photo friday: towering

It's been a very long week.

I have no idea why. The week has been the usual length, I've had lots of things to do to keep me occupied and a range of tasks (well the same range of tasks over and over and over) to keep my appropriately busy, but yeah, the week has been looooooooooooooong.

It's also been mostly slightly freezing in the office this week. Which I always enjoy but everybody else moans about endlessly. It was actually cold enough that I had to put a second layer on which I never normally do, so that means real actual cold. Except for Friday... which is also when I chose to wear a jumper with a tshirt underneath all day, and ended up feeling just the other side of comfortably warm during most of the afternoon. Which made me slightly sleepy.

Plus my body was taking revenge on me for sitting down too much last night... not in a dramatic way, more in a niggling annoying way.

Other than that there really isn't any news... I've settled into that working routine... and an even more boring version than the one I had last time I was working... I get up, I go for my walk in the dark, I come home, I go to work, I don't leave the office the whole damn day, I leave work and walk home, I lay on my bed for a while, I made dinner, I get back into bed and watch something audio visual, I go to sleep and start the whole thing over again.

Also I only had the one chiro appointment this week... next week I get to see my usual chiro again, so that will be good. And by good, I mean I fully expect to be chastised in the sweetest possible way.

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random factor hotness

Roaming around the blogiverse and the Tumblrverse, there are certain young gentlemen that just keep appearing... one of those is this week's Random Hotness, Sam Callahan.

Sam was a contestant on the UK version of X-Factor, and since then has seemingly been making a career out of wearing very little clothing. Which, given his amazing body, seems like a good plan.

These shots are from a shoot he did with GT (Gay Times) magazine last December, and even though they looked pretty damn good in colour originally, I think these versions, in black and white, look even better.

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buy all the things saturday with indoor forkness

Today didn't exactly turn out like we planned... kind of, but with differences.

But before I dive into that, just a short update of my week and my back and whatnot.

I spent Monday at home, in bed... dozed through the morning and then spent the whole afternoon and evening watching the fourth season of Game of Thrones. Ten hours later...

Tuesday I had a chiro appointment first thing in the morning (ie 8am) which was something of a relief, and then I headed into work. I spent the majority of the day standing, which was okay, although my desk still hadn't been adjusted, so it was a little bit problematic reaching the keyboard. A couple of A4 paper box tops fixed that up.

The desk finally got adjusted by Thursday morning, which was a welcome relief. And I've actually been able to sit for longer periods of time at work whereas I last about 15 minutes sitting in my chair at home before I have to get up. I am also sleeping a lot better... as in I can actually sleep through the night.

Friday morning I had another chiro appointment which was good, if only because I got to ask a lot of potentially dumb questions about the weird things my body had been doing over the last week. Like for example the fact that my knee feels like it doesn't want to hold any weight at various times... turns out that's because everything else is doing the work of the thing before it in my body and my knee just goes "Nup, got nothing, screw you". Not that I've fallen down or anything, but I did do a bit of a gimpy wobble getting on the bus on Wednesday.

Work has definitively picked up this week. I have three computers, I've processed a bunch of projects, it's all going swimmingly. Annoyingly occasionally, but also swimmingly.

And after discovering that I had transposed the apartment and building numbers on a parcel from Amazon, it all turned out fine when the postman ended up taking it to the post office and I followed the tracking numbers through to their logical conclusion and found that it was sitting there waiting for me. Yaaay.

The only other semi weird thing since I hurt my back is my partial lack of appetite. Actually it's not really THAT weird, first off it was the pain that was preventing me from wanting to eat anything, and after that I think there has just been that general lack of desire to stand around preparing very much that has led to less food happening.

Fortunately that more of less sorted itself out by today.

The general plan today was to have Miss Oh with us, since La Cousina and hubby are away for a couple of weeks and Ma was sleeping over at their place this weekend just to keep Miss Oh company until... actually, the until doesn't really matter. So I've kind of been looking forward to this all week long more or less, since I always enjoy spending time with Miss Oh and I don't get to do it all that much.

But Ma messaged me while I was in the shower to tell me that Miss Oh wasn't feeling well and so she wouldn't be coming along. Disappointing, but these things happen. It just would have been nice since there was a Fork on the Road on today at Bowden and I don't know if she's done the food truck thing before.

Anyway, when Ma got down we headed out, all rugged up warmly, since it wasn't the warmest of days.

Supermarketness was a little more intense perhaps than usual, if only because I didn't do any shopping last weekend besides asking Ma to pick me up a handful of things. And it just so happened that there were a number of things I ran out of this week.

After we finished that and had done the unpacking thing back here as usual, he headed off to pretty much do most of the things we would have done had Miss Oh been with us anyway. No sense wasting a perfectly good half of a plan.

Our first stop was the Flinders Street Market which we went to back in March...

While Ma poked around the jewellery stalls, I was once again semi-obsessed by the second hand/bric-a-brac stall at the back. Specifically the vintage photos that he still seemed to have (I'm only guessing they were from the same batch, they might not have been) from the last time we were there.

I picked up another four portraits of handsome young gentlemen from the late 1800's and early 1900's... I still don't know why I'm obsessed with then photos, just that I am.

I also noticed a very beautiful cash box in amongst a set of rather more humdrum cash boxes... it looks like it's made of wood, but it's actually painted... I don't know by who, I don't know when, but it looks really ornate and when the guy running the stall said it was $20, I wasn't going to walk away from it.

True, I also have no idea what the hell I'm going to do WITH it... but it was too pretty not to buy.

Next up, Ma had planned on a trip to the Haighs store... and since I've been thinking about making a side trip to Haighs all week, I wasn't going to say no. I did go a little bit crackers, but that was only because there were a lot of things I like in the Seconds racks. Plus I wanted some toasted marshmallow like crazy.

The only thing I wanted to do other than the evening Forking was to grab a copy of The Lego Movie (and possibly to see if I could track down the Jack Skellington figure from Disney Infinity). So it was down the road to Cumberland Park Big W we went.

Lego Movie, check... but while they seemed to have every single other Disney Infinity figure, no Jack.

Since we were already on that side of town and the weather was decidedly shitful and prone to rain and whatnot, so after a very tasty sausage sizzle we decided to keep heading in the same general direction all the way down to Marion.

Looking back on it, it may have been a slightly stupid idea, just from the perspective of sitting down in the car for all that time. I'm tying this standing up, and I'm generally a little achy all over. I think a large proportion of tomorrow will be spend horizontally.

Anyway, we finally got to Marion, and finally found a carpark (which was a little bit wearing... so close and yet so far and all that... plus too much stopping and starting and overly enthusiastic breaking for my general wellbeing). Big W was pretty much a bust, Infinity-wise, and at that point I generally got over the whole idea. The only reason I was even looking for them there was that they had a "twofer" deal on, even though there wasn't really a second figure I was that interested in.

Instead I went into T2 to engage in my newly acquired fetish for T2 tea... but they did have 18% off everything since it's their 18th Birthday, and as a T2 member I also got a free box of tea... so, BARGAINS!

I bought a pretty red mug for work complete with it's own strainer, a box of Liquorice Legs tea which they had in one of their brew stations and which was really lovely and aniseedy, then when we got to the counter I spotted the Cocoa Loco tea, which is made out of cocoa bean husks and smells like chocolate. I don't exactly remember what the three free tea options were because when the girl said "Creme Brulee", I was sold.

That was about it generally for Marion... we had a wander around (I only just stopped short of fondling the giant box for the Lego Sydney Opera House only because it was giant... but it was on sale, so I was somewhat tempted), people just generally seemed to want to be in my way (even more so than usual, possibly because I was slightly tired and a touch grumpy at that point), and then once we'd done a full circuit we were pretty much done, so we headed back to my place.

I had a little bit of a rest, although I couldn't stay lying down for long otherwise I would have dozed off. Then we watched part of some on Barbra Streisand movie (On A Clear Day) until it was time to head on down to Fork.

This was a bit of a different Fork, one billed as an "Indoor Fork"... which was both partially true and somewhat misleading. There was indoor seating, but all the trucks were still outdoors.

We started out with a wander around, then headed down to see Archie and get some Pastizzi (mushy pea and pork for Ma, Moroccan lamb for me) as an entree.

Not everything was up and running when we got there, so we decided to share the Deep Fried Egg at Simon Bryant's Dirt(y) stall... and it was pretty much exactly as advertised... a fried egg, with all manner of tasty things sprinkled on top and laying on a bed of rice. Nice though, and definitely something I'd try again.

And Our Lady of the Blessed Burger, the Grand Dame of Food Trucks, Pearl was back on the road at long last, stuffed full of Burger Theory goodness.

I was literally the first person in line... it took them a while after we got there to get the doors open, and I was hovering across the way taking a photo of the truck to harass the boys online with when Rob came out and started opening up. It was definitely good to see them back out on the road, as well as seeing Dan back behind the grill.

We also tried this lovely, tasty, golden goodness... and it had weird name and I can't remember what the hell it was... other than it was slathered in "garlic water" and was vaguely potato related. Definitely another one that I would happily revisit... plus they had interesting sounding vanilla slices too.

This was the second time we've been in the old Clipsal factory for an event (it'd make a great set/venue for a very industrial version of Macbeth too I think), and while the whole place wasn't opened up (which was also possibly a mistake given the number of people crammed into the available seating), it is a great space and makes for some interesting photos.

We'd already stopped off to see Mim at Four Seeds to pick up some brownie goodness (including an extra helping for Ma to take back to Miss Oh) earlier in the evening, so for dessert we stopped off at the Honey Puff Ladies for some sugary, doughy, fried balls of wrongness and deliciousness.

And that was the end of, in the words of Winnie The Pooh, A Very Busy Day.

Turned out to be a good day, even if it wasn't the day we expected when we set out.

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the return to being mostly horizontal

Remember in 2012 when I screwed up my back?

Well, after a couple of weeks of occasional twinges, an overly enthusiastic masseuse, an adjustment from a chiro that isn't my regular chiro and a Friday morning spent moving computers and crawling under my desk at work, I spent Friday evening resting in bed and got up to find that I had major pains shooting down the opposite leg from last time.

And they were there even when I went to lay back down. Not good.

That let to me having about two hours total sleep on Friday night since I couldn't do much of anything without pain.

Since my chiro office isn't even open on weekends, I found a replacement chiro out at Unley that could see me yesterday. Not sure how much she helped, but she did a partial adjustment and prescribed ice, rest and some walking around. Hopefully I can get in to see my proper chiro next week, since I get the feeling I'm going to be going back to seeing her a couple of times a week for a while.

Until then I'll be spending quite a bit of time just laying in bed for a while, and probably won't be blogging all that much until I can summon up the energy to either do something standing up or until I can actually sit down again.

Fortunately it's not as bad as the major incident last time... I can stand, I can turn over in bed, I can shower, dress myself and leave the house... I just can't sit. And there's some degree of pain involved in everything else.

So, yeah... not the best update ever, but at least I haven't just disappeared into the ether... I'm still here, just in a prone position mostly. At least it finally gives me the time to catch up on the last series of Game of Thrones.

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random district hotness

There's a movie poster theme for this week's Random Hotness. The movie in question is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (or, you know, just Mockingjay) which doesn't come out until November.

A set of seven teaser posters dropped this week featuring high fashion images relating to the Districts, and it's actually a toss up for my favourite poster between District 7 (featured below) and the poster for District 9. As a brief aside, I think they totally missed the mark with the District 12 poster... I know why they did it, but it's a complete mis-match to the rest of the images.

But I knew I had to feature these three if only because of the presence of model (and former Random Hotness) Alex Minsky in the District 7 poster.

I have no idea who the models are for Districts 6 and 7... but you gotta love a man in textured rubber pants and a man in a furry cape.

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movies: how to train your dragon 2

While the original movie was about a son's relationship with his father and how belief really can change the world, How to Train Your Dragon 2 is much more about what happens when that son grows up and has to deal with the world outside what he's known to this point.

And damn but Hiccup grew up nice... I know he's a cartoon character and everything, but damn! With the hair and the leather suit and the freckles and the stubble... damn!

Compared with the first movie (which is amongst my favourite movies and was my top rated movie for 2010), this has a much bigger story, more characters, more dragons and much bigger stakes. But what it shares is that sense of heart and that ability for the animation to just exist in the moment without needing to include a lot of unnecessary words.

It's also definitely a movie to see more than once, if only so you can catch all the little antics going on in the background between Toothless and the other dragons.

Dean DeBlois, one half of the pair behind not only the first movie but also my all-time favourite animated movie, Lilo and Stitch, returns as the writer and director this time around and he's crafted a beautiful story.

And I'm not going to lie... I cried... more than once.

What I love most about both of the HTTYD movies is that there are consequences. Amazing things happen, but there is death and destruction and loss. And it's handled in a way that, like everything else in the movie, doesn't hit you over the head. Like the fact that both Hiccup and Toothless are essentially disabled and while they can both make their way alone, it's when they work together that they both give their best.

And if I thought that the first movie was beautifully animated and rendered, then there doesn't currently exist a superlative to describe how glorious this movie looks. I've already mentioned how good Hiccup looks, but Toothless has had a whole makeover too and everything from his pupils to his scales, even down to his tongue, looks better than ever.

Then there's the first scene with Toothless and Hiccup, flying through the clouds... the ice effects later in the movie... and all the new dragons.

There are also a host of new voices joining Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, America Ferrera and all the others, including Cate Blanchett as the mysterious Dragon Rider, Valka... Game of Thrones star Kit Harington as the dragon trapper Eret, son of Eret... while Djimon Hounsou lends his big booming voice to Drago, the villain of the piece.

What I didn't know going in is that HTTYD2 is the second act in a trilogy, DeBlois accepted the sequel on the condition he could turn it into a trilogy and while this feels like a fully rounded story, it definitely leaves the door open to a conclusion to the overall story.

yani's rating: 4 alpha dragons out of 5

mostly perfunctory saturday shopping

Today was a bit of a perfunctory Saturday. There really doesn't feel like there's very much to report.

We were both running a little bit late this morning, which is usually better than just one of us, so we got to the supermarket a little late.

Then there was the usual shopping adventures, although we seemed to do 90% of the shopping in the fruit and veg section and the meat section and then 10% everywhere else.

When we were done with supermarketry we did a wander around Target before heading back here.

Neither of us really had any urgent errands we needed to run, but I did want to see if Big W had the new series of Lego Mixels, so we headed down to Arndale.

Trips to Arndale never last particularly long, so we did the usual circuit, I grabbed the Mixels, Ma found a top she liked and it took me as long to go through the self serve checkouts as it took her to go through the regular ones. And that's just not right.

After we were finished at Arndale we came back to North Adelaide along Prospect Road and stopped off to have a look at Honeysuckle Lane, which is now jointly named KAB101 Lane, and all the previous artwork has been replaced with works by KAB101. While it's nice to see a street artist get such high profile recognition, and while I do love a lot of KAB's work, I kind of miss the range of pieces that used to be there... as well as the fact that one of my favourite Benzo pieces (albeit a very faded piece the last time I visited... but it was my iPhone and laptop wallpaper for the longest time) is gone.

We also had a poke around a couple of vintage/antique stores on Prospect Road... and I was three quarters tempted to buy an old Box Brownie camera, but it would have just been a decorator item, and while it was cute, I really didn't love it to death, so after carrying it around the store for ten minutes I walked out without it.

From there we took a detour to Perrymans to grab some lunch, and then to the North Adelaide Village for a couple of things we didn't get earlier.

Then, after we came back here we had some lunch and then Ma wandered off on her merry way.

So, yeah... we didn't really set the world on fire or anything.

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photo friday: tails

This has actually been a fairly busy week... mostly work-wise, although I did spend an evening chasing my own tail in the pursuit of getting some tail, a phrase I don't think I've ever used in my entire life.

Having a busy work is good... although at the start of the week I was severely not in the groove for this particular new task so I spend about a day and a half (including half of last Friday) essentially spinning my wheels. But then I invoked the mighty god of tables, Excel, and now I have myself a fully functional process with colours and formulas and whatnot. I do love a good spreadsheet, I'm not going to lie... although it's weird because I'm not a numbers person... but then I tend to use Excel for everything BUT number crunching.

And once the leash fully comes off, hopefully next week, I should be running between the proverbial pillar and post (which in this case actually means three different computers) getting everything done.

It looks like it's going to be a good level of busy though... no so flat out that I can't do anything else, but enough so that I have something to do when I'm not doing anything else.

Monday evening turned into something that, while it definitely had elements of comedy, was pretty much a tragedy. It started with me chatting with a guy I've been talking to on and off for months, possibly even over a year at this point. We've flirted pretty hard core previously, but this time when an invitation was extended I took him up on it and drove out to Norwood (fortunately not that far to go). I'd only been there a couple of minutes when he declared that he was feeling "awkward" and had changed his mind.

To be honest I always expected him to totally flake out on me, he just gave out that kind of vibe... so the fact that I actually got an address that wasn't a pizza shop or a vacant lot and actually got to see him spectacularly naked was more than I'd expected. I very much doubt I'll be hearing from him ever again though.

That did mean I'd had an essentially wasted journey and was all revved up with nowhere to go (well, once I got home).

Which is why when another guy messaged me not long after I got home, I invited him over. And this is where it got semi-weird. He said he was in town and was headed my way, which is a 15 minute trip at most. Some 45 minutes later he claimed to be downstairs and when I gave him the "how to get to my door" spiel (which is much more complicated than it used to be) he said he was only wearing his underwear. I never did get around to asking why, but he then said he'd be back in another 20 minutes. I offered to go down there with clothes, but he just took off. And then blocked me. So whether he was ever even downstairs, I have no idea.

Oh, and then on Wednesday I had a guy I've met up with on a previous occasion (although, I'll be honest, I only slightly remember him) had been hitting on me pretty hard and was all set to come over, said he was going to take a shower and just vanished into the ether. I did send him a Christian Bale inspired "oh good for you, we are done professionally" (I've been listening to a lot of Hollywood Babble On lately... they do a bit... it's from his on-set rant during the Terminator movie) message... so

Seriously, what the fuck is my life?

Yes, I know, it's the price you pay for picking up randoms on the internet... but still... fuck.

Yesterday was a day full of food and haircut. We had a pizza lunch at The Nut House... usually we have morning tea to celebrate people's birthdays, but then there's so much food that we never feel like eating lunch. This time someone had the brilliant idea to cut out the middle man and make the morning tea into a lunch.

So twelve pizzas, six garlic breads, a box of donuts and several bottles of soft drink later...

I actually don't know how many pieces of pizza I ended up eating... I'm going to assume it was probably the better part of a whole pizza plus a bunch of garlic bread. By the time we were all finished eating we'd made it through eleven pizzas and five of the garlic breads.

Then there were some of those decadent Nutella filled donuts from the bakery in North Adelaide... I didn't have one during lunch but I did stick one on my desk for later in the afternoon. It was amazing, but a big, big, big mistake. I had far too much sugar rushing around in my system to be able to make brain things for the rest of the afternoon, and didn't feel like eating any dinner when I got home.

Fortunately I had to head out and see a very, very, very pregnant Tink to get my hair did. It was my second to last haircut before the baby's due... in fact, my next haircut is Tink's last appointment before the baby's due.

It was pretty standard as these things go... hair, shorter and blonder... talk, much of a general nature... pregnant belly, damn huge.

And that's really about it... I don't tend to get to into any exciting adventures while I'm at work since I don't actually leave the office, even at lunch. Which, I'll be honest, I always used to think people were crazy for doing, but it is saving me a ton of money bringing my lunch.

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random ben hotness

This is one of those Random Hotness posts where Tumblr comes to the rescue at the last moment...

I saw a really hot animated gif of underwear model, entrepreneur and occasional porn star Benjamin Godfre naked outdoors with a skateboard, so I had to go and investigate.

These shots are by photographer Gabriel Gastelum, and while Ben might not be totally naked, he's not far off.

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supposedly frugal saturday shopping

The phrase "I don't want to spend any money today" didn't really have a whole lot of effect on today...

I genuinely had a couple of minutes this morning when I woke up where I didn't remember what day it was. I was trying to work out why my alarm hadn't gone off when it was supposed to and how that was going to affect my day because I was running behind schedule.

And then I remembered it was Saturday.

I did waste some time playing Angry Birds Epic, the RPG style game from the flinging bird people. It's cute and vaguely addictive.

I managed to pull myself away in enough time to take a shower and get ready before Ma got down here... well, apart from shoes... and then we headed off to the supermarket, and had an in-depth conversation about the first episode of the new series of So You Think You Can Dance from last night on the way.

What, it was a very emotional start to the season.

Shopping was, you know, shopping. I'm planning on making minestrone soup as my lunch of choice this week, so I filled up my trolley with a metric ton of vegetables as seems to be the general theme of late. Thankfully I didn't start work in Summer, because I have no idea what I'd be doing about lunches.

After we did the regular supermarketry we had a wander around Target... and I convinced Ma that she needed to buy one of the onesies they were selling out. It was pink and fluffy and had bear ears on the hood. She's 67 years old and now she owns a pink fluffy onesie.

And she looks fucking adorable in it.

We didn't really have any plans for the day, other than the aforementioned wish to not spend any money.

I had idly floated the idea that I could do with another set of bedding while we were in Target, only really due to the fact that the Ikea sets that I have are about 10cm smaller than the non-Ikea set, and in Winter that 10cm is the difference between being able to tuck my feet in and cover my head at the same time.

But Ma does, on occasion, tend to latch onto those idle ideas if we don't have any other plans... so she suggested that we head off to Spotlight since they were having a sale and we could look at bedding.

The bedding I wasn't so fussed about, but I figured if they were having a sale it was as good a time as any to replace the overly long kitchen curtain with something that was a more suitable length.

So we headed into the city.

Due to the ongoing insanity that are parking restrictions in the city due to sports matches happening some seven hours later, we ended up parking in a different spot than usual and then taking a shortcut through the University grounds and coming out at the Target end of the Mall.

We decided to have a look there at bedding, which turned out to be a good idea, since they seemed to be having a sale, and they actually had some simple, single colour quilt sets. So I settled on one that was a very dark navy blue, almost black.

It was marked $99, but the tag on the shelf had it at 50% off at $49, and when I took it to the register it actually came out as $26... so no complaining there. I also grabbed a big red scarf in the women's department. It's very similar to the one I bought in Melbourne last year, but it's bright red.

We then headed to the other end of the Mall to Spotlight. And that was about the point that I realised that I also needed a new fitted sheet and two extra pillowcases (the fact I also needed a new pillowcase for my body pillow didn't occur to me until later), but everything in Spotlight seemed overpriced and boring.

Boring was also the order of the day when it came to net curtain material. Well, the combination of boring and the depth of curtain I wanted, very boring indeed. Plus Spotlight never lays them out at all well. You would think that they would very tidily group all the curtains that are the same depth together, so that if you knew how deep your window was you could instantly see what your options are.

Yeah, they don't seem to do that.

Also if it's not 213cm deep then it's fucking boring.

In the end I decided to get the same fabric that was already in that window and in the bedroom window (although as it turned out what was already there was the ivory colour and I bought the white)... I don't love it, but at least it already matches what's in the house already.

Technically what I bought is several centimetres too short, but I was already living with curtains that were too long, and trust me, short is better.

We also grabbed a cheese toasty from the food truck in the Mall, had a wander around Myer and the Myer Centre (and found a cheap bodypillow case in Lincraft), had something to drink in the basement of the Myer Centre and then wandered back down the Mall to take a look at the fitted sheets and pillow cases at Target again.

I managed to find a nice teal blue sheet, but of course they didn't have matching pillowcases... but it's not like I needed it urgently today so I bought the sheet and Ma managed to find the pillowcases at a Target on her way home.

As we were leaving we ran into J & K who are tangentially related to us... we used to see them much more regularly when I was a kid, but now it's pretty much whenever Ma and I happen to randomly run into them. It's always nice to see them though, even if, like most of the other people I'm related to, I don't have a single thing in common with them.

That was about it really... after that we wandered back to the car and came back here.

Annoyingly I had my first failure with a set of those 3M hooks... I was trying to stick them up above the window so that I could take some of the weight off the cord the net curtain is on, and they just wouldn't stay on the wall. And even when I got one of them to stay for more than a couple of minutes it fell down as soon as I tried to hook the curtain over it.

So yeah... so much for not buying things...

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