Weeknotes 295

That was August then.

Monday was a bank holiday. Glorious.

The pendulum swung to the other extreme and I spent the four-day week working from home like a pampered sultan. It was luxurious but I can feel the cabin fever encroaching at the edges of my mind so I’m looking forward to the cognitive reset of seeing my officemates in person next week.

Without the routine of my commute I only made it to the gym on Wednesday and Friday. Then the thought of writing that sentence made me feel disappointed enough that I went this morning too, bringing me up to the standard three visits. The system works.

It was raining and properly dark as I trudged to the gym on Friday morning. Summer’s almost over. I’m enjoying the cooler air if not the receding daylight.

I’ve more or less lost the 15kg I was aiming for, which feels pretty good. From now on I’ll just be trying to hold steady and prevent any backsliding.

Last week depleted my reserves so much that, gym and groceries aside, I effectively didn’t leave the flat this week. Yesterday I took the train to the coast to visit my parents which counts as going outside so that’s fine.

Spending time at home made it easy to bake some bread to take as a gift. Therapeutic.

I got glasses for reading almost two years ago but haven’t worn them much cos I can read fine without them and so it never occurs to me.

This week I tried wearing them when using my iPad or MacBook on my lap and it’s noticeably more relaxing for my eyes at that distance so I think I’d benefit from forming the habit.

I watched Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning which should’ve been a fun romp but got crushed by its own self-importance and overblown sense of occasion.

It’s drowned in bombastic music all the way through and every scene’s spoiled by a desperate need to be portentous, sentimental and packed with exposition. Mission: Impossible is best when it’s silly fun but this one’s surprisingly small and dull.

It really didn’t help that the copy I bought had subtitles available in Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, American Spanish, European Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese but not English, so every time the soundtrack started parping extra-loud it became even harder to follow the already nonsensical dialogue.

Good news: because of the missing subtitles, I requested and received a refund of my £13.99. Bad news: nobody can give me those 170 minutes back.

I also saw Dangerous Animals and it came as a relief. It’s a tight, tense 90 minutes with a great central performance by Jai Courtney. It overstretches its premise one (or two?) too many times but overall it’s an entertaining watch.

I think I’ve given up on Alien: Earth because after the first two naff episodes I just can’t face any more of it. Someone let me know if it gets better.

I Am An AI Hater is well-written and makes an essential point (“I celebrate my humanity”) which’ll be missed by the people who most need to hear it because they’ll have stopped reading after the first paragraph. Oh well; what can you do? Love is for the ones who love the work.