Hils's journal

I honestly don't know where the weekend has gone. Well, I suppose they do say time flies when you're having fun.

Friday I squeezed in an episode of Kingdom ahead of the weekly Newcastle Zoom call. More on Kingdom later. The Zoom call itself was pretty chill. We just chatted, mostly about Star Wars for reasons that escape me now. I bowed out early because there was hockey to watch.

So, a brief overview on the NHL playoffs. Teams who finish at the top of the league play each other in a series of rounds. Whoever wins the series goes on to the next one and whoever loses is eliminated until there are two teams left and whoever wins that series wins the Stanley Cup. Each series is a best of 7 games. At one point the Avalanche were 3-1 down in the second series and they somehow managed to drag it to 3-3 which meant the 7th game was the deciding game. That's the game that happened on Friday.

As I've mentioned before I've struggled to get invested in hockey since the season was suspended due to COVID. I've enjoyed the few games I've managed to watch but it hasn't occupied my every waking moment like it did before. I just didn't have the headspace for it and everything else that's been going on.

But I tuned in and it was a good game! With everything on the line both teams gave it everything they had. Every time one team scored, the other equalised within a few minutes. Eventually it went to overtime and the Avs lost, but I didn't have it in me to be too mad or disappointed. They did their best, and now they get to go back home to their families having been living in a bubble since the beginning of August.

I have no idea when the next season is going to start or how it's going to work so I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

Saturday I had my weekly Stardew Valley session with Emma, and then after dinner it was time to stream ALL THE THINGS. I watched another episode of Kingdom, then two episodes of Lost Tomb with madamoisellebon followed by three episodes of My Strange Friend with the Twitter group chat gang.

My Strange Friend is definitely a show that needs to be watched in a group, ideally with alcohol to hand if you are someone who drinks. It is utterly incoherent. We had to go back and see if we'd somehow missed something at the end of the last episode we watched last week but nope there's just an inexplicable jump between one episode and the next. Someone joked that maybe they only had Yibo for a few days of filming so they just built the show around the footage they had. It actually wouldn't surprise me if that was the case.

Still, the fact that show is bad doesn't make watching it any less fun. We all laughed a lot and I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday night.

Sunday was spent watching even more of ALL THE TV. Watched the latest translated episode of Street Dance of China with the Australians followed by a spinoff they do where the four captains and the producers sit around and eat food and chat. So that was nearly 4 hours of TV, and the thing is it goes so fast! It doesn't feel like a long show at all. After that I watched the last episode of season 1 of Kingdom and I need to yell about this now because HOLY SHIT

( Spoilers for Kingdom Season 1 )

I also finished Lost Tomb with madamoisellebon and we started Lost Tomb 2. I don't really have a huge amount to say about it tbh but here's some general thoughts under the cut.

( The Lost Tomb 1 & 2 )

Since it's a holiday in the US today madamoisellebon is going to watch some more of Lost Tomb 2 with me after dinner. Looking forward to it.

I still haven't touched my Untamed fic I really need to try get some editing done this week so I can get it to a beta and start writing one of the many Guardian ideas I've written down.