Weekly Update: Streaming Edition

I stopped using streaming services for a few months as I was studying for a certification exam, but as I now have more time in the evenings I’ve been back to watching stuff on my iPad. Here are a few things that I’ve watched over the last month or so.

“Shrinking” (Apple TV) – I bought a new iPad in December and so I got three free months of Apple TV. After I finished watching the fifth season of “Slow Horses” (excellent as usual), I watched the three seasons of “Shrinking”. It’s a wonderful show that manages to be both upbeat and constantly make you cry. The actors, the writing, the concept are all fantastic, and Harrison Ford (like Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses”) steal every scene he’s in. You tend to generally dislike the characters when they first appear on screen, and they gradually earn your respect and compassion, which is refreshing. My last experience with therapy was not good, and all three of the therapists in this show are deeply flawed, if very well meaning. It speaks to the quality of the writing and the acting that despite this I would be happy to have either one of them as my therapist.
“Murderbot” (Apple TV) – I love Matha Wells’s Murderbot Diaries series of books that this is based on, so I was apprehensive about this series. After watching the first season I can say that it’s a good series, although it isn’t as good as “All Systems Red”, the novella that it is based on. The novella was adapted for the format, and while the result works and it’s a good sci-fi series, the TV murderbot lacks the humour and heart of the book one. I recommend watching it, and I recommend even more reading the books.
“Lilo & Stitch” and “Lilo & Stitch Live Action” (Disney+) – I didn’t watch the original animated film when it came out and until now I haven’t taken the time to watch it. I wish that I had – it’s an unexpected gem, a lovely story about family, love, being unique and belonging. I generally don’t watch live action adaptations of Disney animated features, but this one was highly recommended and it is very good. The story was changed to update it and fit the format and to update it for the times, and the result is delightful. I highly recommend both.
“Elio” (Disney+) – this Pixar film isn’t one of their classics, but it’s still a cute sci-fi story, with charming humour, and whimsical world-building. It lacks the depth or punch of “Up”, “Inside Out”, “Wall-E” and other Pixar classics, but it’s still a fun way to pass an evening.
“Elemental” (Disney+) – this Pixar film is supposed to be a rom-com but ends up being a preachy and lackluster story about first and second generation immigrants. “Turning Red” dealt with the immigrant story much better than “Elemental” – it was funnier, more interesting, and more relatable. The world-building in “Elemental” is patchy as is the animation (it moves from weirdly hyper realistic backgrounds to almost 2D characters), and I didn’t feel that there was chemistry between the two main characters. The world has some charming moments, but doesn’t hold a candle to that of “Inside Out”, “Monsters Inc” or “Wall-E”, and the humour isn’t really there. It ends up being a mediocre movie, and there are too many good things to watch to justify spending any time with this film.
“Scrubs” (Disney+) – the team is back after years for a new season, and it’s an absolute delight. I like the new interns, and I love how they accounted for the growth and age of the original cast – and yet how at their core they remain the same. The series manages to deal with the many shortcomings of the American health system without becoming preachy, and it still keeps a balance between humour and heart.
“Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” (Paramount Plus) – before this series aired I thought that only Star Wars had “anti-diversity bro” reviewers, but boy was I wrong. The pilot is important story-wise but is far from perfect, but the rest of the series has the Star Trek heart and vibe that are missing from “Star Trek: Discovery” and “Star Trek: Picard”. The mean reviewers seem to forget that Star Trek was always both “woke” and campy, and this series is both (it features a pacifist gay Klingon, which apparently is a bridge too far for the dudes). While I don’t like Captain Ake (I find her mannerisms more annoying than charming) the rest of the cast is wonderful and the cadets grow and evolve significantly throughout the series. This series features the best Klingon episode to date, as well as lovely homage to my favourite Star Trek series, “Deep Space Nine”. I recommend this series, despite the pilot and Captain Ake and her weird mannerisms, as it has a lot of heart, a lot of humour and a lot of good stories and good characters.

Apart from that I managed to get four short runs in this week (my runs are now laps around the bomb shelter) and I went to my favourite cafe and sketched my favourite barista at work:

Watercolours and fineliner on Pith sketchbook

Here’s the sketch before I added watercolours:

Faber Castell 0.3 fineliner on Pith sketchbook

And I’m back to building Lego, as it really helps reduce stress (at least for me). My brother bought me this set for my birthday last year and I haven’t had the chance to build it yet. It took me about two hours:

There’s a nice hidden Star Wars scene at the top of the “T”. Can you guess what it is?

Hoping that the downed airman is safely recovered and this war ends.

Living Through Difficult Times and Inktober Day 25

I had a phone call with an old friend today, and he asked me what I do to stay sane these days. I told him that I’m back to my chemo routine:

Wake up in the morning, take care of my cats and my plants.
Do some form of physical activity: run, gym, Nike Training Club workout, walk, something. This is non-negotiable since without it I get very depressed very quickly.
Work as best as I can.
Have a conversation with at least one friend. Messaging and emails don’t count — phone calls, zoom calls, face to face only. Yes, it makes a difference. I hate making phone calls too — it’s still worth it.
Talk to my family as much as possible.
Cuddle my cats. They’re very cuddly, and it helps. The little one in particular is velcro.
Journal, at least two times a day (morning and evening). These days I go for a midday session too. Write what’s going on and what I’m feeling to process it.
Read. It’s always been a comfort to me, and while most people can’t read during treatments and many can’t bring themselves to read anything but the news now, I’ve always found comfort in books.
Build Lego every night. It’s the best meditation ever. You can’t feel scared while building Lego. Your mind can’t race while building Lego. There’s only the Lego. And in the end you have something cool in your hands that you’ve built.

It worked then, and so far it works now.

Weekly Update: Dungeon World and Urban Sketchers

It’s been a busy past two weeks.

I ran my first tabletop roleplaying convention game for a group of strangers and it went great. It was an evening convention for “oldies” – players over 30 years old – run entirely by volunteers, and the vibe was wonderful. There was tea and biscuits, as befitting people our age, and about 8 tables running games in two rounds. I ran a Dungeon World game on the first round to three delightful and creative people, and we all had a great time. The game itself ran for three hours, including an half-hour general intro and intro to the system. It took me something like six hours to write the adventure from scratch, create the pre-made characters and write an intro to the system and to the game. I also did a test run of the game before the convention, and it helped me tweak the game and make it much better.
I got to experience a great story and have a really fun time with a group of funny and nice people, and I got to get someone who hasn’t played since he was a teenager back into the hobby. I will probably be running another convention game in the future, maybe even later this year.

Game table setup just before we started.

I’ve also launched the first D&D campaign I’ve written in years. It’s set in a new campaign setting that I’ve created (also something I have done in well over a decade) and it’s the most complex kind of campaign with the most players that I have ever run. Set in a university like setting that is functioning at the brink of an all out war, the students are called to fill in for the ever dwindling university staff while still trying to study for their degrees. The game is set in short adventures running two or three sessions, with a changing cast of characters, and is built for busy people who can’t commit for a years long campaign. Some of the play is done via a telegram group, and there’s a growing campaign site in obsidian portal, which works to keep the play alive from session to session. The logistics of it is monstrous, but so far people appear to be having fun and I’m enjoying myself, so all is well in the world.

I’ve finished January having read four books (two Agatha Christies, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” by Aubrey Gordon, and “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” by Winifred Watson). I’ll be posting reviews of the latter two books later on this week probably. Meanwhile, I’ve started reading the deliciously delightful “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles after having eyed it for a long time. I’ve decided to read all of the 20-something e-books that I have languishing in my Kindle instead of going for this year’s Tournament of Books.

I went on my first Urban Sketchers sketchwalk in a good long while, and while my hands aren’t what they used to be and I took time to warm up as I hadn’t drawn for a while, I still got a few good sketches out of the three hours we had, and I enjoyed myself. You can read more about it here.

It’s finally decided to winter here, so I’ve been forced to run on a treadmill and I’ve gotten back to doing NTC training sessions. NTC have added whiteboard workouts, which are a challenge (to say the least), and treadmill running is still heinous, but at least I get to do some speedwork (also heinous) while I’m doing it, thus killing two birds with the proverbial stone.

There have been a lot of good Lego deals here lately, so I really need to start building some of the sets that I have before I’ll drown in boxes (and then think about what to do with them once I’ve finished building them, of course). There’s something meditative about building Legos. I started to get back to them once I was in my month in and out of hospital waiting for my cancer diagnosis to be finalized, and the Legos today aren’t those that I had as a child. They are much more sophisticated, interesting, and creative than those that we had as children, and I can lose myself in a set just like I can lose myself in a good book.

As for the fountain pen countdown, I’m down to 28 inked pens now, likely down to 27 by the end of today.

Quick sketch of a friend’s dog with a Parker 51 on Hahnemule Cappuccino paper.

Have a great week!

Journal Sketch: Lego, The Expanse and Rockets

The Lego set came out well:

Weekly Update: Ink Washes, Health Scare and Finding My Stride

It’s been a while since I posted an update, and there’s been fewer posts than usual during the last two months. This is mostly because I started a new job in June, and it’s been longer hours and more work than I anticipated at first. I am enjoying myself, but the change means I have less free time, and that I need to prioritise things differently to better fit the things that I care about into my life. Was moving from a cushy and undemanding job to an interesting and fun but much more demanding one a mistake? Time will tell, but so far I’m not regretting the switch.

As I’m starting to find my footing, I’ve been able to find more time for my hobbies. During the early days of my new job the only thing I did was work, exercise, sleep and eat. Then reading came back into my life, and journalling and sketching followed. Meanwhile the Sketching Now Watercolour course is over and I only had time for the first week, but thankfully the materials are all available online so I’ll be able to complete it all eventually.

What’s left my life almost entirely so far is watching TV, and I doubt that it will regularly return. In terms of media consumption, I read and listen to podcasts and that’s about it. I will watch specific things on Disney Plus or watch Adam Savage make things on YouTube, but even that isn’t something that I do often these days. It’s not a value judgement on TV – it’s just that I have less time now, and of the things I could easily get rid of, this was one of them.

Lego Orchid set (it’s gorgeous). I find building these sets very relaxing, and as you can see in the background, I have quite a few more to build…

Another thing that went out the window is social media. I’ve stopped checking Twitter and Facebook regularly. The only thing left is Instagram, which I still spend too much time on for my liking, and as Facebook starts messing with it I may likely leave as well.

Health

I had a bit of a health scare in late June. It was 6 months after my last chemo treatment, and I had some blood work done for a check up with my hemato-oncologist. One of the results was extremely low, and it was for a test that people rarely get and I certainly have never gotten before, so I had no baseline to compare it to. What little information I found online indicated that I either was going through kidney failure/had a kidney tumor or had a rare form of blood cancer (beyond the blood cancer that I already had). Two sleepless nights later my hemato-oncologist (bless her), told me that everything was OK. The rest of my blood work was good, and this test was meaningless for people in my condition. She never asked for it, and I don’t know what possessed my GP to ask for it. In any case, I am now officially well enough to go on the regular post treatment checkup schedule, which means once every three months. Yay!!!

I’m running five times a week now, four 5ks a week and I’ve now started to work in a long run in the hopes to get back to running 10k. It’s tough running in this heat and humidity, especially with my lungs not being 100%, but I’m pushing through and enjoying myself. Running is my meditation, and has remained that way even though I now also meditate as part of ACT.

I’m also going twice a week to lift weights in the gym, nowadays with a mask on to avoid COVID. I’ve been vaccinated four times, but am now working from home again and staying masked as I can’t afford to get sick with the state of my lungs. Practically nobody is wearing masks anymore, and almost everyone around me is sick, so it’s been frustrating to try and stay healthy under these conditions. I’m hoping that the Omicron variant vaccine will be available here in a month or so, and I’m keeping an eye on the numbers to know when I can go back to the office and see people face to face again.

Reading

I’ve finished Hillary Mantel’s “The Mirror and the Light”, the third and final book in her trilogy about Thomas Cromwell. I’ll write a more lengthy review of it on Goodreads, but I will say that I got tired of the book at around the 60% mark (it’s about 900 pages long), and it didn’t really recover from that point on. I can see why Mantel struggled with this one, and I don’t regret reading it, but it’s not as good as the previous two books, and it could have done with some robust (and perhaps ruthless) editing.

I’ve also finished Ali Smith’s “Companion Piece”, which is a companion piece to her seasonal quartet of novels (Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer) and is excellent. You don’t need to read the quartet to enjoy this book, and “Companion Piece” would also be a good introduction to Smith’s writing. It’s written in stream of consciousness style, although it’s fairly easy to understand (nothing as complex as Joyce), and there’s a joy in her writing, compassion, insight and humour that make reading her always an enjoyable and worthy pastime.

As these were a bit challenging to read, I had an Agatha Christie “palate cleanser” in the shape of two novels: “The Man in the Brown Suit” and “Crooked House”. “The Man in the Brown Suit” is a detective/adventure story that was originally light hearted, but today just doesn’t work. There’s too much racism and sexism to bear, especially if you know anything at all about the history of South Africa, diamond mines, and labour relations in Africa. “Crooked House” was one of Christie’s favourite novels, and it’s a fun and interesting book with many original characters (and yes, also spots of racism).

Pens, Pencils and Notebooks

I’ve been playing around a lot with ink washes lately, as I’ve written here. They’re a fun and quick way to add colour to a sketch, and having a limited palette makes me appreciate colour values more.

Quick sketch of squash plants gone wild in a local garden.

I’ve written almost all of my fountain pens dry, with the exception of a Franklin Christoph 45L Sage with a S.I.G fine nib (filled with Bungobox June Bride Something Blue ink) and a Platinum Plaisir filled with the blue cartridge it came with. The other fountain pens I have inked (two Lamy’s and two Sailor Fude pens) are used for sketching and not writing. I’ll likely fill up a few pens next week.

From left to right: Platinum Plaisir, Franklin Christoph 45L Sage, Sailor Fude pen, Lamy Lx Rose Gold, Lamy Safari white and red, Sailor Fude pen.

The BigIDesign Dual Side Click pen arrived from the kickstarted that I backed, and it’s fantastic. I hope to have a review up next week, but so far I’ve really enjoyed using it, and I think that it’s their best pen yet (which is saying something).

I’ve decided to start switching around the pencils that I use, instead of writing one down to a nub. I’ve been using a vintage Eberhard Faber Mongol pencil this week, and a Musgrave Tennessee Red one. They’re both #2 or HB pencils, but the Tennessee Red one is much softer and darker.

I’ve changed the way I use my notebooks, streamlining certain things, consolidating notebooks on the one hand, and starting a new notebook (MD A5 blank paper notebook) for insights and ideas that I would have previously explored on social media and now prefer to explore in private, on paper. I’m no longer chasing likes for these things, as I’m more interested in giving the thoughts in my head time and space to grow and change, and Twitter and Facebook are the last places to allow for that.

All the Rest

I’m back to decluttering my house, a project that I had started working on before I got sick and until now didn’t have energy to get back to. Yesterday I found a stash of half used notebooks that I forgot that I ever had, and it was bizarre to go over them and read what my pre-Covid, pre-cancer self thought about life in 2014-2015.

Lego Architecture Trafalgar Square

I created this page as part of Liz Steel‘s excellent Sketchbook Design course. I remember drawing it while listening to a live Q&A with the Mischief Theatre improvisors on Instagram. I got back to building Legos after more than 20 years because I saw how much joy Adam Savage took in building Legos and I decided that I wanted some of that childhood joy back too.

I discovered that legos have become much more sophisticated these days, especially the Ideas and Architecture sets, and that building Legos puts me into a zen like mood that beats anything I’ve been able to achieve with meditation so far. My mind becomes calm and focused on the step that I’m on and I can utterly forget about my problems for a few hours. If I didn’t have budget and space limitations I would be knee-deep in the giant Millennium Falcon set as we speak.

Today I discovered that a local Lego guru is collecting money to buy sets for kids that are going to spend Passover in the Oncology departments of various local children’s hospitals. For years he’s been purchasing sets for kids, teenagers and young adults that are hospitalized for long periods of time, at first entirely from his own pocket, and now with the help of donations as well.

If you can, treat yourself and someone you care for to something like a Lego set, or a nice pen, or a cool notebook or just a half hour of listening to them talk about whatever they want to. I think we could all use a little kindness pick me up right now.

Writing at Large

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