teevee related saturday shopping

Today has very much been about television...

And the associated new gadget envy that goes along with someone else's new toys.

After a slightly delayed start, we did the usual supermarket wandering... which was about the same as every other week's supermarket wandering.

Once we were done at the supermarket, we came back before getting ourselves organised for our only errand this week.

On Tuesday, Ma called me to let me know that her old teevee had started making weird noises and she didn't want to keep using it just in case it happened to blow up or whatnot.

I didn't have any problem with that, I've been trying to convince her that she's needed a new teevee for months now, even before the analogue stations were turned off, mostly because she hadn't been able to use her DVD player as well as the set top box for some strange reason.

So we headed down to the Good Guys store where we buy all of our major electronic doodads to see what they had on offer.

I also decided to have a look at the microwaves while we were there, but I never seem to see any that don't look kinda crappy... or else they're too big for the space I have available. I did see one that was kinda cool, but I need to double check the size of it.

While I was doing that, Ma was looking at teevees and then I came back over to see where she was at. It seems like they only have teevees that are around 25" and then the next size up is about 40"... whereas when I bought mine, I managed to get a 32". Either that or they just didn't have any in stock.

Given that Ma has more than enough space for a larger teevee, I recommended that she get the 42" Sony Bravia... I've been very happy with my Bravia over the last three years, although to be honest I'd forgotten how big my teevee was and thought it must have been around the same size.

Ma went back and forth on which teevee to choose for a little while but eventually settled on the W670A Bravia (which is the very pretty gadetness seen on the right).

Once it was all paid for and loaded in the car we headed down to Ma's place so I could help her put it all together and set it up and whatnot.

On the way down we worked out where to take her old CRT teevee, a possible plan for making a change to Christmas decorations and other randomness.

Ma had already reorganised her loungeroom and set up the IKEA LACK table to use as her teevee stand, so all I really needed to do was unpack the teevee, set it up on it's stand and connect all the wires.

Fortunately that was actually the hardest part... once everything was plugged into everything else, the teevee pretty much set itself up... a few minutes, a couple of language and location options later and Ma had a fully function and very large teevee.

It is a very big teevee though, relatively speaking, and because the border is incredibly thin, it looks even bigger.

My gadget envy didn't really kick in until we were playing around with it after it was all set up and we worked out that you can just plug in a USB and play stuff straight from there. Mine does have a USB port but it never seems to work like it should.

Plus it's a bigger teevee, it's all shiny, it's new and it does things that mine just doesn't (including connect to the internet, not that Ma has the internet currently)... so, yeah, big fat gadget envy.

Once we'd played with the teevee enough we loaded the old CRT into the car and headed back to my place, stopping off on the way to dump it at a recycling centre that was on the way.

So yeah, that was our Saturday... and I still have vague gadget envy...

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photo friday: feathered friends

This week hasn't been much of anything...

I finished watching The West Wing (seven seasons in three weeks), got hooked on the six episode run of the documentary/reality series Heroes of Cosplay (I disliked half the people on the show, but the fabrication stuff and the finished results were interesting), checked out the first episode of Agents of SHIELD (it feels quite a lot like Heroes, but it also feels a little predictable) and made a bunch of changes to one of my Tumblrs...

So yeah... not much of anything really...

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random turk hotness

It's a return to a former hotness for this week's Random Hotness.

The last time I featured model Parker Hurley was actually on my birthday this year. This time however he's wearing a Mr Turk swimsuit... and giving himself a new hairdo.

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forking whitmore and beaching it

Today has been a good day.

It started in the usual fashion... although to be honest, due to the fact my apartment has been pretty much tidy all the time for a couple of weeks now, I really didn't need to worry about doing very much.

That meant that I had an early shower and I got to chill out and leaf through the Capture Creatures book (it's very good... but in more than a few instances the Pokemon parallel is blatantly obvious) while I was waiting for Ma to get here.

Shopping was much the same as usual... I may have ended up with some more stuff than usual, but not crazily so.

After the usual unpacking, Ma was asking me about iPhone games, so we messed around in the App Store for a little bit and then decided to take a wander down to Arndale before heading off to this month's Fork on the Road.

We didn't really have any plan for wandering around Arndale, we just did our usual circuit... although I did find some Avengers Mini Mugg vinyl toys at The Reject Shop of all places... I could have gone a little nuts with them, but I restricted myself to Thor and Nick Fury since he has a great graphic look. I was also very tempted by Captain America, but unfortunately the Hawkeye figure looked a little rubbish.

I also had something of a weird conversation with the young guy on the checkout... he asked me who the toys were for, which is a slightly weird question anyway, but when I said they were for me he responded with something like "cool" and then said he loved the movie. I don't know if he'd been eyeing off the figures all day and I was either the first person he'd served who bought one, or the first adult who was buying them for themselves, but it was an odd, if amusing, conversation.

Once we finished our wander we headed into the city for the September edition of Fork on the Road.

This time it was in Whitmore Square, which turned out to be a great venue... plenty of grass, plenty of trees which in turn means plenty of shade. And there was also a nice mix of food trucks. And the weather cleared up after some rain and cloud earlier in the morning and by lunchtime the sun was shining merrily away (thankfully this time I remembered to take a hat).

Sadly neither the gelati lady nor the Locapops lady were there, and to be honest, that's possibly the only thing that was missing... some nice frozen goodness.

We took a stroll up and down the line of trucks, just to see what was around, then headed back to Delectaballs where Ma had their tasting plate with a pork and fennel slider and a sweet potato and goat's cheese ball with beetroot dip and I tried the cheese balls with a slightly lethal chilli cheese sauce.

Usually I'm happy to just wander around while eating or just find a temporary seat, but after we commandeered some milk crates to sit on Ma decided to stay put while I went off and brought food back. It wasn't a bad plan overall, especially since we'd found a spot to sit that was a decent distance away from the music and away from the majority of the people.

The next course was from Burger Theory... since I haven't had the opportunity to visit my favourite food truck for a few weeks, I was kind of craving a burger, and there wasn't a line-up, which is always a bonus.

And of course I couldn't resist a trip to Archie the Pastizzi Bus... so I grabbed an apple and cinnamon each and then a Moroccan lamb for me. Yum, yum, yum. I also swung past the Raw Thirst truck and picked up an Amazon Acai with was fantastically tasty.

As usual, our last stop was to Four Seeds for some of their fantastic brownies (mmmm salted caramel brownies) before heading back to the car.

Since it was such a nice afternoon, we decided to go for a drive down to the beach.

Once again, we didn't really have a specific destination in mind... you know, beyond the beach... unfortunately it's not that easy to just go down to the beach and drive along the foreshore, but we did a bit of that until we ended up near Grange, parked the car and decided to go for a wander along the sand.

And it was a really nice wander. I took a lot of photos, I walked on the wet sand (which is a great exfoliant for the feet), got my feet wet in the ocean and took a lot of photos.

After we'd washed the sand off our feet we headed back to the car, grabbed some water and found a spot to eat our brownies (which were slightly warm from being in the car, and very yummy) and then headed back here.

So a very good day all in all...

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photo friday: bobbing about

This week has certainly been busier than the previous two weeks, and I've definitely spoken to more people, although really it doesn't amount to all that much.

I went to see Tink for Haircut Night on Wednesday and got my hair did. Then this afternoon I had to go into town to see my chiro, and I went in a little early and dropped in to see Josh at Espionage. In all three instances there was a conversation about my current employment situation.

So yeah... that was a thing that happened. Also, my hair is blonder and tidy again.

I also had three deliveries this week... two that I was expecting, one that was a surprise... or rather unexpected. In order to minimise the TV show DVDs that I have I bought a stack of new six disc cases which arrived on Wednesday. I managed to compress the number of DVDs into a smaller number of cases, but I ran out so I ordered another batch which were supposed to arrive next week but showed up this morning.

And then while I was half way through moving DVDs into new cases I had a reward for one of my Kickstarter projects show up, the slightly Pokemon-eske Capture Creatures book and print.

I also managed to take all of my other DVDs out of the bookcase and into boxes and rearranged some stuff. Basically I'm getting to the point where I need to work out what the hell I'm doing with the old bookcases (and I'm sure I've said this about a million times), once I know that, then the new bookcases will be up and filled inside a day. Okay, maybe a couple of days...

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random wildlife hotness

There are some Random Hotness posts that really don't need all that much of an explanation. And now 25 year old Zachary David Alexander "Zac" Efron in a suit with a collection of fuzzy animals is one of those.

The shots come from a Blackbook magazine article late last year titled "Zac Efron Doesn't Want To Be Your Teenage Crush Anymore" (which really only gets kind of interesting about two thirds of the way through), and the photos for the shoot were taken at Wildlife Learning Center in Sylmar, California.

But really, who could possibly resist Zac Efron with bunnies in his pockets?

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