#photoadaymay

You have no idea how glad I am that May is over! Seriously, this month has been a total disaster and I can only hope that June brings better things!

Days 5-20 detail my two weeks of solitary confinement due to my back problems... in fact Days 6-12 were all taken on Day 12 when I was finally able to move around a little...

There were much fewer photos that were planned out in advance this month, although there were still a few (Days 4, 22, 24 and 29)... I think pretty much everything about this month became much more ad hoc than normal.

The most popular image of the month turned out to be Day 18, the zombie related cross stitch I did two years ago.

• Day 1: Peace (mornings are always peaceful... it's the one time I'm guaranteed peace)
• Day 2: Skyline
• Day 3: Something I wore today (my favourite scarf)
• Day 4: Fun! (May the Fourth Be With You on Star Wars Day)
• Day 5: Bird
• Day 6: Me (the note the doctor gave me... indicating that I was essentially fucked)
• Day 7: Someone that inspires me (my favourite artists inspire me)
• Day 8: A smell I adore (I love the smell of old books and old bookstores)
• Day 9: Something I do everyday
• Day 10: A favourite word ("fuck" was a useful word during my confinement to bed)
• Day 11: Kitchen (Ma made me soup!)
• Day 12: Something that makes me happy (Lego minifigs... the whole seventh series)
• Day 13: Mum (She's a superhero)
• Day 14: Grass
• Day 15: Love
• Day 16: What I'm reading
• Day 17: Snack
• Day 18: Something I made
• Day 19: A favourite place (Perryman's Bakery in North Adelaide)
• Day 20: Something I can't live without (very literally, sunshine and oxygen)
• Day 21: Where I stand (on my legs but with a walking stick)
• Day 22: Pink (two pairs of pink undies)
• Day 23: Technology
• Day 24: Something new (Peter Drew makes new things out of old things)
• Day 25: Unusual (Vampire Bunny fits the bill)
• Day 26: 12 o'clock (time to take my pills)
• Day 27: Something sweet
• Day 28: The weather today
• Day 29: A number (RIP Topham Wall Street Art Gallery)
• Day 30: My personality (I'm complex, but snarky)
• Day 31: Something beautiful (he wore that coat very well)

Have I mentioned how glad I am that we're moving on to the June list...

Current Mood:

random finger hotness

Today's Random Hotness is a meeting of that sublime photographer of naked manflesh, Rick Day, and previous Hotness, ubercute model River Viiperi... and proving that sometimes a face (and a stray nipple) is more than enough.

Do I really need to say any more?

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movies: dark shadows

Sometimes the collaborations between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are excellent, other times they're only so-so...

Dark Shadows (their eighth pairing) is mostly so-so, with a few moments of potential excellence.

I realised about halfway through that the whole thing was feeling very much like the TV show that it was based on... not that I've seen the show, but it just felt more like TV than a fully fledged movie.  It was almost episodic... the sequences didn't seem to flow from one to the other, it was often very choppy, and there just seemed to be too much stuff thrown in at times.

The final sequence however was where it all really kicked in and felt like a proper movie, even if there were a few moments that seemed to come completely out of nowhere.

Most of the cast are excellent... Johnny is at his awkwardly gothic best, Michelle Pfeiffer shows that she's as elegant and strong as ever, Helena Bonham Carter is somewhat underutilised but is wonderfully strange, Chloë Grace Moretz is proving that she can pretty much do anything you throw at her.

It's just a shame that they weren't all given more... or else that parts of the movie had been scaled back so that characters could have been given more time or more story.

If there's a major flaw in the cast, it's definitely Eva Green... she's trying to be sexy and vampy, but she just comes off as unappealing and weird looking.  Maybe it's the horrible blonde wig... maybe it's just Green, I've never been particularly fond of her, so she just felt clunky in this role.

As usual, most of the strength in Burton movies are in the set design and costuming, and that's no different here... there's a meshing of 1700's and 1970's in both that appealed to me.

However, often-times Depp's make-up looks exactly like it's makeup, especially the sunken cheekbones, although at other points it looks perfect.

I think Burton may have tried to be too faithful to the television show he loved and so the movie seems a little scattered, and kind of like a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sleepy Hollow without being the best parts of either.

yani's rating: 2 octopus chandeliers out of 5

tooth and nail sunday

Yaaaaay, I can drive a car without crippling myself!

I've been a little twitchy about getting in the car ever since le injury but after taking myself to breakfast at the Royal Oak this morning I decided I needed to get back on the proverbial horse.

And I really needed to go into the city anyway to turn my plan for the blog's Winter template into reality...

I did get into the car very gingerly, and felt like I was driving really slowly... but then I feel like I'm doing everything slowly at the moment... but it all turned out okay.

While I was wandering around, searching out street art, I realised that I was essentially on the doorstep of the Tooth and Nail gallery that I keep seeing mentioned, but hadn't gotten around to finding.

So I swung past.

Turns out it's in the same street I wandered down one lunchtime and slapped up an eyeBird as I was walking along.  Weird.

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the i hate may edition of saturday shopping

I officially HATE May now.

The month of May can choke to death on the decaying corpse of something large, smelly and horrible.

Granted today hasn't been the worst day this month... but it's been a little bit shit...

Firstly, partially because I haven't driven my car since I hurt my back, and also because Ma doesn't want me carrying heavy bags of shopping while my back is still not right, the fact that Ma was having her hair done this morning meant that I had to wait around for her to come down before going shopping...

That wasn't terrible... I was still pretty tired this morning, so it was nice not to have to rush around.  Originally I had intended to head to the supermarket in North Adelaide and get a paper, some breakfast and an Iced Coffee, but since I was a little achey and just couldn't be bothered this morning, I decided against it.

And there's a reason we go shopping at 8am (or thereabouts) on a Saturday morning, and not at 10:30am... shopping at 8am is much nicer and much easier.

But it wasn't a total disaster, so that was okay...

Then we did the usual thing of coming back here, unpacking and then heading off to do whatever the next piece of our plan is.  Today that involved heading down to Big W at Arndale to have a look at their Bonds hoodies that were on special.

I didn't take my walking stick with me... I hadn't taken it to the supermarket since I was going to be pushing the trolley and there wasn't any point... but to be honest, I'm kind of sick of the stupid stick and can't help wondering if it's making my leg sore in different ways.  But that's another story.

However, if I had had it with me, what happened next might not have happened...

And we weren't even at the supermarket... I was walking out of my apartment building, heading to Ma's car... and I don't even know what happened... one minute I was walking, the next minute I was flat on my face.

Okay, not literally... I broke my fall with my hands, and I jarred my elbow and hit one knee and kind of landed on my hip a little because of the direction I was travelling... but I fell over.

WHAT! THE! ACTUAL! FUCK!

Granted it wasn't as bad as when I fell last year before our trip to Sydney, but it was one of those things that I really, really, really didn't need right at this moment in time.  Plus I ripped a hole in my very favourite pair of jeans... and I think I scared the shit out of Ma.

Honestly, I was more annoyed than anything else.  I am so very, incredibly glad that the month of May ends on Friday next week.  June better be a fucking improvement!

But since I hadn't really damaged myself, we still headed down to Arndale, I bought a hoodie that turned out not to be as cheap as the striped ones (but it will work as an "everyday" hoodie to replace the one I lost in Sydney, although it's not as nice)... obviously nobody buys the striped ones.

It also seems that they're about to do some $35 million dollars worth of renovations/extensions at Arndale, which is probably long overdue... but it will basically make Arndale look like every other shopping centre, all shiny white floors and black/chrome doodads.

After we'd had a little wander around and I stopped off at the chemist to get some of that Voltaren gel stuff for not only my back but also possibly my elbows, knee and hip, we called it quits, detoured back via Perryman's Bakery again and came back here.

And there turned out to be some completely insane Katherine Hepburn movie on, which turned out not to really be worth watching, but it was a little bit like a car crash and was hard to look away from... eventually though I sent Ma home and half watched the rest of it in between looking at porn on Tumblr.

So, yeah... that's my life... more or less.

Is it June yet?

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photo friday: hunter and prey

It's been an interesting week living as a functional invalid...

Firstly I'm glad I'm not less functional than I am, because people don't really seem to notice or care about the fact I'm walking with a stick... only one bus driver during the whole week actually specifically lowered the bus for me and nobody has offered me a seat on the bus. Not that I really needed either of those things, but it would have been nice to be asked.

I'm definitely feeling better than I was, what with going to and from work, moving around much more during the work day and sitting in a chair that's somewhat more forgiving on my back.

But I think I'm using different muscles than I would usually use while getting around, so I'm a little sore in strange and unusual places after a week of being back in The Nut House.

Fortunately there was quite a bit of work kicking around this week, as well as me having to catch up on being away for two weeks, so I haven't had a lot of time to think about it.

And work also has the potential to become insane in the next few weeks... so we'll see what happens.

It's not been a very exciting week otherwise... well, kind of before yesterday, and that only seemed exciting in relation to the three weeks beforehand.

Yesterday though, I had both lunch and dinner at the Burger Theory truck (and bought a big yellow Burger Theory umbrella) and also went to Peter Drew's solo gallery show at AP Bond. Sadly I missed out on buying the piece of artwork I really wanted to buy, but he was giving away a print of his pixel alphabet, so I have that and will need to get myself a frame for it.

Oh, and then find somewhere to put it... and the last six pieces of artwork that I bought...

After work tonight I dropping into the gym to put a hold on my membership for the next four weeks and then going to see the ladies at my dry-cleaner just to let them know I was still alive.

And given the way the weather is at present and the fact that I've been upright for a whole week and I'm kind of over it, I am considering dragging the laptop into the bedroom again after dinner and curling up in bed watching a movie.

Actually that sounds pretty good...

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random knight hotness

A very porny Random Hotness this week... the 2011 Twink of the Year, Seth Knight...

He's also in the running to become the next Fleshjack Boy...

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monday and the end of unconscious mutterings

After 269 Unconscious Mutterings posts over the last five years, I'm pulling the plug on that particular institution... I missed out on the last couple due to being incapacitated and now I find that I don't really have a hell of a lot of a desire to return to them...

I'm not exactly sure if there's going to be a permanent addition to replace them, but I have a lot of unused photos still laying around, so maybe I'll use up some of those... who knows...

Today, being my first day back at work for two weeks, worked out pretty much exactly like I thought it would... telling variations of the same story to several different people, having a lot of people be glad that I was back and actually having more emails to deal with that I expected.

And there was also the realisation that although I feel like I spend a lot of time talking about the things I do with the people I work with, they don't really seem to know the intricacies of what I do.

Also, because a couple of my projects were coming pretty much to go time while I was away, they've kind of gone on without me... which feels weird because even though I was away for so long, it doesn't feel like I've really been gone, so I still keep thinking everything should be about the same place it was when I was last there.

And just to reinforce the feeling that I was all Rip Van Winkle, three new staff members have started in my absence...

My body held up pretty well though... I did rely on the cane a little more than I would have at home, but I wasn't in any pain sitting down which is good.  But because it was really more physical and mental exertion that I've had to deal with since hurting my back I was starting to feel kinda drained by about 3pm... but the worst thing during the whole day was actually standing at the bus stop after work waiting for the bus.

But at least I'm back.

And people actually seemed to have missed me.

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lego hulk smash

I put the Lego Marvel Super Heroes Hulk I bought yesterday together this morning...

And he's been sitting on my laptop table for the rest of the day holding a Sharpie and keeping me company... and wobbling every so slightly every time I bump the table.

The box and it's contents... this is the first of the Lego Hero Factory style models I've put together, and I like it...

Hulk's legs... and him being armless. All the pieces are fairly big and they snap together really securely... no worries that he'd fall apart if he fell onto the floor... one of the arm or leg plates might fly off but that's about it.

The Hulk's back is left pretty much wide open, and there's a whole second section attached to the back to hold his arms.  I didn't realise when I was first taking photos that those grey pieces on his shoulders are supposed to be folded down to make up his trapezius muscles.

So that's why this last photo was taken about ten hours later once I'd had a chance to fiddle around with him and get him hunkered down into a more Hulk-like stance... plus folded his shoulder plates down.

His head actually looks better from the side, but his body kinda looks better front on... dilemmas, dilemmas. 

Hulk smash indeed.

Now I just want a big Lego Thor for him to hang out with...

Current Mood:

circa

Perfection.

I don't know how else to describe Circa other than to say that it's simple perfection.

It's circus/acrobatics with all the sparkles and fripperies stripped off until it's just bare, beautiful performance.

The only other word to describe it is simple.

Simple and perfect.

The staging is simple... some lights, some matts and nothing else.  The costumes are simple. And all that simplicity just makes what the performers are doing stand out even more.

While the music can't really be described as simple, each piece of music (or the choice to not use music at all) is perfect for that section.

One thing I was kind of surprised about was how funny it was in parts.  I expected it to be beautiful, I expected it to be powerful but there were some genuinely laugh out loud moments.

It was also moving. I found myself getting a little misty-eyed on a couple of occasions, partially because it was just so beautiful.

One performer in particular moved me, Jarred Dewey.  He was also one of the most beautiful performers I have ever seen. I essentially had the same reaction to seeing him perform that I had to Billy Bell on the American version of So You Think You Can Dance... the control of his body, the way he moves, just everything about him in his element on stage moved me.

And the sequence with him and Todd Kilby that was half played as comedy and half as an amazing technical performance wowed me... but essentially I had trouble taking my eyes off him every time he stepped out on stage.

He's definitely a name I will be looking out for from now on.

Not that the rest of the cast weren't outstanding.  There wasn't a single moment that wasn't breathtaking or funny or beautiful.

Two of the other stand-out moments both featured Alice Muntz... the first was her performance on the swing/trapeze, where her control and the slowness of a lot of her movements were just amazing... and the second was the sequence where she walks all over (and I do mean all over) Nathan Boyle in a pair of sparkly red high heels... she never once touches the floor from the beginning of the sequence until the end, instead walking, dragging and folding Boyle into whatever shape she needed so that she could scramble over him like a mountain goat.  If mountain goats wore heels.

If there was any downside to the performance it was possibly that there were times when there were so many performers on stage that it was hard to catch everything that was going on.  And I really did want to see every last second of it.

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walking stick saturday

I have a stick... cane... mobility aid... whatever you want to call it... I have one.

Not a pretty one like the ones in the photo though (I don't like the "crook" headed ones anyway)... it's kind of coppery or brassy metallic brown.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Yay, actually walking around outside doing shopping and suchlike... it's a novelty, sure, but yay.

Everything pretty much went like usual... I made use of the little shopping cart we usually use to aid me walking around the supermarket, although it was perhaps a fraction too low to really be of assistance.

And Ma wouldn't let me carry any of the bags full of shopping, so we made use of a regular size trolley. It was like trying to drive a yacht or something... I haven't used a regular size trolley in years and it just felt comically oversized!

Once we made it back here we headed off to see the nice people at Homecare Equipment Services to return my crutches (which have been a godsend) and to investigate the aforementioned walking stick.

On the up side it's fully adjustable, on the down side for it to be adjustable it has to be metal, which is never as nice as wood.

And I decided to buy it outright, instead of renting one... there have been other times when I could have done with having a stick in the house, and it wasn't particularly expensive.

So now I have my own proper walking stick.

Since I was now aided in my mobility we decided to have a little wander around town... partly because I need the practice walking around, but also I've been essentially confined to the house for two weeks (with a couple of minor exceptions) and the lure of being outside/in places that aren't my apartment were just too great.

I did pretty well though.  It's the most walking I've done at any stage in the last two weeks, and I tried not to rely on the stick too much, although I did find it more necessary/useful as the day progressed.

We didn't really shop for very much or buy that much... Ma did find the seahorse charm for her bracelet, but given that her birthday is less than three weeks away I wouldn't let her buy it for herself.  And given that Toyworld had the full range of Lego Marvel Super Heroes in stock, I got myself The Hulk, since there's just something about it that I really love. Of course if at any point they made a Hawkeye one, I'm so getting that too!  Or possibly a Thor.

That was about it really though... so we stopped off to pick up some lunch and then came back to my place to eat it.

And that possibly would have been it, except we had tickets to see Circa... it's actually what I've been the most stressed about ever since I injured my back... especially since I know that the chairs in Her Majesty's Theatre are not only fairly tiny, but not the most comfortable theatre chairs ever.

But overall the chairs weren't too bad, somewhat uncomfortable but not agonisingly so... fortunately the show only ran for 75 minutes... I think if it had been two hours I might have been struggling.

And that, as they say, was that.

My first weekend properly back as a person in the world. With a stick.

Current Mood:

photo friday: stormy greys

Guess what! I've been out of bed ALL DAY!

I got up at about 7:30, had some breakfast and a shower and then sat in my little red chair... and managed to sit up all day long!

Which doesn't sound like very much, but given that this is the first time I've been able to do that in almost two weeks.  Sure it wasn't completely pain free, but it's an achievement none the less.

It also bodes well both for going to see Circa with Ma tomorrow as well as the fact that I'm going back to work on Monday.

I'm going to chalk the last two weeks up to being careful what you wish for... I'd really been wanting some time off from work... but this totally wasn't the way I wanted it.  I really need to be more careful what I ask the Universe to provide... there's always a sting in the tail when you're not specific.

Oh, and since the Universe does indeed have a sense of humour, it turns out that the frame that I went to Ikea to get the Sunday before last that started all this rubbish has a flaw or a mark or some sort of damage to the clear plastic front. It's both sad and hilarious all at the same time.

Current Mood:

random bites hotness

There are two things that today's Random Hotness, Jimmy Bites, and I have in common... and one of them is that we have the same bed.

The bed that I've pretty much lived in/been trapped in for the last two weeks.

For the other, you'll have to check his very NSFW Tumblr and work out for yourself...

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