Hearts, and whatnot

 Well.  Tomorrow, I get to see a new cardiologist!

I've been seeing a cardiologist since my initial diagnosis of Atrial Fibrillation.  But, my cardiologist left his practice.  I've tried to get a referral to his new practice, which is actually closer to home, but I never got a call back.  In the mean time, my atrium is fibrillating.  Again.

The new cardiologist put me on a monitor. 

New cardiologist, who had an appointment scheduled at 7:30 pm (PM!) but moved it forward to 5 if I was able, recommended either another cardioversion or an ablation.

Since cardioversion didn't seem to last 3 years, I decided to go with an ablation.

Only, the new cardiologist works out of an office in Dalton, GA, and that office is out of network with my insurance.

So tomorrow, I go via referral to a new cardiologist in Chattanooga.

Joy.

All of this at the same time that I'm trying to get my insurance squared away for next year.  Thanks to Trump and his ilk passing the Big Beautiful Bill, my premiums look to be going up, at minimum, 40%.  Probably 50.

I'd be lying if I said I haven't spent a lot of November mad at the world.  At the ridiculous clusterfuck we've got in the White House.  The money will go directly to the people.  Right, Donnie.  Where's my fucking check? 

But I digress.

New doctors make me nervous.  Gotta explain all my stuff.  That I'm losing weight (40 pounds since April!).  That I'm walking between 45 minutes and an hour a day.   More, some days.

Speaking of which, Thomas and I went to see The Running Man yesterday.  Not a bad flick, but the ending is such a weirdly different tone than the rest of the movie that I wonder if the studio made some demands over what had originally come.  But anyway, we ran into my buddy Andy.  Andy has lost 301 pounds!  It might be 3 years since he started this journey, but 301 pounds!  That's amazing.   That's a frigging Big Stupid Tommy.

Almost.

I don't have any specific goals.  

I'd just like to live another 20 years or more.

If possible.

Leaves

 I think in the past several weeks, I've blown, raked or otherwise moved my considerable weight in leaves from one portion of a yard to another across three different properties, and I think I will declare war on these deciduous sons of bitches so that I might never have to do such things again.

Did I mention that I'm also chopping a lot of them up with the lawnmower to use as mulch?

Actually, I rather enjoy that part, laughing dementedly as I mutter about life cycles and xylem and phloem and spongy mesophyll while pushing a Toro across hell's acre.

I may have timed my gas purchase for the mower exactly right, for the first time in years.  I don't like leaving my gas can over the winter in the cold weather, with quarter gallon left in the can, to mix with condensation over the winter.  I just about emptied the can into the mower's tank.  There's just a little left.  I figure I may run the mower one more time, to do one more pass over the leaves before winter settles all the way in.

Partying like a rock star

 Writing this as I realized I was an old fart just a few minutes ago.

This is not the first time I've realized this, so I guess I re-realized that I'm an old fart.

This particular realization?  

Got excited that there was a Ken Burns documentary series on the American Revolution starting on PBS tonight.

I heard my DVR grunt under the strain.

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We had us a beautiful weekend here in my corner of East Tennessee, this middle of November.  We had a cold snap...a very cold snap at the beginning of the week.  Lows around 19, colder by about 15 degrees than any night since last winter.  Our fig and banana trees seemed to feel this snap the hardest.  The banana tree went from vibrant green to dull yellow overnight, it's leaves reaching as high as 13 feet last weekend, now wilting to just taller than my 6'4".  The fig tree, meanwhile, just decide to drop its leaves all at once.  I used the leaf blower later in the week to blow them around its base, in a makeshift mulching.

But the cold gave way to highs in the 70's again this weekend.  Shyam and I unloaded a load of firewood for her folks this morning, and we'd both worked up a light sweat by the end of it.

Colder weather is coming.  Tonight, in fact.  I think we're expected a low around 34 this evening.

Should be good sleeping weather.

(Another old fart milepost, I think...commenting on cooler weather as beneficial to slumber....)

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Saw a couple new movies last week.

The first, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, was a delight.  We caught it on Netflix, after wanting to try to make the pilgrimage to Sevierville to see it on the Big Screen.  Real life being what it is, lately, we couldn't make the time to do that.  So, we waited until its Netflix release.  Regardless of where we saw it, I'm just happy that it was exactly what I wanted it to be.  A big, glorious horror story.  It's a favorite novel.  And it does the book a lot of justice.  Jacob Elordi is amazing as the monster.  Oscar Isaac is reined in and performs well.  Christoph Waltz is amazing as always.

An honesty, though?  I don't care for Mia Goth in this.  It's like she's half a beat off.  It's not horrible, but she didn't seem to fit perfectly.

One more note about Frankenstein:  my blog pal Sheila O'Malley wrote the book on the production.  I'd like to pick that book up at some point.

Later in the week, my buddy Micah and I caught Predator: Badlands.

I liked it.  It was exactly the gruesome adventure I needed it to be.

I couldn't help but compare it to Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus, which appeared last year.  I enjoyed seeing that movie on the Big Screen, but don't know that I gave it more than a moment's thought after that.  Alvarez seemed to enjoy playing in that sandbox, but I can't recall seeing anything on the screen that wasn't a callback to some other facet of the Alien franchise, including one or more of the video games: references lost on me considering I haven't played a console regularly since I bought a PS2 off a stocker when PS3 came out.

Dan Trachtenberg, with Prey, Killer of Killers and now Badlands, has expanded the canon on screen in a fun way that doesn't betray the original flick, which is just a wonderful, wonderful thing.

23?

Been doing this nonsense for 23 years. 

Dayum. 

Almost half my life.....

Quayle