sighing saturday shopping

Today did not, as they say in the classics, go according to any sort of plan.

Ma was having her hair did this morning so it was up to me to go shopping on my own... which I have no problem with, I planned to just slap on my headphones and do the usual supermarket thing in half the time it normally takes us.

Except when I went downstairs and got in the car and turned the key, nothing happened.

I seriously thought that I'd moved on from that since my car is no longer sitting out in the open, but I haven't driven it for.... I dunno, possibly a month. So of course, flat battery.

Dammit.

I could have gone through all the rigmarole of calling the RAA and getting them to start the car, then taking it down to the mechanic and getting him to charge the battery or replace it or whatever. But I figured I'd wait until Ma came down, get her to jump start my car from hers and go from there.

So after giving her a call I was slightly freaked out by the fact that my iPhone decided to tell me how many minutes it would take to drive to Sefton Plaza, where the supermarket is... I mean that would make sense if I had any reference to the supermarket in my phone, but all I had was a reminder to buy garlic... yet my iPhone knew where I should be headed on a Saturday morning.

Essentially my iPhone is stalking me.

To fill in the time until Ma arrived I sat down and played some Assassin's Creed, because, reasons.

When she arrived I got her to pull her car into the spot next to mine, expecting that everything would be all good. Except the jumper cables I have aren't long enough to reach from her car to my car. So fuck it... I gave up and was going to deal with it tomorrow. However on more reflection I might just wait until next weekend, make a proper appointment at the garage and go from there.

All of that, combined with the fact that going to the supermarket an hour and a half later than usual is a recipe for frustration given that it's a whole different set of people clogging up the store.

Like for example the guy in tracksuit pants ordering about a kilo and a half of bacon, a kilo of chicken and god knows what else at the deli counter... seriously, unless you're hosting a footy club BBQ or feeding army cadets, you're just being a dick. And even then...

And I also wasn't really in the mood to take a look at anything in Target, so we mostly just did the wander around and then headed back to my place.

Truth be told once we got back here that was kind of the point at which I half gave up on today being overly useful.

We didn't have any actual plans for the day, other than heading out to That Dapper Market at 3pm, but I'd had half of a plan to head out down to Toy Corner to pick up some Lego plates for the base of the Minifig case I bought from The Interwebnets.

And since we were going to be in the neighbourhood I suggested we head over to Tea Tree Plaza since it's not somewhere we go that often.

Fast forwarding a bunch of the day... Toy Corner, mostly successful (I got the plates, just not as many as I wanted for both cases), and then we scared ourselves by wandering around the Factory of Endless Crapulence that is Neds. Tea Tree Plaza... m'eh. I found a box of five Assassin's Creed books in amongst Father's Day junk at Big W, so Ma snagged it off me to put away for Christmas.

The books themselves may very well be crap, but they worked out reasonably cheaply as a set.

Beyond that we just wandered around with little to no success. Which tends to happen when you don't really have any plan.

Once we were finished with the wandering, we headed back to my place via the North Adelaide Village and the headed off to That Dapper Market.

And even if I hadn't had a somewhat frustrating day I think I would still officially be done with Dapper Market... or as it should more accurately be called That Hipster Vegan Bollocks Market. Maybe the first time we went we were just already in the Market mood... and everything was shiny and new and interesting. But this time it was just a world of m'eh or blah or some other word that displays a general sense of being uninterested and over it.

On the up side the Gozleme stall was there so we had some tasty late lunch/early dinner... and got some yummy cookies and brownies from a couple of the baked good stalls.

But otherwise, just no.

Which was really the general watchword for the whole day really. Just no.

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photo friday: black and white streets

I am seriously not to be trusted with an internet connection and a credit card... or any kind of bank account or clearly money in general.

Not that I've been overly extravagant, just a little here and a little there... a t-shirt or some new underwear here, a book there, some naked male art somewhere else... you know, the usual... plus I am saving money. But yeah, money and the internet, a dangerous combination.

I do very much enjoy getting parcels in the mail though.

Work was... well, work. Weirdly Thursday turned out to be how I thought Friday was going to feel and Friday was pretty damn quiet, at least for the morning.

I'm not sure there's really a whole lot else of interest to report... I really feel like a lot of this week has managed to slip through my fingers in one way or another... not necessarily in a bad way, just that time has gotten away from me.

So... yeah. It's really been pretty damn average.

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central city forking with adding spendingness

My claim to want to go to bed earlier from yesterday didn't really hold a lot of water, so while I wasn't exactly running behind this morning, I didn't have a lot of time for goofing around.

But as always (seemingly), I ended up heading downstairs just as Ma arrived... which is awesome timing wise, but still a little spooky generally.

There was a small hiccup when we got to the supermarket though... and it's well documented that I'm not a massive fan of small random change (or large destructive change for that matter). But the small trolleys I use every week which take two of the carry baskets were nowhere to be seen. They've dicked around with their location before, so I had a look around but there wasn't really anyone around to ask who was free and to be honest there weren't that many staff around. Eventually one of the dudes putting out stock in the fruit and veg department took pity on me since I kept wandering back and forth aimlessly and found somebody to ask.

Turns out they got rid of them somewhere between last weekend and this one. And instead they had some of those stupid "half trolleys" that are still giant trolley sized things, but just really shallow. It honestly felt like pushing some sort of yacht around the store. Initially I thought it might have worked against them because the trolley wasn't as deep... but thinking about it I think we spent slightly more money than usual, although we both bought a few things we don't normally do.

After we'd done all of the collective supermarket shoppery for the week, I wanted to look in Target and EB Games... both of which turned into slightly expensive trips. Target because I've been half thinking about getting new crockery for a while now... the plates I have at present are all cracked, plus I'm kind of over the whole square shape thing.

And Target just happened to have the Canteen range, which was available as individual pieces... which is good because I only ever need two of everything, not four.

Also, I have something of a weakness for bowls, and the range had a mini bowl, a cereal bowl, a general bowl and a giant salad bowl... I resisted the giant salad bowl, but I did go a little mental with the other three. Now normally I would have gone with the red ones, but this time I resisted and instead got the "blue"... which honestly is more of a soft robin egg blue... a tiny bit green but not a strong turquoise.

It also turned out that Target was having a sale on crockery, and because I spent over a certain amount I got $10 off, which is always a nice surprise.

Then we swung by EB Games where I found Assassin's Creed III and Revelations... plus LA Noire, since I needed a third game to take advantage of the deal that got me all three for half the sticker price.

Plus they just happened to have a Captain Jack figure from the Disney Infinity game... and they're really nice figures... worthy of being displayed even though I don't have the game and don't really have any intention of getting it. And it was cheap.

We ended up spending longer in the store than I'd intended since the two people before me in the line were both doing overly complicated things (and the guy at the head of the line was a little bit of a douche since he was challenging the wording for some promotion they were having. And doubly annoying since he got what he wanted in the end.

All of that added up to the fact that we got back to my place quite late, relatively speaking.

By the time we headed back out into the city it was already noon, but for once we weren't heading straight to Fork on the Road, I wanted to head into the Mall and grab the extendible curtain rod I totally forgot about last weekend.

We couldn't find a park close to Victoria Square, but we got a close as we could and then wandered over to the Mall for a quick raid on Spotlight before we headed back, dropped the rod in the car and then wandered over to Fork.

This is the third Fork on the Road that I've now been to in Victoria Square... it's where the first ever Fork was held, and then there was one held on the road between the two halves of the Square... so you could say that this was the first proper Fork in Vic Square.

And there were a large number of old and new trucks in attendance, including one that has now officially become one of my favourites.

As is traditional whenever Archie is in attendance, we started off with a couple of pastizzi... pork and mushy pea for Ma, and I tried the green chicken curry one, which was quite tasty.

I didn't really notice until I just looked at the photos in this post, but most of what we ended up was fried in one form or another... not for any particular reason, it just turned out that way.

And it was good given that there's lots of possible spots to sit in Victoria Square, so we could just wander around the trucks and find spots to sit and soak up both the sun and the atmosphere.

Next stop was Papa's Hotdogs for a serve of their onion rings, which really are the best onion rings while we watched the kids frolic in the fountain.

From there we went around to try my new favourite, Cheesy Street for a Cheese on Cheese on Cheese toasty and a banana milkshake. The three cheeses were provolone, vintage cheddar and provolone piccante on dark rye bread... and very tasty. As was the milkshake.

Once again we kind of hung out for a while watching toddlers do amusing things after we'd finished eating before we eventually wandered back around to La Chiva to try some of their Tapioca chips... which ended up being pretty much just like big fat potato chips but with a slightly different texture. Interesting, but not mind blowing.

We finished up with first some Barossa Valley ice-cream... Salty Caramel for Ma and Pear and Verjuice sorbet for me... both of which were really, really nice. And then we revisited the honey puff truck (Honey Ladies, Honey Girls... something like that I think) for some sugary, fried balls of honey soaked dough deliciousness.

It was then a very slow but highly contented walk back to the car.

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photo friday: spines

This week has been a much better week. Technically it shouldn't have been, since I've done a lot of sitting while playing a whole bunch of Assassin's Creed II, but somehow the thing that I shouldn't do that much of hasn't punished me all that much.

Had I known then what I know how, I would have gone out and bought Assassin's Creed II before I played Brotherhood... especially give that II has all of the "how to do everything" training, and Brotherhood has none. I went back and watched the original Good Game reviews, and they described Brotherhood as feeling like DLC for II, which makes perfect sense... huge, complicated DLC, but still like an additional part of the game. And I definitely think that Brotherhood is much more difficult game overall.

Of course now I'm looking for AC: Revelations and AC III...

But circling around to the fact that this has been a better week... not being in pain meant that I was able to suffer fools a little more than usual. Or else there were less fools... or possibly being aware of what was causing me to be grumpy stopped me from being quite so grumpy, I don't know.

I do know that I need to get my shit together as far as getting to bed earlier is concerned, because then I sleep through my first alarm and end up getting to work late.

Given how much fun we had at the Mythbusters show on Wednesday, I was literally shattered to learn today that the Build Team of Tory, Grant and Kari are leaving the show (which sounds so much better than just saying they've been fired). In a lot of ways I really, really don't get it... the Build Team allowed for Adam and Jamie not to have to carry the entire show and let them cover more myths in a shorter time frame. I also just assumed that they would stay on the show until Adam and Jamie were at the point they wanted to retire and then the trio would step up and take over.

There's been no real discussion of the whys and wherefores... parts of what the trio have said almost sound like they have another project to go to (or projects, I don't know)... and beyond saying that the show was going to refocus on Adam and Jamie, there hasn't been any other forthcoming information. I have a feeling that they're just going to concentrate on maybe one myth per episode and dig into the detail and the building and the minutia instead of glossing over some of that at the expense of two myths per episode.

We'll just have to wait and see what the deal is I guess.

So, yeah, that's really about it for this week...

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mythbusters: behind the myths tour

I don't get genuinely, hardcore excited about a lot of things... but going to see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman in the Mythbusters: Behind the Myths tour was definitely something that made me giddy as the proverbial schoolgirl (or Jamie when there's high explosive around).

And I don't think I stopped smiling the whole time they were on stage... and the final sequence involving a suit of armour, one half of the spawn of Adam's loins and Jamie's paintball gun from hell had me laughing the whole way through.

As always, Adam had any number of costume changes (at one point quite literally when he put on his Han Solo costume) with an array of superhero themed shirts, while Jamie stayed cool and crisp in his ubiquitous white shirt.

The little pre-taped pieces before the show actually made it all feel very "behind the myths", first there was Jamie giving a tour through M5, and even though it's a place you see weekly, you don't always know how it all fits together and what leads into where.

Then out come Adam and Jamie... Adam talking 100 miles a minute and Jamie occasionally getting a word in edgeways.

I don't want to give away too many of the "tricks" but there's a mixture of simple but impressive physics displays, stunts they did on the show like the interleaved phone books, fun with the high speed camera and on top of all of that separate question and answer sessions with both hosts. Also, you've never heard a Mythbusters explosion until you've heard it coming out of a lot of very large and powerful speakers with the bass turned all the way up to at least 15 so you feel it in your whole body.

And even though I didn't get picked for audience participation (always a problem when you're not overly near the front of a very large venue... but I would have sorely loved to have been), the audience members they did choose were really good, especially the little boy who blew the double raspberry on high speed camera.

But I really can't give it any higher praise than then whole show, from beginning to end, just made me really, really, really happy.

And who doesn't need a little happy in their life?

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regularly scheduled saturday shopping

There really isn't all that much to report for today's adventures...

My morning routine was pretty standard... I decided to break in my new Waterbender teeshirt, which pretty much resulted in a blue outfit from head to toe.

Then I literally made it downstairs as Ma was arriving... she pulled up just as I made it out to the street, so that was useful.

Supermarketry was about the same as always... I did fill up on a variety of things in the produce section so that I can attempt to make lasagne to take to work this week. And lasagne with the addition of lots and lots of sneaky vegetables blended into the sauce... well, I say blended, but we'll see how it all comes together tomorrow. As usual I'll be half following the recipe and half making it up as I go along.

We faffed about back at my place for a little while, unpacking groceries and discussing So You Think You Can Dance, as we do, before we headed into the city.

Earlier in the week I had a list of maybe half a dozen things I wanted to do in the city. Know how many I remembered to do while we were in the city? One of them. D'oh.

Granted it's not like a number of them were especially urgent, but still.

We did have a little bit of luck when we parked the car though, firstly we were right in front of the ticket machine, however when I got out to put the money in, not only did the money not seem to want to go into the machine, it also dropped right through and out the other end. But when I went to extract the money I realised there was a bunch of money already sitting in the coin return tray... $6 to be exact, not including the $2 I'd put in. Score! So I got to use $2 in one of the other machines for a ticket and still made $4 profit.

Not really a bad start to the excursion.

The only thing that I remembered I wanted to do was head to Dymocks to see if they had any of the books I've been looking for for Baby Tink... they didn't, however they did have a gorgeous book called Otto the Book Bear, which was too gorgeous to pass up.

We had a bit of a poke around some of the other stores (I found an elephant doorstop that was too cute to pass up and works a whole hell of a lot better keeping the bathroom door closed than the awful curly wedge thing I previously had. And because all elephants need a name, I found the name Horace appear in my brain... and the only reason I'm writing it down is that this is probably the only time I'll even remember he has a name, let along what it is.

After we finished poking around the shops (including a slightly accidental trip to Haighs... it wasn't planned but we were in the neighbourhood) we headed down Rundle Street to check out the Burger of the Month at Burger Theory.

We tried the new "Call Me Gravy" burger, which is chips, gravy, cayenne pepper sauce and double cheese. But it's not your regular gravy, this is American "biscuits and gravy" style gravy... which makes me really want to try biscuits and gravy now... because that stuff is DAMN TASTY!

And the Cajun fries are just the perfect amount of spiciness. Mmmmmm.

But seriously, can we talk about frozen custard for a moment. OH! MY! GODDESS! It's like the smoothest smooth ice-cream I've ever eaten... if that ultra smooth ice-cream was put through an additional smoothing process. Yeah, suffice to say, it's a new obsession and I can't wait for Fringe time next year when I can just casually pop in to Burger Theory on the way to or from a Fringe show and get a cup of frozen custard to take on my merry way.

Of course now I need to work my way through all the options for frozen custard "concrete"... I don't remember all the options on the list, but just the idea of vanilla frozen custard mixed with apple crumble has me drooling a tiny bit.

And even though I shared both the fries and the frozen custard with Ma, I was still very, very full... happy certainly, but full.

So much so that after Ma left I lay down and had a little nap.

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photo friday: thinking about things

Last week Ma mentioned that she thought we needed to start thinking about Sydney... to which my reply was that I never stop thinking about Sydney (although I'd rather save my money rather than take a trip, at least this year).

But never more so than currently while Mythbuster Adam Savage is in the country for his and Jamie's Behind The Myths Tour (which Ma and I head off to next Wednesday)... he's currently in Sydney and blogging his travels for the Tested website.

His post about the Sydney ferries made me happy, but then yesterday's post about Newtown made me all of the happy, especially given that Adam and his family literally trod some of the same ground that Ma and I did back in March (although I'm a little annoyed that we didn't discover the cemetery last time).

This week has been something of a vicious cycle... my hip (as a result of my back) were hurting, which made me irritable, which tensed up my back and especially my shoulders, which hurt... which... well, you get the idea. It didn't help that there was any number of tasks, people, situations, etc that were getting on my nerves. Which again, I'm pretty sure is part of the cycle thing...

Earlier this week I was talking to one of the girls at work about the Good Game Top 100 and I was telling her about Assassin's Creed Brotherhood given that she'd just bought the first two AC games... which in turn made me go looking for ex-rental copies, and managing to snag both of them for $23.

Granted playing vast amounts of AC doesn't really gel terribly well with trying not to sit for long periods, plus the fact that I have no fucking idea where my PS3 controller charging cord is (there aren't that many places it could be... I just don't know what any of them are)... but we'll see what happens.

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movies: guardians of the galaxy

Like the majority of people, I knew next to nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy beyond the character's names and the fact that it was a third string comic book.

But the Marvel Cinematic Universe has worked it's magic yet again and it turned out to be a hell of a good movie.

The cast is exceptionally good... current Winner of the Internet, Chris Pratt, is fantastic as Quill, he's charming enough, goofy enough and more than sexy enough to carry off the character without making it cringe-worthy.

And the fact that the character was taken from Earth in the late 80's allows for not only the best soundtrack to any of the Marvel movies thus far (although the music is all 70's rather than 80's), but also gave the writers the change to weave in any number of great 80's references.

Zoe Saldana and wrestler, Dave Bautista are equally brilliant (especially Bautista, how has better comic timing that I would have expected)... but to be honest more than a few scenes are completely stolen by two characters who aren't even there.

Groot, a walking, talking tree voiced by Vin Diesel, and Rocket, a genetically modified raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper don't feel like computer generated creations, especially Groot... I had to keep reminding myself at certain points that he wasn't a dude in a creature suit but actually CGI. There were a couple of moments in the Uncanny Valley with Rocket, but he's a raccoon, so that's pretty damn understandable.

But Groot quickly became my favourite character, and I did get a little misty eyed at a certain point due to his character... as well as having the best moment of the movie right at the end.

And because the story all happens on other worlds or just in space generally, they had great license to create a world full of candy colours and bigger than life people and places.

I will say that the fact that the villain was tied back into the larger Thanos storyline begun in (the end credits of) The Avengers makes Lee Pace's portrayal of Ronan feel a little "Villain of the Week"... and while I'm am incredibly biased, I can't help but think that Karen Gillan proved once again that she's not that great an actress given that she's a bit shouty and more over the top than absolutely called for as Nebula. I'm fully willing to accept it's more about the fact that I just can't stand her.

Also incredibly high on the "What the ever-living fuck" scale was the post credit sequence... I won't spoil it specifically, however I can imagine that a large number of people may not even get it because it took me a moment to realise... but it also doesn't tease a little bit of the next movie. It's just fucking weird.

Although thinking about it now I can only think that it was another, rather blatent, 80's reference.

Even taking that into account, it's a great movie overall, and a more than fitting member of the Marvel stable.

yani's rating: 4 Infinity Gems out of 5

pantastic saturday shopping

Today was pretty much about two things... a frypan and finally going back to the movies after skipping many a week... over a month in fact... due to me tweaking my back.

I got off to a bit of a slow start this morning, but once again managed to drag myself downstairs just as Ma was arriving.

The supermarket wanderings were fairly ho-hum... I'm living out of my freezer for lunches this coming week, so I didn't have a trolley full of ingredients for that. Next week will be different, as I'm intending to make lasagne... although I've never actually made a successful one... actually I've only ever attempted it once. So we'll see how that goes.

I decided to have a look in Target for some new shirts for work... some of the ones that I have are up to and exceeding ten years old (two of them at least), so it's time for some new additions.

I also managed to get the last of the Chima Legend Beasts... but Ma snagged it off me and said that it could go away for Christmas... which is fine, I just wanted to make sure that I had it, I didn't need it right now.

After we were done, we headed back here for the unpacking portion of the morning, and then headed over to the North Adelaide Village to drop a whole bunch of my coinage in at the bank, check out the Emma Hack exhibition on in one of the shops and take a look in the bookstore for any of the books I want for Tink's new baby. I did manage to find two, although I only ended up grabbing one of them.

Next up was a trip down to the Gepps Cross Homemaker Centre... my non-stick pan has stopped being especially non-stick, so I was in search of a new one.

I actually ended up with two... a little one I can use for smaller things and a deep one that will be good for stir fries and stuff.

I was also kind of on the lookout for a replacement for one of my knives and some new measuring cups (yes indeed, I do live a rockstar lifestyle)... but nothing caught my attention at the price I wanted to pay.

We then headed down to Arndale, had a brief wander around and then headed off to the movies... and even though it was a two hour movie, plus another half hour on top of that for the ads and trailers, I wasn't in any great discomfort, which is a relief.

And that was it really... not particularly exciting, but a reasonably useful day.

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photo friday: bricking it

There really isn't very much news this week...

• Work today was slightly mental and by 4pm I'd only gotten around to completing all the emails that same in from yesterday afternoon to 9am this morning. It's a slight exaggeration, I did do a bunch of other requests that came in during the day as well, but it was something of a hectic day.
• At the same time it was the day most like "old times"... back at the dawn of time when it was mostly me, H-San, Sugarmonkey and Rockchick. Not that other people weren't around, but we just had a few moments of connection and, I guess for me anyway, nostalgia.
• I had a bit of a retail therapy moment after the chiro this afternoon... I walk past a little gift shop every day after work, and every day this week I kept noticing a Jim Shore designed Stitch in the window. So after I left the chiro I went back and bought it... because, reasons.
• This week was yet another reminder from the universe that if an experience is weird, awkward and vaguely disappointing the first time around, it really isn't going to improve the second time.
• While the previous point is about something completely different, it also relates to my experience with Peanut Butter Tim Tams... they should have been a no-brainer and right in my wheelhouse as they say... sadly they're just disappointing. And it was the same from the first one to the end of the pack.
• I also discovered that Shin Tokoyo in the city had Nanoblock Pokemon... so I swung by at the beginning of the week and picked up Bulbasaur... because he's always been my favourite. It was also my first experience building Nanoblocks... and it was an interesting one, not least of all because all the bricks are so damn tiny. It did make me wonder if it would be possible to replicate the model using LEGO, although the dimensions of the bricks are very different.

That's it really... not necessarily an interesting story, but a true one.

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