Underrated Movies: Hook

I felt compelled to write about this after watching Peter Pan and Wendy, which is a movie that came out on Disney+ recently. The comments/reviews on it seemed positive so I gave it a go on a boring Saturday morning. I mean, sure, it was a good movie, but it wasn't innovative. Peter Pan has been done 100 times and the story is pretty old at this point. There wasn't anything new or different about this one. However, some of the lines reminded me greatly of the movie Hook. And maybe that was because they were taken from the book; I don't know, because I have never read it. But it had me reminiscing about that movie and how great it was.

Hook was amazingly underrated in my opinion. Has it aged well? I'd say so; as a lot of Steven Spielberg movies tend to do (ie: Jurassic Park) thanks to extravagant and well built sets. The music, done up by the one and only John Williams, will never get old to me. There could not have been a better Hook than Dustin Hoffman - I compare all others to him. 

And Robin.

I thought briefly that it would be great to be able to remake this movie with more modern stuff, but Robin Williams can never be replaced. I grew up on Robin Williams movies, and his kind will never be found again. He was truly a one of a kind, amazing man, and perfect for the role of a child who never wanted to grow up.

The premise of this movie was very unique. About a man named Peter Banning, who is a grumpy, stuffy lawyer with no sense of humor or fun in his life. His two children get kidnapped, and it turns out it was Captain Hook who stole his kids and took them to Neverland in order to lure Peter back to his childhood home, where he had completely forgotten that he was actually Peter Pan. With the help of the Lost Boys, he begins to remember his past and how to fly and fight so that he can save his children from Hook. A fresh take on a childhood classic for sure.

The movie is not perfect. I do say that anytime Tinkerbell is portrayed as a jealous bitch who wants to kill Wendy is completely idiotic, (and I did appreciate that Peter Pan and Wendy did not go this route), and luckily Hook didn't go crazy here, but this Tinkerbell (played by Julia Roberts, whom I think was badly cast for this role) was completely strange and took away from the movie. Her love for Peter was kind of creepy to be honest.

The movie had a lot of slow parts. Hook trying to convince Peter's kids that he was a better father than Peter and trying to teach them how to be good pirates was kind of a stretch but interesting if not a tad boring. Jack switching sides was fun, and him teaching Hook and crew how to play baseball was really entertaining to watch.

One can never forget the scene where it finally clicks for Peter how to feel young at heart again, and is able to insult Rufio like only an unscripted Robin Williams can.

There are a few good lines, including one scene between Hook and Smee:

“- Smee: I've just had an apostrophe.
- Captain Hook: I think you mean an epiphany.
- Smee: Lightning has just struck my brain.
- Captain Hook: Well, that must hurt.”

But overall, I think this movie is very enjoyable and unique enough to keep you engaged. There are only so many movies in my life that I watch multiple times, and Hook is one of the rare few. If you've never seen it I would highly recommend it. Sometimes it's difficult to get into movies meant for children, but if you don't mind it, it's a good watch for sure.

Raising Awareness of PVCs... again?

If you are unfamiliar of my original blog post, it's here, and it kind of explains what a PVC is.

This is more of an update post because I had gone to the ER back on 4/13 for frequent PVCs. This was a little bit different than last time. It started on Wednesday evening 4/12, in which I began having PVC "events". In the world of PVCs this is not abnormal, but I was fairly concerned. What would happen is when my heart began an event and I would put my fingers on my neck to track my pulse, it would go something like this:

Beat/pulse

Beat/pulse

Beat/_____

Repeat about 5 times. The heart would reset itself, but then 10-15 minutes later, another event would happen. This went on throughout the night which became concerning to me.

The PVCs I was having back when I wrote my original blog post were more disturbing because my heart would go: beat/____, beat/____, a few times in a row, which feels a lot more like a panic attack or a heart attack and was a horrible feeling. If this kind of PVC lasts more than a few seconds, it can become V-tac, or Ventricular Tachycardia which requires a call to 911. Luckily, V-tach/V-Fib are two shockable (with paddles) types of heart attacks.

Source: https://avive.life/blog/shockable-vs-non-shockable-heart-rhythms/ 

Side note: if you are familiar with medical dramas, you have probably seen doctors try to use paddles on a non-beating heart. Defibrillators are named exactly for what they do - when your heart is in a fibrillated state, they send a shock to correct the error in the rhythm. You can not do this when your heart is in PEA (pulseless Electrical Activity) and Asystole (aka, "flatline").

Anyway, so I had decided by morning to go to the urgent care to be evaluated because the events hadn't stopped. I figured they might be able to monitor my heart rhythm or send me home with a 24 holter monitor or something. I was first in at 8am but realized quickly that they could do nothing. They advised I go to the ER so they can properly monitor my heart.

I had no other worrying symptoms like chest pain, dizziness, or SOB, but I just wanted to make sure my heart was okay, so I went in. Luckily, it wasn't super busy and we only ended up waiting about 30 minutes. I even got a "room" with patients separated by a curtain. Certainly better than the hallway, I suppose.

They drew blood to make sure my electrolytes were ok (I was still unintentionally fasting at this point so that's cool), did an EKG which showed nothing because its only about a 6 second picture, and hooked me up to their heart monitoring machine.

The PVCs continued in the couple of hours I was there, and the funny thing is that when I was checking in I told them I was having what I "thought were PVCs" but not being an actual medical professional I didn't want to sound like a know-it-all, but when the doctor saw the monitor he was like, "You were right, you're having PVCs".

Anyway, they basically said that because my heart was still pumping blood effectively, there wasn't really anything to be concerned about or anything they were able to do while I was there. They just warned me about calling 911 if it turned into V-Fib or V-Tach, and they were going to hook me up to a fancy new wireless holter monitor called a Zio XT. I was apparently their guinea pig that day because this was the first time the ER was going to hookup a patient with it. It was all so new that the Epic system wasn't even fully integrated with it yet so it took them much longer to set me up and make sure it was working before releasing me.

Besides being a little itchy under the diode, it's fairly unobtrusive, and with no wires, a lot easier to manage. I wore it for 14 days and was even be able to shower with it on without a problem, which was pretty neat. I got my results back very quickly (The PVCs only lasted for a total of about 24 hours, so the rest of the 14 days was fairly normal), and turns out I was having PVCs and PACs, so that's cool /s.

I have no idea what happens now, I'm assuming nothing because it's not really something anyone can do. There's no point in putting me on a medication when my heart isn't constantly going nuts. I'll write and update if that changes.

It's Daisy Day

It's been a year since we decided to put our Daisy kitty down. I have to admit, sometimes I still feel guilty about making the call to euthanize her. I had watched so many youtube videos on "when is the right time?" or "Did I do this too soon?" trying to decide what to do and when.

They say it is one of the hardest decisions you will ever have to make. They aren't kidding when they say that. With cats, I can say it's even harder. Daisy had cancer. It started as a lump under her armpit that we excised without running a pathology on it. As the lump was growing, I knew it was bad news though because it was hard, red, and oozing in 3 different spots. Without running a pathology on it we couldn't be sure, but it certainly acted like cancer. When it grew back, we did an x-ray and that confirmed it had spread to her lungs.

The lungs are the absolute worst place for growths like this. So many bad things could go wrong so quickly without us being there or having time to help. She could end up SOB, or not breathing at all. I was scared. And cats are notorious for hiding their pain and discomfort. Neither one of us really knew how much pain she was in, and that was the hardest part.

We were already giving her gabapentin for her arthritic pain. She was throwing up nearly every day so we were giving her anti-nausea medication. She basically stopped eating, so we were giving her an appetite stimulant. She was still grooming. Still able to use her litter box. But when we looked at her and watched her, we knew things were bad and getting worse. The hospice vet had given her a ketamine shot, which felt like a miracle drug. It made Daisy do a complete 180. She was like a new cat. She was hungry, she was eating. It was amazing. But it only lasted a couple of weeks. It just seemed to show how much she was actually suffering.

The choice to (and when to) euthanize is a personal decision linked to each experience. We both knew she didn't have much time left, but we didn't know when the right time would be. I expressed my worst fear of both of us being gone at work when Daisy suddenly can't breathe and needs help, and we come home to find her gone and that she had suffered alone without her humans. Or maybe it happens when we're there, but we have to rush her to the emergency vet. Maybe they put her on a ventilator but basically tell us that we need to put her down, and now she's in a scary place and we're doing this so quickly without us being prepared. I couldn't live with either one of those scenarios. 

Of course it still felt wrong to make this decision at all. With dogs, a lot of the time you can see the light go out of their eyes. Maybe they become less active. Maybe they hoble or whimper. Maybe they won't play anymore. Dogs are so expressive. Cats feel like trying to decipher hieroglyphs. And Daisy was never my cat... I took care of her, but Patrick knew her for I think 10-12 of her 18 years. I was barely a blip for her lifespan.

I didn't want to wait until it was "too late". I watched videos of cats with kidney disease.... just wasting away. Losing weight, not eating, sleeping all day, no grooming or playing. I didn't want that for Daisy. We knew she was in pain, but she was a tough girl and it was hard to know how much. I still feel guilt about thinking it was too soon. It's been a year and I don't think that feeling will ever go away. There's always going to be that "what if we had waited?" Sometimes you have to remember quality over quantity. And were we waiting for her, or for us? That's the hardest question to answer. I didn't want to avoid putting her down because of our selfish want for her to be here longer. No matter how you faced it, it was hard to justify either decision.

In the end, we knew she had lived a long, fruitful life. We took care of her the best as we could. We gave her all the pets and all the love. We euthanized her in her home, with her humans and her favorite things. And the worry about her dying alone evaporated because she had gone the best way we knew how. All the suffering she had endured was over. All that is left is her ashes, her pictures, and our fond memories. And that will have to be enough.

It wasn't alcohol intolerance!

I don't know if you want to call me a hypochondriac, but at least I'm logical about it. I usually don't message my provider regarding symptoms I'm having unless I have a logical guess about what is going on. And yes, sudden alcohol intolerance didn't make any sense, but I wasn't sure what else it could be.

Turns out, it could be hypoglycemia. Now, I'm not diabetic, but I was taking Ozempic at the time for weight loss, and I was on 2mg (2ml? I don't know) of it, which is about double what a normal diabetic would take for their disease. During the last year or so, I had slowly been increasing my dose to reduce symptoms like diarrhea or gas or abdominal pain. So, drinking at the beginning, I either had no symptoms or very little (such as what I would dub the "wine headache") and that's when I had stopped drinking for several months because I didn't feel good after drinking while all the while, increasing my Ozempic dose.

So when I finally decided to partake around the holidays, I felt really crappy. I had read that Ozempic and alcohol together might lower my blood sugar, but I wasn't putting two and two together because the last time I'd drank it wasn't nearly this bad. But I was also taking a much lower dose at the time.

Turns out alcohol intolerance and hypoglycemia have a lot of the same symptoms, including shaking, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. 

I'm just angry that had I known it at the time, I could have had a spoonful of sugar and felt better! Ugh!

Now this song is stuck in my head. Goody.

I had figured this out because shortly after the holidays were over I had stopped taking my Ozempic; mainly because it wasn't doing much for me anymore, which is depressing in and of itself because I didn't think this was something my body could or would "get used to" like all the other medications I had tried. 

AND YET - obviously it was doing something because it was causing hypoglycemia when I drank. The F, yo. But I had tested the drinking waters after I'd stopping taking it and guess what - no more symptoms. I was perfectly fine.

My PCP probably hates me. Have you ever heard the idea that doctors make the worst patients? Like, at least doctors went to medical school. I didn't. I just have basic anatomy knowledge (and way too much GYN cancer knowledge), so I'm probably an even worse patient, as this misdiagnosis can attest to.

Raising Awareness of Alcohol Intolerance

At this point, my "Raising Awareness" series of blog posts is getting rather long. I'll post links to all the others at the bottom of this post.

Really, the only reason I'm writing this one is that the symptoms of alcohol intolerance can be the same as a person with a hangover (some differences I'll get into in a bit), so I think that there could be a number of people out there thinking they're just suffering from a hangover when it's actually an alcohol intolerance. 

Now, on the one hand, I know two people personally who have the kind of alcohol intolerance that comes up most when you google symptoms, which is basically a "red, flushed face", and potentially hives. That, to me, sounds like an allergic reaction and should really be classified under "alcohol allergy". They are not the same thing. An allergy is an immuno-reaction to a substance, while an "intolerance" is generally classified as a gastrointestinal reaction. It was the exact same thing with my avocado intolerance. I was getting stomach cramps, not anaphylaxis. 

There are also articles out there that tend to point out that alcohol intolerance is only genetic, which is obviously not the case. Sure, like lactose intolerance, Asians seem to get the worst of it by also genetically not having the enzymes to break down alcohol. It is definately possible to be born with it. But, like with my avocados, you can develop it over time.

The other symptoms of alcohol intolerance include headaches, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and diahrrea. Sounds a lot like a hangover, doesn't it? So the difference between the two is the amount of time it takes to develop symptoms. For someone with an intolerance, it could take less than an hour to begin to feel shitty, even when you only had a small amount of alcohol. My intolerance developed over the course of several months (because I did go many months without drinking any alcohol at all due to the fact that I didn't feel good). I would drink a glass of wine, get what's known as a "wine headache", and not even feel a buzz. That's the main difference between these two - I don't get drunk, I just get sick. 

But lately, it's gotten even more unpleasant. Now I check almost all the boxes.

People with alcohol intolerance can't process alcohol in the normal way. Generally, this is what happens when you drink alcohol:

"The enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) metabolizes the ethanol (that's the type of alcohol in alcohol) into toxic acetaldehyde. From there the liver enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) metabolizes acetaldehyde into acetate, a less toxic compound that breaks down into water and carbon dioxide."

So essentially, my liver is not making, or making enough of, ALDH because it's the toxic actaldehyde that is causing my body to feel sick. And that is certainly worrisome, as the word "toxic" is being thrown in.

I have a couple options to explore in pill or liquid form which might help my liver matabolize some of the alcohol if I wish to partake, but really the only cure is to no longer drink alcohol. Well, it only took 3+ years of not eating avocado before my body reset, so maybe I can do the same with alcohol. 

Oh boy. Wish me luck.

My Raising Awareness series:

Dyspaurunia

Gallstones

Blepharitis

PVCs

BAM

Fintech Banks

Define Fintech: Fintech refers to the integration of technology into offerings by financial services companies in order to improve their use and delivery to consumers.

I am all in in Fintech banks (aka neobanks), but they are just as bad as Uber, Grubhub and the like. If you follow financial news at all (which I don't, but I still hear about this stuff), apps like Uber, where they base their business on an app and then employ people to maintain it, bleed money out the wazoo. They stay afloat only by convincing investors to give them money, and then bleed it all away because the costs are too high to maintain. All apps are like this, and Fintech Bank apps seem to be no exception. 

I used to be a regular bank user, and even though I always maintained a good balance, never went overdraft etc, the fees they charge are nuts. If you go below a minimum balance; if you don't do direct deposit; if you overdraft etc etc. I actually left Wells Fargo in my early 20s after the scandal of their team members signing people up for accounts they never asked for in order for them to meet quotas. Plus, they were all up in the housing market crash. Banks are shady as shit.

But now I understand why. I found an online bank called Simple. It was revolutionary. It wasn't just a website that showed your balance and maybe the last few things you bought. It had features. Features I didn't even know I needed. Like Expenses and Goals. I could automate my paycheck and put $300 per paycheck into an Expense folder and my bills would come out of it instead of my spending money. I could send a % per paycheck into specific goals to save up for things. (Which, I use for just about everything. I save up all year to pay my car tabs, which can be like $400 for a new car). It gave me budgeting tools, which admittedly I never used, but it was cool that they were there. It would automatically catrogorize everything I bought, like Groceries or Gas, and then you could look them up to see how much you spent on each catagory, and set a limit if you wanted to. It also had immediate notifications; every time I bought something, within seconds I could get a notification of the transaction. It really came in handy once when I was sitting on my couch at home and got a notification that I had spent $20 at a gas station in West Virginia. Um, no?? And I was immediately able to pause/cancel my card in the app and get sent a new one. The amount of things it could do was crazy and I loved it. But not only that, fees were non-existant. They didn't charge overdraft, or low balance, or any of those things.

But then, the worst happened. Simple was bought about by BBVA.
They were shutting their doors and giving people a chance to either switch, or get integrated into BBVA. During this impending doom, you will find many articles that sprang up - if you google "what banks are like Simple?" because people wanted a good alternative since Simple was so cool. 

I decided to give BBVA a chance, since I wasn't sold on any of the alternatives that I read about. But it was a horrible transition. Not only did they have many issues with Simple customers, but they were just a traditional bank that had fees and no features. I jumped ship as soon as I could. I found a neobank called Douugh, and waited for almost a year for them to get an Android app before switching over. (Apparently there's a monthly fee now?! I had no idea; I am assuming grandfathered accounts like mine aren't being charged.)

But I am so done with them. I think they're gonna go under soon. They had features that they then took away (Like Peer2Peer instant transfers between Douugh users), features they promised to add a year ago and still haven't (like mobile deposit; anticipated December 2021) and are beginning to have issues with their app that are driving me nuts. My money is literally stuck; since I began using them I have never been able to connect with my other bank, BECU, to be able to transfer funds into it. I have never been able to use Zelle to pay Patrick, I even just signed up for Venmo but I get an error every time I try to send someone money. They still haven't added mobile deposit so if I ever get a check for something I have to deposit it into BECU, which is completely unnacceptable. If I didn't still have BECU I'd have no way to get that money into my account.

I finally decided enough was enough. Even though transfering banks is awful, I just had to find something else. But the problem was Fintech. Simple went under because they bled money, just like Douugh is bleeding money. Just like I read Varo is bleeding money. Chime had many complaints and attracted the attention of state regulators. As many as are available now, they're all pretty much in trouble. And I didn't want to sign up for another one just to have them go under like Simple did.

Click here to read the article on neobanks

I had to find something that not only had all the features I wanted, like Goals (or Jars, or Vaults, or Envelopes... every app calls them something different), but had maybe been around for a while and still had traditional bank features, such as credit cards, a line of credit, loans etc. Because then that is something else they can make money off of and not just interchange/transaction fees like traditional Fintechs.

Enter SoFi. You may have heard of them; they own a stadium in Los Angeles. They have a lot of traditional bank stuff, but the app is also feature rich. I'm really hoping I'm going to like this one because I'm getting tired of jumping ship and having to switch all my stuff around. I'll let you know how it goes!

MOVING!!!!

I didn't want to write this until after the deed was done. I moved on 11/10 from place that was nice but way too small for two people. I felt incredibly cramped after Patrick moved in, especially because his computer was set up at the dining room table when our place didn't even technically have a dining room (It was a part of the living room that I cut in half using chairs and hung a pendant light in order to make it into a seperate space). Nor did it have laundry in the unit, which I had gotten used to over the years but was still irritating when I had to wash more than just my weekly load.

[Side note: When the pandemic started, quarters became very scarce because people stopped using cash. Places where I could normally buy a roll of quarters for the laundry machines no longer had them, and my bank didn't have tellers (BECU) except for the branch all the way up in Tukwila. So every few months we would buy like $100 worth of quarters so we wouldn't have to make several trips. I had tried to cut a deal with the Landlord to buy back the quarters in the laundry machines when they went to empty them but no dice.]

The place I was at was old, but it was still decent. However, rent kept (and keeps) going up, and it quickly became more than the place was worth. I quickly became enamoured with this new place that had only been built 5-6 years ago. I thought it had been way too expensive but with Patrick's new job it was a real possibility to move to it. The issue was that they had a waiting list - 2-3 months. You would have to apply 3 months before you lease ended in hopes they would have a place come availible when you were due to move out. It was a real roll of the dice. When I applied, I guessed wrong on the lease end date. 9 months from our last sign was 11/30/22. I figured it would round to 12/1/22, but instead it rounded to 11/1, so I was a month off, and would probably end up paying months worth of $200 month-to-month fees on top of rent while waiting. I got really lucky though - I received a call from the landlord of the new place that said a unit had become available and no one ahead of me on the list could take it because their leases weren't up yet. Did we want it?

UM, HELL YES.

However, their move out was 10/31 and the unit would not be ready until 11/10. So I ended up having to pay a full month's rent at the old place, PLUS the $200 month-to-month fee (for 10 days!) and then all of their move in costs. I probably could have put a damn down payment on a house with as much as we shelled out this month. But now that we're officially moved in, it was so worth it. I still have some unpacking to do, but the majority of it is done.

I've never lived in a place this nice in my entire life. Two bed, two bath (I didn't really care to have another whole bathroom but they don't have 2-bed 1 bath units). It has quartz countertops with under-counter sinks. The doors aren't cheap and crappy like in most apartments. The laminate wood floors are great and even the carpet is very plush and soft. The washer and dryer are stackable but actually nice. I've never been in an apartment that doesn't just cheap out on all the appliances. I lived at one place that had the maintenance guy tasked with fixing all of the old appliances; I had the dryer break, the water heater bust, and the fridge die TWICE while I lived there. (They had the nerve to get angry with me when I called the "fire, flood or blood" maintenance line over the weekend for the busted fridge because all of the freezer food was spoiling and I tried to fit everything from the fridge into a chest cooler.) ANYWAY, I digress.

I've never been on the first floor before. It's so weird. I'm so used to the privacy and security of being on the top floor of apartment units. I'm a huge privacy nerd; it runs in the family. I grew up on 5 acres in the middle of nowhere where you didn't have to bother locking your car doors or leaving the windows open. Even when at the old place and I was on the top floor, where I was right on top of the main walkway through the complex so I added trelis fencing on the balcony to block people's view of my living room. Now I'm on the first floor facing the parking lot on the main walkway to the mailboxes and garbage. I'm glad neither one of us cares much about natural light because we will have the shades and curtains drawn 24/7 lol. We also have our own office for the computers, now!! Something I've always wanted.

This place really thought of everything. Not only do I now have a small workout room, a tanning bed (not as if I would use it but it's cool) and a pool, but they also have their own Amazon lockers with UPS/FedEx drop off, electric vehicle chargers, CenturyLink internet instead of Comcast (with a Fiber option and their own rep to call if you run into issues!) and a huge trash compactor. Yup, that's right, no regular dumpsters here. Even though it's only a mile from my previous place, it feels like a much safer community. My unit is in the middle section of all the units, so I'm not close to the main street or the freeway, and it's also fully gated. Hopefully I can feel safe cracking my window open at night to let in the cool air. 

I'll post another update with pics once our place is completely done and clean!