photo saturday: weird little guys

We can't forget paste-ups and stickers in the grand pantheon of street art. So, some weird little green buddies for today.

Anyway...

A relatively short one for today.

No Thursday Night DnD.

Friday was Chiro Day... which also included my monthly Wandering Around Looking At Things. This time that mostly meant taking photos of things in bookstores that

Friday Night Not DnD was good... I do enjoy that in the absence of actual roleplay or whatnot, we've basically started using what little story there is and making up our own story. Or, you know, mostly just amusing ourselves.

Anyway...

I think we've finally hit that break point between "Argh Summer" and "Oooh Autumn", so I bought soup ingredients today.

Woo.

And that was it really.

Like I said, a short one.

Current mood:

photo saturday: post-birthday lady walls

Some more walls. Surprising nobody.

Interestingly, these were more or less the first (on the left) and last (on the right) shots I took last week.

Also, two examples of the importance of having lighting in the right place when it comes to street art photos. But also, not wanting to spend a whole day waiting for the light to move around.

Anyway...

This week was my birthday. Obviously. But we covered that already.

There wasn't any Thursday Night DnD this week... because people were sick and we're at a Very Important Point of getting to the beginning of the story... so... we skipped this week.

Friday Night Not DnD was good... once again, we have a system down, so we're not getting hammered as much as we were in the earlier levels. I assume the game will take it's revenge soon enough.

It was also my Friday Night Birthday... so presents were had and tiny cupcakes were eaten.

Anyway....

Today was a non-zero amount of the supermarket, looking at very old recipe books and then taking a trip to Spotlight for reasons. Not thrilling, but perfectly fine.

So, a short one this week. Which is also perfectly fine.

Current mood:

it's my (49th) birthday

The downside to this whole "famous person who shares your birthday thing" is that eventually, if we're not counting Instagram and TikTok "stars", you run out of actual famous people. So we took a left this year. More on that in a second.

Today was... actually a pretty okay birthday. I mean, it wasn't exciting or flashy or involved, but it was okay.

I started off by getting woken up from a call from Ma, who would normally text, but for reasons best known to her, called me instead.

Then I headed down the road to go buy some wireless headphones as my birthday present. Also, can I just do an "old man yells at cloud" about the fact that things don't come with instructions anymore. I mean, if I can't do that on my birthday, when can I do it? Things should come with, at the least, basic instructions. But I worked the headphones out eventually.

I then used said headphones to walk to the shops and felt very Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century. Yeah, there's a dated reference. I had to go to the shops in order to get my free Birthday Boost and my free Birthday Scone and also, you know, some actual lunch.

So, you know, like I said, not exciting, but I like free things and I like it when retail people wish me Happy Birthday on my actual birthday.

This year's image is Nicky Doll (aka Karl Sanchez), a French drag queen and RuPaul's Drag Race alumni as well as being the host of Drag Race France since 2022.

Happy Birthday Nicky (also Karl). You're the latest addition to the list of famous faces who share my birthday... including, three-time featured Jamie Bell, Johan Paulik, Taylor Hanson, Michael Caine, Chris Klein, Albert Einstein, Corey Stoll, Daniel Gillies, Ansel Elgort, Demetrius Joyette, Stephen Curry, Antoni Porowski and Johnny Flynn.

Current mood:

photo saturday: wonderwalls pre-birthday saturday

Hey, look. It's that thing where I go places and take photographs. Remember when that was a thing. Yeah. We're having a brief resurgence.

Because last week was the Wonderwalls Street Art event down at Port Adelaide, and the last one I went to was 2019.

This was also one of my favorite pieces by artists PichiAvo. Their whole vibe is taking classical sculpture images against colourful words. Would it have been better if I had lined the shots up so that the arm went across properly? Sure. Didn't happen though.

But more on Wonderwalls later.

Anyway...

Next up, some Sofles yellow and purple art.

All behold, It is My Birthday Week. Because that's three days before my birthday, then my birthday on Tuesday, then three days after my birthday. Which brings us to next Friday. Mark your calendars appropriately.

Of course, having said that, do I actually care one fuck about my birthday this year? No, no I do not. Will I care next year when it's a birthday ending in a zero? Who can say. We'll see when we get there.

I've now read more books than I read in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022. So there's that.

Otherwise Thursday Night DnD was good. We were down a player, and the whole session ended up being about finding that player before he got married to a banshee bride. And, you know, also drawing under an off-hand joke I made several sessions ago about started a rumour in the tavern that said player was getting married.

Maybe next week we can get to the start of the actual hardcover adventure we're intending to play.

Friday Night Not DnD was also good. We almost got the bad guy for this level, but he teleported away at the last second, which is annoying. And then afterwards, as generally happens when we're all a little overtired and overstimulated, we played what should have been some very chill Love Letter and lost our minds several times.

Also I won. Because that's important to note.

Anyway...

This is my second favourite. this absolutely amazing piece by Smug One featuring Hot Boy and Squeezed Plums. Yes. Please. Although the sun was completely in the wrong position to get decent shots, but that happens a lot of the time with the Wonderwalls stuff. Either you need a completely overcast day, when your sky is just blah, or you need to pick your times based on the direction of the wall.

I paired this with a nice case of Urban. Because why not.

Today was... well, you've basically seen a bunch of today.

We did the supermarket. I want it to be soup season already please, I'm bored with deciding what to make for dinner. Although this week I did make a mostly average tuna morney. Edible, but not exciting.

Then we bundled into the car and, detouring through town in a way we don't normally detour through town, we drove all the way down to Port Adelaide.

I'd done some internet sleuthing, so I knew both that there were only about eight new Wonderwalls pieces around, but also that there were pieces from all the years we missed (well, when they actually did it). Also, annoyingly, the map I was looking at online wasn't as good as the printed map we found... after we'd finished and were having lunch. [le sigh]

But we did a bunch of short car hops going from place to place, rather than traipsing from one end of the Port to the other. And found everything I wanted to find. Would it have been better if we'd remembered to bring hats. Probably. But we did okay.

And when we'd done the whole look, we went back to where we'd started to have lunch at a little place called Swedish Tarts Cafe. Where they have, no surprise, Swedish tarts. But we had a pleasant lunch, bought some tarts to take away and split when we got back to my place, and then bundled back into the car and drove all the way back here.

So, a different Saturday. And I'll have photos for at least two or three weeks.

Current mood:

photo saturday: swamp witch

Putting the NPC idea on hold for now, as I'm not really super happy with any of the other ones I've made... so instead we've got what happens when I dig into a certain idea for DnD Character Colouring Book.

And that idea being, basically, a swamp witch.

So, combining the half-hag Hexblood with the mould and fungus themed Spores Druid. I've tried making Hexbloods before, but never quite got their "eldercross" correct, especially given that the book description of a "living, garland-like part of a hexblood’s body extends from their temples and wraps behind the head" doesn't actually vibe with the official art that we have, where the eldercross extends from the back of their head and wraps in front of the head.

But I finally found a Hero Forge set of horns that fit the bill of the text description.

I also realised that Verna has basically a bad but happy Irish Mrs Doubtfire accent (because all of my attempts at an Irish accent end up bad) on Friday after listening to a podcast featuring Irish people talking.

Yes, I'm still obsessed with this particular skirt, which also featured in the last two weeks. At some point they're going to give it a makeover, and I just hope it still looks as good. Once again though, I still love combining the overskirt with different overshirts giving the whole thing a different look.

Also yes, that Crawling Claw familiar is one that I've featured the last time I tried a Hexblood. Why reinvent the wheel when you already did the thing back in January last year.

So, Verna goes on the list of "backup characters that will probably never see the light of day".

Anyway...

As of last Friday, I have now read the same number of books since January that I read in the whole of 2022. So that's a thing that happened.

Fast forward through to Thursday. Specifically Thursday Night DnD.

After everybody being a little punchy last week, we had a brief clearing of the air at the start of this game, which was good. I mean, I didn't say everything I may have originally wanted to say, because some of it actually didn't need to be said. But it was good that we got there.

We've also, basically, found our way to the very outskirts of the beginning of the adventure we're supposed to be playing. Because we've actually been off the map the entire time thus far. I mean, we still need to get to the starting city next week, but we're nearly there.

Friday Night Not DnD was good. I mean, it started off when we were sure it was going to be a total TPK, given that we started off with no gear and I opened the This Is Where All The Enemies Are door before we found said gear. We did make it through however. Although my elf very nearly died.

I think I've said this before, but it's amazing to me how different each "level" of this game feel, given that it's always the exact same floor layout, it's just the door locations and rooms that change.

It was also a shorter level, so we ended up playing Dungeon Mayhem afterwards. And the issue with coming out hard in the first game and taking another player out and then winning is that you then have a giant target on your back for the rest of the games. I won one and basically got knocked out either first or second in every other game.

Anyway...

Today was basically just the supermarket.

Next week should, weather permitting, be slightly more interesting.

Current mood: