Tag: binge watching

Conveying Stress

by mkingdon, posted in house move, Walt Disney World

I am undertaking some rest and recuperation this weekend. For the past few weeks, every weekend has been a whirl of packing and sorting stuff out, but I have decided, no, have been forced, to not do that this week, as to be frank, I’m bloody knackered.

No doubt that is a build-up of month’s of angst and stress but last week especially was a busy one. My own job was particularly hectic, but I was also trying my hand at some DIY conveyancing.

Here is a representation of last week, with me being portrayed by somebody with hair and a normal BMI.

As our solicitor, and as I discovered, our seller’s too, seemed disinclined to have a go at the stuff they are qualified in and paid well for, things were taken into my own hands. I can’t recount the full set of events, but it started with a strongly worded email to all concerned parties on Monday (nobody answers their phone or calls back) and it ended with myself and the seller, via their estate agent, directly discussing what was outstanding and the best way forward.

In a nutshell, there are about six outstanding queries on our purchase, mostly relating to the quirky and often changed nature of the house and all its conversions and extensions over the years. The solicitors involved were playing a never-ending game of email tennis, which when I finally wrestled a copy of the email chain from my solicitor, seemed to contain lots of referring each other to other emails dated blah, blah, blah and not a great deal of effort to actually get any of the issues addressed.

So I took it upon myself to reach out to the seller and ask him to try to get his solicitor to do something….anything…..much as I was trying to do with mine. Via their estate agent, an email exchange happened, and rightly or wrongly I shared with him the outstanding issues and asked if he could help get this sale done so he can pocket all of our money.

To his credit, he quickly agreed to cover any outstanding bits of paperwork that could not be provided with an indemnity policy, much as we have done to our buyer for works done to our house that we have no paperwork for and gave his solicitor a kick up the arse. Last I heard late on Thursday was that he had approved the draft policy provided to him and told them to get on with it. I am led to believe that this is now with our solicitor but of course, any form of proactive update from them is clearly not in the package I am paying for, and I shall have to wait until my third email chaser next week to get a half-formed update. There was no point in trying to get any such update on Friday as she has long since made it clear that Fridays are a day when she has more important stuff to do.

So I do not know if this covers all outstanding queries but it will sort the majority. The coming few days may see my solicitor do something other than ignoring my calls and emails.

I think the stress and frustration of all that hit me on Saturday morning when my body untensed after such a busy week, both in the job for which I get paid and the one I am doing despite paying someone else to do, so I woke feeling like rubbish. I declared the weekend a write off and that I wouldn’t be doing anything of any note.

Indeed, the day’s only achievements were eating three-quarters of a pack of Rich Tea and having two poos. A red-letter day indeed. The evening, as nearly all of them are now, was spent binge-watching something. Our current set of things on the go are –

Servant (on Apple TV)

The entire Marvel film back catalogue on Disney + (to be fair we only started that journey last week by watching Captain America, so I don’t know how committed we are to that).

Wandavision

Celebrity Game Face

The latter is our newest form of vegetation and is a new discovery tucked away on the channel E. We seldom watch this channel as it normally features too many Kardashians or reality shows about WWE wrestlers that we don’t know. However, we stumbled upon Kevin Hart’s Celebrity Game Face. It’s silly, pointless and at times hilarious and just what you need when you’ve been trying to move house for six months and still don’t have a clue when it might happen. Give it a go if you want to turn your brain off and have a chuckle.

Of course, Rebecca and Tom’s move did not happen last week as they were promised. Their seller had the nerve to find himself in hospital, which rendered him unable to sign things and so their date has been put back to next Friday. It’s almost as if moving house is an absolute horror show that you should never, ever do.

Someone commented last week that I didn’t even mention our holiday. It’s a sign of how full my mind is of houses, solicitor inertia and other such bollocks and I know the entire UK Disney community uses this blog as some sort of bell-wether or canary in the coal mine for their entire planning strategy, so here’s my current take.

My current forecast of the chances of us being in WDW in June is slim to none. I can’t back that up with any firm stats or evidence and as such I have been invited to take up a position in cabinet, but it’s just a feeling. Now, I know that my overall mood right now is one of stress and frustration, so I may not be in the best place to make that judgement, but it just feels too soon….again.

Being so tired and emotional I also feel that even if borders are open, the thought of wearing masks, especially for Freddie, also appears to be dragging me down a bit. Not that we will ever be back to the normal we thought we had pre-Covid, but I think it will be Summer 2022 before things like social distancing and masks have a chance of being removed by the risk-averse Disney parks.

As I said, I’m tired and emotional. For that reason, I am properly missing our holidays right now. The juxtaposition of seeing my trio of vloggers in the WDW parks whilst we have to stay in our houses wrapped in cling film isn’t helping.

Who knows. By the spring, international travel may be allowed with a vaccine or a negative test and we may be able to make the best of the experience despite the masks and at least get some sun, good food and a change of scenery in mid-June. If we can’t, then I guess the next obvious set of dates would be our usual very late August time of year, but I have to say, sacking it all off and waiting for 2022 is also a very real consideration. There are only so many times you can book one holiday.

So there you go. A post where you can almost see my tiredness and stress hanging off every word. Luckily, everything that is contributing to that will continue at a pace for a while so buckle yourselves in for the next few weeks. How frequently I will update you on the poo count is, at this stage, unknown.

Till the next time……

Binge Baby Binge

by mkingdon, posted in mkingdon

Let’s get my sanctimonious, unqualified preaching out of the way first.

As this lockdown continues it’s going to get really hard to keep to the rules. The weather will improve, the boredom will increase and the temptation to soften the adherence will be huge. I don’t want to bring any unwanted negativity to your Sunday, but all I will say is that based on the very few snippets Louise has shared about what is going on in hospital right now, please gird your loins, embrace the tedium and stay at home. It’s hard to see a tangible benefit of doing so, as we’ll never know who didn’t die because you did the right thing, so just do it and believe that will happen.

It’s easy to become numb to the numbers you hear on the news when at other times any event which killed hundreds in a day would be seen quite rightly as a catastrophe. Again, not wanting to darken anyone’s mood, those numbers will, in reality, be higher than those reported, as deaths in care homes (as an example) aren’t being included in those figures. Sorry, just stay at home.

We are fairly big bingers in normal times, and that has increased as other options have been removed so let me try to help with some suggestions of stuff to watch. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, so you may be aware, but here we go –

We have just finished series 3 of Ozark. That is excellent and has got better with each series so do try that. It stars and is directed by Jason Bateman, and on that subject, Arrested Development is a cracker too.

We are long time Breaking Bad superfans, so we are of course currently watching Better Call Saul, an excellent spin-off and one with a different style and pace to most other Netflix stuff.

Other things that you may have missed from the recent past include The Umbrella Academy, Daybreak, Goliath (Amazon Prime), Inside Number 9 and Schitt’s Creek. However, if you have got to today and still haven’t watched what was probably the first “binge-worthy” series, Breaking Bad, then now is that time. We have never experienced anything that demanded you watched the next episode at the expense of sleep and real-life happening like this did. It is perfect lockdown viewing.

If you really want to mop up some time, then you could treat yourself to The West Wing.

That one isn’t on Netflix but is on Amazon Prime, and I think you need to pay for it. A cheaper solution would be to just buy the box set off Amazon or eBay. You will find a second-hand box set for not very much money. Just wipe it down when it arrives. You will fall in love with Martin Sheen and wish that you were watching reality rather than fiction. It oozes class, quality and superb acting.

For something along similar lines, but less serious, The Thick Of It is glorious and Malcolm Tucker will become your new hero. That one has some spectacular language in it, so that’s one for when the kids are in bed.

We have followed the herd and started to watch Tiger King. It is gloriously weird and almost unbelievable but entertaining nonetheless. It reminds me in a way of Making A Murderer, which is another Netflix series to get into.

I have now watched all three of the available Imagineering Story on Disney+ and cannot recommend that enough. The Mandalorian is on our list to watch when a viewing slot crops up in our busy schedule.

There will be others I have forgotten, but I will offer those up in the weeks to come as they return to my memory. You might need them. Of course, if you have some suggestions, leave them in the comments for the benefit of others too. It can be a virtual library of stuff to occupy ourselves with.

Don’t worry that all this watching will affect my athletic frame. I am also finding time to do some rowing (we have a machine, not a lake) and I walk the dogs every day too so my six-pack is safe. We also played a game of virtual bingo last night on Zoom with friends and family.

I hate bingo, driven by the years I sat through it when Louise was a club singer and more recently on the odd occasion that Mustard do one of those clubs, but it was lovely to see some familiar faces again and it passed a couple of hours.

Emily is missing her boyfriend a lot which is understandable, and despite regular video contact, to say we are missing Rebecca, Tom and Freddie is an understatement. It’s very hard not to have them here on a regular basis and watch Freddie continue to grow, develop and more importantly make us smile as he always does.

I have trimmed my own hair this week. Not an onerous task as you might imagine, but still, the fear of running those clippers over my head was real, but thankfully, nothing disastrous happened and my reverse Mohican remains in fine fettle.

Another highlight of the week was trying to unblock one of Louise’s Mum’s outside drains. Getting elbow deep in unpleasant stuff passed another hour. It wasn’t successful so I assume there is a dead body, hopefully, animal, or some huge stone so far down the pipe that it cannot be reached and it will need proper attention when possible. It comes to something when DIY tasks are seen as a decent way to spend some time.

I hope you are all well and continue to be so. The best way to increase those odds is, yep, stay at home.

Till the next time…….