. Everything Everywhere All at Once is the best thing I've seen in a cinema in a very long time. It's a showcase of the dramatic and creative possibilities of the medium, but more importantly it's all in service of an emotionally resonant and satisfying story. The cast are all great, too. I would happily have added it to the very short list of films I've gone to see in the cinema more than once, but the local cinema only did a single screening. Actually, to be fair, they've recently announced a second single screening, but unfortunately it's on a night when I have rehearsals.


. Rehearsals are continuing for Rock of Ages. I've also been roped into a part for another production, partly on condition that it's a small role and I don't have to attend every rehearsal but it still means that there aren't a lot of nights left that I don't have rehearsals.


. In the annals of small personal victories, I hired a lawnmower for an hour and tamed the overgrown grass in my back yard. I've known where the hire place is for months, but I kept putting it off on the excuse that they didn't stock small lawnmowers and I didn't know if the ones they had would fit in the back of my car. Turns out it was fine once we folded up the handle. The staff were very helpful, and in all it was definitely a better experience than any of the other ways I've dealt with the overgrown yard in the past. (Most often by hiring an entire person to come and do it, which is stressful and rather more expensive and it keeps happening that when I like the work a person has done, they've gone out of business by the time I want them to come and do it again.)

As a fun side note, I noticed when I was done that my Fitbit was registering an elevated heart rate (probably mostly from hoicking the mower in and out of the car, rather than the bit where I pushed it around), and wondered if the automatic exercise logger would make something of it. It did: it marked it down as a period of bicycle riding, presumably on the basis that the arm with the Fitbit on had spent most of the period in question in a handlebar-holding position.


. For this month's reading challenge (book with a direction in the title), I'm reading James A. Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. It's a collection of stories set in the Pacific theatre of World War 2; a couple of them, combined, were the inspiration for the musical South Pacific. I haven't got up to either of those stories yet; the ones I have read so far have been less cheery than I remember the musical being. One of the ones I have read is set on Norfolk Island, which was interesting; I don't often see American writers writing about Australian history.


. I have finished the extended story mode of Invisible, Inc in Expert Plus difficulty, and consequently I've now garnered every in-game achievement except the gimmick achievement that it's literally impossible to attain while actually playing the game. I'm glad I took the time to work on Expert Plus difficulty; I don't want to sound like one of those "You haven't really played until you've beaten the game on the highest difficulty" gamers (particularly since the game itself describes Expert Plus difficulty as 'a bit ridiculous') but my experience was that once I started getting the hang of it the extra level of challenge made it more immersive, and finishing the story mode came with a real sense of accomplishment.