photo saturday: street animals

So, in the end it took a whole week to get the leak in my shower fixed. Yup, a whole week of dripping, two different plumber visits... but it did result in a set of brand new taps and a brand new shower head. And not even cheap crappy taps, fairly nice lever turn style ones. I mean at some point my fat ass is going to knock into one of those taps and either turn the cold water up full or turn the hot water off... but they're still fairly pretty.

This week's soup was an unmitigated disaster. It shouldn't have been, but it just was, and I tried to fix it by pureeing it after I'd had a bowl, and it didn't help. Okay, disaster may have been a little strong, I just wasn't feeling it and lost interest in it fairly quickly.

DnD this week was... interesting.

In running or playing tabletop role playing games there are two types of personalities at the table... the first is the players, the second is the characters. There are people who I quite like who play characters I really dislike... there are also people I generally don't much care for who play characters I'm okay with. There are also those where I like both the people and the character. And instances where I like the person, but sometimes really dislike their table behaviour.

This week was very much about characters I don't much care for played by people I quite like. And also the table behaviour thing.

I dunno... it's possibly I'm just feeling a little cranky what with everything that isn't going on in my life right now added to the fact that a bunch of stupid changes are about to happen the Adventurer's League... and beyond the fact that I hate change, a number of these changes make no sense to me. Like literally I have no fucking idea what they think the benefit to some of the changes will be, none, zero, zilch, zip.

But, that's neither here nor there, they're happening.

Anyway... I may have had a little dummy spit at the Thursday group... and while I know what the inciting incident was, I'm not sure that that was actually the problem (I mean, I know part of what the problem is, it's just how to convey that to other people without coming off like a complete asshole), and I'll need to try and devote some time to that without also climbing up into my own head and taking up residence there, which is not an easy thing to avoid.

Moving on...

This week was also Chiro Week, but I'd been in my head the whole day, so it was basically a trip into town, a brief appointment, and back home again.

Today was... also brief, mostly.

Ma was getting her hair did, so I did my own supermarket adventure. Which mostly consisted of buying an awful lot of stuff since I bought hardly anything last week and spent much of this week being somewhat annoyed by that fact.

Then it was back here to unpack, watch a bunch of stuff on YouTube and generally hang out until Ma arrived.

From there we headed into the city for a general wander, mostly to look into replacing some jewellery that Ma lost last week (lost as in it seems to have fallen out of her bag outside of somewhere and not been handed in... so basically stolen), with minimal success. To be honest, it was between 5 and 10 years ago that she got the jewellery in question, so it's not overly surprising.

We finished up with lunch at Burger Theory, sampling their new extended menu and then a quick visit to Haighs.

And that was my week.

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photo saturday: odd places

My week begins and ends with plumbing related issues.

Inbetween was some DnD.

Starting with the beginning of the week, I was surprised and pleased when the plumber not only showed up before the allotted time, he was actually finished before it as well. And I have a brand new combination water inlet/plumbob/thingy that looks like it's right out of the Jetsons, or alternatively could double as a bluetooth speaker system.

I made some pretty great soup on Sunday that was kind of half way between potato and leek soup and chowder... not bad at all I have to say.

DnD was... well, it wasn't bad.

Monday's game I ran a game I've run possibly more than any other, and allowed the party to just get weird at the end, so they actually missed out on all the sneaking around that usually happens in that adventure and instead did a massive combat encounter.

I also managed to do some serious roleplay with one of my regular players, given that I just threw out a random hook that he leaned into, and then picked up on something that I did with one of the other players and had himself a little moment there too. I do like those moments, when you know exactly what it is that they're attempting to do so you just let them run with it as much as humanly possible. And sometimes you just plus it a little and it all gets kind of silly or interesting or both.

Wednesday's game had some of that from the other side. It also means I'll be playing my replacement character for a hot minute, since my DM had the bad guy steal the body of my previous character. It's all very complicated and somewhat Shakespearean to be honest.

Thursday none of what I consider to be the Regular Thursday Boys showed up, so instead the rest of us had quite the adventure, but it was also a little calmer than it can otherwise be, which was nice.

And since it was at someone's house, her husband made us all bacon sandwiches and tea, so what's not to love about that.

Otherwise not much to report.

Oh, this end of the week and the other leak... After my shower on Friday I discovered that the shower head was leaking. And not just a little bit.

After trying to figure out if it was going to stop on it's own or not, I realised it wasn't... so there may be a plumber visit on Monday (or if I'm really unlucky the fucking useless handyman, but if he fucks me around or does a half assed job I'll be onto the land agent real damn quick).

And it's only gotten worse today.

Today wasn't really much of anything. We did the shopping, I picked up enough stuff to make some kind of vegetable based soup, I really have no idea what it's going to be, and we came back here.

Then we headed off to Marion for a general wander around, because there still isn't sweet fuck all on at the movies worth seeing.

And that was really about it.

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movies: goodbye christopher robin

Way back in the first year of the blog, I wrote a little something about my love for the Winnie The Pooh books by A.A. Milne.

Even all this time later they remain amongst my favourite children's books. And while I kinda of knew that "Christopher Robin" was based on Milne's child, and the characters were all based on his toys, I didn't really know anything about the Milne family or the writing of the books.

Enter Goodbye Christopher Robin.

And there are just some things that once you know them, you just can't un-know. Don't get me wrong, it was fascinating, but it was also incredibly heartbreaking and frustrating and absolutely of it's time and location (and class), and horrendously British (for all that that implies).

Domhnall Gleeson does a fantastic, complicated job as Alan aka Blue aka A.A., while Margot Robbie makes his wife Daphne into both a real person and at the same time, absolutely horrible.

Young Will Tilston does remarkable well as young Christopher Robin aka Billy Moon, even with the incredibly accurate and unflattering haircut. And Kelly Macdonald is a ray of light in an otherwise dull, empty and repressed world.

My favourite parts of the movie were those that involve the writing and development of the stories of Winnie The Pooh, as they dropped in so many references to the stories. Stuff that a casual fan of the stories may not ever pick up on. So I liked that very much.

And the fact that the movie was filmed in the real locations where the Milnes lives, the real bridge where Poohsticks was played, the real tree where Owl's door was constructed.

What I didn't know about the Pooh books was the craze that sprung up around them and how it affected young Christoper and the rest of the family. How accurate that part of the movie is I don't know, but it feels like something that would have happened. And it also feels more than a little icky.

I kind of wish that could have spent a little more time with the teenaged/older Christopher Robin, but the point of this story is his childhood and what affect the Pooh books actually had on them.

And for the record, I didn't completely cry, but it was a touch and go thing for a while there.

It's both a sweet and painful story, and an interesting one, but one that you can't forget you know once you know it.

yani's rating: 4 red balloons out of 5

photo saturday: walls and stuff

Let's see...

This week was... blah with a side order of m'eh.

I made semi decent soup... fauxestrone (ie not actually minestrone, but in the same general neighbourhood), I possibly should have passed up on the kidney beans I added, they were a little m'eh... but then they often are.

This week's DnD games were... fine. I mean the adventure I ran on Monday wasn't the best design ever, my character died on Wednesday and Thursday's game was at the game store instead of one of our players and only four of us showed up... and we had a random drop in, who was fine, but it's not really the type of game for randoms.

Otherwise my toilet cistern suffered an emotional breakdown this week and seems to no longer be able to hold liquid long term. Which is problematic, but there's a plumber coming on Monday, so hopefully it's a simple fix.

Today was also essentially a non-event.

We did the supermarket thing this morning, I'm making some variation of potato and leek soup this week, possibly dipping a little into the chowder oeuvre if I remember to take chicken out of the freezer. And while I can deal with people on checkouts who are slow and people who are bad at packing, the Venn diagram crossover is where I have trouble.

Then we came back here before heading out to pick up some stuff at Big W... in fact given that there wasn't any movies on that we wanted to see, Ma suggested we check out the cheap DVDs there and if we found something good, bring it back here and watch it.

Which is basically what we did.

I mean we wandered around Big W, then did a brief wild goose chase in a couple of other places looking for something I'm not entirely sure exists, but I want to exist... or else does exist, but is too bloody expensive.

Anyway... we got some food, came back here and watched Goodbye Christopher Robin (more on that later).

It wasn't much of a day, but it wasn't bad.

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photo saturday: leaves and water

This week mostly centred around me being varying degrees of sick. And having a rental inspection.

Both Sunday and Monday involved some long slow pottering around to get things looking the way they needed to, while also cooking a whole pot of chicken soup on Sunday night to either assist in killing my cold, or at worst, keeping me hydrated.

And because I didn't overthink it (my thinking apparatus being essentially clogged), it turned out really well. Just enough chilli to open up the nasal passages and a good liquid to vegetable ratio.

I got to play DnD all three time this week, since I'd flung a module at the Canadian last week, and he did a great job running the adventure, as I knew he would. So I know that at any point if I'm not up for it, I can tap him to fill in.

It also meant that I got to debut my newest character, badass halfling barbarian grandma with a big axe. I mean technically due to backstory reasons, she's not actually a grandma, but I had one of the characters on Monday calling me Grandma within about five minutes, so I'm planning on leaning into it.

And it's fun to play old lady characters... they get away with stuff other characters probably wouldn't or couldn't. Also, I love playing characters that don't make any logical sense, like a 104 year old female halfling barbarian. Because why the fuck not.

Also, you know you're a particular kind of nerd when you spend 20 minutes making a spreadsheet to work out how much it would cost your regular 5 person adventuring group per year to share the cost of an imaginary wagon with two imaginary horses and an imaginary person to look after the wagon and horses, plus imaginary food and imaginary stabling.

For the record, 140 gold, 5 silver, 5 copper for the first year, and 113 gold, 5 silver, 5 copper for each year after that. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, rolling backwards a little... Tuesday was the inspection, so I cleared out before the allotted time, went down the road to the library, caught up on my DnD "homework" (logging character adventures) and watching an episode of Critical Role (DnD web stream) I'd downloaded to the netbook.

It's also always good when you watch a particular emotional episode of anything in a public place and try not to cry.

I spent a little time beyond the inspection window, just to be sure and pottered back to my place to find that it had finally been done. Thank goodness.

Otherwise the week was, m'eh... I mean, my cold/flu diminished somewhat as the week went on which was good, but otherwise, m'eh.

Today, likewise, had high levels of m'eh.

We did the supermarket thing this morning... I bought stuff to make more soup, most probably some made up variation of minestrone. And I say this only because I bought tomatoes.

Afterwards we came back here, dithered around a bit and then did the "no clue what we're doing, let's go to a place where a shop exists" thing we so often do. Which mostly resulted in poking around three separate locations and not much else.

And that's about it really.

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