http://littlespicejar.com/cheddar-mashed-potatoes/

This was a pretty nice and easy meal.  I paired it with some baked chicken, nothing too fancy.  This could have used more cheese and more chives!

Since it wasn’t that many potatoes and I finally learned that potatoes need to be cut into eighths for anything that involves mashing them, this didn’t really take too long to prep.

I put in six cloves of garlic instead of four as we really like garlic.  I feel like it barely tasted of garlic still.

I used two cups of cheddar cheese and we still wanted more.  Might end up getting two bags of two cups worth of Cheddar cheese.

I did use three tablespoons of chopped chives but my wife looked into her bowl and asked where all the chives went so next time, five tablespoons of chives, at the very least.  The bowl was mostly white with a few lines of yellow and a speck or two of green.  Not the color feast I was hoping for.

We’ll probably add onions to it for next time.  Maybe some bits of bacon too?  Maybe just go crazy with the whole thing.

. . .

We’re still in the middle of season eight of The Office, our next episode is Tallahassee, which hopefully it is as good as previous multi-episode arcs like Jim’s time in Stamford and the Michael Scott Paper Company arc.  That pool party episode should have been better, one of the few episodes we had to stop in the middle of and it took us a few days to get back to it.

We’re looking forward to all of our shows being done for the winter break, gives us time to catch up with other shows.

Marvel’s Runaways is still going, and that show gets better and better.  I wish there was a local comic book store I could pick up that first trade to refresh my memories.  My sense memory was that the parents were barely in it, more like bookend scenes or something.  The latest episode ended on such an intense note!

Looking up Runaways reminded me that we are getting Cloak & Dagger and New Warriors, both coming to FreeForm.  Which is pretty nice and all three shows are set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so that’s cool too.  I haven’t seen anything on Runaways that proves or disproves that but if Jeff Loeb says it is true, he’ll know.  I didn’t even know that Squirrel Girl was cast but she’s the playwright from This is Us, Sloane, her actress is Milana Vayntrub.  Odd that Squirrel Girl and Great Lakes Avengers’ Mister Immortal are the big names of the show.  At least Night Thrasher and Speedball are represented.  Maybe they can quickly incorporate Justice and Firestar to the show with the Disney / 21st Century FOX merger coming.  There apparently is a trailer for the Cloak and Dagger show that I need to watch.  It occurs to me that I haven’t done a post regarding the Avengers : Infinity Wars trailer.

We’re finally three episodes into Harlan Coben’s The Five.  There is a moment in the third episode that I just loved and now I just want to binge the rest of the seven episodes but we still have to get through The Voice and maybe two other shows.  What happens would have taken maybe seven episodes on an American series but they solved it and the twist in no time.  Detective Kenwood is now my favorite television police detective.  I may have to make a list but besides Batman, I’m not sure I even have a list of favorite detectives for one particular genre.  I guess Dick Tracy and Elongated Man would count.

. . .

I’m on episode 117 of Living Between Wednesdays so I’m getting caught up!  They are reviewing Justice League and I’m going to have to make peace with the fact that I’m going to listen to their Star Wars episode before I even get a chance to see it.  As I doubt our son will want to sit through The Last Jedi but maybe he will.  If anything, it will be towards the end of its run in the theater.  We didn’t see Force Awakens until it was well onto DVD, like a month after it came out.

. . .

TMNT Legends, I’m finally close to getting all of my characters to level 31, well besides the ones that don’t have available DNA to use.

I’m going to have to double time the tournament if I want to get Shinigami, though it is still early in the week.  I usually get to the third tier of the blue one which is where I have to be to unlock Shinigami, so I should be able to do it without any real problems.

I’m at level 66 so I’m close to level 70 where I get to participate in particular challenges, so that’ll be nice.  I still barely play for 20 minutes, in the morning, at lunch and at night.  So an hour is pretty good for a free game.

We are all caught up with Season Four of the Nick Turtles, so I really need Hulu to get season five put up but I imagine that’s a year away.

Now that we are done with that show, I’ll be able to go back to Riverdale.  Sounds like Living Between Wednesdays is wavering if they are going to keep watching it.  I still can’t believe they decided to do 22 episodes of Riverdale, the first season’s 13 was so tightly written and this season just feels bloated and filler-ful.  Which is super disappointing.

http://www.plainchicken.com/2012/06/cheesy-chicken-casserole.html

I didn’t mean to take so much time away from the blog, it sort of just happened that way.  Sorry about that.

This is a pretty great recipe for a potluck, I would only changed it from two tablespoons of poppy seeds to one, as one was plenty for us.

What was also plenty for us, was this dish!  Once I poured the Cheddar cheese in, I started realizing that this was a lot of food.  So next time, I’ll just half ingredients.  I also started having that thought with all the sour cream the recipe called for.

Not a full rotisserie chicken
Probably keep the 16 ounce egg noodles
12 ounces of sour cream
Probably keep the two cans of cream of chicken soup
Probably go with one eight ounce bag of mixed Cheddar and Mozzarella cheese
Keep the sleeve of Club crackers, the garlic variety
Keep the 1/4 cup of melted butter
1 tablespoon of poppy seeds is all we needed so we’ll keep that too

Another change of the preparation, and maybe this is more of a fun factor, is that i would stir each new ingredient, as we put it in.  I had the idea after doing the two cans of soups but I should have started that immediately with the sour cream.  It would have made for a better mixture.

Our six quarter pot, that we use for everything (so we need to do dishes after using it, every time) was pretty full when everything was in it.  I started getting concern everything wasn’t going to fit inside the 9 x 13 dish.

We ended up eating half of it, as it was pretty dense.  Very tasty but dense.  Just a big spoonful was all we needed for a serving.

I also bought a Costco rotisserie chicken, after being told that it was the best price and pretty tasty.  I thought it worked out pretty well.  I think I still prefer just cooking up some chicken thighs and going that route but I understand it is supposed to be a time saving measure but I don’t think it really is, after all the chopping and pulling the meat apart.

. . .

We’re onto Season Eight of The Office, our next episode is Lotto.  So far, it hasn’t been to bad, without Steve Carrell being around.  That may change, as I know the show only lasts this and the next season.

We are all caught up with the CW Superhero shows.  I really enjoyed that Crisis of Earth-X crossover, it was the best one yet.

I’m behind with Riverdale, I usually watch it with my son.  Which may be questionable but I have to watch TV with either my wife or my son as I don’t have private time to myself.  With the holiday season upon us, I should have time as our shows tend to stop airing new episodes.

Our next episode of the Nick Turtles is The Insecta Trifecta.  I’m happy they are back on Earth but I’m curious if the old space turtles are ever going to be mention.  So odd that there are duplicates out there, having adventures but being told about what their future selves were up to.  Pretty complicated but I know that show ends after the fifth season so it isn’t a big worry.  Hopefully Hulu uploads those episodes as we’re going to be done with the fourth season, relatively soon.

On Netflix, we’ve started watching Harlan Coben’s The Five.  We’re two episodes in and we’re hoping to finish the entire thing soon.  So far, pretty good.

We probably won’t start Legends of Tomorrow until the summer, we want a break from superhero shows.  I’m not dying to watch Luke Cage, Iron Fist or the Defenders, so we might be done there.  Which means we probably won’t watch Punisher anytime soon, though I’ve heard good things.

We did finish Inhumans, it wasn’t horrible, and I liked that the last two episodes took place on Avalon.  I wish the Royal Family don their proper costumes for the last two episodes but I get that they were still moving fast but it would have been nice.  I do want to watch the motion comic Inhumans DVD, as it still is in the plastic wrap.

We are thinking of starting to watch Emily Owens, MD on Netflix as The Five is only ten episodes.  I looked it up last night and FOX’s The Gifted is 13 episodes, when I thought it was only ten.  I’ve heard good things about Owens and it is another done-in-one season.  Hopefully it ties everything up at the end there.  I’m fine with a tease for season two but hopefully all the main plot points tie up.  It has Justin Hartley in the cast, so that helped convinced my wife too.

There is a new episode of Runaways so we have to watch that this week.

. . .

I’m on episode 106 of Living Between Wednesdays, so I’m doing it!  I can’t wait to be caught up with that show.  I haven’t been missing Undisclosed so I am seriously thinking of going through Turtle Soup but this time, keeping track of funny segments.  I wrote up a Second Clip show option for the Uncanny X-Cast, which I had planned on posting once they did a new episode but I might just post it some day.  I did share it with Rob but I don’t think they’ll use it anytime soon.  Not like Turtle Soup would use my clip suggestions but I’ve been thinking about it for so long I might as well do it and get it out of my head.  I’m not sure if I want to go through the trouble of creating a Wiki for it or just posting it here as special posts, which I probably will do, plus it gives me content.  I’m sure there is a way for me to create a special subpage where everything can be kept but I’m not sure how to do that with WordPress.  If anyone knows how to do that, I’ll be up for a step by step direction.  I’ll Google it and see if I can find an easy way to do it.  I feel like I looked it up before and it looked super complicated, going into the other WordPress where the templates live and doing things there, I was put off by it, is my sense memory of it.

If you are current with all of Comixology’s free comics, today they released :

Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat #1 / Uncanny Inhumans 1, SHIELD (2014) #1 / Captain America 444

I really need to put the Comixology app onto my Kindle.  My wife gave me a free trade code for Amazon and I downloaded IvX but I haven’t open the trade yet.  It took like 20 minutes for it to load, which by the time it was loaded, I had to start doing something else.

I plan on updating with Comixology’s free comics, just so I can get a feel for when new ones are added.  I feel like they are added every two weeks but maybe not?

. . .

TMNT Legends is still a fine game.  Ludia did change the Challenges so we can replay them, daily, to get new DNA cards, so that was a nice improvement.  I’m getting closer to getting my second to bottom tier guys moved up to the next stage, so they can no longer be level 30.  Once I get like five of those guys, the game should open up some more for me.  It is a grind but it is almost over.  I’m excited to get the new April Kunoichi, especially as we’re watching this version on the show now.  Fun how all that came together, for me, at the same time.  She’s the prize for the current tournament.  I keep getting into the bottom tier of the Shogun tier but I’m clearly not meant to be in there.  I finally have a decent two teams of level 45 characters and my third team is mid-30 but I’m clearly supposed to be at level 50 so I keep being bounced back to the upper tier of Samurai.  I hope I got those names right, it is the blue tier and the brown tier is the one I’m clearly under-leveled for.

. . .

I really do enjoy writing these posts, I just need to do it more often.  I just been so distracted with work and life, I haven’t had any think pieces come to mind to write down.  I need to be less busy, I guess.  Not sure how that’ll happen but maybe the end of 2018 would be a bold start, if everything works out.

https://www.themagicalslowcooker.com/slow-cooker-chicken-cordon-bleu-casserole/

I’m not usually a big fan of the concept of Cordon Bleu, as I’ve never really been much of a ham guy, or turkey type of guy, for that matter.  I’m particular with my roast beef too, if it isn’t from Arby’s or that style, I’m not a fan.  I really should learn what they do that makes me like it so much so that I can order roast beef from the grocery store or another restaurant.  Which reminds me, my wife finally agreed to go to Arby’s (she’s not the biggest fan) and they were out of roast beef!  I went with one of their new deep fried turkey sandwiches but I should have just went somewhere else.  That was pretty disappointing.

This was another receipt that my son, Walker Dennis, helped me prepare.  He really got into shredding the ham.  I thought he was doing it too much so I was essentially just quartering the ham slices we got from the Walmart deli.  I didn’t care for the ham, separately, but during the end result, it was pretty tasty.  We usually go with a black forest ham but went with another option, it wasn’t honey as my wife doesn’t like that variety but I’m having a hard time remembering.  She’s a big fan of ham, so she’s regularly getting the ham sandwich from Hardee’s and Arby’s.

I’m coming around on Swiss cheese, I hated it as a kid but my taste palette has really come a long way in the past few years.

My son also loves stuffing so that was a big hit.  He didn’t eat much of the dish proper but he ate up the stuffing.

. . .

I’m behind on my Riverdale as we were closing up the third season of the Nick TMNT third season.  That ends on such an intense note!  I really want to launch into the fourth season, especially the first episode but I need to take the long weekend to get caught up on Riverdale.  The Sony BluRay player we have in our son’s room doesn’t have the CW, so I have to stick with watching it on the Kindle.  Eventually, we’ll be able to find the Roku Stick that was on his television prior to our big move.  We have so much in storage that we haven’t come across it, and we thought we opened every box.  It is in a safe spot, is what I’m thinking.  I imagine it is in my comic book box that also has my Notary Public stamp.  I found my book in another box but not the stamp.  Which is the part I really need to so I can help out the office being another Notary Public.  That comic book box didn’t have my six or so issues that I bought from Hastings that I never got around to reading so I want to find that second box as there are some other documents in there too.  That’s from my memory, at least.

We’re caught up on most of our shows.  The Monday night episode of the Voice was pretty disappointing, I only liked three of the songs.  There are no many contestants and their video packages are not leaving much of an impression on me.  I had to look up their names and songs from Wikipedia.  I thought Brook Simpson (Team Miley)’s rendition of Praying lacked a lot of the purpose of Kesha’s version, which makes sense as it is an extremely personal song.  Which is a concept that I keep coming back to with artists like Ed Sherran that he writes all of these personal songs, then within six months of the album (or single) release, randoms are now singing them on singing competition shows, like they were just words put to music.  It is an odd concept that I’m just now thinking about.  That’s what happens with popular music, the artist releases it to the world and one never knows how the word is going to respond.

My main problem with the episode was that song selection was pretty lousy.  I just want some fun upbeat songs, or if you are going to do a slower song, you have to knock it out.  I liked Chloe Kohanski (Team Blake) with Dido’s Thank You, probably the real winner of the night, for me.  But I could have just did without the episode.  Am I surprised that Team Adam had two people in the bottom two?  No, of course not.  I imagine the winner will either be from Blake or Miley’s team.  JHud has such a team that they are pretty exchangeable.  Also, the Instant Save song, better just be a fun upbeat song, so people see that you are fun and a delight to keep seeing in the competition.  Let’s hope that Adam Cunningham can take some notes and isn’t leaving next, even though, he really should be next.  Which is the point of the Instant Save, to put a contestant on notice and go in a new potentially winning direction.

Dancing with the Stars 25 big winner is Lindsay and Jordan Fisher won, which makes complete sense.  Fisher is essentially a professional dancer.  There is a fun piece of trivia with Lindsay coming in fourth, third, second and now, finally, first, over the past four consecutive seasons.  Which is a record that someone on production must have gotten the word out on.  It wasn’t a bad season, I had to read the result as I had to get to work this morning and didn’t wake up early enough to finish the entire episode.

We got fully caught up on last week’s show by last thing Sunday night.  Now that Dancing is over, we should be able to start tackling our backlog of shows.  I really want to continue watching Stranger Things 2 and Inhumans.

We saw the first episode of Runaways, I really dug it.  Alex is pretty cast perfect with his look.  It bugs me that Molly is the same age (maybe a year younger?) but it makes sense.  A 12 year old would be pretty limited with her screen time, BUT she didn’t get that much screen time, so what would be the harm?  We’ll probably try to watch the next episodes once we get one more of the other shows seen.  I like how Hulu released the first three, so that’s pretty nice.

Our next episode of The Office Season Seven is The Search.

I’ve been so pleased with Hartley Sawyer’s take of Elongated Man on this season of The Flash.  I keep waiting for them to give him that soft lavender costume.  Plus a gal named Sue!  That’s what that show needed.

I’m on episode 96 of Living Between Wednesdays, wherein Rachelle and Dave rate Elongated Man for the revised Super Hunks feature.  I wish they would do a proper blog post for the new ratings, that’ll be nice.  They make the joke about how the choice is out of the blue as there was nothing keeping him in the public consciousness.  But to me, it made perfect sense as he’s on The Flash now but they’re still so far in the past that there probably wasn’t even casting news.  Heck, I didn’t even know he was joining the show until they said Ralph Dibny’s name.  Then it took me several minutes before I realized I did recognize that name.  The podcast episode came out in June 2017, the week after Wonder Woman came to theaters.  I’m hoping I get her BluRay for Christmas and finally see that film.  From what I’ve been told, I’m getting a slew of BluRays with digital copies of several superhero films.  Wonder Woman and Spider-Man : Homecoming are my top two picks.  I see Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is coming to Netflix in early December so the need for that one goes down a bit.

We’re hoping to score a PS4 at either Target or Costco, as both have it for just under $200 and that’s a price I can’t say no too!  For our anniversary, I’m hoping to get my wife that 43 inch television with built-in Roku as we’re fans of that setup.  We’ve really need a new television for the living room.  It is currently $280 so if it could go down to $250 for Black Friday, I’ll scoop one of those up too!  My wife says that it was pretty low last year and hasn’t dropped in price since then so it must still be a $280 value television.

I do like how Costco isn’t doing anything on Thanksgiving, good for them!  Sadly, with a PS4 in our sights, we’ll be outside of Target around 5pm or so.  I’m hoping they do the first hour guarantee.  We’ve passed up on deals for controllers and such, already, as I don’t want buy any of the side stuff until owning the system itself.

. . .

From my family to you and yours, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

My wife an enlisted me to help her cook a corn casserole and a sweet potato casserole, so that’s what we’re contributing.  And two different types of rolls from this great local place, Great Harvest.

I still can’t believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  I can’t wait to be out of the retail game and the holidays feel like real joys instead of obstacles that I have to endure until the day itself.  It is tiring and the late nights are starting to catch up to me.

https://therecipecritic.com/2016/12/slow-cooker-parmesan-garlic-herb-chicken-potatoes/

This was a pretty nice meal, once again, it needs vegetables like onions and green peppers or something to make it not so starchy.

My son was a huge help with preparing this dish, which is always fun to cook with the little man.

For the chicken, while searing it, I cooked it with parsley, thyme and oregano.

Instead of quartering the red potatoes, I cut them into eighths.  Some probably should have been cut even more.

I never like slow cooker recipes that doesn’t require some liquid into it.  So after the first hour, I added 1/2 cup of chicken broth to the pot.  The potatoes had some water in them but I’ll add a full cup of chicken broth, next time.  I’ll also add onions and green peppers, just something to add color and some additional flavoring.

. . .

We had a big weekend of family events and television watching.  We’re all caught up with our current shows.  We are on episode seven of Stranger Things 2.  My wife has a friend who originally comment that something outstanding happened in episode eight, so we’ve been eagerly anticipating that episode.  Though I thought there were two big episodes before that, six being one of them.  I’m just happy that Max got on the same page as the rest of them, her and Sean Astin, also getting on the same page, was great.  I really hope he makes it through the season, I really like his character, Bob.

Off the recommendation of Comic Book Queers, and wanting a show to end on a lighter note, we started watching Inhumans.  We finished the first two episodes and it doesn’t seem campy or silly, yet.  I’m glad we’re watching it.  My wife finds it funny that Iwan Rheon is cast as another character who is “hassled” by dogs.  He is Maximus on this show and was Ramsay Bolton on Game of Thrones.  Karnak choosing the wrong rock to step on, is super puzzling, from the second episode.  There is only eight episodes, so we should go through this rather quickly.

Referring to eight episodes, we saw another clip of American Vandal, on Netflix, and I was super interested in watching it.  I’m done with Doctor Who Season Nine, and I’ll have to wait until Season Ten is available for the Amazon Prime membership.  I should check again on Hulu to see if Doctor Who made it back there.  So now I’m looking for another show to watch.  My wife saw the first episode with me and she said I could continue without her.  She also recommended I watch The 100, she says it is up my alley.  It is five seasons, right now on Netflix, so that might be more than I want to do.  I’m all about the eight episode season.

I’m currently on episode eight of Comic Book Queers and episode 85 of Living Between Wednesdays.  I’m in the middle of episode 48, which is their current episode.  Instead of releasing the Patreon episodes, all at once, they are labeling them with the next episode number, which is an interesting way to do it.  It makes sense, as it gives them new content to release and it doesn’t drown a guy like me who is eagerly willing to listen to all of them.  I see the third episode is out as episode 49, so I’ll have to listen to that.

https://player.fm/series/talk-is-jericho-1243841/talk-is-jericho-with-freddie-prinze-jr-ep212

FPJr referenced in episode 48, that he did Chris Jericho’s podcast, so I had to add that to my playlist.  Pretty great interview, and I really miss Chris Jericho.  Been a fan of him since his Y2J entrance into WWE.  I was so pleased when he become the first Undisputed Champion and was disappointed when HHH took the title from him, and I’m a pretty big HHH fan but I wanted Jericho to have it for a while.  He never even got to hold the unified belt.

Still, it is episode 212 of Talk is Jericho, and it is definitely an episode worth listening to.  I remember, maybe it was for Batman Forever, of watching (or taping it on the ol’ VCR) and watching all the appearances of the cast.  It may not have been that film but it was definitely for a superhero movie.  The problem I learned, after the third appearance, was that the celebrity pretty much had the same story to tell, and had the same clip, too.  Oh, it must have been the first X-Men film, in 2000, as I recall it was Patrick Stewart.  He even did that thing of not knowing which clip was about to be shown, twice on two different shows and it was the same clip too.  So I choose to stop watching any additional interviews.  That run also made me realized that, when an actor is in New York, they just do all of the New York shows, which I hadn’t really thought about before.  One can definitely tell, which actors were sent to which premieres, and when the premiere was, as they were in town for that and to do press.

A long way to get to the point that FPJr likes to tell certain stories, which I enjoy but I may be following him too closely.  I imagine these are stories that are tested well, and he tells well, so he’s comfortable with sharing these select stories of his past.

I also saw that Turtle Soup 163 was dropped last week, Eric and Ryan are not the best at putting those notices on their Facebook page.  I’m sure it is on the Slack channel, and maybe soon, I can start throwing ten dollars their way.

Whenever Turtle Soup drops, that puts me back as the guys give us two hours of the best entertainment so that puts me back on other shows.  Plus, I was pretty busy this week so I didn’t get to listen to as many podcasts as I’m use to.  I also had the problem with wanting to put all of these episodes on my phone and kept running out of memory.  I can’t wait until February when I can get a phone with at least 16MB, that’s all I care about.  8MB is killing me and has for so long now!

. . .

We keep talking about getting a PS4 for Black Friday, Target and Costco are both selling them for around $185, so that’s too good of a deal to pass up.  We’re not longer thinking of purchasing a Switch, as we’ll only want it for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Mario Odyssey, so maybe next year.  There are like 25 games that I want on the PS4 so that’s taking up some brain space.

TMNT Legends, I’m mostly trying to get into a new mindset of going after DNA cards and getting my team expanded.  I almost got Donatello to three stars, I’m only one away.  I may go crazy trying to get Michelangelo, after that.  I did earn Space Michelangelo and now the tournament is for Space Leonardo so I feel pretty confidant that I can earn him as well.  I did so well with Space Michelangelo that I got the two star version of him, whereas I only got the one star version of Space Raphael.

I still miss the old DNA card missions but they did release a new Raphael challenge, last week, so I’m hoping that maybe some ways of getting DNA are coming back.  In the Out of Shadows mode, I got movie Michelangelo and Rocksteady so, of course, I keep getting their DNA packs and rarely anyone else’s DNA.  So close with so many others but I’m just trying to get DNA and getting my main five’s moves maxed out.

Still not enjoying it like I used to but I’m finding ways to get new enjoyment out of it.

In our rewatch of Season Three, we’re on episode Tale of the Yokai.  Since we’re caught up on Riverdale and Doctor Who, I needed a new show and remembered our old show so that’s pretty fun.  I recall these episodes so, somehow, we missed out on some of the early episodes of the season.  Six more episodes and we’ll be able to start season four, which I’m pretty excited about.

. . .

I completely forgot about The Office!  We finished Season Six and well into Season Seven, our next episode is Viewing Party, episode 8.

https://centslessdeals.com/dorito-pie-recipe/

So I’ve really taken to cooking with Doritos!

Next time, I think I’ll go with Spicy Doritos, add onion and some green peppers.

This tasted pretty amazing but it could use some vegetables.  One of these days, I’ll learn to just add onions and green peppers from the very start.

We went to Walmart and was going to pie one of those disposable nine inch pie dish.  It was going to come with two for around three dollars.  Or we could just buy a nice glass one for the same price, so like an adult, I bought the glass one.  We have a pie dish but it has straight edges instead of the nice classic pie slant edge and I really wanted that for the dish.

I really liked the pepper jack cheese so I have to cook with that more.

Maybe this is how I made it but the directions should have a note about how high up the pie is going to look, prior to putting it in the oven.  The Nacho Doritos top layer was falling to the side.  I cooked it for 20 minutes but it probably was done at 15 as the top was a tad toasted.

It was even good the next day!

. . .

We’re really mowing through The Office Season Six, our next episode is New Leads.  My wife keeps wondering when Steve Carrell leaves, so there is this odd build up towards that.  I saw that episode when it first came out and like Phyllis’ wedding episode, enjoyed it but was a tad lost with the ongoing plotlines and wasn’t tempted to revisit the series or pick up and start watching it from that episode forward.  Not sure what made me watch Phyllis’ wedding episode, seems completely random now.

We are now officially current with Arrow, and it seems to be off to a good start.  We have plans to catch up with Legends of Tomorrow in the future, probably watch last season, knowing there is no way to catch up to see the current shows.  But that way, we will not be two seasons behind.

We finally finished Person of Interest in an amazing four episode binge!  Our son wasn’t great towards the last two episodes but some Playdoh later and everything was good.  Such a great finale!  We were not sure how it was going to end with twenty minutes left of the show.

Walker Dennis and me watched Doctor Who Season 9’s Heaven Sent.  We’re in the middle of Hell Bent but the Weeping Angels really scared him so we took a pause on that.  Maybe tonight we can finish it.  It is the season finale, so I really want to get back to it.

We started Stranger Things Season Two.  We saw Netflix has an after show, Beyond Stranger Things.  My wife figured we’ll watch the entire second season and then watch Beyond.

Netflix has a new ‘Stranger Things’ aftershow, but you shouldn’t watch it just yet

Good thing as that website states they give spoilers away so I’m glad we didn’t attempt it.  I noticed it had two less episodes than the second season, so I figured it didn’t match episode per episode.  Odd that they didn’t just do ten and ten, with the purpose of watching the show and then the aftershow and back to the show proper.  That’s how I would have done it.

The first episode was a pretty good start.  I’m glad that the characters are not pretending that it didn’t happen.  I thought the time jump to the next year was a good way to avoid any initial need to explain things.  We’ll get those answers, as we go.

. . .

I’m on episode 6 of Comic Book Queers, with two more before I’m caught up.  I’m on episode 84 of Living Between Wednesdays, with so many more to catch up on.

On episode 47 of Prinze and the Wolf, they announced that they are no longer doing Patreon episodes but will have a second feed for those bonus episodes.  Which is awesome!  I’ll have to add that backlog to my listening list, once it is available.  I’m not sure how FM Player is going to handle that, as that’s how I listen to the episodes.  Their official page was hard to work through the backlog with but now that I’m caught up, I should revisit it.

I just checked and they don’t have the two feeds up yet.  They released two Patreon episodes so far, so that’s two I can skip in that process.

. . .

TMNT Legends.  I got Space Raphael in the Tournament, so that made me feel pretty great.  I’m on track to get Space Michelangelo, if I can stay in the Samurai II category, I should but it’ll be great to move up a tier as well.   I’ve checked with the Reddit Page –

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmntlegends/

and they share my disappointments with the latest upgrade.  Ludia Games really took away the DNA card option that I and so many others really enjoyed.  I’ll throw a few Greenbacks towards buying DNA at a time but now, they are forcing people to buy five cards at a time for an extremely steep prize.  I’ll just stick with the Gauntlet and the Out of the Shadows mission to try to obtain those DNA cards.  Some people are hoping that Ludia changes the DNA back to how it used to be, which I also hope they do that.

I also just need to bring up my characters so that I don’t just have a top five guys.  I’m slowly getting a new set of five – Karai-Serpent, Shredder, Raphael, Casey Jones and Metalhead to level 45.  That way, I might be able to do a few more things such as the Daily Challenge Modes and the Story Challenge modes, as of now, I pretty much only make it pass one or two levels and get stopped, hard.  Which kills my buzz for the game.  I too wish it would go back to how it was with the DNA card challenges.  All they had to do was extend those challenges from four hours to being all day.  Which they did have all day challenges that ended with DNA packs.  I liked the ones that resulted in points towards DNA wherein we chose the character we wanted, as opposed to the ones that we had to earn like 2,500 points as I could never get to even to 1,000 points.  Or something like that, I might be off by a zero, I rarely ever played those except for the experience points.

So I don’t play the game all that much.  A short time in the morning, during the second half of my lunch hour and a little before bed.  I used to be addicted to the game but now I’ve cooled way down on it.  I have 4,000 Greenbacks, so I’m waiting until I get 5,000 before buying any DNA cards through the shop, by then, Ludia Games may have reverted the system again.  They apparently do read the Reddit page and one of the moderators has access to one of the crew members.

Which I remember that being the way with the super fun Avengers Alliance on Facebook as Playdom was pretty involved with that message board too.  I miss that game so much.  I see TMNT Legends heading in that direction that brought that game down though.  Hopefully Nickelodeon has a better relationship with Ludia Games than Disney had with Playdom.  Disney inherited that game though, which might be a crucial difference.

. . .

I still haven’t read X-Men Gold 13, I see the bag it is in but I keep thinking I’ll have this magical ten minutes but I need to just force it to happen.  There’s something about reading a thirteenth issue and knowing I’m not going to read issue 14 nor the first 12 anytime soon that stops me from doing it.  Then writing the post about it.  I still have five other reviews to publish too, I need to get back into this.

http://thecookinchicks.com/2015/07/parmesan-chicken-casserole/

We really can’t go wrong with a good pasta dish.  This one needs a bit of a kick but it was pretty good.

I cooked the chicken with simple salt and pepper, with garlic powder.  My son helped with that, as he likes to assist with the spices.  Walker Dennis is also pretty great with mixing items, as well.  He helped create the yogurt mixture, too.  My wife doesn’t like mayonnaise, or egg nog for that matter, so I went with the yogurt option.  I’m a huge fan of egg nog, buying a gallon of it from Costco, every payday.  I’m on my second cycle of it and I’m loving it.

Again, we went with grated Parmesan cheese and not the shredded, I really need to make sure I create the grocery list when Parmesan is an ingredient.  I wouldn’t imagine the consistency would be all that different but I imagine it is better to use shredded when the recipe calls for it.  I imagine that the mixture would have been more soupy, if we used shredded as the grated cheese just sat on the chicken.  So that effected the overall quality but I’m not a hundred percent sure that the type of cheese was the culprit there.  Maybe I should have made it with two cups of yogurt.

Instead of a 9×13 dish, I placed the chicken mixture in a 8×8 as the note states it could become a bit soupy and I wanted the chicken to marinate in the soup.  Instead, the mixture never really went below the top of the chicken base.

I served the chicken mixture over pasta and it was pretty good.  Some bites were better than others but we do enjoy Parmesan cheese so we were happy with that.

I also almost forgot to put the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese on top of the mixture, so I had to quickly take that out of the oven and put it back in.

. . .

With it being the weekend before Halloween, we were running around Helena, attending all sorts of Halloween events, which was pretty fun.  So not much television watching but we got in a few shows.

Our next episode of The Office is Season Six’s Secret Santa.

Sunday night, we knocked out the last two episodes of Arrow’s fifth season.  Which was pretty grand and so we had to watch the first episode of season six.  Our plan is to watch the next two (probably three, now) episodes and stay current with it.  Now that I know Arrow is the lowest watched of the CW shows –

https://www.cinemablend.com/television/1676820/how-the-cws-4-arrow-verse-shows-actually-compare-in-popularity

(Not the website I first read that statistic but I couldn’t find that one.)

There is this odd mind space of wanting the show to get better.  Though I really liked the last season, it could have been two or three episodes shorter but that finale really brought it.

The show is dark but not unwatchable.  The main villain started to ham it up, towards the end, but I can see where people gave up on it.

We’re current with Riverdale, which is still pretty good.

I’m on episode 80 of Living Between Wednesdays and they reviewed the second episode of the first season.  So it is all coming together.  Which is a fun time aspect of catching up with that show, as they near my present day.  Dave and Rachelle joked about what season two will be, as it couldn’t be another murder mystery . . . and it totally is!  What else could it be?  Just pure teen melodrama?  I could be cool with that.

I’m doing one episode of LBW and then one episode of Comic Book Queers, to try to get current with that podcast.  My next episode is the fourth one.  They are not that far behind, they are on episode 8, so I’m at the half way mark, so I’m listening to episodes that were released a month ago.

TMNT Legends just had a massive update, as they added a slew of characters and improvements.  I still wish that, when farming for an item, that screen will show how many of the item I current have.  That’ll be helpful, as well as having my current DNA number, on the individual character page.  Maybe during the next update as I’m sure they are going to be hit by complaints and notices of glitches.

The only one I noticed was during the Super Shredder fight, when he has armor up (meaning he can get hit once, and not be hurt) the animation for the armor, is to his far right (our left) so I’m sure they will update that so the effect is actually around him.  That fight has been brutal as my top characters are all stuck at level 45, until I improve them and Chapter Five Level 12’s end boss is a level 46 and he kicks my team’s butts. So I have to max out their moves, as it’ll take forever to get enough DNA to level each of them up, if I want to stand a chance.  Now that the update has happened, there are level 50 villains and they pretty much murder my team.  Super Shredder punishes all of those around Leonardo and then poor Leo dies a slow death.

So the update is fun but I’m so under-powered that it kills some of my enjoyment as I know it will take months to achieve the success I want and I’m not sure I want to grind that much.  But I did finally unlock Raphael, so that’s pretty cool.  So I have to level him up to 45, which should take some time as I’ve finally hit that point where I don’t have as much Mutagen, which I need to level up characters and moves.  I also now need to spend the time to get Donatello’s DNA so that my three proper turtles can all be level 45 (or on the road to 45).

. . .

Have a happy and safe Halloween!  Walker Dennis is going as a pirate.  Hopefully, the weather holds up and he doesn’t have to wear his jacket too much, while being outside.

https://www.familyfreshmeals.com/2014/09/cheesy-chicken-enchilada-casserole-vegetarian-option.html

I really liked this recipe but my wife only thought it was okay.

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/mexican-spice-mix/5ec99d6a-f967-475f-9f07-7223db290426

When I prepare chicken, I like to use the spices from the dish to cook the chicken with.  This recipe didn’t call for any spices so I looked up one of our spice blends.

http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/mexican-spice-mix/5ec99d6a-f967-475f-9f07-7223db290426

I think this could have gone better.  I didn’t have coriander leaves but everything else so I stuck with this recipe.  I need to learn to not use as much cumin, maybe half it.  We like it but a tablespoon essentially turns the spice blend into a cumin blend with a cameo appearance from everyone else.

We must have gotten bigger than six inch tortillas as I started with lining the bottom with six tortillas but then quickly realized that, with future steps, I would only use half of the required amount.

The directions state to not grease the pan, so I thought adding six tortillas was a smart away around that.

We had a decent amount of red enchilada sauce, left over, and that was after I used a pretty generous amount, throughout the recipe.

We could have used more green chiles, two small cans instead of the one small can.  I really like green chiles, as does my wife, so we should double that ingredient.

I also used plenty of cheese, as one can never go wrong with too much cheese and we did get the Kraft Mexican blend, this time.

Step five wants six more tortillas, and we bought a ten pack, which was helpful as it gave me a reason to pause.  So I used two at this step and two more for the next step.

I also missed the corn portion of step five and just threw the rest of it during step six.  Not like it really mattered but I was happy that I looked into the can of corn and noticed there was more in there.

I baked it for 35 minutes and it looked pretty good.  I think the chicken brought it down a little and maybe making it into a spicy dish, would have helped.  More green chiles, would have helped too.

. . .

Our next episode of Office Season Six, is Niagara, Part Two.

We had plans to really commit to Arrow Season Five, so that we could catch up to the current season but we missed the mark by two episodes.  Hopefully we can still catch up, but the season is getting better.  The show really could have been 21 episodes, instead of 23.  A comment I keep making.  I’m just done with filler episodes.  At one point, one of the characters actually said something along the lines of “we have to stop the search for Prometheus and handle this” which is essentially saying “this is a filler episode, ya’ll.”  Our next episode is Season Five’s The Missing.

We went to Great Falls, this weekend, and went to the Applestem Maze, which our son really enjoyed.

https://www.applestemcornmaze.com/

I was hoping for more of a Curious George presence as Walker Dennis is really into Curious George.  Well, he used to be more into his adventures but still perks up when he seems George.  If we were there opening weekend, they did have George and The Man in the Yellow Hat but we were never going to go during opening weekend.

We also stopped by Kelly’s Komix.

http://www.kellyskomixgreatfalls.com/

We were not going to go there, at all, as I wasn’t going to buy five comics of the 115 that I would need to buy to be current again.  But on Friday, I learned that Lockheed was in X-Men Gold 13 so we stopped by and they still had a copy of it!  So now I just need Captain America : Steve Rogers 15’s ResurreXion variant cover and I’ll be current on Lockheed’s appearances.  I still haven’t read the issue yet, but the hard part was buying it.

Such a great comic book store, too.  Probably the best one in Montana.  The Missoula one is nice but Kelly’s Komix has this incredible selection of back issues, and I could probably spend hours in there.  I’m lucky if I can spend 15 minutes.

I was by our storage unit, looking for my notary journal and stamp.  I knew they were in a comic book box, so I found that box.  It only had my journal in it, which is the least important part of the duo.  That box was supposed to have the last five comics I bought from Hastings, too, so that must be in another comic book box.  Next time I go to the storage unit, I’ll have to look for it, again.

My son and I are caught up on Riverdale’s second season.  So far, so good.  My wife pointed out that Mr. Lodge is portrayed by Mark Consuelos, Kelly Ripa’s husband.  He’s doing a great job, thus far.

We’re in the middle of Doctor Who Season Nine’s Face the Raven.  We started it too late so we couldn’t finish it.  Hopefully tonight.

I’m on episode 78 of Living Between Wednesdays.  Rachelle and Dave are going to review X2 : X-Men United.

I would be a couple episodes further but Comic Book Queers is back, as Comic Book Queers Legacy so I’ve heard the first episode and have the second one to listen to, as well.  Then I’ll write a post about that.  I missed Brett and EvilJeff.

Turtle Soup also released episode 162, and Prinze and the Wolf should be releasing an episode on Tuesday.  I’ve learn to just wait until Wednesday morning, to be on the safe side.

I’m almost out of my banked T-Coins in TMNT Legends, and becoming less addicted to it.  They keep hinting at a huge update but it hasn’t happened yet.  I just three starred the movie mission so now I can use my warp passes to quickly get the movie characters.  Of the released characters, the only one I haven’t made DNA progress on is Classic Rocksteady, so that has been fun.  Still a fun game, and I had to grind to beat the movie sidequest, but now that I have completed all of this prep work, the game should be fun again, as I can make progress again.  Hopefully.

http://www.latestfood.com/2013/11/crescent-chicken.html

This was a rather simple dinner.  It needs a side, next time, I’ll make rice with it.

The dinner went right as my son, Walker Dennis, helped me make it and he hasn’t asked to help in a month or so.  I’m not sure what made him stop cooking with Dada but I miss the little guy being at my side.  We enjoy a nice tall can of Arizona Sweet Tea.  I enjoy one, even if he doesn’t ask for some but it is nice when I drink from the can and he enjoys his share in his Tumbler.  And by share, I mean, the bulk of the drink.

My son had a great time with unfolding the jumbo crescent rolls.  He also liked making the soup.  I had cooked the chicken with a sprinkling of rosemary.  He wanted to try the rosemary and with the reminder of the sample, put that into the soup.  Not like it changed it at all but he made that bold choice.

I’m not sure if it needed two cans of cream of chicken soup or two cans worth of milk but I would have liked more soup.  I feel like two of each, might be a tad much.  My son really liked the soup, so that’s good to know.  It doesn’t really taste all that bad, on its own.

We went with Pillsbury jumbo rolls and Campbell’s soup.

I thought the rolls tasted pretty great, I just wanted more soup.  My wife and son thought it was okay, remarking that it needed a side.  We ate all eight of them so no left overs for us.

. . .

This weekend started our October weekends being quite busy.  We had plans to watch the seven Arrow episodes we needed, so we can watch season six live but we didn’t watch any episodes.

I misread Netflix’s episode count for The Office’s fifth season.  At first, I thought it was only 23 episodes so we marathon-ed the entire Michael Scott Paper Company, but we still have a couple more episodes before that season is over.  Our next episode is Cafe Disco.

My son and I are 20 minutes into Riverdale’s first episode of season two.  So far, pretty good.  We watched it in two sittings of ten minutes so I need to power through and watch the rest of it.  He’s having some rough nights, going to sleep on his own, so it has cut into our television watching.

I’m on episode 74 of Living Between Wednesdays.

I’ve cooled down on TMNT Legends, this weekend, as I only really logged to visit the shop, play my PVP games and attempted to unlock Splinter, which is going to take forever as I still only have my four turtles and two of them are Leonardos.  My main team still isn’t strong enough to beat the two levels I’m working on, enough to three star both levels and I really don’t want to move onto new levels until I’ve gotten those two levels three starred.

Lots of Halloween and Fall activities are coming up and we’re excited for and ready for Halloween to be over as it is taking up some of our time but once we’re at the events, they are pretty fun.

https://www.facebook.com/MontanaGhostbusters/

The Kleins also met the Montana Ghostbusters!  That was pretty cool.  Once we left the Fallfest, which is getting smaller each year, our son kept seeing ghosts and wanting us to call the Ghostbusters.  Which is super cute.