photo saturday: back fences

This week didn't end up being quite as busy as I thought... okay, it was kind of busy...

I did have my dates confused for going to see My Dad Wrote A Porno Live though, having thought it was Tuesday, but since it was Wednesday I was out of the house more than I was in.

And there was some talk of drinks on Friday, which never eventuated, but I still had my chiro appointment.

But otherwise it was just a lot of Dungeons and Dragons again.

I'll admit that on Thursday I had a brief bout of not really wanting to go out for the game... but then I got there and had one of the better sessions thus far. Which pretty much sums up my whole life (don't want to go, sometimes go anyway, usually have fun).

I also finally got around to stopping off at Pearl's Pizza, the Burger Theory offshoot in Adelaide Uni on Wednesday after D&D. Now, I know I'm a total BT fanboy... and 99 times out of 100 I love what they do (there's the occasional Burger of the Month that I'm not nuts about, but otherwise, it's all good). So it's not really going to come as any surprise to hear that the pizza was fucking amazing.

Which is actually kind of weird because it's the most deep dish pizza I think I've ever experienced, and as a general rule I'm very much about thin crusts, not deep ones, but this is all kinds of amazing.

I may have to remember to wander down after other games, just to try different flavours.

Oh, and I made what essentially turned out to be chicken stew this week. It sort of started it's life as soup, but to be honest everything absorbed the liquid and it really was just stew. But weirdly you never really hear people talking about chicken stew for some reason.

It was good though. A large part of which was due to the chorizo sausages I put in.

Today was very rinse and repeat. Supermarket, home, down the road to Ma's, a circuit of her shopping centre and then home again.

So that's about it for my week really.

Current Mood:

my dad wrote a porno live

I honestly don't remember where I first heard about the My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast... it may have been on one of those lists of "50 podcasts you should be listening to" or something.

But I decided to give it a go, and have been hooked ever since.

If you're not familiar with the podcast, Jamie Morton (in the centre) has a dad who self publishes erotic fiction under the nom de plume Rocky Flintstone. I say erotic, but it's some of the weirdest, least erotic, badly written erotica ever to appear in print. And he decided to get together with two of his best mates, James Cooper and Alice Levine, and read the book chapter by chapter, with James and Alice providing blow by blow (pun very much at your discretion) commentary.

They're currently near the end of Book 3, and it's ridiculous, but at the same time, genuinely hilarious.

And they've now gotten infamous enough to be able to do a live tour. They started in the UK, they've doing Australia and New Zealand currently and they're headed to the US in October.

But Wednesday night was Adelaide's turn.

The show is structured around the reading of "Belinda Blinked: The Lost Chapter". And it's supposedly so bad that even Rocky decided not to include it in one of the books. I'll be honest though, there have been worse chapters, plot wise.

They've obviously done everything that they can to ensure that the show feels like the podcast, but clearly both James and Alice have heard this chapter a number of times, and there are a number of "scripted" responses. I also think it's a show that won't always feel the same as I'm sure that while they have points they want to hit, there's also a lot of room for them to just play depending on both the room and how they're feeling on any given day.

There's also a small amount of audience participation in the show, most of which I think works pretty well in the context of the show (I'm not completely sure about the point of having someone in the audience read one of the characters lines... maybe it works in the UK, if they can actually find someone with the particular accent needed, but it just felt a bit pointless otherwise).

Normally the podcasts are between about 35 and 40 minutes, so a roughly two hour live show (including the intermission) is triple that, but weirdly it still felt too short.

The three of them are all people you'd just like to hang out with and have a drink or two. Jamie is velvet voiced and cuddly, Alice is just the right amount of acidic and world weary and James may very well be Too Gay To Function but is also easy on the eye.

It was absolutely too much fun though, and I laughed my proverbial ass off.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: green pairs

To quote Herman's Hermits... "Second verse, same as the first!"

There's not a lot new to report this week. Just more of the same really.

I made a fairly successful pumpkin soup this week. Doubly successful because I didn't overspice the hell out of it like I did last time, so it was actually edible. I did, however, forget to buy onions, so it was pure pumpkin (and some sweet potato).

D&D continues to be both a major obsession and the highlight of my week. I experienced the first character death this week also... not one of my characters to be honest, but one of someone I've played with a number of times. As stupid as it sounds, I was genuinely shaken by it, even after the DM threw in an in-universe way for us to bring the character back.

In the same game I also had one of the other players say that his character saw mine as a mother-figure, which is actually really awesome, and will definitely influence the way we interact in future. I also had a player call me out on a particular bit of behaviour fluff I've been doing with the same character. Not in a bad way, more in a "hey, you did that last time, what's up with that", which I kind of didn't necessarily expect to happen that quickly, but it was nice that he noticed.

I also busted out my Crumpler laptop bag, that has just been taking up space in the wardrobe (albeit filled full of old busted laptop) to use as my D&D bag, which is about 90% effective, although that's not a hell of a lot of room for anything other than my gear and dice.

And yes, I'm probably going to mention stuff like this a fair bit, deal with it.

Today was decidedly the definition of "second verse, same as the first". Although I did have a fairly late start this morning.

So, yeah... shopping, home, off to Ma's. Then we headed off to the shopping centre, had a slightly pointless wander around the centre, an even more pointless stop for food (because really, it was a bit m'eh) and called it a day.

It's so weird that it's been 9 months of this. Thankfully Ma is definitely on the improve and it shouldn't be too much longer before she starts coming down to this neck of the woods on a Saturday. And I think that's possibly like the 80th week in a row where I've mentioned that or something similar.

Ah well.

That's really about it to be honest.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: minifig professions

So this week can be summed up by two D&D games and a haircut.

Because I was due to see Tink on Thursday night, I needed to skip the Thursday night D&D game, but Monday night was interesting because there were a couple of new people, who were so new to the idea they didn't even have characters yet. It did mean that we lost the first half hour or so to that. It was more fun than it sounds, just from the perspective of inducting brand new people to the game.

Wednesday was a little nuts because we had three of the DMs playing, which was half the players. But it was a fun adventure all the same.

I also managed to use my beard trimmer on Wednesday morning without putting the attachment on it... and basically hacked a chunk out of the right side of my moustache. Given that the only two options were living with it as it was and shaving, I opted to go with living with it. Yes, it's going to look a bit naff for a couple of weeks, but I really didn't want to shave it all off.

Thursday was Haircut Day. The second to last Haircut Day before Tink and the family moves up into the hills. Which is not ideal. In theory it shouldn't be a much longer drive, but it's into the hills, and I hate driving in the hills. So we'll see what happens.

I really, really don't want to have to find a new hairdresser, especially given that it's so much cheaper to go to Tink. Hopefully once I'm used to it it'll be fine.

Today was pretty much a paint by numbers Saturday. Got up, went to the supermarket, came home, unpacked, drove up to Ma's place.

We did drive out to look at some reverse cycle airconditioners for Ma's place, which was a slightly pointless journey, but Ma just wanted to have a look at the units in the flesh as it were. But she's going to have somebody come out and go through all the details with her, so that'll probably be more informative.

Afterwards we did swing by the shopping centre and do a lap, which was about the same as every other time we do it.

I did take a detour on the way home (well, I went past home and kept going) to pick up the few minifigs I wanted from the Lego Ninjago Movie set.

So, yeah, not a terribly exciting week, but that's fine.

Current Mood:

movies: cars 3

It's not really any great secret that the Cars series is my least favourite Pixar subset of movies, but Cars 3 is possibly the best of the bunch.

My main problem with the first Cars movie was that it was incredibly predictable plot-wise. The second one I enjoyed a lot more, but it is incredibly goofy.

The third outing manages to combine an effective and moving story with less wacky humour but with stunning visuals.

Like the first one, this is Lightning McQueen's story, but this time it's about what happens when "the up and comer" becomes "the veteran"... and given that the first movie came out in 2006, it seems appropriate.

Once again, the story feels a little predictable in a way that other Pixar movies don't, but I'm not sure if that was because I'd read or seen something about the story, or if it was just that obvious after a certain point. This time though I didn't mind as much, possibly because it was a more interesting story.

I will also say that this is, without a doubt, the most beautiful Pixar movie since The Good Dinosaur. Water, plants, lighting, weather effects, everything. It's all gorgeous, especially once they head across the country.

Part of the problem with this series has always been that it's hard to pay off the large cast of characters from the original movie, which they've done in both of the sequels by mostly isolating a character with a couple of new cast members. In this case it's mostly Cristela Alonzo as Cruz Ramirez. But also, hats off to Nathan Fillion for his second Pixar role.

And I'll admit, I did get a little choked up towards the end, which is pretty much to be expected from a Pixar movie, if not necessarily from a Cars movie.

Oh, and the short that precedes this one is called Lou, and I think it's the most beautiful and emotive short they've made yet.

yani's rating: 4 treadmills out of 5

photo saturday: artimals

This week got a little crazy at times...

I made potato and leek soup this week, and it was pretty good, thanks to a liberal helping of cheese.

My obsession with D&D continues... I went to all three sessions this week (Monday night, Wednesday morning and Thursday night), Monday was kind of nuts with five or six tables, each with at least six or seven people, so the noise was a little crazy.

It's also kind of interesting that the guy who I really dislike as a player actually makes an outstanding DM, possibly because he's a little too "into" the roleplay aspect as a player, but that is a good trait for a DM.

The other realisation I had this week, which is probably so outstandingly obvious, but I don't think I'd ever organised the thought into exact words before. D&D is collaborative storytelling. The DM has a version of a story, but each of the players bring the story of the characters to that, and then once the game begins, each person's actions change the story, for good or ill, depending.

I will also say that D&D is a great excuse to buy more stationery... because of course it is.

I started playing my second character this week as well, who's a cross between Moana's grandmother and Oprah basically (more that she looks like Oprah and acts like the grandmother to be honest), who's called Mama Lullaby. Which meant that for four hours on Thursday night I had a room full of six grown (presumably straight, but I'd hate to be presumptuous) men referring to me as "Mama".

And that wasn't even the weirdest thing that happened in that game.

Also on Thursday I went for my walk, came home and went to plug in my iPhone to charge it. I've been having trouble with the phone charging for a while now, and it'd gotten to the point where it would only charge in very specific positions. I assumed it was because of the way I used to hold it when it was on charge (applying a small amount of pressure to the charge connection), and over time the connectors had just ended up being bent.

I've been trying to avoid using it as much as possible, which has been relatively easy, given that I'm at home and can easily just use the laptop instead, and only charging it when I absolutely need to.

And when I plugged it in on Thursday... nothing. I tried all the usual tricks but the damn thing would not register that it was attached to the charger. And I had 9% battery left. And I haven't synced my phone with iTunes for... three years. I don't know exactly, but I know that I haven't done if for the entire time I've had this laptop, since I never got around to reinstalling it on here.

In the afternoon I headed into the city to go visit the Apple Store. I should really have called ahead and arranged an appointment, but I didn't... so when I got there it was an hour and a half wait. Given the time frame, I ended up catching the bus back home, grabbing my D&D gear and driving back into town, so I didn't need to rush afterwards, since I had no idea how long the appointment was going to take.

Turned out that it didn't take all that long as all. After waiting for a little while, the bearded hipster Apple Genius boy came and found out what was wrong, then took my phone in the back (because they always take stuff into the back and do something magical and mysterious with it) for maybe ten minutes tops, and brought it back out, 100% fixed.

Yaaaaay!

From what he said there was "stuff" (pocket fluff most likely) wedged into the charging port as well as the headphone jack, so he did whatever they do to clean that stuff out and I was good to go.

Well, as good to go as I could be with only 1% battery left. But he also plugged the phone in for me and told me I could hang around as long as I needed to to charge it up. Which was very sweet of him.

I stuck around for maybe half an hour, until the phone was up to about 40% charged, then went off on my merry way. It's so weird the difference between having a phone that you avoid using or that isn't working properly and one that is back to full strength. It's a little like having a fully functional limb again.

Which I fully acknowledge is all kinds of lame, but it's the world in which we find ourselves at present.

This morning I went off to do the usual supermarket thing. I honestly bought hardly anything, if I hadn't been buying things for Ma my trolley would have looked very sad. After unpacking and the like I headed off to Ma's place.

You can tell Ma is much on the mend, because she'd been making Ham Hearts. Which was sweet, because we never had any this Christmas, and it was definitely one of the things she's mentioned as being something she wants to do "when she's better". Plus, Ham Hearts straight out of the oven... there's nothing nicer.

We didn't really have any plans, so we just headed off to the movies, but to Hoyts instead of Reading, which was a nice change, if only because they have fancy reclining chairs at Hoyts.

Afterwards we stopped off for some food and got some really, really nice stuff from Noodle Box, which isn't somewhere we usually go.

And then I headed home. So not really an exciting day but it wasn't too bad.

Current Mood: