Weeknotes 347

Real rain this week; not yet biblical, but sustained and serious, with dark clouds on the horizon.

No less busy, no less frustrated, making steady progress regardless. I’m not sleeping well and can feel the flames of burnout licking at my feet but I’m determined to keep them at bay by easing off and/or saying no as I need to. The bank holiday weekend’s come at a good time.

Three gyms. I’m enjoying Redemption Ark a lot more now that I’ve reached the eventful part of the story.

Last Sunday I returned to the warzone of Whitechapel Sainsbury’s for more ginger beer. The clickbait headline: cans are now 40p each with a Nectar card, absolutely smashing the previous record of 60p with a Clubcard in my local Tesco Express. The bad news is they’d sold out of the “extra fiery” kind so I had to settle for the normal sugar-free variety, which is still good but unfortunately doesn’t make me sneeze three times.

Flush with the success of last week’s bread revival, I got two more loaves into the fridge on Monday night, then woke up early on Tuesday to bake them and bring them into the office as gifts.

Then work work work work work work, then back on the trains early yesterday to visit my parents, then (ideally) fully inert at home today & tomorrow.

Succession: Honeymoon States and Kill List. Not laugh-out-loud funny given the tone, but very good all the same. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed the Frank & Karl relationship in these episodes — the utterly joyless “I’m kidding, of course” “No, sure, you’re… you’re speculating in a comic mode” “Yeah. In a humorous vein” is perfect.

I rewatched Misery for the first time in a few decades and still enjoyed it a lot. It’s a nice simple setup which leaves lots of room for entertaining subtlety in the way the two main performances develop together throughout the story. I have a high tolerance for gore but I was sufficiently harrowed by the sledgehammer scene as a child that it turns out I don’t really want to see it again as an adult. Everything else though: great.