Watching, Playing, Reading #10

Since I was so sick from September through December I've watched even more things than usual!  I'll just share my favorite movies I watched, as well as the TV series I have finished.

Watching:

Netflix:

TV series:

Jessica Jones: I honestly watched this because it's going to be my name once I'm married, but I loved it!  It's about a superhero who has quit the superhero life and is now a private investigator.  It's a dark and gritty show with a lot of emotional stuff going on, and the season finale is really great.

Grace and Frankie: Two older women's husbands tell them their wives they're leaving them...for one another.  Grace and Frankie start out hating each other but form an interesting friendship through the sudden loss of their husbands.  It's a really interesting show and I really liked it.

Bates Motel: I am forever in love with this show, and the latest season is no exception.  Norman Bates is slowly becoming more disturbed and his mother is finally starting to worry about it.  And more bodies are showing up all of the time.

The Following: The serial killer cult never fails to disappoint.  This show remains interesting and surprising.

X Files: I finally watched this show and I have no idea why I waited so long to watch it.  It's pretty much everything I love all wrapped up in one amazing show.  There are serial killers, paranormal events, monsters, aliens, and a huge government conspiracy.  Oh my goodness, I loved it!

Love: Netflix usually does a great job of every original series they make, but I found this one a little lacking.  It was kind of funny at times, but the main characters were both horrible people, which I guess was the point, but I didn't love it.

Animal House: Not to be confused with the movie of the same name, this is a documentary series about rescue dogs and super cute puppies being rescued and adopted by loving families.  I love it because all of the dogs are so cute forever and there is always a happy ending.

Movies:

After: After a bus crash two strangers find themselves back in their small hometown.  But nobody else is there and there is a strange black cloud closing in all around.  This is a great thought-provoking surreal movie that I thoroughly enjoyed.  It felt like it could be an episode of X Files.

House of Wax: Psycho serial killers in what turns out to be an "abandoned" small town.  This movie is action-packed and will keep you on the edge of your seat throughout the whole thing.

Playing:

Steam (If you are already addicted to buying games on Steam swing by the Humble Bundle store to get great deals while doing good.  I'm not an affiliate.  I just love getting great deals on games while doing good.):

Divide by Sheep: This game was cool but ending up infuriating me after a while, because I am not good at math, and it is essentially a math game.

Cook, Serve, Delicious: I discovered this game when Felicia Day played it on Youtube.  It's really fun, but also super stressful.  I haven't played it in a  while because I don't need more stress.

Dreaming Sarah:  I loved this game so much!  It has great visuals and really satisfying gameplay.  It's cute and creepy.  It took me about 3 or 4 hours to finish the game and I enjoyed every second (except for the time I spent trying to fall just right on the clock level to move on).

Image via

Android:

Alphabear: This is a fun word game with super cute collectible bear characters that you can use to help you beat levels.

Monument Valley: This is a sweet little game that sort of reminded me of Fez.  You play a princess traveling through different rotatable 3D worlds that get progressively harder to traverse.  It's a puzzle game with very relaxing visuals and pleasant gameplay.

God of Light: This is an interesting game where you use different mechanisms to direct light through three stars and into a portal.  It gets harder the more you play and adds more mechanics to direct the light.  It's pretty fun but also sometimes frustrating.

Reading: 

River Town by Peter Hessler: I've been working on this book for 4 or 5 months.  I used to read every day on the bus to and from work, but I haven't worked since September so I haven't been doing as much reading.  It is a very interesting book about an American's time teaching abroad in China in a small river town.  There is social and political comparisons to American ideals and also some interesting Chinese history.

What have been watching, playing, and reading?  Do you have any recommendations for me?

All Work and All Play

Makes me a well-balanced person, I guess.  I've been doing a lot of work lately, staying extra at work and then working on my own shop stuff when I get home.  But it's fun work.  I'm making flower crowns for my shop!  So before they're crowns, they're a pretty bouquet in my room.

fake flowers in a vase that I thrifted today for $1!, plus a sneak peek of my art wall

And I got my new game the other day, so that's awesome.  (It's one of the ones that needed funding help, Pandora: Purge of Pride)  The weather was finally nice enough to go hacky sack in the park yesterday, so I did that for almost an hour.  Then I accidentally made new friends who live in my house and one of them made a big dinner for all of us, that I could actually eat :)  (Let's call him The Chef)  It was really tasty.  There was chicken, broccoli with cheese sauce, and potatoes.  And The Chef also commisioned a necklace from me, which is super cool.  Then I hacky sacked with the other friend, who did alright despite not hacky sacking since 8th grade.  (We'll call him The Rollerblader, because he roller blades.)  And then I went to bed, because that was a whole lot of human interaction and it made me sleepy.

And in other notable events, I discovered the wonder that is Desura, and specifically Desura's free games, and downloaded a bunch of them.  So far I have only played (and completed) The Kite.   That game will make you feel feelings.  It is intense.  Seriously.

And I've also discovered that I don't hate documentaries; I just hate boring documentaries.  Now I am that person who says, "Oh, I actually just watched a really interesting documentary about that" during conversations.  Here are some documentaries that I have watched and enjoyed on Netflix recently (with handy dandy links and my ratings, out of 5 stars):

• Happy 3 stars
• Nerdcore Rising (I'm actually watching it right now, so no rating yet, but I love it so far)
• Indie Game: The Movie 5 stars
• Afterlife 4 stars
• The Human Experience 5 stars
• Bomb It 5 stars
• Dive! 4 stars
• Buskers 3 stars
• The Antics Roadshow 3 stars

I also watched two documentaries that are no longer on Netflix, but I still highly recommend them: What the #$*! Do We Know!? and What are Dreams?: Nova.  I give them both 5 stars.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

With the changing of the seasons come changes to my blog. Did you see that nifty ad box in my blog's upper right corner? That's here to stay now.  And, depending on its success, more ad boxes might join it.  In other news, I'm going to start taking this "I'm a freelance graphic designer" thing seriously.  I ordered some business cards today, 100 of them.  There was this promotional deal where I got them for free and just had to pay shipping.  In hindsight, I should have probably made my company website first, but oh well.  So yeah, I run my own company now.  It's called Honeybee Designs and I plan to create my new website for free using Blogger, so you guys will be the first ones to know once that's up and running.  G and I are really starting to get into the holiday spirit.  Mainly because it's nearly freezing out lately, 40 degrees F.  So yesterday we bought pumpkin ice cream and ate it while cuddling under blankets watching movies.  Two movies we watched over the weekend that were both really good and are on Netflix, that you should totally watch, but I'm not going to review them properly right now, since this blogpost is going to be long enough without it, are Paper Man and Cherry.  Paper Man is one of my new favorite movies.  And Cherry is also pretty fantastic.  So watch those.

In football, the Washington Huskies got their butts thoroughly kicked by Stanford Cardinal this past weekend.  Let's just say we lost by over 30 points and leave it at that.  Seattle Seahawks and Cleveland Browns played a game of who sucks slightly less on Sunday.  Nobody scored a touchdown, but the Browns beat the Seahawks 6-3.  Truly pathetic.  Sidenote: in my mind, today is Monday.  Because G took the week off to work on his paper for his master's degree and I've been staying at his house until today.  I helped him transcribe his entire 48 minute long video for his paper.  It took me significantly longer than 48 minutes.

The other big news is that I am going to start reselling thrift store clothing and stuff on eBay in an attempt to make some extra money.  It was G's idea, since he always marvels at the things I find for so cheap at thrift stores, and he hasn't even seen the little black dress I got on my last trip yet.  So I plan to list all of the clothing I don't wear and use whatever money I make off of that as capital to buy more stuff to resell.  I'll blog about how that goes, of course.

In other news, I received my E.L.F. order today and I'm really excited about that.  Like I said, I'll review one product from that every once in a while on here, so you can expect to see lots more pictures of me in the future. 

And last of all, I have an announcement: in my next blogpost, I will be having a giveaway with two winners, who will each receive a tube of lipstick, so watch out for that.

I hope you are all staying warm and healthy, and I'll be back again soon.