photo saturday: sky blue details

This week has been... (relatively speaking) weird... yeah, lets go with weird.

I made lasagne this week. It was probably more successful than previous versions, but I still didn't really get it completely right... not enough salt in the meat sauce mostly... and maybe not enough layers... but I also don't have what feels like the right shaped container.

When I was a kid, Ma used to make lasagne from time to time, and my memory of it is that it was always these perfect, multilayered cubes of pasta that never fell over or slumped all over the plate. Yeah, I'm not there yet.

Supposedly the answer, according to Ma today, is a deep cake tin. Who knew.

DnD was... basically non-existent this week. I went in for the Wednesday day game only to discover that nobody had bothered to show up. By which I mean the DM and half of the people I've been playing with weren't there.

And I looked at who was there, and I just couldn't be bothered with who was there and what was on offer. So I bailed, wandered around town for a bit and then came home.

Of course, because I hate my friends, we had no game on Wednesday night either. I mean we could have played here with me hosting, but we didn't have enough people for a real game. So, yeah, Wednesday was a bust.

However we did have our first proper session of the Friday night game, which was good. The first session is always a bit all over the place because nobody really knows who their characters are totally yet and the DM is doing a lot of setting the scene work.

But we murdered a horrible doctor with a door, kicked the ass of a bunch of pirates, got drafted into the local militia and got in universe gold that actually made sense again (as opposed to the dumb AL system).

I also made bread again, cheesy bread this time. Although possibly I either used the wrong kind of cheese or not enough cheese, because it just wasn't as cheesy as I would have otherwise liked. And while it was very good bread, it wasn't perhaps as good as last week's cranberry bread.

Otherwise this week was both Haircut Day and Chiro Day. While the temperature was above 35 for one and under 20 for the following day. Urgh.

Both appointments were essentially business as usual... my hair got cut and coloured, my back got chiro'ed. Not much to report beyond that really.

Today was... m'eh. Kind of. I guess.

I'm going to have to actually cook things on the same day I eat them this week... and possibly again until it's time for soup again. Which is just annoying (#firstworldproblems). I mean, I'll live, but still.

After the supermarket, Ma declared that we really needed to do something about my lounge chairs, which would be fine if it didn't cost actual money and stuff. But we ended up heading to IKEA to at least have a look at replacement chairs.

The downside of that plan is that when I bought these chairs originally they were a complete unit, in various colours... now for the same cost they sell a "blank" base with no actual fabric on it, but you also need to buy a "slipcover"... one of which is beige, boring and $50... the other is basically the same, but green and costs $100.

Fuck that for a game of skittles.

So possibly I might get two of the boring beige covers and dye them red. It's not the worst idea in the world.

But that was about it really.

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photo saturday: port grey

Well... this week was... a week.

The chicken soup for this week was okay... not my best work perhaps, but serviceable... and somehow where was a LOT of it, even relative to how much I usually make.

We'll put this week's DnD count at two and a half... there were the two usual Wednesday games (more on that in a sec), but also we had our session zero for the new Friday night game I'm playing with friends.

The Wednesday day game was average for what it was... but it ended up being one big long combat session, not particularly my favourite, because we all end up using up all of our resources and can't do anything at all afterwards. And also nothing but combat for four hours is actually pretty fucking boring.

The Wednesday night game was... hmmm... frustrating I guess. Someone who used to play with us but just stopped coming... twice... just decided to show up again. No dude, you left for like nine months, you don't get to come back and finish up the game with us... especially coming back with a third character. To be honest I wish that the DM had just told him no. The worst part was that his character kept mine alive through a big boss fight and I think we would all have been screwed without him. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I dislike him as a person, I just really don't want to play DnD with him. I can only hope he disappears again soon.

Then Friday was just pleasant... we were missing one person, but we started working out characters and storyline details and whatnot... and it was just pleasant... I made a really good loaf of bread with cranberries in it (with the correct amount of salt this time), which was amazing... plus I got cat cuddles.

We're doing a couple of weeks in a row, then going fortnightly, which should be good. I'm also playing my first bard, so that'll be something...

Otherwise not much of anything to report for the week.

Today was average... I decided I'm gunna try making lasagne this week. I mean I've done it before, but it sometimes has variable results. So we'll see. It's probably more about finding the correct container to put it in... which I'm not sure I have. We'll see.

Afterwards we headed into the city, did random wanderings with incidental shopping.

Yeah... not particularly exciting honestly.

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photo saturday: halves

More photos from last week's excursion.

This week, however, has been a whotsaname... holding pattern.

Or it kinda feels like that anyway.

But, back to the beginning...

I've made tuna mornay a number of times. You could even say "a lot". I think this week's batch is the first time that I've actually properly made a proper mornay sauce. With all the cheese and everything. And of course a healthy dose of spices, but that's just usual for me.

But yeah, I took my time with the sauce this time, and it turned out pretty damn well.

This week was also the start of Daylight Savings... which meant that my body clock was all out of whack for the first half of the week. Weirdly more so on the evening end of things to be honest.

I also got sort of... let's not call it obsessed... but, you know, obsessed, with taking the Hero Forge versions of my DnD characters, throwing them into Photoshop and applying colour. Basically, as I realised towards the end of the week, my version of an adult colouring book. When I've finished all of them, I might post my favourite ones here... we'll see.

Speaking of DnD, there was only one game this week, the Wednesday day game. And, honestly, it was a red hot disaster. A bunch of regular folk weren't there, and neither of the DMs were on my first choice list. And the adventure we ended up playing was something of a mess (or became so because DM).

Next week I'm starting a campaign with new people, but only every other week. Which should be good. Not sure exactly what we're playing yet, but we'll work all that out on Friday.

Otherwise the week was a bit... blah.

Today, likewise, blah.

We did the supermarket thing. Because the weather has gone back to being Spring adjacent rather than Summer orientated, I'm going back to soup for now... chicken soup more specifically.

And then we came back here.

And we did a whole lot of nothing.

Originally we were going to go out and do... something. But there really isn't a something we needed to do. Or wanted to do for that matter.

So there was a period of time where we stood around trying to work out what to do if we went out... before giving up and not bothering. In the end we went over to Burnside Village to look at the pop-up Christmas store that was around last year (same shop, different location), before grabbing some lunch.

And that was that really.

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photo saturday: wonderwalls and weather

Hey, look at that... photos fresh off the proverbial presses (in this case that would be Photoshop).

But we'll circle back to that.

This week has been average with a side order of "oh, I remember warm weather, can we not please?".

I did not soup or stew this week, because overly warm Spring weather. Instead I baked some chicken breasts in the oven on Monday night and had them for the rest of the week in not especially interesting or inventive ways.

On the up side, oven baked chicken is really nice, even several days later.

Oh, yeah, an update on my face and the lack of movement therein. As of right now I'm mostly back to normal. There's still some residual weakness in my lip, but as I've probably said before, that was the first thing to go, so it'll be the last thing to return. It's basically at the point where I don't really notice it or think about it unless I'm rinsing my mouth after brushing my teeth, so that's a plus.

Otherwise, not much to mention from the first part of the week.

Wednesday was all the DnD once again. And both characters had a bit of a rough time to be honest.

The day game wasn't our usual game (lack of DM) so I got to play on the table of one of my friends who hasn't been around on Wednesdays for a while, playing the sequel to an adventure I really enjoyed. The only downside is that my very talkative "French" wizard elf wanted access to some books, resulting in him ending up with an Intelligence score of 1 (instead of 16), so that was fun. He's better now, the DM didn't torture me for long and reversed the effect (I possibly would have done it for longer myself, and I was enjoying myself, although not being able to talk was possibly torture).

Then the night game was... very interesting. I mean rule 1 is always "Don't fuck with time travel". And we got sent back in time thanks to the adventure Macguffin last week, and didn't do everything exactly the same was we did them the first time through. This week was the repercussions of that. It was also one of those "be careful what you ask the DM for" moments, since I'd jokingly complained about him taking a number of characters away from me/us (okay, me)... and he gave some of them back this week. And my character found his "graph paper girlfriend" was back, but their relationship is different and strange and I had a lot of fun roleplaying the confusion (I mean some of it was just regular confusion, no roleplay required).

I amused the rest of the table though. And I had a ton of fun.

We are definitely entering the end game though. It just depends on how long we drag this thing out I guess.

The end of the week was entirely too warm for my liking. I'm sure I go though some version of this every year, but somehow the end of Winter always comes as a surprise and I feel like it's been colder weather for the last 1000 years. And I'm just not ready for the alternative.

Today, the warmest of the warm days thus far, although mostly cloudy, was in fact a different day for us.

I mean it started in the usual way, with the supermarket. And since the weather is cooling down next week I'm making tuna mornay... what I'll do when it's actually Summer, I have no fucking clue. That's one of the things I really like about Winter, I cook once a week and I'm fed. This cooking every day thing is too much work.

Anyway... we came back here and did the usual pfaffery.

Then we decided that while it was warm, it was also cloudy, so we might as well do what we'd originally intended to do today and go down to Port Adelaide to finally check out the street art from Wonderwalls back in March.

Often times overcast days are better for getting shots of the artwork itself, but means that the sky often blows out... so it's a swings and roundabouts thing really. Not too bad overall though. Found all but one (I think) of the pieces from 2019... and even tracked down some ones I hadn't seen from 2017.

However, one kinda massive flaw to the day. We parked down by Hart's Mill to start off, and I got out of the car, headed over to take a photo only to discover my middle finger on my left hand was bleeding. Yep, Ma's car bit me. And by bit me I mean that the stupid metal foil on the inner door handle had started to peel at the top, and I accidentally ran my finger along it when I was opening the door.

What is it with me and injured fingers? I mean it's the same hand as my major finger injury, plus a number of older and smaller injuries with various and sundry scars.

Thankfully the nice people at the fruit and veg market had a first aid kit and gave me a bandaid, but fuck my life.

Anyway, it wasn't an auspicious start to the trip, but it did improve from that point.

We wandered around until just after noon then circled back to the second position for the car and had some lunch nearby.

Then a quick trip over the bridge to capture the Capricorn piece at the top of this post, and we headed back to my place. And we got back here a lot earlier than expected (granted we left here originally earlier than we have been heading out previously).

And man it's been a while since I went through a big group of photos and got them ready for the blog. I both miss it and I really don't, since it takes forever. The end result is worth it though.

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