20251016 Digest / People & Blogs

First of all, exciting news! I have a little interview posted to Manuel Moreale’s People & Blogs series this morning!

You can read it here!

I have been a fan of this series since I first discovered it a couple of years ago, so I was thrilled to be asked to take part! I have found many new bloggers through this series, and I have enjoyed reading the interviews from some of my existing favourites (like Winnie Lim and Veronique).

It’s a fabulous project that aims to bring together personal bloggers from all corners of the internet. It is really difficult to find blogs to read, especially when people are spread across different platforms. It was really exciting for me when Veronique mentioned me in her interview to hear that someone I enjoy reading has found me on the internet and has enjoyed my thoughts!

I know I have a mix of people who follow me on RSS feed and others who subscribe through WordPress, I expect some of my WP readers have never heard of P&B, as it tends to live more over in the techy Mastodon space of bloggers. At least that is where I found it! I hope I can be a little bridge to introduce some new people to the project.

A week of “freedom”

It’s the time of year when Husband goes away for a week, and it’s just me and the cats! I will miss him so I distract myself with all the things I can do with the extra “freedom!”

I can do whatever I want after work in the evenings! I can get completely obsessed with a TV show, project or game and not feel bad that I’m being anti-social!

Or do a whole jigsaw to myself! 😂🤘🏼

I can eat what I like because meals will just be for me. I’m thinking I’ll make my favourite turkey chilli (Husband doesn’t like chilli) or maybe a lasagne. Get a chippy takeaway one night!

My period is probably going to hit next week, though, so what might happen is I camp on the sofa, watch rom-coms and work on embroidery! I have a floral piece to finish, and then I really should get working on the Christmas tree decorations I started and aborted last year when I realised how long they’d take!

Sometimes it’s nice to have the place to myself, but it does mean I’ll have to make all my own cups of tea, and be the one who gets out of bed to turn off the alarm!

Telly

• Husband away also means pausing the rewatch of the MCU movies. We did Thor 2: The Dark World (fine, just a bit boring) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier (easily the best so far) last weekend. TWS is so good, I didn’t even work on any embroidery while we watched!
• Also means I’ll have to delay watching this week’s Taskmaster!
• And Celebrity Traitors next week, which will be torture. It is so good, it’s all I want to talk about!!
• On my lunch breaks, I’ve been watching Con Man on Prime, which is a crowd-funded Alan Tudyk mini sitcom where he basically plays a version of himself and gets all his old Firefly castmates and sci-fi actors involved (basically everyone you could think of… and Lesley Jordan). It’s OK, not particularly original, and the jokes hang very low. I only watched it because it’s 15 minutes an episode!
• I watched one episode of the US Younger and noped out because there is no way anyone would believe that woman was 26. 30 ok, 26 no fucking way. Face, voice, posture… not buying it. I still do need a new 22-minute thing to watch!

What else…?

• I decided to pre-order The Outer Worlds 2. I basically never preorder games or buy them full price, but I love the first one so much I wanted to show support! I think the first one and the Mass Effect trilogy are probably the only ones! I didn’t realise they’d decided to launch it for PS5! I thought it was an Xbox/PC exclusive, which was why I got a new PC (which so far I’ve only played Sims 2 and Two Point games on!)! Oh well, I prefer that kind of game on console anyway, and I’d rather have a physical disc.
• I think we’ve almost worn out our walking treadmill; it’s erroring a lot these days when we start it up. It was cheap and gets used for 2-4 hours most days between the two of us, so a replacement may be needed soon. I don’t think we can go back to life without it! I am thinking about getting one that is suitable for running on and not just walking on, especially now it’s almost dark after work, and the weather is getting colder and wetter.
• I’ve become very interested in watching Cracking The Cryptic solve The Times cryptic crosswords this week. I think I might be starting to understand them… Husband loves them and does The Viz ones (I think he’s the only under-50-year-old that buys it!).  I like the idea of learning to do them! I know words! I might spend this week working my way through Husband’s Minute Cryptic book.
• Still reading through X-Men, but now I’m post-Claremont and it’s 1991 I’m really struggling, there is a very obvious cliff drop in story quality! Still, I am enjoying Gambit as a new addition. I will probably get bored of these soon and jump ahead to the Krakoa stuff I keep hearing about, see how that is, and then I might take a break from X-Men and visit some other Marvel heroes!
• I’m reading I Cheerfully Refuse by Lief Enger, and it’s absolutely brilliant. After reading a few fantasy books (one of which was ACOTAR, *shudder*) in a row, it feels so good to come home to some speculative literature! Also, keeping a reading log in Obsidian is going really well, and I’m still excited about it!
• Wondering if I could use Obsidian Bases now to keep track of seasonal garden jobs and what plants I have in the garden. I’m bad at remembering when to do pruning, and this year I was definitely late at pruning back my lavender plants. Hopefully, the mild weather will help me get away with it!