It's Friday night already?1?! WHAT??? It feels like time is on fast-forward and all that jazz. It's still basically summer and pumpkin stuff is already invading. Pumpkin beer from Whole Foods is currently in my fridge and probably by the time you are reading this is my tummy. Enough of that, onward to what you're here for. The Five things I thought were worth sharing from the past week.

1. The Wicked + The Divine: Fandemonium (Gillen, McKelvie, Wilson, Cowles). I've spent the summer trying out non-Marvel, non-DC, non-superhero titles and I just have to say that image comics is KILLING it. My favorite thing (so far) has definitely been The Wicked + The Divine series about a group of gods that has been reincarnated into a bunch of teenagers. The first trade paperback, The Faust Act, was a tantalizing tease of the greater stories to come from this series. I just picked up the recently-released second trade paperback, Fandemonium, and I couldn't put it down. The story is twisty, humorous, sad, and mysterious. The art is beautiful, bright, but always tinged with darkness. I was worried that the subject matter, a bunch of teenage gods, would be all teen melodrama (not that I don't like things like that), but this story is way more about the philosophical struggles of humanity, though it chiefly stars those who are divine. I cannot recommend this book enough. And let me just say it ends on multiple cliffhangers. Ugh! I might need to pick up the recent issues (#12-14) before the next trade comes out.

2. Canva.com. For a while now, Picmonkey has been my thumbnail maker, photo editor, design program go-to when I don't want to bother with Photoshop. It's been buggy as hell and doesn't let you save your creations, so I've moved on to Canva. Is Canva perfect? No. Is it extremely useful and very helpful in inspiring new design ideas? Yes. Does it effectively fill in for Photoshop when I'm feeling lazy? Yes, but I really should spend more time learning about Photoshop. In the meantime, I have Canva. It's free and you can import your own photos (though you can pay for some of the stock photo elements they offer). It has lots of fonts and lots of suggested layouts for those fonts, templates for all the different social media content you might want to design, and most importantly lets you save and change previous designs. Its photo editing is pretty standard and it's filters are ok, not quite as good as Instagram, but still usable. Most of my recent thumbnails have used Canva, if that's any indication of whether it's good or not (I do like some of them more than others).

3. Aerial America. These past few weeks I've been delving in spreadsheets, sandbox games, content databases, and maps and have been loving it. Upon reflection I think I really enjoy seeing and understanding the Big Picture and how it is laid out and focusing down to each part to see the connects and how the system works as a whole. And I like nothing more than ensuring that all the pieces are present and accounted for. I never feel more accomplished than when I complete one of these systems, no matter what form it takes. But enough about me. How does this apply to Aerial America, a great show that flies around the country and captures the natural and man-made features that the U.S. has to offer. For me this truly feeds into my love of delving into complex systems. I <3 maps and it's like Aerial America let's me see the details of the map. On top of all that the show highlights the history and focuses on the beauty of the natural world, which makes it interesting and visually satisfying. You can catch it randomly on the Smithsonian Channel like I did for the Michigan ep last week. (It showed UMich and The Big House-- oh the memories!!) They generally have a couple of free episodes on YouTube, or you can download the seasons on Amazon or iTunes or one of those types of places.

4. Who Do You Think You Are? Did I say enough about me and my love of understanding and completing complex systems? Well, I guess I was wrong. This love is instrumental in my current obsession with genealogy. I have been working hard at discovering all the branches of my own family tree and also watching the hell out of "Who Do You Think You Are?". This is a series following celebrities on their adventures delving into their family's past. It just wrapped up it's most recent season on TLC, but has a huge UK back catalog too. YouTube has a ton of episodes if you are interested in joining in on my obsession. Don't you want to know where all those random British celebrities, whom you sort of recognize, hail from?

5. Just Between Us with Allison Raskin & Gaby Dunn. If you are partial to Buzzfeed and its videos, you might recognize Allison & Gaby because they show up in them, being their awesome selves, quite regularly. The best friends also have their own YouTube Channel, where they upload funny sketches that pit Allison's neuroses against Gaby's laid back attitude and videos sharing dating advice. I want to use the words amusing, tongue-in-cheek, and irreverent to describe them, but 1) I think I just called something else irreverent recently (maybe I like irreverent things???), 2) those descriptors make me sound like an old fuddy-duddy (using those words do it too! I'm stuck in a never-ending cycle of sounding to old for my own good. AHHH!), and finally 3) those words pretty much mean the same thing (I know, I know. I need to learn how to condense my phrasing.).I think you catch my drift though. At least I hope you do! I'm just saying anything that has the phrases, "My pre-school boyfriend is getting married!", "Do they name girls Jess?" and "My type is the world and I am the world's type." is just worth watching.

That's it for this week. Next week I plan on posts about Fall TV, Cinerama, those Great Movies I'm watching, and maybe the return of Heart Says Hey videos??? Maybe we'll see! Follow me on social media to see when all of that goes live.