TV Binge: Psych Season 8 (Final)

I watched Psych some time last year or the year before.  I can’t remember it too much since it was pretty much seven seasons in one shot then patiently waited for Netflix to update Season 8 to end off the show.  It finally arrived on Netflix a little while ago and of course, I took the liberty to binge watch it! Unfortunately, I can’t recap seven seasons before but I’ll tell you this.  Psych is pretty fun.  My friend used to tell me she enjoyed it more than The Mentalist.  In all honesty, the pace and tone are completely different so while the material is similar as its just some dude who is very good at noticing details and using that to solve cases, Psych is a more light-hearted detective series unlike The Mentalist which can get a little heavy especially when the first few seasons is pretty much the main guy trying to hunt down the serial killer who murdered his wife (or something along those lines).

Psych Season 8

Creator: Steve Franks

Cast: James Roday, Dulé Hill, Timothy Omundson, Maggie Lawson, Corbin Bernsen, Kirsten Nelson

Since I haven’t done a previous TV binge on any of the previous seasons, which I probably should but I’m too lazy to go back, I’ll do a little synopsis in case you don’t know what it is.

Psych follows Shawn Spencer (James Roday), a guy who was brought up to by his ex-cop father (Corbin Bernsen) to notice the smallest details/heightened observation skills.  With those skills, he pretends that he has the psychic ability to feel his way to the next clue and eventually solve the crime.  With the help of his best friend Burton Guster (Dulé Hill), he pursues this career and establishes the Psych Detective Agency and becomes the Santa Barbara Police Department’s police consultant much to the reluctance of the detective, Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson).

Season 8 is the final season of Psych and as with any ending, its all about how you wrap up the series so that the fans are satisfied.  As a fan, I was happy with it.  There was moments of bringing back who mattered and just how Shawn and Burton grew up even though the show is very much about their shenanigans.  The way the wrapped it up made for a nice heartfelt moment that this show is about and tied up the loose ends.

Overall, Psych is an interesting series.  It starts off with the first few seasons pretty strong and just a lot of fun, then it kind of drags on for a few seasons in the middle and Season 7 and 8 brings back the essence of the show.  Their specials are always a treat and some of the guests they get a pretty awesome.  My favorite has to be Cary Elwes.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about the series.  Comedy series are always a little hard for me to like and I really enjoyed Psych so I was pleased with it. The humor was right up my alley.  The chemistry and bromance that Shawn and Burton had was really fun and awesome. At the same time, the father-son relationship between Shawn and his father was great also.  And of course, what series is without a little romance and here is Shawn with Juliet (played by Maggie Lawson), the partner of Carlton Lassiter who has a few bumps in the road but eventually do see the light and things work out okay.  The dynamic of the show kept me going and just how the characters became so fun to watch and sometimes the cases were just about the most absurd and silly situations.

Psych is perfect for where I am right now with movie/TV watching.  Its a genre I like, detective/mystery but with a comedic twist to keep things not so serious and dramatic. There are a few lesser seasons as with any long running series but with a satisfying ending to wrap up the series and knowing when to end it also makes a big difference.

Ends, Beginnings and Everything in Between!

A lot to talk about this week.  Well, kind of! Lets just get straight to the 8 little bits and pieces 😉

1) End of Fantasia Film Festival 2014

I had a blast at Fantasia Film Festival this year. After 11 movies, I learned a lot about myself and the way I understood movies and just a lot about movies and their purposes in general. If you want to check my reviews, click on the menu and Movies, Festivals, Fantasia 😉

If not, here is the list of the movies and I’ll link it to the reviews I’ve done and update as it goes!

Fantasia Film Festival 2014

Open Windows
I Origins
Cybernatural
The Harvest
Jack et la Mecanique du Coeur
Hal/short: Sonny Boy and Dewdrop Girl
Into the Storm
Dys-/short: I am Monster
The Drownsman/short: Picket
Time Lapse
The Demon Within

I still have 1 movie to review for the festival.  They will be going up soon!

2) Resuming workout

There is nothing to say but that I’ve really taken a LONG break from working out.  I still go out to bike rides and did some jogging in between but I’m ready to get right back into it now.  This week, I got in two 20 minutes yoga sessions and some other activities which I’ll talk about in a little bit later of this post!  Here’s the awesome yoga sessions if you’re interested:

Starting next week, I should resume with the 4 weeks Nike Training Club program (if everything goes as planned), I might just boost up my strength with some random circuits first and start the week after!

3) Catching up with TV!

This week, I finished Season 7 of Psych.  Thanks to Netflix for updating it!

Psych has its up and down moments.  There are some episodes which are a bit meh.  I can’t really blame it since its at season 7 now.  However, compared to season 7, this totally rocked.  I particularly LOVED the season 7 finale. I’m going to try to find Season 8 now since thats the final season and I hate to keep these things hanging.

I also took the time this week to catch up on True Blood.  I like to watch them in bundles of episodes just so some stupid episode endings don’t bother me as much.  I was about 3 episodes behind so I sat down and took care of that. Its the series finale in just a few episodes and honestly, I’m still not quite sure if I like where everything is going.

My goal this little while is to keep up with True Blood and Pretty Little Liars, so next line of business will be to catch up with the last 3 episodes of that. I will be binge watching Season 1 of Arrow right after though 😉

What series have you been watching?

4) (Kind of) Secret Weekend Getaway!

My boyfriend and I went off on a weekend getaway this past weekend.  One of the reasons why I’ve been slightly quiet and well, I didn’t even bother to say anything because since we’re just a few hours up north, I had my cell that worked and its a little escape.  A few of my friends knew about it and our parents but in general, its just a little bit of a breather to recharge.

We did some hiking (a part of resuming my workout) and we did some visiting in Saguenay region in Quebec.  Its about a 5 hours drive or so away and we had a lot of fun.  I’ll be posting about the few places we went in the next week.

As much as we love buying a house together and spending every living moment making it ours, its nice to just get away by ourselves and take a little break.

5) Lovely Surprises in the Garden

Hello raspberries! Thats right! I amped up the bottles for self-watering system in the raspberry plants and when I came back, I had some ripe raspberries waiting for me.  There’s still a good bunch waiting to ripen but so far they are delicious and sweet. My mom was also a sweetheart and dropped by to help me water the plants to keep the soil wet during our very hot weekend.

I have some strawberry, yellow zucchini and tomato harvests happening and coming up.

There are few other things on my agenda for the garden:

• Orange thyme harvesting and drying,
• Figuring out why my basil all died and was so weak when it was alive,
• Looking at the uses of lemongrass and how to harvest it,
• Searching up what to do and how to harvest lemon verbena.

Plus, I have to figure out my front yard and pull out some over abundant plants and by the end of the season, shift some plants around.

Green thumbs anyone?

6) Geeking out!

Mario and Dinobot Yoshi!

While I was on the getaway, I used my ton of overtime and took Friday off.  Much to my surprise, somehow this package arrived that exact day.  Thank goodness, the mailman was great and put it in my mailbox.  Its a tank top that I ordered from For Human Peoples and its the totally awesome crossover of Transformers and Mario.  Excuse me, Dinobot Yoshi! Allow me to geek out just a little bit and tell you that I saw this and I knew that I had to own it!

*ahem* I’ve regained myself a little! Moving along…

7) Finding the Perfect Gluten-Free Article from Popsugar Fitness

Click on the image to get to the article! 🙂

Everyone read this already? So, some of you know that I’ve been trying to go gluten-free.  I’m about 80% there.  I’ve cut out a lot of foods including bread and I make an effort to make and buy lots of gluten-free products.  Its helpful because now it opens up the options I never had when I was just dealing with lactose intolerance.  Except, cutting gluten and lactose is like double hard and I absolutely hate it when people make it harder.

What really gets me all the time with any food intolerance is “just give it a bite, it won’t kill you” or “Its all your head”.

If gluten-free was me doing this just to have fun and lose weight, sure thing but its not.  I truly believe that its going to make my life a lot better and reduce a lot of this recurring discomfort from IBS symptoms.  Just to make things clear, its really hard to go gluten-free.  Almost everything on store shelves has gluten, its really a pain so lets refrain from any comments that will just make it worse.  Because no, its not in my head and no, it won’t kill me but it will put me in a state where I’d like you to kill me.  You know, just to skip the disgusting details….

Rant over but that article made me laugh a little 🙂

8) Home is Where My Cat Is 😉

My Cat Taking up All the Space

My cat is a huge baby and she’s the princess of the house.  She’s making a point that she’s hot and that she deserves the best spot in the house where the wind hits or the A/C.  So here’s her the night before I left for my getaway and not letting me sleep.  And she’s not joking, she’s in full dream mode 😉

By the way, Aeropostale actually has a shirt with “My Home Is Where My Cat Is” . Its true though.  I always miss my little girl (even if she hogs the bed).

BEFORE I SAY THE GOOD NIGHTS…

Here’s a little something to help you go to sleep a la Disney style 😉

Its getting late, so I’m off to bed! 🙂

Hope you all had a great weekend! 

The Key to Relaxing :)

I’m a bit late with this random life update post that I almost didn’t want to put one together. By the way, if you don’t want to read anytime, scroll down to the bottom, I have a special message 🙂

Nothing really happened actually, which is quite a miracle and honestly, a relief.  I needed some down time from running around.  We managed to finally start painting and for me, it was a totally new experience as I’ve always been pampered and my mom used to do all the painting at my place.  I gotta love her to bits: an awesome cook, a lovely home painter and just wonderful.  Sure, my mom and me, we have our cranky days and she loves to piss me off when I’m in my time of the month and it usually ignites some form of argument but I’m starting to feel the best friend in her coming back slowly. But of course, things never quite last in the happy zone these days and I’m feeling pressured with something else that I’m not quite ready to discuss here just yet.

I really don’t have much to share about the past week.  I’m even in much of a mood to ramble on about stuff.

You know what I think about when I’m in these moods?

One thing is TV and I went ahead and continued on watching Season 2 of Psych.

And happily finished it last night and after getting in a few movies so that I have content for the following week, I will move on later this week to Season 3 hopefully 🙂 Honestly, Psych is not as awesome as The Mentalist, Lie to Me  and shows with the same sort of investigation through hyper-observation. It does have that easy-going silly fun that works for me because it offers a lot of laugh out loud moments that I realized I appreciated a lot more in Season 2.  I look forward to catching up with Season 3 🙂  What series are you watching now?

What goes well with TV aside from food, which I already posted about HERE, is some drinks! While I went to shop for my weekend dinner and food for the following week, this bottle caught my eye.

I have no idea what Still Cider is but what caught my eye was when I was looking at the description in the back, it showed that it was made by Pinnacle which is a popular ice wine producer here. I’ve always liked their products so I figured I’d give this a shot 🙂 Turns out its pretty strong but it tasted decent also.  Its not my favorite but I managed to grow to increasingly like it. It could also be that I was getting a tad tipsy.  Who knows, right? I love exploring new wines once in a while although I’m usually more of a cocktail person.

That leads me to my Sunday night drink.  Work the next day also meant that I couldn’t drink as much as the previous night.  I was surfing Pinterest (again!) and found this recipe called Sex in the Driveway.  LOL! That was seriously my reaction.  I’ve heard of Sex on the Beach but c’mon! Really? Sex in the Driveway?!? Anyways, here’s what it looks like:

Sex in the Driveway

I had a bit of improvisation but the actual recipe is: 1 oz peach schnapps, 1 oz blue curacao, 2 oz vodka and fill with sprite. I don’t own peach schnapps so we used apricot brandy instead and my boyfriend had to improvise because my glass was taller than the normal size.  Either way, it turned out good.  The apricot brandy overrides a lot of the other tastes so it tasted a lot like apricot and was very perfumed with it but I also love it a lot so it didn’t bother me 🙂 Its a pretty good drink and I love vodka based cocktails so this was right up my alley.  But then, I wonder because I swapped out the peach schnapps does the location of where the sex occurred change? Just joking! Being a tad silly..haha!

What cocktail do you like? How about wine?

Now that we have our thirst quenched, my third way to de-stress is one I’m trying to overcome: Shopping.  Except now, I’m trying to resist online shopping.  I’ve been doing rather well, except I really was in need of some clothes so I took advantage of an online sale. And then add a trip to Walmart to damage my wallet a little more…at least I didn’t feel too guilty because everything was awesome.  Since I said that I wouldn’t do a selfie, I just caught the front of the shirt and not my face.

First up from La Senza is my ROAR sleep wear. I love tigers. What more can I say? 🙂

I love La Senza stuff but its just so pricey.  Thank goodness this was on special and had my size left in stock.  Then, in the same package, I had a few other stuff but as a filler I got this very meaningless headband but maybe for Halloween eventually, it’ll be useful.

Cat ears hair band

I wore them on and off during the weekend.  I like to channel my inner feline/tiger/cat self.  After all, my boyfriend calls me kitty as a nickname.  It could be because I like to meow randomly.  Scratch that about no selfie, but just one because I don’t know how to take a hair band without my face.

Moving on from that, I also got a cute shirt at Walmart which totally defines me.

Fight for Cupcakes!

C’mon! You add Marvel and cupcakes and I’m in! I guess the only way to one up this would be to add a cute tiger with a cupcake…

Now that we’re done with clothes and accessories, I’d like to bring your attention to this super cool car trunk art that I saw.  I don’t know what you call it but this car we were behind at a red light had the COOLEST picture on it ever!

I don’t know this car and if the owner of that car does find the way to my site and doesn’t like their car shown, feel free to tell me and I’d gladly remove it. Just in case anyone gets offended by it.  I should probably blank out the license plate, right? Still, I’m am quite impressed with this.

One of the best things of this weekend is that the weather FINALLY is warming up. We had a pretty clear Saturday which was great because I managed to start my walker to runner training that I talked about HERE! On the same day I also started the Beach Body Challenge and as of today, I’m going to do Day 4 and I honestly want to punch someone because who puts 50 burpees and 50 leg raises in one go.  Either way, for the run, this is my land of jogging: the neighborhood bike path 🙂

Not looking very green and alive right now but it will come 🙂 We did have abnormal warm weather yesterday.  I’m ready for the heat! Although at my office, its feeling extremely sauna-like everyday. Since then, its pretty much been raining. Hopefully it’ll stop soon so that I can go out for another run 🙂

This post was full of randomness so I guess to wrap it all up, I’d like to end with steering you all to check out a post I’m pretty proud of on my newly established blog (that I really should spend more time on) for the last Weekly Writing Challenge.  I’ll find my comfort zone there soon, just like I kind of have here! You can check it out HERE! Its only a fifty word “story”.

Blogging has been my breath of fresh air, even in all my versatility and lack of direction and spontaneity.  Its all about keeping things positive and even without any milestones or whatnot, I’d love to just share this quote to end this off!

 

Maybe I’ve been feeling extremely mushy or its just me being extremely thankful, I don’t know but all I know is that without this blog, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do many of the things I’ve been working on of late.  You all are my inspiration and I thank all of you for dropping by and following, commenting and just writing up all those wonderful blogs you own 🙂 You all are awesome! Its keeps me motivated each day to know that there are such wonderful people scattered across the world that I’ve been acquainted with here in this blogosphere!

Happy Tuesday, my friends!