couple of flicks
I seem to have slipped into this frustrating mode at work where every day that comes along where it seems I might be able to work on catching up on long-backlogged tasks, I get buried under a deluge of emails regarding things that require my immediate attention. This is exacerbated slightly by Steven being out on vacation, so system questions for Health and Body Care are also coming to me. Those are actually but a small fraction though; this issue would be happening with just Grocery items even if he weren't on vacation.
It's driving me crazy! I mean, shit, I came back from Australia ten months ago with a backlog of emails that got immediately put on the back burner and ignored when work-from-home got mandated, shutdowns happened, and we spent the next couple of months scrambling to fill shelves either sold out because of panic buyers or because of economic fallout impacting production (or in some cases the very existence of vendor and product businesses). All that did was compound my email backlog exponentially, until 2020 became the Year of a New Approach: to retain my sanity and eliminate stress, I started focusing on whatever had the highest priority at any given time, and I did not worry about whatever was next on the priority list until that thing got done. This has resulted in a lot of stuff falling by the wayside, some things occasionally getting missed, but it was the only way to approach the job.
And, that's still where I am at, nearly a year later. I delete relatively large chunks of backlogged emails whenever I can that are either so old they are no longer relevant or they were never relevant (I'm on a lot of email alias recipient groups), but it hasn't cut down on the number of emails still in my inbox a great deal. I suppose given all the details I just shared, it's actually not half bad that I currently only have 91 unread emails in my inbox. There are still 851 emails total in there. I keep thinking I should try deleting at least slightly more of the backlogged emails than come in on any given day. But, I have received over fifty emails this morning alone, the majority of which did require my attention. I should be burning through my fat stack of receivers, goddammit!
Beyond that, what can I quickly say about my weekend? No socializing this time around, aside from a relatively brief FaceTime with Gabriel in the middle of Shobhit and me watching an episode of Bridgerton on Netflix. I had texted Gabriel and Lea on Friday asking if we were going to do our 2020 Movie Draft this weekend, and since no one ever got back to me, I didn't bother preparing. Gabriel said he was ready, but Lea was not. Evidently we just got missed communication; Gabriel never responds to texts and evidently has made that part of his brand, so he just assumed Lea would respond, and she did not. To be fair, I could have followed up again earlier yesterday and I never bothered. So, now we're tentatively planning for 7 p.m. next Saturday, although I'm holding out hope we can make it earlier. Gabriel's only concern was that they don't know for sure yet what the rest of their Saturday will look like.
So! I did watch and review two movies over the weekend: Derek DelGaudio's In & of Itself on Saturday, which was astounding (A-); and Sylvie's Love yesterday, which was perfectly nice (solid B). The latter has been available for a few weeks but I put it on my list after one of the podcasts I listen to discussed it.
To be sure, listening to the podcasts The Big Picture and, to a lesser but still vital extent, The Watch (which focuses more on TV but does touch on movies), has been a life saver in the COVID, no-open-movie-theaters era. It's mostly because of them that I know about streaming movie releases, particularly for ones that have had any theatrical release elsewhere in the country or is otherwise Oscar eligible. I wrote down several titles last week and already I have another three films planned between tonight and Friday to watch and review as well, maybe a fourth on Saturday. These all comprise of a pretty consistent mix of platforms, the next three being VOD for $6.99, Netflix, and HBO Max each. The Derek DelGaudio movie from last weekend was on Hulu and the movie I saw yesterday was Prime Video. They're all over the place, and as such I am very much glad I have all these subscriptions and find them to be well worth it, particularly while movie theaters are closed.
I can't say I did a whole lot else of note over the weekend. Friday evening I watched the latest episode of WandaVision (that one being on Disney+). I did some cooking. I did laundry on Friday. I vacuumed. I spent a fair amount of time looking at TikTok. I created some new B-52's playlists in iTunes. It was a pretty pleasant weekend, honestly.
[posted 12:35 pm]