Made two now GOT wallies, this time of Brienne Of Tarth 😀
Categories Blog Memes & Asks Personal
The Friday Five for 25 June 2021: Summer things
Picture from Pixabay
Answers to today’s questions at thefridayfive @ Dreamwith.
1) What’s your favorite dish to bring to a summer cookout?
I/we love fresh strawberries and real whipped cream, so I bake something and fill/decorate with strawberries and real whipped cream, or don’t bake at all and just bring them as-is, that’s delicious too! I might also bring chicked fillets for grilling.
2) How much time have you spent outdoors this week?
I’ve only been outside when I’ve run errands and needed to wait for the bus, or did quick runs outside like taking out the trash. I’ve no idea how much that amounts to… propably 30 mins or so. It’s been a too hot for me.
3) Where do you set your thermostat?
Is that to do with adjustable inbuilt air conditioning? That’s not a thing in Finnish homes. Most homes don’t have adjustable air conditioning. If we have air conditioning it’s later added as needed and usually movable – a fan (xx euros), portable air condition device (XXX euros), or in the last 10 years, a heat pump that’s mounter on the wall with another piece outside (XXXX euros, can cool in the summer and also warm in the winter but these aren’t allowed in all apartment buildings, or are allowed with such strict limitations that it isn’t cost efficient). With hot summers getting to the norm, looks like, I can only hope that adjustable air conditioning will slowly become the default in building new homes going forward.
In the winter, I try to set the domestic radiator so that it’s about 20-21 degrees Celsius inside.
4) How did you learn to swim?
My Mom and Dad… I’ve known how to swim as far back as I can remember, and I’ve always loved swimming. We used to go swimming every week, and camping every summer where the camp had it’s own beach by the sea, just a minute or two walk away. We did all this right since I was born – long before school, and I was a really good swimmer by the time school started. I used to love going swimming with my class because I didn’t have to partake in the lessons after the inital test (I was too advanced for them) and could just swim as I liked, it was like an extra fun time to me! And I was allowed to the adult pool where I normally swam long before most of my classmates. There were one or two good swimmers in addition to me, so it wasn’t common to know how to swim well at that age in my school, or class at least.
5) How do you avoid overheating?
By staying our of the sun! I hate being in sun and the brightness is also too much for my migraine, so indoors it is. I try to avoid using the oven, at least during the day but even so, it’s gets hot inside.
To avoid overheating myself indoors – I point my fan where I am (usually my couch, and my bed at night), and I drink a lot of water/mineral water/juice mixture with salt, sugar and baking soda added in…. I got that recipe from the hospital because I have chronic diarrhea (joys of Crohn’s Disease) and so have to watch out for dehydration even in the winter but most especially in hot weather. I also drench towels in ice cold water and wipe my arms and legs down because it feels so good for several minutes. I can take a shower in lukewarm water but don’t really dry off and instead stay naked and preferably in front of my fan until I’m mostly dry because that feels lovely as well! And of course I also eat a lot of ice cream, ice scream/milk shakes and mehujää… dictionary says ice lolly? ice pop? It’s juice that’s frozen in sticks.
But I mostly just endure summer and wait for the autumn.
Categories Celebrities Gillian Anderson TV & Movies
Hannibal TV Series
Finally managed the make it through all three seasons of Hannibal. I’ve been intending to watch this since it aired, for the story and especially because Gillian Anderson has a re-curring role. This was my third or fourth try; the other times I never got much past season 1 for some reason – partially because it was always hard to find, partially and this happened again this time, I had some trouble staying interested through the season 2 and 3. I think it’s well-written and beautifully filmed, very stylized, but in seasons 2 and 3 I felt like fast forwarding quite often, and this was because each episode had many, many, many lingering filmings of various things like blood drops falling, rain spattering, a drink being poured etc. etc. It started to feel like the episodes would be half shorter had those thing been used less. I also started to lose my suspension of disbelief when it came to some injuries certain characters kept amassing – it started to feel not believable that they could survive all of them. But I liked the ending! I feel like both Will’s and Hannibal’s story came to a finish that felt believable given what had gone over the three seasons. I can see them both dying, or one, or both, surviving the sea, given what was shown with Bedelia after the end credits. I can see it going either way, and I’m okay with all three options.
I did some caps of Gillian Anderson; she looked great as Bedelia and her performance was very measured. I’ll probably do a wallpaper or two at some point 🙂 I thought all the actors were great.
Seasons 2 and 3 gave me grief while I was watching – I don’t know whether my copy was weird, or whether it was truly filmed like that but those two seasons were so bloody dark, lighting wise. Season 1 was beautiful, but I could hardly see who the people on screen were in seasons 2 and 3. I had to increase the contrast in MPC-BE a lot to get it look like normal. The Gillian screencaps came out also very, very dark! Sadly I didn’t make any caps of season 1 as I was trying to resist that particular desire so I can’t compare them.
Health Update + Hot Weather + Jeri Ryan Site
God I miss winter! Hence the picture. It’s from Pixabay.
Heat wave
Heat wave is not much of a wave anymore – something that comes and goes like in summers of the past. More and more they just come and stay 😕 Summer’s barely started and we’ve already had 21 heat wave days this year 😐 Today’s going to be the hottest day so far in my city, 31 Celcius. It’s not yet 10am, I’ve already had the fan on for hour and I’m already so done with today, it’s already much too hot… how the hell am I going to make it through the day? I’m on the very edge of a migraine attack and my head feels nasty, and there’s noise outside in the distance and sometimes closer that sounds like maybe the grass cutters will come around. Hopefully not today, those drivable machines make a horrible noise and my head really, really can’t take it today, and I’d have to close my back door and windows to make the noise bearable which would make my apartment feel like that there is no air because it’s so hot inside.
Health
In the Finnish Crohn’s Disease Facebook group there are people there whose symptoms worsen a lot during hot weather. I haven’t noticed this myself before, but the last few weeks it’s been a tiny bit worse. But my symptoms vary enough, come and go, that I can’t be sure. Just that this latest while of a little bit more active symptoms happened simultanously with the hot weather.
I haven’t slept in about three weeks now. Part of is the hot weather no doubt, but mostly I think it’s my iron levels… namely the lack of them. All I get is about 30 mins of sort of maybe kind of lousy sleep, that doesn’t feel like I slept at all, totalling about 2-3 hours. Mostly I think it’s because my ferritin is still much too low, close to zero, and the last time I slept this badly, the ferritin was about the same as it is now. I slept much better when it got over 30, but when it was 43 the doctor said I can stop taking iron every day and to only take it during my period. I’ve read that IBD patients should have ferritin the minimum of 100, but the doctors here don’t seem to know/believe that. 43 is the highest mine’s ever been, and that lasted only about year – as soon as I stopped taking it every day, it came down to 9 (and CRP was 14 so it propably was/is closer to zero actually) within the year.
Now I’ve taking iron again since November, but it’s got up only to 21 which is what it was for a decade at least and that’s when I had so many bad sleeping problems. Not to mention terrible tiredness. Tiredness has never gone away, but sleeping was so much better for a while when the ferritin was around 40. I hate that the doctors ignore ferritin so much here, they don’t really know about it or believe that ferritin actually does anything, and that ferriting being 15 for women of childbearing age is totally okay! (Their own Doctor’s Handbook states that ferritin under 30 is empty and needs to be fixed but somehow that doesn’t count) But that it’s bad if men have it so low because their ferritin is apparently supposed to be like 150 or more 😯 Iron infusions are almost impossible to get unless you go to like one of the about five doctors in the entire country (who have private practices) that understand about ferritin and do infusions if oral iron supplements don’t help, or you can’t take them. If you pay out of pocket for everything, of course. Even IBD patients who aren’t supposed to take iron orally by the Doctor’s Handbook are told to take it orally and if they can’t, well too bad! Never mind your quality of life, and never mind if literally the only things you can do is go to work and sleep, because you’re so tired all the fucking time. Only extreme cases iron infusions are used in treating IBD patients. I bet if men had systemic problem with low ferritin it’d be taken seriously in the public health service and by doctors in general 😐
Jeri Ryan Site
This past week Claudia, the owner of I Heart Jeri Ryan donated her content to my Jeri site, because she closed I Heart Jeri Ryan down due a personal loss. She has some things that I don’t and it’d have been such a shame to lose them. So I’ve been uploading her things (and will continue to do so in the coming days, as I go through Claudia’s things), and I’m happy to see my Jeri gallery now even more complete 😀
Categories 4K/UHD Blog Game Of Thrones
Game Of Thrones Gallery
I’m stunned and delighted by how many views my Game Of Thrones gallery has gotten so far! Over half a million views in only 6,5 months! I’ve owned sites that never reached even close that, even in a decade! I thought the miserable season 8 had killed the fandom and people’s interest in the show and along with it the desire for screencaps and almost didn’t bother to put them up, but seems like I was very wrong and I couldn’t be more happy knowing that my screencaps fill a need 😀