2026

2026. Weirdly it feels like a made up number. Like what do you mean the year is 2026, that's not a real thing. Admittedly, 2025 felt kind of the same.

In addition to being the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, it's also the International Year of the Woman Farmer as well as Volunteers for Sustainable Development. So, naturally Hot Boy With Farm Animal was the go-to. And this particular Hot Boy is Francesco Soave, in a photoshoot by Johnny Lopera.

Yesterday was a little atypical, relatively speaking. I did the usual stuff, changed the bed to the soothing black and white bedding, generally tidied up, although I already did the lion's share of that earlier in the week, ran the vacuum over the floors... and then finished reading the book I was on because I wanted it done before the new year. You know, nothing exciting.

I also realised, fairly late in the afternoon that I hadn't made my usual year-in-review post... and looking through the blog last year... really there wasn't enough interesting stuff to justify bothering. I made a few crochet scarves plus a cardigan for Ma, I befriended a butterfly, I broke my toe... that was it really. So I didn't bother. There will be a books/media "best of" post sometime in the next week or so though.

The evening was where things weren't The Usual. For the first time since 2021, there was no Fluffy Movie Night. In all honestly, there wasn't even a "movie night" at all. Because I'd grabbed TV shows at the library last weekend without necessarily thinking it all the way through. So I finished the last three episodes of the season I was watching (more on that on the weekend). Which at least felt apt, even if there's a second season I really need to grab soon.

And that finished up around like 10:30... so I tidied things away and just went to bed by about, I dunno, 11 or so. Granted I messed around on my phone until midnight and did hear the fireworks from town, but I basically crashed out before 12:15.

This morning was a very quiet walk, as New Year's Day tends to be. And then the plan for later today is probably putting together the Lucky Bamboo Lego that Fluffy got me for Christmas. And then working out if I can actually get it in one of the cloches that I already own.

2025

Welcome to 2025.

In addition to being the International Year of Peace and Trust, 2025 is the International Years for Glaciers' Preservation, Cooperatives as well as Quantum Science and Technology. However, as much as I would have liked to feature "hot boy on iceberg", the image search gods were not with me in this effort.

I also realised that 2021 was also a "Peace and Trust" year. Turns out that that's just the United Nations way of going "hey kids, quit squabbling, also we exist still" essentially. The more you know. And good for them I guess.

Weirdly, New Years Eve felt like it snuck up on me this year. I don't know if that's because there was a weekend in the middle, or what, I don't know. But yesterday was very "oh, it's NYE".

After my walk I went through my usual NYE chores. Change the bedding from festive red and green to calming black and white, tidy the house, vacuum, trim my hair, etc. All thrilling stuff, but necessary. And all very much my NYE "traditions". In the loosest definition of that word.

As is also tradition, Fluffy showed up in the evening for our usual New Years Eve Moviefest.

Of course, after a month of watching nothing but the entire run of Teen Wolf, and inspiring Fluffy to do the same, just slightly behind me, of course our first movie pick for the night had to be Teen Wolf: The Movie. I'm going to do a full review on it shortly... but it was both very good and in line with elements of the series, and also an entire dumpster fire. Very solidly average.

We followed that up with 80's camp classic, Big Business, partially to expand Fluffy's knowledge of Lily Tomlin, partially because it's just a big camp farce. It is, at times, somewhat slower than I remember it being and doesn't quite do as much of the, to quote Noises Off, "...doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce."

I mean, it does all that, just less frantically. Still great though.

And, because we never quite get the timing right, we finished the movies at 11:30 and I drove Fluffy home, getting back just before midnight and basically just listening to the sounds of about 10 minutes of fireworks before I called it a night.

This morning wasn't anything new or surprising, just my morning walk.

2024

Hello 2024!

Also, hello to the International Year of Camelids... which includes camels, llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos.

It also led to me discovering the batshit crazy image that graces the top of this post... which, just this morning, I discovered was from an even more batshit crazy commercial for a Norwegian "acupressure" product that... doesn't seem to exist under that name anymore.

Also, there is "no reliable evidence for the effectiveness of acupressure", according to Wikipedia and anybody with any sense. The image is still great though.

So that was my morning. How did you start your 2024?

The thing about traditions... or just a day where you do things because it's that day... is that just traditions... I'm very good with words and thinking and making sense of things this morning... wait, where was I...

Oh, traditions... the thing about them, given that we're talking about ones that only come up once a year, is that they don't tend to change very much from year to year.

My New Years Eve is very that. The only major thing that tends to change is what day it's happening on, which changes some of the minor details.

Yesterday was very much both an average Sunday and also an average New Years Eve.

I did my usual porridge and coffee breakfast, I had pizza for a late lunch/early dinner. I'd already taken down my Christmas decorations (such as they were) on Saturday night, I did some cleaning up, I vacuumed the floors, mostly because they needed it anyway and less specifically because it was New Years.

I changed my bedding from the festive green IKEA swirly quilt cover with the red fitted sheet that I make from a combination of two different regular sets of bedding with the exact same pattern of quilt cover, but in all black and white (which are the other halves of the Christmas sets)... and every year the monochrome version is so very restful to the eyes in a way that I don't think about until it changes over. Also, I think that's the most awkward version of that sentence from any of the New Years posts in recent memory. Like I said... I do words good today.

And then Fluffy came over so we could do what is fast becoming our New Years Eve tradition, which is just the New Years Tradition I was already doing, just with another person. Essentially, watch movies until New Year happens.

I did make little tiny pizza scrolls though, which were successful for the low effort it took to make them.

We also have fallen into a pattern where I show Fluffy a vintage movie he hasn't seen, and then we watch either a movie he's seen and I haven't or something new that neither of us have seen.

This year we started off with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, ticking "Marilyn Monroe" off on his Movie Education Bingo Card... and then we did The Mitchells vs The Machines. Which is... decent. It feels a little too... "I've seen this story 9000 times already" and also "This movie is clearly not aimed at me" and also "LOL, wut, random" or whatever the current generation version of that is. But, to be fair, it's less of that as the movie goes along. I don't think I have enough to say about it to make a whole review though.

We had decided to wander down the road a little to see if we could watch the fireworks down one of the side streets, so we killed the little bit of time before midnight with a frankly terrible episode of the David Suchet Poirot series that was very short and full of very bad acting. And I realised, about halfway through, that the story had also been part of the Anime Poirot and Miss Marple series I watched a bunch of last year.

Was the "watch the fireworks" plan successful? I swear that last year, I saw the fireworks very clearly as I was driving home from having dropped Fluffy home... but, I guess... trees grow in a year. So... we saw what can best be described as both diddly and squat. But we did head people yell "Happy New Year" in literal surround sound as people in the houses around us all yelled it at midnight. So that was novel.

And then I drove him home. I think maybe next year, we just go for three full movies.

This morning, being a Monday, started with my morning walk. And now we're here. So, 2024 definitely has some built in chaos energy already, we'll see how things progress.

2023

Welcome to 2023.

International Year of Millets and also Dialogue as a Guarantee of Peace... so there's that. And I went a little oldschool with the image for this year. All the way back to the 1930's with this photo by Gustave Roud from his Farmer Bodies series. Because who doesn't like a little vintage Swiss beefcake.

Yesterday was pretty chill. I did my usual prep. Emptied things, filled things. Took down the few Christmas decorations I had up. Changed my sheets and towels. Posted my regular posts to Twitter, Insta and the blog (Twitterversary, Insta Top 9 and Year in Review respectively).

And the Fluffy came over for NYE Movie Night.

Oh, I was also very, very happy to see Channel 9 continuing the NYE tradition and extending it this year. So not only was Can't Stop The Music on just before midnight, but before that, they put Xanadu on. Which makes my heart happy, because they're both trash, but they're the good kind of trash.

Speaking of movies.

I continued Fluffy's Classic Movie Education by introducing him to 1992's Death Becomes Her. Because what better way to end 2022 than with homicidal bitchy divas. 

And then he wanted me to finally watch the Marvel Halloween short movie, Werewolf by Night. It was about what I expected. A cast mostly devoid of charisma, a script mostly devoid of actual horror or suspense, and the usual amount of "stunt man throws other stunt man using wires" you expect from Marvel. The upsides. Cinematographer Zoe White, who made it look amazing. And, honestly, Man-Thing, the non-speaking CGI creature. Also, the makeup department.

It was not, however, the worst thing we watched all night.

Disney's Strange World. More on that shortly.

We also need to get better at timings for New Years Movie Night. So that, you know, we actually end the last movie at or just after midnight.

Because we finished up at about 11:30, wandered around my apartment for a good 10 minutes just saying "why" at each other, and then I drove Fluffy home, and was sitting at an intersection on the way home for actual New Years. Which did mean that including the drive there and the drive back, I saw about 8 different sets of fireworks go off. And got home just as the ones in Adelaide finished.

This morning I attempted to recreate the perfect egg and bacon roll I made back in... I dunno... it was 2 houses ago... so about 2015. Today's entry was tasty enough with the edition of my tomato and onion relish, but not as Instragram-worthy 2015 version.

So that's that about that.

Current mood:

2022

2022... which, if you say it out loud, sounds like 2020 II... or the second 2020. And, honestly, nobody wants any of that.

This year is not only the International Year of Glass, as exemplified by the above image... looking through glass windows to see glass windows, also tastefully naked blonde man. But this year is also the year of both Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Mountain Development.

We'll get onto New Years Eve in a second, but because today is ALSO a Saturday, I need to do a real quick roundup first. Because screw this holiday season and things falling on Saturdays.

The only real points of interest were that on Monday I lost my mind slightly and started finding the boxes I had stored away for various bits of tchotchkes, pulled them all out, put things in boxes and filled the kitchen table with them. So... that's the start of that.

Thursday was both Supermarket Saturday and DnD Friday, while also being Thursday. So first up was the Supermarket with Ma... and it was much, much quieter than last week's shopping. Then DnD Night was... more talking. And making plans. And trying to convince a polar bear that he shouldn't be keeping secrets from us. And investigating a story thread that I probably should have looked into months ago, but didn't. And getting a spooky omen from the Frostmaiden herself.

Which brings us around to New Years Eve.

Now, normally my New Years Eve is the exact same shit as the year before and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that. And this year was... 90% that. But not.

So, I tidied the house as best I could with boxes spread over multiple surfaces, change my bedding from garish red and green to calm black and white, rotated the mattress, because otherwise I forget to do it, so once a year at the very least seems like a good idea. And then Fluffy came down in the evening.

Which means, instead of just sitting around on my own watching movies, I sat around with Fluffy and watched movies. Which is the 10% from the above.

We started off with a classic, How To Steal A Million, which I love, and which Fluffy had never seen... then we watched Encanto... and that is absolutely getting a review later. The funny thing was that mid way through the movie Fluffy's laptop, which we were using to play the movie onto my TV just rebooted itself and decided that it needed to take about half an hour to do a Windows update. Because that really needed to happen right then and there and couldn't have waited a couple of hours or until he shut the laptop down. So we ended up watching a chunk of Dirty Dancing, which, I realised, I'd never seen all the way through, although I'm familiar with the story.

But it eventually sorted itself out, we finished the movie, I big-cried (but not as far as ugly cry, but it was touch and go for a second there) and we then spent a good portion of time analysing the shit out of it.

And... for some reason, Channel 9 had decided to play You Can't Stop The Music starting at like 10:30pm rather than midnight. So we left that on for a bit before Fluffy started losing the will to live. So then it was back to YouTube to look up Encanto songs until midnight.

Then once we heard the fireworks, we wished each other a Happy New Year... and I drove him home LOL. Had things been slightly different, I might have thrown another old movie on, but, overall it was a nice night. Something different enough at any rate.

And then I came home, and was going to go to bed, but went to shut the laptop down and ended up messaging back and forth with Owlgirl for about half an hour. So that was nice.

Of course, then the first news I saw this morning when I woke up was the fact that Betty White had passed away at the age of 99, a couple of weeks before her 100th birthday. But that technically counts as a 2021 problem. Safe journeys Betty... thanks for you know... and also, for sticking around for so long.

Okay, bring it on 2022. I may not be ready or prepared, but... actually I don't know how that sentence ends... but, we'll get there.

Current mood:

2021

2021, hey. How about that.

As always, I like to highlight one of the UN's International Years in my first post of the year.

This year there was a lot to choose from (not like 2018, seriously, what was up with that)... 2021 is the International Years of Peace and Trust, Creative Economy for Sustainable Development, Fruits and Vegetables, and the Elimination of Child Labour.

I went with Peace and Trust. Because we could all do with a little more of both this year.

Otherwise, I went through the NYE motions... I changed my bedding (which, thinking about it, makes it sound like I only do that once a year given I never mention it otherwise... which is not the case, it's just something I definitely do as part of NYE), I tidied the apartment, took down my few Christmas decorations, wrote my yearly wrap up post, made grilled chicken and potato salad for dinner, prepped bread for tomorrow and settled in to watch both Tom Holland Spider-man movies.

Sidebar reviews: Tom Holland is squeaky voiced, adorkable perfection. I could have done with an amount of the "Ned" character more rapidly approaching 0%. Zendaya's character was not what I expected. The second movie was better than the first one. Yes, Jake Gyllenhaal, yes. Some of the more interesting post credit scenes. Points for the Captain America one from the first movie.

After hearing the fireworks off in the distance, I finished up the movies just after midnight, was happy to see that Channel 9 was playing Can't Stop The Music, as is their post NYE movie tradition (actually it started here at 11:30, but I think that was just a time zone thing honestly) for reasons I don't fully understand. It's even mentioned on the CSTM Wikipedia page. Anyway, I watched maybe two minutes of it this year before commercials happened and I gave up and went to bed.

Today has been, as usual, a big fat nothing day... but at least I have DnD to look forward to tonight.

Current mood:

2020

2020... new year, new decade, same old me.

And for what it's worth, 2020 is also the International Year of Plant Health. So this year's HNY image comes from the very sweet Boys With Plants. Because surprisingly (or maybe not) boys and plants are very restful.

It's so weird that an arbitrary (if regular) point within the flight of this big dumb lump of rock around a ball of burning gas actually feels significant even when you don't imbue it with any real significance.

I desperately needed to go through my New Years Eve ritual of cleaning the apartment, as the hot weather meant that I really couldn't be bothered with that before yesterday. But I wasn't in any kind rush... so I cleaned the kitchen, changed my bedding, including rotating the mattress and throwing away two of my pillows because I haven't used four pillows for sleeping possibly at all this decade, put a new shower curtain up (because I happened to have one in the cupboard), and just generally made things tidy.

Then I made Thai Green Curry and settled in to watch movies. Specifically Missing Link, which is very sadly the first Laika movie that is just bad (uninteresting or dislikable characters, predictable narrative) followed by Avengers: Infinity War, which is fine, but much less enjoyable than Endgame was I think.

I finished just before midnight, discovered that Channel 9 were once again playing You Can't Stop The Music (I don't know why they play it basically every year, but I love that they do), watched about ten minutes of that until just after midnight and then gave up and went to bed.

And today I've done basically nothing except a little bit of printing and catching up on YouTube stuff.

So here we go... the twenty-twenties...

Current mood:

2019

And here we are... 2019.

The International Year of Indigenous Languages, Moderation and the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.

You know those times when you're just going through the motions because it's tradition or it's what you always do, or whatever the reasons. Yeah, that really does feel like my whole Christmas and New Year period. I do what I do because it's what I do.

Up to and including yesterday. Yes, I ticked all the appropriate New Years Eve boxes. I changed my bedding from red and green to black and white. I took down the old calendar. I posted my Top 9 on Instagram and wrote a very lacklustre Year in Review post. I made sure my sink was mostly empty. I took my trash and my recycling out. In essence, I sorted my environment.

It didn't feel like anything though. I was doing the things I do on New Years Eve because this was the day to do them, not because it felt like the last day of the year (if that makes any sense at all).

Then in the evening, I made some dinner (chicken with tomato and mango relish... and thankfully the relish was one I'd prepared earlier out of the freezer) and settled down to watch movies.

And I didn't even get any movies for Christmas this year... fortunately there were things I'd bought or been given that I hadn't gotten around to watching yet. So I went with The Lego Batman Movie and The Shape of Water.

That got me to about 11:45, I played around until about 12:30, stopping briefly to half watch the two square inches of fireworks I can see from my doorway.

And then I called it a night.

Today has been... mostly inconsequential. I got up and did what I would do any other morning... had cereal and coffee, watched some stuff on YouTube. I did do that thing I tend to do at the end/beginning of the year, where I go through my social media accounts and weed out the people I'm no longer interested in, and in the case of Instagram, going through the people following me to clear out the old, unused accounts or mostly empty accounts or just the people who shouldn't be following me.

I also tried to make my usual Instagram/Social Print Studio calendar... but it seems that Instagram doesn't want to play nicely with their interface and I'm going to need to go about it a different way. Which is annoying. But not hard.

Otherwise I just phaffed about.

2019... it's basically like 2018 but there's currently less of it.

Current Mood:

2018

Hello 2018... how you doing?

Normally I theme the New Years image with whatever the "international year" of the year is (well, 2016 was a little hard)... but "contrary to common practice, the United Nations has not declared 2018 as International Year for any specific topic".

So instead, have this image of Cameron Boyce, beautiful freckled human.

My New Years was average as these things go... and I'll be honest, both yesterday and today just feel like any other day, which has happened a lot across the festive period this year.

I tidied the house a little in the morning, left my Iced Coffee in the freezer a little bit too long (the slush to liquid ratio was sub-optimal), did a little blogging, grabbed some lunch and then settled in to play a couple of hours of Assassin's Creed Origins.

I will just say that even more than some of the other AC games, it's very easy to get totally lost in that world...

But I resurfaced around 7pm, made some dinner (if by dinner you mean cooked a plate of dumplings, then, yes, dinner) and settled in for my usual NYE moviefest.

This year my choices were Cars 3 and Logan... definitely an odd pairing, but I was impressed with Logan. I finished up just before midnight, waited for the clock to tick over, listened to the fireworks for about five seconds, saw the top inch and a half through the trees and then headed to bed (lamenting the fact that You Can't Stop The Music was on yet again, but there was no way I was staying up to watch it).

So, yeah, the thrills never stop around this place.

Happy New Year!

Current Mood:

2017

Hello 2017... a lot of people are both very glad to see you and worried for what you hold. Be gentle with us, would you.

It's also the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development... so that's a thing.

Yesterday was a funny old day... it didn't really feel like the last day of the year, and then on top of that it was also a Saturday, so there was shopping to be done. I got up fairly early and headed off to the supermarket to be there when they opened. It was a much more chill experience than Christmas Eve, unsurprisingly.

After I was done and had put away my stuff in my still overstuffed fridge, I packed up Ma's groceries and headed off to her place.

Given that we abandoned going to La Cousina's on Christmas Day, Ma had arranged to go and see them on Saturday... but La Cousina was running a bit behind schedule so we headed off to the shops to do some errands Ma wanted to do.

Then it was off to La Cousina's. And it was a really good visit... it was just La Cousina, Miss Oh, Ma, me and Princess T's little girl. She really is the most adorable baby (she's 6 or 7 months old if memory serves)... all chubby arms and legs and big anime eyes. And she's clearly one of those kids who take to strangers right away... I pretty much had hold of her or had her in my lap the entire time we were there (other than a short nap she had). And it just being La Cousina and Miss Oh was nice too... so we ended up having a good long chat about this, that, the other and nothing much at all and we were there for a couple of hours all up.

I didn't stick around too long after we got back to Ma's... I still had a bunch of stuff I wanted to do before settling in for New Years Eve.

First things first was getting the place tidied up... not that it was that bad given that I hadn't done much all week besides playing video games (mostly Lego Dimensions... not really surprising given that they were over half of my Christmas present... but I also finished off Firewatch, which was amazing, but nothing like I thought it was going to be... but that definitely needs another play through at some stage) and watching the first season of Westworld (it took a while to get there, but by the end, I was totally on board).

Then I had to do some blogging... so I didn't really get started on the usual NYE routine until after 8pm... dinner was a plate full of potsticker dumplings which were fantastic... and a gin slushie, finally using some of those zooper doopers. And I'll say right now... alcoholic slushie, A+++ idea.

Although I'm glad I paced myself... partly because I still don't have the ratios of gin, water, ice and zooper dooper 100% right... but I had two and then just had some gin and soda... and I'll admit, I was a little fluffy this morning.

My movie selections for the evening were Kubo and the Two Strings followed by The Man From U.N.C.L.E.... Kubo still remains an amazing movie, and TMFU, which doesn't hold up quite as well given my original impression, but is still very, very enjoyable.

One thing about being so far away from town compared to previous years, although more specifically the last two, is that I hardly even heard the fireworks... a couple of the louder bangs, but that was about it. And I could JUST see some of the high ones in the gap between a couple of the neighbouring houses. Ah well.

TMFU finished up around 12:30 and I did a little tidying up, but then realised that as is their post midnight NYE tradition, Channel 9 was showing Can't Stop The Music yet again... the down side being that it wouldn't finish until around 2am... so I watched a little, tweeted about it (and got more likes than I think I've had on ANYTHING in quite a while... go figure), then gave up and went to bed.

This morning, as I said, I woke up a little bit fluffy... but thankfully Past Me remembered to buy eggs so that Present Me could have bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast.

I didn't really do much with the morning, but then this afternoon I went off to see the Assassin's Creed movie (more on that later) in the city. And I had enough points on my card to see it for free, so that was nice.

So yeah, the whole weekend/NYE/NYD has been a very quiet and low-key one (I feel like I say that every year, but still, it's true).

Current Mood:

2016

It's officially 2016! And also the rather unsexily themed International Year of Pulses. So unsexy in fact that I had to abandon my usual theme of finding an image of a hot guy that was at least partially related to the theme of the year and just go with something hot.

This year, New Years Eve was primarily about avoiding the heat. With a temperature that maxed out at 40.1°C, that meant essentially hermitting myself away in the living room with the air-conditioner on full blast. And that worked remarkably well.

I took the day off work as well, so I got all my tidying up done first thing in the morning... then after lunch I had a gentleman caller... well, I say caller, it was the only time in the whole day that I actually went out in the heat to pick him up and drop him off again (long story, don't ask). And it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.

Then after he'd gone I sat down for another session of Lego Dimensions (the saddest part is that I'm nearly finished the main campaign, but I still have the Doctor Who and Portal 2 levels to do, as well as explore all the homeworlds I have access to) before cracking open a bottle of Rekorderlig Passionfruit cider and enjoying chicken with mango and tomato relish thanks to Past Me, who made enough the last time for there to be tasty leftovers in my freezer.

Normally I go with three movies on New Years Eve, but this year I stuck with two... but because I didn't actually get any DVDs at Christmas, I had to make to with stuff I already had... which turned out to be Ant-Man (interesting, but there's only so much I can like a film when the three main actors are all people I dislike) and Kingsman.

The early fireworks went off around 9pm and I watched a little of them, but my bedroom was just too damn hot to spend any time in (which is why I spent the last two nights sleeping on the floor of the living room), so I didn't see all that much of them.

And the movies wrapped up just short of midnight, and once again, I didn't watch all that much of the fireworks due to the heat... in fact I was in bed before they'd even finished the whole firework show.

So an incredibly low-key night all up.

Current Mood:

2015

Welcome to 2015... International Year of Light (and Light-based Technologies)!

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. And NYE was no exception... in fact there were two displays, the first at the family friendly time of 9:30 (which I actually think was the better display, at least from my perspective) and then the usual midnight extravaganza.

And the night was actually a hell of a lot quieter than I was expecting or predicting... I hardly even heard the concert in Elder Park, other than when I was watching the first set of fireworks (mucho cheering), and none of my neighbours had giant rowdy parties until the wee small hours. So definite bonus there, especially given when there were doing the sound check for the concert last night it was a giant cacophonous mess blasting through my bathroom window. 

The fact that I've spent the week between Christmas and New Years at work did throw off my usual routine quite a bit... not least of which because I was up really early and didn't make it to bed until 1am.

But it also meant that the "must tidy house" compulsions I go through each year had to be broken up into smaller chunks so I could do it during the week rather than leaving it all until last night. It was also as dull as hell, since I didn't really have anything to do, and should probably have taken the time off.

On a total whim when I left the house yesterday morning I put four of the bottles of Strongbow Cider I bought, back before I had all that trouble with my ears, in the fridge. I can't actually remember the last New Years where I had anything to drink, but this was just sitting in the cupboard, so I figured what the hell.

Weirdly, because of working, it also didn't really feel properly like New Years Eve all day (or all night even).

As usual, I lined up three movies to watch... and had some nice left over pasta for dinner so I didn't even need to cook.

I started the night with Wreck-It Ralph, had some jelly stuffed full of grapes with some brandy custard, watched the 9:30 fireworks and did the last little tidy up for the evening, then started How To Train Your Dragon 2. Then I changed my bed and settled in with the last movie, which I only bought yesterday (well, someone else picked it up and brought it to me, but yeah), Predestination. Even though I knew exactly what the storyline was, I enjoyed it more the second time around... although I did work out the plot pretty quickly the first time, but this time around I noticed all the little nods and winks to the central theme of the movie that I don't think I realised were significant last time.

And all the while I worked my way through the four bottles of Strongbow... which isn't that bad, and I don't think I was drunk by any stretch of the imagination, but I was nicely mellow (and given that I only drank them all night, not any water, I was only a little seedy around the edges when I woke up this morning).

I took myself off to bed at 1am after the movie finished, which fortunately was also the time that the whole concert thing was packing up, so I think I heard a tiny bit of music (but honestly that could have been coming from anywhere) before everybody called it a day... night... whatever.

While I could have gotten up this morning and done my usual walk, I was a little seedy around the edges, so I used that as an excuse to just go straight back to sleep for another hour or so and then finally got out of bed and made myself a big egg and bacon roll.

Seemed as good as way as any to start 2015... and I can only hope that this year improves on the good things of last year and, wherever possible, reduces the bad things.

Current Mood:

2014

Welcome to 2014, the International Year of Family Farming as well as the Chinese Year of the Horse (from February onwards anyway).

I definitely had an atypical New Years 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.

Normally the the bed is made with fresh linen, clean towels go up in the bathroom, the bins are emptied the sink is cleared of dishes, the old calendars come down and the house is made all tidy and ship-shape for the start of the new year. But other than taking down the old calendars and my usual movie watching, I didn't do any of that.

Instead I packed some boxes early in the day before it got too hot (including buying three copies of the newspaper just so that I could add layers of protective crumpled newspaper to the packing boxes), made a jelly using blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and flavoured with Bickford's Lemon Lime and Bitters cordial, kept continually refilling bottles with water to put in the fridge in an attempt to keep myself cool/hydrated and dumped my bedside cabinet outside with the rest of the junk that's been released into the wild as other residents leave the building (I've already had a tiny bookcase and a chest of drawers that I put out be taken by other people, so in essence it's a kind of passive recycling).

Once the evening rolled around I made myself a big bowl of random dinner salad (this time featuring tuna, noodles, tomato, prosciutto, haloumi, tomato, a few green beans and some lettuce) and sat down to watch the first of my two movie choices for the evening, Rise of the Guardians. It's so weird that even though it's set in March/April it just feels like a Christmas movie... I know it's got Santa and Jack Frost, but even so, weird. I then followed that up with some berry jelly and Skyfall. I have to say that I wasn't as excited about this as I was when I originally saw it, the villain is still really, really stupid, and I did start to get sleepy towards the end.

In fact, I got so sleepy that at the end of the movie I decided that even though it was only just over half an hour to go before the big countdown, I was actually too damn tired, too damn hot and just over it... so I packed up and went to bed. I suppose it isn't really too different from what I might have done on any other NYE, except that I didn't stop to listed to the fireworks.

It also meant that I woke up at the regular time this morning and took myself off for the first walk of 2014.

My route was pretty much deserted, although there were a couple of examples of a NYE either well spent or badly spent depending on your point of view... the first was a quite cute shirtless guy laying next to/under the bus stop bench across from Carclew... he also had half of his perky underwear clad butt hanging out of his pants, but the fact that he was passed out/asleep kind of took some of the attraction away... and the other one was on the final leg, as I walked past some of the houses, there was another quite cute young guy who may have been on the porch all night long... he was sitting up in a chair, with his feet propped on a second chair, but he also seemed pretty much dead to the world.

Oh and there was a large floating barge in the middle of the Torrens down near Jolly's Boathouse which didn't make a damn bit of sense... I guess it could have been used for NYE somehow, it just wasn't obvious how and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there yesterday morning.

And I'll be spending the rest of New Years Day packing boxes, getting rid of a bunch of stuff I no longer need and attempting to make the cool change come inside my apartment once it arrives around midday.

But, even so, I'm optimistic about 2014, it's going to be a good year, I can just feel it.

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2013

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

Is there a New Years equivalent of the Christmas's Grinch/Scrooge? If there is, I think I'm it. I mean I stayed up until after midnight last night, but I didn't really care, I was just going through to motions.

And today definitely has that whiff of "the last day before the end of school holidays" about it.

I'm hoping this isn't going to generally set the tone for the rest of the year (although, honestly, does anything that happens on New Years Day ever inform the rest of the year?).

Anyway, thanks to re-reading old New Years blog posts a couple of days ago, I definitely made an effort as soon as I got up on New Years Eve to get everything organised. In fact by around 7am I'd changed my bedding, washed up, tidied up, took out the trash (actually took it out just as the garbage truck was pulling out to my house... timing!), took down the old calendars and was trying to cool the house down as much as possible.

And once I'd finished my final Photo-A-Day post and had a shower, I decided to reward myself by laying on the bed and watching a movie. Which sounds incredibly lazy, except that I've spent far too much time sitting up for long periods of time over this Christmas break and my back/leg is letting me know that that's not a good plan.

The first movie was followed by lunch (what I really love about a bagel is that it pretty much tastes the same on the day it's made as it does three or four days later), and then another movie.

But then I wanted to finish off my final post for 2012, so more sitting... and it actually took longer than I thought it would, especially since I was only really cutting images... but I think everything during this Christmas break has taken longer than I expect it to. I know, you just can't believe how thrilling my life is, right? Me either!

I'd picked out Brave, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and The Amazing Spider Man as my three movies to lead me into the New Year, so I cooked dinner (possibly the best steak I've ever cooked... so very tender and perfectly cooked) while watching Brave and ate the berry and apple cider jelly I made (I think this is the first time in a while that I've made one of those "flavour your own jelly" jellies... I remember now why I liked them so much, although the fruit helped.

I think the funk set in sometime during ALVH once I'd gone back to lay on my bed. I'm not even sure why specifically (although the thought of going back to work on Wednesday was at least part of it)... but I just didn't feel very NYE'sy...

Not when the 9pm fireworks went off, not during any of the times when the wind carried the thumping bass from the NYE concert up the hill to North Adelaide (I would have sworn a number of times that it was coming from a house on my street rather than down by the Torrens) and not during the seemingly never ending fireworks pops, bangs and booms at midnight.

And not all of the fireworks were the official ones... there were at least two unofficial sets of fireworks that went off both before, during and after the main ones.

It doesn't matter how well I do the math, I always get the times for watching movies on NYE wrong... or else I end up stopping the movies at various points, or taking longer between movies or something, because it wasn't that far off midnight when I started Spider Man. I probably shouldn't have started it, but it was better than throwing in the towel with less than half an hour to go. Plus I really wanted to see it again.

I finally threw in the towel at about 1:15, as I still had an hour's worth of the movie to finish, so instead I finished watching it first thing this morning.

So, yeah... perhaps a slightly more grumpy NYE post than previously... but it is what it is...

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happy 2012

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.

I can only assume that it's because of doing the Saturday shopping thing yesterday... it kinda threw off my NYE mojo.

After I finished up the last post of 2011 I made some dinner (Bush tomato sausage salad... slightly less interesting than it sounds) and after trying to wrangle Siri on my iPhone 4S to add things up for me and then to convert the number of minutes into hours, I settled in to watch a few new Futurama audio commentaries before filling up my big metal pot full of cold water to soak my feet in (mmmm cooling... stupid really, really hot New Years) and starting the NYE Moviefest.

That's possibly the other reason NYE didn't completely feel like NYE, I started watching movies later than usual and I only watched two instead of the usual three.

I was very happy with my movie choices though... it was a bit of a Dreamworks Animation Fest, with Kung Fu Panda 2 followed by How To Train Your Dragon... both of which make me tear up, and which were... blogging spoiler alert... my #1 movies of 2011 and 2010 respectively).

When I was finished with both of those it was about 11:30 and I couldn't be bothered starting another movie so I alternated between watching Special Features and another Futurama commentary.

And that's pretty much what I was doing when the clock rolled over to 2012.

Every New Years, I can hear the fireworks down at the Torrens but because my apartment block faces away from the river (as is at the other end of North Adelaide) I really can't see anything... but this year I wandered around into the rear car park to see if I could spot anything from there. I could, but only the really, really, really high stuff... although I could hear it all, and the light from all the fireworks was visible on the back of the apartment building... bit of a tease really.

And that was that really... I finished the Futurama episode and then went to bed. Now I'm spending the first day of 2012 in a darkened apartment watching movies trying to keep reasonably cool.

So, yeah... oh, and Happy 2012 everyone... welcome to the National Year of Reading!

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happy 2011

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

Which as well as being World Veterinary Year, also happens to be International Year of Forests and International Year of Chemistry (insert jokes about having both wood and chemistry here).

I also think both today and November 11 will be big days for number geeks... and if I could have been bothered I might have waiting until 11:11am to post this...

As usual, I had a quiet night last night... just me and some DVDs and the usual quasi-superstitious traditions of taking the calendars down, emptying the bins and not having any dishes on or in the sink. Fortunately the cool change started coming in around 6pm so I was able to open the place up and cool it down some.

I'm sure I've said this before, but I've done the going out thing and I've done the party with friends thing on New Years, and I have to say, sitting home watching good movies is much nicer... no driving, no dealing with drunk people or crowds or whatever...

Last night's movies of choice were Where The Wild Things Are (beautiful but incredibly sad... and viewing it a second time made me realise how sad and how much stuff from Max's life ends up on the island), Scott Pilgrim vs The World (the graphic novels make me kinda wish for more, but it's still a great movie) and Kick-Ass (not necessarily as violent as I remember it)... which was accompanied by a tuna nicoise style salad and some awesome fruit salad (I so totally win at making fruit salad!)

Cue the brief pause at midnight while I listened to random people across the road hooting, the fireworks in town went off, some random fireworks somewhere in the direction of Bowden went shooting into the sky and my next door neighbour and I managed to ignore each other while standing on our respective doorsteps.

Then I went back inside, finished watching Kick-Ass and went to bed...

So not very exciting by most people's standards, but just the way I like it!

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happy 2010

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!

Happy New Year everyone!

My NYE "festivities" were pretty much the same as they've been for the last few years... I stayed in, made a not untasty cold tuna noodle salad and ginger beer jelly (bless you Aeroplane!), had a movie marathon and did all those stupid, semi superstitious little things I seem to need to do on New Years Eve now...

No dishes in the sink or draining board, no rubbish in the bins, fresh bedding on the bed, fresh towels in the bathroom, that kinda thing. Although attaching a fitted sheet to my plus-sized mattress is challenging at the best of times, but at 10:30pm on New Years Eve when my bedroom is 300°C... I liked that less.

The cool change part of the evening I did enjoy... as well as the movies.

This year's selection was Cool Hand Luke, Duplicity and Watchmen... a very diverse selection, I have to say. It's also worth stating that I think I'm developing a bit of a Steve McQueen thing... in the past year I've seen The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Papillon and now Cool Hand Luke... but damn that man is just the posterboy for cool and sexy and a surprisingly good actor!

And it never seems to matter how much I plan out when I should start my little marathon so I can get to bed not long after midnight, something always seems to happen through the night to make sure I don't get to bed before about 1:30... this time I was later starting than I'd planned, then I realised I hadn't changed my bed yet... then I stopped for a couple of minutes to listen to the fireworks going off (I know it's New Years... but 15 minutes worth of fireworks?) and text some people appropriate New Years wishes.

What was different this year was the fact that I signed up for Twitter late yesterday afternoon (with thanks to Tom for nursing me through my last minute username freakout)... so I ended up tweeting things on and off through the evening...

I also managed to pump a slight amount of cooler air into my bedroom by the time I called it a night, and with both the fan and evaporative cooler going it wasn't too bad.

And even though I've only had about four hours of sleep I got up nice and early this morning and went off on my walk...

This is where the International Year of Hot Boys comes into play...

First there was the slightly surly looking but sexy skateboarding guy who rolled past me and if that had been it, it would still have been a good morning. But then we had the two very, very, very hot shirtless guys wearing essentially nothing but sarongs (sadly I didn't get the chance to check them for underwear)... that totally made my morning.

Then as I crossed over the Morphett Street bridge I noticed another skateboard boy and his girlfriend, but they ended up behind me and I didn't really get a good look... that is until I started to hear skateboard wheels clickity clacking along the pavers behind me... I assumed they were going to pass me, but no... the cute, tattooed and pierced little skaterboy came up alongside me, said hello and initiated a conversation. To be honest, I'm pretty sure he was still drunk and hadn't been home yet, but he wanted to know what I was doing, and when I told him "exercising" he couldn't quite grasp the concept that I hadn't been out drinking last night. You know how when you have a weird conversation like that you often think of better things to say once the person has gone away... well this was one of those (I could have told him anything and he would have believed it... that I was twelve stepping it, that this was the best way to recover from a hangover, that I was Amish, anything)... but we had some amusing back and forth anyway, and eventually I wished him Happy New Year and he rolled on back to his girlfriend. It did make me smile though... in fact it's still making me smile.

I knew there had to be one more though... and sure enough, coming back up the hill there was this very tall hipster dude in a Mickey Mouse teeshirt and white framed glasses... very cute.

If this is the way the year intends to carry on, I could get used to it!

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happy 2009

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

Technically the sheets in the image probably AREN'T satin made from silk, but they could be, and that's the main thing...

Happy New Year boys and girls (okay, mostly boys I guess)!

Sharp eyed and regular visitors might have noticed that I didn't post my Wish List as usual on New Years Eve... that's because I didn't do one this year. I've done one every year since 2002, but I think that particular ship may have well and truly sailed. All I really want from the coming year is to be content... not necessarily outrageously happy or anything, just content.

I saw the new year in in my traditional manner... I spent a big chunk of the day getting the house passably tidy (I swept, I dustbusted, I tidied... I didn't scrub anything), although I did forget to not only change my bedding but also do the dishes (luckily I remembered both around 11pm, so they were done before midnight)... and then I picked out a few favoured titles from my Christmas DVD haul and had myself a little filmfest.

This year it was Iron Man followed by three of the gayest titles possible... High School Musical, Another Gay Sequel and Torch Song Trilogy.

Yes, yes... I finally succumbed to HSM, and I have to say, while I'm not going to be raving about it at the top of my lungs, I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than I thought I would. But lord, it's just gayer than Christmas... and had I not followed it up with the supremely gay AGS, then I would have said it was gayer than buttsex... but if anything is gayer than buttsex, it's AGS!

My cinematic new year was finished off with the very first gay movie I ever saw (I'm not even sure when the hell I first saw it, but I know it was the first)... and Torch Song remains one of my favourite movies to this day.

And other than interrupting TST briefly to see the official countdown and the start of the Sydney fireworks on teevee (and setting the VCR to tape Can't Stop The Music... see, gayest New Years ever!) that was about my night.

So here's hoping that everybody had an enjoyable, if not eventual, New Years and that the year ahead is going to be a very good year!

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happy 2008

And another year begins...

Not that the old year didn't go out with a certain degree of grunt... last night was the city's hottest December night in 110 years (which for the record, means they would have been sweltering back in 1897 without all the modern devices we have now)... and at midnight it was still 32.7°C. That's just RUDE I say!

I ended up skipping my walk this morning (so far anyway, but I don't know that it's actually going to happen now, since the sun is "officially" up, and the heat would be less fun, we'll see though) to try and pump some cooler air into the house. How successful I was I don't really know, but it seemed like a good idea at the time (until I worked out that it's going to be about 38°C again today instead of there cooler temperature they originally said, so there might not have been a lot of point)... how's that though, the first day of the year and already I've messed up my walking routine.

Ah screw it... what time is it... 7:45ish... okay... back soon...

Back now, all "post walkness"... I'm not sure if that was a good plan or a bad plan actually... I already had a bit of a dehydration/lack of sleep headache, and now I've got an additional "was out walking in the scarily strong for this time of the morning sunshine" headache thing too. But at least I had my walk... or the shortened, truncated (and quite fast actually) version of same. Honestly, I'm obviously addicted, I just couldn't NOT go... scary.

Anyway... like the last couple of years I rang in the New Year here at home watching movies... actually that's pretty much what I did for most of the day... (and I also discovered that my batting average with DVD failure rate this year is up like 2000% or something... I had another one go squiffy on me, Ferris Bueller's Day Off of all things, although not as badly as before)... but the "official New Years Eve movies" were Stranger Than Fiction and Casino Royale.

I still stand by everything I said in my original review of Stranger Than Fiction... and even though I knew what was going to happen at the end I still had me a little bit of a girlyman cry... and it still tops my list as the BEST movie of 2007, no ifs, ands or buts.

And my opinion of Casino Royale hasn't changed much either. Having watched a couple of the old ones over last few days I have to say that I think part of the problem with this one was that it was very "compartmentalised"... there didn't seem to be a free flow of plot/story through the movie, but almost little episodes strung together without follow through, and that whole "let's run off on a yacht together" sequence just bring the whole movie to a SCREAMING halt just when it should be ramping up for the end. Sad really... hopefully they managed it better with the next one.

So other than my "usual" New Year's traditions of making sure I've taken all the old calendars down by about sunset, and taking out the rubbish so all the bins are empty and making sure that there isn't anything in the sink come midnight, that was about it really.

Roll on 2008!

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happy 2007

Oh man... what a start to the year...

Nothing terribly exciting unfortunately, but I woke up (or was woken up by a message on my mobile... I don't remember hearing the message tone, but the first thing I do remember is having the phone in my hand and checking the Happy New Year message from Ma) with a teeny tiny hangover... and possibly a minor tooth issue, but that could have been more the hangover than my actual tooth... please, oh lordy please let it not be my tooth...

Stupid Vanilla Bliss (1 cup vodka, 2 cups lemon iced tea and 2 cups lemonade and like a teaspoon of vanilla, hence the name... although I couldn't really taste it) drink from the Coles Magazine... and stupid me for both making it and drinking the whole thing (although I made mine with three quarters of a cup of vodka, simply because that was all I had left)... it wasn't bad though... might be better with less vodka and maybe green iced tea instead of lemon (since I adore the green iced tea)...

I haven't had a hangover since god knows when... and this one was mostly because I broke my own cardinal rule... after drinking always consume large amounts of water... and let me tell you, going out of my walk this morning with a vague kind of semi hangover... not the most fun I've ever had...

And I actually managed to miss the whole midnight countdown thing on teevee... I'd watched Memoirs of a Geisha earlier, but I was in the midst of Brokeback Mountain when the big moment rolled around, and kinda missed it by a couple of minutes... whoops...

I did briefly have a smile and think of Tom (and his family) while I watched a little bit of the fireworks in Sydney (and then again on my walk when the radio mentioned a vast number of tourists that were at the fireworks) before I went back to Brokeback...

On the subject of Brokeback...

THOSE! GODDAMN! SHIRTS!

Every time those damn cowboy shirts appeared on screen at the end I got all weepy... I do stand by what I said yesterday though... Brokeback is a great movie, but it's not something you could watch over and over and over and over...

And I thought it when I saw the movie that first time (although I didn't mention it)... as beautiful and touching as that whole "you're asleep on your feet like a horse" scene is at the end... it's SO in the wrong place... it just throws me... I don't know why Ang didn't put it in as a flashback after Ennis finds the shirts... really tug on the old heartstrings... but to have it where it was... just doesn't work for me...

On a completely unrelated topic, I think the older I get, the more I'm possibly turning into my Nanna... which is just scary all on it's own... but there was all these little "rituals" or maybe superstitions or whatever that she would do on various occasions when I was growing up, and I've just absorbed some of them... and they all seem to be finding their way into my routines and, of course, I'm getting very particular about them...

There can't be any dirty dishes in the sink come midnight... and the rubbish bins should all be empty... everything should be away and tidy and appropriately shipshape... I also took down both of my old calendars around sunset, put the new ones up before I went to bed... and I also changed my sheets so that I could spend the first night of the New Year on clean sheets...

So that was my vaguely OCD themed New Years... what about the rest of you?

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