fringe: the will to be

The year is 1962. The place, an office in the English department of Melbourne University.

In that office is a man, William O'Halloran, played so beautifully and specifically by writer, co-producer and performer Mark Salvestro. And he just received a letter that will change his life.

This is the story of two Williams, O'Halloran and Shakespeare. And how the love of the bard led to our English professor finding love with Henry, one of his students, and then being fired as a result.

It was a complete accident that we saw this on the same night as Mardi Gras, but it definitely felt appropriate.

Salvestro is amazing. There is so much lightness and deftness to his performance, and so much specificity. From his continued eye contact with the audience at specific moments, to his use of a slight stammer to indicate the abject terror of this man whose life has begun to unravel before his eyes thanks to the dismissal letter from the university. His mannerisms as he tells his story just captured my heart, and I had the overwhelming urge to tell William that everything would work out okay eventually and that there was nothing wrong with him.

There is also the way that Salvestro weaves in passages from Shakespeare into his writing without it seeming jarring or glaringly obvious. In fact there were several times when I only realised he'd switched to Shakespeare when we were already mid way down the rabbit hole or a line I recognised came up (I know there was some Romeo and Juliet, some Hamlet, and then I think there were a lot of the Henrys and possibly some of the Richards). And it wasn't just the strength of his performance, it was also the strength of his writing, allowing his prose to stand up against extracts from Shakespeare.

At the same time, his description of that first forbidden kiss, that first new touch, the insecurity melting away under the warmth of action and emotion that just feel right, that make you feel alive, felt painfully real. And all the more painful given the background of the times, where homosexuality wouldn't be decriminalised until 1980 in Victoria and that the prevailing emotion for most men in William's position in his time was to feel deep shame and disgust about themselves and about their perfectly natural wants and desires.

Without spoiling the ending, I was afraid things would take a tragic turn for our William, but I was genuinely pleased that his story went in a different direction, one where he was in control of his own story. So much so that it left me wanting to know what happened next, always a good sign.

yani's rating: 5 unbuttoned shirts out of 5

photo saturday: wood metal and stone

Well... seven days do indeed constitute a week. So it has in fact been a week.

Actually it wasn't anywhere near as bad as that possibly makes it sounds.

I decided to "finish" the dyeing of my chair covers on Monday. And got a most grievous injury. Well, I got a blister on the end of my middle finger. Such trauma, much blister, wow. That's not a thing any more is it. Anyway.

Yes, I threw the covers in my little red wheelie bin with the liquid dye and what was actually the first time I bothered trying to measure out the water. And then I sat there and manually agitated the covers in the dye water for two hours. Two fucking hours. Which is possibly what I should have fucking done the previous two times. Disregarded the instructions and just left them in the dye for as long as humanly possible. Because it worked much better. And maybe that was the fact I used the right amount of water, who the fuck knows. It's still not scarlet, but it's better.

However, sitting there moving thick wet fabric around in hot water while wearing rubber gloves and getting small mounts of water in said gloves lead to the aforementioned blister. I realised what was happening a little too late, but once I did I switched hands and took the glove off on the blistered hand. And then totally burst the blister when I was up to my everything in warm and cold water trying to rinse the dye out.

But it's all done now. Either just for now, but more probably just done done.

Tuesday was Pancake Day... which also means it's the one day of the year that I actually make and eat pancrepes. Technically they're crepes, but I just like saying pancrepes. And it may have been the first batch that I've made where they just seemed to work perfectly from the very beginning. Which is nice. I'm suggesting that the reason was that I greased the pan with butter, because butter fixes almost everything.

So a belly full of lemon and sugar pancrepes and Nutella pancrepes (and one Nutella and banana pancrepe) and I was a very happy boy for another year.

Wednesday was 100% DnD Day.

The day game was good... we rounded out the trilogy we've been playing the last (unsurprisingly) three weeks. And it was one of those modules were the writers clearly get their heads too deep into their own assholes (it's definitely a thing that happens more than it should), and the final monster was supposed to trigger the players running away because it's "so dangerous", turning into a chase (never, ever the mark of a good DnD module... I've never seen a chase scene in a module that worked as written)... we said "fuck that" to that idea because there had already been a chase/race mechanic in the module (that also wasn't clear, didn't work, and wasn't interesting or satisfying).

So we stood our ground and fought. And killed the monster inside two rounds. Yay paladins, rogues and the Polymorph spell.

And it was much better than the "scripted" ending.

Then the Wednesday night crew went back to our "original" characters for the next few weeks, which is good because I don't have to rush prepping my adventure. It was good to go back to them, but the buttkicking we generally do was curtailed by the lack of our cleric plus our tank and our rogue being heavily sidelined. It wasn't bad, but it took us basically four hours to get halfway through the adventure.

Friday night's DnD bread was thematically appropriate for our first adventure in the Nine Hells... I included a teaspoon of cayenne pepper and a teaspoon of paprika, which don't sound like a lot out of four cups, but it ended up having a nice bit of heat to it.

Also, our entry into the first level of Hell was interesting... not quite what I was expecting, but it makes sense I guess to not completely throw characters and players straight into the horror of Hell. But part of me just wanted to get out there and see what's what.

Today is a two part adventure.

We did the usual supermarket thing this morning, etc, etc. And then went into town to do a few errands, nothing terribly exciting honestly. Then Ma went home, to return later tonight for our first Fringe show.

Current mood:

rainbow character template

I've had this same blog template since the beginning of October 2014, and the header image itself was from June that same year. So it's been a hot minute (actually, it's more in the neighbourhood of 2,800,000 minutes).

And while I still love my Little Traveller, Lego isn't quite as big a part of my life right now.

But my DnD characters definitely are. And I've been playing with Hero Forge for my characters since the beginning, but then I discovered a tutorial about using their screenshot tool to then colour the images in Photoshop. Cue a whole new obsession.

After the first couple took me upwards of an hour and a half, I have it down to probably about 45 minutes now... depending on complexity.

I started playing around with coloured backgrounds, wallpaper for my laptop, that kind of thing. Which led me to the idea of adapting that design into a blog header, which then led to the blog header above. Which, while simple, I'm pretty proud of. And yes, I know that the green background doesn't have a correspondingly themed character, but there's reasons for that.

So, from left to right...

• Demyan - human noble cleric of Loviatar, Goddess of Pain
  Demyan is my dumpster fire. He's a total disaster and I could not love him more. He's a noble, worships a Lawful Evil goddess, a Grave Domain cleric who will definitely let you go unconscious before he bothers to heal you, has the upmost of contempt for most people and as such considers himself above everyone else... in short he's a total prick. But he's also insightful as fuck and protective of children and people who have won his favour. He's also one of the first characters that appeared in my head after I invented an NPC in a game and he just never left, just sat there insisting that I make him into a character. His personality only appeared when I played in a game with way too many other people, about half of which I didn't especially like playing with for various reasons. So it was too much fun to not show my displeasure via my character (without being a dick about it).
  
  
• Belben - halfling arcane trickster rogue
  My very first character, Belben will always be my favourite. He's also the reason I'm obsessed with halflings and have played five different halflings so far. And although it doesn't show in who he is now, his original DNA came about because I was reading a lot of Dashiell Hammett books and wanted an investigator character. He's a member of the enormous Beestinger clan, grew up in a bakery (and that was before I learned how to make bread), has five older sisters (although he never feels like "the baby"). While he could rob you blind, he's not that kind of rogue, he's much more interested in your secrets. He can also walk into a room and totally "Sherlock Holmes" the shit out of it. And I will say that my decision to give him Winged Boots was the best decision I ever made. He's my little bumblebee.
  
  
• Rain in the Night - tabaxi monk
  If all of my characters are some part of my personality turned all the way up to 15, Rain is my impulsiveness/impatience. He'll be fine up to a point and then he'll get bored and do the dumb thing. This is also aided by the fact that as a cheetah themed tabaxi (bipedal big-cat person) and a monk, he can, when necessary, run up to 270 feet inside six seconds (or 49km/h), which now includes along vertical surfaces and across water. I now tend to dig much deeper for character names, but he was literally named because I was making him at night during a big rainstorm.
  
  
• Khurg - champion orc fighter and barbarian
  Khurg is my big dumb boy. He's the character I've played mostly either when I've already played or run a particular adventure or I can't be bothered. Alternatively, sometimes I just want to play someone uncomplicated. I picked orc for him especially so that he was mechanically dumber than he could otherwise have been (since orcs have a -2 to their intelligence stat). He's also a character that partially showed up after me running a series of adventures that all had orc or ogre or other big dumb NPC characters. I also get to his character/voice by pushing my lower jaw forward and grunting... it just works. He's also the character that I had to include, even though he doesn't match his colour swatch, because everybody loves Khurg. And yes, he has "Friendly" embroidered into the front of his overalls... originally that was a piece of stone, but then I did a Christmas adventure and decided that one of Santa's helpers embroidered that for him.
  
  
• Oceanus - water genasi sailor and coastal druid
  Oceanus (Oh-see-ann-us... not any other variation of how you might pronounce that particular name, thank you very much) is Southern. My accept repertoire isn't enormous... I can do a decent accent from the American south though. And by decent, I mean often terrible, but a bad real world accent makes for a workable DnD accept. It also makes him often more laid back than I might otherwise play characters. He's also has a little bit of Big Dad Energy. I didn't want to play him that way, but maybe because I play him mostly with people roughly two decades younger than me, it's just what happens.
  
  
• Masika - former pirate fighter and storm sorcerer
  She was supposed to be my bad girl, my bitch, my character who didn't give a fuck and wasn't nice. But something happened to Masika when she travelled across the desert with a bunch of idiots, then continued to hang out with them for months and months and months. She ended up caring about them. And kind of ended up as either the bitchy older sister or occasionally the slightly exasperated and authoritative mother of the group. Well, except for the pretty but insane human girl PC she ended up fucking... their relationship has been weird and on-again, off-again, but still incredibly important to who both of those characters are now. She also has possibly the shortest temper of all my characters. If you fuck with what's hers, she will end up in spectacular fashion. She also once shaved her head after an altercation with an NPC. And in the most recent game we played, the reason we had to leave the city we'd been in before the start of the game was that Masika had an affair with a married noblewoman and needed to get out of town quick.
  
  
• Nightingale - drow elf bard violinist and dancer
  Surprisingly to the people who know how I play DnD, it took me 822 days to actually play a bard. Because, honestly, I think bards are incredibly boring. Or rather the scope of potential character concepts for them is very restrictive. And the subclasses aren't hugely varied in the way that they are for a rogue for example. So much so that taking any of three different subclasses wouldn't actually have changed my character concept in the slightest. Nightingale is also my first drow. Not for any particular reason, but personally I'd probably rather play a half-elf than a full elf. She also has a vague and non-specific Eastern European accent. And honestly, it took me a little while to work out who Nightingale actually was. Distilled down to her essence, she's a relapsing addict, she's someone who knows that she shouldn't Do Bad Things, but also knows that sometimes Doing Bad Things are the only way to get things done. Interestingly she's a character who will use sex and sexuality but isn't particularly interested in it (as opposed to, say, Masika), possibly because being a drow in the surface world, she's been fetishised and objectified by (mostly) men, but she comes from a culture where men have no real power.

And no the fact that the image is a little bit rainbow flag themed (or at least the 1978-1979 version with the turquoise stripe) isn't 100% coincidental, since a lot of my characters would probably identify as somewhere on the rainbow spectrum... but posting it just before Mardi Gras is just a happy accident.

Current mood:

photo saturday: museum style

Well that didn't go quite as planned.

I started out writing what became the OTHER post from today, thinking I would just phase it into the usual weekly roundup, before realising that no, it definitely needed to be it's own thing. So you get two posts today.

Let's see what else happened.

Oh, you know how I talked at length last post about the fact that I'd dyed my chair covers and they were possibly a little dark, but dark was just fine. They dried. They dried pink. A darker pink than they had been, but still pink. Well, looking at them, I honestly don't know what the fuck happened. But they're pink. Ish.

I'm guessing probably the ratio of dye to water and fabric was off. Who knows.

But they don't look bad.

Wednesday's DnD day game was decent, I gave up my arm (it grew back), we fought a dragon turtle, somebody died (nobody important, harsh but fair), my sailor got himself a folding boat. So a good time was had by all. And by all I mean me.

The evening game has it's own post... but it also means we're that much closer to me running the next campaign for the group. I have thoughts and plans.

This week Friday night got moved to Thursday night due to reasons, which was weird, but the game itself was pretty good. And we finally got to hell, which is the point of this particular game.

And I made sun dried tomato bread, which was really nice. I mean obviously, because sundried tomatoes are frequently awesome. But it was a good loaf.

Then Friday I had my updated chiro appointment after last weeks total failure. And because I'd made the appointment for 10:30 in the morning, I went for a wander afterwards and took a bunch of photos. It was nice, playing a little bit of home town tourist. Then I came home and the rest of the afternoon and evening was a big wack of nothing, since I'm used to going to DnD on Friday nights now.

Anyway... I survived.

Today wasn't especially thrilling. We did the usual supermarket thing, had a really, really good check out girly... she'd be a keeper, but as such we probably won't see her again any time soon.

Then we came back here, unpacked, did all the usual, and ended up doing a run back to Norwood to pick up a bunch of free stuff we got via their scratchcard promotion (woo, free shit), then stopped in at Spotlight to use a 40% off voucher Ma got, then we did a detour to a Woolworths store neither of us knew was there, before coming back here and calling it a day.

Current mood:

charlatan paladin to small town baker

The Out of the Abyss DnD game we've been playing since May 2018 (on and off, we ended up with a total of 42 sessions) came to an end this Wednesday.

And it didn't quite end the way I expected.

The two images above (made with Hero Forge and coloured by me in Photoshop) are both of my charlatan halfling paladin rogue... on the left as he was at the end of the game, and then on the right as he became 15 or so years later, a simple baker in a small town. In the space between those two images are the last ten minutes of the game where he managed to surprise me one last time.

He's done that a lot, young Peregrin Swiftfoot, formerly Obaris Beestinger, soon to be Peregrin Beestinger (it's a long story, but he walked away from his name and family, picked up and dropped names as he ran confidence scams up and down the coast, then found that he could be a better man and decided after the campaign that he'd grown enough to at least be a Beestinger again)... I would open my mouth on occasion and I wasn't the one talking, he was. I am so, so, so glad that I decided to play him in this campaign, he was so wonderfully complicated and complex and had more layers than I think any other character I've ever played. And he wouldn't have been any of those things in a different game.

He loved, he lied (oh, how he lied), he meddled (mostly in other people's love lives), he had enemies, he made a difference. And he made promises he didn't intend to keep, so many promises. But honestly, I realised a few games back that he actually had something of a deathwish, he didn't expect to actually get out of the final battle alive. He didn't think he deserved to. And it would also have meant he could have gotten out of all of those promises.

But that wasn't to be. He survived. So after we vanquished two of the most powerful of the demon lords of the abyss he pulled one final trick. Everyone was doing post game discussion, one of the antagonist NPCs he'd made a promise to came to gloat a little and remind him of his debt. And I opened my mouth to answer and Pery spoke instead. He said (slightly paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact wording) "You don't need to worry, Peregrin Swiftfoot will fulfil his promise". An oddly specific phrase, and given that Peregrin was only ever someone he was pretending to be, one of those wonderful weaselly phrases that has so many layers to it. I'd had the thought of what he could do earlier that afternoon, but I wasn't sure if I'd do it or not. That was when I knew.

A little bit after that I just said to the DM "I'm gunna walk away from the group". And then after some other back and forth I said that I was going to find one of the NPCs and get the package I left with him. It wasn't something I'd set up earlier, but I had laid in that NPC in a prior game, for other reasons.

It was when I said that I knew what he was going to do, the why came later, but the what was easy. He changed his gear from the flashy, eye-catching peacock of an outfit on the right to simple, stealthy garb. He left all his magical gear behind (well everything except his nightvision goggles), he left all his gear in fact, took his very full gold pouch and some diamonds and walked out of the camp, avoiding his friends.

Because of course he did. He'd been doing the same thing since he was 15. Running away when things went bad. He'd gotten in over his head, made promises he couldn't or wouldn't keep, and as I worked out later, was suffering from a massive case of impostor syndrome. He'd been pretending to be a better man, which had made him BE a better man, but now that was all coming to an end and he had no idea what to do next, no idea how to be the "hero" he'd been down in the Underdark once he was back in the real world. And he'd screwed up his relationship with the dwarven shield maiden in two different timelines, so much so that she left before the final battle without telling him.

So he ran.

Legitimately it was one of those moments when a character was so fully alive in my head that I didn't need to think about how he was going to do it all, I just knew.

I'd also written a "hey, I'm dead" letter to one of the players (because of course I did) which I ended up handing over because it was too good not to, and I also didn't have a "hey, I'm a shithead and I'm running" letter prepared. I think I threw him for a complete loop honestly, and I definitely need to have an in-character conversation with him at some point in the near future.

One of the other NPCs tracked me for a bit, but eventually I just asked her to give me an hour's head start, then bolted. And thanks to some interference from our cleric's god, I got sent to "a place Pery has felt at peace". Which is honestly a massive thought to process for that character, one I wasn't able to unpack until later. But he'd never felt at peace really. He'd spent his whole life gripping onto the edges of disaster by his fingernails, even when a con was going well, he knew that the whole thing could go south at a moment's notice, the wrong word, the wrong move and everything goes sour.

The only real times of late that he'd possibly been at peace were in the other timeline (yeah, we did just about everything in this campaign... demon slaying, multiple romance plotlines, visits to the library, alternate timelines and time travel) when he was with the dwarven shield maiden. But that proverbial ship had sailed, he screwed it up and she (probably, I need to check with the DM) died in that timeline, plus their relationship was never the same in this timeline.

So, in game I eventually came up with a place a couple of days journey from where he grew up, but I realised later that the god didn't send him to somewhere he had BEEN at peace, it sent him to somewhere he WOULD be at peace. To give him someone he could finally be completely honest with and who would love him even if he was a massive screw-up.

He ended up in that small town, literally crashing into (because that will happen if you go from riding a fey-horse at high speed to being teleported to another place) the half-elven owner of the tavern, who took one look at him, declared that Pery clearly needed a drink and took him in. Pery ended up telling him everything, something he normally wouldn't do, but definitely something he needed to do. They became friends, which transitioned into a easy relationship which transitioned into them getting married and adopting a young halfling boy after he lost his family. And Pery took his fistfuls of gold and renovated an old house in town into a bakery.

However when our DM asked where we were around 20 years after the end of the game, all I knew was that he would be married, working as a baker (he went a little crazy making bread in game around the same time I learned how to make bread IRL) in this little nowhere town, with fat muttonchop halfling sideburns, a little thicker around the middle (all that bread), showing off his original hair and eye colour... and happier than he had ever been in his life.

It wasn't until later I knew that he retained his paladin powers for the rest of his days, healed anyone in town who was injured, kept a diamond handy just in case of an accidental death, used his spells to defend the town, protect against disease or poison, was the one people came to to settle disputes, conducted weddings, naming ceremonies, was always good for an adventure story in the tavern of an evening, all that good small town stuff. And I gave him the zen circle tattoo because it's much harder to pretend to be someone else long term with a big chunk of black ink on your arm.

And so I retired him. Because there wasn't another option. For a character who started out face down in an alleyway with a knife in his back and inventing a whole new persona to escape, finding peace was the perfect end.

I'm gunna miss that charming, talkative, meddling, protective, lying little shit.

Current mood:

photo saturday: red and brown

All my everything is exhausted.

But, on the up side, my chair covers have now been dyed a deeper red colour... I'd almost call it a "red denim"... much better than the previous "red beige". Still not bright scarlet, but that ship has now officially sailed.

But back to the beginning.

What happened at the start of this week? Who the fuck knows... I did stuff, probably. I know I made veal schnitzel on Monday night using pulverised corn chips instead of breadcrumbs. I need to try it again with chicken... because chicken is just better than veal. Don't @ me.

Wednesday was a red letter day. To which you should apply the usual sarcasm filter. But I did have two DnD games for the first time since the beginning of November because my friends and acquaintances managed to remove their heads from their asses long enough for us to have a game. Yay. My character is an idiot and is in way over his head with multiple people, making promises he can't hope to fulfil. I have no earthy idea how or even if he's going to get out of it. And next week is going to be ostensibly around 4 hours of nothing but battle. Let's see how many times I die this time... and whether he chooses to come back.

There was also the Wednesday day game... which was decent. But without anything particularly special to report.

Thursday night was Board Game Night... and I might have reached my limit on irritating people for the week at that point... It was fine, don't get me wrong, but I got somewhat annoyed at one point. I didn't ruin the game though, and we were all still on speaking terms at the end of it. So, yeah.

However, Thursday night when I got home I was sitting watching YouTube and there was an ant on my arm. And then there was a second ant. And then a third ant. Three ants is never good. I still don't know exactly where they were coming from, but I went to town with the bug spray over the following 24 hours and the little bastards seem to have fucked right off.

Friday I started off by realising I had a fridge full of tomatoes, plums and peaches that were beginning to circle the drain a little bit, so I went a little nuts and went back to the peach, nectarine and tomato relish (which I've still never made directly from the recipe, but who cares) I've made a couple of times before and ended up with six jars of it.

And then I went above and beyond and made myself a label. With good reason, because I fully intend to give almost all of this batch away. Especially because I made it on Valentine's Day... which, as previous history on this blog will back up, I actively don't give a shit about, but it was nice to make something to give to friends for V-Day.

Around 4:30 I got a phonecall from my chiro... I totally forget to put Friday's appointment in my phone and hence didn't remember to show up. Totally stood her up. Whoops. I'll go and mea culpa next Friday.

I gave some of the relish away to the Friday night DnD group, along with making a loaf of cranberry bread. It was good, but it could have done with a teeny touch more water, because putting dried fruit in always soaks up more water than any other bread I've made thus far.

We stopped the DnD game at an appropriate point and broke out the Sheriff of Nottingham board game, which is awesome fun. Not least of all because I won.

But it did mean I didn't get home until 1am. Totally worth it.

Today as previously indicated, ended up with me up to my elbows in red fabric dye. Well, metaphorical elbows... mostly.

We did the usual shopping thing this morning... blah blah fruit and veg, blah blah dairy, blah blah grocery, blah blah bakery. Then back here for the unpacking and blah blah blah.

Then I went to town on the fabric dyeing. And this time I didn't have to stand at the stove and boil the ever loving shit out of it. Instead I just filled my red wheelie bin with water and fabric dye and salt (because of course) and threw in both of my chair covers and two old white Bonds teeshirts that I never wear because they're white Bonds teeshirts. And then spent an hour moving the fabric around.

And ended up with tingling fingers, very sore everything, slightly pink hands and best of all much darker red covers. Not the scarlet I was originally wanting, but I did the best with what I had and the outcome looks good, and better than the previous version. Oh and two somewhat dark coral-y Bonds teeshirts. I get why I think, the teeshirts were only picking up the leftover dye after most of it ended up in the covers.

Then of course I had to rinse and rinse and rinse and rinse and rinse and rinse and it makes me tired just thinking about it. And when I appeared to have gotten all the dye out from rinsing, I washed them in the bathtub and suddenly it was red dye everywhere all over again. Repeat until insane. And now I just need to wait for them to dry before I can put them back on the chairs.

After they were drying I went to do a fairly simple task, put some popcorn from a bowl into a smaller plastic container. Something I've done a version of a billion times. But my fingers and hands were so buggered I dropped the bowl and the popcorn went all over the floor. Le sigh.

I am too damn tired now to clean up, so that's a problem for tomorrow.

Current mood:

photo saturday: street pinks

This week was certainly drier than last week. Well, the weather outside was drier.

As for inside, I had an rental inspection on Thursday, so that included the usual "douse the bathroom and kitchen in a layer of water, then clean" along with "sweep, then vacuum then mop the floors". So I always end up a little wet around the gills by the end of it all.

Thankfully unlike before the last inspection, both sides of my face continued to be functional throughout the week.

But, rolling back for a second. Monday I did the tidying and organising I always tend to do during these things. I mean it's good that I have times when I can do that... the theme of this one seemed to mostly be "old DnD paperwork". And cleaning the kitchen for the first time (I kind of ended up doing it at least twice because I cleaned, used the stove, then had to clean again before giving up and only using the oven).

Then Tuesday was the long slow version of taking everything possibly up off the floor, putting it on my bed and then cleaning the bathroom and sweeping, vacuuming and mopping the floor. Which always sounds like it shouldn't take that long, and always takes waaaaaaaay longer than that.

Urgh.

As always, while I hate going through the process of moving all the furniture, mopping the floor and whatnot, the best feeling ever is when it's all done and everything looks clean and sparkling and lovely.

Actually, the best feeling is coming home AFTER the inspection to a clean house.

Anyway...

The inspection was Thursday... I finished cleaning on Tuesday. Wednesday was kind of a holding pattern day. I mean I went to DnD, so I was out of the house for most of the day, which was good.

I also had trouble sleeping Wednesday and Thursday nights... not sure why, maybe the weather?

Then I cleared out of the house on Thursday morning for a couple of hours... thank goodness for Burnside Library, podcasts and DnD module prep. That evening I made olive bread for Friday night.

Friday I finally got around to doing a ton of DnD paperwork, I finished up the olive bread and then Fluffy came down, we talked crap for a while as we often do and then headed out for board games instead of DnD because reasons. Still a good night, and I enjoy the boardgames... but DnD is generally just more fulfilling.

Today was rinse and repeat. We did the supermarket thing, came back here, and ended up doing a trip to Spotlight again... for no real reason honestly.

And that's it really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: blue and white

Several parts of this week could be best categorised as "Thanks, I hate it".

Tuesday night I got a confusing message from my friend who is part of the Wednesday night DnD game as well as hosting the board game fortnight sessions... I thought he was talking about the board game group, but he was talking about the DnD group... but I didn't realise that until one of the other people messaged me Wednesday morning. Urgh.

And, unsurprisingly, someone was trying to get the group to take it's thumb out of it's butt, however they wanted me to host... with less than 12 hours notice. Yeah, no.

But it was also too damn hot on Thursday to go to board games (since my car's aircon is shot), so I skipped that also.

Wednesday's day game wasn't horrible, I mean I didn't die this week, although there was a moment where it could be gone badly. But I just don't like the overall style of those particular modules. Brutal for the sake of brutal doesn't do it for me oddly enough. And I very much disliked the fact that player agency was taken away at the end of the adventure. Which is a shame because they're otherwise decently put together.

Afterwards a bunch of us sat around and chewed the fat on a laundry list of topics, which was fun.

Then, as previously mentioned, Thursday was just hot and gross.

Friday continued in the same vein, but with a side order of hideously humid. Which I hate more than just plain old heat. But then just after Fluffy arrived it started to rain. And I mean RAIN. Get some wood and start collating two of every animal kind of rain. But it didn't get any cooler... just wetter... so much wetter.

Which meant that was the weather in which we needed to drive into the hills. Argh.

And when the car suddenly decelerated every time I hit a patch of water, which I couldn't see, because the rain was so heavy I couldn't really see through the windshield, or even when I could, it was just basically a wall of water. Argh.

Then every time we came to a cross street, there seemed to be a torrent of water flowing across the road from the other direction. And occasionally there was so much water that half of the street was essentially flooded. Argh.

The key moment though, was when we were waiting at a set of traffic lights behind four or five other cars, waiting to turn left, watching a torrent of water flow across the street we were on, when a wheelie bin came floating down the road and stopped in from of the lead car. And of course nobody wanted to wade through ankle deep water to move it, so when the lights changed the cars just carefully drove around it, us included. Argh.

But we got there fine, beyond some frayed nerves. And the rain wasn't as horrific when we got up there, although it definitely kept raining for the rest of the evening.

In fact the rain kept going from Friday evening all the way through to maybe an hour and a half ago... so about 20 hours straight. Not as intensely the whole time, obviously, but still.

The Friday DnD game was good... some good roleplay moments, we're starting a new part of the story. The magic item I ended up picking might not be super useful, but it's thematic and given the reaction of the other two, it was worth getting for that alone.

Anyway.

Today wasn't much of anything. Ma had her haircut this morning, so I did solo shopping, came back here, blah blah blah. Killed time catching up on things on YouTube before Ma got here. And honestly neither of us really wanted to go anywhere because rain, so we faffed around a bit, then Ma went home.

And I have a rental inspection to prep for this week... fun.

Current mood: