two thousand and twenty three in review

Here we are... we made it all the way to the last day of 2023. Well done us.

This year started out with me having tweaked my back, and having gotten a library card again for the first time in two decades... so, suffice to say, reading featured really heavily in my overall year initially because I could do it while laying down, but later because I just kept going. But that's getting it's own post later.

Also, brief sidebar... Australia Post have started doing weird things to the images of the stamps they put online (understandable, I guess)... so that's less fun. I might need to revisit the whole stamp idea come the end of next year. Because that's not aesthetic.

After skimming through a year's worth of blog posts, there wasn't a huge amount of anything hugely exciting. So you'll have to deal with the stuff that did stand out to me. 

Also, my life is mostly boring... but the 35 of you who seem to stick around must enjoy it or something. Hi, but the way... thanks for being here. Otherwise I'm just basically prattling on into the void for my own amusement. And so that when I have a "when did that thing happen in my life", I can come here and look it up.

So... like I was saying... prattling into the void.

January: I finished the Friday Night DnD campaign I was running. We played Hero Quest as a breather between my campaign and the next campaign.

February: I started walking in the mornings again (I did extend the walk at some point, I can't find a post about it). I got to meet Baby Owlgirl. I got my fifth booster shot.

March: We went down to Port Adelaide to see Wonderwalls street art. Also, birthday. I ended the month with a rental inspection.

April: I started playing Horizon Forbidden West (sadly my PS4 is old and annoying and I haven't been able to finish it). Ma wasn't well. I reset the Fall Down Go Boom counter.

May: We finished the short Friday Night Hero Quest campaign and started a new DnD campaign.

June: Ma's birthday and a movie. I bought (big monster feet) slippers and an enormous fleece-lined, knee-length hoodie, amongst the best decisions I made all year.

July: We're counting this as the point that my back finally started to be officially on the mend after six months of giving me (a lot of) trouble. Another inspection.

August: I got to hold a very small baby through a whole game of DnD. What? Not a lot else happened.

September: I started learning to crochet, although was keeping it on the down-low. Which turned into The Secret Project. I got my sixth booster shot the same week.

October: Fluffy went on his Grand Adventure for three weeks. I missed his stupid face. There was too much Going To See Doctors And Getting Tests Done.

November: I updated my blog template again. I finished the Secret Project, but wasn't able to reveal it until after Christmas. I accidentally broke my "gentleman drought". Fluffy came home again.

December: Friday Night DnD became Friday Night Board Game Christmas. I got to reveal the Secret Project, finally. Christmas happened and was the coldest Christmas in 17 years.

And... that's a wrap.

photo saturday: adventing 2023, part four

The last full week of the 2023 Hero Forge Advent Calendar brings with it a white and gold theme... because it felt appropriately festive... and I kind of did some red and green at the beginning of the month.

I do have some thoughts and feelings about the offerings for this week. Firstly, as interesting as "damaged" items are, I do wish they would also add "undamaged" versions at the same time. Because they added a simpler version of the ornate metal-bound round shield, so it's not like they're not thinking about it.

Also, a little like previous years, the catfolk head is standing in for a much wider array of cat themed items from Christmas Day... hence the "Oops, All Cats" label.

I realised that I hadn't actually been doing the Current Item Count vs Item's I'd actually use like I did last year... so let's sum up real quick...

• Current item count: 30 + some duplicates between hand held and worn or base items, plus 6 cat related creatures.
• Current item's I'd actually use count: 14 plus potential cat related things.

So, about half, which isn't bad. But we were at more overall items this time last year somehow. I don't remember how I did the math on that last year though, so, who knows.

Of this week, I feel like it's mostly going to be the boots and the simpler version of the metal-bound shield. There are two more days to go (because we're a day in front of the US), but I don't know what I'm going to do with those, it depends on what they end up being I guess.

Also, we never got hair this year. But I would take new hair over a shield any day of the week.

Anyway.

Christmas happened.

I've said it before and I will continue to say it until the Heat Death of the Universe. The week between Christmas and New Year is weird for many, many, many reasons. Not least of all because I somehow end up eating very random things... or basically just consuming Christmas left overs in various forms. This week was basically leftover Christmas salad reheated with an egg thrown in and vaguely scrambled in it on Tuesday, and then potato salad and leftover turkey and sausage meat for the rest of the week.

I also did some work on End of Year posts, or at least started the process on them. Including the Secret Project Blanket post. And started plotting my Rainbow Hexagon Cardigan Project. More on that in the New Year. Because while I only have two days left, I very much have to resist the urge to just start it immediately.

And I managed to find my way into a potential trio of characters for the Planescape adventure Fluffy aims to run... actually probably not before mid 2025 at this point. So a lot of things could change before then. It's more important that I found my way into an idea rather than the actual idea. I have no doubt the details will change between now and then, but the framework will serve me well regardless. And if it never actually happens because something far more interesting comes along (also very likely), then they'll just join the giant pile of discarded ideas that have come and gone.

Friday Night DnD can be filed under "The Flaming Feathers Detective Agency Solve The Case of the Bloody Toebeans"... because when DM Mrs waves a murder mystery under our noses and my character rolls two Nat 20's to investigate the murder scene... we get all Sherlock/Poirot up in this biz.

Also, I was already convinced we were dealing with a murderer who shapeshifted into a cat, but we confirmed it this week.

We were also all a little bit crazed. In the best possible way.

Anyway...

Today was something of a Post Christmas Shopping Fail...

But the supermarket portion of the morning was fine.

It was more when we went to see if there was any leftover Christmas products at Haighs and took a trip to Target to see if the shorts I wanted were on sale.

Turns out that Haighs totally cleared out all of their Christmas products as soon as Christmas was over... assuming that they did just sell out before Christmas (which is plausible I guess). And it turned out that the vibe for shorts in general this year, at Target anyway, is elasticated waists... and... no, I don't think so. Also, the Target that we went to is kinda tiny and it did look a little like the locusts had been through and literally stripped shelves completely bare.

So that was that about that.

crochet: secret granny square blanket project

Remember those [clandestine references to secret project] that started showing up in mid September?

Yep, I learned how to crochet and made a whole blanket. As a Christmas gift for Fluffy (who reads the blog on occasion, hence the mystery).

It started out, as many things do, with a YouTube recommendation. I like watching people make things. The "thing" itself doesn't matter all that much, I just like to see the process of somebody making a thing. Or occasionally completely fail to make a thing, but schadenfreude exists.

I'd also looked up some crochet tutorials for Ma at certain points. So these two things combined in the middle of August when YouTube sent me in the direction of Michelle Jasek, crochet enthusiast, thrifter and all around late 70's, early 80's viber. And her whole yellow, orange and brown aesthetic is very much Fluffy's vibe.

Because Fluffy is, definitively, an Autumn.

But I watched a number of Jasek's videos, and the idea of crochet kind of got under my skin.

Weirdly though, it's one of those things that I've watched videos about and it just looked like literal witchcraft to me. Those tutorials for Ma... yeah, I watched those and went "WTF... and also, how?". I also thought, well, it can't be THAT hard. And Ma knows how to do it.

So, on September 9, after shopping, she taught me how.

I'd asked Ma to teach me how to do a thing... which, you know, is both dangerous and turnabout is, in fact, fair play. It went... about as well as I expected it to go initially, which is completely badly, and rather than being frustrated, I kind of lost my mind a tiny bit.

But I kinda got it. And then I didn't... and then I really didn't... and it was a very amusing disaster.

And then we went to Spotlight and bought things so it can be a disaster later. Or I can practice it being less of a disaster. I don't know.

Which is very true. I couldn't get my head around it at first. But it was also hilarious instead of frustrating, which was good. When we went to Spotlight I found what I've come to call "Swamp Trash" yarn (it's actually, I discovered later, Red Heart Super Saver Yarn in the colour "Fall"). And the plan started to form to make A Thing For Fluffy. With "blanket" being the top contender.

It didn't start out... spectacularly. After Ma left, I messed around a little, just trying to get the feel of things without having to actually worry about making anything that was, you know, functional. It was more getting my brain and my hands used to the movements and how to hold the yarn and all of that.

They're very... "freeform expressionist crochet".

The upside is that you can just pull on the yarn and unravel (or, as I learned, "frog", which is an unofficial term that comes from the idea of "ribbit" and "rip it" sounding similar) the whole thing and start over.

I will say, if I knew then what I know now, I would have played around with different yarn, because this stuff was the hardest to work with of all the yarn I used.

That Sunday I tried a little swatch of single crochet and ended up with the wonky ass thing on the left... then found a tutorial on Moss Stitch, which is really beautiful. But as my very first project, and with that particular yarn... not great. Not terrible, but I think there are only about three places where the Moss Stitch actually looks like it's supposed to.

That ended up getting frogged eventually too, because I needed the yarn.

But by then I had other yarn and started looking up actual tutorials, which lead me to this Bella Coco tutorial on granny squares. Ma had attempted to get me to granny squares in our initial training session, but it was too much too soon, but the tutorial walked me there.

The very first attempt is on the left. After I did that one, I watched a couple of other tutorials and refined my technique, so on September 17 I set up a spreadsheet, and started on the first of what would be a LOT of granny squares.

It took a while before I got my eye in. I did the first dozen in the yellow before switching over to the Swamp Trash yarn, then switching back to the yellow. On the right up there is one of my original squares at the bottom and one of the last yellow squares I made once I knew what I was doing at the top. There's a mild size discrepancy... that comes into play later.

But I had a plan... well, technically I had six plans and a couple of possible plans...

Because what's better than working out how you're going to arrange your solid colour granny squares than a Google docs spreadsheet.

Once again, in a perfect world, and if I knew then what I know now, I might have done The X, but I don't know if the actual blanket would have had the same slight optical illusion to it that the plan has. I also really liked the randomness of The Random. Which I know isn't completely random, but I like it anyway.

Of course, in a perfect world, I would have used a slightly smaller hook size and also made a 12 by 12 blanket and not an 11 by 13... but I also was limited by the amount of Swamp Trash yarn and I also wanted a "centre square" to the pattern.

There were a variation of The Flow and The Stripe where two colours went left to right and the other two colours went right to left. But I never liked those as much.

So, by that point I had five different colours of yarn. I did consider doing squares in the final grey colour, but decided that it would look better if they were fastened together with it.

I also got a lot faster as time went on. My first two squares took about 75 minutes per square. By the time I finished a month later (a little over 94 consecutive hours of crochet), I was down to just under 30 minutes per square.

And I had 145 finished squares. Plus I'd also unpicked 17 of my original squares and redone them so they were the better size. I came out of that with a bag of leftover yarn ends.

There they all are. And you can very clearly see the difference in the thickness of the yarn I was using, which is what happens when you pick your yarn out of the remnants bin because it's essentially cheaper than regular yarn and comes in great big fat skeins.

I think the green was the nicest to work with. Plus that colour of green is very much my kinda green.

I started out with 400g of each yarn (because that's the way the big bags of remnant yarn comes), which amounted to four skeins each of the yellow, beige and green and three of the Swamp Trash. Because that's slightly heavier. And at the end of the granny squares I essentially had a leftover skein of the other three colours. Which makes sense.

I also had been doing, at a minimum, three squares per night. But I averaged about five. Basically, as I got better at it and it took less time, I did more per night.

By this point, I wasn't sure how I was going to fasten them together, but I had decided on The Spiral design, because if I didn't have enough of the grey yarn (spoiler alert, I didn't, it didn't matter, I got more), that was a pattern that was still a pattern but wouldn't be ruined if I skipped the last row.

I could have tried a couple of the other patterns, but, honestly, when I laid The Spiral out on my bed, I was pretty much sold. What's funny is that I didn't actually realise when I originally made it was that it's just The Diamond with the last quarter changed.

I also didn't feel completely comfortable stitching it together or doing a single crochet or doing slip stitching or any of the other common blanket joining options I kept finding.

Because there had to be a join method out there that was basically just the same thing I already knew how to do, namely, more granny clusters. And then I found Roz over at Play Hooky With Me. She had the answer I'd been looking for.

So I stared putting the blanket together. I'll be honest, for most of the first row I was back to "you know nothing Jon Snow" territory...

We started with the World's Most Tragic Scarf (above right)...

And then it kept growing and growing and growing and growing...

It's also fun, because Fluffy is on Fluffy's Grand Adventure right now and he touches base occasionally with photos or updates... so I know that the very first row of the blanket took place while he was at Disneyland and sending me photos of it.

It took about three hours total to crochet each row of granny squares then crochet along the bottom edge to seal them all in. And after every row I would lay it out on my bed and go... "I did a thing", be vaguely impressed with myself, then fold it up and put it away for the night.

Also, it was about this time, as they say, that our intrepid hero (dat's me!) realised something... I kept looking at the colours and thinking "I really like this, they're really nice colours..." and then early one morning it occurred to me...

I was basically making a Wordle themed blanket by accident. Well, Wordle plus Swamp Trash.

Which, honestly, it's not the worst thing in the world, because Fluffy and I have been playing Wordle and messaging each other our daily results since January of 2022 (well, right up until he went travelling).

So... we'll file that under "happy little accident".

Speaking of accidents...

The day after I had finished the row in the previous set of photos, I did a whole row, got to the end, was going to join it to the previous row and saw the corner in the photo on the left. Which is bad. Because there should be two clusters in that corner, just like the outer yellow row.

Somehow I missed it and only put one in.

But I'd already attached the whole entire next row... so I thought to myself... "well, fuck... but, you know, it's fine, just attach it together and move on. So I finished the bottom of that row, laid the blanket out on the bed, looked at it and went... "oh, it'll do" and folded it up for the night.

And couldn't stop thinking about it.

Cue the following day where I did the frog thing. Because I couldn't leave it like that.

The thing about crochet, the base, fundamental thing, is that it's basically just really artistically tangled string. String that untangles really easily if you pull on a loose thread. It's literally that cartoon trope that we all remember where somebody gets their sweater caught on a nail and the entire thing unravels in seconds.

That.

So it took literal seconds to undo over three hours of work. The shot on the right is the aftermath.

Also, when I got to the end of second to last row, and went to attach a green square, I discovered that it had a small fuck up in it (I did a single stitch instead of three stitches in one of the clusters for... some unknown reason). So, I grabbed a different square, put that one aside and later that night I unpicked the last row of the green square and redid it. Because I'd come THIS far, I wasn't going to accept random fixable errors that late in the game.

The putting together phase took 14 days... or 48 consequent hours.

And that includes finishing the unfinished side and doing a second row of stitches around the whole border of the blanket to make the edge the same width as the line between squares.

Thus, after 145 consecutive hours, I had a whole-ass blanket.

I did have a moment where I looked at the finished product and said, aloud, to my empty apartment and/or the blanket... "who am I to just go and make a whole-ass blanket... who the hell do I think I am?", but, you know, in a joyfully incredulous way.

I made a blanket. A big blanket too. It's not quite the same size as my Queen size quilt, but it's not far off. It's maybe somewhere between Double and Queen sized. And it looks damn good.

There's a couple of small errors, but nothing egregious. I'm also really happy with the results. And because I'm writing this up the day after I finished it (3 November), I now have to wait until Board Game Christmas before I can give it to him.

And I have to find another project...

[Post Christmas Update]

It was a great success. And I worked on presents for other people too including amigurumi octopuses, a dice bag, cat toys, stress toys and a pair of earrings. Which were all also great successes.

And my next major project is going to be a cardigan for me, which I got a whole lot of yarn for at Christmas.

post christmas round-up 2023

Rain on Christmas? Clouds and cold weather?

Yeah... "Adelaide recorded its coldest Christmas Day since 2006 (17.9 degrees recorded at the Kent Town observation site)". Although I do love how difficult it is to find any reliable reporting on the temperature at Christmas, other than the Bureau of Meteorology, because media outlets are always screaming about it being the hottest, coldest, wettest, cloudiest, humidest, blah di blah di blah Christmas since [insert random year].

But otherwise, it was actually a pretty good day overall. I both didn't take a lot of photos, and the photos I did take weren't what we would consider my best work, so I did find this great retro pin-up Caducado piece that can serve in place of the usual Christmas tree photo (also, we've kind of stopped doing full on Christmas tree-ness, but Ma does have little tiny trees that she can take down without assistance come January.

I didn't do anything particular festive last night... I made pizza, which fulfilled my Christmas Eve Pizza requirements, packed up some stuff that I was taking to Ma's place but that was about it.

This morning I did my morning walk. And it was odd, because I only started doing this again in January (and mentioned it briefly at the start of February), so it was interesting doing the Christmas Morning Walk, which I haven't done since the old days of North Adelaide. There are always a couple of folks out and about, although I did see more folks out walking their dogs (we get a lot of that in Norwood) when I was driving to Ma's.

Anyway, I got back, got ready and, as I said, headed down the road and got to Ma's shortly after 9.

Note to self: If we buy croissants a day early, check if they're in those bags that are designed to not make bread products go soft. Because that's great for certain things, but not for croissants. But the insides were mostly good.

So, yeah, our usual croissant breakfast. After I pre-breakfasted on some of the ham hearts Ma was literally pulling out of the oven when I got there.

The weird thing is, because we do basically the same thing every year, and, honestly, not much of anything really happens, I always end up not really remembering the order in which we did anything.

I think we did presents next.

So, we have...

• Yarn in 7 colours (you know, basically a jewel-tone rainbow) plus black for my 2024 Hexagon Granny Square Cardigan project (there's also more black yarn not shown)
  
• Dice Advent Calendar (from Mr and Mrs)
• Haighs Milk Chocolate Baubles (from Mr and Mrs)
• The 99% Invisible City book (from Fluffy)
• Pink and Orange Skull Dice (from Fluffy)
• Saga, Volume 11
• Lego + Disney 100 Wicked Queen and Robin Hood minifigs
  
• Bundaberg Christmas Spiced Ginger Beer
• Chocolate Crackle Candle
• Black Body Pillowcase
• Mossimo Mens Canvas Slip-On Shoes (not shown... I forgot to put them in shot)

See what I mean... I forgot to put shoes in the shot... and I only realised afterwards that I had put the Dice Advent Calendar down upside down.

I was also pleased with my Lego + Disney minifigs... especially given that they were the last two in the box when we bought them. Would it have been perfect if I'd gotten Cruella, Stitch or Baymax? Yes, but at least I got my Wicked Queen.

I'd also brought my laptop up to Ma's, so at a certain point I hooked it up to Ma's TV (which she can't do with her laptop because it's a little old and crusty) and just stuck some Christmas Lofi on while we did other things.

There was a hiccup when we went out to light the Webber. Well, more so when we went out to check on it after lighting it. Because of the wind, it wasn't catching the way it needed to and the coals weren't heating up like they needed to.

So, we basically gave up on that, came inside and cranked up the oven. Thankfully it was, as previously discussed, the coldest Christmas Day in 17 years, so that wasn't really an issue.

It was also slightly odd... because we only do this whole thing once a year, it's kind of easier to track the changes to our routine... and this year, I ended up doing a lot of the cooking and organising and prepping and whatnot. Which let Ma relax. In previous years we've mostly been sharing it all, but I just got on with it.

And for the most part, shoving it all in the oven worked out. It was a little more crowded, and I probably didn't need to microwave the potatoes first since they were in the oven the whole time (they were fine, just a little too crispy).

While things were cooking, I put on the Scrooge musical that I'd watched last year, because it's colour and movement and takes up time and is still pretty good. It also meant that I could walk away from it to do Christmas Lunch prep and not actually be missing anything.

I did swap back to Christmas Lofi Beats when we were eating dinner though.

And, like I said, other than slightly overly crispy potatoes, it was pretty well done. I mean, it isn't going to the top of the list of our Christmas Salads, but it was tasty.

It also really doesn't matter how early we try to get organised or how early we intend to have Christmas Lunch... it always ends up being about 2:30.

Then we finished lunch, we finished Scrooge and then tidied up from lunch. And I threw together some Eton Mess, as we usually do.

We continued in the Christmas Carol vein with A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong (also on YouTube), which is always fun.

Then we packed up my stuff and the leftover food I was taking home and I toddled off home... and it rained most of the way home. And by rain, it wasn't exactly bucketing down.

So... that's it for Christmas 2023.

photo saturday: adventing 2023, part three

It's odd how these colour stories come together. Week Three of the Hero Forge Advent Calendar took on a very brown and purple vibe. And we can mostly blame the Nautilus Spear for that one. Because, of course I was going to do purple tentacles. That was one of the items that was definitely better in the silhouette and/or my imagination... it's a little... clunky.

I will say that I quite like the axe, the corset top will probably see some use, but the folding fan! I've already redone my pain themed cleric, Whipmaster Demyan. Because as much as I liked the shield and whip combo, and he did in fact carry a whip in game, he also very much carried a fan. Because in one of the early games I played him in, the aircon at the gaming store was... questionable at best, so I brought a fan in with me for my own comfort, which then became my go-to Demyan prop.

But he'll probably be showing up as a Character Colouring Book in January.

Anyway...

This has felt like a very long week. Mostly because at the end of it (last night) was Friday Night D&D Board Game Christmas. And the final reveal of The Secret Project.

But I started off with a much better quiche for this week. My biggest hurdle right now is trying to cut the thing into 5 roughly even pieces.

On Tuesday I wrapped presents. And was very thankful that I'd completely incidentally watched a couple of videos about wrapping presents in the last week or so. Which meant, when I cut the wrapping paper too small for the giant box I had to wrap, I didn't freak out, I just turned the paper about 45 degrees and did probably a 7 out of 10 on the wrapping, because the sides were not even and the paper was a little loose in spots, but I got there. It looked reasonable. And when you mostly have a random pattern on the paper with no stripes or directional details, it definitely helps.

Wednesday I made Rocky Road. Only the one. But then, of course, it turned out that the container I used was almost the size of the two disposable foil trays I've used in the past. Or it took up about the same amount of space in the fridge.

Thursday was a new Christmas recipe... Christmas Crack from my favourite internet baker, B Dylan Hollis (other cracks are available). And, honestly, my most successful attempt at something from his cookbook (The #1 New York Times Bestselling Cookbook Baking Yesteryear) to date. It was wildly successful. And super easy.

Friday started out with trips to two different libraries, because I noticed one of the new books that I had on hold was just casually sitting on a shelf at the library near my old house. So I jumped in the car, headed down the road, snatched it up and came back to hit up my library for the second time this week (I'd run out of books on Thursday and things were waiting for me, but then something else came in on Friday, and given they'll be closed for part of next week, I headed off to get it.

I'll fully admit that I've spent all week in a state of... anticipation, I guess. Because, as I said, yesterday was FNDnDBGC, but I only really realised what I was feeling and why on Friday morning. Because giving people presents is part of my love language (along with Physical Touch... honestly, looking at the five love language options, are there any  of those that aren't at least partially me... hmmm... maybe not Acts of Service) and it's been a hot minute since I've been able to actually have present people with... well, presents. And I was kind of riding that high especially on Thursday and Friday.

Also, any day I can emotionally torture Fluffy is a good day. Because I'm evil.

I also hid the giant box in the boot of the car so that he only saw it when we got to Mr and Mrs' place. 

[evil grin]

And of course, I made sure I went last. Because DUR. I will mention it again later, but I'm very excited by the copy of The 99% Invisible City Fluffy got for me after I introduced him to the podcast this year. Or, rather, he finally paid attention to me after recommending it to him about five other times. It will definitely be one of my first reads of 2024.

But I finally got to reveal what was behind all those [clandestine reference to ongoing secret project] mentions. I learned to crochet and made Fluffy a big granny square blanket. There will be a whole post on it, probably in the week between Christmas and New Year, but soon anyway. And not to toot my own horn, but I did good. And I know that by the number of times he said "how dare you" to me when we left and were headed back to the car.

[does Snoopy Happy Dance for an extended period of time]

I also made a dice bag for Mrs, an Emotional Support Mind Flayer (basically an octopus, but he's planning on running a DnD adventure for us that has a lot of mind flayers in it, so it seemed appropriate), plus small things for the twins and also cat toys for the cats. Basically, many crocheted things.

[contented sigh]

And then what better to get us all in the mood for Christmas than a nice game of Mansions of Madness that was very "big snek energy" coded. Or, to use the appropriate Lovecraft reference, very "Yig". Which we absolutely should have won, but lost one turn before victory, even though we had all four idols, had prevented a bunch of folks from turning into big snek monsters. But sadly, we did not and now all our investigators are also snek monsters.

Pour one out for "Ashcan" Pete the Drifter, Ursula Downs the Explorer, Rita Young the Athlete and Diana Stanley the Redeemed Cultist.

Doubly so because we finished up at 1am. It was a good night though.

Anyway...

Fuck the supermarket on the Saturday before Christmas. Because we do this on Saturday every week... you're just taking up space and getting in everyone's way. And, for the record, deciding to go first thing when the supermarket opens is... the exact same idea that everybody else has had, so maybe stay home, go later.

Actually, it wasn't that bad. I mean, the deli counter and the fruit and veg section was a shitshow and there were people taking up space everywhere, but I think we managed to time it a little between People Who Showed Up When The Store Opened and People Who Showed Up Later To Avoid Those People.

We didn't do anything else, because, no, absolutely not. Y'all lose your tiny minds the weekend before Christmas, doubly so when Christmas is directly after that weekend. So, no shops for us.

That it.

movies: the boy and the heron

It's been just under a decade since the last Studio Ghibli movie by Hayao Miyazaki came out... The Wind Rises... which I never fully reviewed because I fell asleep part way through (I still maintain that was because I was in the early stages of a massive ear infection). Good times.

But that does bring me around, quite nicely, to the new one... The Boy and the Heron... because, I'll be honest, it's been a little over three hours since I got out of the movie, and the whole thing still feels a little bit like an extended fever dream. Whether that was my fever dream or Miyazaki's I'm not entirely sure.

Which, in this case, isn't a bad thing. It's just a very, very, very strange movie. And not really what I was expecting.

Firstly though, as one would fully expect, it is stunningly beautiful. And there is a lot of animation, especially at the beginning, that feels a little different to previous Ghibli and Miyazaki's movies. It does kind of revert to the animation style we all know and love by the end, which I don't have an issue with, but seeing something new definitely caught my eye.

Completely by accident, we went to see the subtitled version rather than the dubbed version (so none of the names on the poster are remotely relevant), but it's not a dialogue heavy movie anyway, which was good.

It's just so incredibly... strange. The official blurb calls is "semi-autobiographical fantasy", but, honestly, when was a Miyazaki movie not semi-autobiographical in some way. And I can very much see the parts that would fit the bill here. But the rest of it, like I said, feels like some sort of bird related fever dream.

Also, a lot of the character motivations are muddy at best. There are certain things that our lead character of Mahito does that I don't completely understand the reasons for, or, I have theories, but the movie doesn't confirm or deny them. Likewise with his aunt who is also his new stepmother (the internet tells me that that's called levirate marriage, but it also doesn't seem to be something that is widely done in modern Japan). But the issue is that... I didn't like his aunt/stepmother very much, she seemed a little odd/pushy, and I actually thought she might be the villain of the piece. Turns out no. But I also wasn't emotionally invested in her when she became important to the plot.

Honestly though, everybody could have done with having a little more motivation and a little more of their character explored.

Favourite character? Kiriko, absolutely.

Also, without spoiling anything... there's a lot of birds in this movie. Like, a lot. Anyone who has issues with birds should be fully warned.

There are also moments that feel very much like they were drawing inspiration or paying homage to some of Miyazaki's previous movies or Ghibli movies in general. But, again, that might just be because he and the studio have a visual style that they stick to, so things just look like My Neighbour Totoro or The Wind Rises or even Ponyo... but the Ghibliness of things like Arrietty also shine through.

Don't get me wrong though, none of this adds up to a bad movie. An incredibly confusing one at times, yes... bad, no. Did it also make me succumb to "just resting my eyes for a few moments" more than once? Absolutely... but they're very slow and hypnotic movies, so that's just a thing that's going to happen. Did it manage to stick the landing, which other Ghibli movies have sometimes failed to do? Yes, it did.

Do I want to see it again? Absolutely. Possibly the dubbed version, because I just want to see how they're different. And maybe just unpack the movie a little more.

yani's rating: 3 pelicans out of 5

photo saturday: adventing 2023, part two

Week Two of the Hero Forge Advent Calendar... and I went a little themed for my colouring. I have to say... I am completely obsessed with Day 14's bow... because, I mean, look at it! I instantly started designing archer characters in my head for it.

Everything else... m'eh. Thankfully there's a non creepy face version of the shield. Everything else it beautifully modelled, but I'm not sure it's going to ever get used. With the possible exception of the treasure chest, but I don't use that many base items. And the twiddly corner bits I don't love.

And I'm fine with that... not everything has to be useful to me, especially when we're getting over 30 new items this month. I do have an issue with "directional shields" though. Like, I know that the arm is supposed to be bent, and that's not the case here, but you don't always want the shield covering the whole body either. But it does look a little like the shield is sniffing our friend's armpit there.

Anyway...

This week continued to be... wet.

But also occasionally humid, and just... no.

Did I also end up with what I'm called a mild case of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) because the weather was so weird at the beginning of the week. Kinda.

I also learned not to put grated carrot and zucchini in my quiche recipe. Not good. Although, weirdly, it was better in the days after than it was on Monday when I actually made it. Still not great... but better.

We called Time of Death on Thursday Night DnD for 2023 for this week. People were busy, people were sick, and it probably would have been called off at the last minute anyway.

Friday was also my final Chiro Day for the year. And I took my Chiro a little something just because it's what I do... or have done in the past. Which she really loved, so that was nice.

Friday Night DnD was more Talking To People About Things. And Failing Upwards.

Anyway...

Today we bought too many things at the supermarket. And then we went to the movies. More on that in a second.

But yeah, that was it really.

photo saturday: adventing 2023, part one

Yes, it's that time again... when everybody is very eager to throw content at you 7 days a week, before it all goes back to normal in January. Or more specifically, the Hero Forge Advent Calendar items for 2023.

But I'm also working my way through the 2023 Q Workshop Dice Advent Calendar over on Instagram, which, slightly disappointingly, of the three versions we have between me, Fluffy and Mrs, they're all basically identical. Which is somewhat disappointing. But they're still pretty dice, so I'm not complaining that much.

Getting back to the Hero Forge of it all... this week was a lot of very large items. With varying degrees of interest to me. Basically, I'm good with the whole right side... and while I like the top and the mask, those are going to be very specific use cases. The shield also isn't terrible. But the hammer and the basket are essentially useless to me. The hammer is the latest in a very long line of "too ridiculous to even consider" weapons.

But it's a new free item every day for a month, so I'm not complaining.

Anyway...

Surprising nobody, ditching the zucchini slice in favor of quiche was the correct answer. Much, much better results.

Thursday Night DnD was... both not very much and also The Most Possible. Which is what happens when one of the players is missing and you get to talk about the revelation that was revealed about that character in the last session. And then your character confesses to their feelings for said character. And everyone at the table essentially screams "WHAT!" at you.

Those are literally the moments I live for.

Friday Night DnD... at some point we might actually interact with the actual story again and not just be caught in a travel montage. But I suspect that that may not be any time soon.

But I did suggest a possible group name, not really seriously, and it kind of derailed everyone's brains for a hot minute.

And I'll be honest, I don't even care about a party name. Firstly because we're bad at it, and also because we never come by one naturally, it's always a long walk and feels very forced.

Anyway...

 Today was.. wet.

After a week of warm weather, the rain is back today. And probably tomorrow. So it's been wet all day.

We did the supermarket thing. We weren't going to do anything else because of the weather, but it didn't seem that bad, but we ran some errands for specific items and found none of those items. We did, however, find some things that we've been looking for in other places and failing to find thus far. So, not the worst trip ever.

We did get a bit wet though.

photo saturday: good healing boy

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is a revisit of a character I made and intended to play before the wheels fell off the Universe in 2020. Alby Abeowan came to be after I invented "The Potion Man" as the reason why Adventurer's League games gave everyone a free healing potion for every adventure. It started out as a dumb joke, but then Fluffy started using it, and then I came up with the idea of making The Potion Man a Warlock Patron, and Alby was born. He was probably also going to multiclass into Divine Soul Sorcerer at some point, because more spell slots and things.

The fascinating thing, though, is to look back at my original Photoshop-coloured version of the art from 2020 and compare it with this version. Because it's like night and day. Especially given that the core of the outfit is exactly the same.

He is still on the list of Maybe One Day characters though. Even if I end up tweaking the origin story.

Because one day I will play a warlock with a pseudodragon familiar!

Anyway...

I tried the veggie slice recipe again this week... I don't think it works completely for me. So this week I'm going to break out my quiche recipe, go with something I know works even when I mess with it.

Tuesday I started building an ark, because the rain was ridiculous.

No Thursday Night DnD this week, which turned out to be good, because somebody also came down with the plague for the third time. So we dodged a bullet there.

Friday Night DnD was another "setting the scene/travel/roleplay episode"... and it's interesting, I wrote the smallest backstory for this character, but I got peppered with a bunch of questions about his past last night and somehow all the answers were just there. And some of it was stuff I hadn't even considered. I was just riffing. But clearly he just exists in my head. It's always a combination of weird and interesting when that happens.

Anyway...

So... I noticed something today, which I maybe have subconsciously noted previously, but given that we've hit December, items at the supermarket that have previously been on special and are on special again... are more expensively on special, if that makes sense. Which might just be the couple of things I noticed today... but it wouldn't surprise me.

Also, Egg Nog appeared in the supermarket. Which means I bought some, and will drink it and then wonder why I bought it, but possibly buy it again before it goes away this Christmas and definitely again next Christmas. Because I like it... but it's honestly not that special LOL. But I get sucked in, every year.

I did resist all the wonderfully flavoured custards though. This week anyway.

Afterwards we ran a completely pointless errand. My favourite kind. And by pointless, I mean, we went to a place and came away with none of the things we went to the place for. Mostly because they didn't have any of them. Because fuck last stage capitalism.