photo saturday: sky kites

Well, it's been a weird old fucking week...

And I know I said that last week, but this week really did put last week in the dust.

To start off with we went from shorts weather to torrential rain and wind strong enough to bring down a tree down the road from my house. So that did my head in a little. Partially because I didn't sleep that well for the first couple of days.

DnD this week was... let's say "extra", and not least of all because there was an extra session of it. I love being able to work either character building or additional world building in when I'm running a game, and I got to do both on Monday... partially because two of my players had given me additional information about their characters, which meant I had to make up some "off the books" roleplay mechanics for one of them (which was fine, I basically just stole the idea from a game called Honey Heist and modified it as necessary).

But I am losing one of my players for a couple of months when he heads back home to Canada for Christmas... so that's a bit of a bummer. But he will be back. I just need to snag a couple of extra people for my table in the interim though.

Tuesday I got laid... I wasn't expecting to get laid, but then suddenly the offer was right there and, really, what else did I have happening... so it was a couple of pleasant hours. It also meant that parts of my body that don't usually get a workout were sore for several days. Not that I'm complaining.

Wednesday was basically a full day of DnD... I mean not FULL, but I went to the day game, hung around for a while afterwards, got home around 4:30 and then turned around and left again just before 5:30 for the night game.

Unfortunately my long standing character from the day game finally met her end this week... at the eye stalk of a zombie beholder... disintegrated into a fine powder along with all her belongings that weren't magical. So that was a thing. I'm actually not traumatised about it or anything... I have a backup character I've been playing more often recently than her, so I can switch over to him. And there are two possible plans for bringing her back... but I'm going to hold onto both of them for now, if only to allow the DM to traumatise the other players a little.

I'm also probably okay with either leaving her dead or bringing her back and essentially retiring her. But I'm not making any decisions just yet. It's still a little too soon.

As far as the evening session went, it was a fairly light on session, mostly dealing with the fallout from the revelation about my character in the previous session. Sadly, the player I really wanted/needed to be there for that wasn't... so that will have to play out on another occasion. I will say that I made the exact right choice about which of the other players to get to read out my letter... I was sitting over on the couch instead of being at the table and I will admit that I got a little choked up hearing it... even though I was the one who wrote it and I've read it through myself about half a billion times.

I think both the character and I felt some relief in the secret being out, but having everyone not like the character (because that's basically who all of my characters are/have been and basically who I am... please like me, I'm needy) is so weird and I keep wanting to fix it, but I also know that it needs some time, which I'm also not good at. But we'll see how things come together... especially when the missing character comes back.

Weirdly, the first character to come and speak to me/him turned out to be significant, even though I didn't realise it at the time... because sometimes you just need a signal from your fictional god to let you know you're on the right path.

Anyway...

Thursday I ended up going to DnD... I wasn't sure if I could be bothered, but decided I'd rather go and discover it had been a bad idea than not go.

And it still may be bad... there was only a couple of tables worth of people, but fortunately I managed to talk my way onto the "slot zero" table, of DMs who are running the epic adventure this weekend, which I wasn't particularly interested in going to... but I was happy to help out, and we had a really good time, mostly because of the collection of people who were playing/test running the adventures (including the woman I chatted with at AVCon and her wife, which was unexpected).

But it was a pleasant evening. Not sure if it's always going to be worth going, but I might give it a try while we're playing the other game on Wednesday nights.

Friday wasn't much of anything, beyond cleaning up the apartment, because it was a bit of a trainwreck, as much as it's ever a trainwreck (and if it is, it's usually just to do with dirty dishes).

Today ending up being a pretty good day...

Because today was the Norwood Christmas Pageant, we went shopping super early... so early in fact that we were finished by the time that we would normally have been getting there. And other than all the old people who probably normally go that early, it wasn't super busy.

Afterwards we headed to the newly refurbished Haighs factory/head office/store on Greenhill Road. It's very fancy. Although weirdly it feels like there's less stuff in there, even though I'm pretty sure that there's actually more. That's visual design for you.

From there we headed down to Unley Road to go to the Alliance Française French Market... but when we got there we discovered that the Etsy Made Local market was on essentially across the road, so we spent most of our time there.

It was a damn good market too... it went a good way down the side road and there were a ton of stalls. So instead of going to into the city for Christmas shopping, we got a bunch of stuff done there.

Have I mentioned how incredibly disorganised we are this year... it's the end of fucking November and we've barely done anything Christmas shopping related. Not really our finest hour... or season... or whatever.

But after the Etsy stuff, we headed over to the French Market, which was... French, I guess. It wasn't really much of anything to be honest. We did get some nice lunch at Frencheese... because potato with melted cheese on it is never a bad idea. There wasn't really much else there of interest though, so I'm glad we found the Etsy market.

And we pretty much called it a day there.

Also, in case you haven't been paying attention, it's a month until Christmas.

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photo saturday: go with the flow

It's been a weird old week.

Monday I started the new "campaign" for my DnD regulars. I say campaign, but honestly I'm just running the modules from a previous season in order. But it does allow for some story shenanigans, especially as they're starting from scratch with completely new characters.

And as players they've seen some interesting characters created by other people, so they're really stepping up the character weirdness... which I totally encourage, especially in a group that plays together regularly. So that's fun.

Wednesday was not normal at all... I didn't have my normal daytime DnD game... instead I went and picked Ma up from the airport from her Perth trip, and the plane got in right in the middle of the day, so I couldn't do DnD and a shuttle run.

So no vampire laden adventures for me.

However, we have moved the usual Thursday came to Wednesday for the time being, and making this week the first instance of that was good because I didn't end up doing back to back DnD. I haven't decided yet if I want to go back to the store on Thursdays while this is going on... maybe, it would give me a chance to actually play different characters, since I'm mostly locked into the same couple of characters on my play days.

We'll see.

We also had (almost) the full original group back together... which, look, I'll be honest, I'm not 100% ecstatic about having the full 7 person table back together... it's a little too much to be honest. We'll see if it lasts at all, or at least for how long.

However, during the session it was revealed that my character has been lying to everyone else about his past since about May/June in the real world, probably about two or three months in-game time. For the character it went spectacularly badly... for me, I was somewhere between feeling very attacked and delighted that I get to play out this aspect of the character. I then proceeded to work on a letter for the other characters to read next session until about 2am...

Yeah, like the character, I need to craft the perfect in game artefact that is both completely sincere and emotionally manipulative. And I have a plan for if things go south. Not sure how good a plan it is, but it's a plan.

Have I mentioned how fucking much I love creating in game artefacts?

So, no third game this week... which I'll admit was fucking weird.

Or at least it was until I got distracted by finishing Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, which only took me two sessions. I kind of wish it has been longer to be honest, although it did it's job and wrapped everything up before wearing out it's welcome.

Friday I had my chiro appointment, so I headed into the city in the afternoon, got my adjustment and wandered around a bit before calling it a day.

Today I was again shopping on my own as Ma had to go get her hair did. So I did the thing, and came back here to unpack.

From there, when Ma arrived we headed into the city for the Gathered market at the Queen's Theatre in Adelaide.

Partially because of the location, but it very much reminded me of the original Bowerbird Bazaars that we went to there. Except for the fact that Gathered is all local South Australian artists and crafts people. But I absolutely preferred the smaller, more intimate setting to the giant unwieldy behemoth that Bowerbird has ended up being.

It also meant that we could chat with some of the stall holders about their stuff, including the nice lady on the Cooling Neck Tie stall, the woman on the Abode Wares stall selling wardrobe/car fragrance diffusers and anyone on one of the stalls where we bought greeting cards.

Afterwards we wandered down to Leigh Street because they're supposed to be having Christmas markets every Saturday between now and Christmas, but we should have learned our lesson last year (I think) when it was a bit of a non-event... I mean it may have been fine, but we arrived just after 12 and the market didn't actually start until 1pm, so a bit pointless.

We didn't hang around. But it's nice to know that it's a potential option at some point in the next month or so.

And that's basically it for the day.

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movies: venom

It's been a while since I've been to the movies (since June to be exact), mostly because there hasn't been a lot of that has been inspiring me to go see it.

But I had a chance to see Venom before it disappeared out of the cinemas, and I'd heard good things, so I decided why not.

And it's not bad.

I'm fairly confident in saying that it wouldn't have been the movie it was without Tom Hardy... I can't think of anyone else who could have played both the confident and the falling apart versions of Eddie Brock so well. Like Hardy goes for it. And he's someone you can buy as a pain in the ass investigative journalist who just turns into a broken man who is still a pain in the ass.

And his interactions with Venom are perfect... the dialogue is sharper than I was expecting it to be, and the fact that Hardy was reacting to the lines being fed to him in real time (even though he recorded them earlier) over an earpiece was definitely the right way to go.

As with 90% of superhero movies the villain is somewhat underwhelming... but managed to be underwhelming on two fronts because one villain is just a (rich and evil) guy, and the other one doesn't interact with the hero until the last 15 minutes of the movie. But you also know that both of them are going to disappear before the end of the movie, because they always do in this kind of movie.

I also wasn't hugely impressed with the climactic battle scene either... when you have two dark monsters (even if one is dark silver grey and the other is basically black) who look functionally identical fighting each other against a night time sky with a bunch of metal walkways and there's a lot of quick cuts and the like, it's hard to tell what the hell is going on and why you should care.

I'm going to steal a line from my favourite online review site... Movie Bitches... can we talk about Michelle Williams's wig? What the hell was up with that? And is there any reason at all in 2018 that her characters can't have a short pixie cut like she does? Sure it might not "match" the character, but who gives a crap, it's better than the shitty, single style, plastic looking piece of shit they put her in.

I mean she's not bad in the movie... to be honest slightly surplus to requirements for the majority of the time, but she's okay... the wig is hideous though.

Also, secondly question regarding her... with slight spoilers... and I already kind of know the answer to this, and it's going to be "because that's what it looked like in the comics", but that answer is generally bullshit... so here goes...

Why does the symbiote feel that making a sexy lady shape while piggybacking on Williams character makes sense... wouldn't it just have kept the larger, bulkier shape it used when inhabiting Brock? And I don't even buy the "maybe she didn't have as good a bond with it" argument. I think it was only so that when the Brock/She Venom kiss happened the teenage boys in the audience didn't freak out. Which is a shame, because it would have been a more interesting scene.

Anyway, spoilers over.

For the most part though, those are my only major complaints... well, that and the fact that surely they could have done more during the day? Maybe it's just harder to actually film action scenes in the day time, but it would have been more interesting to see Venom contrasted with the daylight.

But the real appeal of this movie is Hardy and the Brock/Venom interactions.

yani's rating: 3 parasites out of 5

photo saturday: on a string

So... last Sunday was a whole world of me cleaning the apartment for the inspection on Monday, although I will admit because I started nice and early I managed to wrap things up earlier than I have in the past, so that was pleasant.

Then Monday I hauled ass to the library for a couple of hours and did some DnD related crafts (because of course I did). Fortunately, for unexplained reasons the window for inspections is now only two hours instead of the four it has always been every other place and time I've had one, so at least I didn't need to stay out of the house for all that long.

Monday was also the last DnD game in the current arc for my players, they'll essentially be going back to the beginning with new characters this coming Monday. So we'll see how that goes.

Wednesday was an interesting game... but also ended up with four of us hanging around afterwards and playing a game of Unstable Unicorns, which was all kinds of awesome, even if I didn't win.

Thursday I played taxi again for the DnD crew... although it seems as though we're moving the game to Wednesday this coming week, which is good in that it lets one of our players come back and good that I won't have to play taxi... but playing two games in a week might be problematic, we'll see.

Friday was Haircut Day... which was much the same as usual, although I did kind of hang out a little longer than usual and we went a bit more silvery with my hair. Which looks pretty good I think.

I also finally finished Horizon Zero Dawn on Friday... I need to ponder it for a while before I'm ready to talk about it I think tho.

Today wasn't a usual Saturday... Ma is currently in Perth visiting with her besties who moved over there (long story, mostly uninteresting), so I was footloose and fancy free all day. However the payback for that is picking her up from the airport on Wednesday at lunchtime.

I left here a little earlier than normal, did my shopping with earphones firmly in place, bought way too much stuff, came back here and unpacked it all. Then I kind of cleaned up a bit, dicked around here for a while and took myself off to Tea Tree Plaza to see Venom on the big screen before a) it disappears and b) the gift card Ma had runs out at the end of the week.

It's been a while since I've been to TTP to be honest... and I will say that I wasn't especially happy about the car parking situation as I both couldn't really find my way around and had trouble finding a park... but eventually a nice lady left her spot just as I got there, and I got a park under cover, so that was nice.

But the complete and total lack of signage from the food court to the cinema made me all kinds of crazy. I mean, seriously, they have signs at all kinds of appropriate points upstairs, pointing you towards the food court, then a sign pointing you through the inside food court to the new outdoor food court, which is really lovely. But there isn't a single fucking sign outside. And I had no clue where the fuck I was actually going beyond the vague direction.

Not happy Jan.

I had to come back in and use one of the touchscreen boards to work out what the hell I was supposed to be doing... and then the cinema had those stupid self serve ticket screens... which would have been fine, except for the fact that I was trying to use a gift card and you can't use a gift card with those dumb things. GRRRRRR!

Yeah... not the best experience ever. Especially when you add in that there were a bunch of kids who I'm pretty sure probably snuck into the movie after their movie finished and who kept messing with their mobile phones and taking selfies with the flash on and other bullshit. Had it been more prevalent I probably would have gone and dobbed them in, but I was in the middle of a row, and I think they disappeared at a certain point. But, yeah... this is a problem when you don't actually have staff or people paying attention.

Anyway.

I saw the movie (more on that later), came out afterwards and ran into our Thursday DnD hosts, which was nice. We had a brief chat, then I grabbed something to eat had an unenthusiastic wander and came back home.

Oh and Tink reminded me that it's only 45 days until Christmas... because of course it is.

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photo saturday: bridging it

I've complained on previous occasions about how notice my current land agent gives me before rental inspections... I swear with the old one it was two weeks generally... this one, I got a message on Monday telling me that this Monday was inspection day. Thanks for that buddy.

But all I really need to do is wipe down the kitchen counters, clean the stove, clean the bathroom and mop the floors. And I am determined that it's not going to take me all fucking day.

Just means that I need to get off my ass first thing in the morning and get shit done. And go lurk at the library for a couple of hours on Monday morning... but I have some DnD related stuff I can take with me to keep me occupied.

Speaking of...

This week was much the same as previous weeks of DnD... running the Monday game, playing Wednesday, and then some variation of the Thursday group.

I don't quite know what I'm going to do with the Monday group in a couple of weeks though... I've taken them all the way through Tier 1 and 2 of the same season with a couple of small detours to get people across the line, but with the adventure on Monday I've finally run out of stuff that's even related to the same area. I may enlist one of the other DMs to take over for a couple of weeks, just to give me a breather and maybe allow me to actually play again on a Monday... but after that I have no idea.

We'll see.

Wednesday we finally managed to wrap up an adventure we started two weeks ago and then got derailed due to reasons.

Thursday we were without our usual DM, so the smaller group got together anyway and did the second part of a two-parter we started a few weeks back. And it was with our long running characters, so that was nice.

I was a little disappointed to discover that one of the players is planning on taking a break from DnD due to a scheduling conflict while he sorts out another part of his life. Understandable, yes... but still disappointing, because I like him a lot and enjoy playing with him (and honestly, out of all of the Thursday players, he may be my favourite).

But it's not forever (at this stage anyway).

Otherwise there was some cleaning, or at least clearing away of stuff in preparation for the inspection clean up tomorrow, and that was about it.

The finger is improving. I think. I mean it is, but it's harder to gauge when I see it all the time instead of once a week. But it doesn't feel as "pins and needle-y" as it did before, but it's still wrinklier than I'd like and the smooth part still feels weird. It'll take a while, I know that, it's just frustrating.

Today was... m'eh to be honest... but that may partially be because I have a huge headache right now.

We did the supermarket thing... we did the unpacking thing... and Ma had brought down a bag full of old (like 1950-1960 old) camera gear, so we went into the city to see the second hand camera dude who has some space in a vintage record shop (yeah, I know... but it is what it is). Sadly he wasn't there... but he was due to turn up in about an hour and a half, so we took the bag of gear back to the car, came back to the Mall and had a wander for a while, then stopped off at the shop on our way back to the car, found him there, went back to the car to get the gear, then back to the shop (it's not really any wonder that I have a headache).

And after all that, while he did take the gear off our hands, it was only really worth about $20, partially because the movie camera had no battery (and was a weird and gigantic battery) and the film camera didn't want to work (also we couldn't get the lens off for some reason).

But at least we didn't have to throw it all out.

That was it really. We had a five minute look at the redeveloped Rundle Mall Plaza and poked our heads into the homewares section at the back of H&M (m'eh), had a look in a couple of other places, but that was it really.

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