photo saturday: water coloured

I've been staring at a "blank page" for about 45 minutes... I say "blank" because, you know, photos.

I know I've said it about half a billion times before, but sometimes starting one of these posts if the hardest bit. Especially when there's not much of anything to talk about.

However, I do want to make a note of the fact that I made two amazing pizzas this week. Like pizza is nothing new, but this was a lot more ingredients than I would usually use, and it was damn tasty. Salami, capsicum, red onion, mushroom, tomato... and cheese obviously. Delicious.

DnD was weird this week... with one thing and another the Wednesday game didn't happen. After last week's session also didn't happen (for more obvious reasons)... and I know that people flake out in December at an exponential rate, so I may have spat the dummy a little...

In the last three years we've never managed to actually play any games in the month of December, somebody cancels, then someone else doesn't show up, and all of December goes by and we never do anything. I would, however, like to finish this module before January. So, do something for me, look at your calendars, appointment books, diaries or the crayon scrawling on the wall of the asylum and work out if you can actually manage a single Wednesday between now and January, share that information with the group and if we have a consensus, yay. If it's easier for people to do an online thing, I'm fine with that. Alternatively, just say now that you can't do a game for the entire month of December, let's not do the "oh maybe" last minute cancellation thing, because that's just frustrating. Know that I love you all, but sometimes herding cats through IKEA would be more productive.

Yeah. That. I was kind of pleased with both the "crayon scrawling" and the "herding cats" lines.

And I got an 3 affirmatives (with two other presumed affirmatives, because they're not the problem) within 45 minutes. Because sometimes you just have to put the Dad Pants on.

Anyway... Wednesday didn't happen. And then Friday got moved to Thursday. Which made sense, because the forecast for Friday was "fucking stupid hot". But it did mean that my brain was somewhat confused a few times yesterday concerning what day it was.

I also made the most amazing bread. Okay, the dough was SUPER sticky and wet, but it still worked. I threw cheese into with the flour, and then when it was ready for forming into a loaf, I folded some salami into it, randomly, because of the aforementioned sticky. And I don't know if it was because it soaked some of the liquid out of the dough or it just "steamed" inside the dough when I cooked it, but it was SO tasty.

The DnD itself was okay... no major events. We're currently going through a dungeon, well, a dungeon by any other name, so I expect things won't be super different for a few sessions yet.

Otherwise, not a lot of anything this week.

Today was also more of the same.

We did the supermarket thing. I really wish I'd picked up a few other things last week, given that whole products were just sold out this week. Not really hugely surprising, given the fuckery of last weekend. But still.

Even so, we did a fairly big shop, wearing our masks like responsible adults. And I realised why it stayed in place pretty perfectly last week, but this week it was doing my head in. Also why everything seemed to go to shit when I was at the check out last week. Headphones. When I was wearing headphones the mask stayed in place. Without headphones, not so much. We also picked up some new masks... made by Bonds... which is not really surprising, they have the material, they have the technology... but you're basically wearing a pair of undies on your face. Which is a mood, certainly. They're also just that tiny bit too small for me, and that bit too big for Ma. Le sigh.

After supermarket, we came back here, did the unpacking thing, did some YubTubs, then Ma wanted to go to Kmart, so we did that... And found better masks... or at least ones with a better shape to them. Honestly, I think unless you spend a little money on getting one with a decent shape, made of decent material and with decent elastic straps, it's all a bit m'eh.

But at least we have choices now.

That was it though. And now I'm just waiting for the cool change to properly hit my place. I mean it's mostly here, but there's a band of rain that just hasn't arrived yet.

Oh, and tomorrow I will need to summon up the energy and the effort and the ability to give a fuck in order to put up the Christmas tree at Ma's place. Blah. Future me is definitely not going to enjoy the messages 2020 me is going to leave on boxes this year, I can tell you that much.

Current mood:

photo saturday: four walls

This week has been... a lot.

Not as much as it perhaps could have been, but still a lot.

And on top of that, Summer has decided to arrive and be all Summer in Australia all over the place. Fuck that noise.

Honestly, this is going to be a pretty short post all up.

So there was no DnD this week. Because SA went until lockdown between Wednesday night at midnight and tonight at midnight. A whole "don't leave your house, wear a mask, one person can go to the shops once a day" lockdown.

Honestly, with the exception of DnD and going shopping on my own today, it didn't really affect my movements at all. Because it's not like I go anywhere most of the time. What it did affect was the inside of my brain. By which I mean my brain.

As I said to someone during the week, it's like being told not to think of elephants. You weren't thinking of elephants, you have no reason to be thinking about elephants, elephants aren't part of your life right now. But now you can't think about anything but fucking elephants. And having the house all closed up, which fabulously cool and air-conditioned, didn't help. Because situational claustrophobia I guess.

And, honestly, I think actually looking at the news probably didn't help. It's not something I generally do either, and haven't for a while, since I worked out that it's generally 50% bad stuff, 30% bullshit I don't care about and 20% stuff that isn't actually news.

Anyway... that was basically the week.

Today I took my mask and my latex gloves and my hand sanitiser and my headphones and headed off to the supermarket at 7:15am, getting there before they opened at 7:30 and doing a shop that felt like we were back in March... only, you know, worse. Because, WEAR A FUCKING MASK but also wearing a mask wasn't fun. But I survived. And was home by just after 8am.

So that was my week...

Current mood:

photo saturday: random details

Honestly, I do love spotting weird random details to take photos of...

Otherwise, this week was Too Fucking Hot, Giant Thunderstorm, Basically September Again.

And I made chilli, which wasn't bad. Certainly not the most interesting chilli I've made, but tasty enough. Plus, I really only got sick of it by Friday, so not bad all things considered.

Wednesday night's DnD was fine... the adventure has, I think, three stages of fights to it, the first one you're supposed to "lose" very quickly (in that the bad guys are going to achieve their objective and you move on to the next sequence)... Instead, because we're all special and overly specialised for causing mayhem, we spent three hours (more or less, I didn't actually time it) in that first fight. And haven't technically lost it yet. I think we're about to at the top of next session though.

Friday was also Chiro day, so I headed into the city and did that, wandered about for a bit, came home, made bread, went to Friday night DnD.

And yes, my character will absolutely rearrange the world to suit her wants and desires. Firstly, she's a bard. Secondly, she's a drow. Do the math people. Even if it means using the truth like a finely pointed weapon. Sorry, especially, not even.

Mostly this session she got her ass handed to her because, honestly, I got cocky. I mean, mostly it was fine. But why is she the one who always gets, to paraphrase an episode of Buffy, "the funny syphilis". First pig lycanthropy, now Bulezau poisoning with boils. Urgh. And she's the pretty one. The pretty one with the shit armour class. That I can't do anything about.

Today... today was fine. We did the shopping, I finally threw in the towel and will not be making a single food item to last me through the week. I will actually be cooking multiple times during the week. Pray for me. Not that I can't do it, I just mostly can't be bothered. But I'm also finally going to make pizza, after I've been wanting to for a few weeks but never quite manage it.

After the supermarket, we did what was ostensibly a trip to look for presents or something. And, as Ma pointed out, we went looking for presents for other people and only bought things for ourselves. Not a lot of anything, honestly. And we did buy things for other people at the second stop. So yay us.

Or something.

Otherwise, not much excitement.

Current mood:

photo saturday: beach greens

More photos from last week's beach trip... green plant stuff, just because I was in the mood.

Also, this is my "once every four years" dip into the world of politics, specifically a WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK AMERICA. The election was on Wednesday. It's now Saturday and we're waiting for four fucking states to finish counting shit. Like, count faster or something, I dunno. But also the fact that the race is this fucking close after the last four years beggars belief. I mean, I'd say "How?", but I already know the answer to that.

But we wait, and we hope that the last four years can finally be consigned to history and eventually be a joke or a cautionary tale or a collective fever dream.

Anyway...

This weeks tuna noodle casserole wasn't perhaps as good as the one from last time. Don't get me wrong, it was decent, I just don't know what magic thing I did the first time to make it really good. Or it could just be that I hadn't had it in quite a while at that point.

Tuesday I had a... I was about to say home invasion, and that is a very, very different thing and not at all what happened. But also, theoretically, it's the good version of that. Wow, I should stop talking now. Anyway. I had people. In my house. For socialising. And board games.

Our Friday night DM (I probably need to come up with a blog pseudonym for her, because, you know, it's gunna come up... I'll mull) and Fluffy came over for board games, because she had a day off and she wanted to do daytime boardgames. And why the fuck not.

We might have gone to her place, but the weather last week was stoopid. Being very hot for two days, and then very cold for the remainder of the week. Because, say it with me now, we don't have seasons, we just have random weather. Which is also fundamentally untrue, but occasionally feels true in those between times. So everyone came to my place, I cranked the aircon, made a fuckton (the technical term) of sausage rolls, which were well received and we spent several hours playing board games. Which was great.

And I sent some sausage rolls home with both of them, and still had some left over for myself.

Wednesday I ignored the aftermentioned shit show from the top of this post until the point that I thought it would already be over, mid afternoon. How wrong I was.

Then Wednesday night we had DnD again and finished up the adventure from last week. And nobody died. In fact, I honestly don't think I got hit at all during the final fight. I feel like I should have been, but it just never eventuated.

Friday night's DnD game was... interesting. A couple of things came up that were accidents of bad dice rolls which resulted in more interesting things that would have happened if we'd gotten good rolls. And by we, I mean, not me. I had good rolls in this scenario. Just for the record.

I also think that I have my bread recipe down again after several weeks of finding that sweet spot (so to speak). So it might be time for fucking around with additions again. And of course the Friday group will have no objections to that at all.

Today wasn't much of anything really.

We did the supermarket thing. I'm aiming for chilli this week... because... fuck it, I felt like chilli this week. Even if the weather intends to do a repeat of this week and be too fucking hot and then colder than it should be for this time of year.

Unlike the last couple of weeks, we didn't have a specific plan of what we wanted to do, or where we wanted to go, and we ended up heading to Spotlight because I kinda wanted to look for a couple of things. One I totally forgot about once we were there, and the other I decided against, at least for now. I was also very tempted by one of those "little tiny room" kits, because they're so beautiful, but having watched about five minutes of the "how this all goes together" video I just found on YouTube, I'm glad I changed my mind, because I'm not sure I have the patience or dexterity to actually make one of them.

It was very pretty though.

And that was it really. We talked about poking around in Officeworks, but we didn't really need anything, and neither of us could really be bothered.

Current mood: