The Marci Rating System

My low-key obsession with Heated Rivalry continues, and a local friend and I are planning to marathon the whole show on Boxing Day, whee! She will have already seen the final episode, because she is high-key obsessed and has been watching each one when it drops at midnight; I'm not that gonzo and will probably wait to watch it with her, thus also giving her the fun of watching me watch it. At least, I find that incredibly fun, so I hope she does too -- and I got to show dorinda the first two episodes a couple of days ago, which was wonderful!

Other than that, we're not doing much for the holidays. Geoff and I lit Hanukkah candles; he makes me actually light them, because it's traditionally the role of the woman of the house, and yeah that's very gendered but I mean so are we. And we both sing the blessing. We went to one sister's family Hanukkah meal, and are not going to the other sister's huge Christmas party; we're just going to have a quiet night in. And I'm roasting a duck, a thing I have done only once before!

(And then the next day I get AAAAAAAALL THE AMAZING TV, of course, and Geoff's on his own. He remains politely a- and be-mused at my hyperfocus.)

🇨🇦 "Canadian Economy Rallies as #1 Export Now Heated Rivalry" 🇨🇦

Oh, and we're having a couple of friends over for a NYE dinner. They have non-overlapping dietary restrictions, so I need to think about the menu! I suspect we're looking at roast squash and a salad of some kind...

In other news, I'm reading a book called How to Winter, which a friend recommended to me. I've never liked cold and generally don't enjoy winter (therefore I moved to Canada, because I'm also very smart), so anything that might make it less unpleasant is worth checking out! It's mostly about cultivating a mindset that focuses on the good in the season, and also about letting it affect you appropriately -- like, if winter dark means you want to sleep more and do different things than you do in summer light and warmth, that's okay, it's natural, don't fight it. It all makes perfect sense and yet I'm still grumpy about winter? On the other hand, I am trying to relax into the season a little more, and I think it's working, but it's also not as cold here as it might be and I rarely have to fight the weather in any way (I don't commute, e.g.), so maybe I'm playing on easier mode now. My SAD light helps with the lack of sunlight, so it's really being cold that I find hard. I've started wearing thermal leggings in the house; we have the heat at a comfortable enough level, but I'm really sensitive to drafts. (My desk faces two windows, and even with the leggings I still sometimes pull a heated throw over my legs.) And I think the leggings have made a huge difference.

I finished the most recent series of Shetland and

have spoilery reactions under the cut.

unfortunately I was extremely unimpressed. The revelation about Ed being involved in drug trafficking came completely out of the blue; no ground had been laid for it at all. I really didn't like the Bad Seed mentality behind everybody going "ooh, there were concerning reports about Stevie while she was in care" -- like, no shit a traumatized child ripped away from every familiar place and face "was manipulative," in other words she tried to regain some control of her environment and didn't trust adults? And just a lot of things that I can more or less accept as required by TV crime drama logistics but are still dumb, like Tosh and Ruth accepting that the AirBnB guy correctly identified Stevie in Edie's garden, when that was like the third version of the story he'd told (why should they suddenly believe him this time?) and he was some distance away, in the dark; at first he said "it was probably a man" and now he confidently declares "it was definitely this woman," and they just go yup, hard proof that she was there? Sorry, no. (I mean, she was there, but there's no way they should take his statement as proof of that, and they do.) Morag behaved like an idiot. And BILLY WOULD NEVER. I haven't looked but would not be at all surprised to find that the actor wanted off the show (is he the only person other than Tosh who's been there since series 1?) and this was the clumsy way they decided to write him out. I finished the series annoyed, and I really hope the next one is better. Preferably with a new writer.