Week in Review: I’ve done gone primal

It’s been a busy week and I haven’t gotten the chance to sit down and write about some of the things bouncing around in my head. But I do want to a week (and a half in this case) in review. What I’ve been playing, watching, reading, cooking, etc.

The Week in Games:

Started playing Crusader Kings II the Game of Thrones mod. My goal is to create a Dornish One World Government. I started out wanting to create a matriarchy monarchy for sake of delicious escapist power fantasies BUT that is not possible. Best you can get in the GoT mod is eldest child inheriting regardless of gender (which is what Dorne is, a lone jewel of common sense in the GoT patriarchal system). Supposedly I could create a matri-lineal system in the Elder Scrolls mod but I find myself needing to brush up on that lore (and EQNext’s new lore since we’re on the topic).

So far it’s been really fun. I’m going through it kinda slowly (agonizingly slowly if you ask my husband who zips through a year a second or some such nonsense), but I find I really enjoy the narrative in the smaller details. For instance, I made a minor mistake early on in my first reign (as the awesome Myriah the Old) and gave one of my son’s some land… that happened to be currently occupied. The previous tenant did not take kindly to that and started just generally being pissy at me, trying to start plots and such. Thankfully, everyone loved me (70 great and prosperous years as ruler, who wouldn’t love that) so it never amounted to much. And there was this one vassal whose wives kept dying of a mysterious illness about a year after getting married to him and about 4 months after giving birth to a daughter. He’s on his fourth wife now. I’ve got my eye on him.

I’m also playing some iOS games: TripleTown is addictive as all get out and Duolingo is really capturing my attention. Duolingo is more of a language learning app, but it’s really great at gamify-ing the process and making it fun and encouraging. It’s also rather effective as I have learned several new words in Spanish and can construct a sentence other than “No hablo espanol”.

The Week in Reading:

I really liked the call-out in this comic. It’s sorta subtle, but it’s a pretty concise critique on who we do and do not consider good/heroic and bad/criminal.

This is also a favorite comic of mine that came back across my dash this week. It’s a great metaphor for what the feminist ‘click’ can feel like.

This piece on Jennifer Lawrence and her brand of body-positive-ness in the context of Hollywood celebrity was really good. She’s a wonderful actor and I enjoy watching her on and off screen, but she can say some things that are ultimately fat-shaming. She’s not perfect, we all have our human foibles.

You know who doesn’t have human foibles? Hyram McDaniels, he’s literally a five headed dragon. Go listen to Nightvale. Yes, this counts as reading.

And to round-out an admittedly short round-up (I need to start bookmarking these throughout the week instead of trawling my tumblr likes) there’s this wonderful collection of body-positive and self-care positive workout inspo images.

The Week in Watching:

Nothing! I have watched nothing! All my shows are on hiatus! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Sleepy Hollow returns tonight (Monday for all you future-peoples), and I haven’t gotten to watch last weeks Almost Human yet. Also looking forward to new episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Elementary. And Sherlock, but ‘looking forward to’ is maybe not the right word. I enjoy the show, but I want to watch it more just so I can stop having to avoid spoilers on the interwebs.

The Week in Cooking:

So this week I started back on mainly primal eating. It was one of my New Year’s resolutions, but I wasn’t able to really give it a good go until this weekend. My favorite way to go about cooking for the week (primal or not) is to buy groceries on Saturday and then do all my cooking on Sunday for the week and just reheat for lunch and dinner after work. ‘Cause when I get home after being up and working for 12 hours I reeeeeeally don’t feel like standing around in the kitchen cooking even so much as mac n cheese. So I just get it all out of the way on SUnday. It usually takes a couple hours (this week took two and a half hours), but it’s well worth having my evenings free during the week. And usually when I’m cooking like this I cook two or three BIG meals and then just eat on them throughout the week. My husband and roommate typically eat their own stuff, which is there prerogative and means more for me!

Mmm. Pictures. Tasty Pictures.

This week I made Bacon-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin and Lemon-Thyme Tilapia packets for my meats and then some roasted green beans and root vegetables for my veggies. For my breakfast I oven-hard-boiled a batch of eggs and made some breakfast sausage balls. Those things are SUPER filling. I eat my breakfast around 8 am and I am not hungry until after 2 pm. I also branched out and tried something new with the roasted root vegetables: turnips. Turns out, I do not like turnips. Or at least not roasted turnips. Sad face.

Well that’s a wrap folks. I know not the most exciting week (yay for working full-time!), but who knows? Maybe next week we’ll go to the amusement park. (No, we won’t. It’s bloody cold outside.)