But it returned with something of a vengeance this January with a badge a day during the latter half of the month.
To some degree, I'm slightly tentative about the whole thing given the aforementioned brouhaha, but I am also something of a completionist, so the part of my brain that knows that there would be unclaimed badges out there would niggle at me, at least for a while.
Plus, it'll be nice to be able to post some stories from the past (even if that mostly involves digging through old blog posts), rather than just present day adventures... although I am hoping that there will be some badges that come up that I can arrange an adventure for.
And for the record, the addition of the twelve items below brings my grand total of Lifescout badges up to 45.
Sadly, since I moved apartments at the beginning of last year, sunsets are much less a part of my day-to-day life than they were once upon a time.
It used to be that all I needed to do was to turn my head and look out of my bedroom window to watch the sunset, but now there's an apartment block in the way and I only very occasionally catch part of the sunset from my bedroom window when I'm on my way to or from the bathroom.
However, sunsets are very often a major part of our experiences when we travel, and the most memorable (both for good and bad reasons) was when we went up to the top of the Sydney Tower Eye just before sunset... because seeing a sunset from around 300 metres in the air is a hell of a thing.
I'm also very glad that I live in a city where the sun sets over the ocean...
This one is pretty much a gimme... I've been living away from home since I was 22, and I've been living on my own for all bar about a year of that. So yeah, it's generally either cook or go hungry, because who has the money to eat take out all the damn time.
I cook... not always particularly brilliantly or overly fancily (because who the hell can be bothered when you're just cooking for yourself)... but I get by just fine.
I used to play soccer when I was about... I don't know, eight or nine I guess. I know it was in early-ish primary school, and given the photos that still exist, I was still somewhat tow-headed and the skinnier kid that I often wish I'd remained in later years.
But what I wasn't actually any good at was the sport itself. There exists somewhere a photo of me in my yellow and black soccer uniform, in the middle of the pitch, during a game... and I'm not paying the least bit of attention to the game, I've turned around to smile and pose for the camera in an especially non-sporting way.
And that probably sums up my soccer career the best to be honest, I was never particularly interested. I also don't think I ever even saw the ball during a match. Running, then, as now, has not and never shall be my friend.
So I'm guessing it was a relief to my team's coach when I just quietly bowed out between seasons and sent a message along with one of the other players.
With Fringe about to start, this one seems particularly topical.
I have a whole collection of blog posts under the theatre label which would pretty much sum up my theatre going experiences.
Of course there's my ongoing obsession with Macbeth... not to mention that one time I was on stage for the last third of a show. Plus the time I helped read a letter.
And who could forget that time I was snogged by a big, black, opera singing drag queen!
There are three thoughts that automatically spring to mind when the topic of circuses comes up...
The first is that once upon a time, I was a bear in the circus. Okay, not a real bear, but when I was really young our class (or the whole school maybe, I honestly don't remember) put on a "circus"... kids playing all the roles, and the only two things that I really remember were the two kids who went on just before us with a flea circus (and that the finale of the act was one of them clapping their hands together and "killing" the star performer), and that I played one of the bears in the, I'm guessing, bear tamer act. And my big trick was getting up on my "hind legs" on an upturned metal waste paper basket.
Secondly, when I was around 12 or so, Ma took me to see The Great Moscow Circus for my birthday. I'm not completely sure what I was expecting, but I do know that because it wasn't the typical type of circus and didn't have the elephants and lions and whatnot (at least I don't remember it as having lions... I could be wrong), I remember being fairly disappointed.
And lastly, there's always Cirque du Soleil.
I think the less said about my brief foray into the world of painting, the better.
I don't have any really specific sandcastle memories, and no great stories to tell, but growing up in Australia in the 70's and 80's and spending at least some of that time at the beach until I was sunburned to within an inch of my life, I know that I've definitely built a sandcastle or two.
This one is mostly a Ludo memory, since he's the one who actually taught me to play pool.
At a certain point between when he moved in with Ma and me after he got kicked out by his girlfriend at the time ... and when he and I finally moved in together... Ludo lived in what can only be described as a "halfway house". I don't remember all the reasons why, or to be honest, I don't even know if I knew them all at the time. But on occasions we used it as a base for whatever ill-thought-out scheme we were embarking on.
They also had a pool table, and Ludo and I spent more than a few afternoons just killing time playing pool.
Like everybody, I have various photos of Little Kid Me sitting on Santa's lap (back when you could actually sit on Santa's lap without everybody losing their ever-loving minds) looking freshly scrubbed and otherwise unimpressed.
But beyond the photos I don't really remember those times.
The time I do remember is when I was around 16 or so, and myself and the bunch of girls that I regularly hung around with in school all had a free lesson and we decided to head across the road to the shopping centre. I don't know who's idea it was, but somebody suggested that we should go and see Santa (I would have said that it was suggested ironically, but this was before teenagers had discovered irony, as far as I remember).
The poor bastard in the big red suit couldn't have known what the hell to expect when about half a dozen teenage girls (and me) turned up to say hello and sit on his lap (well, not that I actually sat on his lap, I was a little too... substantial for that).
Bumper cars are one of the few fairground attractions that I like. I'm not much for rollercoasters or those big rides that whiz you around (they make me want to throw up... or at least they used to)... and Ferris Wheels, while nice, are somewhat dull.
I do love a bumper car though...
When Ludo and I first moved in together we spent that year's Skyshow sitting on our balcony watching the fireworks go off just behind the trees, it was nice.
When I moved out on my own, Ludo, Lownee and a ton of people I worked with at the Courts all went along to Skyshow. It was one of only two times I ever went along, the other involved me standing around in 2006 and taking a lot of slightly blurry, yet vaguely artistic photos.
Unfortunately my old apartment was never in the right place to enjoy fireworks... but since moving to the new apartment all I need to do is lay on my bed and I can enjoy all the random fireworks as they happen.
I feel like I've dipped into Martial Arts on occasion throughout my youth, however it was never particularly officially or for very long.
But at a certain point between leaving school and leaving home, Ma and I did do a course of tai chi over a number of weeks. I don't really remember much of it now, and I never kept up with it once we finished the course, but it was fun
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