This is the adorable piece I mentioned last week - Cute Cat Apartment by samanthalanetextiles on Etsy. The designer posted this on Reddit and I thought it was so cute I immediately bought it! This is stitched on 14 count aida. I usually end up buying aida that's pretty stiff - not a preference but it just happens to be what the local store has available. This is Zweigart aida and it was so buttery soft! It also got pulled slightly out of shape from my apparently aggressive hooping of the fabric while I was working on it. It'll be fine once I frame it.

I've already started working on my next piece and it's going to be super cool! But, it's also going to take me a hot minute to finish it. Like, maybe a month or so? Hopefully it won't take too long although I've already had to unstitch a row because I miscounted. Grrr...

Best Son and I went to see 28 Years Later today. It was so good! I loved 28 Days Later and I'm really looking forward to the next film in the series, The Bone Temple.

One of the grocery stores I frequent is heavily promoting their new rewards program, which involves you having to download an app. Prior to this new program you just had to enter your phone number to get rewards. I chose not to give them my phone number and I don't care what I'm "giving up", I don't think I'll be downloading their app. I have app fatigue at this point - everyone has a fucking app they want you to download and I'm just done with it. They do not make anything easier for me and I consider them an imposition. I'm being asked to download something on my phone which I pay for for what? Deals? How in the world did stores manage before smartphones? Side rant - restaurants that only have QR codes and no menus. This assumes that everyone has a smart phone and I think that assumption just needs to stop. I don't know, maybe this is the old person in me talking.

Listening

Podcasts I've listened to this week:

Reading

I finished reading the book I mentioned last week, The Life of Nuns. It was surprisingly interesting! Those 15th century German nuns could get spicy!

I decided to finish a book I'd started a while ago, Terrible Lizards (ed. by Kyle J. Durrant). I really wanted to like this book. It was about dinosaurs! And it was created to raise funds for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I found out about the book from a blog I follow that specifically posts about dinosaur (and other prehistoric animal) fiction. Even that blogger warned that the book was pretty underwhelming. And, except for a few stories, honestly, it was very middling. But I finished it, finally, and now I have a reward book waiting for me!

I just love Lois McMaster Bujold's Penric and Desdemona series and a new novella just came out, The Adventure of the Demonic Ox. I will be starting that one tonight.

Watching

I'm a few episodes into season 2 of Babylon 5. In the last one I watched, people are starting to realize that something unfriendly is in the far reaches of space.

I watched this season's first episode of The Madame Blanc Mysteries but other than that it's been a lot of random videos on either YouTube or Nebula.

I watched a really cool video on saltwater crocodiles - they have some super neat biological aspects (like skin sensors all over their bodies that let them feel everything going on in the water) and they are frighteningly wicked intelligent. Apparently in Australia people who camp in areas that have saltwater crocs are warned to switch up their daily routines because those crocs are watching you and remembering what you're doing and when you'll be there. I watched this on Nebula but it's also available on YouTube - The Insane Biology of: The Saltwater Crocodile.

That's about it for this week!