Cerebrate Good Times

The other night I woke up around 1:30 with chest pain. I was mostly annoyed that it was keeping me from sleeping, and eventually I got up to take some ibuprofen. I kept tossing and turning, however, and a couple hours later when James woke up and came in I decided I better take it more seriously. I ended up going to the emergency room, which (as Brian Regan pointed out) is a nice, relaxing drive. Someone else was checking in right in front of me with chest pain, so I guess it's all the rage right now. I went back to the triage room and they got me hooked up to an EKG machine right away. It was normal. They took some blood to check for the marker the heart releases when it's distressed. That was normal. They took a chest X-ray, which was also normal. They repeated the EKG and blood tests a couple hours later, and they were normal again. After talking with me for a while, the doctor decided to have me get a CT scan to eliminate a problem with the aorta. That came back clean as ...

I normally eschew this kind of post because they don't seem very original, but it's been on my mind and it's my blog and I'll review a movie if I want to. First, check out the trailer  for Anna and the Apocalypse   here . You guys, it's a British Christmas zombie high school musical. Of course I had to see this. I was waiting for it for months. Now, I've mentioned before  more that once that musicals  aren't really my thing. And, oddly, this is a combination of things I'm not that excited about. Musicals, specifically of the Glee or High School Musical variety, are very much not meant for me. And I'm pretty done with zombie stuff. And while some Christmas movies are awesome I've never particularly gravitated toward them as a whole. So I don't know why, but I wanted to see this because the combination of genres was so weird. And it was fantastic. The music was really catchy, it made me actually care about the characters, and it was ...

People are stupid. Everyone knows that. But here's the thing. We're all people. We all try to deny it and think we're the exception, but we all do dumb things. How many times have you criticized a driver for something that you did five minutes earlier? "Well, yeah. But I was in a hurry ! It's totally different!" "You don't know that we had two different Roosevelts as president? Your so stupid! What's that? It's 'you're'? Whatever." I know I've talked about this before, but it's good to periodically remind myself that we all have holes in our knowledge that would seem silly to others. So we should try to give others the benefit of the doubt.

This was a really strange one. Katie had been out running some errands or something and met this kid in his 20s who asked her out on a date. She had decided to accept, and told me about it. I was really upset about it, of course. But I didn't try to stop her because 1) I decided it was a mid-life crisis thing and would boost her self-esteem, and 2) I knew she would realize I'm way better for her than anyone else could ever be. So this kid shows up to my house (which was some really weird building in the dream). He had long hair. And he was in pretty good shape but was 6 inches shorter than me. There were a couple other people there I can't quite identify, but it seems like they were friends of ours. So he was introducing himself, and asked me if I was Katie's brother. I said, "No, I'm her HUSBAND." He was kind of taken aback by that, so I guess she hadn't mentioned being married. But they went out anyway. He picked her up in some fancy car/plane hybr...

l like movies. In fact, I like most of the movies that I see. Some people could say I’m not discriminating enough, and that’s fair. I think that I like to see the good in things, because enjoying things is more fun to me than just looking for flaws for the sake of doing it. Here are a couple examples. Star Wars I have always loved the original Star Wars trilogy. The prequels aren’t very good, although the story itself is pretty interesting and there are a few cool moments. When it comes to the latest trilogy, I really like them. In fact, The Last Jedi is one of my favorites, despite how controversial it is. It’s very different from other Star Wars movies, particularly Luke’s story. Star Trek If you watch the original series, or The Next Generation, Star Trek is about peace and the evolution of mankind. If you watch the current movies, or Star Trek Discovery, it’s very different. It’s become far more action-oriented, and most people would probably say it’s not being true to t...

I got an Instant Pot for Christmas from Katie, which was great. I've heard a lot about how versatile and great these appliances are, and I was really looking forward to trying it out. I mean, you can cook a tender roast in less than an hour, cook easy-to-peel hard-boiled eggs, and supposedly make a million other one-pot meals. So I unboxed it immediately and started looking at the instructions. With all the controls and settings it seemed a little intimidating, so I wasn't sure what to expect. The first thing I saw was four pages of safety warnings. Okay, that's a little weird. But I guess it cooks things under high pressure, so it's good to be safe. Then after giving it a wash, the first thing I was supposed to do is put some water in it and let it get up to pressure. Okay, it's a good idea to make sure it works properly. So I put water in, and carefully followed the instructions to boil some water. And it worked. But I quickly realized that this pot is anyth...