NFL

The American football season started this weekend.  Well, strictly speaking, it began on Wednesday (!) night with the Seattle Seahawks beating the New England Patriots in a low-scoring affair, and a rematch of last year's Superbowl.  Cue the fireworks.  I used to really love watching American football.  I was a fan even before I first came to the US.  But nowadays, I don't care for it much at all.  It's a very difficult game to watch live, because of the constant commercial interruptions.  It's a game where the teams are owned by rich assholes who don't care about their players (although this is a common occurrence across sports, it feels particularly acute in American football).  And as with many other sports, an emphasis on changing the rules to make the game safer has also made the game more boring.  It doesn't help that my team - the San Diego Chargers - doesn't even exist any more...    

Streaming

I've just signed up for a streaming bundle - that includes Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Disney+, Peacock and Hulu.  So there are a whole bunch of new shows available for me to binge.  So much choice, it's quite overwhelming.  All recommendations welcome.  And it's not just current shows.  For example, I haven't subscribed to Netflix since the very early days of streaming.  So there are critically-acclaimed shows - like Black Mirror and The Crown - that I've not seen a single episode of.  What I really need to do is compile a list of shows to prioritize watching.  I'm sure I'll share that in a future post.  What with GTA VI being released in November (I've already pre-ordered it), I'm well prepared to keep myself occupied in the evenings as the nights get earlier.  

Spiders

It's spider mating season - which means they've started to come out of hiding inside and outside the house.  And this year there seem to be more of them and they are bigger.  Is global warming to blame for this?!  There's been a few times when they've scared the bejesus out of me when I turn on a light and see this giant monster on the ceiling.  It's not just spiders.  I found a flying ant infestation outside my front door the other day.  I only discovered it after I noticed some birds flying around near my front door - something they don't normally do - who had apparently found it before me and were feeding on the ants.  Thinking about insects,  I also note that I've seen a lot less wasps this year than previous years.  Maybe global warming is not all bad.  

United States Space Force

Nothing unsettling or fascist-looking about the new uniforms Trump has proposed for the United States Space Force.

And when the hell did the US get a Space Force?  (Apparently since 2019).  And what exactly do they do?  I know the administration wants to fight aliens - but I always thought it was more about non-citizens rather than extraterrestrials. 

US Open

I've been watching quite a bit of the US Open - including staying up late last night to watch Alcaraz get beaten (the match finished around 12.30 am for me, which was 3.30 am in New York!).  What I've been noticing is that there seem to be lots of empty seats at many of the matches.  It's kind of making me want to go to the tournament some day in the future.  I'd rather go to the US Open than experience the pretentiousness of Wimbledon.  I don't imagine a ticket for a decent seat at one of the bigger stadiums is particularly cheap, but they do seem to be available - particularly for a mid-week day session during the early rounds.  That's also your best bet of catching a decent player competing on one of the smaller outdoor courts.  Or watching a British player inevitably getting knocked out in an early round.

Noise

I always seem to find something a neighbor does that annoys me.  Normally noise related.  And I have a new source of my ire.  And this one seems to be a legitimate complaint.  It seems like I have a neighbor who has a kid that belongs in a band.  And that band has started practicing outside - and not being quiet about it.  It is very loud and quite distracting - even when I have my windows closed.  Louder than when they occasionally hold music concerts at the local park.  I'm not sure which neighbor it is - it is somewhere behind my landlord's house, and probably a few houses down.  But today is the second time I have heard them, and I am really worried that it might be becoming a regular thing.  I surely can't be the only one bothered by the noise - there must be so many other neighbors who can hear them playing.  I hope someone else says something, because I don't want to be the one to do so.  I will speak to my landlord about it.  Surely he has noticed it.

Happy Labor Day

How did I spend Labor Day?  Well, I couldn't do very much because I've just started taking a new medication for managing my diabetes, and - how do I put this politely - it's going to take my body a little while to adjust to it.  Let's just say I can't be too far away from a toilet.  So instead I've started going through some of the photos from my UK trip, and saving them to my laptop.  I might eventually post some of them onto this blog.  But this task is not easy, because I'm encountering the same issues that I did in the UK - in that some of the photos cause the file conversion process not to work properly.  Thanks Apple for using a specific file format for photos and videos that doesn't work with anything else.  It means I can't use something like the Windows Photos app to import the photos, because it just messes up.  Even copying and pasting the images doesn't work when one of them is "corrupted" (even though I can see the photo perfectly fine on my iPhone).  I've found ways to get around it (mainly via dodgy online file converters), but it's frustrating and time-consuming.  I'm also starting not to trust my iPhone either.  I could have sworn I took a video of the view of the London skyline from Primrose Hill, but there was no such video saved on my phone.  Am I going crazy?