two thousand and fifteen in review

It's the last day of 2015, and just like every year since 2006, I'm doing my usual "first line of the first post of each month" meme/Year In Review.

And as usual, I found the Chinese zodiac stamp for the year in question... although I don't know what I'm going to do in 2021 when the line runs out...

Given that this year has been seen the lowest number of blog posts since I started, partly because I merged the Photo Friday and Shopping Saturday posts into one larger post... but that did mean that I tweaked the rules to be the first significant line of the first significant post of each month... but it's essentially the same thing.

January: I know I've said it before, but one of the (many) things I do like about living in this apartment over the old apartment is the fact that I can just go and lay on my bed and watch the many and varied fireworks displays that happen throughout the year.

February: I'll be honest, I had figured that due to the brouhaha that blew up last year around the creator of the Lifescouts project, as well as a number of other young male YouTube "personalities" (which I won't reiterate here, that's what Google is for), that we'd possibly seen the last of Lifescouts.

March: Sometimes you see a Fringe show where there are only ten people in the audience.

April: I was very thankful that this was a short week...

May: I never got around to doing a Friday post yesterday, partly due to a slight obsession with watching a playthrough of the Fallout 3 video game on YouTube...

June: Rolling the calendar back to Sunday, I spent about six hours cleaning my apartment for the inspection on Tuesday.

July: I've definitely had issues with electronic equipment this week, mostly computers and thankfully entirely at work.

August: The soup I made last Sunday was successful as far as it being soup on Sunday was concerned, however by the time it came it Monday it was decidedly no longer soup and was in fact just pasta and sauce.

September: This year has definitely been The Year of the Soup.

October: I believe that, by any technical definition of the term, I am every so slightly hungover as fuck.

November: I really would like to start one of these by saying that my week wasn't somewhat trying... but alas, this is not the week or it.

December: I'm really not sure what the hell I have to say... partly because it's fairly hot right now (and all weekend actually, after a very mild week), even with the aircon and fan going.


If I had to sum up this year I'd say it had been exceptionally busy, but I find myself here at the end of the year with not a hell of a lot to show for the last 364 days.

I did celebrate my tenth blogiversary this year though, even if, as I said before, my blogging has significantly diminished over the last twelve months.

We didn't travel anywhere this year, which is something I definitely want to remedy next year, depending on how the work situation unfolds.

Work in general has gone from one level of crazy to another. We launched the first part of our major project at the end of January, then moved on to the other half, which is supposed to be done by next June. What happens after that is anybody's guess at this point. Every time we think we know what's going on, they pull the rug out from under us all unfortunately.

This year's Fringe was, as I said at the time, "a very emotional Fringe in a lot of ways", but also had an incredibly good time. Other than that we saw Danny Elfman's music (not to mention the man himself) in concert, revisited the Unseen Theatre Company, sat very close the the stage for Adam Hills, and were delighted by the verbal stylings of Stephen Fry in Adelaide for the first time.

We headed off to Brick-a-laide over the Easter break... and I put together seven Lego sets (well, eight if you count the Lego Dimenions set, but I haven't done a post about that yet) this year...

• Chima Legend Beast Lion
• Batman and Super Angry Kitty Attack
• Double Decker Couch 
• Jay's ElectroMech
• Emmet's Construct-o-Mech
• Wall-E
• Metalbeard's Duel

I also finished off Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Red Dead Redemption, played through Heavy Rain (and had everybody die on me) and totally failed to finish both BioShock Infinite and Assassin's Creed: Rogue. I tried with ACR, I really did, but it was a bad mash up of Black Flag and ACIII, and I just couldn't get into it.

Also, as my post from September above states, this was decidedly the year for soup. I went through the whole of Winter and made nothing but soup for my work lunches, as well as dinner on Sunday nights. While there were some disasters, I'm excited about starting it up again next year... especially as I've been saving the rinds and leftovers from all my Parmesan cheeses to use as flavourings.

I've also discovered the wonderful art of making my own salad dressings... which I have to say, I'm doing pretty damn well at.

And, as always, today is my Twitter anniversary... in this case, my sixth.

Current Mood:

two thousand and fourteen in review

Here we are, at the end of 2014... which has been a very different kind of year for me in all manner of ways. But more on that shortly...

As always, this time of the year means that everyone's thoughts turn to the year that's been more than the year ahead... and it's usually this time when I trot out the "first line of the first post of each month" meme I've been doing every year since 2006.

Technically I cheated a couple of times this time around... at least one month is not officially the first post (although it's the first post with proper content), and January, it's not the first line (but it's a more appropriate one than "Welcome to 2014"):

January: I definitely had an atypical New Year's Eve last night... I pretty much broke all of my self-imposed NYE rules/customs/traditions bar two... and I didn't even stay up until midnight.

February: Dear Rug Manufacturers, please go fuck yourselves...

March: The Autumnal blog template was inspired, loosely, by two people... the first of which was Ben Teoh's experiments in Lego minifig wall art, which led to me digging out almost all my old Lego Space figs with the intention of making artwork.

April: I'm pretty sure I'm suffering from an post-endorphins crash... my brain has turned a little bit to sleepy mush... but you get that after sitting through a couple of hours of tattooing.

May: You really wouldn't expect that a week that started out at 30°C with me wearing shorts would end at 12°C with torrential rain and me wearing a onesie (shut up, it's warmer and more comfortable).

June: It's been a very long and a very full day... and currently I smell like a nightclub (well, more accurately I smell like a smoke machine, but to me that's the smell of a nightclub).

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

August: Given how cold it's been today I figured a little knitted artwork was more than appropriate.

September: This has been a truly shiteful week.

October: This template has been a long time coming... at least in terms of the idea.

November: While we did have an instance of general "blah", today pretty much all came together with nary a hitch.

December: It's that time of the year again, where I go a little bit nuts with the Adelaide Fringe program and then spend a chunk of change on tickets.


This year definitely did not start out the same way that it ended, more so than any year in recent (and/or blog) memory. Mostly for good, but also slightly odd in some cases.

When the year started, I was quite literally surrounded by boxes, preparing to move out of the apartment I'd been in for seventeen years and into a brand new place. As it ends, I'm very happy (daily stair climbing, bouts of neighbourly dickheadery and a couple of major incidents of water leaking where it shouldn't be notwithstanding) in my new place, with twice the amount of space, a house full of new furniture and a lot less general house/neighbour related stress.

I also painted, stained and varnished a piece of furniture for the first time ever. True it was a basic IKEA pine dresser, and I didn't have any sandpaper so it's not as mirror smooth as it might otherwise have been, but overall it looks damn good and I'm proud of it.

When the year started, I was ungainfully unemployed with severely dwindling bank savings. As it ends, I'm back working in The Nut House, and making (slow) roads to clawing back some savings... and hopeful that my contract gets extended at the end of January.

I also had to unexpectedly replace my laptop this year when my old one just threw a tantrum and refused to function normally. Thankfully it didn’t completely throw in the towel and I was able to get all my data from the hard drive, but it could have picked a better time to throw in the towel.

When the year started Espionage Gallery was a physical place, which I visited regularly. As it ends, Espionage the physical space is no more, and it's now more of a... state of mind. Although it will take physical form again around mid-January for the second Alice in Wonderland inspired show.

I saw more of the inside of hospitals and doctor's waiting rooms than I would have liked this year. And travelled less than usual.

I also got laid a hell of a lot less this year. Or at least it felt that way, especially given the broken thumb, wrenched elbow, back pain, blocked ears and other random maladies that befell me throughout the year when the last thing I really felt like doing was getting jiggy with it as they say. But otherwise the general theme seems to be that the gentlemen callers that I want to return either disappear or are card-carrying mental cases... and the ones I'm not really bothered about are the ones that keep coming back.

This year saw a lot less blogging from me as well. The biggest casualty of the year was Random Hotnesses... which dipped out at 23 posts (which were all pretty much in the first half of the year) instead of the usual 50+, and I've retired the feature, at least for now, because if I'm being completely honest, it had become more trouble than it was worth (plus I think the energy that I used to put into RH posts is now being spent on my Tumblr account. I didn't even do a Christmas Hotness this year. I thought about it, but there just wasn't anything that I felt I had to post.

But this year was also the year that I got some photos "published"... it was only online on the (seemingly now defunct) Already Home website, but it was a thrill all the same.

We also wandered along to the January, April, May, July and August editions of Fork on the Road. But I think I frequented food trucks a lot less this year, since I started bringing my lunch from home (mostly) to try and save a little more cash. Through the majority of Autumn and Winter that has meant stews, soups and lasagne, but once the weather got warmer I've mostly been deconstructing salads, then reconstructing them at work.

Oh, and the other thing Ma and I did less of this year was go to the movies... or at least it felt like we took more weeks off than we spent going to the movies. And I watched less movies in general, partly due to watching TV series and YouTube content, but more so because of playing video games.

It's been a couple of years since I bought my PS3, and although I spent a good chunk of my unemployment last year working my way through Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, this year has definitely been The Year of The Assassin. Thanks to a random conversation with the lovely Herschel at work, I ended up working my way through all of the Assassin's Creed games (well, except for the first one... and the three latest ones, although I did get AC: Black Flag for Christmas and I'm already a few hours into that, and can see myself sinking a TON of hours into it with all the additional side quests and content).

At the beginning of the year I only had one tattoo, now I have a second, and I fall in love with it all over again every time I look at it. It also reawoke the tattooing bug that had been mostly quieted by time since my first tattoo. There are ideas for three, possibly four others, but one would require a trip to Melbourne for a specific tattoo artist, one is too vague a concept right now and the other two are fighting to claim my left shoulder/arm.

Oh, and I fairly major change to my year... when the year started, I was 39... now I'm 40. And I spent my birthday in Sydney having the time of my life at The Lion King.

And today is my fifth anniversary of joining Twitter.

Current Mood:

two thousand and thirteen in review

This is, without a doubt, the most unique New Years Eve I've ever experienced I think... and especially given the last few years where the day has been spent putting the house in order and making sure everything is neat and tidy for the start of the new year.

However, this year I'm sitting here surrounded by a plethora of boxes and general detritus as I pack up the last 17 years of my life. But it's good... it's all about new beginnings for the new year, and it will also mean that I will go through every single thing I own as I unpack (I really don't have time to do it in enough detail while I'm packing, although there are a range of things that are getting the boot) and work out exactly what needs to stay in the new apartment.

Every year around this time I do the "First Post of the Month" meme I started in 2006, but like last year I'm going to add a few other thoughts to the end of the post just summing up where my year has been at.

January: Welcome to 2013, the International Year of Water Cooperation and the International Year of Quinoa.

February: Since Monday was a public holiday and I had the aforementioned toilet dramas between Sunday night and Wednesday, this week feels like nothing has happened.

March: Following on from the previous Lego accessories template... I decided to try something minifig related for the Autumn template.

April: The Croods truly is one of the most beautiful animated movies I've ever seen.

May: April was music month on Lifescouts...

June: It's been one dark grey day today...

July: Given today's date and it's significance to The Land of the Free and The Home of the Brave, this seemed to be the right way to go with Random Hotness, even though I featured the same model about three weeks ago.

August: June on Lifescouts was Carnival Month, but there weren't any badges that I could claim... however this month was the final month for a while, and didn't have a theme, it was just a free-for-all... which was better, since I managed to claim five different badges, bringing the grand total to 32 out of a possible 100.

September: Today has been busy and emotional and just plain weird.

October: First Pixar brought us Cars, then came Cars 2... and now we have Planes.

November: Today has been...well... weirder than the previous few weeks, that's for sure.

December: I spent most of the morning on Friday going through the Adelaide Fringe program and making a list... then yesterday afternoon Ma and I went through the list and came up with the final version of the list and picked out dates and whatnot.

And oddly enough some of the things I was going to mention actually feature in the first line of the month by month posts.... it even reminded me of a couple of things.

2013 in review

In a lot of ways 2013 has been a year of endings... the end of my job at the Nut House, the end of living in this apartment, the end for the bookcases I've had since I was a teenager along with the end of a lot of other random detritus (not to mention starting the year out with a replacement toilet)... but that's good because it leaves space in my life for some new beginnings once the calendar flicks over to 2014.

It wasn't all endings though, this year also saw the birth of the Lifescouts phenomenon, and by the end of the year I'd accumulated 33 badges... hopefully there should be some new badges/challenges at the beginning of next year (and I'd also like to actually earn my archery badge next year... I'd intended to do it this year but it just never happened).

Ma and I took two trips, one to Sydney in April and the other to Melbourne in August. And rain featured quite prominently in both trips. I still much prefer Sydney to Melbourne though... especially after this last trip.

As far as theatre goes, other than the twenty shows for the Fringe, there wasn't quite as much to report this year. However we did finally get to go and see Adam Hills live (and he's definitely somebody I'll go and see any time he comes back with a new show), plus I got my yearly dose of Macbeth thanks to the Urban Myth Theatre Company.

And we also stepped out at the March, May, June, August, September and November editions of Fork on the Road.

My birthday this year was an 18 hour extravaganza (if you include the working day) whereas Ma's birthday was a relatively calm occasion.

Also continuing this year was my ongoing love affair with Espionage Gallery and the expansion of my art collection by about 17 new pieces.

So while 2013 has had a few moments I could have lived without, on reflection it's not been all that bad... but here's to a whole lot of new beginnings next year!

Current Mood:

two thousand and twelve in review

My New Year's Eve tradition (all the way back to 2006) is to do the blog review meme...

The first sentence of the first blog post for each month of 2012...

It's perhaps a little less informative than in previous years if only because a number of the posts are either template changes or Random Hotness posts...

But that's okay... it seems like it was something of a reduced year on the blog this year anyway.

January: I have to say that last night didn't really feel properly like New Years Eve... and today really didn't feel like the beginning of a new year when I woke up this morning, although it's starting to feel a little more like that now.

February: I have no idea who this week's toned little blonde Random Hotness is... but I'm running a little behind schedule with everything this evening... I still need to finish drying the dishes and make sure everything is organised for the morning.

March: Would you believe that the Autumnal template photo was snapped in the entrance to Sportsgirl on Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne?

April: Having a photo of Lego minifigures on your desktop at work isn't a good way to distract yourself from the fact you have a parcel full of new minifigures in your bag that you'll have to wait until you get home before you can open.

May: First off... Joss Muthafuckin Whedon!

June: I realised yesterday when I went to Myer to buy two Lego Star Wars sets that my recent reconversion to an Adult Fan of Lego (or AFOL as they're sometimes called) is pretty much complete.

July: This hasn't been an especially good week for me so far...

August: I'm going all moody black and white for this week's Random Hotness with these photos taken by photographer Daniel Jaems during London Fashion Week.

September: It's time for a little bit of Spring green around the joint...

October: There are two types of time travel movies... ones where everything happens in the order it was always meant to happen and always has happened that way... and the other kind where new things can happen based on what happens right now.

November: I decided that today's Random Hotness needed to be something at least vaguely Halloween related... and what's the main thing about Halloween, after the scary stuff and the candy... costumes!

December: Yes, okay... so my descent into Lego related madness would seem to be complete... the Summer template is nothing but Lego accessories!

Fortunately I started working on something else the week before Christmas that perhaps reviews the year a little more appropriately...

My 2012 in review...

I'm officially declaring my 2012 as The Year of The Food Truck

I know my boys (and girls) from Burger Theory have been around since last year, but this year has just seen the whole food truck phenomenon take off like crazy here in Adelaide. And while both of the two Fork On The Road events were a big hit and featured a range of vendors, it's really the ones that are out there, on the streets as often as they can be that have really made it amazing.

Burger Theory, La Cantina Co, Raw Thirst, Veggie Velo and Chimichurri Grill have all managed to make my workday lunchtimes a much more pleasant experience.

Now what we really need as we head into the heat of Summer is a reoccurring ice-cream/gelati truck out and about... that would be awesome.

I also can't talk about 2012 and food trucks without mentioning Burger Theory and their fantastic Art Burger menu. I actually find that I miss it a little now... especially the Be Friendly and the Shizzle burgers. Plus all the artists who produced the art that went along with the burgers. I just need to get them framed up.

But the food trucks have all been a major part of my life this year... from following Burger Theory around (and ensuring I got my hands on the aforementioned Art Burgers as soon as I could), enjoying the brief period of time when they did a dinner service in North Adelaide to the discovery of the other trucks and finding the perfect thing on the menu to order and just the simple joy of sitting in the park eating a lunch that's fresher, tastier and generally better than anything that may have been sitting around in a bain-marie for several hours.

And although it's not a truck, going to Pearl's Diner for the first time was a pretty special experience as well.

2012 has also been The Year of Collecting Art

Like food trucks, it was something that was already in place in my life, but this year definitely saw an increase the frequency of my art purchases... hand in hand with my regular visits to Espionage Gallery. It started with a visit last December, but really ramped up when I started going to the opening nights of shows... the first of which, I think, was the group print exhibition in April where I bought four pieces.

Add to that the fact that there seem to be a few smaller galleries popping up owned/run by people who understand street art and street artists (or who are street artists themselves). On top of Espionage, there's also These Walls Don't Lie and Tooth and Nail...

I now own over 30 pieces of art... the only downside is that I don't have the wall space to hang them all or the ability to put nails in the wall. But one day... when I'm living somewhere else... I want to have one of those feature walls for all my art where you start at the centre and just move outwards as your collection grows.

2012 has, photographically speaking, been The Year of FatMumSlim's Photo-A-Day challenge.

It's been a great experience... 14 of my top 20 photos on Instagram at present are Photo-A-Day prompted shots (and the top three are all from PAD), and just that push to photograph something every single day has been great.

I am tempted to create a Printstagram page-a-day calendars out of all the photos... even though I know I phoned a few of my shots in during year... but I haven't found another page-a-day calendar that I like, so it could be a way to go.

I'm still undecided about joining the 2013 Photo-A-Day challenge... but I honestly don't quite know what I'm going to do with myself once tomorrow rolls around if I don't have one of Chantelle's word prompts urging me to take a particular photo.

2012 has also become The Year of Watching YouTube Series...

As I've already mentioned, I discovered The Lizzie Bennet Diaries at the beginning of the year (and it just continues to get better and better even with my earlier complaint), and then only a few months back I finally got around to watching Tabletop hosted by the charming Wil Wheaton.

I would never have suspected that watching a group of people play a board game on YouTube could be so much fun... but the combination of great board/dice/card games that I've not heard of and "celebrity" players turns out to be a winning one.

I ended up watching the majority of the sixteen episode season in a few days, but fortunately the series restarts on January 3... so I'm excited about that. 

Like every year, 2012 has also been about movies, but this year has very much been The Year of Movies I've Never Seen Before...

I'll devote a whole post to this later, but I've seen more movies that I've never seen before this year than I saw movies in total last year!

The number of movies I saw in the cinema was the same as last year, but my review of Wreck-It Ralph took me all the way to 200 movie review posts here on the blog.

And I couldn't conclude a list like this without saying that 2012 has without doubt been The Year Lego Came Back Into My Life.

Yes, it crept back in in 2010 when the Lego minifigure collections were released and I bought my first two... but it was just something I bought now and again.

Then, with the release of either Series 5 or 6, my obsession really took off and I not only collected that whole series (and every one since), but I had to go back and fill in the previous series with the assistance of eBay.

I also bought three major Lego sets (I'm not counting the Star Wars minifigure/vehicle/planet sets... although I have all six of those now)... Lego Hulk, the Lego Sydney Opera House (bought from the actual Opera House... which is as it should be) and the Lego R2D2 which I put together earlier this week.

But like my art collection and my small collection of vinyl toys and my toy soldier collection (which didn't even make it out of the boxes this year due to a lack of space) and to a lesser extent pretty much everything I own, I would have more, but I just don't have the room for it, or even the storage space to pack it away.

This is definitely why 2013 needs to be The Year I Reorganise Things And Buy New Bookcases... or possibly, but less likely, The Year I Move House... but that would mean that it would also need to be The Year I Get Permanent Employment.

Theatre

In a non-"Year of the" way, there was once again quite a lot of theatre in my year... 21 Adelaide Fringe shows, 4 Adelaide Cabaret Festival shows and a handful of other shows...

• Doctor Who Symphony Spectacular
• Bell Shakespeare's Macbeth
• Reaper Man
• Rock The Ballet
• Will And The Ghost
• Circa

Out of those 31 shows, The Boy James is still the most emotionally powerful experience I had all year long... even thinking about it now, there are parts of that experience that are as vivid to me as though they happened yesterday, and it does stir up all those emotions I felt at the time.

Travel

Ma and I didn't do any "major" interstate trips this year... there was a brief "long weekend" trip to Melbourne in February for the Doctor Who concert, and I did an overnight trip to Sydney for Macbeth in April... but since then, nothing.

But that's partly so we could do a trip to Sydney in April 2013. Unfortunately I discovered the week before Christmas that the reason for that trip, to go to the second Outpost street art event, has now been cancelled. Which is a total shame... and I haven't really heard why it was cancelled either, which is a bit of a bummer.

I think we'll probably still do an April trip though... I mean I already have it on the Big Board Of Stuff at work and I think Ma has already applied for the time off.

The downside of 2012

I honestly haven't had a large amount to complain about this year... sure there are always little niggling complaints, but overall there has been much in the way of major disasters... although, to be honest, one is more than enough.

However, 2012 was also The Year I Injured My Back... or possibly, just that it was when the issue that had been present in my back since I was a teenager finally made itself officially known.

I now pretty much divide the year into two halves... everything that happened before I injured my back on May 6 and everything that happened from May 6 onwards. And it's one of those things that I don't know if it will ever be completely under control. Every time I think I have a handle on it, I slide backwards a little bit...

But it's difficult to relearn how to stand and walk and generally hold your body after doing the same thing for the last 30-something years.

I just wish that putting that next to the fact that my sex life has slipped from being in intensive care to an unresponsive coma during the latter part of the year into perspective.

So that was my year in a nutshell... mostly good, and a lot that was memorable.

Current Mood:

the last (shopping) post of 2011

You know, I'm not really too fond of this "Important Holiday Eve falling on a Saturday" thing.

It's all kinda disorientating.

But today is both Saturday and New Years Eve, so it's been a different day than previous NYE's...

I woke up around 6am to discover that outside was blessedly cool so I cranked the fan up in the doorway to try and at least pump a little cooler air into the apartment before the sun came up over the house next door.

While that was chugging away, I changed my bedding (while managing to tweak a muscle in my back... a sure sign I'm getting old), rotated my mattress (seemed like a good day to do it), took out the trash and washed the dishes in the sink. All this because my grandmother essentially lives in my brain and everything has to be "just so" at midnight.

I was pretty much done with everything by about 7am, which is pretty damn good, so I played around on the laptop until Ma messaged me to tell me she was on her way down.

Now of the five Saturdays in December, we actually didn't go shopping together for three of those, so it felt a little odd and I think we both ended up buying more stuff than usual (even though my fridge is kinda full already).

Then we wandered around Target to see if they had anything decent on sale (not really... or at least nothing that I want/need)... and marvelled (no, wait, the other thing... horrified) that they already had the start of their Easter egg display out. Really? Really really?

Since today is very, very hot (36°C as we speak), we decided to head down to Marion where it would at least be cooler, there's pretty much all the shops we would want to have a look in and we could leave the car undercover. My car obviously, since it has aircon.

As always when it's hot it was a little bit of a chore finding a carpark underneath the building, but we managed it eventually. Marion actually wasn't as busy as I thought it was going to be... and lots of guys in shorts and singlets or just shorts that kept falling down... and lots of exposed tattoos (some good, some not so much). Tasty.

We did our usual big circuit (all along the bottom, then upstairs and all along the top, then back along the top and back along the bottom), lets us see everything.

There were a few bits and pieces worth getting in the sales... I picked up a new chain for my watch pendant (the other one had that "fingers on a blackboard" effect on me every time the pendant moved on the chain), Ma bought three big bottles of the Harajuku Lovers Wicked Style perfume for $57 (that's less than one bottle normally retails for... meaning she saved about $140). We also poked around the left over Christmas decorations, but there really wasn't anything even remotely interesting left.

But we covered pretty much everything, so by the time we were done we were officially done with a capital everything.

Now all that remains to be done for the year is to a) watch the back of it disappear into the sunset (literally) in the next six and a half hours and b) do my regular "Yaniblog In Review"... the first sentence of the first blog post for each month of 2011...

I did kinda start this whole "Year That Was" thing yesterday with the Last Meme post, but here's Yaniblog11:

January: And here we are on the very first day of 2011!

February: I don't know if it's exactly yarn bombing if you tie a doily to a tree, but it's very cool... I'll refrain from trying to make a reference to the other image...

March: Philip Escoffey's previous show, "Six Impossible Things Before Dinner", was one of the shows that I wanted to see last year but missed out...

April: It hasn't been a particularly good week...

May: I got my 52 Suburbs book today... it's so pretty... I'm going to need to devote some time to going through it though... there's a lot of text and a lot of images to pour through...

June: Something blue for the Winter template...

July: Behold! The rare blue Mr Sloppy! I knew there was a blue one around, and a recent photo tipped me off to where I might find it.

August: I'll say this for you Brisbane, I may not be able to orient myself on your streets yet, but you have some mighty fine looking men wandering around...

September: Unsurprisingly, the Spring template is from our trip to Brisbane.

October: Today was brief... so much so that I think it can best be summed up in dot point form...

November: If Adelaide Zoo is a regular kind of zoo, then I have no idea what the hell Taronga Zoo is... it's like an animal city or something. We saw pretty much everything there was to see except the Kid's Zoo, and it took six and a half hours.

December: Some of that "painting with light" action for today's Random Hotness...

That's it... 2011 is officially done and dusted. See you all in 2012!

Current Mood:

photo friday: birds and the last meme of 2011

A mixed bag of birds for the year's last Photo Friday... from three different states.

Since I haven't really done anything much this week, I figured that I'd round out the year with a real life, honest to goodness meme... it's been one that's been floating around in my drafts for a few years, but this year seemed a good time to drag it out.

And this pretty much sums up everything I would have mentioned about the ups and downs of the last 12 months anyway...

So here it is... The Last Meme of 2011:

1. What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
   Travelled to three different cities, two of them during the same trip. I had more money in the bank than I've ever had before in my whole life (although two interstate trips, eBay and Fringe tickets have kinda wiped a lot of that out).
   
   I also put some of my photography up for sale in a gallery. So far nothing has sold, but it could just be the wrong gallery for my work.
   
   Going to the gym first thing in the morning is a new one.
   
   Oh, and taking part in crowdfunding was something I hadn't even heard of before this year... but during 2011 I've helped to fund artists, musicians, travellers, tech accessories, urban collectives and books.
   


2. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   Tink, Sugarmonkey, two of my cousins (not that I'm technically "close" to either of them).


3. Did anyone close to you die?
   Thankfully no.


4. Who was the best new person you met?
   Possibly The Banger at work... I really don't meet people.


5. Who did you miss?
   Lownee, the same as always... but a little less so every year which is both good and disheartening. In July 2012 she'll have been gone from my life for 10 years. Which is longer than she was actually IN my life. But I still look for her face from time to time in a crowd of strangers.


6. How many one night stands in this last year?
   Approximately 15, give or take a couple. Although are they technically one night stands if you've already had sex with the person more than 12 months beforehand?


7. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
   Work permanency, regular sex (contrary to what it would seem like from the previous question), a larger bank balance, a smaller waistline... the usual.


8. What dates/experiences from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory?
   Seeing Stephen Fry for the second time... visiting the emergency room followed by Shakespeare... Macbeth at the Fringe... the best sex of my life.


9. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
   On my actual birthday, not a lot... but before then there was stuff... and 37.


10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    Ear infection, knee scrape, nothing serious.


11. What was the best thing you bought?
    Either Gary Seaman's entry in the Dumpster Biennale or my Digital SLR.


12. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    I'm not sure I got "really x 3" excited about anything this year... although the Melbourne/Sydney trip, the whole of the Fringe and getting pretty much all the packages I got in the mail throughout the year made me pretty excited.
    
    Oh, wait... Burger Theory burgers... they got me really, really excited for a good chunk of the year... partly because I never quite knew when I would be able to have another one. They probably also count as one of the best things I bought.


13. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    
    
    • Happier or sadder?
      Potentially happier, but more angry than sad overall.
    
    
    • Thinner or fatter?
      Technically thinner, but it's only by degrees, and disappointing since I've been going to the gym pretty much all year.
    
    
    • Richer or poorer?
      
    Currently poorer, but that's due to the aforementioned trips, tickets and Christmas.


14. What do you wish you'd done more of?
    I wish I'd eaten better. Or maybe just eaten less, I don't know.


15. What do you wish you'd done less of?
    Complain, be disagreeable, be difficult. I often realise afterwards that I'm usually the one who complains about, well, everything... I don't really mean to be, but there's so much stuff that just seems stupid or ill-thought-out to me (especially in a work context) that I find myself complaining about it. A lot. Loudly.


16. How will you be spending New Years?
    Watching movies, the same as usual... although since I didn't get a ton of DVDs for Christmas I may have to dip into the DVDs I haven't gotten around to watching during the year.


17. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
    I have some different neighbours to this time last year, but I hate all my neighbours as a collective unit, so I'm not sure that counts. And various people at the gym shit me... but people pretty much everywhere shit me, so I think that's more about me than them.


18. What was the best book/s you read?
    I really stopped reading during this year. I mean novels anyway... in fact, I've only read three books throughout this year, and only two of them are really novels. But I read stuff all the time... Twitter, blogs, articles, work things.


19. What was your favourite TV program?
    Underbelly Razor


20. What were your favourite films of this year?
    I'll be blogging my Top 10 list of movies for this year next week... But I also saw a LOT of older movies I'd never seen before during the year, so they'll probably get a mention in the same post.


21. What did you want and get?
    Top of the list though is probably the iPhone 4S. But most things really. That's part of the "problem" with me working full time (if not on a permanent basis), then if I really want something (or even if I only think I want it, but I am getting better at resisting the urge to buy that kind of stuff), I buy it.


22. What did you want and not get?
    This time last year I really wanted to replace my bookshelves, give myself more storage potentially. That still hasn't happened. The other thing I kinda wanted was a new microwave, not because I need one, but partly because it's the only piece of electronic equipment I haven't replaced during my time in this apartment. But I'm not sure what I really want in a new one, so I haven't found it yet.


23. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    Is it trite to say "more sex"... actually it should be "more great sex". I'll also add "a new apartment" or alternatively "new neighbours" (but more the former, since I'm kinda over living in this particular apartment), and "our unit having a higher profile" at work.


24. What kept you sane?
    Laughter wherever the hell it came from, Twitter and my blog. Also working full time, although that potentially kept me equally sane and insane but for different reasons.

Current Mood:

photo friday: mr sloppy returns

Mr Sloppy never really left us... some of the images of the Street Dreams mascot are still around if you know where to look, but this year Mr Sloppy has had a bit of a makeover (which is being polite, I think he's actually gained some weight...) and is starting to show up again...

So I went for a little walk at lunchtime today with the mission to find this version. It's a little like hide and seek really... or some sort of treasure hunt... you know there are new Mr Sloppys around, but you have to hunt them down.

And obviously the return of Mr Sloppy also means that the program for Street Dreams is out...

You know, every time I see a video with footage from last year, I keep looking for myself in the background... fortunately I don't seem to be in any of the footage!

Anyway, the program... I'm very excited about the Dumpster Biennale (although, really, if it's not happening every other year, is it really a Biennale) again... must resist the urge to buy another one though (only because I don't have the space).

I'm slightly less excited about the artist they have coming in to redo the wall outside the Format Gallery... if only because she's described as a "visual artist" rather than a street artist... but she may do something amazing, so I'll wait and see.

In other news...

Looky... I got an award!

Well, it's really more of a meme with delusions of grandeur, but whatever.

The very lovely (Large)Tony from West of Mayberry passed it on to me because according to him I've "got some great photography and an eye for style". Awww bless... He's such a sweetheart!

So the rules go something like this...

Thank the person who gave you the award (check), post seven things about yourself and nominate/contact five other bloggers to pass the award on to.

Although, really, if everybody passes it on to 5 people, by the time the tenth person passes it on 1,953,125 will be stylish...

Anyway...

Seven Things About Me (The "Shit That Happened This Week") Edition

1. My To Do List at work isn't getting any shorter... it's also not getting any longer, it just sits there, staring at me while I get distracted by other things which is something that I'm exceptionally good at.
2. I make really good quiche.
3. I always seem to be the one who does all the work when it comes to getting naked with a dude... whether it's his place or my place, I do most of the heavy lifting... what the hell is up with that?
4. I now have crushes on four different YouTube vloggers... well five, but one is a woman.
5. My elephant-like memory came to good use yesterday when I created a Google map of all the locations of street art I could remember in Adelaide.
   
6. I have a project at work where I'm going to have to stand up in front of a bunch of people and talk for about 45 minutes, and it terrifies me. Fortunately it's not until March. Unfortunately I really haven't started working on it yet (see also #1).
   
7. I went through my blogroll earlier this week and have hardly anybody left so the next step is going to be really difficult.
   

If you want to know some actual stuff about me, try my fourth and seventh ever posts...

Sadly, most of the people I can think of who I would have said deserved a Stylish Award are no longer blogging... or at least not regularly enough for it to be worthwhile...

So unless there's a great outcry in the comments for me to award Stylish Awards, we'll just leave it at that...

Now it's time for leftover quiche...

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photo friday: mmx in review

So here we are... at the last day of 2010...

Like last NYE, today has been incredibly hot... and I discovered at about 11pm last night that my evaporative cooler wasn't actually doing any evaporating because the fabric that turns on little rollers in the back wasn't turning.

Cue me at 9am this morning standing outside The Good Guys waiting to buy a new one... which I probably would have done with much less fuss had I not found one online that I liked and that they were supposed to have in stock... which they turned out not to have in stock... so I ended up getting my second choice, which though the temperature is still in the mid 30°C range, is holding up okay.

I also stopped off and bought a bucketload of fruit which I'll turn into fruit salad very shortly...

And learning from my previous mistakes, I changed my bedding first thing this morning so I didn't have to attempt it at 11pm while my bedroom was stinking hot.

It's a little strange that I actually remember last New Years Eve with such clarity... most of it anyway... although specifically I remember exactly where I was sitting and what I was doing as I started something that has had a serious effect on my life for the last year...

That's right... just after 5pm last NYE, I started my Twitter account!

I think my first tweet was in reply to former blogger Tom, but I can't tell at present as older tweets are offline... but it's definitely made a change in my life...

And you would think so, given that I've made 6489 tweets up to this point... that's nearly 18 tweets a day...

I've discovered a whole new group of online friends, started the #60mmo live tweeting phenomenon with Peteski and Twillyon (which actually skews the hell out of my tweets per day number), found that sometimes if you say something on Twitter people you never would have expected to reach answer you... and you end up maybe a little bit smarter (although possibly with a slightly smaller attention span).

So to any of my Tweeple, friends and followers who read this, thanks for this first year of tweeting... I wouldn't have missed it for anything.

In other general news for this year...

I spent the entire year working, I decided to not blog every single day, I travelled to both Sydney and Melbourne (and didn't get laid in either city), I bought a new teevee and entertainment system, my iPhone has pretty much been welded to my hand for the past twelve months and went a little crazy at both the Fringe and Cabaret Festivals...

And I don't appear to have done a single meme in the last twelve months... but luckily, my NYE tradition (see also 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) takes care of that...

The first line of the first blog post for each month...

January: Welcome to the new decade, and more specifically to 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity... or, if my walk this morning is any indication, the International Year of Hot Boys!

February: It's been a very trying day... mostly because I've been unable to concentrate on anything properly...

March: I have this sense of impending... well, not exactly doom... but I feel like the Universe needs to balance out my account, what with all the Fringe fun and the new teevee and everything... I'm guessing it's just rampant paranoia...

April: Since sets of pictures of hot guys in bunny/Easter related outfits are in short supply, today's Random Hotness is APlusK himself (and that's the first time I actually GOT that username), Ashton Kutcher...

May: I didn't intend to do either, but I gave my credit card a serious workout today, and I ate Lynx shower gel...

June: While I haven't actually read any of the reviews, general buzz for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time hasn't been especially complimentary... but I didn't think it was as bad as all that.

July: Today's Random Hotness... a model, in his underwear, in the desert, holding onto a giant picture frame...

August: This trip to Melbourne is very different in a lot of ways to trips we've made before... we're much more focussed this time... we have actual plans rather than just wandering around wherever the wind and whim takes us.

September: Sometimes it amazes me how the perfect photo for a template sometimes falls right into my lap right before I'm about to change it.

October: This is another version of the artwork from the centre of last Saturday's montage... it was a great piece of art... with all the layers and the lighting that moved and changed...

November: Hey, guess what... I'm in Sydney!

December: The Summer 2010/11 yaniblog template comes courtesy of Sculpture by the Sea (unsurprisingly)... I mean, really, how many homosexuals can resist a bit of rainbow action now and again?

So that's it for 2010 pretty much... I wonder what next year will bring?

Current Mood:

2009: the year in review

You know how I said that it didn't really feel like Christmas, right up until Christmas... well the coming of the new year feels about the same (doubly so because it's also the end of the decade and everybody seems to be talking about the best "insert term here" of the last ten years... I'm not even going to think about that one. way too depressing)...

Maybe it's because I've essentially spent the whole year working... it just seems to have slipped through my fingers... it was only about five minutes ago that it was the middle of March and I was starting up again at The Nut House...

It's mostly been a work orientated year... while I've done a bunch of other stuff, it does feel like everything revolves around the working... maybe because the working paid for all the other stuff that happened... like the new bed and chair... the new laptop and broadband... the new iPhone...

Which makes it sound like it was a year of consumerism... but I think it was more of a year of opportunities... the money was just the facilitator... I got to take another trip to Melbourne, I went to six theatre performances (a personal record) and just shy of thirty movies and a whole bunch of shopping/market experiences, as well as a much of stuff that was fun, yet free...

And even though New Years Eve isn't until tomorrow, I thought I'd just drag out this meme which seems like it's turned into a New Years tradition (2006, 2007, 2008)...

Yaniblog09 In Review

Post the first sentence from the first post of every month of 2009:

January: Welcome to 2009, the International Year of Natural Fibres...

February: Okay, so it should be no surprise by now that it's bloody buggery hot here in good old Adelaide... and that since I don't have any kind of refrigerated air-conditioning, I am now, and have been for the last week, at varying degrees of overheatedness...

March: Good morning and welcome to Autumn!

April: Just some random questions that have been floating around in my head this fine Wednesday...

May: Okay, let's get down to it while my sugar rush is still in effect...

June: Urgh... can I please have another weekend to recover from the weekend I just had?

July: Almost twelve months ago to the day my hot water heater stopped working... and there was way too much drama about getting it working again.

August: Today was a lot like last Saturday... pretty lowkey, although with slightly more spending action.

September: There's a downside to working full time, having had very Wintery weather of late and the fact that the majority of my images are locked away on the new, and currently inaccessible, external hard drive...

October: Behold the first of five, count them... five, montages constructed from the 858 photos I took on my trip... this one details highlights from each of the five days... and since there are five rows and five days, that's a row a day.

November: You know what... I really need to get better at listening for signals amongst the noise.

December: The first day of Summer brings with it many changes, not least of which is a brand new blog template...

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