Musing Monday (70): Favorite Podcasts

Rules: 

• Musing Mondays is a weekly meme hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker that asks you to muse about something book related each week. 

My musings for the week...

Once again, it has been some time since I last participated in this weekly meme. Since I didn't have any music I felt like sharing this Monday, I decided to do Musing Mondays instead. First off, I'm going to answer the random weekly questions I missed, before moving on to my other musings for the week. All questions are marked with the date that they were originally posted. 

June 12th: Which would you rather live without? Books or chocolate.

This question is so simple but also kind of evil. How can I be expected to choose between books or chocolate? I love books but I also love chocolate too much to just immediately say that yeah, I'll be willing to live without it.

June 19th: What is your favorite Mark Twain novel?

I don't have a favorite Mark Twain novel because I haven't read anything by him yet. Eventually, I'll probably pick up one of his books. However, at the moment, I don't have any foreseeable plans to do so.

June 26th: What is your favorite spot to read during the summer?

California is hot in the summer. I mean, you can just look at the recent weather patterns and you'll see what I mean. So, I'll read in places that are cool with lots of sunlight. Usually, I'll just read at my desk.

July 3rd: Do you follow book release dates and eagerly await a new arrival? Or do you just kind of check things out in a more casual manner?

While I do eagerly wait for books to come out, I also have a more casual approach to release dates. That's mainly because I don't feel like I have to be the first person to read a thing, and I don't mind waiting months, sometimes a full year, before getting the book in question. I'm just not in a rush.

Other musings for the week...

Today, I wanted to talk about something a little different and it will be in the form of a list, which I haven’t done in a long time. I don’t believe I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog before, and recently I got to thinking about podcasts. I thought it would be interesting to talk about some of the podcasts I’m currently listening to, which isn’t that many at all. However, I hope to change that very soon.

• First up is Midnight in Karachi, a Tor.com podcast. There hasn’t been an episode in a while. Still, I’ve been steadily working my way through them, and so far it’s been pretty great getting to listen to what authors had to say. I’m not listening to them in any particular order, but my favorite ones so far have been Aliette de Bodard and N.K. Jemisin. I’m sure that list will expand once I get around to listening to more of the podcast.
• Next up is Black Girl Nerds. I love this podcast a lot! Once again, I’m late to the party. So, there are a lot of episodes that I’ve yet to listen to that I’ll have plenty of them to keep me busy for a while. The episodes are always interesting, and it’s just a joy getting to listen to so many different topics and guests. 
• Welcome to Night Vale. I’m terribly behind on this podcast series, but I hope to listen to more episodes soon. All I have to say about this one is: I finally get the hype. 
• And last, but certainly not least: Fangirl Happy Hour. This one is pretty much the reason why I’ve started listening to more and more podcast, especially recently. I’ve been listening to this podcast for a while off and on, but I recently went on a binge of all the episodes I missed. 

So, that’s my very short list of podcasts I regularly listen to. It’s not a lot, but it’s certainly a start. Do you have any favorite podcasts? If so, tell me about them in the comments down below.

Pardon the Construction...

At the end of last year, I was pretty happy with the overall design of Our Thoughts Precisely. However, I’ve done a lot of thinking, especially about the direction I want to take this blog. I’ve had a lot of time to think and ultimately decided that change wasn’t just on the horizon, it was already here. If you’ve noticed, blog posts have been more sporadic than before, and I’ve taken a lot more week long breaks—between catching a cold back in May, reading slumps, and lack of motivation to write anything. Honestly, I haven’t been reading as much young adult or middle grade books as I used to. So, I haven’t really felt like I had as much to post on Our Thoughts Precisely. As part of my 2017 resolutions, I wanted to incorporate more of my interests into my blogging. And I didn’t feel like the old design of Our Thoughts Precisely really reflected that anymore. So, my first thought was to give the blog a new look.

I’m going to be honest: deciding how to change the header, the background, and the overall look of the blog wasn’t easy. Actually, the new header is the second one I made. The first one, well, I felt like it was too along the same sort of vein as the old look of Our Thoughts Precisely—i.e. a similar, if not identical color scheme and style. It took me a long time to make it, and I struggled with parts of it because I wasn’t totally happy with it. While, in hindsight, I later realized that I wanted something with cleaner lines, limited colors, and no solid background except for white. But, I also wanted to incorporate all the things that I associate with this blog—birdcages, teacups, skeleton keys, and birds. And the first redesign just didn’t fit that vision. So, I started over again and let me tell you, that was the best decision because I found it so much easier to just sit down and create the header.

About the new header…

The last couple of headers for the blog were pieces I drew on my computer, but recently I got a new Samsung Tablet that I now use for art. There’s one particular app that I use: MediBang Paint. This app is probably the best drawing app I’ve ever used (Adri and I plan to talk more about this app on a later post), and the standard brushes made it so easy to draw the design for this header. The one I specifically used to make the uncolored layer is the Rotation Symmetry Pen with these specific settings: opacity of 93%; width of 1px; 12 lines; color is black; and with “pen pressure size” and “opacity by pressure” checked (pictured below, click to enlarge). The Rotation Symmetry Pen is amazing. It’s my new favorite pen, because it makes patterns and backgrounds so much easier to draw.

Other changes…

Before I end this post, I want to talk about some of the other changes that I’m going to steadily incorporate onto the blog. I won’t stop writing reviews, participating in weekly memes, or writing about book related things—like book tags, lists, etc. However, the main change is that Our Thoughts Precisely isn’t going to be limited to just nonfiction, young adult, or middle grade anymore. I plan to do reviews for most of the books I read instead of limiting myself and what I can post to this blog. Other stuff includes just about anything I or my two co-bloggers want to write about. As such, I’ve changed the sort of byline for the header from “book blog” to just “a place for our thoughts”. What it comes down to is change. It’s easy to get comfortable with what I’m currently doing. However, sometimes comfortable is also stagnant, and that's exactly how I started to feel.

So, I think that about covers it. This post got a lot longer than I thought it would be, but once I started to write I figured out pretty quickly that I had a lot to say. I plan to overhaul a lot of the pages as well, and hope to be done with it soon. So, I'm going to spend the rest of the week making changes.

Quarterly Recap: April-June

Well, looking back at April, May, and June, I realized how much time I actually took off. However, it was kind of necessary because I've come up with some changes I want to make to the blog...

April Review:

• Labyrinth Lost
• The Hate U Give
• The Crooked Sixpence

May Reviews:

• Windfall
• Strange The Dreamer
• The Gauntlet

June Reviews:

• Colored Pencil Painting Portraits
• Starflight
• A Crown of Wishes 

Other April Posts:

• Quarterly Recap

Other June Posts:

• So Many Questions + Do I Still DNF Books?
• Weekend Tidbits # 11: Some Exciting Things

I don't really have much to say for this section of the post, because I have a few upcoming things that will go more in depth with what I plan to do. So, it just wouldn't make sense to repeat some of those points.

Weekend Tidbits {#12}: Art Haul

I’m not going to bother with a long introduction because I meant to post this awhile ago (around Easter actually). This is just the kind of post that I kept adding to the longer it sat in the draft folder. Now that I've come back to it again and added a few more things to it, I figured that it was time to just post it so I can finally move on...

For Easter, I did some baking. The cookie recipe is Hershey's Doubly Chocolate Cookies just sans the chocolate chips, because they weren't necessary for what I was doing. I used the dough two ways: heart shaped cookies (pictured below) with the Wilton silicone heart mold, and the rest went to just ordinary cookies. The regular old cookies were used to make those sandwiches (pictured below). I also used up the left over candy melts from a different baking project, as you can see on the cookie sandwiches. The heart shaped ones also got a similar treatment, but I never got around to getting a picture of them before they got eaten. By the way, they were delicious.

In 2016, I focused more on developing my skills at digital painting, but this year I'm doing more than that. I've gotten back into painting by hand, and it's so much fun. It has been a long time since I’ve used watercolors, and I don't mean a couple of months. I'm talking about years. Yes, it has been that long, and during that time I lost my old watercolor pans as well as most of my supplies. So, I actually have a small art haul.

I picked up some Reeves Watercolour paints, new brushes, a watercolor pad, and a basic palette. I’ll probably talk about the paints later since I’ve only used them a few times. I also picked up some Papermate felt tip pens because they were on sale, and I wanted to try them. I’ve only used them a handful of times, but I love them so much. The colors are really nice and I’ve had a lot of fun just using them to doodle or quickly go over sketches. Like the paint, I'll probably have more to say about the felt tip pens once I've used them more than I already have. The last thing I picked up were two Gelly Role gel pens in white. My sister let me borrow hers, and I really loved how well the gel pens work for smaller details on top of the reeves paint. So, I felt that it was necessary to get my own since I plan on painting more.

Since I wrote this post a while ago, I've picked up more than just the above shown items. I've gotten some acrylic brushes, Reeves Gouache, and a new sharpener.

I forgot to mention this on twitter, but I picked up a few comics on free comic book day. I went to two different stores, but by far my experience at Ryan's Comics was the best. The staff was friendly, and they had a cosplayer by the door telling you about the event on the way in. So, there was no confusion about the event and how many comics you could pick. I've made purchases from Ryan's Comics before, and suffice it to say I will be going back again. 

 

Weekend Tidbits {#11}: Some Exciting Things...

Hi Adri here, today I’m discussing some interesting things I’ve done and bought between February and March. On a side note, when I say we, I mean co blogger Andrea and another relative. So here are some exciting things that went down.

Funko!

Between these two months, not only did I add seven Funkos to my collection, but I also out Funko’d Breana! By at least two now… I’m not going to get into details as this post will become overly long. Although I’ve been lacking in watching much TV, these are still some of my favorite characters. Anyway, I really wish there were Mirror’s Edge Catalyst and Miraculous Ladybug Funkos –though it is just a dream *Sigh*.

  

Marlon...

On February 24th we had the opportunity to attend the live taping of the season finale of Marlon, a new show premiering this summer on August 16th on NBC. In addition to that I actually got to see the taping of two other episodes –Including the pilot episode last summer when I got to meet Marlon Wayans. During the second taping, while we were in deep conversation, Notlim Taylor caught us off guard when she asked if it was okay to jump in line in front of us. She is really nice, and she does a great job in her role as Marley. I truly enjoyed every episode I went to see so much that I was laughing and crying all at the same time. So although I haven’t been watching much TV, I’ll definitely tune into Marlon.

Kong: Skull Island...

Next on March 6th we were able to attend a screening of Kong: Skull Island. What more can I say, I loved it; if I had to rate it now I’d say 4 bird cages. There were some parts that I was like: ew, gross! But it didn’t affect my thoughts on the plot. Also the theater sold chicken tenders and curly fires... Um, Yum!

Left Valentines day left overs…

I’m always looking for more accessories to accent my clothing, so on the way to see Kong, we stopped at a Toys R Us, which had a Claire’s section in it. I looked at the $2 rack, and near the bottom sat the last Valentine’s Day scarf. I was like “It’s pretty, it’s the last one, and I’m not leaving it!” And thus I brought it and sported it after the screening.



Beauty and the Beast...

Next I had the opportunity to see an advance screening of Beauty and the Beast at the TCL Chinese Theater. This was my first time going to that theater. It’s so nice in there. The elaborate architectural work gave me inspiration to create stuff. They gave posters out too. As for the movie, let me not lie, I assumed I wasn’t going to like it at all. However, as I watched the movie I fell in love with this magical rendition of Beauty and the Beast. Plus I also thought that the CGI blended well. As of right now Beauty and the Beast is my favorite movie of 2017. If I had to rate it I’d say 4.5 bird cages.





Horizon: Zero Dawn...

Last but not least, after ordering two movies from the Red Box there was an option to get a free game. So I decided to try out Horizon: Zero dawn, knowing I hate stealth games. But, like Beauty and the Beast, I fell in love with it! I didn’t get far so I have no comment on the plot, but I enjoyed playing. I’m positive I’ll be glued to my controller when I get my own copy. One thing I must mention is the in game capture mode, which allows you to zoom and angle the camera around the character. I totally love it! There is the option of no filter (top left) and custom filter (bottom).

And that almost sums up February and March! What exciting things have you bought or done recently?