photo saturday: what a beach

This week has been hell... by which I mean the temperature ascended to an actual literal hellscape.

As evidence, I submit these two tweets from the SA Bureau of Meteorology on Thursday (and a fuckton of places around the state also broke previous records for highest temperature):

ADELAIDE RECORD. West Terrace has just cracked 46.2C at 1:42pm, after 130 years of records, beating its previous record of 46.1 on 12 January 1939 

Adelaide is now the hottest capital in Australia, having just reached 46.6C at 3:35pm, beating the previous record in Melbourne of 46.4

The rest of the week wasn't much better.

Fuck everything.

Well, everything except air-conditioning, which allowed me to function as an actual human being for the majority of the week.

This week's DnD felt like it was portentous, but several things just happened to coincidentally line up. To start with I rounded out the finale of a series of adventures on Monday... and while I felt like I was flailing without a net in the first half last week, the second half went much more smoothly.

I also got to do a number of callbacks, which I always enjoy. So that was good.

Wednesday we finally brought the storyline I've been playing since 27 September 2017 to a close... problematically not a completely satisfying or completely successful close, but a close non the less. But my character didn't die, I gave the other characters the letters I'd written them and got the emotional reactions I was looking for (including oddly, from the player who didn't read the letter at all, which was fitting for his character... whether he ever does or not, I don't really care).

I wish we'd done a few things differently, all the way up to missing a number of clues in previous adventures that are obvious in retrospect, but were close to impossible to see in the moment.

The only downside is I have no fucking idea what the hell we're going to do this coming Wednesday.

Wednesday night's game was much less lethal and much more verbal (as usual), and we finally had what I consider to be the core group back together. I also burned my lip so badly on a party pie it blistered, so swings and roundabouts.

Thursday was a good game overall, but the fact that it was the 46.6C day, the game shop has dysfunctional air-conditioning and my car has none... yeah, it was a little bit of a trying time. But it was also the end of a trilogy of stories, which is sad given that I enjoyed playing that particular character again (my first and oldest... well, oldest in the sense of since I actually started playing). And the DM is very good, so hopefully it won't be too long before I get to be on his table for something else.

So DnD in general next week is looking like it could be a little bit of a mixed bag. We'll see I guess.

Otherwise this week was mostly staying indoors hiding from the heat.

Oh, and because I mentioned it last week, my knee completely returned to normal after the extreme bout of "ow" I had last Saturday. Granted it wasn't until about Tuesday (if memory serves, it may have been slightly earlier), but it improved a little each day, so I wasn't freaking out about it.

Today was essentially nothing.

We did the supermarket thing, but a) it's Australia Day (technically, the day off is Monday, but the day is actually today), b) Ma is in the process of packing her house to move in early February and c) there were no movies I really gave a crap about and d) we had nowhere we needed/wanted to go. So instead we hung around my place chatting until about noon, then wandered over to the Village for some lunch before she toddled off home.

So, yeah...

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photo saturday: opera slices

This week's post is brought to you by the letters "FML" and any number lower than 30.

The numbers, because it would have been nice to have more days with a temperature lower than that... or a night time temperature under 20.

As for FML, partly that's the heat, but we'll get to the rest of it.

I properly felt out of my depth for the first real time running a DnD game this week. I get why... the adventure is much more complex, but I do need to relay to the person who ran it for me and the Thursday numbskulls my admiration for the fact that he did a much better job.

And we have the second half of that adventure still to run this coming Monday. But that should be easier, all things considered.

I pulled the plug this week on the Wednesday night game (just for this week, not forever), partly because the guy who usually acts as taxi wasn't going to be there, which made me taxi-man, plus the heat, plus the fact that our DM had annoyed me earlier in the week.

It turned out to be a good idea anyway, because it allowed us to play for 6 hours at the Wednesday day game. Yeah... it was A LOT. I went toe to toe with the big bad guy and did 100 damage in a single turn, then got my ass handed to me by his minions and the other big bad.

And our DM finally revealed that he'd been sitting on a switcharoo between one of the NPCs and a villain we thought we'd killed already. Damn him... so now we have two different big bads to kill. Not to mention that my character is currently alone, all the party having turned on him thanks to the other big bad's ability to charm creatures.

So they're all planning a wedding, and I spent the last quarter of the game handing from a tree over a mountainous ravine, fully expecting that character to die. I'll be honest with you, I'm kind of disappointed that he didn't. If places had been reversed and I'd been the charmed one, I like to think that I would have just thrown one of them into the ravine without missing a beat.

No idea what the hell I'm going to do next week (although I'm in the process of writing them all letters that the character had already written them... because what use are friends if you can't emotionally manipulate them), but the character is most likely going to try and settle in for a rest, regain his lost health and spells, summon his celestial steed before he tries to head out again. And I also know that there is approximately 0.0000001% chance of me actually being able to do that once we sit back down at the table.

Thursday was a very talky game, but oddly, compared with the very fighty game last week, I lost more health this time. I also got to pretend to be a weird creature (on top of pretending to be my character). So that was a change of pace. Also the second time this particular character has done the body switching thing.

My comments about the group of players from last week remain the same since it was the same group. And will remain the same group for the third part of the trilogy next week.

Otherwise it was too damn hot this week.

Except that this was also Haircut Week and Chiro Week... fortunately not on the hottest of the days.

At least it was a little cooler up in the hills for Haircut Day. It was a very "on rails" visit, we did all the usual things, but Tink Jr was taking up all the air in the room as only a 7 year old can. Not in a bad way especially, but yeah, she is definitely a handful.

Chiro Day came with a side order of "ow my leg"... not from the chiro visit, but my knee had been giving me problems since about Wednesday morning, making life less fun, and my chiro said it was probably caused by my hips being slightly out of whack. Seriously, almost everything that falls apart on me is in some way related to my back.

But because she adjusted both my hips and my knee, it was a little whingy both last night and all day today. I may need to take another visit in the next week or so if it doesn't settle down like I hope it's going to.

Anyway... today wasn't really anything.

Shopping was minimal at best... I just buy too much stuff, don't use it all and it ends up going to waste, so I'm trying to only buy what I need, but I don't know what I need or what I want, so I buy stuff I think is going to be fine, and hope for the best.

Oh and Ma is moving between now and the Fringe. Much as I did in 2016. We definitely know how to move house in my family. Not. Hopefully her move will be much less stressful than my last one (although I do tend to find that moving stress is often inversely proportioned to how eager you are to move out of the old house... as in, from Childers Street to Wellington Square, very eager, from Wellington Square to here, not eager at all).

It also meant we really didn't have anything we wanted to do, and I didn't want to spend the day sitting, because in direct contrast to what you would expect, sitting is worse than walking around when it comes to my knee.

So we went to West Lakes. Which we haven't done in a while... at least since they totally redid the David Jones store down there. And we basically just wandered around the place, poked around in the stores we usually poke around in, and that was about that.

We did stop in the little cafe in David Jones for some lunch though, and that was very pleasant. And much quieter and less urgh than the food court. So we need to remember that in future I think... not just for there, but for DJs in general.

And that's it for the day really.

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movies: how to train your dragon - the hidden world

It's been 8 years and 9 months since I first made the acquaintance of Toothless and Hiccup and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World brings their trilogy to an end in a heartbreakingly beautiful way.

Lets get the two most important things out of the way first.

I cried... oh baby, I cried. The entire last fifteen minutes of the movie in fact I think.

The effects and visuals in this movie are astounding. There was more than once where I thought that the water could just have been real actual footage of water it was that damn good. And the textures, light and smoke effects, hair, dragon eyes... so many things that were stunningly beautiful.

Okay, now that that's been dealt with.

HTTYD:THW is a beautiful climax to the story of Toothless and Hiccup and the denizens of Berk, both viking and dragon. If anything, it's a simpler story, like the first one rather than the second.

Dean DeBlois has finished off the trilogy with the same heart and deftness of touch that I've come to expect from him and from this series.

And even though the villain, played with requisite malice by F. Murray Abraham, is fascinating (even without a ton of screen time), this story continues to be about the connections between fathers and sons, even if, as in this case, the son is a dragon. It's about letting go of something you love because that's what is right for them, rather than what is right for you.

Jay Baruchel continues to project so much emotion into Hiccup, but has also subtly aged the character vocally from the awkward teenager of the first movie to the man he's become in this one. America Ferrera maintains the no-nonsense Astrid as the Yang to Hiccup's Yin and makes you believe that she honestly loves this man.

To be perfectly honest, I could have probably done with a lot less of the supporting players this time around... Snotlout, Tuffnut, Ruffnut and Fishlegs all feel out of place somehow... or at the very least, mostly surplus to requirements. None of them really add anything to the Hiccup story, they all have a little bit of their own business to do, but it doesn't feel necessary (particularly Snotlout and Tuffnut).

I was glad to see that Cate Blanchett had returned as Hiccup's mother Valka, but it wouldn't have been quite the same if they hadn't also brought back Gerard Butler as Hiccup's father, albeit only in some perfect little flashbacks.

Side note: Both Craig Ferguson and Kit Harington return as Gobber the blacksmith and Eret, son of Eret respectively...and given what the previous movie "revealed" about Gobber (heavy sarcasm on the word revealed there), I can't help but wonder if this movie did the same with Eret, if only due to a very brief and even more subtle scene towards the end. And if so, what does that mean about Gobber and Eret... of course the answer to that could be that I'm reading entirely too much into it.

I also appreciated that the callbacks in this movie are often quite subtle... I'm sure that some of the scenes towards the end are set up almost exactly like similar scenes from the first movie, which gives you that wealth of emotion as your brain makes the visual connections.

And even with my minor complaints, I honestly don't care. This movie concludes the trilogy beautifully and that's really all I care about.

yani's rating: 4 lightfuries out of 5

photo saturday: das circles

This week felt more like a normal week... for a sliding scale of whatever the hell normal is anyway.

There were not one, not two, not even three but four games of DnD... which made my Wednesday a little full on.

Monday's game... yeah, let's assign that to the m'eh pile. I didn't have my full group back from various Christmas things, I was running a very Christmas themed adventure and after juggling the universe for a long period of time to avoid having to interact with a particular individual, there wasn't really a way to avoid having him on my table. I mean it wasn't hideous, but yeah, definitely someone I want far, far away from me in the future.

Otherwise, the session was pretty good... I'd decided to try and go as long as possible without referring directly to "Santa" during the adventure, and made it maybe halfway through before I slipped up. Not that it was surprising anyone, you go to his workshop to make toys and then hijinks ensue for fucks sake.

It's silly, but it's fun. And now it goes back in the drawer until next year.

Wednesday was... good, but frustrating, but also good. We're finishing up a "campaign" (and I use the term very loosely, since I've been at every single one of the sessions bar one over the last eighteen or so months, but I've seen so many others cycle through it's not even funny), and we're at the abode of the big bad... and it's just frustrating. And the DM is a little too lethal, or a little too bent on keeping us at emotional and physical breaking point (as characters)... or at least at the point where we're fast running out of resources.

And I'll say it, not my preferred style of gameplay... yes, it fits the setting, yes it makes narrative sense, but I've already lost one character to this particular campaign (and while I could probably bring her back, I'm honestly not sure it's worth it given the circumstances, since everything she owns bar magic items has also been destroyed). And I think possibly it's just gone on that little bit too long.

Wednesday evening's game was tame by comparison. Given it's a different DM, different DM style and honestly, we all want exactly what our DM is putting into the world for this particular campaign. It did mean that we spent about three hours doing something that the DM expected would take us about 10 minutes, partially because I think we were all a little slow on the uptake.

But it was rich, juicy roleplay, and I loved every minute of it.

Thursday's game let me return to my very first character for the first time in about six months... which was fantastic. And it was someone I haven't had DM a full game for me before, but who I've both played with and run a game for. Plus is was a Tier 3 game, which I've only played a handful of, and only once with this character. Which made it a great game. Sure, there was at least one person I would happily have launched from the table directly into the sun, but that's Adventure's League for you.

I also got to have a chat with one of my DnD friends who I've been a little worried about this week... a bunch of stuff had been going on with him, and I think he needed some of that good, clean Yani energy, because he turned up randomly on Wednesday at the store just to get a prolonged hug before heading on his way, and then he was there on Thursday, not at the same table, but in the room, and I drove him home afterwards and got all of the juicy gossip and delivered much of the hugs.

Otherwise, a slow week... my new headphones (after my other ones mostly gave up the ghost last week, but are still powering on due to the magic powers of superglue) arrived, you guessed it, on the one day I'm actually out of the house, Wednesday. So technically they didn't arrive at all on Wednesday and instead arrived on Friday when the nice man handed them too me and made me sign an electronic pad with my finger.

I haven't used them yet, but they look pretty.

Still a little sad I couldn't find a pair with only one cable like the ones I already have though.

Today we had a plan, but we also needed to do a little bit of hot shoe shuffle in order for us to actually get to our plan.

We started with the supermarketry. I honestly need to work out how much stuff I need to buy currently, because I'm out three nights a week at present, plus the rest of Wednesday, so it's all a bit out of whack to be honest. And I'm still intending to eat my way through basically everything in my freezer, provided I can actually find things that are still edible and not frozen hunks of concrete.

But otherwise, average.

Then back here, usual rigmarole. We decided last week that this week was a good time to go to the movies for the last of the How To Train Your Dragon movies, and we could have gone to Marion again (having only done that a couple of weeks ago), or fill in some time and then go to the GU Film House in the city. Given that it's school holidays and it's a family movie, we decided the city was a better idea, since there would be much less people there (news flash, we were correct, total of about a dozen people I think).

So we killed some time at Big W, Kmart and Officeworks, doing the Goodwood Road, Anzac Highway, city circle. Nothing mind boggling... we looked at pretty much all the things we usually look at, plus some things we don't. Bought a few bits of nothing much. Essentially killed some time.

Then we headed into town and the movies. Only to discover that we were there at 12:30 for a 1:15 session and the movie complex didn't actually open until 12:45, because reasons I guess. So more time was killed.

After the movie (more on that later, as always) we just headed back here and Ma toddled off down the road to home.

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photo saturday: textual

A bit of a nothing week this week really... I mean I know it was New Years and everything, but even so...

Last Sunday I ended up clearing out some of my kitchen cupboards, discovering that I have a bad habit of buying multiple replacements/backups for something I already have. This is why I now have two bottles of tomato sauce, three jars of Dijon mustard and two full tubes of Berocca.

Partly I blame the shit cupboard designs, since they're too narrow and waaaaay too deep, and stuff gets lost.

Anyway.

New Years happened.

Wednesday was my only game of DnD this week... and yeah, it was a bit of a clusterfuck. I did get turned into a silver T-Rex (because my character is a silver dragonborn, so of course) for a brief period, which kept me alive a lot longer.

But that was it... no Monday game because of New Years, no Wednesday night game because people have lives or whatever I guess, no Thursday game because the person who would DM for me is on holidays of some description (also it was too fucking hot on Thursday).

I will say that being pretty much by myself in the house all week, with the exception of Wednesday, kinda did a number of my head. Yeah, not a fan of it.

So, I did sweet fuck all that was interesting this week. Even compared to normal.

Today wasn't overly exciting either... but at least it was something.

We did the supermarket thing... I really do need to use up all of the stuff in my fridge and freezer, so I didn't get a ton of stuff... just bits and pieces really.

Afterwards, we decided to head into the city, not for anything specific, mostly to see if there was anything in the Christmas decoration oeuvre still hanging about... with a side order of whatever else caught our eye.

The answer? Not a lot really. There were a few bits and pieces in Myer and David Jones, but other than some cards that Ma wanted, it was all a bit "shit that clearly nobody wanted even now it's cheap".

 We did wander around one of those slightly more upscale Japanese interesting plastic crap and toys places that has opened downstairs from David Jones... I can't remember the name of it to be honest, but it's a cute store. And I found a black gel pen that was in the shape of a feather made of silicon. Weird, but cute. And it'll be useful when my very last black Lego gel pen gives up the ghost.

Other than that, not really much of a sausage.

We stopped off at Boost when we were in need to a sit down, watched the passing weirdness of the world go past and then called it quits.

And that was that...

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2019

And here we are... 2019.

The International Year of Indigenous Languages, Moderation and the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.

You know those times when you're just going through the motions because it's tradition or it's what you always do, or whatever the reasons. Yeah, that really does feel like my whole Christmas and New Year period. I do what I do because it's what I do.

Up to and including yesterday. Yes, I ticked all the appropriate New Years Eve boxes. I changed my bedding from red and green to black and white. I took down the old calendar. I posted my Top 9 on Instagram and wrote a very lacklustre Year in Review post. I made sure my sink was mostly empty. I took my trash and my recycling out. In essence, I sorted my environment.

It didn't feel like anything though. I was doing the things I do on New Years Eve because this was the day to do them, not because it felt like the last day of the year (if that makes any sense at all).

Then in the evening, I made some dinner (chicken with tomato and mango relish... and thankfully the relish was one I'd prepared earlier out of the freezer) and settled down to watch movies.

And I didn't even get any movies for Christmas this year... fortunately there were things I'd bought or been given that I hadn't gotten around to watching yet. So I went with The Lego Batman Movie and The Shape of Water.

That got me to about 11:45, I played around until about 12:30, stopping briefly to half watch the two square inches of fireworks I can see from my doorway.

And then I called it a night.

Today has been... mostly inconsequential. I got up and did what I would do any other morning... had cereal and coffee, watched some stuff on YouTube. I did do that thing I tend to do at the end/beginning of the year, where I go through my social media accounts and weed out the people I'm no longer interested in, and in the case of Instagram, going through the people following me to clear out the old, unused accounts or mostly empty accounts or just the people who shouldn't be following me.

I also tried to make my usual Instagram/Social Print Studio calendar... but it seems that Instagram doesn't want to play nicely with their interface and I'm going to need to go about it a different way. Which is annoying. But not hard.

Otherwise I just phaffed about.

2019... it's basically like 2018 but there's currently less of it.

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