Hi, there, Dear Reader. It’s late morning here in Lithia, Florida, on Thursday, January 13, 2022. It is a chilly – but not freezing – winter day in the Sunshine State. Currently, the temperature is 69˚F (20˚C) under sunny skies. With humidity at 70% and the wind blowing from the west-northwest at 3 MPH (5 KM/H), the wind-chill factor is 67˚F (20˚C). Today’s forecast calls for mostly sunny skies and a high of 74˚F (23˚C). Tonight, skies will be mostly clear, and the low will be 54˚F (12˚C).
Well, yesterday I received one of the two orders I was expecting: a Star Wars The Black Series action figure from Hasbro’s Archives: Lucasfilm 50th Anniversary sub-collection from 2021. After I received my Luke Skywalker (Hoth) figure earlier this week, I decided to get a companion figure, Han Solo (Hoth) from both the same sub-collection and movie (Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Based on the character portrayed in director Irvin Kershner’s 1980 follow-up to George Lucas’ Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Han Solo (Hoth) depicts the Corellian smuggler-turned-Rebel in his brown (not blue) parka; the figure also includes a set of macrobinoculars and Han’s trusty BlasTech DL-44 blaster pistol.
Although the packer at Amazon did a nice job of packing the figure by ensconcing it in a plastic outer bag before putting it in a cardboard box for shipping, the Lucasfilm 50th Anniversary is creased slightly and looks a bit dog-eared. This is not a major defect, but I still dislike it when it happens.[1] I will probably review Han Solo (Hoth) tomorrow. We’ll see.
As for my order of Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan: Limited Edition (2-CD Set)? It did not arrive yesterday as the U.S. Post Office originally estimated. And from the looks of it – I checked the status of my package earlier this morning – it will not get here today, either.
Currently, this shipment is marked as “In Transit: Late” and does not have an estimated day of arrival. The last place my package was scanned was at the Santa Clarita (California) Distribution Center at 5:32 AM (PST) on January 8. I hope the Post Office did not lose it. However, considering that Louis DeJoy, the Postmaster-General, is a crony of Donald Trump’s and was put in place to hobble the Postal Service for purely political reasons, I would not be surprised if I do not receive my order until next week, if at all.
I also tried out my 4K UHD Blu-ray of The Great Escape from MGM/Kino Lorber. I did not watch the entire film; The Great Escape is nearly three hours long (2 hours, 52 minutes, to be precise), and I did the “gee, I wonder how the movie looks in 4K?” test sometime around 8 PM. I knew that if I tried to sit through the whole thing I’d fall asleep before the halfway point, so I just tried the 4K with one of the audio commentaries – The Great Escape has two – for five minutes. I liked what I saw of the video but was disappointed that only the main feature has subtitles – the audio commentary tracks don’t have subs, and neither does the Bonus Features 2K Blu-ray. I might watch the feature film this weekend, depending on my mood.
Anyway, that’s “all the news that’s fit to print,” so I’ll close for now. Until next time, Dear Reader, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.
[1] At least this packing faux pas is not as bad as one that occurred when I bought a Garindan (Long Snoot) Power of the Force action figure from a private collector who was selling her collection because she was going away to college and needed the money. Instead of placing Garindan – the cloaked, goggle-wearing alien who follows Luke Skywalker and Ben Kenobi in Mos Eisley for the Empire) – in a box large enough to hold a figure with its cardback without damaging the packaging, the seller stuffed it into a small envelope. When Garindan arrived at my Miami townhouse, the cardback was so badly curled up that I had to tear it open – something that I did not want to do. I still have the figure and his blaster, but I wish I could have kept Garindan in his Power of the Force packaging.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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