Goodbye 2020 ...

 ... and good riddance, you sucked.  

In addition to several subjective new year's resolutions, most of which I will undoubtedly quickly break - so I won't bother sharing them here - I have also made one objective and quantifiable new year's resolution.  And that is to lose 24 lb in 2021.  That is only 2 lb a month, in theory quite achievable.  But everything in my history suggest that it is going to be next to impossible.  Yes I have lost weight before, but I've never been able to keep that weight off.  And so this is going to be tough.  Exercise, diet, blah blah blah.  But the biggest thing for me is willpower.  I have to want to lose that weight enough to commit to better choices, and stick to them.  That's always been my problem, and something I need to overcome.  And when I take a step backwards, I can't give up.  Which is why I can't totally change all my terrible habits and lifestyle choices overnight.  It has to be a slow and gradual transition to something better.  Let's see how I get on.  I will aim to revisit this resolution in this blog on the last day of every month.

Song of the Week #38

For the end of the year, something from one of the best bands of their era.  Maybe not one of their best known songs but one that has been covered extensively, one that has been used extensively in TV show finales, and one that seems appropriate to welcoming in a new and hopefully better year.

Sense of Humor

I don't know whether this is a symptom of this year, or whether my sense of humor has evolved over time - but I'm finding that things I used to find funny are no longer funny.  In particular, I'm thinking of Channel 4 panel shows.  For example, I tried to watch the Big Fat Quiz of the Year on YouTube.  I've enjoyed these in the past, and this one featured some comedians who I have traditionally liked - but this time round, I found it almost unwatchable and couldn't finish it.  Same goes for 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.  Has my sense of humor changed?  Has it disappeared?  No, that definitely can't be it because there are still some shows (Taskmaster) and many podcasts that I enjoy and find very funny.  But the vast majority of these tend to be American now, so perhaps my sense of humor has become Americanized?  That is disturbing.  That might explain why I'm spelling humor instinctively without the u now.   

Resolution

My last burger and fries of the year today.  And it might also be my last burger and fries for a while.  A new year's resolution is to eat more "sensibly".  I've purposely made that subjective and ambiguous, but I do want to make more of an effort to cut down on fast food - especially when the weather stinks and I'm not going out for any exercise.  I'm not going to eliminate fast food totally - but I will have it less regularly, and I will be more sensible in the size of portions.  I give it 2 weeks before I totally break this resolution.       

Palace - oh dear

The less said about the Palace results over the festive period so far, the better.  Never a high scoring team, it's a bit alarming that we've gone so long without keeping a clean sheet (and shipping a lot of goals at the moment).  On the opposite side of things, lots of fireworks in the neighborhood tonight as Seattle won and sealed their division win.  I think the NFL playoffs are expanded and different this year, and only the #1 seed gets a bye - and Seattle are not the #1 seed on the NFC side, so much tougher to get to the Superbowl if you're not the #1.  A very interesting year for Seattle - started as an offensive juggernaut with a shockingly poor defense, and now they don't score nearly as much but have a much stronger defense.  If they can put it together, they could go far.   

And an update - feeling very pleased with myself, as I think I fixed a lot of my TV audio issues.  I realized that a splitter I use might be causing the issue following a firmware update on the TV.  And sure enough, when I eliminate that then I don't seem to get the intermittent sound issues anymore.  I notice I still get some stutter in the picture when I try to watch Wonder Woman via HBO Max on Roku - but I think that is more to do with the volume of people accessing their server, than anything to do with the equipment on my end.  I don't think this is going to stop me from upgrading my telly and soundbar - kind of fed up with having to deal with one issue or another.  The only reason I use the splitter in the first place is because of an another issue to do with audio lag - nothing more annoying than not being able to get a picture synced with the audio.  You'd think TV companies would latch onto the fact that if they included a decent sound system with their product then it would be so much more appealing - seems like a terrible oversight (though I suspect more an unofficial agreement between the TV manufacturers and the audio equipment manufacturers).

12 Films

A bit convoluted, but my version of the 12 Days of Christmas is to watch 12 films over the Christmas period before I go back to work.  I've done 3 films so far.  Ford vs Ferrari - a good old-fashioned, if somewhat one-dimensional, film - 3.5 stars.  Doctor Sleep - a perfectly okay film for what it was, but loses a star because it is sacrilegious to make a sequel to The Shining 40 years later - 2.5 stars.  And yesterday I watched Wonder Woman 1984 on the day of it's premiere - a perfect example of the serviceable but ultimately vacuous and unmemorable film from one of the cinematic universes we have today - 2 stars.  I wanted to watch it in 4K and with Dolby Atmos sound - because I have the telly and soundbar that play these formats.  But after much faffing around, it doesn't appear I have the actual combination of equipment that enable me to do so.  Which is extremely disappointing.  And then I got trapped down a rabbit hole of playing around with all my settings to see what my set up can and can't do.  And I have come to the sad conclusion that my TV isn't even compatible with my soundbar for playing any sort of Dolby Atmos sound.  Worse, I don't seem to be able to play audio from any of my streaming apps without the sound cutting out intermittently every 10 seconds or so.  Which is devastating.  I've been having a lot of doubts about my telly already - despite not having had it that long - and I think this might be the final straw.  This is undoubtedly going to consume so much of my time over the next week, as I am convinced it is fixable - though it is just as likely to be a bug in the firmware somewhere.  I might refine this - but I think I'm going to make it a new year's resolution to combine all of the following next year: cut the cord, get a PS5, get a better telly and get a better soundbar.  Let's hope I get a decent annual bonus to pay for all this (unlikely).    

Merry Christmas

A Christmas alone.  Not how you want to spend it.  You know what I missed most?  Maybe waking up to a sackful of presents from Santa at the bottom of the bed.  Maybe playing cards with all the family, particularly Grandpa who played with such amusing reckless abandon.  But no, I think it's the food I missed - and miss - the most.  I think the Christmas Day meal was, and is, my favorite meal of the year - something that Mum slaved over for hours with so little appreciation.  Well I appreciate it now!  Exactly like Thanksgiving, I wasn't prepared to cook a massive meal with all the trimmings just for myself.  Unlike Thanksgiving, there are a lot less places here that offer take out Christmas dinners.  In the end, I picked up a pre-cooked dinner from a local Irish bar/restaurant a few days ago - so all I needed to do was heat it up today.  It was perfectly nice, but it doesn't compare to Mum's home cooking!  As with a lot of American meals, it came with a side salad that was almost a meal in itself - so much so, that I had the salad for lunch and the main meal for dinner.  I doubt it was a real Irish Christmas meal, here is what it consisted of (verbatim from the website):

- Hand Cut Holiday Glazed Ham

- Au Gratin Smashed Potatoes

- Broccolini with Bacon

- Cider Spiced Braised Cabbage

- Emerald Salad with Fruit and Candied Nuts

- O'Donnell's Soda Bread

Make of that what you will.  They don't do Christmas Pudding in America.  So I also ordered some Bread Pudding, which is about as close as I can get.  I'm feeling pleasantly stuffed now, but of course a Skype call today can't make up for the lack of company.  I'm going to try to ensure that doesn't happen again for any future Christmases.