In better news, I only have about four more pounds to go to reach the lower-end of my goal weight range.. Our weight-loss contest at work is over, so now I'm on my own. But I'm glad; while that team competition was just what I needed to get started, I'm ready to do this on my own terms now. The competition cost $70 to participate in, with a $10,000 prize for the 1st place team. We ended up being 19th out of 251 teams, so not too shabby. Although I wasn't ever going for the prize; none of the people on my team started off big enough to make that realistic. I was going for losing 10% of my body weight and keeping it off for 6 months which means that the entry fee is returned. I lost over 13% during the competition, and I intend to keep it plus a little more off indefinitely, so I should end up with a net $0 investment.
I charted my weight-loss and calculated the regression line, and determined that I should reach my goal weight of 122 pounds by May 13th if I keep on the same trajectory. But weight-loss isn't necessarily linear, so at this point I'm just hoping for about two or three more weeks, or mid-May to go on to maintenance mode.
Now for a rant because I'm mad at Netflix. (Like the title indicated, this is a random check-in.) I love horror books and movies. Horror books are generally pretty good, and it's fairly easy to spot the pulp. But horror movies can be a real crap-shoot as to whether or not they're even watchable. The best horror movies are fairly intellectual like The Exorcist, The Omen, The Conjuring, The Others, or the first 7/8ths of Insidious (the ending of that movie would have been better if they continued to leave the monsters in the dark and allowed the viewer's imagination to do the work). There are campy horror movies that are also enjoyable because they acknowledge and embrace their campy nature, movies like the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Tucker and Dale vs Evil, Housebound, or the Blade trilogy (although I could argue that the eye-candy might be part of the appeal here.)
When Netflix still used the star rating system, I could better gauge how bad a horror movie was going to be. If they had much below 3 stars, I'd just pass. But Netflix changed to a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating, and it's harder to tell now if a horror movie is going to be really awful. So I started watching American Poltergeist and couldn't even finish it. The acting was wooden. The script was minimal and the story-telling practically non-existent. The characters made these tremendous leaps of logic with very little information, almost like an episode of Scooby Doo, but not as good. I also noticed that Netflix has American Poltergeist II. Who finances these things?! I guess from now on when I feel like watching a horror movie on Netflix, I'll have to go look it up on IMDB before I can watch. I know, this is the classic definition of a "first-world problem." But it's an annoyance nonetheless.
We've been having a beautiful spring here. It got really warm for a time, but lately it's been cooler again with regular rain. My husband trimmed our lilac bushes back last year, and they're blooming better than they have in a few years.
I hope wherever you are you're enjoying beautiful spring weather and the blooming of the trees and plants.
