two thousand and nineteen in review

2019 wasn't the most exciting year for me... it did have some roadbumps, but nothing devastating. Things did change a number of times during the year though. As they have all through the decade in fact.

Which is about the only reference to the 2010-2019 you're getting... other than for me to remark that today is my 10th year on Twitter. And I've been on Instagram for basically the whole decade also... but that started in October 2010.

And speaking of which, I managed to keep the #leftovertuesdays Instagram idea happening all year (I think I missed two weeks, one because I was sick and one from technical issues), where I posted old photos every Tuesday.

I also broke 4000 blog posts earlier this month... so that's my last decade and then some.

But 2019...

January: Business as usual, many much DnD. Adelaide broke a highest temperature record that I think we re-broke about three times recently during December.

February: Ma moved house (fortunately not far, unfortunately she was not organised in any way, shape or form). Went to a DnD friend's engagement party. Fringe started.

March: I turned 45, Fringe ended.

April: I went through all my books and got rid of a pile of them, which was pretty damn cathartic. I ran the first real DnD game for Ma.

May: I got sick, otherwise nada.

June: Ma's birthday. Burger Theory closed their city store... I didn't find out until August. I ran Ma a DnD game for her birthday. The Thursday DnD group that should never have worked played their last game together.

July: Ma had a car accident, she was fine, car not so much. She bought a "new" (secondhand) car.

August: Circumstances beyond my control (or at least beyond my finances currently) meant I ran my last Monday DnD game. I bought a kitchen table (for DnD... I've yet to actually use it for that). I learned how to make bread.

September: I came down with a case of Bell's Palsey and lost control of half of my face for the rest of the month. Septembers have not been treating me well for the last couple of years.

October: We finally got around to checking out the Wonderwalls street art at Port Adelaide. I got full feeling/function back in my face. I started playing the new DnD hardcover with a small, handpicked group (and make bread for the games).

November: One of my DnD friends invited me to a fortnightly boardgame night at his place. I went to a former workmate's 60th birthday party.

December: The least excited Christmas season ever, including tree trimming, goodie making and then actual Christmas.

Otherwise it was mostly the same old same old.

I finished a DnD "campaign" (I put it in inverted commas because it wasn't a real actual campaign), continued another (more on that in a second) and started two others, one of which fell apart, the other is perfect and brilliant.

As far as the continued campaign, we have had some AMAZING moments, and more than one session with nothing but total roleplay from one end to the other, where the only dice we roll during the game are against each other. And I will be incredibly sad when that campaign ends. However, looking back through the year and seeing how many weeks I mentioned "oh it didn't happen because reasons nobody bothered to tell me" or "we won't be playing again for weeks before the DM has some bullshit reason". I'm also annoyed that one of the players who should not have been allowed to come back and join us, has in fact come back and joined us. Don't get me wrong, his character has kept mine alive, but it's still annoying. As is the fact that yes, we tool November off because one of the players was getting married, but then we never restarted again in December because of the DM (and again, I didn't hear this from him)... so hopefully we get to finish the campaign in January.

We only saw 6 movies this year. Mostly because there were just long stretches of time where there was absolutely nothing we wanted to see. But Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame were the only two movies that got full marks. Everything else was fairly good as well.

Current Mood:

movies: star wars: the rise of skywalker

I'll be honest, I was a little ambivalent going into Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker... especially after the unevenness of The Last Jedi, but I've seen every Star Wars movie since Return of the Jedi in the cinema, so I wanted to round out the series.

And much like TLJ, I really loved everything relating to Rey and Kylo, but didn't really give a shit about the Po and Finn stuff. They're just not interesting characters. Especially Finn. He's maybe a little better here than the last movie, but yeah, I just found that any time the focus switched to him and Po I wasn't as interested.

Overall though, I think this comes under the general heading of an emotionally satisfying conclusion, even if it's not satisfying as far as narrative or structure is concerned.

There will also be some spoilers from this point onwards. I'll keep them to a minimum, but you've been warned.

Addressing the elephant in the room, the use of old footage and body doubles to make up for the fact that Carrie Fisher is no longer with us, but that Leia should have been the focus of this movie was... uneven. But I can't decide whether it was the fact that I knew what they'd done (made use of unused footage from the previous two movies) or whether it would have just felt weird and awkward anyway. The dialogue felt very much like "this is what we have, we have to make it work", and it is a shame they had intended to have her be the "previous trilogy focus" in this third one, given the circumstances.

Having said that, the way they handled it was with delicacy and it was still impactful, given her fate this time around (although that doesn't really feel like a spoiler given the fates of both Han and Luke in the previous two movies).

Except for that flashback that shows a rubber Gumby faced young Leia shoved inside a helmet that is actively horrifying... like I recoiled from the screen horrifying. Urgh. No.

There were some stupid "plot contrivance" things at the beginning of the movie that annoyed me... the fact that C3PO is unable to translate the MacGuffin because of the programming of all droids everywhere wasn't completely clear, and the "we have to wait for this arbitrary timer" for intelligence from a spy, dumb and sloppy writing. Also, later, the "oh we can't take a boat out over this very storm ocean, we'll have to wait" contrivance which very quickly turns into two different boats doing it with seemingly no problem whatsoever. Dumb.

And having a whole plot line where Finn "wants to tell Rey something", which never sets resolved... annoying as fuck. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't care what he wanted to tell her. But if felt like it was a declaration of love. Which then just made it icky for the rest of the movie, every time Finn follows Rey around like a lovesick puppy and every time it's brought up... it's very clear that she's NOT into him. Hence it just felt weird. Yeah, that was totally a part of the story that shouldn't have made it out of rewrites.

Also, shoehorning in Po Dameron's "heterosexuality" by including a character we've never met before who is in the overall movie for about fifteen seconds, which includes him asking to kiss her, not once, but twice. And doubly annoying when there are possibly two separate moments in the movie where the whole Finn/Po romance thing (which, I will say, I personally don't care about, because aforementioned lack of interest in both Finn and Po) could have been confirmed. Yeah, bad.

I also need to mention something. This is to all filmmakers everywhere. Especially large studios. Large studios with large, existing franchises. Homosexuality is not production design, it is not set dressing. Don't throw in a two second shot of two characters of the same gender (especially when you take the "safer" option of making them both female) kissing and think that you've done your bit to show that homosexuality exists in your universe. It just isn't good enough. It's tokenism at the very best, insulting at worst. Just stop doing it. Make a gay main character or secondary character or just fuck off. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Once last thing before I move on to things I actually liked. C3PO. He's annoying. He was palatable in the original trilogy because people told him to shut up or just switched him off much more frequently. He was incredibly annoying in both of the previous movies. He's irritating to the point of distraction in large chunks of this movie. No more please.

Anyway...

The strengths of this movie, beyond amazing production design, are Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver. Seriously, the whole movie hinges on their chemistry... he seduces her, she seduces him, they seduce each other... and all without being, technically, in the same room. In fact it happens so much that when they do finally confront each other in the same space, I didn't think that's what was happening for over half the sequence.

And the pay off to them setting up multiple times during the movie that items could pass between them while they communicated in "force cyberspace" was brilliant and something I totally didn't see coming.

The other thing, the "force healing", yeah that I saw coming a mile off because it was shoehorned inelegantly in.

And even if it sometimes feels likewise shoehorned in (we needed to go to how many locations?), the locations, both actual and virtual, in this movie are gorgeous. The water planet especially. But also the alien festival Burning Man planet... gorgeous. Also, Rey's lightsaber... the first ever yellow lightsaber, that looks like it was made from her staff... YES!

So, was it a fitting end to this trilogy. Absolutely. Was it the right way to end out the nine movie series. Absolutely. Were parts of it dumb. Absolutely. Did I cry or get misty a number of times at the end. Abso-fucking-lutely. Like I said at the start, it was an emotionally satisfying movie and overall conclusion. With some dumb stuff.

yani's rating: 4 hairy horses out of 5

photo saturday: kite fleet

Christmas apathy, check. Christmas 2019, check. Post Christmas malaise, check.

Also, can Summer just fuck off already.

This is going to be brief I think...

Tuesday was Wednesday as far as DnD was concerned, and I got to see people I don't get to see very often, so that was nice.

Then Tuesday night, normally on Christmas Eve I would settle in with a pizza and my yearly viewing of Arthur Christmas. This year the usual overruled the annual, and instead I just did what I do every Tuesday night, which is watch Critical Role.

Not a bad alternative, and especially because I just wasn't feeling the Christmas thing.

The day itself has already been covered.

Then Thursday and Friday I basically stayed home and made love to the air-conditioner again.

I will say that the problem with having nice things to eat in the house is resisting the urge to eat all the nice things in the house, and therefore having no nice things in the house. I did this with varying degrees of success.

Friday DnD got moved to tonight, which just added to the overall sense of weird that today entailed.

Because I don't have aircon in my car (I mean I do, it just doesn't work/needs replacing) we decided to take Ma's car to the supermarket, which probably ended up being a smart plan, although it didn't seem like it at the time.

Just after we got in the car and headed off, I heard this clicking noise, which turned out to be the motor in Ma's passenger side mirror. It was very loud, but eventually got quieter, but also didn't stop even when the car was completely turned off. I assumed at that point that whatever plan we might have had for today was out the window and replaced with "try and get Ma's car fixed".

We did the supermarket thing, came back here, then Ma had the bright idea of calling the RAA to come out and have a look at it. The guy showed up in about half an hour, popped a panel off the passenger door and disconnected the wires to the mirror. I mean it's not fixed, but at least it's not doing it any more.

It also meant that we could still go to the movies. Yes, literally almost six months to the day since the last time we went to the movies.

More on that later.

Afterwards, we had some lunch, ran a quick errand and called it a day.

Current Mood:

post christmas round-up 2019

Okay... let's start this off in the way I mean to go on.

Fuck Christmas this year.

More than at any other point in recent history, Christmas was literally just a Wednesday with turkey. Granted not the worst ever Wednesday, but yeah, fuck Christmas 2019.

Part of the problem was that we diverged in some of the preparation from the usual script, which is often a giant mistake. But I also made fresh bread for Christmas morning. Which did require me to get up just after 5am, but also let me get things organise before I left the house for the day, as well as watch a bunch of crap on YouTube.

But, bread proofed and baked, I loaded up the car and headed up to Ma's place just after 8am.

And Ma was making the last of the ham hearts and mince tarts... so I got to have a few of them fresh out of the oven, always good. Then we had actual breakfast... and while freshly baked bread is awesome, and was possibly more special for Ma since I haven't really been able to give her any of the "freshly baked" stuff, it didn't necessarily feel as "special" as our usual Christmas morning breakfast of croissants.

Still nice though.

And I have, in previous years, complained about the fact that none of the networks just slap on any old Christmas movie during the day... because it's Christmas, and it's nice to have random crap on in the background when you're doing other things... or whatever.

This year I got my wish, and how. Now, I've been a fan of the YouTube channel MovieBitches for a while now, and they've introduced me to the phenomenon of the Shitty Halmark/Lifetime/Netflix Christmas Movie. Yep, Channel Nine came to my rescue this year and ran four of the things back to back from 9am to 5pm. So damn ridiculously BAD, but the first two (Oh Christmas Tree/Fir Crazy and The Spirit of Christmas) were either entertaining or ridiculous enough to actually leave on while doing other things. Granted it was diminishing returns, so Fir Crazy was the best, and they got worse from then on... we had the third one on with no sound and then actively switched the last one off after about ten minutes.

Once we'd done breakfast and cleaned up from breakfast we played a couple of games of Unstable Unicorns that I borrowed off a friend for the purpose of Christmas Day.

After that, we did a little prep for lunch, then it was present time.

Such as it was.

Let me just point out that I'm not saying I should have gotten more stuff, it's more that there isn't the money this year to do much of anything. Plus there really isn't much of anything I desperately, actively need. So yeah.

• Disney/Typo 2020 calendar
• DVDs
• Avengers: Infinity War
• The Lego Movie 2
• Missing Link
• Wakanda Forever/Black Panther mug
• Dukkah dipping set
• Gingerbread men
• Turkish Delight
• Little Buddah keyring (which I forgot to flip over for the photo dammit).

In related news, Ma really liked her calendar, which was good.

Christmas lunch is really when the wheels fell off the day, and as I described it a collection of loosely connected fuckups.

These start all the way back on Saturday.

Normally Ma picks up the bits and pieces for our Christmas salad the day or so before Christmas, but this time she asked me to do it and I somehow forgot to say no. I should have said no.

If only because, by the time we got to Christmas Eve night, the basil I bought had withered and shrivelled inside the fridge and the cherry tomatoes were a little too ripe. I didn't know this until after the shops had shut though.

So we already had a strike against us.

Then the second issue was that Ma didn't read the instructions on the turkey packaging correctly. Fortunately it didn't effect the turkey itself, but it was still a problem. My mother and reading instructions correctly, it's an ongoing theme.

And I know she asked me if it was okay to get the turkey with flavoured stuffing in it, at least I seem to have that memory, and it seemed fine at the time, but on top of everything else in the moment it just seemed problematic.

Anyway, the timing issue meant that we should have put the potatoes in the Weber at the same time as the meat in order to have lovely roast potatoes. We did not.

So then we had to fry some of the potatoes to try and get the same effect. Newsflash, not the same at all.

And then Ma started cooking the haloumi way before she should have. This was also partly on me, because I saw her do it, but I don't think my brain registered how much of a dumb idea it was until it was already finished.

So, we ended up with:

• wilted/shrivelled basil (and for some reason Ma had no salad leaves in her house)
• overly ripe tomatoes
• un-roasted roast potatoes
• turkey with unnecessary stuffing
• bacon that was cooked but not super crispy and crunchy
• haloumi that wasn't as good as it could have been.

And then sausage meat, because it's basically impossible to stuff up sausage meat, even if I think they've changed the consistency or recipe (I may have said the same thing for the last couple of Christmases honestly).

Let me just say, it wasn't inedible, by any stretch of the imagination. It was pleasant. It just that almost none of it beyond the sausage meat and the turkey was actually finished in the way it was supposed to be or has previously been.

So while I might otherwise have had a second bowl or sat and picked the yummy bits (usually the meats and the potatoes) out of it after we finished, I just didn't. Also, I'm gunna guess it was mostly because this is our first Christmas dinner in Ma's new house, but the whole prep and construction stages were kind of a hot mess also.

I was pretty over everything at this stage, I'll be honest. But there was some clean up and whatnot. As there usually is.

Then we sat down to a couple of game of Forbidden Island (also borrowed from the same friend as the Unicorns for the same reason). We did pretty well... we won the first game (which was basically on "easy mode"), then lost the first game in the first turn before resetting that board and trying again, and getting right down to the wire of only having two land tiles left and lost. We almost got there, we just couldn't do it.

Between games of Forbidden Island we stopped to have some dessert, our usual "Eton Mess" style thing with meringues, mince pie ice cream, berries and slivers of chocolate. Always good, and yes, that all worked just fine.

That was followed by a couple more games of Unicorns, which actually went better than the first couple, Ma was less tentative and we had a lot of fun.

Once we'd packed everything up and I left, it was maybe 8:30ish... I got home around 9 I think, unpacked, dicked around for a bit and then called it a night.

So there we go, Wednesday with turkey, complete for another year.

Current Mood:

a naughty list kinda christmas

Current Mood:

photo saturday: walls walls walls

Well, fuck this week. Fuck this week right in it's heatwaving, bushfire facehole.

Australia has broken so many "highest temperature" records this week, I think at one point South Australia broke a record that Western Australia had broken earlier that day. And then the temperature went up even higher about two hours later. Le sigh.

Firstly, let's rewind to before the world was mostly made of fire, to last Sunday's Christmas goody making.

It was weird. Let's just get that out there right off the bat. Although mostly it was weird because Ma moved house at the beginning of the year, so this is the first goody making in the new kitchen and new stuff is weird.

It wasn't bad (especially because the temperature was reasonable for the majority of the day). It was just different and weird. And honestly, I made 80% of everything I think.

Not that there was that much of everything, but yeah. I made two lots of Rocky Road. One with the regular Turkish Delight and milk chocolate, the other with orange flavoured TD and dark chocolate (left and right on the top row respectively... I think).

I'm gunna be honest, other than the slight difference in taste between the two kinds of chocolate, these are functionally identical. I can't really tell the difference. But they look pretty, which is good.

Then we (or I, I guess) made the Oreo Peppermint Truffles. I always like these because, due to adding melted chocolate to the mixture they always set really, really well for rolling into balls.

And finally, everybody's (and by everybody, I mostly mean me) favourite, the Peanut Butter Balls. I accidentally made a somewhat better, or at least seemingly less melty version of them this year. I think maybe because I put more icing sugar and peanut butter in and a little less butter. They tasted a little less sweet to me overall, but that could also be me misremembering how sweet they've been in previous years.

The good thing about Ma's new place is that the kitchen and living room are all part of one large space, instead of being two totally separate rooms, so we just watched random, not Christmas, movies while we worked.

I would have preferred to spend the rest of the entire week holed up in my apartment making love to the airconditioner, but it was not to be. Plus I think I would have come down with a nice case of cabin fever. I was already going a little loopy after just Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday was DnD, and we finished off the little trilogy from the past couple of weeks. Which was fun. And the store was adequately airconditioned, so that was fantastic.

Then Thursday was Haircut Day... with added small children. Which is fine, because I get to leave eventually. And Tink got me a baby Groot "planter" (I put it in quotes because while I totally could put something in it, I'm not sure if I want to actually put soil and a plant I need to water in it... maybe a little fake plant or one of those airplants maybe?). I might also talk to one of my friends about giving it a new paintjob, because the "factory paint" isn't particularly detailed. But the sculpt is nice.

Hair, short, blonde bordering on silver/purple.

I also piked out of Board Game Fortnight... mostly because the aircon in my car no longer works and I really, really didn't want to sit in traffic in the heat.

Then Friday was Chiro Day... because I clearly arranged everything to be the week before Christmas WAY before the weather decided to put the setting on "Hell/Heatwave/Firestorm".

I don't know it it was because it was the end of a heatwave, or the Friday before Christmas or what, but I was the only passenger on the bus all the way into town... which was slightly weird. But also airconditioned, and therefore good.

Then after back adjustments and suchlike, it was back home before heading out to Friday Night DnD.

We didn't do a hell of a lot to be honest. I mean, we had fun and my bard got to perform, so that was great. And then because we reached a good stopping point early, we played a bunch of rounds of Love Letter, which was a ton of fun.

I did mean we didn't wrap up until after midnight and I didn't get home until about 1am.

Today was simple. Which is good. Ma was having her hair did, so I was on my own for shopping. And because it was the last Saturday before Christmas I made sure that I was there nice and early when the supermarket opened at 7:30, and was done by the time we would usually be getting to the shops.

And I'm not doing anything involved or strenuous with the rest of the day.

Also, turns out this is my 4000th blog post, who knew!

Current Mood:

photo saturday: beach metal

This week was less up and down...

Last Sunday's DnD game never happened. One of the players came down with a virus, so we called the game off. It did mean that I had a whole cranberry loaf to myself... so a little bit of a balance between good and bad to be honest.

Tuesday I booked our very meagre 2020 Fringe outing, then went and picked up the tickets after DnD on Wednesday.

Wednesday's day game started off a little rocky, especially as the module seemed to be written by someone who was aware of the beats an adventure should have, but hadn't bothered to really link the individual elements together. And was being pointlessly brutal for the sake of being brutal. Which I hate. But at a certain point, the DM decided to go "tense but silly" in the final second and we encountered a group of pirates that somehow ended up wearing red sequins and were mostly ridiculously dumb. But it still managed to have a sense of threat to it which was a good balancing act. I will also say that I'm glad I was playing my slightly impulsive bipedal cat man monk... because at a certain point I just went "fuck it" and did the potentially dumb but spectacular thing and it all worked out beautifully.

Which shows what a difference a good DM can make.

Thursday I went to get Ma's calendar bound... by which I mean I dropped it off to be done, and picked it up the following day. More on that in a second.

I got home to discover that my request for the landlord/strata to deal with the possums that keeps divebombing onto the roof finally had a result, and the tree loppers had turned up to do their thing. Cue the remainder of the day filled with varying volumes of mini chainsaw and then mulcher. They totally went to town on all the trees/plants in the driveway, however didn't touch one of the trees around the back where I know the possums previously used for roof access. I may need to log that as a job later on.

Friday morning I headed back to Officeworks. Now, I've had calendars bound in October, November and December. October is best because everyone isn't trying to get Christmas presents done. December is worst because Christmas. And they never put enough staff on in the Print and Copy Shop. And there was a line full of people. Actually there were two lines, one for pick up and one for drop-off, which is probably really frustrating when the staff end up spending a lot of time with one particular customer and so the drop-off line doesn't really move. Thankfully I was in the other line.

But I was more concerned about whether or not they had done the binding properly (which they had), so I didn't notice until I got home that while the binding was great, they hadn't bothered to add the clear front cover or the back card cover. Thankfully they also hadn't charged me for them, even though they were right there in the job order.

Not Happy Jan.

Yes, I could have gone back and got it fixed, but that's not the point. And yes, this is only the second time they've actually screwed it up. But, it's a very weird error to make, and one they shouldn't have made.

Then last night we were back to our regularly scheduled Friday night DnD game. Yay.

Sometimes in DnD games there are moments where all the stars align between DM and player and the player sets up a moment that you as the DM can then run away with. We had at two of those with two different players last night. Also, we split the party because we're idiots.

And now everything in-game is starting to fall apart... also known as "the plot". Always good.

Also, brief aside, I made what I am referring to as Christmas Bread... bread with cranberries and sultanas and dried apple and pistachios and cinnamon and nutmeg. Pretty good, honestly... the mix was a little dry, which leads to a much harder crust I think, but overall, pretty good.

Today was... actually today was exactly what it said on the tin... a week and a half before Christmas and the Saturday before I go down to Ma's and make Christmas goodies.

So we bought (allegedly) all the ingredients (which turned out not to be the case because Ma thought we were making one recipe when we only ever made that once because it was a bit m'eh). And some of the other pre-Christmas food stuff.

Then we came back here, unpacked and generally fluffed about, before heading off to Target for a couple of items. Which honestly was a lot less painful than the shopping trip from last week.

And that was that.

Current Mood:

my adelaide fringe picks 2020

Another very lean Fringe year, although this year it's definitely not for a lack of shows. And interestingly, there seemed to be a lot less "repeat" shows from what I noticed.

Don't get me wrong, I love a repeat show, but I also love seeing new things. I got to combine the best of both worlds in a couple of the shows, as while we saw The Handlebards last year, that was the male troupe, this time it's the female troupe... and one of the performers from Barbaroi I saw in another circus show back in 2013 (and promised that if he showed up in other things I'd go see them).

• The Will To Be: One man's exploration of sexuality, society and shame, laced with the words of Shakespeare.
• The Handlebards - The Tempest: A shipwreck washes the court of Milan up onto a mysterious desert island, inhabited by a magician, sprites and monsters, and where nothing is as it seems.
• The Bakers: Three bakers, one bakery! Dough up the walls, flour in your eyes.
• Barbaroi: Inspired by the world of shadows where anything goes, and the gritty underbelly of society, 'Barbaroi' is a blend of high octane circus, cabaret and physical theatre.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: the details

I'm going to file this week under "rollercoaster"... but like not a big scary one... like a little one, for babies.

Sunday was... actually Sunday was probably equal parts shithouse and adequate really.

Sunday was the Christmas tree at Ma's place.

My "fuck Christmas in it's facehole" mood continued from last Saturday into Sunday, which clearly wasn't the best way to approach the day. But thankfully we have a system. I can do a system all day long. Even, or perhaps especially, when I otherwise don't give a flying fuck.

So, we did the tree.

I did the lights twice because I fucked them the first time. And like I said, if I have a system, I'm gunna do a system.

Ma wanted rainbow, so we did rainbow. On the plus side of Ma's new place, it looks a lot nicer and brighter sitting against the window like that.

On the negative side, it's fucking impossible to photograph effectively.

And it was possibly fortunate that we didn't find any of the good, plain glass ornaments this year, because we totally would have forgotten that we wanted pink ones for the top of the tree to replace the silver ones.

While I did add "box sass" once again this year, I did not remember to take photos of it.

Never mind, it'll still be there next year.

That was really it for Sunday. Which was more than enough, because my body has been sore all week from all the squatting, bending and holding of lights.

I also put together Ma's calendar this week. It's one of those things that once I start it just gets done, but I have to start it. And given that we really only did one photographic excursion all year, it's the Wonderwalls photos from Port Adelaide (see also the photos in this post).

In the context of the whole calendar, I quite like the June choice (since I always feature June here, seeing as it's Ma's birth month and this is her calendar), but it's perhaps not the most striking individual photo.

And of course, because I only print one of these things a year, the printer usually fucks me over at the beginning... but after much prodding, poking, swearing and changing absolutely NONE of the settings, I reprinted the cover and it worked perfectly fine. No idea why the first attempt was all fucked up. Just glad it was only the test print.

Just the one DnD game this week... because we put our Friday game off until Sunday this week because the DM was going to be away. But it was a small group, a good DM and a decent enough adventure (although one of those ones that WANT you to go into all the rooms, poke all the weird things, and get your ass kicked... but you absolutely don't HAVE to do any of it... which is how we ended up playing it for the most part... because decent adventurers would start to realise when a haunted house or a dungeon or whatever is just making things too fucking obvious or hard or unnecessary, right?)

But I did go and see one of the Wednesday night players on Wednesday night... because he's the one who got married, and I made him and his wife (wow, that's a sentence I just said) a thing, and I didn't want it just sitting on my kitchen table until January. They seemed to like it, or at least they were polite about it. But it was nice to see them outside of an "on the way to/at DnD" context. Even if we did end up talking about DnD.

Also it turns out that our Wednesday night DM has disappeared up his own ass because he's moving house. And while, yes, I totally understand, and it's one of the most stressful times in a person's life, and if this includes finding a new place to live, sure... but otherwise, yeah, you've just disappeared up your own ass again, haven't you sweety.

Grrr.

Thursday was tabletop/board game fortnight, which fortunately wasn't the six person extravaganza of previous fortnights... there were only 3 of us and we played a very chill game, Villagers. Whether it was chill because there were only 3 of us, or whether it was because it's just a more relaxed game (I think it's a column A, column B situation, honestly), I really like it.

And I won the second game, which was nice. Especially as I came third in the first game.

Today wasn't bad. I mean it was occasionally a hot mess, but it was okay.

Shopping was a "four bag" occasion... which means we've bought too much stuff, although I will say that most of it was probably from the fruit and veg section, so not the worst result.

And then Ma wanted to pick up a few last presents. Urgh. So we went to Kmart, and she got everything but, I think, two things. Not the worst shopping trip, but I do hate doing any kind of shopping in December. Then we needed to stop at Typo, but by the time we got into the city finding a park was going to be painful. Thankfully I remembered that there is a Typo in Norwood, so we abandoned the city and went there instead.

That did mean we had lunch at the always slightly disappointing Nordburger. I mean technically it's all fine. But there was too much syrup in the milkshake (which was otherwise really good) and the burger was acceptable, if a little bit overly saucy, but not otherwise outstanding.

M'eh really.

And that, boys and girls, was all she wrote (as they say).

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photo saturday: lines and shapes

Bah humbug, maybe?

I dunno. I actually don't give a shit about any of the December rigmarole right now. Nothing seems worth bothering with honestly. Not like "life", just like all the festive bullshit. Tomorrow I have to up to Ma's place to put up the Christmas tree. And I couldn't be any less enthused than I currently am.

Like, the enthusiasm gauge is legitimately on 0%... in fact it might actually be dipping below zero at certain points.

Urgh.

Anyway.

Last Saturday, aka the birthday party, was better than anticipated. I mean I knew it wasn't going to be horrendous, but I haven't seen the majority of the former Nut House in... two and a half years. So, weirdness was built in. I did realise while I was on my way there that I'd essentially armoured myself in DnD character jewellery. And dark purple nail polish.

Because sometimes you just have to strap on your mental armour through physical items.

But there's a reason why I enjoyed spending time with those people. And why we got along. And also why, in the case of someone I'd never actually met before that night, we pretty much clicked into a similar mode to how I relate to the rest of them... because she'd been part of the team and was clearly One Of Us.

I told a number of DnD stories to people who were at least polite enough to be vaguely interested, and breadmaking and whatnot... Apologies to anyone I bored the pants off, but really, who cares.

I'd told myself I was only going to stay for a couple of hours and then disappear... that didn't happen, obviously, it was basically midnight by the time I left and I think I was the last of the "former workmates" to leave. It did mean I got to have a nice conversation with the birthday boy out on the porch though, so that was good.

But I had a good time.

Wednesday I went into town for DnD for the first time in three weeks (as in I wasn't in for two... does that make sense?), and it wasn't bad... the adventure was a bit m'eh honestly, but it was decent enough.

It also seems from what I've been told second hand that Wednesday nights won't be happening in December because our DM is often... oh, so many things to say here, none of them complimentary. I'm sure he has reasons... but given that he hasn't bothered to tell me what they are, I will choose to be slightly annoyed by his choices.

Things will be decidedly different when we start the new campaign I'm running. As in, it will actually run on a weekly basis unless I'm somehow incapacitated.

Grrr.

Thursday was Haircut Day. All the usual usualness. A little more "silvery purple" with my hair, but otherwise, nothing dramatic.

For Friday's DnD game I made cheese and chive bread, which was really good. I used more bread than the first time, and I added the chives... although I still need to try a version where I put the cheese in before it proves and see what happens then. Next week I might try a cranberry bread again.

We're also playing on Sunday next week, which isn't a bad option, but it won't be as late a night as we have been doing.

As far as the game is concerned, it was a very chill shopping/exploration/social session. Which I love, obviously. There were a few nice moments too. I mean it makes sense, but this is a very different vibe from other groups... it's quite chill, partly from the DM I think, but also these are mostly quite chill, if very weird, characters.

Speaking of chill... that's probably the way to describe today. I mean it isn't, because I'm not particularly feeling it, but it's as good as anything.

We didn't buy a hell of a lot at the supermarket, because now that we're not in soup weather again, I have no idea how the fuck to actually shop anymore. I either buy way too much stuff which potentially goes to waste like last week, or too little which then runs out, which I think is basically this week's direction.

Then we came back here, faffed around a bit, did a short trip down the road to Haighs so Ma could get something Christmas related for... somebody. Then came back here, watched some stuff on the YouTubes and called it a day.

So, yeah.

That's about it.

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photo saturday: leafy cloud

Well, Summer arrived with something of a vengeance this week. Fortunately only for a day.

This also led to me cancelling any and everything for Wednesday and hibernating inside with the air-conditioner.

Thursday I had a board game night at a friend's place with associated randoms, which was fun.

Then last night I had my first DnD session in two weeks (since the last Friday night game), and we had a good time. I also terrorised a young cultist we captured, so that was enjoyable (you know, in the dark "make him rethink his life choices" way).

Although now I have to pick a bard subclass... and I honestly don't know what to pick. Partially that's because I don't think that the bardic subclasses are as narratively strong as those of other classes. But also because my character could honestly go in three different subclass directions. So that's going to be on my mind for the rest of the week.

I made plain bread for the game, and our hosts provided some cheese and some cold meats and we went through almost the whole thing. It was very good bread, if I do say so myself. And I do.

I had a phone call from my land agent yesterday, and she started talking and in the back of my mind I'm trying to work out where this story is going... and then suddenly it clicks that somehow, someone has mistaken weird creepy smoking old man from the other end of the balcony for me and made a complaint and she's trying to explain this to me. But of course. I'm me and not creepy smoking old man. So then we had that conversation and I was definitely "hey, here are the receipts, there's the truth, I already left a note during an inspection about this issue and you can take this conversation and shovel it".

But as is often the case, the whole "getting in trouble, even for something that definitely is not in any way me" thing meant that my body was full of endorphins and so trying to send them an email to confirm everything I'd said over the phone was a challenging exercise.

And then I went into the city for my chiro appointment.

Today... today was the centre of the nexus of the vortex of the whole entire universe. Today had so many things happening... not things I needed or wanted or was invited to go to... but honestly, everything just seemed to be scheduled for today.

For example, two of my friends are getting married, one of my old workmates is having a 60th birthday party (which I am going to tonight), there is a DnD epic happening, both the Etsy Christmas Market and the French Festival were on today... and as I discovered to my chagrin on the way to the supermarket this morning, the Norwood Christmas Pageant (also known as "Oh God, oh God, why are all the roads closed, you monsters") was ALSO today.

So fuck right off today.

I will say that even though I didn't know it was All The Roads Are Closed Day and I was shopping on my own today (Ma's Haircut Day), while getting to the supermarket took longer, it was remarkably low stress for some reason. Or I just managed to get lucky and found a break in the traffic (probably more so that instead of sitting there and trying to go right, I just went left and then did a U turn in a sidestreet). So yeah, there's that.

Then I came home, put stuff away, watched some YouTube, dicked around on the computer before Ma showed up.

We then went off to Unley for the Etsy Market. And, while it's great, it's also a lot of similar things (artwork, greeting cards, earrings and necklaces), none of which we particularly need. I mean I did get a card for the birthday party tonight, and Ma got one present, but that was it really.

As far as the French Festival is concerned, we walked through it on the way to and from the Etsy Market, but that was really about it.

Then we came back here and went over to Burnside Village for some lunch. And then called it today.

And that's about it... except I need to go out again tonight. So *shrugs*.

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photo saturday: nothing much

You know when people say "bit of a quiet week" or "nothing really happened"?

Yeah, quite literally nothing happened this week. I didn't leave the house at all between last Sunday afternoon and this morning. I spoke to one person. I had no DnD games.

I mean I made experimental sultana bread on Monday, made a giant quiche on Tuesday, but yeah, this week was a write off.

So... moving on.

Today was slightly more interesting.

We did the usual supermarket thing... I have no idea what I'm eating this week, but I got enough supplies that I should be able to make things up as I go. Especially given that it's supposed to be 40°C on Wednesday... urgh.

Afterwards we footled around here for a bit, then decided to head down to Marion... because it's November and really, we don't want to be going anywhere near Marion any later than this... in fact even this week was a little too close to Christmas honestly.

We didn't really get much of anything... but it filled in the day and we had a good long walk, so it's not the worst thing we've ever done.

Honestly, that's really it.

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