The Friday Five, 10/13/23: 5 things I've been up to this week

Today is Friday the 13th, and I'm headed to my office for one final time—my company is moving to Birmingham and invited us to come to the current office in Troy and take any furniture, artwork, and other things that we want. 

Boston engagement photo
credit: Christina Manuela Photography

What I've been up to this week:
  1. Engagement photos are in! When we went to Boston last week, I was trying to find someone on short notice to take engagement photos for us, either in Boston or Rhode Island. Friends recommended some people and also my cousins, and we ended up going with Christina Manuela Photography, who was fabulous; we had booked 60-90 minutes with her and I think she took photos of us for about 2 hours. Christina is a friend of one of my cousins and did a great job. We took photos by Long Wharf in Boston, and the photo above was a greenery area that we found close to Long Wharf. There are a few more photos posted on my personal Facebook, as well. 
  2. Watching movies. I saw The Creator in the theater last Saturday afternoon and I'd give it 4/5; Denzel's son was great in it and the premise was intriguing. We discovered my fiance is behind in his Disney movie viewing, so we watched Frozen, Frozen 2, and Coco this week, and we've also started Cruella, all of which I've already seen, but Coco is a favorite and Cruella is really well done, with some great acting by Emma Stone, too. I was going to go see The Haunting of Venice at my local AMC yesterday but it got bumped for the new Taylor Swift movie, and they actually didn't even tell me, so I'm glad I checked the app. I have a ticket for The Equalizer 3 today, as well, at AMC. 
  3. Getting my COVID booster. On Tuesday night I went to a local CVS to get this, and I also had to get my monthly B12 shot on Wed. AM, so needless to say I have two sore arms this week. Sometimes I feel unfocused after the COVID shot and that took about 24 hours to happen—around 5pm on Wed. I started to get super tired—but other than that the side effects weren't too bad. I've had COVID two times now, in late 2021 and January this year after a Vegas trip, so I'm hoping not to get it again anytime soon; both times were not pleasant. 
  4. Cooking. We had Green Chef this week, one of my favorites but usually pricey (I had a discount this week), and EveryPlate last week, after coming back from the East Coast. EveryPlate and Dinnerly used to be the two "discount" ones (cheaper than HelloFresh and GC, which HF actually owns, along with EveryPlate), but even those are like $50-55 now at full price (and I never pay full price, I usually hop around due to discounts). 
  5. Watching TV shows. I started watching The Other Black Girl on Hulu last night and got about five to six episodes in (hence why I'm tired today), but it's a really good watch so far; apparently it's based on the book, also. I started the newest Starstruck season on Max, too, and that's also an easy watch, since each episode is 25-30 minutes, and the last episodes of Love is Blind is up today so I'm hoping to watch that later and also Still Up, on AppleTV, which has been putting up one new episode every Friday. I also finally finished Virgin River, on Netflix—I like that show but I don't love it, so I used to watch it whenever I had extra time. I also finished Only Murders in the Building on Hulu with my parents last week and it had a great ending to set up the next season.
Sage brown butter chicken piccata from Green Chef
Sage brown butter chicken piccata from Green Chef

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