two thousand and twenty one in review

I very nearly didn't do this. In the end, I only really decided to do it because a) tradition but also b) I would very, very, very much like to look back this time next year and breath a sigh of relief that my life has improved in a significant number of ways.

So... there's that. 

Don't expect a lot of introspection though, because, honestly, I don't have the mental bandwidth for that right now. 

I'm also not really in the mood to reminisce about a mostly shit year and one where when everything is potentially about to fall on it's ass in my life in the next month... or at best is going to be majorly fucking stressful. 

Urgh.

But enough of my mental baggage, 2021.

Almost nothing happened this year. Days passed, things happened. But nothing HAPPENED. You know.

Like last year, I would have gone insane if not for my friends. And having a routine that actually got me out of the house more than once a week.

January: Friday night DnD finished our almost year and a half Descent into Avernus campaign. Still sad, still amazing. 

February: I had a bout of dizziness that lasted a couple of weeks, involved a doctor's visit and then disappeared as quickly as it arrived. 

March: My birthday. For which no shits were given by me. I developed a DnD character basically live on the blog. We went to the movies for the first time in over a year. 

April: I shaved my head after threatening to do it about once a month since March 2020. It remains shaved. 

May: We started a "non-campaign" campaign for the Thursday night Dnd Group. 

June: I explored the DnD Cookbook. We started the new major Friday night DnD campaign. Critical Role Series 2 ended with a 7 hour game. 

July: A roof leak. Getting Ma on the internets. Having to isolate for two weeks and it taking five and a half hours for my first test and 10 minutes for the second and third. 

August: Roof/ceiling shenanigans continued, resulting in a hole cut in the ceiling. 

September: I got my first vax shot. And I ran a one shot game for Fluffy's birthday. The hole in the ceiling got patched. 

October: I got told my lease, which expires in February, isn't being renewed. I got my second vax shot. Friday Night DnD's two year anniversary. 

November: My shoulder stopped being fully functional for no well explained reason. They finally fixed the actual roof leak. 

December: The Christmas Tree went up (see also: Fuck Christmas). We did Board Game Christmas with Mr and Mrs again, followed by Movie Night with Fluffy. Christmas happened.

I did make a lot of additional DnD characters or sketches or ideas for use in place of actual photos this year. DnD was once again... very important in my life.

I didn't really do much in the way of movies this year... even older stuff.

What I will say is that Luca was great, Shang Chi was much better than I expected, Cruella SUCKED, as I knew it would, and Raya and the Last Dragon was uneven but 100% is a Disney movie with a lesbian lead/love story.

Current mood:

post christmas round-up 2021

It's Saturday, but it's also Christmas Day... which basically just leads to my brain imploding in on itself at a certain point.

So we're going to do a modified weekly round-up, such as it is, then do the Christmas thing, such as that is.

First and foremost, I need a Bundaberg Spiced Ginger Beer... because that shit is tasty, tasty Christmas in a bottle, and I love it. I don't think I've mentioned it before, but it's fucking great, and I'm 100% here for it.

Secondly... I told you we had one DnD Character Colouring Book Reindeer to go.

Cousin Rudolph. Because, he's definitely not a Jingle Brother. And of course he's a Warlock. And a little bit extra. With Santa as his patron. I do really love how his outfit turned out to be honest. And I also love that the little doll in Hero Forge can be coloured to look like Spiderman... because that's silly and fun. And it's also the thing he "inherited" from Santa. And his Talisman Pact Boon. Or else the doll is the talisman and the staff is the thing he inherited. One of those.

So there's that.

This week was all topsy turvy... 

We had Friday's DnD on Thursday. And it was basically almost entirely a roleplay episode. Because we came back to the place where all the NPCs are right now, so we tend to talk to all of them. And my character got Wine Mom Drunk and spoke Truth to one of the other characters about them being awesome. I mean, she is due... she's had a hell of a couple of weeks.

Thursday was also Supermarket Day. Which I did on my own. At 7:30am.

Only to discover that every other muthafucker had also decided that 7:30am on the day before Christmas and the same amount of people we usually see during the course of one entire supermarket trip were all crammed into the fruit and veg department.

Grrrr.

But I was out of there and back home by 8:30 give or take.

I also wrapped up my Dice Advent Calendar from Mr and Mrs... which ended up in a very eclectic set of dice, plus one red and white Santa themed set, which I quite like. But the weird thing being that, other than that set, I did not get a single d8 dice. Everything else. No d8's. Weird.

I had assumed that while the dice were "random", there would be the Santa set, two full sets of random dice (as in a d20, d12, d00, d10, d8, d6 and d4), then the extra d4 from the Santa set, the special metal dice and... you know... another d20, probably. But not, the dice were super random. I got a lot of d6's... Fluffy got a lot of d20's in his calendar... and it was just... odd.

Anyway...

Welcome to Christmas Day.

I woke up... fairly early... but no earlier than I've been waking up of late.

And because we don't have places to go and people to see these days (and honestly, even if we had, I would 100% have cancelled it, because, The World Right Now), I didn't feel compelled to head down the road super early.

So I messaged Ma, wished her a Merry Crimmas, futzed around on my phone for a bit, got up, had a shower, did my physio exercises (because while my shoulder is 95% there again, I'm still doing the exercises for the foreseeable, just until the little bit of weakness that I can still feel is gone), which watching things on YouTube... 

And then, honestly, it felt very weird that I didn't get to open a window in the Dice Advent Calendar, since that has been a thing every day for the last 24 days.

But I finally packed up the car and headed down the road at about 8:45am. The roads weren't perhaps as empty as they have been when I've done the super early drive, but it was find.

And of course, when I got there, Ma was pulling a bunch of Ham Hearts out of the oven, so yummy ham, cheese and puff pastry morsels for the pre-breakfast snack. Because, fuck it... it's Christmas, and I can have breakfast before my breakfast.

Anyway, we did the croissant thing. Because as much as I loved having to get up two and a half hours before I intended to leave in order to make fresh bread, bake the bread and then take it down the road to Ma's place... honestly, I just fucking wanted croissants. Because I have bread on the regular, I never have croissants.

I could just say here that everything happened in much the same way as previous Christmas Days... but it kinda didn't. I mean, mostly it did, but it also kinda didn't.

And I'm not super getting into it, but for any number of reasons, we barely did presents this year. There were a couple of bits and pieces, but Ma gave me some money, because, honestly, either I need major items that I wouldn't expect to get as Christmas presents, like a *whispers* newlaptop *whispers* (we don't say it too loud so the laptop doesn't hear) or a new TV or a new iPhone... or I don't really need much of anything right now.

Anyway.

We kind of pfaffed around... a lot. I messaged a bunch of people with Christmas greetings. After that we prepped for lunch. After the semi panic of, I think, last year... or the year before... I can't be bothered looking it up, I prepped all of the individual things that went into the salad beforehand, so it was just kinda plug and play.

And then we did... "presents". Most of these were things I got from DnD Christmas with Fluffy, Mr and Mrs... but we do the full list here, because... tradition, I guess.

• The Wild Beyond The Witchlight Campaign Book (from Mr, Mrs and Fluffy)
• Thousand Year Old Vampire (from Fluffy)
• Wyrmwood Dice Box (from Mr and Mrs)
• Q Workshop Dice Advent Calendar (from Mr and Mrs)
• Handmade Embroidered Bear with a Whip ornament (from Fluffy, crafted by Fluffy's Mum, themed around my Asshole Cleric)
• Wooden Incense Box
• Avengers: Endgame DVD
• Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings DVD
• Light Up Crystal Ball (sadly, not as pretty as I'd hoped, but we got it real cheap when they were selling out Halloween shit... and I can make some use of it)

So, there's that.

After all of that prep... including just throwing together a salad dressing with mustard, cranberry sauce, oil and vinegar at the last second (because the one that Ma had was a little too... much)... and I burned the haloumi because fuck Ma's electric stove top.

But thanks to a Jamie Oliver Christmas cooking special was on in the background at some point, I squished the roast potatoes part way through, and they came out really nicely. Sadly, throwing dressing on them makes them much less crispy instantly, but overall, it all worked out.

Then we cleaned up and played a few games of L.L.A.M.A... and then a game of Here To Slay, which we played last year. While mostly ignoring White Christmas which was on in the background.

We made the usual Eton Mess thingy with gin and lemon meringue, mince pie icecream and fresh berries. It's always nice, it's always super sweet and super rich, and I couldn't deal with it more than once a year.

And when White Christmas finished, I packed up and came home.

In a word. Blah.

Current mood:

photo saturday: jingle bros part two

The second half of the Jingle Brothers for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book - Xmas Edition.

• Comet - The Light Domain Cleric
  The kindly young healer that lights up the lives of everyone he meets
• Cupid - The Fey Wanderer Ranger
  The quiet and calm bowmaster who got lost in the Feywild as a child
• Donner - The Clockwork Soul Sorcerer
  The debonair arcane spellcaster harnessing the magical power of toys
• Blitzen - The Way of Mercy Monk
  The stern eldest brother with a heart of gold who is beloved by the toymaking elves

Of these four, I think Comet is my favourite. I just love how his colour scheme came out, but I have a bit of a soft spot for Cupid also (even if, in this arrangement of images it kind of looks as though he's about to take a potshot at his brother). Blitzen had to be the stern and serious one because his costume is kind of the silliest... along with the candy cane bo staff.

Those of you playing Reindeer Bingo at home, might be saying to yourselves... "hey, you missed one"... never fear, after all, Christmas Day is on a Saturday.

Moving on...

So... Tuna Noodle Do for food this week. Without eggs, because I ate entirely all of the eggs last week.

Then, on Monday afternoon I went hardcore on Rocky Road, by which I mean I made a big old chocolately mess, filled two foil trays with it and then later on cut it into appropriately sized pieces and filled the bottom shelf of my fridge with it.

I also finished off Fluffy's present, which was a collection of recipes, mostly from the blog, but also from life in general, and a simplified version of a couple of the DnD recipes (because he's got the book, but some of those recipes definitely over explain things... plus you don't want to get the pretty, pretty book out every time, it could get dirty). But it looked quite smart in the display book I got.

Then we get to Wednesday, which was Board Game Christmas with Fluffy, Mr and Mrs. Well, mostly Fluffy and Mrs... Mr had other things he needed to be doing, but he did show up a few times.

I made cheese, chive and black pepper bread, and took Rocky Road for Mr and Mrs. We did the present thing first... and I'll mention those with my other presents next week. Then, we were on for games. We played quite a bit of L.L.A.M.A. followed by several rounds of Coup, a spirited game of Disney Villainous: Perfectly Wretched where I played Cruella, obvs... and Fluffy won, because, for some reason, Fluffy always fucking wins Villainous. Followed up by a seemingly quite short game of Mysterium, and then rounded out with a few more games of L.L.A.M.A. And we fitted lunch in there somewhere. Possibly between Coup and Villainous I think.

It was a fun day. We got there just after 10am and didn't leave until... just after 4 I think.

Then Fluffy and I came back here and watched Christmas movies. The original idea was Bad Netflix Xmas movie, but, honestly, I wanted "camp bad" not "people who can't act bad"... so in the end we went with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (which is freely available on the YooToobs), which is unabashedly, certifiably TERRIBLE, but fun to make fun of. We really knew what we were into when the credits at the start of the movie listed the "Custume Designer".

But, fun fact, that movie is the first documented appearance of Mrs Claus in a motion picture. And the second is in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Rankin Bass stop motion animation classic, which came out three weeks later.

Then we went down the road and grabbed a pizza, came back here and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol, because after all that bad movie, we needed something good to balance it out.

It was a long day, and I want exhausted by the end of it. Which is weird, because it doesn't sound like all that much. But, you know, stuff.

Friday was DnD as usual.

Except, you know, I somehow cast a DnD spell in real life. The short version is that there were some bad guys coming up towards the cave we were in, so my druid cast Call Lightning, a spell that, unsurprisingly, creates a 60 foot radius storm cloud that you can call down lightning from.

And not 10 second after I'd said that I was going to cast that spell, we saw a flash of real lightning outside. It's not even like the day had been stormy or rainy... it had been filthy hot, if overcast, all day, and a lightning storm was the last thing any of us expected.

So, yeah... that was weird.

Otherwise, it was a decent game. We mostly did diplomatic negotiations... well, after we murderised the bad guys at the start. And I talked to plants again. Which, honestly, was more confusing than the diplomacy.

Moving on.

Today was... brief and to the point.

With everything going on right now, the last thing I want to do is to be making unnecessary trips to places... so we did the supermarket, came back here, didn't really do much here, and then Ma shuffled off home.

It does mean that I'm going to need to sneak in a shopping trip sometime towards the end of the week. Most likely first thing on Thursday morning honestly, since the supermarket opens at like 7:30am. And I don't need a ton of stuff, due to, you know, Christmas leftovers, mostly just some salad stuff and some milk products. But, you know, grocery shopping two days before Christmas... everyone pray for me.

But that's that really.

Current mood:

photo saturday: jingle bros part one

So, maybe I did a thing.

It started with Prancer. Although not that version... a simpler version. And that was going to be it. But then my mind started doing that thing it does. Then came Dasher. And then, one by one, they all appeared.

Before I knew it, I had the Jingle Brothers, adventurers and defenders of the North Pole and Christmas. And, you know, actually buildable in DnD without any fancy homebrew if you just use the Satyr race as your base and just tweak the non-mechanical details slightly.

They're already Fey creatures, have a faster walking speed, the ability to make an extra long or high leap, they have resistance to magic, they get the Performance and Persuasion skills and they have a Ram (horn) attack. What more do you need really?

You only get four of the brothers this week though... you'll need to tune in next week for the other four.

This week's boys are...

• Dasher - The Arcane Trickster Rogue
  The sneaky but anxious youngest brother (featured with his magical Mage Hand)
• Dancer - The Oath of the Ancients Paladin
  The brave and hot tempered protector of the North Pole
• Prancer - The Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian
  The sweet himbo wielding the power of winter storms
• Vixen - The College of Glamour Bard
  The ostentatious flirt and charismatic musician

I don't quite know why the cow faces (which is what these are) are so damn expressive, but with just some minor adjustments, a range of characters presented themselves... even though they all ended up with the same face, the hairstyle and the same colour scheme (well, for the fur anyway).

So there's that. And there will be more of that next week.

I made another quiche this week... not as good as the previous one. I'll just say, I'm not completely sure mushroom works in quiche. Or else, I needed to cook them down a lot longer and really get most of the moisture out of them. I dunno. It was serviceable.

Shoulder update: The end of the week was much better than the beginning. I'd go as far as to say that I'm mostly on the mend. There's still some weakness there, but I can lift my arm more than 45°... which is great.

This week was the Christmas breakup for the Thursday DnD group. So I made cheese and salami bread. And much like when I took the cookies fresh out of the oven back in June... they descended on said bread like the proverbial seagulls. And it was all gone inside of about 5 minutes. Ten at the most.

But they enjoyed it, which is the main thing.

And we didn't die and my character got himself a fancy magic item, which I didn't expect to be in the book.

Friday was Chiro Day... so insert the rinse and repeat of taking a trip into town, seeing my chiro, sticking my head in at the gaming store, then coming home again.

Friday night's DnD is not stopping for Christmas. I mean, we have to move the game in two weeks, because Friday is also Christmas Eve, but we're still doing stuff right through.

This week's game wasn't bad. We had some interesting moments, but also some combat that felt like it was going to be much more epic than it turned out to be. Not bad, you understand... but I was expecting a number of enemies. But we did the thing we needed to do.

Oh, and my character talked to a thistle. Because spells are fucking weird.

Anyway. A good time was had.

Also, it's funny to me that Fluffy and I are basically headcanoning a whole second campaign for the group of rangers that consists almost entirely of my backup characters (I need to post the image of that whole group at some point), plus my imaginary son. Not that we're doing anything with it, we just keep talking about it on the drive back to his place.

Today wasn't much.

We basically bent the supermarket over, and beat the Christmas right out of it. That, I see now, is a weird sentence. What I was attempting to say was that we bought a lot of the random things you need for Christmas that can just sit in the cupboard or the freezer for a couple of weeks. But we bought a lot of stuff.

Insert my usual quote here about "a lot of fuss and nonsense basically amounting to one meal and nothing much". Bah, humbug, etc.

Anyway... I needed a thingy from Officeworks to finish off a project, so we did that trip and then called it a day.

Current mood:

photo saturday: lady lady

This is what happens when I reply to a DnD worldbuilding question on Reddit, and like my answer so much I need to come up with a character that fits into that idea.

The idea being that there are certain High Elf owned/staffed... houses of negotiable virtue... for want of a better term. But that they're more like courtesans or a little like geisha... and are, in world, called Adab Lastar in Elvish... House of the Listener. And the individual houses have names like House of Golden Jade or House of Twilight Rose.

And that's where Lady Orel comes in. A High Elf entertainer who is also a Divine Soul Sorceress whose power comes from the Elven goddess of Love, Hanali Celanil.

With, you know, a dress and a corset and knee high boots and makeup and whatnot. And combining a top and a skirt that are absolutely not meant to be part of a set, but colouring them like it's a dress. Weirdly, she only really came alive to me when I tilted the head to the side a little. I can't quite say why that works, just that I know it does.

Anyway...

I went up to Ma's place last Sunday to enact the Christmas tree decoration ritual... with exactly zero enthusiasm about the whole fucking process.

Doubly so because reaching the top of the tree with only one arm that wanted to go that high is something of a problem.

I undertook the writing inside the box rituals, as I have done through the ages.

And... weirdly there were just two pink baubles that I don't think we normally add to the tree, but I added them this year, stepped back and then realised that I'd given the tree eyeballs. And the line of purple baubles kind of looked like a mouth.

I accidentally made a Muppet tree... and I'm not even a little bit mad at it.

But I put up the tree and didn't hang around after that.

So that happened.

I made a really good quiche this week. And it worked for four days worth of food, so I'm doing the same thing, only with slightly different ingredients, this week.

I also started my Dice Advent Calendar this week... so that's fun. I wasn't expecting the little messages inside each window, that that was an added bonus. They're weird, but fun.

Thursday night's DnD game was one of those rare occasions where we basically did nothing but explore and roleplay. So that was nice. I mean, we're stuck in a mystery where we have no idea what's really going on. But I have ideas... most of which are probably ridiculous and wrong.

Then Friday night's DnD was... roleplay... pretty much just roleplay. And thinking about what happened, it feels like it should have taken about an hour... but somehow it doesn't feel like it should have taken as long as it did. Simple, effective, but yeah, weirdly feels shorter in my head than the actual length of time we played.

Moving on.

Today, we went to the supermarket. We bought stuff. We came back here. And that was it really.

So there's that.

Current mood: