two thousand and eighteen in review

Looking back through this year's posts, a few things became apparent.

Firstly, almost all my weeks are the same... DnD games on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, a monthly haircut and chiro visit, the weekly supermarket/shopping trip. And we didn't go to as many movies, or theatre shows this year either.

It doesn't perhaps make for as interesting a Year in Review as previous years, but 2018 definitely had it's moments.

January: Nothing much to report... a lot of Assassins Creed and not much out of the ordinary.

February: Fringe started.

March: Fringe continued, with a total of 18 shows. I turned 44.

April: I finished Assassins Creed Origins... and was slightly disappointed by the ending. We went to the 2018 Biennial of Australian Art.

May: I didn't realise that running a DnD game on that particular Monday would lead to seven months of running games for a recurring group once a week. And my Thursday group left the game store and started new characters in a new storyline.

June: Ma's 71st birthday. We went to the Waterhouse Natural Science Art show. I kissed a boy I shouldn't have kissed... but am glad I did, even if it broke my brain for a little while. We caught the Musée d'Orsay exhibition before it headed back to France.

July: I got laid in the most spectacular fashion at 3am on a Wednesday morning. I had my 13th bloggiversary. I attended my first ever AVCon, and ran three DnD games.

August: Minor plumbing related issues, one easily fixed, the other which took several attempts for some reason.

September: I sliced the end of my finger off.

October: We went to a Fork on the Road for the first time in what feels like forever (but is probably about 12 months). I had my final appointment with my doctor to change the dressing on my finger. We stopped by the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year show.

November: I finished up Horizon Zero Dawn, which I haven't written anything about, but really enjoyed. My Thursday DnD group moved our games to Wednesday... for now anyway.

December: All the Christmas things that I was generally unenthusiastic about... tree stuff, chocolate stuff, actual Christmas Day stuff.

Unsurprisingly both the "kissing a boy" and the "slicing my finger off" are the two events this year that haven't completely healed (for want of a better term). The end of my finger is still a little odd... as is my relationship with The Boy, especially now The Boy has A Girl.

For the most part though, I have a routine. Which gets me out of the house and interacting with actual living humans. At least several days a week.

There's also a whole bunch of self reflection there, or would be, if I wanted to dig into it. But I pretty much know what it all is, and why it's there, so to be honest it can stay where it is and mind it's own business.

Like the review, I think my "favourite thing" list for this year is fairly short...

yani's favourite things 2018

More Dungeons and Dragons

Yeah, I've played somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150+ games of DnD this year. And maybe run about a third of those, maybe less.

Me running once a week started off as a way to avoid questionable DMs and players I didn't care for. What it turned into was a group of people (the numbers vary) who came back to my table for seven months. At least one of whom I think is only ever playing on my table.

It's made me a better DM, it's allowed me to give back some of the experiences I've had as a player to other players. It's also let me give some of those experiences back to the DMs who ran for me when I was new. And running for a recurring group has let me play around in the margins of various adventures, making plenty of time for character role play opportunities.

Outside of running, I've played around with who my characters are, I've actually done character voices in a couple of instances, and I feel like I've both knitted groups together and torn them apart (in-game groups that is).

Even the changes to Adventurer's League didn't put much of a dent in my enjoyment (or at least not for long, and it did allow me to have a good long whinge about stuff at possibly the perfect time)... I mean they're still incredibly stupid and I have no idea why the hell they need to be in place... but they're in place and they don't ruin the game, they just create more housekeeping outside of it.

Critical Role

This also comes under the general heading of DnD, and while I was aware of the first season of Critical Role before I started playing, it was only when they started their second campaign that I jumped in with both feet.

I mean what's not to love... professional voice actors (is that a pejorative, are they not just actors? I mean it's how they introduce the show, but still) playing DnD, heavy on the character building and role play (and voices).

Movies

It has been a lean year for movies... we only managed to see 12 things (technically 11, since one was a movie that came out last year).

Either we just never got around to seeing things while they were in the cinemas, or the reviews and word of mouth I heard after things came out made me reconsider wanting to see it.

Only three things ended up with a perfect score... Coco, Black Panther and Call Me By Your Name.

So that's all of 2018 done and dusted.

And as always, today (about an hour ago I think) marks my 9th Twitterversary.

Current Mood:

movies: ralph breaks the internet

What do you do six years after you make a Disney movie about gaming?

Why, you take on the internet of course... so what Wreck it Ralph did for gaming, Ralph Breaks the Internet does for 2018 internet culture.

Or the Disney-fied version of it anyway.

This does feel at times like it's hitting some of the same story themes that the first movie touched on six years ago, but overall it does feel like a more mature story, in a completely Disney way, obviously.

At it's heart, this movie is about growing up and realising that if you love something, you can set it free. But also that it's okay to want to want to stay behind.

Along the way, there's a lot of references to the internet that are going to go flying over the heads of very small children, but at the same time, they do get the message out there that you never read the comments, which is good. Also, Disney princesses... a lot of Disney princesses.

I will say, without spoilers, that I very much appreciated the return of the princesses at the end of the movie, tonally it was just right.

It will be interesting to watch these two movies back to back, given that the first one is beautifully rendered and full of colour and great visuals... but with this much time having passed, I did notice details in this movie I don't remember from the first one... the patch on the back of Ralph's overalls for example... but the lighting, effects and rendering of "the internet" are all amazing.

It's a shame in some ways that there weren't more of Felix and Calhoun this time around. I get it, they've been happily married for the last six years and having them there would have pulled focus from the Ralph and Vanellope story. There is a nice set up and payoff with them at the beginning and end of the movie though.

Of the new characters, princesses notwithstanding, it's a toss up between Taraji P. Henson as Yesss (thankfully not Yasss) and Gal Gadot as Shank... both strong female characters (and in Shank's case, in a role that would probably be male in most video games) but in very different ways.

Just touching on Shank for a minute... or more on Shank's game... and mild spoilers follow. So the world is just going to be cool with having essentially a seven year old girl showing up as a character in a violent online car game? Nobody is going to have a massive internet outcry? Yeah, I think they just might. It's a completely minor thing, and I'm not even bothered, but it's the one moment that threw me out of the movie to be honest.

I will also say that it's one of the few Disney/Pixar movies (this, and the first one are both Disney movies, but honestly feels like they should have been the other side of the street) that is going to age horribly. Yeah, they mostly stayed away from anything on the internet that wasn't one of the larger names, but still, there's going to come a point when things in the movie aren't things that exist any more.

But that's the price you pay for putting internet things in your movie I guess (and the major plot items are mostly made-up companies).

It's a good movie overall though... not top tier for Disney stuff, but lots of fun, especially for people like me who spend too much of their time on the internet.

Oh, and this is definitely a movie that you want/need to stay all the way through the absurdly long credit sequence... you can thank me later.

yani's rating: 3 steering wheels out of 5

photo saturday: boys and blues

I saw a sign today that read "that bit between Xmas and New Year where you don't know who you are or what day it is".... it's very me.

Rewinding, the cold/flu/general ick that overcame me by Christmas Day started to peek it's head into the light on Sunday, but really established itself on Monday.

Even so, I spent Christmas Eve very differently from previous years... I ran six hours of DnD games (a two hour, then a four hour)... which was fun. And they were both Christmas related games (ish)... plus I was able to both run for people I've only ever played with and let people who usually run games at the comic shop actually play, both of which was fun.

Christmas Eve night was the traditional ordering of pizza (although I went to pick it up, since it's a) just down the road and b) $10 cheaper that way) and watching of Arthur Christmas.

And, as I mentioned, I slept crappily that night. But all of that has already been documented.

Boxing Day I did... functionally speaking, nothing. I mean, I got up, I had breakfast, I caught up on some YouTube viewing, but otherwise, not much of anything. It didn't help that I still felt crappy, and the weather decided that Christmas week was when it needed to get progressively hotter and awful.

Actually that was mostly the blueprint for the latter three days of this week. Feel crap, hide inside where it's cool, do nothing.

I made a brief sojourn outside on Thursday morning to buy cold and flu tablets, but that was it.

At least the cold and flu medicine improved things a little... even if I'm still not sleeping properly. And I did develop one of those "wet" coughs (yeah, I know how gross that sounds, it doesn't improve on this side of the screen, let me tell you)... but as of right now, I'm actually able to breathe through my nose, so improvements have happened.

Granted, I'm still partially deaf in my right ear, and that won't be fixable until after the end of the first week in January when the specialist returns to work... so yay. And by yay I mean fuckbuggerbollockshit.

Interestingly, this goes on record as only the second worst Christmas due to illness, directly behind the year from when I was a kid where I started the school holidays with chicken pox and ended them with German measles and Christmas was about the point at which I was at the tail end of the first one and the start of the second one.

Oddly, the only real memory I have from that year is not being able to play outside with the other kids on Christmas Day and instead sitting in somebody's loungeroom (I honestly don't remember who... my aunt and her dirtbag second husband maybe) playing a very early hand held electronic game (but don't ask me what it was).

Weird the shit you do and don't remember.

Anyway... I still feel somewhat like crap, but less crap than earlier in the week.

Thankfully because I wasn't feeling well I managed to avoid missing DnD.

Bouncing merrily down the hill to today.

Today's weather goes in the basket marked "changeable and stupid", for being cooler and windy this morning, followed by muggy and a little too warm this afternoon.

Both Ma and I declared that we didn't need much of anything from the supermarket... and I didn't think we bought all that much stuff, but still managed to come away with four bags of stuff between us. Maybe the checkout boy just didn't pack stuff as efficiently as he could, I dunno.

Afterwards, we came back here, I unpacked, then Ma wanted to grab some money from over at the Village, plus we needed something resembling breakfast, so we wandered over there, came back here, made fun of the bumper December magazine from Coles (somehow we never saw it until three days before the end of the month) and it's "243+ recipes and tips"... yeah, tips is stretching it a bit at times.

From there it was off to Marion to finally go and see a movie.

Marion between Christmas and New Year may have been a mistake... I mean it's been like two days since the stores opened again, you'd think people would have gotten it all out of their system. Seems not so much.

And nobody had any decent leftover Christmas stuff... I know that's partially because some of the places started selling it off by mid December, and I'm convinced the other stores just put what didn't sell this year into storage and bring it all out again next year.

But, to coin a phrase, I can't even with people. Look where you're going, pick a lane/direction/life goal/plan and stick to it. Urgh.

So all I came away with was superglue to stick my "not Lego" Christmas wreath together (it falls apart too easily, and honestly it doesn't need to disassemble into that many pieces at all), and that was it.

I did however run into two people I know... a fellow DnD'er and their small child making a beeline for the movies (they were running late and it's legitimately only because we crossed paths as they dashed past the bottom of the escalator as we were getting off that we exchanged more than a wave at a distance... and then I saw the other chiro from my chiro. And I had one of those moments where you think "hmm, they look a little familiar", then you think maybe they said hello at a distance, you check behind you to make sure they aren't actually talking to other people and then finally you realise who they are.

Yeah, that's who I am right now.

What can I say, it's been a trying week.

Current Mood:

post christmas round-up 2018

You know what sucks? Feeling sick on Christmas. Even when you don't really give a shit about this particular Christmas because of reasons.

And I'd been feeling mediocre before that... mostly due to that seasonal "ear infection" I seem to get this time of year... but this one mostly snuck up on me on Sunday, progressing to basically a full on flu/cold/completely blocked ear.

So, all the fun stuff.

I did my usual Christmas Eve pizza, watched Arthur Christmas and went to bed at a reasonable hour, but unfortunately with a head full of both snot and cotton wool (don't think about that too hard to for too long to be honest), I had trouble sleeping and I think I woke up roughly ever hour from about 2:30am (and I don't think the fact that it's been hot and I slept with the evaporative cooler right next to the bed helped the cold/flu/ear issue).

An auspicious start to the day.

But I got up, had a shower, started to feel a little more human, did a little bit of pottering about, then loaded up the car and headed to Ma's place, arriving a bit before 8am.

Thinking about it, there really isn't any reason that I need to get there that early, especially as we don't go and see La Cousina in the morning any more... but it's what we do, so it's what I did.

As usual, Ma wasn't especially organised when I got there... I mean she was, being in the midst of making the Christmas morning batch of Ham Hearts, but she was also still in her pyjamas. But the baking didn't take that long and I sent her upstairs to get ready while I watched over the heating of the traditional Christmas croissants (with ham and cheese this year).

We followed that up with the also traditional cleaning up, I think I also put the lunch table flatware and cutlery out at that point (I don't know, I know it all happens, but the order of things is somewhat of a mystery, since it all just happens).

Then it was time for presents.

The one bonus to buying things in like April and putting them away for Christmas is that you entirely forget that they're a thing (in this case, that applies to both the Lego and the neon ampersand).

• Lego Dimensions Ghostbusters (2016) Story Pack
• Teen Wolf Season 6, Parts 1 and 2
• Typo Disney 2019 calendar
• Neon ampersand
• Diecast Disney Stitch "Nano Metalfig"
• Christmas tree tongs
• Perrymans gingerbread men/reindeers
• Terry's Chocolate Orange
• Sour Cream and Onion Pringles
• Bassets Jelly Babies Snowmen

Honestly, I think the little neon ampersand we picked up at... Big W (if memory serves) is my favourite thing this year... I mean it's not much of anything, but it's pretty and it will be a good replacement for the neon Christmas tree when that goes away sometime over the next week or so.

Ma knew pretty much everything she was getting this year, but she did like both the calendar and the dice set, which she didn't know about, so that was good.

After we were done with that and I'd taken some photos I was planning to sit down and send Christmas messages out to various people but got beaten to the punch by someone I wouldn't have expected, which was nice... so cue about a five minute montage of me texting or otherwise messaging various people.

I'll be honest, I'm a little crap at those kinds of messages, so it was all just basically "Merry Christmas" along with a couple of appropriate emoji.

Ma did a similar thing when she realised what I was doing... so, yes, insert total Christmas texting montage.

It also turned out that La Cousina and Ma had gotten crossed wires about what the plans were for seeing each other, so we never actually saw them. Which was fine.

Then we started working on putting together the Weber and the stuff to go in it. Between bouts of that Ma put Arthur Christmas on since she hadn't just watched it... and I'll be honest, I probably had more than a few little microsleeps since I'd only just seen it.

We never quite got to the end since there was other prep that needed to happen for lunch.

We ended up sitting down at about 2pm, but everything came together quite nicely, including the dressing I made with apple cider vinegar, oil and cranberry (not quite enough cranberry to be honest, but still tasty).

The potatoes were beautifully roasted, the meats (turkey and sausage) were moist... I ended up having about two bowls worth.

As usual, neither of us particularly felt like dessert immediately afterwards, so we tidied up and then I ran the modified DnD adventure for Ma.

I think she had fun. And she got to see me running a game, doing all the stupid voices and whatnot. And it killed a couple of hours.

And it was better than falling asleep in front of a movie.

Then we had some dessert (the usual "Eton Mess" we've made the last few years), watched a little of the 1966 Batman movie and made fun of pretty much everything (they HAD to know it was a total joke, right?), before switching over for a little Wallace and Grommit.

That was about it... we packed up my leftovers and I headed home at about 6pm.

I didn't do much of anything when I got home... had a shower (the drive home was quite warm), picked at a little bit of food, watched some stuff on YouTube and then called it a night.

So, it was probably an even more anti-climactic Christmas than usual, but it also wasn't the most awful thing ever.

Current Mood:

checking the naughty list

Current Mood:

ma's presents 2018

So, I know I've said variations on this a lot of late, but we've reached Christmas Eve Eve... and my mood is still essentially "Christmas, m'eh".

But I also had to put Ma's somewhat small group of presents together this evening, since I'll be out all day tomorrow. And as with a number of instances of wrapping Ma's presents, I was competing in the space between the heat of the afternoon and not wanting a fan to blow everything everywhere.

This also isn't the BIG shiny red box... this is it's younger sibling, the not-quite-as-big shiny red box.

The tissue paper and red and white ribbon remain the same (and recycled from year to year to year to year... because the environment, but also it makes more sense).

Again, not a huge list...

• Harajuku Lovers Pop Electric G and Lil' Angel
• Dick Francis novels (Risk, Bolt and Whip Hand... which all sound weird unless you know they're about horse racing)
• Jax and Co wood and resin earrings
• Hallmark 2018 snowman ornament
• Chessex Frosted white dice set (yeah, these will probably end up in my dice bag, but I'm running a little mini DnD adventure for Ma on Christmas day)
• Minifig-her 2019 calendar and wallpapers

So, yeah... that's about it.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: minifig-hers

The theme of this year's holiday celebrations is "last minute".

I don't like last minute.

For example, I only got around to making Ma's 2019 calendar a couple of weeks ago, and only printed it and got it appropriately bound this week.

And the printer didn't want to play nicely, which meant that they all printed a little weirdly. Which is on top of the fact that the focus is off enough on the individual minifig faces that I want to entirely remake the calendar.

But anyway...

Oh, because I never got around to posting anything about last Sunday's trip to Ma's place for the annual making of the goodies, here's an image of the end result, followed by the shortest possible synopsis.

• I didn't go down there super early
• we got distracted by more interesting but less productive things
• I managed to completely forget how to make the candy cane truffles (although they worked out fine in the end)
• this year's Turkish Delight was the best for cutting up we've had in a good long time
• I always need to remember to add a little Copha to the chocolate for Rocky Road
• Ma's marble cutting board makes the best photo background
• I came home later than I would have liked, but it didn't really matter that much

I also took some along to two of the three DnD games this week. They were well received, as always. 

This week's DnD was about average. Although on Monday I finally got to fun for the guy who ran for me on Thursday last week, so that was nice. And for the first time in a while, they actually managed to stretch a two hour module out to around 4 hours.

Wednesday's game was less intense than the previous one, a little more annoying at time, and as characters we said goodbye to one of the group who has been around for a while now, but I think the last couple of modules have been a little too much for both character and, to a lesser extent, player.

But we did come up with several of the stupidest plans ever at the end of the game, while resulted in two somewhat competing plans that saw us Looney Tuning it, "cutting" a hole in the floor under the villain, then she and one of the characters plummeted 1000 feet down the side of a mountain (he survived, she didn't). It was supposed to be a big fight that should have taken about an hour... because of ridiculousness we managed to wrap it all up in under 20 minutes even though we were mostly out of health, spells and fucks to give.

Thursday's game my S/M cleric made a friend and found a protege... but also had to both actually heal someone AND do damage to an enemy (I'd made a bet with myself on how long it would take... answer, two and a half games). Granted it was the same person more than once, and he only ever did it when they got knocked out... because of course.

The protege thing snuck up on me... I didn't realise until the player told me at the end of the game... my character would have known... he's more insightful than my dumbass. So we'll see where that goes. Also, as a general rule, never start a staring contest with me.

Thursday was also both Haircut Day and the day I went to get the calendar bound.

Not at the same time though.

It's always good when your friend/hairdresser has tradesmen working in their yard and one of them is very cute and definitely worth perving on.

As far as the haircut is concerned... the same, and also the same silvery dye job we've done a couple of times now.

Tink's older daughter appeared half-way through (not like a magic trick or anything, the older one was on errands with dad, the younger one was at childcare) and made me a very pretty rainbow loomband bracelet (like, it's legitimately really nice looking), then I just hung around with Tink for a while, and ended up discovering how to make a perfect paper aeroplane (by accident... I did what I would normally have done up to a certain point and then accidentally did something different and shazam, perfect plane), drew a drawing and then took myself home (followed by going straight back out to Officeworks to get the calendar done).

I then needed to go and pick up the calendar on Friday afternoon, since it was better if I left it there overnight so that they didn't have to rush it. And the final version looks good, all things considered (focus issues notwithstanding).

Then today wasn't much of anything really.

Ma was getting her hair did this morning, so I did the supermarket run on my own... And I know I say this any time there's a holiday or whatnot, but why do all of you people appear out of the woodwork only at these times? And why does everyone lose their mind buying food at Christmas. I mean, I get it... but even so, fucking calm down and go away.

Anyway... I did my thing, and managed to get home relatively quickly (granted I got there earlier than I might otherwise do when I'm shopping alone). Then hung out and waited for Ma to arrive.

The plan had been to go to the movies. But everything was either not that interesting, on too late (relatively speaking) or too far away.

So we didn't do anything. We sat around and chatted for about quarter of an hour and then she toddled off home.

But a better plan than battling through all of the stupid unorganised Christmas shoppers, even just to go to the movies.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: yellow climb

It's ten days until Christmas and my mood can still be best described as "m'eh".

This week's DnD was pretty good... Monday's game I had a new player who was in town for work from Perth, so that was different. And he may be back again since he commutes back and forth, which is cool.

Wednesday was only one game again (more on that in a sec), but it's also the second time I've teared up at the DnD table... because of the same NPC, but yeah... it was a bit of an intense session, by design, but yeah.

The Wednesday evening sessions are... on hiatus. That makes it sound more sinister than it actually is, I'm just kind of pissed off about it. I got a message from the DM saying that he was "stopping til after Christmas"... and I'm sure there's a reason for it, or maybe not, fucked if I know, but since all that conversation happens over on Facebook where I'm never going to be, I don't know. I was just a little pissed off that it seemingly came out of the blue.

Also, small DnD based rant (feel free to skip this if you really don't give a shit), but when you choose to DM for a group of people, you enter into an unspoken social contract... they agree to show up and play, you agree to run games for them. But while it's important that they show up, you can do without all of them all the time, whereas without you as the DM, they can't play in your world. They can still play, especially in Adventurer's League, because that's the point, but it's not the version of the world you have in your head. And I understand that people get busy and have lives and all that shit... but playing DnD is like any other commitment or relationship in your life, if you don't make time for it, it's not going to be the same when you come back to it.

But as I said, I'm sure there's a reason, or maybe it was that everybody was all doing their own thing that meant they wouldn't be showing up, I don't know. I'm just a little bit pissed off about it.

On the up side, it has meant that I haven't had to run from one game to another on Wednesdays, and a couple of us had an interesting chat after the day game, so that was nice.

Anyway... Thursday I got to be there for a new DM's first session. He's someone I've played with for a few weeks now, and he was definitely good DM material, that was pretty fucking obvious right from the start. And, yeah, his first session proved it. He still needs a little more confidence (which will come as he runs more games), but he definitely has the right stuff to be a great DM.

Friday was my chiro appointment, which was pretty average.

Today was effective but not really much of anything.

The supermarket thing this morning was padded out by some additional Christmas/pre Christmas supplies... and clearly other people were having the same idea, because the supermarket seemed to have a lot more people in it... there were definitely more people working the checkouts.

Afterwards Ma needed to pick a couple of things up for her Secret Santa at work, as well as some random crap for people she'll be seeing after Christmas, so, with some slight trepidation on my part, we headed into the city.

And we managed to find everything she wanted... even if all of the random crap was just us walking into the "Christmas gift food" section of Target and basically throwing a range of stuff in the $10-12 range into a basket. Problem solved.

I think I've said this before, but as much as I love picking out exactly the right gifts for people, there are people where a) that's too much work, because you only see them once a year, if that, and really have no idea what they're interested in or b) that effort is never reciprocated and people use the "you're just too hard to buy for", to which the answer is generally "no, you're just not paying enough attention or don't give enough of a shit". Sometimes both. Especially when it's both. In those instances, I say cut your losses and go for something easy... if it's something that will also get a smile from them when they open it, even if they forget about it by New Years, you've done okay.

Wow, I'm in a fucking preachy mood today aren't I.

Actually I'm just in a mood.

Anyway... we picked up all the crap we needed, dumped it back in the car, had lunch at Burger Theory and then called it a day.

Tomorrow is Christmas Goodie Making Day... and I'm really not that bothered. I mean, I'm gunna do it, but I think we're going with minimum effort for maximum return to be honest.

Current Mood:

my adelaide fringe picks 2019

Well, we got there in the end...

It's going to be a lean Fringe year this year... I can never tell whether it's lean because there aren't that many shows I'm interested or if I become less interested in shows when I know I'm on a budget. Maybe it's both at the same time.

And there's only one show I'm going off to by myself. Which feels a little weird.

We are going back to see a number of old favourites in new shows however... A Night at the Musicals, Box and Cox, Head First Acrobats, Improv Adelaide and Casus Circus. And a good selection of Shakespeare this year... including the requisite weird version of Macbeth.

The full list for this year is...

• Box and Cox: Married and Settled!: All the flavour and fun of the original farce, with new characters and new antics sure draw a smile on any face.
• Quest Time!: Watch as the performers hilariously fumble their way through levelling-up, saving throws, and spell casting; all while exposing dark and sinister plots.
• Another Night at the Musicals: Adelaide's most beloved ridiculous and beloved assholes are back with a brand new party; a melting pot of musical theatre karaoke, vaudeville, variety, sing-along and dress up madness.
• The Measure of a Man: A perfect balance of comedy and drama - from light-hearted and uproariously funny moments to gut-wrenching, dark moments that expose the scars and open wounds that still remain, hidden underneath the glitter.
• Macbeth in space! (and two other locations....): So, we had a seance, and William Shakespeare made contact. In fact he wouldn't shut up, until he'd dictated this updated version of Macbeth.
• The Works of William Shakespeare by Chicks: The ladies of Humpty Bong TAFE Applied Theatre Level 4 have made a discovery that will change the course of history.
• You and I: This unashamedly authentic journey reveals a fresh narrative where gay stories are not consumed by tragedy but filled with conviction and acceptance.
• Railed: Welcome to Railed, a western themed circus spectacular, combining the trademark physical talents, finely chiselled bodies and hilarious comic timing of the Head First Acrobats.
• The HandleBards - Twelfth Night: The world's first cycling theatre company pedal from venue to venue with all the set, props and costume necessary to perform environmentally sustainable Shakespeare across the globe.

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photo saturday: tannenbaumding

Yep... Christmas tree is up at Ma's... hell, neon Christmas tree is up at mine... and I'm still not feeling it.

Hence why there wasn't a separate post for the Christmas tree decorating.

But we're here now.

It wasn't especially different from any other edition of the decorating... Except I didn't go down to Ma's quite so early. Still pretty early, but not super stupid early.

And the whole thing was fairly low key.

I read the weird messages I'd left on various boxes for myself last Christmas and replied where appropriate, including the one that said we needed to revisit the Rainbow Christmas tree from 2014... especially since we have additional shades now we didn't have then. And it worked pretty damn well.

I will say that it's much easier and takes less brainpower to just put all the same colour on a single row of the tree, although because we had both shiny, matt and clear for some of the colours, making sure there weren't too much overlap in texture/finish took a hot minute.

We also kind of need either some brighter purple ones and/or some pink ones to go at the top of the tree. Well, I say "need"... it'd be nice to have them.

There wasn't a huge amount else that we needed to do... there were a few other bits and pieces we always put up at Ma's place, so those went up, but she's in the middle of packing up for the move, so her place is a bit all over everywhere just at the moment.

And we only wrapped a handful of things... so I was on the road back to my place by about 4 I think.

When I got home, I put up my little neon Christmas tree... which took all of about 37 seconds... take items out of box, plug item A into item B, plug item B into wall socket, enjoy Christmas merriment.

Did I mention both humbug and m'eh?

Anyway...

DnD was somewhat average, somewhat weird this week... Monday was pretty usual, although my Canadian player wasn't able to come to what would have been his final game before he goes to Canada... I mean he's coming back, but not until midway through January I think.

And after the game a number of the DMs wandered down to the Pancake Kitchen to sit around and talk shit, which was pleasant, even if I didn't get home until after 1am.

Wednesday was slightly odd for a couple of reasons, firstly the Wednesday night game (which used to be the Thursday night game) got cancelled due to lack of people giving a fuck (okay, actually due to people being sick and associated December bullshit, but still), but one of the guys who only intermittently comes for that game actually showed up after we'd finished the day game because he was in the neighbourhood and had finished work early.

Also, when your DM says to you a couple of days before a session that he has an idea to freak out the other players if you're game, and you go with it and it does freak out the others and it's weird that it's not weird because you've done way weirder stuff outside of DnD... yeah, that...

Anyway, because we haven't been playing on Wednesday nights for long enough that it felt weird NOT to play, Wednesday night was just a regular Wednesday.

Thursday was a good session, even if I knew the adventure and had to try very hard not to second guess myself (and I think that I second guessed myself so hard a couple of times that I didn't do what I probably would have naturally done because I couldn't remember if I was remembering that that was what was supposed to happen... you know?). But I continue to love this new character I mentioned last week who has still yet to do a single point of damage (his first game notwithstanding, but that was a whole different thing) and who I just reworked his character to be a little more in line with the way I'm playing him.

Also, this is the very first character I've ever had where someone has said to me "oh, I HATE him"... which is kind of awesome... I mean he's not a massive asshole or anything, but he's definitely not the usual type of characters that I play. And it's a lot of fun.

Otherwise this week wasn't much of anything really.

I do need to get my shit together and buy Fringe tickets though... by Tuesday at the latest.

Today was a little bit more of a run around, because I finally got around to booking my car in for a service. I think I mentioned last week that there had been smoke appearing from under the bonnet from time to time, but there's enough oil and enough coolant in the car, so I had no clue what the hell was going on.

So first thing this morning, I drove down to my mechanic, who is opposite our old supermarket, met Ma there, and we headed from there back to Norwood to do the shopping, then back to my place.

Ma needed to pick something up from IKEA for a Christmas present, so we headed down that way, just did the bottom floor (which they've finally opened up from the front of the store, so you can just go straight in that way, which is nice) and grabbed the things we needed. I got a call from my mechanic towards the end saying that the car was ready to be picked up, so we finished up and headed that way.

With a brief stop off in North Adelaide at Perryman's Bakery, because why not.

Turns out the car had a cracked gasket and was leeching a little bit of oil onto the engine block... so potentially not cataclysmic, but better to get it fixed than not. Plus it was due for a service anyway.

We came back here (in separate cars, obviously), had some lunch (the aforementioned Perryman's) and then Ma wanted to take a quick look around Burnside Village, so that killed about half an hour. And she got a fairly nice present for one of her friends, which pretty much finishes off her shopping I think.

And next week we have the Christmas goodies... which I am also not especially excited about, but we'll see what happens.

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photo friday: deux-some

It's the first of December... it's officially the start of the Christmas season... tomorrow I'm heading up to Ma's to put the Christmas tree up. And I don't give a shit.

No, that's not entirely true... it's more that I have no fucks to give. My fuck drawer is fresh out of fucks. I don't know if it's because of where I'm at monetarily, or emotionally or the fact that with one thing and another, Christmas kind of snuck up on us, but yeah, it all seems to have happened suddenly and I'm not real interested.

Don't get me wrong, I'll go through as many of the motions as I have to, but my heart isn't in any of it.

But no so much "bah humbug" as it is "m'eh".

Anyway...

I managed four games of DnD again this week... which made Wednesday essentially one long DnD game, which is kind of great, but also kind of awful because it's the whole day gone.

Anyway, Monday's game was good... although one of the players, who isn't a regular, but has been on my table a number of times is occasionally flirty... but I don't know if it's "i see you as safe, so I can flirt with you without it getting weird" flirting or "I'm so comfortable in my indeterminate sexuality, that I don't really think this is flirting" flirting. Which would be neither here nor there if it wasn't somewhat my physical type.

I mean it's nothing, and it's not extreme, and it's 90% likely he's straight and/or not interested, and he's too damn young... but, you know... it's a thing that happens.

Also, I don't know if it's my DMing style or if it's my players, but I think I need to double down on the opening/quest giving... I have a plan for trying to make it clearer for them for the next game, but if that doesn't work, I may run a game for them where if they can't remember why they're supposed to be going to do something, they just don't go and do it. See if that makes them pay a little bit more attention.

Wednesday's games were interesting... partially because the day game meant I got to both play my character and pretend to be a completely different character (possession by the ghost of a dead wizard will do that). And then we followed the day game up with a few rounds of Dungeon Mayhem, which is a really cool game, especially for someone who may be interested in the idea of DnD, but not want to commit to playing... it's basically DnD PvP lite.

The Wednesday night game... that's much more interesting. And we're still in the space created by the fallout from my character's confession about his past a couple of weeks back. But this week we got to have both a shopping episode AND a bathhouse episode in the same session.

And on top of that my character almost said too much to the father of the NPC he'd been sleeping with before the revelation... that was a hot second of awkwardness. I also managed to accidentally set myself up as a suspect in a murder. So next week should be interesting. It's not exactly what I expected to be doing in that particular dwarven city... but such is DnD.

Also, I need to get better at not hanging around after the day game until there's only time to catch my bus home, change character sheets and set off again.

Thursday's game was an interesting one... someone I know well but have never had DM for me, the party were mostly people I know and have either played with or run games for, or just seen around the place. Sometimes, a group of people sit down at the table and their characters just instantly gel... they work together as a team, it all just works. And then there was this group.

Don't get me wrong, none of it was bad, but it was all a bit all over the shop. And I'm playing my cleric who is basically a rich kid S/M enthusiast who doesn't have a lot of time for anyone. Which was super easy to play at that table. And while it was an adventure that could be pretty much entirely played via roleplay without any combat (and I knew it, having played half the module once before), I didn't do a single point of damage (or heal a single point for that matter) to anyone, and didn't use a single offensive spell.

I'm kind of curious how long I can keep that up for... possibly for a while in adventures from the newest season, since they're perhaps a little TOO heavy tilted towards the roleplay (vs the other types of play). And also how long I can go without healing damage to anyone but myself.

I mean his goddess DOES preside over pain, hurt and torture...

Yeah... DnD!

Friday I had the tradie out to take a better look at my stove than the last tradie did... and it seems that he's gotten it working properly, which is good... we'll see how long it lasts.

So that was about it for the week really.

Oh, the Fringe guide dropped on Thursday also.

I'll dive into this a little more in my actual Fringe picks post, but I can never tell if my economic situation colours my judgement on what's available, but there were relatively few shows I was excited about this year... sure I didn't go through the listings 406 times like I've done the last few years, and I probably need to do a secondary run through, just in case, but there were less than a dozen shows I was interested in this year. I know that I'm much less likely to take chances on super weird stuff of questionable quality when times are lean, but even so...

Anyway, on to today.

Normally, I think, I really don't remember since it only happens once a year, on the Saturday before the Christmas tree, either Ma doesn't come down at all or she comes down, we do the food shopping and maybe the odd thing and then she buggers off home. But usually we've finished Christmas shopping beyond a few outliers well before the start of December.

So we had a relatively normal Saturday... although to be honest, because we bought a few additional things at the supermarket, it did end up being a bit of a mega shop. Partially that was us buying bits and pieces for goodie making, partially it was me realising that I actually need to buy enough of the right stuff to actually be able to make meals during the whole week (specially given that I'm out of the house now on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights).

Then we came back here, Ma went through the Fringe shows I'd picked out, they all met with her approval (so it's mostly going to be a Ma and me year this year also, since there was only one show I picked just for me).

She needed a couple of final-ish things for a couple of people, so we decided on the Big W to Target to Kmart circle (with a trip to Officeworks thrown in because I wanted a couple of bits and pieces from there)... only missing out the Kmart part because we didn't need anything there once we were done with the other places.

So, some Dr Suess, Roald Dahl, basketry and various paper and sticky tape later, we were pretty much done.

And now I remember why it is we usually have all (or at least most of) the shopping finished by mid November... people... urgh.

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