photo friday: dollcradle boy

How do you make a character that would work for a game and a world that you absolutely don't care about... and if people on the internet are to be believed, isn't a very good adventure... so you'll probably never actually play it?

Welcome to this week's edition of DnD Character Colouring Book... were you make a character who also is dismissive about the adventure and world of it all and just wants to be left alone to study.

Say hello to Ephah, Hexblood Warlock of the Witherbloom College of Strixhaven...

At Witherbloom, the College of Essence Studies, mages draw power from the opposing forces of life and death. These mages brew their spells from natural components and the essence of living creatures, using that power to heal or harm the living or to raise or entreat the dead. They can cause entire forests to blossom out of nowhere or call down old curses that scourge flesh from bone.

Oh, also his zombie hand familiar Phalanx. Named after a bone in the hand, obviously.

Of the three "races" (or lineages, which is what they're called in the book they're from), Hexblood is the one I was less excited about, mostly because I couldn't find a concept that I liked... but this all seemed to mesh nicely. The Undying Warlock of it all, plus the Witherbloom element... it just felt like the right way to go.

Plus, I decided he is ridiculously tall, and just generally over everything.

Anyway.

Wow. This week. Not going to lie, it has been the technical definition of A Lot. Not bad, just a lot.

Also, the weather has been so fucking humid all week that I might as well have been in Sydney or Brisbane... too humid for me... I can't with humidity at the best of times. But it's been annoying all week.

Moving on.

We start out on Monday... when I went into the city to do a bunch of errands.

First errand was to go to the Apple Store to talk to them about my dying iPhone. Well, technically the first thing was to get an appointment to talk to someone, then go do other errands, then come back. Which is what happened, but while I was running around going to the bank to get the drama from last Friday sorted now that I had access to the appropriate app, buying a new mask (plus ordering a smaller one for Ma), forgetting the other thing I needed to do... I stopped to take a street art photo... and 15 seconds later, my phone went "nah, no more battery for you".

So I went back to the Apple Store to steal some of their electricity to get my phone up and running again, only to discover that while the girl who booked me in said "come back in two hours"... but I was back within about half an hour, and the appointment I booked in for was at 1pm, which was only about half an hour, forty minutes from when I first went in. WTF. But, I was there, it all worked out.

Spoke to possibly the oldest Apple employee I've ever encountered, he poked my iPhone with all appropriately technology, only to tell me that my phone was only capable of keeping 30% of a charge in it's battery. Fun times. Especially when he said that he'd never seen one so low.

He poked around for a while, I asked some questions where the answers were either "you might need to reformat you phone and then replace it from a backup" or "that's just how that works now", which is about what I expected.

But he was nice, he gave me some stuff to think about, and then left the store, started playing my podcast, got three steps further on and the phone battery just died because it was clearly past the point where it actually had enough charge to do more than just sit there quietly.

Annoying.

So I figured maybe it's time to bite the bullet and get a new phone. It's been a hot minute. And by minute, I mean 8 years, 1 month, 29 days.

I came home, realised that I hadn't gone into the chiro to change my appointment to a day that wasn't the day I have to move house, called them and sorted that out. Then paid my bond for the new place.

Then poked the Optus and Apple Store websites for potential phone plans.

Tuesday I had the plumbers coming to look at the roof and it's ongoing leak issues. Again. They hung around for a good hour and a half. Poked the roof with... whatever they poke the roof with, ran water off it for a period of time to see if any of it ended up in my living room. It did not. Eventually they left after putting sealant on a bunch of places that seemed like they were a problem (also, hi, hello, previous plumbing boys... why the fuck didn't you fucking do that?), and advised me to keep an eye one it. Absolutely. Right up until moving day and then I will never think or care about it ever again.

After they left I called the moving company to update them on the moving date, and while I had them on the phone, I mentioned that when I bought boxes I bought too many of the large ones and not enough of the small ones and was there any chance that I could bring some back and swap them out? Turns out yes. Yay. So I threw five of the big boxes in the back of the car and drove down there to trade them in. Only got slightly lost once, which is better than when Ma and I went down there originally.

And now I have an extra 8 smaller boxes. Plus one of their "Safe Spot" boxes, which is designed to put things like kitchen towel and toilet roll and the kettle and tea and coffee and things that you will definitely need when you get to the new house. For free. Because I asked her about them, and, I dunno... maybe because I'm already spending all the money with them.

Wednesday was a public holiday. For some reason, even though this public holiday is on the same fucking day every fucking year, I was convinced that it was on Thursday not Wednesday. So, there were things I was going to do Wednesday that I had to put off for an extra day. Otherwise I did fuck all. Oh, wait, I emptied the linen closet and put all my towels and bedding in one of the remaining big boxes. So that's done.

Randomly had a lovely chat with Owlgirl via Instagram while doing that last bit... which was lovely, obviously.

Thursday was New Phone Day.

I'd done my research, I knew what I wanted and what was inside my budget, so off I trotted to the Apple Store just after they opened.

Yep, that's right... a nice new shiny red iPhone. An SE to be precise. And not just red... but (Product) RED. Which is nice, even if I'm sure it's not that much of a percentage of the price.

Anyway... it took a while to get through all of process and do all the things. As it always does. Because, stuff.

The guy who looked after me was very lovely though, and, given that they have a deal where if you buy the phone through Apple they give you a massive discount, I got the phone for about $220, and the bills will be slightly lower than they are right now. Which is great.

I also bought an adaptor for my headphones... because that was cheaper than buying new Apple headphones of any kind. Also because I don't really like the Apple ones... they dont' stay in my ears properly.

When that was done, I wandered around town trying to find a cheap but functional case and screen protector... tried Target, tried JB HiFi, looked briefly at one of those slightly dodgy kiosks, totally forgot that the other place I needed to look was Officeworks.

After that, I headed home, and spent... entirely too much time updating the new phone with all my bits and pieces and downloading an iOS update and updating a ton of the apps... and even headed out halfway through to drive down the road to the other Officeworks near me to get the aforementioned case and screen protector. Because, that's where I should have fucking gone in the first place. Whether the city store would have had what I wanted or not, I dunno... and also, I needed to pick up more bubblewrap so that we didn't have to do it today.

By the time I'd done all of that, my phone had updated itself appropriately along with all the apps, the battery was fully charged and I'd put the screen protector and case on it... oh, and I'd finally gotten around to moving the SIM card over, and made my first call on the phone to tell Ma I had a new phone, it was 4:15pm. Keeping it mind that I walked into the Apple Store just after 10:15am. So, a very phone orientated day.

It's just that bit much larger than the old phone... enough that I can put an extra row of apps on the home screen, and right now it's more comfortable to use it with two hands. But everything is new any shiny and updated and lovely. And also chunks of it are now serving me ads that couldn't before because my phone was very old. I'll live with that, honestly.

It is also a huge weight off my mind however. Because I don't have to stress out about my phone dying after me using it for more than 30 seconds at a time.

And, in the grand tradition of Bumblebee, Bonecrusher and Bluestreak... well, fuck, I'd forgotten that I was doing both a Transformers AND a letter B thing for my phones... actually, I very nearly called this new one Blaster, after the Autobot knockoff of Soundwave (the best Transformer, don't @ me... but the phone isn't purple)... but Blaster is kind of a stupid name.

In the end, from the list of the "red" Transformers, I decided on Perceptor.

Because I'm a grown ass adult man... and I can name my technology after stupid 80's cartoon shows if I want.

So there's that about that.

Also, while I was doing all of that, the real estate company from the other application I put in called. I don't know why. I assume to say "yeah, no", but honestly I don't know. Because I'd already assumed that I didn't and wouldn't get that place, so I'd written it off. And why would they call instead of just sending an email or a text message. 

But I'll never know, because I didn't let her get too far into her spiel before I cut her off to tell her that I'd secured another apartment and wouldn't be moving forward with this one. Because at this point, it has been about a week and a half... week and a bit anyway. And if it took them that long to get back to me, I'm probably better off.

But not knowing will bug me for... about three more days... or until I forget about it completely.

Friday... actually, Friday I think maybe I let out the breath I've been holding for... I dunno... months. And I didn't even really realise that I had been holding it. But I'm pretty sure I have been. Or at the very least I let it out a bit. Maybe not the whole thing. Enough though.

Mostly Friday I pottered around the house a bit, came up with a vague plan for today's packing, but didn't do much else really. Oh. I did reshave my head and trim the beard for the first time since the middle of December. I probably should have done it at New Years, but I didn't... and was looking like of scruffy by the time I did the trim. Better now.

Then we come to Friday night DnD. It was... also a lot. But in a different way.

DM Fluffy decided that he didn't like the "trials" as written for the tenets of the goddess... you know, the fun stuff of cruelty, isolation, endurance and preservation. So he came up with his own versions, the evil little hobbit.

Because he also managed to sync the trials up to the backstories of each of our three player characters plus our talking polar bear NPC. Only we didn't realise that at the start, because we started with the trial that happened to be connected to our NPC. Turns out the polar bear used to be a prince regent (insert <of_course.gif> here... although, honestly, I had no fucking idea)... and we had to recreate one of his memories and all has to be horrible to him. Because cruelty.

It was... infuriating. In the best way. Because we were all terrible people within the memory... as in we were standing in for existing horrible people. But then we also had to be horrible to the prince regent without knowing that he was actually our polar bear NPC.

Isolation was my character's test. And I knew it was immediately. Because if anything underlines Quillamina's story in this campaign, it's isolation caused by loss and grief. Not that she's isolating herself, and she has the other members of the party, but she's been isolated from her husband through death, her son through circumstances, about half of her druid circle by death, deception or betrayal... and so, yeah, isolation works.

But the thing was we had to split up. Which I knew. Because, isolation, dur. And head in opposite directions. Again, no shit Sherlock. But eventually we each independently came across Quill's house, that she shared with her husband and her son... which she's kind of avoided since his death, unsurprisingly.

When she finally went through the door she realised that the house wasn't hers anymore. Someone else had put their things there. The building was the same, the house she built with her husband when they came to this place. It wasn't her house anymore.

Which, is, you know, not like anything at all that is anything to do with what I'm currently going through in real life... or have gone through previously in the last couple of apartments.

But mostly, when I leave somewhere, I leave it... and it's not mine anymore. I'd also been standing in the kitchen before Fluffy arrived at my place, looking around the room and thinking about that very thing. Moving on.

Fluffy claims he didn't specifically plan that... but it was odd that my character happened to sync up with where my head is at right now. Plus I have plans for that in-game house when the campaign is over. I have had for a while... which, I think, means that Quill has had those same plans for a little while.

Mine was also the shortest of the sequences. Because all we needed to do was have me be at peace with the fact that that house was no longer mine. And, as discussed, already there.

I don't think any of us expected Mr to have the reaction that his character did to the trial of endurance. I don't even think he could explain it, either in or out of character. And it wasn't the longest, but it was... no... it wasn't the most frustrating either... it was the most... interesting actually, because of Mr's reaction.

Also, because my character has been watching the other two characters have some sort of feelings for each other but not be specific about those feelings with my character or each other... we may have left the session on a "cliffhanger" after the endurance test was... endured (yes, I know) because I basically told Mr's character that maybe it was time that he said the things that needed to be said to the people who needed to hear them.

And then walked off to talk to the gigantic talking walrus.

So we'll see how that works out next week.

Oh, and after I fully charged my new phone on Thursday, I didn't need to put it on charge again until last night. Oh, the joy. Oh, the relief. Oh, the battery life.

Which brings us around to today.

Today was... exhausting. Because packing is exhausting. And moving house is exhausting. And I'm so fucking glad that I'm not actually moving house this coming Tuesday, because otherwise, today would have been very different. And much more frantic.

But we did the supermarket thing. And, when the check out girl put only a small amount of stuff into two different bags, I may have just repacked them into a single bag. Because fuck that.

After we came back here and unpacked, we made a brief trip into the city to pick up the mask I ordered on Monday. That's some good service. And by brief trip, I literally mean that Ma circled the block while I went into the store, and then we came back here and... packed.

I think we got through... six boxes. Seven maybe. And started on some of the kitchen stuff. Also, note to self, you packed a whole lot of stuff INSIDE other things. You probably want to check all of that when you get to the new house. Because otherwise, that's going to be a weird surprise in... two years time when you open that random tin or container and find... baking powder. Or something stranger.

You won't re-read this after the move, but maybe having typed it will make you remember. Otherwise, may all appropriate gods have mercy on your... kitchen containers I guess.

But we got through some packing. And my main room is full of even more boxes. And the stack of plastic storage bins next to my bedside cabinet grows ever taller. And the cupboards slowly get emptier and emptier.

And this is less and less my home. And I'm... okay with that. Or at least, it is what it is, and it's the beginning of something new.

And right now, my body is really fucking sore... lol.

And that's about it for this week.

Twenty days and counting.

Current mood:

photo friday: fairy friend

It's been an... interesting 168 hours (or, you know, week)...

But things are looking good... so let's go for something a little playful for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... Zephyr.

Zephyr is an NPC for an upcoming campaign I'm running for the Friday crew... specifically linked to Fluffy's character for the first part of the adventure. He's a knife throwing, knife juggling, knife tricks essentially. But he's only about 10"/25cm tall.

I haven't really pinned down his personality as yet... I think he's going to be very outgoing and very much a showman when he's performing, but more parental and warm when he's backstage. Like I said, I haven't thought it out fully yet... and it will also kind of just happen at the table when I open my mouth and words come out.

Anyway, he was fun to design and go over the top with his makeup and hair and costume all based around the colours of his wings.

Moving on...

So, I had two apartment inspections on Monday, one in North Adelaide, which was a shoebox and one in Glenunga, which was lovely from the outside (a very green courtyard, small number of units) but inside it was... weird. I wasn't digging it.

Tuesday was the first place I looked at where I thought, yeah I would put in an application on this place. Again the block itself was green and shaded and quite nice, and the apartment was... okay. Okay enough to put in an application anyway.

So Wednesday morning was... a giant fucking headfuck. Because fuck electronic/online rental inspections in every uncomfortable orifice. Also, but the time I was finished with pulling all the dates together and photographing a bunch of my IDs and pulling all the other documents I needed and working out how the fuck I was going to make myself not sound like the worst possible tenant in the world, it took me like an hour and a half and I hated myself and I hated the application and I knew I wasn't going to get it and my application was going to go straight in the recycle bin.

But I did it anyway.

Then Wednsday afternoon I went out to Norwood to look at a place. Again, it was cute enough. Less interesting block, but on a good street, and big enough for my purposes, and also on the second floor, which is fine. Also giving it marks in the plus column was the current tenant's belongings (also, could you be more of a hipster, sir... with your vinyl turntable and your lack of a television... well, I don't remember seeing a TV anyway), which made it look like a home rather than just a box with windows.

I have realised that one of the flaws that I have when I'm looking at apartments... is that I don't actually SEE a lot of the details. Like, I see the space. I see things that seem to make sense to me at the time. I get the vibe of the place... but I don't LOOK properly. In this place I never looked at the kitchen. I think the stove is electric, but I'm not completely sure, and I know it has aircon, but I don't remember actually seeing it.

So Thursday morning was filling out the paper application for that place. Which took 15 minutes. Seriously, it took so little time it was actually disconcerting. I thought maybe I did something wrong. And I only needed to add a photo of my driver's license, AND I was able to actually attach a cover letter explaining my circumstances. So, suffice to say, I felt a lot better about that application. Doubly so because I looked up the land agent and while it should have been weird, because it's a very, very small company, the information on the site made me feel like if anyone would give me a chance, it would be this company.

And even better still when I got a phone call from the Land Agent on Thursday night saying that it was down to me and one other person, she just had to talk to the owner. Who also owns the whole building. And lives there.

Yay.

Of course, I had a nervous night, got up earlier than I otherwise would have done and couldn't really settle to anything.

I also had my chiro appointment. So that at least got me out the house. And of course I fully expected to get a call or a message while I was flat on the table. That didn't happen, but I did get a message right after I sat down in my chiro's office. And I thought that was bad news, because usually they just message you if they're saying no. But no, it was just the agent keeping me updated on the fact that she still hadn't spoken to the owner.

Chiro appointment was business as usual.

Wandered around town for... a tiny bit... came home, and less than a minute after walked through the door, the agent called me. And took me on a roller coaster ride of "ooh that's bad... ah that's good... ooh that's bad... the froghurt is also cursed, etc"... only to say that if I could match the extra rent the other guy was offering (also, fuck that trend... let's not line the pockets of the fucking landlords any more than we need to, shall we?) then it was mine. So of COURSE I said yes.

And then immediately called Ma and when she answered the phone I was just saying "yes, yes, yes, yes...".

So, I have a place to live.

But that opened up a Pandora's Box (no pun intended... because, moving) of... other things I had to then do.

Firstly I called my current land agent to say... "hey, got a place, but you know how I'm supposed to move out at the beginning of February... nah bitch, how's three weeks later, because that's when I can move into the new place... 'k?". Of course it wasn't that easy... he had to talk to the other woman, who was theoretically on leave... so, yeah, call me back bud.

Then there was drama with paying my first two weeks rent, because internet banking decided that you need to download a fucking app that has nothing to do with your bank in order to do some stupid security thing in order to add a new payee to my own fucking account. How does GET FUCKED sound.

And I have been incredibly lax in updating my phone in the last... I dunno... seven years. So I hadn't updated my iOS, which then meant that I couldn't download the app. So I went to the bank. And the woman was, frankly and unsurprisingly, unhelpful and dismissive. Not enough for me to decide to go to a different bank... but, you know... enough to further frustrate my already frustrated and overheated ass.

In the end I withdrew the money from my bank and walked down the street like a peasant in order to pay it in at my land agent's bank. URGH.

But I got it done... 

And on the drive home, not only did the Online Banking Call Centre call me back (after an hour and a half vs the 26-45 minutes they claimed when I said "yes, please just call me back so I don't have to sit on hold for forever") while I was driving, but also the other land agent for my current place I think tried to call me, and then messaged me with a frankly incoherent message. So I was just thinking to myself... "fuck, can I just drive home in peace for five minutes"... is that a thing I can do after having essentially yelled at the bank bitch. I mean, I didn't... but I was yelling on the inside.

Got home, ignored the Online Banking People because fuck you, you can't help me, and I think you try and call back three times and then give up anyway. Called the current land agent... did a little sweet talking and YAY... I can stay here until my moving date.

Because, honestly, I am slowly trying to move any potential moving date further and further away from Christmas and New Years one move at a time... somewhat accidentally given the first move (in 20 years) was like 6 January, the next one got pushed out to 6 February and now we're most of the way through February. Because fuck trying to find something while Christmas and New Year is happening.

Not that I'm going anywhere for a while, honestly.

So, after that I called Ma and ranted for a little bit. And then though... well, fuckkit, let's see what I can do about this iOS issue. So I plugged in my phone, hit some buttons and before I knew it I was leaping about four iOS versions and my phone was chugging away downloading an update when Fluffy turned up. Because I'd asked him to come down a little early, but didn't know when he was actually showing up. So he surprised me.

Wow... sorry... not that you would have noticed, but I kinda got distracted there by reading the two overly long moving posts. Yeah... those are... definitely two different moods. And my feelings about this place now and this place when I moved in are... kind of the opinions of two different people. I mean, I definitely know that other person. But some of those issues got resolved and were, I think, mostly related to having to move at all rather than having to move here.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, Fluffy. He helped me take all of the art that has been stored in the boxes in my bedroom for the last 6 years out of said boxes, retape said boxes to ensure they will stand another move, then repacked said art into said boxes. So that's done.

Which then led into a) me showing him the photos of my art collection, since said collection is wrapped in bubble wrap in said boxes and b) reminiscing about Burger Theory in all it's glory. Good times.

Then bread cooking, and off to Friday night DnD.

For any number of reasons, not least of all because we haven't seen each other for two weeks, there was lots of chat before we finally got down to the game.

And we set foot into the Belly of the Beast as it were. By which I mean the lair of a goddess... that used to be the home of a tribe of frost giants. So, you know, a regular Friday. We did meet the sweetest talking walrus though... who just happened to have the same accent as my character, which led to my character's accent getting a LOT thicker. Because of course that's what would happen.

So now we just have to go through four trials for the tenets of the goddess... cruelty, endurance, isolation, preservation. Won't that be fun.

Today was... tiring.

We did the supermarket thing as usual this morning, after I detoured past the new place so Ma could see it from the outside/see the location.

After shopping we came back here, and I unpacked my shopping and also unpacked the collection of extra cardboard boxes Ma brought down (thank goodness).

And then it was packing. I wanted to get the apartment "tidied" as best as I could, because it's been a total mess for the last week, much like the inside of my brain. So, with the help of the boxes Ma brought, I managed to pack some things that I tried to pack during the week and couldn't because the boxes I had were entirely too big. Or possibly I didn't think of that particular box. I'm not sure which anymore.

We also ended up pulling the big artwork out of the big box that has been living along side my pantry shelf for the aforementioned 6 years. Retaped the box, put some of the art pieces that used to be in the box back in the box and also added in a few other bits and pieces that fit in the space that I had left.

Ma also displayed her super power.

I was trying to stick a large number of things that were already in boxes into the big box I'd already put together, and they just wouldn't fit. No matter how I tried to put these five or six boxes inside this bigger box, they just wouldn't work. And I was basically "fuck this". Ma wandered over, turned one single box 90 degrees and suddenly they all went in the box pretty much perfectly. Fucking Human Tetris Machine. It's useful, but man, the number of times I tried and failed before she did one tiny thing.

In the end, we cleared 90% of my dining table, packed like seven other boxes, made some decisions about things and got my apartment in a much more organised state.

It's almost as though once I got my head straight after securing a new place to live, I can then get my physical surroundings organised in a way that I couldn't before that point. Who knew? Well, you know, I knew... it made perfect sense to me, even if I kind of made it happen by randomly throwing the shit on the table into a box just to clear it so we could use it to wrap some additional art. Then took it all back out and repacked it. Shit got done basically.

Fun fact: I also have a box entirely filled with tea and tea making supplies. I have too much tea.

We took a couple of breaks, eventually I showed Ma the photos of the inside of the place (because I showed all the properties to her... last week, I think... but that was a whole week away and I don't this she retained all that much of the information. Plus this is the place she actually has to remember now that I'm moving there.

But finally I was absolutely done... and my entire body is still all kinds of sore. Tomorrow will be fun. Plus I worked out while working on this post that I'm going to need to move my chiro appointment next week, because I accidentally booked it on the same day as the move, so that's not going to fly.

Having an appointment the week after the move definitely isn't the worst idea though.

So, yeah... as much as I'm sure I will complain about very specific things once I move into the new place, and if I make it through the process without wanting to murder various utility company staff members it will be a miracle, but right now, everything feels positive.

Just keep your fingers crossed for me if you wouldn't mind... because, you know, one can never have too much extra luck during the process of moving.

Current mood:

photo saturday: tenpenny and honeypot

So... this week... yeah, that's a full on conversation.

But first... my purple clad, purple prose writing erotic novelist bard... Harland Honeypot. I knew who his mother was, but until the games before Christmas I hadn't thought about his father much at all.

I knew he had one, but I thought perhaps his mother, Mimosa Honeypot, a "former" courtesan (she still has a few old regulars, but isn't taking on any new clients right now, thank you for asking) and current hostess and entertainer at the Blushing Nymph festhall, maybe didn't know who his father was, or did but hadn't told him, or had don't him but it wasn't a big deal to either of them.

Basically wherever she was in her life at the time and where she is now are two very different places, and a long term relationship doesn't fit anymore.

But then we met some Harpers in the last game we met before Christmas. And I knew that Harland didn't like the Harpers, even though he's is 100% perfect to be a member of said faction, but I couldn't remember WHY (I think it came up in our pre-game relationship dice rolls, but I honestly didn't write most of it down, as I didn't really care). So when we met said Harper agent, Harland instantly disliked her and was honestly kind of a dick about it. Which was fun to play, even if I didn't understand what was driving it initially.

But then I needed to work out WHY. Which led me to dear old dad. He was involved in something he shouldn't have been and the Harpers used him to get to the more important criminals but in the end hung him out to dry. And he ended up in prison because of it. Where he died. Or something. Like, he's definitely dead, because why else would the reaction have been that strong, even if he knew his dad was a bad guy. I'm okay with leaving it a little up in the air because basically I know that whatever the actual story is, Harland doesn't know it. He only knows the story he was told, ostensibly by his dad, who would therefore be an unreliable narrator to his own story.

I also know the Harpers have been through more than one instance of "traitors within", so maybe his dad was a Harper or working with them but was then betrayed by said traitor, maybe dad was a traitor himself. In the end it doesn't really matter.. it's enough for what I need.

And that was how Milo Tenpenny came to be. The poor schlub didn't even have a name before that point.

I don't think he and Mimosa (and I only just realised that they're both M names) ever married, which is part of the reason why Harland uses his mother's name... but also, as an author of erotic novels, which would you rather be called... Harland Tenpenny or Harland Honeypot?

Yeah, same.

Which of course led me to DnD Character Colouring Book for the parents. Partly because they'd just added the new dress at the time and that seemed appropriate for dear old Mum. I also enjoy that Dad is just a little bit derpy. Looking back at Harland's skin tone, I feel like Dad's skin should be darker, but maybe Dad spent too many nights out on the job and too many days catching up on his sleep.

Also, if they had class levels (which they don't), then Rogue and Bard respectively. And probably the Thief and College of Glamour subclasses honestly.

And the fact that it looks like Milo is checking Mimosa's goblet to see if she needs a top up, or has just topped her up, is completely accidental. I was more trying to get across that she's all fine wine and golden goblets and he's all dagger in your back and rotgut rum.

Anyway... 

This week has been... too fucking much honestly.

So, after I finished last week's post, we learned that Fluffy's sister had tested positive, which meant that Fluffy was technically a close contact, which meant that because he spent like half of Friday with me, I was technically a close contact of him, which meant that Mr and Mrs, who we saw for DnD on Friday night were close contacts of the pair of us, and Ma, who I went shopping with on Saturday and then sat around and watched a movie with was also a close contact of me.

Fuckit.

I didn't care so much for myself, but Mrs is immuno compromised and Ma is just old.

So off they went to get tested on Saturday evening... and we had to wait until Sunday for results. I called Ma and advised her to, you know, not do her Sunday plans of going to see her equally old friends and instead stay home.

Sunday morning Fluffy was most convinced he was going to test positive... so I decided, fuckit, let's go and sneak a test in on Sunday morning while the lines are hopefully not super long and so that if the worst comes to the worst, I have my results back sooner rather than later.

So off to Hindmarsh we went. To the Educational Development Centre... retreading old ground from previous lives and all that. And a place that I've been to on more than one occasion under very different circumstances.

And as much as I didn't really dig the "have to get out of your car" aesthetic of the place, I did appreciate that it took me about as long to drive there as it did to get tested and I was back inside of an hour I think.

I also remembered to be very nice to all the staff because they're doing a very necessary job and also one where they don't get thanked anywhere near as much as they should do. And that included the girl whose main job seems to be "print out papers, fold them and place them in the right place for the nurses"... because nobody remembers to thank the admin staff. So I did. Also the nurses.

Anyway... stayed indoors for all of Sunday just to be sure. We got Fluffy's results back midway through Sunday... negative. And my results, when they came through on Monday, also negative.

Thank fuck.

Because, yeah, having to isolate for a week while also trying to find a new place to live, that wasn't going to be any kind of fun.

Speaking of...

I have currently backed 16 small boxes and two large boxes, including all of my books and most of my papers and tchotchkes. Plus I think six plastic storage tubs that I already had. All of my bookcases are stripped down and are just holding the stuff that still needs packing and the house looks like... well, it looks like I'm midway through packing for a move honestly.

Dining table isn't any clearer... every time I semi empty it, I just add more stuff to it, so there's that.

I also went through my CDs during the week... basically enough of them need to go in order for me to just have a single bookshelf worth, which may not make a lot of sense, but otherwise I'd have a weirdly shaped shelf to fill otherwise.

And I went to see two places last week. One said that it was in North Adelaide but was actually in Ovingham on the side of a hill and didn't have a stove. Nor a cooktop. So fuck that noise on any number of levels. If I'd known that before I went, I wouldn't have gone.

Then on Friday I went to another place that was within walking distance of my current place. It just seemed... small and grubby... didn't like it.

Currently I have, I think, at least four open inspections next week. And some, if not all of them, I'm going to need to start putting in applications for, even if they're not 100% perfect.

Fun times.

Also, as I messaged Fluffy mid way through the week... I am currently sick of every single thing that I own. Because either there's too many of them, they're difficult to pack, or I probably should have gotten rid of them at some point but just didn't.

In any event, there will come a time for culling after the move. Especially for random tchotchkes I think. I have a whole storage bin full of them that I never even got out here... or possibly the place before honestly... yeah, it's a whole lot of stuff that I like, but, honestly, if I don't have an actual spot for it, why is it hanging around.

Whether this mood lasts throughout the move and into the unpacking phase remains to be seen.

Anyway...

Due to aforementioned "close contact", even though all of their tests came back negative, Fluffy and the fam still needed to insolate for the week, so no Friday DnD. And I've pulled the plug on Thursday DnD for the month, because I kind of don't have, as mentioned last week, the mental bandwidth for it right now. Plus I need to be able to head out to open inspections in the evenings, just in case.

Also my back has been letting me know that it doesn't appreciate all the bending and carrying of heavy objects... and I don't have a chiro appointment until next week sadly. So, yeah, more fun times.

justquietly... arrggghhhhhh.....

Which brings us around to today.

Which mostly involved me proverbially banging my head against the proverbial wall honestly.

First up, supermarket. And because I didn't buy fuck all last week due to... last week... I needed to make up for it with additional stuff this week. Or, you know, the right amount of stuff.

Then it was back here for unpacking and... coming up with a plan for more packing of a different kind. Fun times. Or something.

So, it was off to the Reject Shop to get a couple more of those plastic storage tubs that are super useful for the more fragile of the tchotchkes. Plus I want to keep the last four of the smaller boxes for kitchen stuff.

And then it was back here to try and work out what to pack and how to pack it. Because most of what's left needs some amount of bubblewrap, it's just working out the how and the.... well, mostly the how of wrapping them up honestly. So we did that... take item out of glass container it usually lives in, wrap item in bubble wrap awkwardly, put item back in glass container, wrap whole thing in bubblewrap awkwardly, put entirely too much tape on it, look at weird lump that results... get next thing.

I also kept finding additional THINGS... stuff I'd clearly put in A Place at Some Time and then promptly forgotten about, only to discover it now and think "sorry, what... why is this a thing and when did I put that there?".

Right now my brain is mostly fried... my hands feel all weird and tingly from having handled too much bubblewrap and tape... and I still am mostly sick of every single thing I own.

Also, I now have a stack of "not moving company" cardboard boxes that I'm sure will come in useful eventually, but right now are just taking up space.

And just so we're clear... on a scale from Underwhelmed to Overwhelmed, I'm currently at Whelmed, dancing furiously on the borderline of Overwhelmed.

Fun. Fucking. Times.

Current mood:

photo saturday: animal boys

Some animal themed boys for the first DnD Character Colouring Book of the year. And I probably could have just gone with one of them, but they seemed to work nicely together honestly.

Firstly, the Battlemaster Fighter... the very on-the-nose named Reynard, the redhead, who kind of got his fox based name after his look was done. Because I still haven't really done a redheaded character, even though I've wanted to on a number of occasions. Also, he's only a Battlemaster because that made sense for him... it's not really my favourite subclass.

Valazquez is when happens when you're watching people play video games for a number of hours and something comes up in the game that makes you want to make a DnD character with the same theme.

The video game: Wildermyth. The something: the Crowtouched theme that slowly turns one of your characters into... a crow.

While musing on it, the character became an Acolyte and Aasimar tied to the Raven Queen... because goth and edgy shit. And then a rogue, because the aforementioned goth and edgy shit. See also the Phantom Rogue subclass.

Moving on.

This week was... a lot.

So, although I haven't mentioned it since the first... mention... urgh... I still have to move house at the start of February. Which is all kinds of problems and issues and whatnots.

But between Christmas and New Year I found a moving company, but they seemed... less good than the other company I used during my last two moves... but they decided that they didn't want to operate in Adelaide any more sometime after my last move. So, urgh, again.

So, this week I tried to find a different company. Wow. Moving companies are... the word that comes springing to mind is... bullshit. Or often just a random dude and a truck. Is it out of line to expect, I don't know. An office. And when I look up your company address on Google Maps, that I don't find... somebody's house. Or a place where you theoretically park your truck.

And when you go through Google looking at different removal companies... you start to notice that a lof of the websites look like ass. And... you start to realise that, hey, I've seen that phone number before... so you Google the phone number and find, like five different "companies" with similar looking websites, but with completely different names.

So... Best Movers Adelaide, Same Day Movers, Total Removals, Proven Removalists and Carlo Removalists... I fucking see you all. With your mostly matching websites and your identical phone numbers but different addresses. I see you.

I'll tell you, that for me, I started to a) loose all faith in humanity in general and b) started to kind of loose my tenuous grip on reality.

Also not helped when the company that I had seen that seemed better than the one I'd already spoken to told me when I called them that they're not doing any removals in Adelaide until April. At least I think it was them, I ended up speaking to a number of companies and had a number of stupid conversations.

So what do we do when we start to loose our tenuous grip on reality? We call Ma. And she comes down so that you can have a brief freak out, and then outline the whole problem you're having and then end up calling a couple of other companies who are also... functionally useless.

I mean, they had reasons, and I understand their reasons. But for the most part, none of those reasons didn't help me.

And even trying to find a company that rented/sold moving boxes was doing my head in.

Basically the TLDR is that I had gotten myself into a headspace, and couldn't see my way past any of it.

Basically after I called one of the major moving companies and while I spoke to someone in Melbourne, they tried to put me through someone in Adelaide, but nobody was picking up the phone. Now, I get it... this was the first day back at work for a lot of them after the Christmas/New Years break, but fuck.

So I just went... fuck it. Let's go with the company that I'm already booked with, and even though they don't fucking mention it, they do rent boxes, albeit at a more expensive rate than I would have initially liked (which was one of the things that I was unhappy about when I first spoke to them). And because I know they charged an additional fee to bring the boxes out, so, since Ma was here, I suggested driving out there to pick some up.

I mean, I called them first... but, like every other phonecall I made that day, it was unproductive because it ended up going to voicemail... and they never called me back (I mean, before we got there).

Actually seeing that they had a building, with a sign, and a dinky little office (which was essentially a cube inside the bigger warehouse), and people... made me feel better. I mean, I then had to spend entirely too much fucking money on fucking cardboard. But they're good boxes. And I learned my lesson from the last move by getting the new ones and not the used ones. Because my experience with the used boxes last time was less than ideal.

And of course, because of the way my life works, while I am physically holding onto one of the sets of boxes, with woman from the office getting the other boxes for me... my phone rings. Of course it's the other moving company. I just thought "fuck this" and told the woman who called that I'd made "other arrangements, but thank you".

Then we stopped off at Officeworks on the way back to my place for some more tape and some bubble wrap and some butchers paper. Not the BEST butchers paper mind you, it's a bit... thin. But there's also 250 sheets of it, so... swings and roundabouts.

And that was just my Tuesday.

So, right now, I have... 10 boxes packed, two large ones, 8 small ones, all my DVDs are packed, the papers and shite from my chest of drawers are packed, all of the boxes that I had for my tchotchkes, with the aforementioned tchotchkes repacking inside them are in boxes, and I'm slowly building the Great Wall Of China in my living room.

I mean, what the fuck did I do with all the boxes when I loved in here? There the actual fuck did I put them all? I mean, I know that I didn't have the dining table, or the chest of drawers, or the kitchen workbench when I got here... and everything was all piled up against the bookcases the day after I moved in... 

But I'll be honest, even looking at that photo right now gives me... well, not clinical anxiety... but it makes me all manner of anxious. Also, the photo from like a week previous that showed where I was up to with packing... also makes me all kinds of anxious.

Partially because the rental market is very, very different now than it was five years ago, my overall situation is... worse than it was five years ago, and, you know, looking for places in the Current World Situation is... kinda fucked, honestly.

In a word. Fuck. Just... plain, old, ordinary... fuck.

Anyway... I went and looked at a place on Thursday evening. Two doors down from the Wellington Square apartment. Which made me suddenly remember a) planes flying overhead and b) it's been five years since I've really been to North Adelaide and c) there were entirely too many people/couples looking through the place, which was cute, but, you know... me against couples for an apartment. Urgh.

But it's also the first one I've physically set foot in, so there's that.

On Friday, Fluffy came down in the afternoon and we did a little packing, did a little organising and culling of shite. I mean, I knew that I liked to keep a useful jar. Just in case it was, at a later point, useful. But I didn't actually realise how many fucking jars I had accumulated inside my house.

Well, jars and empty honey containers, because I also hoard those for soup and whatnot. And also other plastic containers that I put up on high shelves in the kitchen and... never thought of ever again.

So now my recycle bin outside is full. Not just, like, a little bit full... "the lid won't close" kind of full. Mostly with jars. I mean, if they were all smashed into glass, then maybe they'd take up less room. but that's going to make all the pretty, breaking noises when they dump it all into the recycle truck next week.

"Hi, my name's Yani, and I have a problem with collecting containers."

But at least most of that is in the trash now and I don't need to worry about it.

And, while I know that I could actually pack more or less fully for a move within, like a week, taking my time is preferable, but the issue, as I mentioned to... well, anybody who stood still long enough for me to tell this week... right now I have to weigh up between how much room the thing is currently taking up in my house and how much room it will take up once it's in a box... and sometimes it can just stay where it is for now.

Which is also why Ma and I didn't do any packing today... next week is definitely going to be a thing... but for this week... nah, I honestly didn't have the mental bandwidth necessary.

Also, to quote an oft used quote from Press Gang, one of my favourite shows from the 90's... my apartment looks like I've "been playing with something thermonuclear". Big wall of boxes, empty spaces in the bookcases, every surface strewn with the detritus of my life. It's a mess.

Much like my life right now... <insert self deprecating grin gif here>

Urgh... speaking of not having the mental bandwidth... let's move on shall we.

Really the only other thing of note this week... or possibly the only other thing that I really remember because past a certain point my brain is just full... is Friday's DnD game.

After several sessions of... not avoiding the main plot... but, doing our own thing... we proceeded full force with the plot. You know, right into the belly of the beast and all that.

And now we get to answer the age old question... what happens when you put the ghost of a sassy bitch into the body of an already sassy bitch. Yes, my girl got a sassy ghost in her head... because initially she went into the head of our monk... and that wasn't going to be a thing we allowed to stand.

So now I have a sassy bitch in my head and a new weasel familiar friend. I mean, it's the familiar of the sassy bitch... but he's a sweet white weasel/ferret... which might actually be a stoat or an ermine based of the art I saw.

Anyway... next up, we're into the fortress of plot and bad stuff... so that'll be... stressful. But a different kind of stress.

Today was... I dunno... Mental Fallout Day, I guess.

We did the supermarket thing... but didn't end up buying very much... partially because, honestly, I didn't know what the fuck I wanted this week and because the weather can't make up it's damn mind about the weather right now.

Oh, yeah, I should also mention... you know how they "came and fixed to roof"... because of leaks. Yeah, it rained really fucking heavily on Friday afternoon... and, you guessed it, the ceiling/roof leaked again. So they didn't fix shit. But I also don't actually need to care about it for all that much longer. After that it becomes my favourite kind of problem... Somebody Else's Problem.

Anyway, we came back here, I gave Ma a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to just throw away... we watched a weird movie on TV, and then she headed home.

So, there's that about that.

Anyway... think nice thoughts in my general direction please. Think apartment thoughts, think successful thoughts, just think me being able to talk my way into what I want kinda thoughts. Or, you know, not... I'm not the boss of you.

Current mood:

movies: encanto

Well... Encanto...

This was a movie I... didn't see coming. I mean, I knew that it was a movie and I knew that it was coming out, and I'd heard good things. But I had no idea what the hell this movie was. Because I don't do trailers anymore, and I prefer going into a movie knowing nothing about it.

And thus, we have situations like Encanto. Where knowing nothing about a movie let's it hit me like a ten-ton truck.

If you haven't seen anything about the movie, but generally like Disney movies, I'd say, go and see it.

Encanto is another Disney movie in an developing list that takes on a different culture and sets it's story deep within that culture. See also Raya and Moana. 

But this feels more successful than either of those, even though I liked Moana very much. And like Moana, this movie has a number of Lin-Manuel Miranda songs throughout, but more on that later.

At it's core though, Encanto is the story of a family. And what that means, both for good and for bad. It's a very special extended family with a set of gifts, but a family none-the-less. The interesting part comes in because it's a Latinx family, who live in a wonderful house, in a non-specific timeframe, in an isolated rural village location in Columbia. It's also great that the movie's cast is predominantly Latinx and a number of them also reprised their roles in the Spanish language dub of the movie, which is nice.

But maybe 90% of the movie takes place in, or very close to that house. They also manage to give the house something of a personality or at least set it apart from other... magical buildings. Plus there are only a handful of other characters with speaking roles or who affect the plot in any significant way.

The movie is visually... lush. There honestly isn't any other word for how beautiful this movie looks. I know that's generally my go-to description of any new Disney animated movie, but this one is set in a colourful house in a jungle location with flowers and bright costumes and magic and colours everywhere.

The movement of the characters, especially when people move to the music without seemingly meaning to or just dance, are beautiful. They're fluid and have weight and feel real. 

It also has some great songs, one of which, "Surface Pressure" is my favourite of the movie, and something of an earworm that has been bouncing around in my head since... well, not since last night, because I watched it again this morning, but it's certainly catchy.

However... here we get to one of a couple of very minor complaints that I have about the movie.

The first of which is that Lin-Manuel Miranda is amazing at writing songs that move the story along and that focus on character and emotion and what's happening in the scene. What I feel like he's pretty bad at is writing a song you can sing along to. 

None of these songs are "Be Our Guest" or "Never Had A Friend Like Me" or "Under the Sea" or "Hakuna Matata".... and not a single one of them are "I'll Make A Man Out Of You". These are lyrically dense songs that work within the confines of the movie, but I very much doubt will endure or find a life outside of the movie.

And as much as I loved the Moana soundtrack (I bought it on CD after all), there are at least a couple of songs on there that are more generically Disney songs (specifically "How Far I'll Go")... this feels like they just let him go full Lin-Manuel. Which is great, but, like I said, these songs won't endure. Or show up as karaoke songs in ten years times or be a thing you randomly quote if somebody happens to accidentally say a line from.

The other complaint is something of a... "good problem to have" I guess. I like a lot of the characters, both visually and for their part in the story... but... there may be too many of them. Because there are character who don't get enough screen time or don't get fleshed out in any significant way. And I really wish they did. 

It's better than having too few characters who don't get fleshed out, but it's still a problem. There needed to be a lot of characters to get an authentic extended family feel, I get that... but at the same time some of the characters don't get much of a personality beyond the singular character traits outlined for them in the opening number of the movie. Too much of a good thing maybe.

It feels like they came up with some great ideas for individual gifts but were loathe to lose any.

Also... beyond being nice... I'm not completely sure that our main character has a full personality. It works within the context of the movie, because we get enough about her for you to go along with her for the movie and what she has to do within it... but beyond "nice" and "the main character", her personality seems to be "wants to fix the thing that is wrong". And yes, the thing everyone wants to point out is that she's the first female protagonist in a Disney movie who wears glasses. Which is... great, I guess, but it's still not a personality. 

I really like her, don't get me wrong. But I'm damned if I can actually come up with a personality trait for her beyond "protagonist". She loves her family and she works out what's wrong at the end of the movie and why, but only because she's following a completely different plot thread and kind of stumbles on the answer by accident.

Which is fine and good and adequate for a family movie. But, on reflection, a lot of the characters are fairly thinly realised.

Like I said though, it still works for me.

I also knew where the plot was (mostly) going, from early on, but I enjoyed the journey of getting there. And it made me cry at the end. Which is really where the ten-ton truck comes in. Maybe a train is a better analogy... I saw it coming on the tracks, I didn't want to get out of the way, and it ran completely over me.

yani's rating: 4 butterflies out of 5

2022

2022... which, if you say it out loud, sounds like 2020 II... or the second 2020. And, honestly, nobody wants any of that.

This year is not only the International Year of Glass, as exemplified by the above image... looking through glass windows to see glass windows, also tastefully naked blonde man. But this year is also the year of both Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Mountain Development.

We'll get onto New Years Eve in a second, but because today is ALSO a Saturday, I need to do a real quick roundup first. Because screw this holiday season and things falling on Saturdays.

The only real points of interest were that on Monday I lost my mind slightly and started finding the boxes I had stored away for various bits of tchotchkes, pulled them all out, put things in boxes and filled the kitchen table with them. So... that's the start of that.

Thursday was both Supermarket Saturday and DnD Friday, while also being Thursday. So first up was the Supermarket with Ma... and it was much, much quieter than last week's shopping. Then DnD Night was... more talking. And making plans. And trying to convince a polar bear that he shouldn't be keeping secrets from us. And investigating a story thread that I probably should have looked into months ago, but didn't. And getting a spooky omen from the Frostmaiden herself.

Which brings us around to New Years Eve.

Now, normally my New Years Eve is the exact same shit as the year before and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that. And this year was... 90% that. But not.

So, I tidied the house as best I could with boxes spread over multiple surfaces, change my bedding from garish red and green to calm black and white, rotated the mattress, because otherwise I forget to do it, so once a year at the very least seems like a good idea. And then Fluffy came down in the evening.

Which means, instead of just sitting around on my own watching movies, I sat around with Fluffy and watched movies. Which is the 10% from the above.

We started off with a classic, How To Steal A Million, which I love, and which Fluffy had never seen... then we watched Encanto... and that is absolutely getting a review later. The funny thing was that mid way through the movie Fluffy's laptop, which we were using to play the movie onto my TV just rebooted itself and decided that it needed to take about half an hour to do a Windows update. Because that really needed to happen right then and there and couldn't have waited a couple of hours or until he shut the laptop down. So we ended up watching a chunk of Dirty Dancing, which, I realised, I'd never seen all the way through, although I'm familiar with the story.

But it eventually sorted itself out, we finished the movie, I big-cried (but not as far as ugly cry, but it was touch and go for a second there) and we then spent a good portion of time analysing the shit out of it.

And... for some reason, Channel 9 had decided to play You Can't Stop The Music starting at like 10:30pm rather than midnight. So we left that on for a bit before Fluffy started losing the will to live. So then it was back to YouTube to look up Encanto songs until midnight.

Then once we heard the fireworks, we wished each other a Happy New Year... and I drove him home LOL. Had things been slightly different, I might have thrown another old movie on, but, overall it was a nice night. Something different enough at any rate.

And then I came home, and was going to go to bed, but went to shut the laptop down and ended up messaging back and forth with Owlgirl for about half an hour. So that was nice.

Of course, then the first news I saw this morning when I woke up was the fact that Betty White had passed away at the age of 99, a couple of weeks before her 100th birthday. But that technically counts as a 2021 problem. Safe journeys Betty... thanks for you know... and also, for sticking around for so long.

Okay, bring it on 2022. I may not be ready or prepared, but... actually I don't know how that sentence ends... but, we'll get there.

Current mood: