But my inner front right thigh has been hurting all the time since Sunday, most of the time I can walk normally but more or less in pain. Sometimes after sleeping, I limp a little for a bit because the pain is so bad. Ibuprofen helps, but doesn’t remove the pain completely. Only time it doesn’t hurt is when I’m sitting on my couch, and in some positions on the bed after a while. I’ve started to do the exercises I found online for hip arthritis.

This is again just what has been happening the last 14 years – whenever things settle down, or even have gotten better, some fucking new health problem crops up. My body is really just rotting away, isn’t it? If this thigh thing turns out to be not related to Crohn’s Disease and is permanent – I just might throw a tantrum like a two year old….

Also, got my 5th COVID-19 vaccine last week – the bivalent one! 😀 

The Friday Five for 24 February 2023: “You’ve Got Mail!” Edition
Categories Blog Memes & Asks Personal

The Friday Five for 24 February 2023: “You’ve Got Mail!” Edition

Today’s questions at thefridayfive@DW

1. What’s the last thing you got in the mail?

The letter on Monday from the hospital detailing the time for the iron infusion next week, and the approximate date I need to go get routine Crohn’s Disease blood work done in May.

I don’t get much mail anymore – most bills and official letters come via electronic mail or electronic bills. I rarely subscribe to magazines because I usually can’t afford it/rather use the money for something else. I used to often subscribe/get a gift subscription to a certain computer magazine but its contents were “redesigned” and “renewed” right into stuff that didn’t interest me (game reviews, camera usage tutorials etc.). So once that magazine was unexisting as far as I’m concerned, I usually only get bills and official letters and occupational and union magazines and most of those have gone mostly or all online now.

In addition, I have a “no ads and no free distribution leaflets/magazines” label on my mailbox to stop junk mail. So I can go an entire week with only “wow! such-empty” for my mailbox 😀

2. What’s the last thing you sent in the mail?

I can’t remember! I used to have to send unemployment and social benefits application forms monthly but that was more than a decade ago; now I almost never have to send anything in the mail anymore – everything’s done online. The last time I sent anything in the mail was probably five years or more ago.

3. How many unread emails are in your inbox right now?

I have four e-mails in active use. My real name e-mail which I use for all real life official things (online orders, library, bank, social benefits etc.) currently has 4 unread e-mails. My fandom one has technically 1 unread e-mail but it’s one I sent myself from the mobile Tumblr app – a link to a Tumblr post with links to Sansan fanfics so I can check them out on my laptop – so, in reality there’s 0 unread e-mails on that account. And my webmaster e-mail and Oded Fehr fanfic archive e-mail both have 0 undread.

I usually clear my inboxes as the e-mails come in, or within a an hour or two. Except when I’m sleeping, and even after that, it’s usually quick work.

4. What is your most recent text message about?

The library sent an automated text that one of the books I had put on hold is ready to be picked up.

5. Do you have a favorite postage stamp design?

Nope. I don’t even know what the current ones are. I don’t buy stamps anymore because I never need them. On the extremely rare occasion I do, the letter or package is always too heavy for regular stamps so that I have to go to the post office to get the correct weight and postage amount needed and they print the postage stamp so it’s been a boring computer printout for ages now for me.

I have seen some Star Trek stamps around, and I like those, but I’m not sure whether they are/were real or just fannish mockups.