Went to parents' cabin for the weekend. Took two days off work, too. Now I'm home and I'm very tired.

I have so much to do. I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. It was nice to do nothing for a little while, though.

Made a physio appointment. They couldn't get me in until the 21st. I put in a wait list request, though.

So, I found out that Bea isn't allowed to go to any of the pride events this year.

That was her phrasing.

So I'm like... what went on here? I didn't ask over text, we'll be meeting up next weekend and she'll probably want to talk about it then. But I do wonder.

Hearing it didn't shock me; she's nice but seems like the kind of person who could accidentally make people uncomfortable, and then make the situation worse when trying to fix it. But I guess I'll find out later what happened.

This is a bummer, because I was going to ask if she wanted to go to the pride brunch. But. Well. Ahhhh well, I guess I'll see other people I'm familiar with there, it's no big deal. Just, knowing this, is kind of awkward.

Ahhh, summer wildfire season. +31C and smoky as hell. Lovely.

Time to stay inside with the shades down and all the lights off, I guess!

(Ugh, eew, I can even smell it inside. So gross.)

+ This year's Victoria Day weekend has been somewhat cold, as usual, but still nice overall. I finished all of my Obligations on Saturday and Sunday, and now I get to just relax and do nothing. (I might relax, but I will not do nothing.)

+ The interval act from this year's ESC with Baby Lasagna vs Käärijä was pretty awesome, not gonna lie.

+ Wrote a little. Feels good. I also have a finished thing that I don't know what to do with. It'll go up on my writing DW as usual once I'm done a few nitpicks, but I haven't decided if I want to crosspost it or not. It's one of those stories without much substance and not much happening. On the other hand, it's a rarepair. Hm. (I'm leaning toward not crossposting because I can't be arsed to make a decision on how to tag it, but we'll see.)

+ I rewatched Conclave with the director's commentary. It's a good commentary; would recommend giving that a look if you enjoyed the movie. Lots of insight into cinematographic choices and casting choices etc. I found it interesting that they deliberately sought out an unknown to play Benitez - since the cardinals don't know what to expect from him, the director wanted the audience to be unable to have any preconceived notions of the actor, too. It's not something I'd considered but it makes sense. (And it means they ended up with Carlos Diehz, which is of course wonderful.)

+ ...Also spent way too much time playing Delectatio Morosa. On the one hand, I generally like to complete all routes when I play visual novels. On the other, getting the Bad Routes will be hard for me - I am way too attached to these characters and I don't want to upset anybody. On the third hand, I am curious about how cardinal Lawrence could possibly fuck up so badly that it ruins his relationships with everybody, including Benitez. So.

+ I'm rather glad that I did not go to Calgary this weekend to watch the judo nationals in person. It would have been interesting, but I think it would have also been very stressful for me, and I don't really need that. One of our competitors placed, and the other did not. I looked in more detail about the match for our guy who did not place, and found out that our friend was going up against someone from Montreal. So, against someone from a bigger club with many more training opportunities due to the location (compared to here in this small northern town, where the club is small, the opportunities are limited, there is nobody at his level/weight category to train against, and the nearest training camps are 5 hours away). Of course, this is a generalization. But taking that into account, I'm not surprised, and think the guy from our club did very well considering the circumstances. Even getting to compete at the national level at all is a big achievement.

I watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 recently. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great either; it was kind of meh. I don't have much to say about the film itself, even.

Like a lot of sequels, it suffers from being compared to the original, which was very fun if a little dated now. I have seen some speculation that the third movie also suffers from being directed by its main actor, Nia Vardalos - but she didn't direct the second film, which I thought was very disappointing (rather than just kind of meh) so I don't think that's the issue. It could be that the first one was just a very fun film and that it's hard to replicate its energy.

The one thing that I did like about MBFGW3 was a new character, Victory, played by Melina Kotselou. It was another of those situations where after the movie I immediately went to check what other works the actor has been in. Unfortunately, like I ran into with Conclave and Carlos Diehz, aside from MBFGW3 Melina Kotselou has only been in a couple of short films. But apparently they're in something that will be coming out this year (?) so I will have to make a note to find more information about that later. They seem to be more of a theatre actor rather than screen.

Victory is a great character. Very funny, very delightful. I love how optimistic they are and how much love they have for where they live, all the ambitions they have to make the village flourish even if on the face of it the situation is impossible. Stole my attention every time they appeared on the screen, honestly, including from the moment they showed up to pick up the family at the airport and it becomes very clear that the new Greek cousin is just as weird as the American visitors. I didn't expect to stumble across a nonbinary character in this film, let alone one done so well, and it was a really nice surprise.

I wonder if that was planned - like, if Victory was meant to be NB from the start, or if it was a situation were it was like, "Okay, we found this great actor, and they're NB, so we might as well make the character nonbinary too". I wonder if Kotselou had some input into how their scenes should go. I especially liked the dance scene where all the men are on one side, and the women are on another, and Victory starts off on one side, and then switches to another - it's so low-key and very nicely done.

Anyway... The movie wasn't awful, and it's possible I might even rewatch it some time. But that's just the one film. Hopefully Melina Kotselou will be in more movies in the future.