I love the move The Martian so when this movie was announced and it’s by the same writer I was excited! I ended up buying the audiobook and could not stop listening. It’s a fun and easy to follow story that I highly recommend. The audiobook is probably the best I’ve ever heard. The narrator was so great and I do prefer it than the film. But the film is still great! It’s a great way to visualize the story as it is scifi and it is stunning looking. Also Ryan Gosling is easy on the eyes too. 

 I was coming into this movie expecting another The Martian but no, they seem to tackle it a little differently. Ryan Gosling character, Ryland Grace, doesn’t talk as much as I expected him to be. All the science and math talk is very cut down. Which was mostly internal dialogue in the book since he is mostly by himself. It is written in his perspective. He is a lot more funny and smart than what the movie portrays him to be. Practically the same kind of character as The Martian so if they did this to help differentiate from that movie's character than I can understand that. 

So the movie does take some creative liberty with Ryland's character visually. I heard a small clip from Ryan Gosling saying they wanted to add some Chaplin and it definitely shows. They made him be a bit clumsy which adds to his charm. Also his outfits really stood out. The tshirts and sweaters I see people raving about online and I did too. This is a detailed not at all in the book so it really adds to his character. It helps that Ryan Gosling is attractive to make anything look good. The fox sweater would not look good on me but I still want it because its looks like such a comfy sweater when he wears it. 

I find the pacing of the movie pretty fast. I wish they could've push it to the 3 hour mark. It basically covered the major key moments in the books. I do find it visually stunning. Sure, the lighting is darker than I would've liked. I am surprised but glad they used a puppet for Rocky. They did make him super adorable! A lot more than I imagined in my head. The book described him as spider like but the movie made him seem more like a crab to me in its shape but it does have more of a spider movement. 

I find the scenes between Grace and Rocky were a lot better than him on Earth. There is one scene of a badly ADV talk in Mandarin. It was very brief and it made me wonder why they did that. Maybe because I listened to the book already but I did not get emotional during this movie. And I'm a crybaby but the pacing really didn't get me as hook to the movie adaptation. The book got me emotional. I am enjoying seeing people wanting more stories like this and even taking on knitting as the fox sweater isn't a mass produced product but a knitting pattern. I am considering learning to knit to have this sweater too.

Overall, I do recommend watching this movie and hope it also inspires you to get the book or knit! 

 I’ve seen ads for this meal service a lot and I have tried it years ago and I am trying it again. What got me to try again is for the free breakfast meal which is a deal that is pretty appealing. I don't find their meals to be very affordable but they are very balanced meals. The portion size is about the same as frozen dinner meals. Sometimes its easy for me to finish and others I find it difficult to finish. Each meal is about $15 per depending on your box size. The less you pick the more it costs which sucks but since its a business they want people to buy more so they make more. I would definitely take advantage of their half off discounts and cancel. 

 They have a decent amount of meal choices to choose from. I do find the meals to be good but not something that I would be craving. It’s seasoned healthily and has quite of bit of veggies which are good but the broccoli ones tend to be dry and not have that fresh crunch since they are roasted. 

The packaging is like a tv dinner. I do find it very difficult to pull the plastic film off. It’s also very loud when I do get it to pull. But most of the time I just stab an opening with a plastic knife. I take these to work since that’s when I usually get a decent meal in during the weekday. 

The portions varies. Some a little more than others. I do find the protein heavy meals very difficult for me to finish during my 30 minute lunch break. It just makes me feel fuller faster and I do find it wasteful that I’d have to throw the rest away. So I like the more lighter meals as I can finish them easier. 

As for customer service. It can be helpful but a bit annoying. I had a delivery during a huge snow storm which I assumed they would delay a day or so but they didn’t. The package did arrive but 3 days late. So technically they would say it’s not safe but it’s up to you whether you want to risk eating it or just throw it all away. They did refund me but since there was a discount they didn’t a weird credit thing. They split it for partial as credit and the rest back to my card. My credit was screwed because it didn’t factor in the discount it gave me more than I actually paid for. The problem with their credits is that they don’t apply to your next order if there’s a discount. So if you have a discount for coming back it will be awhile till you can use them. You have to contact customer service to request the discount to be removed. Just canceling the subscription and resubscribing does nothing. But you can request the credits to be refund to your card. They won’t actually refund the full credit amount since it isn’t accurate like mine was. They will ask you why and everything. They do have an AI bot customer service chat that you can request an agent in. 

 Overall, I do think it’s gotten better but it is still expensive. And they already sent me a discount postcard to come back. I think their marketing is annoying but that seems to be the marketing tactic these days. It is definitely a healthy way to eat if you don’t do it already. They never made me feel bad. I do prefer their fish dishes than their beef ones. 

 I’ve been subscribing to their monthly snack box for a couple years and I do enjoy what I’ve got. Since I also get Sakuraco boxes I did notice that sometimes they offer the same snacks. Not to say they are identical but it is interesting to get snacks that both boxes have on the same month. 

Due to the recent news of de minimis exemption ending, I contacted customer service chat since I saw no news from them addressing this to their US customers. They can’t help you and won’t refund you if you have subscription longer than 1 month if you want to cancel. And customs questions they would just tell you to contact your local customs office. 

I do find this movie beautiful. The animals do have a style to them that is more realistic than cartoon. The landscape and water is quite realistic not stylized to fit the style of the animals. 

The story is up for interpretation as some scenes are a bit abstract. Definitely a movie I'd recommend to animal lovers. It might be good for children but its not an action packed movie to keep a long attention span if they're easily bored or distracted if they're young.

 Andor is a spin off Star Wars series that is a prequel to the movie Rogue One. And the Rogue One movie is a prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy. This is all build up that leads into getting the Death Star plans. So since its before the original trilogy, there are no Jedis or Siths. No major characters like R2D2 that appears or even mentioned. But I do find this series very compelling and entertaining. The story really helps build the world and the empire as well as the rebels. 

 The series follows several characters and plotlines. It can be a bit confusing to keep track of them all and sometimes some story beats are fast and some are slow. Sometimes some parts of the story seems like filler. But overall the story and acting is superb! I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did but it is pretty well written and acted. The music also fits so well and I find the tone to be quite serious and tense. 

 There's only 2 seasons so its not a huge time commitment.  Definitely one of the best Star Wars in years!

 If you like wild animals and like the idea of caring for them in a rescue then this game is a nice way to experience that life. I found this game from searching on the app store looking for apps with foxes.  This game is free to play and pretty easy to play. You do have to unlock or pay for certain animals. There are optional ads to get more coins to pay for decorations and animals or have chores done.

Game play is pretty simple, you just drag the icons from the bottom bar to the animal or enclosure area to do chores like feeding and giving animals treatment. The rotation is a truck will drive up and honk. An icon will pop up on the left side where it will take you to the truck. A pop up will come up to show you what animal that is in need of care. You get profile of the animal with name, photo, ailment that needs treated, and bars that shows you their health. The bars are to indicate the animal's weight, health, and treatment level. The goal is to get them to go green. The weight is change by food which is the scale icon. If the animal is underweight you can drag the food icon to the bowl up to 3 times to give it more food. The scale updated right away so you can check the clipboard to see if its enough. The heart is change by water and fresh straw, and the last is obviously the treatment. Once its filled the treatment is done and you don't need to keep giving it treatment. Treatments is pretty simple too. The icons are relatively easy to understand. The sponge is for dirty animals, syringe is vaccines, the tube is for rashes, the pills is for worms, the gauze for injury, and the supplement bottle for pregnancy.  Foot steps icon will appear on the top to end the day. When the animal is healthy a person will come by and ring your doorbell asking to adopt. Adopting gives you coins! You can refuse if you want to keep the animal but there will always be someone coming by to want to adopt it. Once the animal gets adopted you have to clean the enclosure by shoveling up the straw and hosing it down.

 The days are a bit random in how many animals will come. There are obviously caps on how many animals you can care for. Some days you the truck will bring enough to almost cap your animal cap out and some days nothing happens. 

You start off with squirrels and skunks. You can care for up to 4 of each. Its not a lot to start you with so it does get rather boring with just these two. But you can use coins to unlock more animals! However it does take a bit. You will have to not buy any decorations if you want to get enough to unlock more animals. Most of the animals cost 1600 coins which is a bit hard to reach when squirrels and skunks get adopted for 20 coins. Rare ones will get you 40 coins! There are trophies that you can easily get that will reward you with coins as well. You can watch ads for coins but they only give me 10 coins which is way too little to be worth it. The cheapest animal you can unlock is the bighorn sheep which is about 580 coins. The second cheapest is black bears at 1200 coins. Most expensive are the wolves at 2000 coins. You can buy just the predators or all animals which strangely excludes mustangs. The bigger animals will fetch you 40 coins when they get adopted but they are capped at 3 each. When you unlock more animals it does get a bit easier to get the coins to unlock others. 

I do find controlling the game a bit frustrating. The icons are small and on a phone it isn't the most forgiving. So many times I try to drag the icons up only to accidentally try to close the app down on my iPhone since the icon won't let my use it unless my finger is right on top of it. The same is for everything. You must put the food in the food bowl spot and the treatment right on the animal. But this is minor. Its doesn't make me hate it but it is a slight annoyance on a small screen.

 Overall I do like this game and would recommend it for anyone who wants to virtually take care of wild animals.

 Black Mirror is a series I've been a fan of since the first season so I was excited to see that a new season came out. Some seasons has its ups and downs. I did feel each season had one or two good episodes and the rest were ok in my opinion. But this one I feel every episode is pretty good! Usually most of the episodes leave me feeling disturbed but most of the ones in this season didn't. Not to say none of it was disturbing but I felt less dread than usual.

 Some of the episodes are very human. Some interesting themes to. I was surprised the last episode is a continuation of an episode of a previous season. I think its a nice bookend to the season as it seems to circle back to the first episode. Overall I quite enjoyed this season. It didn't leave me feeling bad which is unexpected but not unwelcomed.

 So I've been hearing how good Severance was so I decided to give it a go to see. This is a Apple TV+ show but you can buy it on other platforms. At this moment there are 2 seasons with a third season planned in the future. I got hooked in the first 30 minutes. First season is great! I'm definitely glad I waited to watch it since I wouldn't be able to wait to see what happens next. The second season was a bit slower than I'd like but I was pretty satisfied with how they ended that season.

Its hard for me to describe the premise of this show but its pretty much one of those stories where there's an big corporation doing shady things with their employees. Its a scifi with the technology of a little chip that gets implanted into employees who are working on the severed floor which is below ground. They're severed because their memories are severed. They don't remember anything about themselves or much of the outside world. The floor is brightly lit with lots of plain hallways to make it a maze and no windows. When they're done their work shift of the day they don't remember anything of what they did at work. This creates two separate lives in one body. I found this show pretty thought provoking and entertaining. The writing is great, the intro music and animation is great, the acting is great, and I just really enjoyed it. The way it pokes fun at corporate speak and world was just fun to watch. Just the awkwardness between employees and their superiors was amusing to me. While I never had a office job, this kind of work environment is still happens to other industries so its something anyone who had a job can be familiar with.

I didn't expect to see Ben Stiller's name in the credits as a producer and director but I'm glad he's doing well. There's also some familiar guest actors that I was happy to see again! Overall, definitely recommend the show and say that people who said it was good is telling the truth. I look forward to season 3!

 This movie exceeded my expectations. I haven't heard of it before so I never read the book that this is based from. It looks cute from the trailers and the trailer didn't have dialogue which is a neat way to handle it. But the animals do talk. It has a great cast of known celebrities. I think the casting is well done! I didn't feel any of them were casted for their big name *cough*ChrisPratt*COUGH*

 The movie made me cry. Its such a simple but beautifully done story with barely any humans. Not having humans but a robot that becomes "human" is such a neat irony. Its not the focus but it seems like a subtle message on humans an the way we treat our environment. The premise of the this movie is a futuristic high tech task robot accidentally fell on a island. She faces the challenge of doing her job in the wildness and ends up raising a baby goose with the help of a fox who is also trying to eat it. 

 I love the art style. It has a painterly look that really works well with the cartoon style of the animals. The robot doesn't look out of place either in this style. Definitely got a Ghibli influence too. The robot does have most of the screentime. The baby bird is also a main character. The fox is a side character that brings comic relief and a friend to both the robot and the baby bird. He helps inform them on what is normal for a animal. They meet the other animals as well and really shows how important community is.

The story pacing is a bit fast, but nothing I felt was too rushed. The writing is really good. As I said before it has made me cry. All the characters have their own likeable personality and they do talk about "dying" in a real but light hearted way. And they are open about prey and predators. Even so none of them are really painted in a "evil" or "antagonist" way.  

Its a great feel good movie! Definitely would recommend for young ones and adults. If you're an animal lover you would enjoy it.

 This show is better than I expected. Its only on Apple tv but the first episode is free to watch. Its a really nice show about grief, family, and friendships. The show revolves around a therapist Jason Segal plays as, his colleagues that Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford plays, his daughter, his friend, and his neighbors as well as his patients. The shows has great writing! Pretty funny and it does get serious and real at some moments. Very relatable too. Acting and pacing has been great too!

 Since I watched this for Harrison Ford, I will say he's great in it! Since he's one of the main characters he does get quite a bit of screentime. His character's relationship with others is entertaining. His character has Parkinson's and puts up a wall around himself that the show revolves around him slowly opening up to the people he cares about. Definitely a great character for Harrison to play. 

This show has gotten to me emotionally. It has some really great character growth. So far it has 2 seasons out and a 3rd seems to be in the works. I definitely recommend it and wished more people watched it!

I've started to watch more media that Harrison Ford is in since I realized he's in his 80s and its been awhile since I've seen him. So I read that he's currently working on two series and one is a him as a cowboy. I just finished the first season and it seems the second one will start in February.

This show is pretty violent but I am enjoying it so far. The show follows 3 people so there's 3 story lines that I suspect are going to converge at some point. The main story is the Dutton family and their ranch over Yellowstone. This time period had a lot of technological changes and other hardships and Dutton's struggle with the changes. This story does have the largest cast so its not all through the main character which Harrison Ford plays. I do like his character and I am enjoying these "old white man" roles Harrison Ford has been acting as. He is still charming and funny. 

The second story line follows another Dutton, Harrison's character's youngest son, who is abroad in Africa as a hunter as he goes through PTSD of being in WWI. Quite a change from the western cowboy so it was refreshing to get back to this character's story line. Also the actor, Brandon Sklenar, is incredibly attractive. I also do love the female character he meets too and I'm starting to see where their story is going to lead into.

The third story is also a huge tone shift. It follows a young teenage native american girl go through cruelty in a school run by a church. It is hard to watch her get beaten but I find it is well done in how they handle it. The acting and writing for this is great too. 

The pacing in this show is great too! None felt too long or too short. Acting is also great! Definitely looking forward to the second season!

I've been using proxy service to buy things from Japan for years and there are many and they seem to continue to grow. Especially since the yen to cheap compare to the US dollar. I wasn't satisfied with Zenmarket so I wanted to try Buyee out. I find their service fee cheaper since it doesn't charge per item but per order. You have options to just pay the basic fee or pay more for inspection. 

When I looked up Buyee to see other people experience with it, there are quite a few who were dissatisfied and it seems to they misunderstood what a proxy service is. They would buy and item and get it but aren't happy with it so they try to demand a refund. And they get angry when Buyee doesn't refund them. So here's a BIG warning on proxy service, you can't return items! They are just a middle man and aren't going to go through the return process over your items that you want to return. please keep in mind this risk! Don't go using it to buy something expensive or rare on the auction site or mercari since it might be a scam. Mercari now offers listings directly from Japan now and Mercari may be more willing to give you refunds. 

What I find useful with Buyee is that they have discounts. Before mercari opened up internationally, I would use Buyee to buy from Mercari. And would take advantage of their discounts for Mercari as well as Rakuten. You can order from within their site or use their extention to add things to your cart from the shopping site itself. I personally like going through the actual site to shop since not everything gets listed on Buyee when you try to search for it. 

Buyee has a separate page with all the items you put in your cart and it divides them by store. It also tells you how much it will be in your currency. This price does change with the exchange rate too. 

Once your complete an order, the order will move to a different page with status bar for when they buy it to when its in the warehouse. Once it reaches the warehouse it will start a countdown timer on its free storage days. It will also tell you an estimated weight and price for shipping it internationally.

And once you paid for international shipping your order will again move to a different page to track your shipped items. So far I have good experience with Buyee. None of my items arrived damaged or missing. I do wish they had DHL as a shipping option. Most of my packages were shipped by EMS which is pricey sometimes.

You can also have them order from a shop not supported by their extension which I have done. Even on sites that have a competitor proxy service pop up on it. But there are some shops that don't allow proxy services. I tried to order from TORCH TORCH and it was canceled because of that. This process does take longer than buying from Mercari or Rakuten. And it put into its own cart page separate from the others. But it will go to the same Ordered and Shipping page.

Customer service so far I've had a good experience with. They mostly contacted me about my order that I'm missing a detail. Once was a shirt that had a personalized option that I didn't fill out. And another time was about chocolates I wanted to buy but since the weather was warm it required ice packs. If you have Discord, they have their own server and you can open up support tickets in there which I find to be a better way to get help.

One negative experience I have is that they wouldn't help me get mochi. The mochi I wanted is fine to be shipped but Buyee's agents told me they don't buy mochi of any kind because they deem it as perishable and told me their warehouse isn't equipped to handle such food items. The mochi I wanted to get isn't at all perishable since I've had it in snack boxes so it was frustrating to not be able to get it because I wanted to try their other flavors.

Overall I am liking Buyee and will continue to use it!

For my birthday I wanted to treat myself to macarons since its been awhile since I had them and I was craving them a bit. I was glad to see that Laudree can ship their macarons nationwide since I've been wanting to try them and there are none near me.

The selection on what they ship is limited. There are different boxes with a set number of macarons. I think the most disappointing is the lack to choose your flavors. You are just given what they have available. Their flavors are pretty simple and elegant. They don't really tell you all their flavors on their site. Anything else they offer like cakes and other baked goods seem to only be pick up only.

I chose a box of 15 which cost $61 which makes each macaron $4.07 which is rather high. Plus they only have overnight shipping so you have to add $25 to the total which came out to $86 that I got charged for my order. Which makes each macaron cost $5.73 each! Luckily you can choose a date of when you wanted it to be delivered. 

Since my birthday is during the holiday season I had to order a few days in advance. I chose my birthday but with the delays its not guaranteed. They ended up shipping it out on my birthday and I got it the day after. They use Fedex and since it was raining my box was wet when I got home. They packed it in a sturdy shipping box with a big label saying "perishable" by the address label. The macaron box was in a insulated foil mailer and a ice pack was packed with it. It was tightly sealed and packed thankfully that my macarons and the box arrived undamaged. 

I got the green box and its nice. I will definitely keep it and use it for storing small items. It came with a folded paper with the flavors they have. It didn't listed out all the flavors their website had listed. For example there isn't any Almond or Orange Blossom. They gave me a nice enough variety but its not all the flavors. They even listed some seasonal ones and they labeled which were vegan which is nice. 

I've tried 1/3 of the box and I do like it! They are soft and chewy and not too sweet. Are they worth nearly $6 each? No. But I did enjoy everyone one them. Even the basic flavors like Vanilla are better than I thought they be. The only disappointing part of this experience as the price. Would I order from them again? Yes!

 For awhile I didn’t think a vacuum is worth $1000. And I have read stick vacuums with rechargeable batteries without bags are expensive because it’s a newer technology compared to the bag canister types which makes sense to me. I try not to take “branding” into account since it’s mostly marketing than actually quality of the product. Something a home inspector agrees with me on. But I recently tried out a Dyson vacuums and it does a pretty decent job than most of the vacuums I’ve owned. 

What impressed me was the suctions power. It was able to get sand off my floors and also not spit it back out. I have medium length hair so I was also glad that hair rarely gets into the brushes. And the noise level wasn’t bad at all. I like the ball joint on the head attachments that make maneuvering such a breeze. Attaching and removing heads is pretty easy to do. Sometimes it needs to be at the right angle so it can take me a minute to get it on. 

The bad is the weight. I got one that has a bigger canister which is rather unnecessary for me so I wish I had exchanged it for a smaller one. The canister doesn’t rather dirty from the sand and fine dust. It’s an awkward thing to clean too. I like the design of pushing it out to empty but often times hair will get stuck inside and I’d have to reach into to pull it out. Also I have to remove the attachments to empty which is a pain. 

So far I am pretty pleased with it but I personally don’t think it’s worth the full price. If my salary was more then maybe it’s worth it but there are probably other brands that could do as good a job at a cheaper price. 

 Been curious about ways to handle old and unwanted clothes that aren’t fit for donations. So I found out about Trashie which you buy a big poly bag to fill. The bags have their own QR code and a unique number. When I bought my bags they had USPS as a carrier option but now they changed to only UPS which is pretty inconvenient for me. 

Each bag is about $15 which isn’t cheap. They do multi packs and subscription service if you wanted more. I would definitely wait for a sale or deal if you wanted to try them out. If you get more than one they send them out individually. I got a 3 pack and I got 3 Kraft envelopes with a bag each. This doesn’t seem cost effective to me as having them shipped together. My third one came later. 

So each bag gives you Trashie bucks that you use to redeem rewards. These rewards aren’t great. They’re not giftcards to stores most known about either. A lot are expensive small brands. The money you spent on the bags doesn’t equal to how much you can get back on discounts

I redeemed a discount for Neiwai and tried to use it during Black Friday but it didn’t work since it’s not like a gift card but a discount code. It won’t let me use multiple discounts. 

I also redeemed a discount for Blueland but I didn’t realize it was first order only so that is wasted. So far I’m not having a great experience with Trashie. I don’t know if there’s another like it though where you can send clothes and blankets not fit to be worn to.