Tag: Disney Plus

Silver Bells

And the countdown to Christmas has officially begun.

It’s chilly again this morning–the space heater is on–and the electricians are supposedly coming by this morning to see why our central heat isn’t working. It’s not really been an enormous problem–it’s only been bearably cold so far this December, but one never knows when the mercury is going to take a massive nose dive. My space heater makes the kitchen bearable in the worst of the cold, whenever that comes–and there’s blankets and extra clothes for the rest of the Lost Apartment. I paid most of the bills yesterday–there are still a few to go–and of course, there’s laundry and dishes to get done this morning before I head into the office.

I also took the plunge and signed up for Disney Plus yesterday–bundling it with my existing ESPN+ and Hulu Live subscriptions made it practically next to nothing, really, and so this weekend, since there’s no LSU game (sobs for end of football season), Paul and I can dive headfirst into The Mandalorian. Since The Rise of Skywalker opens the following Saturday, I think this is the proper way to prepare for the final installment of Star Wars. 

And I can think of no better holiday experience than seeing the end of the Star Wars Skywalker saga, can you?

We don’t decorate the Lost Apartment for Christmas anymore; Skittle never cared about the decorations, other than the occasional knocking of an ornament off the tree, which he’d then look at it for a moment before getting bored and moving on. Scooter, however, sees a Christmas tree as an amusement park. His first Christmas with us saw us constantly having to get him out of the tree or setting the tree back upright or trying to keep him from eating the cord for the lights. After that hellish first Christmas trying to keep Scooter from electrocuting himself or destroying the tree, we decided to not decorate anymore. It made me, at first, a little sad that we didn’t decorate; Paul and I have always really had the best times with Christmas since we’ve been together–especially the ones when we were so poor we couldn’t really buy each other gifts. The older I get the less important gifts are; although I do like getting nice things for Paul to open excitedly on Christmas Eve. I don’t ever remember opening presents on Christmas morning, to be honest; my parents both worked when my sister and I were kids, and Christmas was a morning when they didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn, and could sleep in–as long as their kids didn’t wake them up wanting to open presents….so they resolved that issue by having us open presents on Christmas Eve. When my grandmother and her second husband lived in Chicago, we used to go over to her place on Christmas day for dinner and some more gifts, then watch football games before going home. So Paul and I have always done the same–open gifts on Christmas Eve, spent Christmas day watching movies if there’s no Saints game; and if there is a Saints game, we watch that before finding movies to watch.

Having Disney Plus now broadens our options. After I got all signed into the app yesterday, I briefly looked through the viewing choices, and was enormously pleased.

I just have to figure out how to make sure I get my ESPN and Hulu bundles worked out so I don’t overpay this month. *adds to list*

And on that note, ’tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader!

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Brilliant Disguise

Good morning, Wednesday, and it’s pay day again–aka pay the bills day. Hurray! But, as I always say when it’s pay-the-bills day, at least I can pay the bills.

Just another thing to be grateful for this holiday season.

I also slept so fucking well last night! I feel like I’ve been renewed, despite waking up to wretched issues with my computer, which seem to have been taken care of by rebooting the stupid thing. (The mouse wouldn’t click on things; imagine how frustrating that would be as you try to delete emails.) Heavy sigh. It’s also cold and gray this morning; the temperature dropped about twenty-thirty degrees yesterday around noon; it was very strange if typical for December in New Orleans. (I’m also trying to pay the bills, but Google Chrome doesn’t seem to want to cooperate; as you can imagine, I am having a rather frustrating morning here in the Lost Apartment thank to shitty, undependable Apple products. Not a fan of Windows by any means, but the decline in quality of Apple products since the death of Steve Jobs has been incredibly swift, surprising, and unsuspected; although I did think when he died Apple was probably going to go into the toilet. I just didn’t expect it to be this fast.)

We watched another episode of Truth Be Told on Apple Plus last night, only to discover, to our shock and surprise, that it’s episodic; unlike Hulu or Netflix, Apple Plus’ shows air like a regular network’s–a new episode per week. We’re enjoying Truth Be Told but primarily because the acting is terrific–Octavia Spencer is luminous; you simply can’t look away from her–even if the writing (the dialogue in particular) leaves a little something to be desired.

And yes, I am probably going to take the plunge and get Disney Plus. The allure of The Mandalorian is simply too great for me to resist. I can always cancel it later, after all.

As I ponder this chilly morning two weeks before Christmas about what to say about Christmas–you see how bad I am at this? I thought, hey, every day during Christmas season–after of course Thanksgiving–you should post something about Christmas, since the book is set during the holiday season and therefore you can promote your book some more, thus using the blog the way it should be. But here I am, frustrated with my computer functionality and unable to think of a single thing to say about Christmas.

Ah, well, perhaps I’ll have better luck at this tomorrow.

And now back to the spice mines.

eDFOsbD

Midnight Blue

I am debating as to whether I should sign up for Disney Plus.

I really want to watch The Mandalorian, as a lifetime Star Wars aficionado, plus they have all that other cool Star Wars and Marvel stuff, not to mention all the old Disney movies. (Wouldn’t it be fun to rewatch all those cheesy Kurt Russell as a teen star Disney movies?) I can also bundle my ESPN subscription with it, and since Hulu Live is raising its prices….I may have to bundle Hulu in with it and only subscribe to live-watch services during football season.

It’s interesting how streaming has changed the way we watch television, isn’t it?

I recently added Apple Plus to our apparently never-ending collection of streaming services that we pay for, but you know what? I still am paying less than I did for cable.

Fuck you, Cox.

We started watching Octavia Spencer’s new show, Truth Be Told, on Apple Plus last night, in which Spencer plays a former journalist whose big break came writing about a murder twenty years ago–only now evidence supporting the fact that the convicted killer might have been wrongfully convicted has shown up, so she wants to get to the truth now. She’s no longer a reporter, but rather has a true crime podcast (very modern take on the crime-investigating reporter, actually), and so she starts looking into the case again. The killer, who was sixteen when he was sent to prison, is now played by Aaron Paul.  The writing was a little clunky, but Elizabeth Perkins is also cast in a supporting role, and so Paul and I are writing off the issues with the first episode as “set-up-itis” and will continue watching.

I just cannot make up my mind about adding Disney Plus to our life. I also am not certain what all streaming services I am paying for right now; and I need to get that straightened out before I go adding something new to the monthly billing.

Still–paying far less than I did with Cox. Hulu’s cost is going up about fifteen dollars–ironically, I got another thing in the mail begging me to come back to Cox–for the new price Hulu will be charging. But it’s only for twelve months–and you know once that twelve months is up Cox will go back to their absurd gouging prices again. I need more information on Disney Plus, and what all comes with it, and whether their bundling with Hulu and ESPN is worth it. (You can’t get live Hulu, which is problematic during football season, but the rest of the year it doesn’t seem to matter as much; although it will be necessary to have live streaming options once the summer Olympics roll around again next summer–can you believe it’s already been four years since the last summer Olympics? Madness.)

Heavy heaving sigh, I hate making adult decisions.

But the inbox is getting emptier–that’s the primary goal for today–and maybe, just maybe, I might get some writing done today.

And on that note, it’s back to the spice mines.

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