Muddling Through

Sometimes life isn’t about clear cut victories or significant progress, but simply about wandering through the vagaries that swirl about you. The patience of Job isn’t an example for just for the disasters of life – it applies to slow times where nothing seems to go completely right too. For me, it is the little things that get under my skin, not crisis level events. Those I can handle.

So it has been the drawn out recovery from the infection, not the severe illness endured while at its peak that has made me a grouch. Actually, my being irritable is usually a sign I’m feeling better, so maybe I shouldn’t whine about my whining. Hmm, exponential whining, what a concept.

Positive things have happened along the way. None of them have been dramatic, but most good things are small anyway. I should list them to smack myself in the face with them:

• Being able to get out and socialize with friends Saturday night even if running late.
• Getting to church the last three Sunday’s despite the pain.
• The Holy Ghost playing the role of teacher and giving me some very interesting insights this weekend.
• Having movies to watch when I was unable to read even light material last week.
• Learning more about my grandparents’ lives through Mamie’s diaries. Our society has lost so much since then that it is tragic.
• Finally sorting, cleaning up, and backing up years worth of files, music, and images on my PC. I can’t believe I forgot to back up all the music purchased from Amazon and Google Play last year!
• The new monitor is finally calibrated and showing me flaws in photos I never saw before. Is that a positive? Depends on what I do with them, I suppose.
• Finally getting The Dark Knight Rises review written after a month of working on it. Writing while sick is not efficient, but it did get done. Eventually.
• B-Movies. Still one of the best ways to deal with being too sick to do anything productive.
• Curry.

I won’t list the bad stuff. Instead some random observations follow.

Brave getting Best Animated Film at the Oscars was surprising to see in the headlines. I only just saw it and unlike the vast majority of Pixar fans think it was their best film. Marketing didn’t do it justice at all and it was the most Miyazaki like of the studio’s offerings. The relationships in the family and the focus on mother/daughter conflicts were something that could easily come out of Studio Ghibli. Must be hate of gingers clouding people’s minds?

2001 on Blu-ray is phenomenal. I’d purchased it over a year ago and forgot I had it, so I popped it in the Samsung player last night. All of my younger friends find it incredibly boring, but it was riveting as always for me. The visual and audio quality is beautiful to say the least. 45 years after being released, it still has better effects than most blockbusters today and hoo boy does it look great in HD.

Speaking of looking great in HD, Viz’s release of the first half of Tiger and Bunny is amazing. The English dub on the first episode was fairly good; can’t comment on later ones since I watched them in Japanese. Between the second set of this and My Neighbor Totoro plus Howl’s Moving Castle coming out on Blu-ray in May, that month is going to hurt my wallet.

Gorgo is coming out the middle of March on BD too, so I am in a quandary about replacing the DVD I only got in the past six months. While a preorder is tempting, if the color shift and over sharpening is still there it won’t be worth it even if it is higher def.

Time to get back to image sorting and working on the next review.