I think Pips makes a good header for these "listing-things-I'm-doing" posts. It's important to have a cute mascot header, right? Of course, right.

Yes, it's a basket, not a bucket, but that's a technicality, and I'm not going to leave buckets around waiting for Pips to jump in so I can take a picture.

ANYway. What have I done lately? A bit of this, a little of that, but mostly a LOT of watching television. See, my library Roku hold came up my last shift before Christmas, and it's not due back until after New Years. So...I've been watching a lot of old & new movies/shows that aren't on my usual streaming channels. And playing Shanghai, Wordscapes, or Cats&Soup on my iPad while doing the TV watching.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of media I've enjoyed this month.

I'm only listing the things I liked, and in batches, otherwise this would be The Longest Post Ever. Are these recommendations? Mmm, I wouldn't go that far. Recommendations with asterisks, more like.

1,. A number of sappy made-for-streaming Christmas romance movies from Prime & . Which & how many? Not relevant. They are all ridiculous and formulaic but earnestly acted, and that's perfect for my brain-function level at this time of year.

2, Only Murders In The Building season 3, Jack Reacher Season 2 (as far as it's gotten) and a series on Netflix called Obliterated. All three were better than I expected. The action stuff is pretty violent.

3. Season 1 of The Bear. I'll watch Season 2 this weekend, but it's very, VERY intense, so I want to let it to settle before doing more. (Wow. Just, WOW, that show is intense. I'm loving it, but it probably should come with content warnings for anyone who's ever worked back-of-house at a non-franchise restaurant. But so, so good.)

4. All the Monsterverse videos, including Monarch on Apple+. That's Godzilla, Kong, and all the rest. And while watching those, it occurred to me that I can 100% justify the existence of kaiju in the Rollover universe. It actually makes more sense for them to exist than not, given all the world building stuff I have in my head that no one in the books knows yet.

5. Jumanji & Jumanji 2. Silly fun. They're holding up better than I expected, much better than many bigger films from the last decade..

6. Gremlins (because I wanted to check my memory of it being a Christmas movie, sorta) Goonies (because it came up as a recommendation after finishing Gremlins) followed by Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter Is Dead, Clueless, & Clueless 2, because I was on an insomnia viewing roll, and the recommendations kept coming.

7. In the newish movies category, Barbie (super surreal & spectacular) the latest Indiana Jones (MEH. Big MEH.) and A Haunting In Venice (somewhere in the middle, closer to meh.)

Other Stuff

Despite all the time spent in front of the screen, I have accomplished some few things.

• All my older short stories worth publishing are gathered in one doc for re-reading & minor revisions, and I've been working on intro paragraphs for them. It's slow going.
• Some chunks of developmental writing for Tiny Box Of Chaos. Might be the first chapter, might not, but writing Izzie, Jack and Natalie's radically different reactions to the saying "the only thing harder than beginnings are endings," has been great fun.
• baked 4 kinds of cookies, which led to a recent post about cookies.
• holiday cooking, (ham n fixings) which has turned into delicious casserole & may provide soup base soon.
• A SECOND trip downtown, this time for a fun lunch a niece and museum visitations.

There was possibly more, but this is more than enough updating for one post, plus I haven't been updating as often as I should...because brain decided I needed a header image as well as a post title...and so I've undoubtedly forgotten things.

More soon! Until then, keep on keeping on.