I didn’t accidentally skip a week; I just let the monthly update be the “tracking entry” for that week. So there you go. And that’s a great way to start a blog post, really. Even I’m looking at this and am incredibly intrigued at what is going to come next.

Honestly, this week was another that was light and felt scatterbrained in places, mostly due to the overwhelming nature of work as well as trying to get some things together for various house projects (i.e., having the majority of our pipes replaced due to their being 30 years old and made of material that is not up to code). It’s probably been the major source of stress even though the job is booked and the money is there and it’s just a matter of finishing it up. But half of my problem is that I do this thing where I ruminate on something until it is done, and the longer I have between the time it is planned and the time it is executed, the more likely I am to stress about it, ruminate on it, or even chicken out (you should see the amount of self-editing I do to any unit or lesson plan that is ambitious in any way … the end result gets so watered down, it’s ridiculous). It’s actually a problem that I want to ask my therapist about: people do stuff like this all the time, so why do I find it so taxing and difficult?

But again, that’s for my therapist and probably doesn’t need to air here. I will say that I have actually been writing more than “week in” and “updates” blog posts; they’re just in draft and haven’t been typed up because I’ve been finding myself really screen fatigued lately. Maybe all of the time spent in front of a computer each day is taking its toll on me or something because I get more and more distracted by the tabs on my browser and even have a tough time reading off of a screen. Which segues into …

Comic Books. I’m up to Annual #1 in the Star Trek series that began in 1989. So far, this is better than I expected because Peter David is trying to give us some sort of continuity that takes place post The Final Frontier. It’s also an ongoing storyline, which is better than I thought it would be. I think that the annual is a separate tale (they were for the most part, and DC annuals prior to crossover events tended to be hit or miss–more miss than hit, in fact), but I’ve slotted it in after issue #9, as issue #10 begins “The Trial of James T. Kirk.” But I will admit that I find myself skimming over quite a bit when I read because of it being on my Kindle. I’m tempted to put the blue light blocking function on so I can read better, but that would kind of muddy the artwork.

Honestly, I take this as a sign not that I prefer print to digital or anything like that; instead, it’s a sign that I’m just very tired in general.

Movies. Just one this time around: The Perfection, starring Allison Williams. It’s a pretty freaky horror movie that involves Williams as a cellist who spent some time in a mental institution after being forced to leave a prestigious music school, then reconnects with both her former teacher as well as the school’s latest prodigy. The horror come when she and this prodigy hook up and then … well, there’s a lot that happens in this movie that I can’t talk about without spoiling. It’s not a particularly great movie–it relies too much on moment designed to be shocking and too many twists. Granted, those twists do make you want to keep watching the movie, so there’s that. You’ve gotta love the grosser side of horror to like this. Skip.

Television. We have been working our way through Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Goldbergs and while we’re almost caught up on the latter, we’re only on season 3 of S.H.I.E.L.D. The Goldbergs is absolutely hilarious and a show I can’t believe I slept on for as long as I did. AoS is a much better show than I had thought it was going to be. No, it’s not the prestige Marvel television that we’ve seen on Disney+ lately, but it’s a callback to quality action-drama shows like Alias and intriguing as hell. Watch Both.

Podcasts. I binged all of season 5 of Tanis this week. I’ve been following the show since its first season and have found it fun to listen to the show after every season ends. Granted, season 5 ended months ago and there’s only tiny slivers of hints at season 6 on Twitter. In case you’re not familiar with it, Tanis is a show about a place that is partially mystical and partially extraterrestrial and one podcast host’s efforts to discover its secrets. Every season shows him getting deeper and deeper into its history and the conspiracies surrounding it. I’ve also finished my backlogs of episodes of The Quarter-Bin Podcast and The Overlooked Dark Knight, both of which are podcasting comfort foods that I’ve been neglecting way too much.

That’s it for this week. Hopefully, I can get some more stuff up this coming week and next.