Mystery shipment

I write down a list of all the packages we expect to arrive at any given time, and have had this habit for over a year now, so it's quite unusual that I'm surprised by a notification of a signed package like I was on Thursday.

Not just any signed package, but one from the bus shipping company. So I THINK that means it has to be one we ordered ourselves and it has to have come from inside Finland (unless both of us are totally wrong about how Matkahuolto works). Neither one of us can think what it can be. The intense curiosity has provided more excitement than most packages are ever worth at all, except when they contain cat treats, and then the excitement is the cats'.

And speaking of cat treats, I have a habit of giving too many little pieces of freeze-dried poultry to them at a time (the only safe treats for a diabetic cat like Snookums), and now we're running out before we had a chance to order more. There are no places that sell them locally, either, so we have to drive to the next town for some today (it's only about 20 minutes though). I should probably just give one treat at a time, but there are two cats and they never arrive at the same time - and he's so much bigger than her - so I've gotten in the bad habit of adding one or two more treats to first one, then the other, trying to get it so they finish eating at the same time. I mean, the treats aren't bad for them at all, they're just way more expensive than their normal food by weight.

Watching and reading

I haven't written anything about what I'm watching and reading lately, so.

The only show that's currently coming out regularly that I'm watching is the new ( Wheel of Time )

All the other shows I have an interest in are between series right now - BBC Ghosts, What We Do in the Shadows, Derry Girls and now Ted Lasso. At least Derry Girls' last series was a while ago, so one can hope they may release another soon. I've already seen the new series of the others.

Wax has been watching that semi-prestige astronaut show with the guy from Altered Carbon. I don't know where they spent their money (well - apart from CGI, that must have cost something), but it clearly wasn't on any kind of realism for costumes and hair and makeup, which are irritating enough to make me mad even though I've only seen this over Wax's shoulder as she watches with headphones on. If it was fanfiction, this level of realism would make it impossible for me to rate higher than mediocre. It's like they didn't even try at all.

Also, I don't think I mentioned that I gave up on Foundation after like 5 episodes. (I still see bits of it over Wax's shoulder though, she just watches it with headphones on now.) It's almost entirely original fiction, which I can't really blame them for because the way the Foundation trilogy is written, it's impossible to use it as anything more than a vague outline of a show. Some of the invention is pretty cool in there, but overall, there is too much that's irritating to me instead for me to sit through it for the entertaining parts - if I were judging it as an original work, I mean. But the real killer is that I can't really judge it ONLY as an original work because it IS still a fan work, and it mostly manages to completely exclude all of the things that were appealing about Foundation in the first place (which is quite a feat, because Foundation had plenty that was wrong with it, so like, the things that WERE great about it seem like they should be hard to miss). If those things aren't there, I feel, what is the point? Then it's just an extremely silly and disorganized mess with a lot more budget than dialogue polishing. Well, it's a racially diverse disorganized mess etc etc, that's a point in its favor, but still, not enough.

Last summer we bought some box sets of Father Ted and The Brittas Empire to rewatch, because we figured there was really no hope of ever finding them streaming. But the DVD player was set up in the bedroom, and then we moved it down when Wax's brother and niece were here to watch The Lion King for the kid, and now it's in the corner of the dining room with stuff piled on it, so it's not at all convenient to watch it. I've mostly been watching old episodes of Only Connect lately actually, in between the random things I follow like epicurious's Four Levels and Professional and Home Chef Swap series.

I've made it to book 10 of Foreigner, so that's like halfway. I THINK I've read this one before, but I'm not actually positive. I haven't been reading anything else in between, except the book on Finnish lighting design history I had from the library for the last month, and I just swapped it for a book on Art Nouveau in Finland.