Month: October 2018

3SMReviews: Boy

3SMR: Boy

Taika Waititi is a fabulous director of children* and his talent is on full display in Boy, the story of a Alamein, a boy living in New Zealand in 1984.  Alamein tells his friends a lot of stories about the adventures his father is having, and then must reckon with the reality of who his father is, once he appears. Boy contains 80s touchstones, abounds with the earnest/slacker New Zealand accent, includes really great fantasy sequences, and is a movie that is a  masterpiece of the wonder and fantasy of childhood, while also doesn’t spare childhood’s dark places.

Cost: free via the Multnomah County Library’s Kanopy service (first movie watched via that platform!)
Where watched: at home with Matt when we were both feeling under the weather.

*As seen in the delightful The Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Dishcloth: Strawberry

There’s a new knitted dishcloth book in town!

That’s right! We’ve left behind the crosstitch-pattern method of knitted dishcloths and have moved on to learning new “16 new stitches as you knit cheery dishcloths” which is the subtitle of the book.

This pattern happened to be knit 4 pearl 4, which is not very different from the pattern for the baby blankets I used to knit, before I discovered the receiving blanket.

Also, this book names their patterns after specific yarn recommendations. I’m following my own yarn path, so the names might not always match the completed project.

This was a nice start. I’m looking forward to more difficult stitches.

3SMReviews: Private Life

3SMR: Private Life

Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life is a sad and funny tale of a couple trying everything to become parents, specifically through fertility treatments. I cannot say enough about how good Kathryn Hahn is in this movie–she’s unrecognizable from the comedic roles I have loved her in, and incredibly real. Aside from being a movie worth watching, this sheds light on the high hopes sold by the fertility industry, something probably foreign to women who don’t want children, or who can easily conceive.

Cost: Netflix monthly subscription fee ($7.99)
Where watched: at home

3SMReviews: A Star is Born (2018)

Three sentence movie review of A Star is Born (2018) directed by Bradley Cooper with and written by Eric Roth and Bradley Cooper. Stars Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, and Sam Elliott.

I can finally exhale, because A Star is Born (2018) ignores the travesty that was the 1976 version and restores what made the 1937 and 1954 versions magical: a story of gentle love and nurturing talent through kindness and adoration. The plot has always focused on how a woman must transform herself to become famous, but for some reason seeing those transformations in the current day really annoyed me.* This movie is also a meditation on the power of performance and provides many examples of the magic of a live audience.**

Cost: $5.55
Where watched: Regal City Center Stadium 12

*What a man needs to be famous: a guitar and a microphone. What a woman needs to be famous: specific looks, particular hair color, ability to dance, the right clothing, etc. etc. etc.
**Despite what people say about the last song not quite being up to the emotional heft that is necessary Lady Gaga gives it her best and nails the final shot.

The 60/30 Rule Report 10/14

Hoo boy, it was a busy week. I had activities on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, plus things on both Saturday and Sunday. Plus, the movie A Star is Born  has been out for two weeks and I’ve still not seen it.

All that is to say, I did not make my goal. I’m okay with it, though. I could have cranked out two more hours, but I did not. I chose to rest. Because I need to rest as a part of this project.

I may or may not make up the time in future weeks.

As for work done, the five hours I did were pretty frustrating. Though I’ve been using WordPress for several years now, it’s a learning curve. Plus, I have a new theme and have to figure out how it works. I feel like I’m only 30% good at what I’m doing and that’s a pretty uncomfortable space to be in.

All of my work this week was on the Three Sentence Movie Review (3SMR) site. I’m going to get that up and running and then focus my attention on Female Financial Independence (FFI)

I did use GIMP (an open-source Photoshop-type program) to design a favicon. I’ve learned that “favicon” is the official name those squares that go in the browser tab, next to the name of the website. I used to call them “those square things that go in the browser tab” I also set up a Three Sentence Movie Review profile in Gravitar, which is the universal icon that comes with me whenever I comment on something.

I also made the pages AGAIN in 3SMR. And I have a lot of pages. I’ve now twice made the same mistake, but I’ve learned. The 50 Essential Things post I’ve been using to get the website up and running tells you to create pages. But then, when I download a template, it erases all the pages. For FFI, I’ll know to download the template and only after that run through the 50 essential things list.

For my second work session, I made categories, which right now are the same as the pages. The categories will help with sorting. My plan is to have a main blog page, but to set up the home page so people can quickly navigate to buckets. The link to Genre will then flip to a page with all my genre categories (Action, Adventure, Crime, Comedy, etc.) From there, a person can click on a genre, like Action,  which will take them to a page where all my action movie reviews will be listed. There will also be buckets for “Liked,” which is subdivided into Good and Recommended, Not My Cup of Tea, movies by women–subdivided into directors and writers–and of course, the CT Film Festival. I should probably have one for lists, too. Top Movies, fun lists I make, etc.

I also downloaded three icons from Flat Icon, and made buttons on the front page that connect people to the Genre page, the Women page and the CT Film Festival page.  Those pages exist right now, but they have nothing on them.

I also found this great resource (https://www.colorhexa.com/e86b24) for the color I randomly picked when I made my front page image. It shows other colors that work with that color and all their numbers.  Good old #e86b24. Such a lovely orange.

Next week, I’ll keep chipping away at the front page.

3SMR: Community Season One

3SMR: Community Season One

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Back when I discovered Gillian Jacobs, everyone always referenced her work on Community, which I had never heard of. Having now watched the first season, I can say that not only is her work delightful, so is everyone else’s in this hilarious community-college-set comedy. While I have to sit through the will-they-or-won’t-they between Jacobs and McHale, (which got old waaaay back in the Sam and Diane days) it’s worth it for the antics of Glover and Pudi.

Cost: free from the Multnomah County Library
Where watched: at home

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SKS Postcard: Birds are creepy

SKS does not like birds, or flying things in general. One of my top-five moments of uncontrollable laughter happened decades ago when she was telling me a story of defeating a moth, armed only with a canister vacuum cleaner and some cat food.

So this postcard was right up her ally. 

As you can see.

She’s also stepped up her game in the addressing of the mailed items lately. I wonder if the postal delivery people notice.

Postscript: we seem to be in an era of very dark photos. I wonder if my camera settings somehow got changed?

The 60/30 Rule Report 10/7

Week one went great! Because week one always goes great. I love starting things. It’s why I enjoy Mondays.

The start of this project also coincided with a work drought. No matter how hard I try to find an office work job that will keep me busy–or even just steady–for all 8 hours, I have not been successful.  In this job, sometimes projects push and then there is nothing to do.

After decades of being frustrated by this, I have rebranded that time as “paid blogging time.” This makes me feel much better.  And so four hours of my “after work” work was done at work this week.

I finished going through all of the steps in ESI Money’s “Five Steps to Creating a Winning 25K Blog” It’s a five-part series and was quite thorough. Having just completed a business plan for my copyediting business, this felt similar. Plus, I learned a bunch of website things I didn’t know, even after having this blog for more than 10 years.

I also worked through 50 Essential Setting after Installing WordPress for Three Sentence Movie Reviews. I did that with my copyediting website and found it helpful.

I did the exercises in the “Start your 25K blog” series for both websites, but now I will focus on Three Sentence Movie Reviews.  Next week I will download a theme and get going on getting it to look like I want. This tends to be challenging as I am only 20% WordPress confident. (Yes, even after all of these years.)