character saturday: steadfast and kickass

So... a little bit of story time for this week's DnD Character Colouring book...

I have a thing about toy soldiers. It's perhaps less of a thing right now than it was a while back, possibly because I overdosed a little. But I still have a thing.

And in one of the more recent books there's a race ("origin", whatever) called Reborn... "individuals who have died yet, somehow, still live". I've also been musing on the Clockwork Soul sorcerer... it's a flavourful subclass... but sometimes subclasses like that are hard to get an interesting take on, because they can seem a little one note...as in, it's hard to come up with alternative concepts unless you ignore some of the flavour text.

Then I thought about the Steadfast Tin Soldier. And about what might happen if somehow, at the end of that story, if the little tin heart that is all that remains of the soldier, was put into another body.

And so TS Dante, Reborn toy soldier, was born.

The outfit came out a little more matador and a little less military jacket, but I don't hate it. And yes, I know he has two functional legs... but either a prosthetic leg or a result of the reborn process would cover that.

That did lead me to playing around with the concept of the ballerina... and what better class for a ballerina than ass kicking elven monk, Liltar. The shoes also aren't perfect, but I improvised a pair of high heels into toe shoes, so it works well enough for what basically amounts to an NPC.

Moving along...

I made tuna mornay this week... and managed to adjust the spices to that it was super tasty but didn't rip the back of your head off. The spices did seem to fade a little as the week went on, but it was tasty either way.

I also got slightly obsessed in making a much smaller brother to the wooden staff I've had for... oh, coming up on 20 years at this point I guess. I noticed a nice looking piece of eucalyptus branch in the little patch of garden by the apartment's carpark... and broke out the cheap ass sandpaper I picked up for a former project and went from rough branch to smooth "wand" over a couple of nights. What it's final form will be and where it will end up living, I'm not sure, I'm enjoying it as it is right now... it's a little bit of a "fidget spinner in stick form" right now. Especially a couple of spots that have been sanded super smooth.

Otherwise, we were back to regular DnD sessions this week.

Thursday's game was... okay. After the last two sessions having Fluffy guest DM which meant that we had 7 players, we have a guest player for these current two games.... and, honestly, 7 players is kind of too much. Honestly, there's times when 6 players are too much. But on the up side, at least these are decently put together adventures.

Friday's game was one of those talky ones. Which we kind of needed, given the high stakes-ness of the previous couple of games. But we did a lot of surmising and assuming and predicting and wondering. And came back to somewhere that we had a fuckton of outstanding quest markers without really realising it. We didn't get quite through them all, but we made a dent.

It's also so strange to me that I can turn onto my character's emotions so quickly and then turn them off again when the moment has passed. For the longest time I never really understood seeing actors say that they can just get to an emotional place with no real prep... turns out, I kinda have the same ability, or at least some small portion thereof.

Next week, because it's Fluffy's birthday, we're taking a break from cold, death and destruction and doing what I hope will be a cute and fun little one-shot, which I'm running. But more on that next week.

Today was about the usual.

We did the supermarket thing, came back, faffed about a bit and then did a little trip to Cheap and Chips for general wandering and random things. Nothing super exciting or noteworthy.

So that's about that...

Current mood:

lego toy soldier template

I'd intended to put something together for the Spring template on Sunday, but obviously my mind has been on other things the last few days.

But obviously when I spotted my Lego toy soldier minifigure when I was tidying up yesterday it sparked off a thought (part of which was the beginning of the lead up to Christmas), so I dug him out of the box this morning and threw together a little photoshoot this morning.

It's kinda weird that the choice of a grey background and moving him around to face the light essentially made him look like he was floating. Although I did completely cheat for the banner image itself and cut him away from the original background before dropping a similar grey background in behind him and his clones.

Current Mood:

photo friday: march of the toy soldiers

My week has looked a little like this...

• Inspired a teeshirt
• Set up all of my toy soldiers... a little disturbed by how many I have
• Strugged with sneezing all over the place/runny nose all day today... either all the dust that got disturbed when I was doing the toy soldiers, or Sugarmonkey gave me plague when he came in for one day yesterday... bastard
• Came home to a parcel waiting for me every day but yesterday
• Got my new iPhone cases (which looks a little spiffy) delivered to work
• Realised a small pizza is enough
• Combined two sets of bedding to give my bed a red/green Christmas look
• Started using the new Blogger interface (not a fan)
• Wore a bright yellow Aussiebum jockstrap to work today and it's probably the most comfortable jock I've worn
• Continue to have a big fat crush on a guy at work
• Made appointment with Tink for my Christmas haircut
• Finished off the calendars for Ma and La Cousina... still need to print them and get them bound though
• Downloaded seventeen versions of Carol of the Bells to create my own Christmas album... yeah I know, but it's my favourite Christmas song
• Attending a birthday afternoon tea and a divorce morning tea

Current Mood:

a return to normal shopping saturdays

I got up at 5:30 this morning... or thereabouts anyway... I don't really remember beyond knowing that the time started with a 5. And knowing that I had to open up my front door and put the fan in the doorway to try and cool the place down... which I did... and it wasn't even properly light at that stage...

I also woke up with a filthy headache, quite possibly caused by the hideous weather yesterday and the fact I slept with the evaporative cooler about a foot from me most of the night... or maybe I was dehydrated or who the hell knows really.

Last night I pulled down all of my toy soldiers and other random Christmas decorations and bundled them all back into storage boxes ready to return for another 11 months of slumber under my bed until next Christmas... which is a little bit sad, but I do have my toy soldier pendant now, so at least I can wear him all year long.

Anyway, because it was hot and I wasn't exactly moving at warp speed (and the fact that I decided to document all my toy soldiers... turns out that including the pendant, I have 65), it probably took longer than it otherwise should have. Essentially it took about two hours, and all I did was take everything down...

I couldn't face putting all the stuff that's been in storage over Christmas back up last night, so I left that (and general tidying up) until this morning... and it took about an hour and a half... and there was still some of the toy soldiers that didn't have a spot...

But fortunately I had time to have a shower and get ready by the time Ma arrived...

It's been nearly a month since Ma and I actually went shopping together... but since the supermarket and our routine never really change it was weirder when we weren't doing it than it was coming back to it.

And supermarket shopping is supermarket shopping is supermarket shopping... nothing ever really changes, except for random impulse buys now and again. Although you have worry about a checkout chick who isn't sure about apricots and doesn't recognise a passionfruit...

The kids of today!

Anyway, after shopping we came back here to do the usual unpacking.

And because the Adelaide Fringe 2011 Guide came out in today's paper I ended up poring through the guide, marking a bunch of stuff as possibilities... currently that stands at about 22 shows (plus some visual art stuff), but I'm pretty sure it will come down to about half that once I examine everything more closely. But it looks like there could be some returns to shows I saw last year (or at least new shows by the same artists), and a couple of the things that I missed out on last year. We'll see.

Once we were done with all of that, we headed off to Good Guys because Ma wanted to get a new evaporative cooler like the one I bought at the end of last year (you know, a week ago)... and we wandered around and looked at microwaves too... I'm definitely getting a Panasonic again... this one has lasted at least ten years, but I think I want one of the sexy stainless steel looking ones. They do have one which doesn't have a turntable, which is very weird, but cool... but that only comes with a white face...

Anyway, when we finally got somebody to serve us, Ma bought the cooler and we packed it in the back of the car, then toddled off to Arndale to look at storage boxes for my toy soldiers.

Arndale is a little weird at the moment... a bunch of the stores seem to be empty but a bunch seem to be getting the full on makeover treatment, possibly in a effort to make the whole shopping centre more "upmarket"... which does immediately bring to mind the phrase "lipstick on a pig"...

But one of the benefits was that the pokey little gift store is now one of a chain, and they had some of the Heartwood Creek figures... including Mickey Mouse as The Nutcracker... so thanks to Christmas money, that's 66 toy soldiers (67 if you count the one on the way from eBay).

I kinda ended up goofing (no pun intended given the Mickey reference... and if you didn't get that, it probably wasn't actually a pun anyway, so lets move on) on the storage box... I got one, and some of the stuff from the existing box fitted into it, which meant there was room in there for some extra stuff... but I got a smaller one than I thought I was buying, so it's probably going to have to be replaced before next Christmas anyway.

When we came out of Arndale (after stopping off for a very insipid iced tea from Gloria Jeans) it was raining, so we decided to skip any extra shopping adventures and just head back to my place and open up... which we did after a quick stop at Perrymans to buy some lunch (and lunch for me for tomorrow).

Even though it was only about 1:30 by the time we got back, I think it was about 3pm by the time Ma left... what with eating lunch, repacking boxes, sorting everything out, looking up solutions to Professor Layton puzzles Ma was stuck on and then loading up the car... it all took a while.

Have I mentioned that this toy soldier thing is becoming an addiction?

Anyway, that was pretty much my day...

Current Mood:

photo friday: qvb christmas tree

It seems like such a long time ago now that we were in Sydney... but it's less than two months! Fortunately we were lucky enough to see the four storey Swarovski Christmas tree in QVB... so purdy!

Speaking of which (Christmas, not Sydney)... I hate that the weeks leading up to Christmas start to seem longer and longer and longer... I have a feeling that next week is going to be painful... at least until Friday, since I'm leaving at lunch time to get my hair did.

Oh, and Tuesday because we have a Nut House lunch followed by a couple of meetings in the afternoon... so maybe I'll sleep though those...

Not that I really want Christmas to come that soon, even though it means a week off... because once Christmas is done, then it's New Years, then I got back to work, and all this shit starts over again and I have to remember to put an "11" at the end of dates instead of a "10", then before you know it, it's my birthday and I'm one year closer to being 40 with not much to show for it...

Okay, I'm mostly kidding... mostly...

There's a possibility that we might be getting an iPad at work... I'm still not completely sure WHY ("to see how stuff looks on it" doesn't seem to be that definitive an answer)... but I'm not going to argue about it, especially since that way I get to see all the ins and outs of what it entails and how much it will cost without actually buying one. So, research essentially.

Staying on the work related theme... is it kinda weird if one of your co-workers reads your blog? I mean I have this whole anonymity thing and I use pseudonyms for everyone and I'm careful about mentioning some things... but it's kinda weird to know that someone I work with reads my stuff. Okay, maybe it's only because of the particular person... and yes, I would probably do the same if the positions were reversed, I just wouldn't ever mention I was doing it. But then I'm a sneaky bastard.

Moving on...

The first of my "eBay Toy Soldiers" arrived this week... so very, very tiny... but it got left on the doorstep, which is never good... so now I'm kind of panicking that one or more of the others may have already turned up, left on the doorstep and been stolen. Which probably isn't the case, but it's where my mind automatically goes. We'll see.

I've been watching the second season of RuPaul's Drag Race this week... it's so bad, but so good... it's kind of like America's Next Top Model, but with sewing... and cock (well not actual cock... but all the participants have one). Actually, it's almost exactly the same as ANTM... which was always a guilty pleasure.

And that's about it really... other than the fact we're making Christmas goodies on Sunday, and somehow my list has bulked out to an even dozen... it shouldn't be, except for the fact that I can't NOT give them to certain people. Kind of irritating, but what are you gunna do!

Current Mood:

toy soldier collection 2010

My toy soldier collection, the revised photo (although I have no idea how the hell I managed to take all those photos in my apartment and have them come out well, and yet can't seem to take digital shots that aren't kinda washed out)...

I'm still not brave enough to count them... well, not correctly anyway... I'm pretty sure it's between 40 and 50 though (I'm guessing whatever I get for Christmas and the five that are on their way via eBay will push it firmly over the half century mark though).

There are toy soldiers that squeak, rattle, wind up, hang, are transparent, break nuts, you can drink, you can read, are one of a kind and ones that I made...

And to think, it all started with a single toy soldier (the flat silver one) two Christmases ago... and it's now turned into what can only be described as a full blown obsession...

Current Mood:

deck the tree and trim the halls

And there it is... the end result of a morning's worth of general insanity...

Although I have to say, much less with the crazy this year! Although you may have a different opinion once you read the rest of this post...

I managed to get my shit together reasonably early this morning and after a very brief shower, I was on my way down to Ma's place by around quarter to 8... after a detour to the 24 hour bakery to get banana bread and the Sunday paper.

On previous years I'm pretty sure once I get to Ma's place I fluff around and read the paper and whatnot, but this year I wanted to dive straight into it, get the tree up and, in essence, get home earlier than I have on previous years.

So dive straight in we did... after I inhaled the fresh batch of Ham Hearts that Ma had waiting for me when I got there...

As you can see by the image alongside, the every expanding army of notes from me, to us (well, essentially to myself) keeps growing every year... and if you think that's bad, there's three pieces of cardboard inside the box all of which have notes from me to me from various points in the Christmas tree experience. And, yes, I add to it in some form or another every year.

It's also weird that I tend to obey whatever it is I wrote on the boxes in previous years... as a case in point, I spent the whole day wearing my Sharpie lanyard, just because the box said so (yeah, it came in handy, but still)...

You can also see that small amount of OCD that Ma and I have between us... one particular year I took photos of every set of baubles in it's box, so that we could then put those photos on the outside of the box to denote what baubles went in where. In truth I should have taken a shot of a single bauble for each box, but whadyagunnado...

Anyway, the tree itself went up with very little fuss as always, and given that we bought the new string of LED lights yesterday the whole process of putting lights on the tree was completely painless! Which has to be a first. Okay, we both got dizzy from walking around and around and around and around and around and around the tree... but other than that...

Sadly though, there's something not quite right about the lights themselves... when they are set on the "Steady On" setting, they are neither steady, nor completely on. They flicker and sputter... it's only really that setting though... everything else is fine. But hey, they weren't that expensive and now that we've proved the principle of a string of lights is sound, we can buy a better set next year, or look around in the post Christmas sales.

I kinda think that the baubles are a little lopsided this year... oddly though, the side that I planned to take the photo of, that was fine, but the side you can't see in the photo, definitely a little bit lacking.

The oddest thing of all was that because of the new lights (and how many there were, and how damn white and bright they are), Ma actually didn't want any tinsel on the tree! I've been attempting to talk her into that for the last four or five years, but every year she says she has to have the tinsel because it finishes the tree off... but not this time! I would have been happier about that if the lights worked properly... but I guess you can't have everything.

By the time we finally finished the tree, I guess it was about 11... which may not be a record, but definitely felt like an achievement... and it probably helped that we weren't messing around with the lights for about half an hour!

So I put up the Nativity like I do every year, we put boxes away and sorted out everything we need for the table on Christmas Day... it was all very civilised and orderly.

And since we seemed to have some time up our sleeves, we went though all of the wrapping paper, all of the tissue paper, all of the curly ribbon and all of the wide ribbon that Ma has and decided what we still wanted to keep and what we didn't. The answer was mostly "keep", but I also sorted all the tissue paper by colour (what, it really needed doing!) and resorted the curly ribbon by colour.

So very much OCD...

I chose too see the positive side of it, and when it came time to wrap some presents we knew exactly where everything was and could find the right thing without a lot of pointless searching!

And I think that doing all of that probably took almost as much time as putting the tree up! Now if only it stays neat and tidy like that until next year.

Anyway... as we always do Post Tree Trimming, we proceeded to make with the present wrapping. And that's pretty much when Ma's living room went from looking neat and orderly to looking like some sort of building site/bomb site/discount import warehouse!

We didn't end up wrapping that much stuff... my presents for Princess T and Miss Oh, some children's books Ma has to mail to interstate relatives and, as the final image in the trilogy up above shows, the "gift boxes" she's giving to Princess T and Miss Oh.

The giant white cracker/bonbon in the front is my present for Miss Oh... we've done that kind of thing in the past, but never on that large a scale (you can see my iPhone behind it)... impressive though... and the ribbon holding it all together matches the colours of the present inside...

The two gift boxes came out exceptionally well too... even though neither of them is particularly Christmassy in it's colouring ... well, the one for Princess T kinda is... except for the black... but it matched the colours of the gifts...

I'm thinking of doing a similar thing with Ma's presents this year... not with the cellophane and everything, but I'm planning on reusing the big square box I gave her all her birthday presents in last year...

Anyway, I called it a day at 5pm, and had to ferry everything through the very welcome rain (well, welcome because it's cooled everything down, but I could have done without it for the five minutes I needed to pack up the car)... then after I left I had to turn around (fortunately I wasn't out at the main road, because that would have been a total pain in the ass) and go back because I'd forgotten a whole bag of my stuff...

And given that part of that stuff was toy soldier related, I would have been a very unhappy bunny if I'd forgotten it...

Some of the collection was the stuff I put out on Saturday morning... the hanging toy soldiers have been up since Wednesday... but the finishing touches went on when I got home today. I'm planning on taking better photos when I have better lighting conditions, but that might not be until next Sunday... I also need to remember to take photos of it again after Christmas with the new additions before I take it all down.

But no, I haven't counted how many toy soldiers I actually own... I don't think it's 50.. yet...

And now it's only 20 sleeps until Christmas!

Current Mood:

all over the place saturday

Somehow, even when our Saturday Shopping Adventures seem like they should end fairly early, there comes a certain point in the day when time just seems to run away from us...

Ma had to take her car into Mr Mechanic Man again (to fix something they needed to order a part for), so for the third weekend in a row I tootled down the road in my car to meet Ma at the supermarket.

When I got up and finally took a look out of the window there was fog... and I couldn't see the end of the road in either direction... I love fog... although I've never had to drive in it. Fortunately I still haven't, since by the time I was ready to go the fog had cleared out of North Adelaide. There was still a band of fog around the supermarket but that cleared up by the time we were finished.

The mechanic said that Ma's car would only take half an hour, so she went off to pick it up while I headed back here to unpack and wait for her.

There really wasn't anything we needed or anywhere we especially wanted to go, so we ended up heading down to Marion, since we haven't been down there in a while.

And it was about the same as usual... we wandered up, we wandered down, we wandered up and we wandered down again... looked in all the usual places, stopped for a Boost and that was pretty much it...

On the way back we decided to stop off at The Christmas Shop... because, you know, it's August... and you never know what new stock they might have in. And yes, I managed to find two new little toy soldiers... and they were selling out some Christmas themed classic Winnie The Pooh plushes... so I couldn't resist Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore, since they're "my boys"...

Actually I think it might be time to reread the books again... although I'm not completely sure where they are...

Then (after some confusion over direction and where the correct road is) we ended up wandering along King William Road at Hyde Park (which, now that I think about it, is where the time disappeared), which also didn't really result in anything...

And then we called in at the 24 Hour Bakery to get some lunch...

So a bit of an all over the place day, and with no real accomplishments...

Current Mood:

big fat solo pre-christmas shopping saturday

Lordy... you would think that not really needing to do any shopping and flying solo because I'm going down to Ma's for Goodie Making tomorrow would lead to a fairly quiet day...

Not so much...

Turned into a bit of an adventure really. The supermarket portion of the morning was fairly average... and since it's Christmas week, I don't need much. I did manage to find a pair of new jeans for Christmas Day... normally I have some sort of outfit arranged for Christmas ages ago, but nothing was presenting it self until today.

And even though I reminded myself, I still forget to take my honey jar with me, so after I got back home and dropped everything off I detoured off to the Honey Man. I played my iPod (is it correct to call it an iPod even though it's part of the iPhone, after all that's what the icon is called) on the way down and tried out the FM Transmitter thing I bought.

And it works brilliantly... or it would if it were not for the fact that the radio is still playing up after they replaced my aerial. But in principal it's a good little doodad.

But as I got to the Honey Man I got a predictably pornographic text message from Slick Willy... part of me couldn't be bothered and sent him back a message saying I was already at Marion, since I'd intended to head down there. But since his place is on the way I had a change of heart (well, a change in some body part anyway) and messaged him back again before dropping by.

Adult sexual situations ensued.

After I left him I stopped off at The Christmas Shop, just on the offchance... we hadn't been since they really sorted out all their new stock and rearranged the shop somewhat... and it was pleasantly surprising... they'd organised things a whole lot better, and it was much easier to move around. The shop was also mostly deserted, or felt that way, especially compared with last Christmas (granted that was much earlier in the month).

I have to say that I do love hearing new people's reactions to that shop... I couldn't help smiling when one of the women was telling her grandson not to touch anything, bit like taking a kid to a lolly factory and telling them they can't eat anything. And the woman who said "this shop is like the TARDIS" made me laugh to myself.

There were also a whole bunch of new toy soldiers...

A marionette, a very wide hipped female version, a little tin man with wobbly legs, two variations on teddy toy soldiers and the little spherical man who looks like he should be made of glass and have a hinge that opens (but is just solid and not glass).

Yes, yes... I got a little carried away... but I did have an almost guided tour around the shop by the owner's wife at one point on the lookout for different toy soldiers or variations on 12 drummers drumming.

Interestingly though I found all of these little guys on my own. Which is not really that surprising since I wandered around the shop for ages.

Once my brain had reached Christmas decoration overload (I actually think I started to get a "pattern matching headache"... when you're looking for things that are red and have big hats in a shop full of Santas who are in red with big hats, it can be difficult to pick out the stuff you like) I took my purchases and headed down to Marion.

On reflection, the thought of Marion on the last Saturday before Christmas, maybe not the brightest idea I've ever had... lots and lots and lots of people, all of whom had lost their minds, didn't know where the hell they were going and were scurrying around trying to buy all those last minute things for people they probably don't really like that much.

Thankfully I didn't really need to buy anything. I did pick up a copy of Dougal the Garbage Dump Bear though... not sure who for, but it's just an adorable story (and shortlisted for the Children's Book Council Book of the Year prize back in 2005)... I saw it earlier in the day and just fell in love with it, and was telling Ma about it on the phone, so she suggested I grab a copy. It's based on a true story about a bear who gets thrown away and ends up at the dump and his adventures there with another abandoned toy, Buzzer the Bee... all told in photographs taken by (very cute, going by his profile) author, Matt Dray. Definitely one to pick up for a small child you know.

I also found a teeshirt to go with my new jeans... black and metallic and rainbow and shiny, as well as pretending to be related to New York in some way... all in all, so very gay...

It's weird though... a lot of the tops I've bought this Summer have been black... which isn't so great on really hot days... and I guess there are other colours out there, but stuff that I like, in my size... there seems to be a lot of black.

Fortunately my jeans are quite light... although I have no idea what shoes I'm wearing yet.

However the black and fluro yellow Bonds trunks I wanted, I couldn't find anywhere in my size... annoying.

Once I was done with all that I stopped off at Salsa's for lunch... love their Mexicrinkle chips, the burritos not so much, very average.

Then I headed off home but decided to stop off at another Kmart (to check if they had the teeshirt I bought in the next size up, and look at underwear), thanks to the Google Maps on my phone... I probably could have found it on my own, but I would have ended up going a much longer way.

The teeshirt obviously only goes up to the size I originally bought (which is fine, and once it stretches out a bit it'll be better)... and while they didn't have the exact underwear I wanted, I did end up getting a pair that's quite different from other ones I already have.

So... yeah... and that was pretty much that.

Big fat solo pre-Christmas shopping Saturday.

Current Mood:

photo friday: city reindeer

In a week from now Christmas will all be over with the exception of laying around in a food coma. That just seems to have come around very quickly and seemingly out of nowhere.

The world took stupid pills in the latter half of this week, especially today... stupid questions, stupid decisions, stupid statements and general stupid...

Some days you just need a chocolate milk and a ham, cheese and tomato croissant at 9am. Today was one of those days.

Sugarmonkey and I wore the same style and colour of shirt (except mine had stripes)... but it had to happen sooner or later.

H-San made himself laugh until he turned purple in the face and cried... and all over instances of the words "information" and "relevant" (which he later turned into the word "elephant").

And I was just generally over every damn thing.

I was a little freaked out last night... I came out of the apartment block on my way to drop off my dry cleaning and there was a guy with a camera across the road taking a photo, seemingly of me. I'm sure that part was accidental, but it did throw me for a loop and made me wish I'd said something to him. It did bring back memories of this very early blog post too.

While catching up on the distinct lack of gossip from yesterday's office party, I also discovered that one of the girls from a different section on our floor had no idea I was a big 'mo and was seemingly somewhere between surprised and shocked to discover it. Bless her little heart... she's a lovely girl, but not that bright.

I thought my place was going to be Grand Central Station (by comparison to normal anyway) tonight... and it still might, although it doesn't seem as likely. First Ma is swinging past after she went into the Optus store in town about her phone (turns out the thing she was complaining about is "a feature of the phone"... so she wasn't happy), then J and The New Boy were supposed to be coming over later in the evening... but I hadn't heard from J... but then Ma called me to tell me she was on her way (and whinge about the feature thing) and J called me not two minutes later, so now he's on his way over too.

As much as I love my little red Converse sneakers, they still kill my feet... and add to that the fact that at the beginning of the week my right hip feels fine, but by the end of the week it's all twingey... less fun. I'm guessing it must be something to do with my chair at work... or maybe my walk... see I knew exercise was bad for you.

I'm addicted to Unblock Me on my iPhone. Seriously, I only added it a week ago (maybe less) and I'm already up to level 150. I've even taken to playing it on the bus, and I'm sure one day I'm going to go straight past my stop.

When I got home (after stopping off and picking up my dry-cleaning and whatnot) the other little parcel card I've been expecting was in my letterbox... so I had to get in the car and go down to stand in a very, very long line (seriously, why wait until the last minute for everything people) and pick up my case of Tin Soldier wine. That's one bottle for me, and 11 more that I have no idea what I'm going to do with (okay, that's kinda not true... a bottle for Sheba, a bottle for J, a few bottles for people Ma knows, etc).

Hearing a woman speaking French is just cool. It happened in Melbourne and it happened in the Post Office. A woman in front of me was with her 3yo daughter, and speaking French to her. Very cool. And the daughter's name was Salome, so even cooler.

Current Mood:

creepy street art

Another couple of shots from the Melbourne street art file, this time by the same artist... WA street artist, Creepy... and I need to keep an eye on his non-street artwork, it's definitely on the "collectable" list.

Speaking of collectible, Ma brought down another toy soldier yesterday... and she's divided them up so that there will be one each Sunday and Movie Tuesday between now and Christmas... tragic woman... I'm not sure how many more there should be though, I can only think of two others. I do want to wander down to Myer some time this week though and see if there's anything in their Christmas department. Unlikely, but possible.

It's definitely an addiction though... I was having a look through some of the art and craft websites over the last few days and there were some tempting ones... although I think buying toy soldiers online would be crossing some sort of line...

Today was a very busy day (hence why I didn't get the chance to go down to Myer today like I'd planned), all leading up to a two hour meeting this afternoon. In fact H-San and I have been prepping for this meeting since the middle of last week... with the full expectation that the people at the meeting were going to complete tear our ideas to shreds and we'd have to start all over again. Surprisingly they loved what we presented... although they still need to present it to the Higher-Ups and convince them it's the right way to go.

But after two hours of talking and showing and sitting (fortunately in very comfortable chairs) I ended up with a headache... no idea why...

Fortunately it didn't last long...

Current Mood:

the toy soldiers have landed

Technically the toy soldiers landed on Monday... but I only got a chance to take the pictures last night (even if they are a little blown out for some strange reason)...

It's not 100% of the collection, especially since some of the new ones are still waiting to come down from Ma's place... but it does feel somewhat Christmassy now with the Christmas lighting and bits and pieces.

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my little soldier

It's been two weeks since I came up with the pattern, and a week since I started... and now my little test cross-stitch toy soldier is done.

And I've only stuck myself in the finger with the needle about half a dozen times, which is pretty good. What I like about coming up with your own pattern is that if you make a minor mistake (check the foot on the pattern versus his actual foot), you can just pretend it was supposed to be like that (and I actually do like the pointier shoe).

I really enjoyed this return to the whole arts and crafts genre... it kept me entertained and gave me something to do with my hands while watching teevee, although I did find myself concentrating more on the cross-stitch than the teevee at certain points (not that that's a bad thing). Interestingly though, I think it shows that my eyes aren't quite what they used to be... either that or the lighting in my place sucks ass... I basically had my bedside lamp by the side of my face the whole time. But then I think it's been about fifteen years since the last time I did any cross-stitch.

So now I just need to get my hands on the right colour and count of material plus deciding whether just to do a row of 10 or 11 or 9, or get really ambitious and try either 25 (5 x 5) or 50 (10 x 5). Yeah, maybe that could be a touch overly ambitious... I mean I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with this little guy now that he's finished.

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photo friday: cardboard tube samurai

Coiled, as spring dawns

I've been totally in love with the Cardboard Tube Samurai from Penny Arcade for some time now... so once I saw that they were making these figures, I had to get one. It's some quality workmanship too... well, other than the fact that his hat slides around and you have to sit him up high to get the best out of him. But really, those are minor points. I was also impressed by how quickly he got here, it was only a little over a week ago that I placed my order.

I played around with my indoor palm and my Foo Lion statue... set up some diorama action... and used my bedside lamp on one side and the natural blue light coming in through the lounge windows on the other. I'm pretty impressed with the results actually.

You can tell somebody who's really good at their customer service job when you can see their face light up as they acknowledge you. And of course it never hurts if they're damn pretty (even with an inexplicable black spot on their nose), know what it is that you're looking for (in this case a copy of the Phase 10 card game) and can get hold of it for you. So thank you Peter, you were both helpful and pretty, which is all I ever ask of shop assistants.

I was doubly impressed when I got an SMS at lunchtime today to tell me that the game was ready for me to pick up (I only ordered it yesterday). And then I was a little freaked out when the box the completely different staff member showed me was tiny, tiny, tiny compared with the one that Marc's version is in. But I opened it up just before and it turns out that the cards are much smaller than the one's in Marc's set... which may make for much easier handling given that having on to ten cards at a time can get a little problematic.

I spend all day yesterday sending email after email after email after email. Well, looking stuff up and then emailing people. But yeah, it was a very email heavy day yesterday. Today was better. Quiet, since Sugarmonkey is on leave until Wednesday, but mostly better.

"Good Morning Mr Irish Jogging Man... yes indeed I can instruct you in the intricacies of the River Torrens Linear Trail. And now that I have, could I possible be of any assistance in servicing you sexually?" What! He was cute and had the whole Irish accent thing working for him. I don't think he was one of the Irish jockeys that are currently in town though... too tall.

The Toy Soldier Cross-Stitch Odyssey continues. I worked on it on every night this week except Tuesday (if only for an hour or so in some cases), and I'll probably continue with it again tonight in between watching So You Think You Can Dance.

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cross-stitch toy soldiers

I've said many and varied times before that if an idea hits me, I do tend to get lost in it, especially if it contains a large amount of footelling around with Photoshop.

What started out, quite innocently, as a search for the sexy merman ornaments (I'm very tempted by the Aqua Merman) mentioned in Aiden Ash's latest blog post turned into a Google Safari for toy soldiers... which, really, is just asking for trouble (oooh, bright shiny things)...

But one of the images I found was a toy soldier done in cross-stitch... which, I'll admit, had never crossed my mind. I've considered doing a large scale, semi-abstract toy solider painting, but I hadn't thought about other arts and crafts opportunities. And I've done cross-stitch, and quite enjoyed it... even if there were a couple of things that I started way, way, way back in the day and never finished.

So the idea of little cross-stitch toy soldiers started to dance around in my brain...

Then they started to form into ranks and platoons or whatever the correct piece of phraseology would be for the little buggers...

Which then led to me sitting down with Photoshop and, after some trial and error and a couple of false starts, working (albeit using the image that I'd found for inspiration) on a cross-stitch pattern for a toy soldier.

Actually it was a ton of fun. I've done various bits of pixel art before (mostly fan art stuff), and this was in a similar vein... fiddly, but fun.

Eventually I ended up with what I'm calling "TS Prime"... that's him on the left up at the top... he's your basic, bog standard toy soldier, very much based on the original image I found. Then I started "finesse-ing" him. Slimmed the body, rounded the chin, shaped the hat, tweaked the hands, shaved off the epaulettes (I'm not sure about the arms though, they could maybe do with being moved in by a block). "TS Slim"... on reflection not as catchy, but appropriate.

I quite like how he worked out... although I'm not exactly sure how tall he's going to end up. I need to chat with Ma, since I know she'll be able to look at the image and tell me.

I'm also not exactly sure how to arrange them for a finished piece. Like I said, I was thinking about just one long row, but if they're only short little things I was wondering about doing a whole field of them... I mean there's nothing quite like getting over ambitious...

Maybe I just need to start off with one, see if I have the time, energy and enthusiasm to actually work on cross-stitch at all before I start on a bigger piece. I wonder if Ma has any of those blank cross-stitch bookmarks...

In unrelated news, I did my tax earlier (bless you e-tax)... three little words... Biggest. Rebate. Ever. According to the computer program anyway. So that could quite possibly be my computer money... woohoo...

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contemporary art saturday

You know what's really bad... having been somewhere and not being able to remember the name of the place you've been... especially when you know exactly where it is. Add to that a computer that freezes up for no good reason and, well, yeah... so I've been trying to track down the name of the place for about the last hour... BLAH!

It kinda matches up with the start of the day, I kinda felt like I was playing "catch up" for a good chunk of the morning... I went to bed late last night, which meant I got up late this morning, and I was shopping on my own due to Ma's haircut, and I'm not sure I bought much worthwhile. Then as I was driving home I saw Ma's car ahead of me, and basically followed her down the road to my place, so she was already there when I made it to the apartment with all the shopping...

After I'd unpacked everything and we'd gone through a number of the stories we would normally have told each other on the way to the supermarket we headed down to the Smiggle store at Burnside since Ma somehow managed to break the stapler I bought her for her birthday. Fortunately they replaced it with no dramas (and no receipt either which was even better) and we had a quick little wander around Burnside. We went into the cute little gift/card store we've been into a bunch of times and I happened to see a toy soldier... okay, granted it was a squeaky baby's "rattle", but it's still a toy soldier. They also had a tin wind up one that I've seen on previous occasions (and in other places), but I decided to get them both (actually I was going to buy them, but Ma was all Snatchy Sue, so she actually bought them). Then we wandered over to a little toy store at the edge of the complex and they had a little plastic wind-up toy soldier (who admittedly doesn't actually walk like he's supposed to, but I got him cheaper because of that).

Then, because we were planning to go to that place I couldn't remember the name of and that didn't open until 2pm, we headed into the city to do some random wandering and poking about in some of our favourite places. They've just realised the second series of the cheap Penguin Books, so while we poked around in Borders I picked up three new ones (Casino Royale, The Witches of Eastwick and The Big Sleep)... I didn't have the best luck with enjoying the last ones I bought, but hopefully these should be better.

I also gave in to my DVD addiction again (Macbeth and Molière), picked up a very cheap plastic rosary (I've been having an ongoing obsession for a while and it was only $1... although it's too small to wear), and generally wandered about.

Then we went back to the car and drove to the other side of the city to That Place...

I eventually worked out that That Place is actually the "Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art" at UniSA... which is somewhere that we've been wanting to go for ages, but I think it originally wasn't open on Saturdays and up until recently we didn't know that that had changed.

But we specifically went along to see the two pieces on the right (actually the image on the far right is part of a series)... The Young Family by Patricia Piccinini (I just wish there had been more of her work on display, because I love her stuff) and The Regal Twelve by Alexia Sinclair.

There was some other reasonably good stuff too... although I can't quite believe Ma and I sat there for 35 minutes watching Hayden Folwer's Second Nature video... very odd stuff...

Once we had our fill of art and culture, we headed back to North Adelaide, picked up some food and watched Heroes... so a slightly different day, but it finished better than it started...

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frugal saturday shopping

Given the shopping excesses of the past two weeks, plus the fact that I only worked three days out of five this week, I was decidedly frugal in my spending this Saturday...

Basically you could sum up my purchases today by saying I bought a Christmas decoration and a piece of punctuation.

We started as always with the Supermarket Safari, which has kind of turned into being whatever fresh stuff I need and any other miscellaneous bits and pieces. Although it was made all the more difficult this morning because they were doing their semi regular stupid stock counting thing. I hate when they do that, because suddenly all the aisles are full of people with little machines counting stuff and generally taking up space... and all the cute supermarket boys are either on their knees or standing on boxes with their butts up at face level (more or less)... so it's all very distracting...

Anyway, once that was all over we headed down the road to some random "chichilala useless object homewares" store that I noticed earlier in the week was having a sale that ended today. Ma and I have been in there before to drool on the overpriced merchandise so I figured we may as well go back while they had 30% off everything.

Ma managed to find a few bits and pieces, some more jewellery amongst other stuff, but there really wasn't anything I wanted... except for the lowercase letters... I've seen the uppercase letters you can get, which all seem to stand up on their own, but I don't think I've seen the lowercase versions anywhere other than this store. The only problem was that they either didn't have the right letters to spell out certain things ("homo" and anything containing an "e" were out), or some of the letters wouldn't have stood up under their own power (so "gay", "slut", "fag" and "yani" were all out)... but what they did have was a &... which was kinda groovy all on it's own, so in the end I bought Ma an "m" and myself an ampersand. Cute!

Next stop was the frame store (and we won't even discuss the fact that we got semi lost on the way and had to double back) to drop off the two little Chinese outfits we bought for La Cousina's Christmas present. The woman in the shop thought they were adorable and I think we picked out a nice option for the framing. Pricey though... I think it will possibly work out being the most expensive present Ma and I have ever given her either individually or collectively. I know she'll love them though.

Then we headed off to Marion, mostly because we haven't been in quite a few weeks what with bed-buying and construction and whatnot. And because it's coming up to the end of the financial year, everybody seems to be having big fat sales... but really, there wasn't anything that even tempted me. Ma bought a few bits of stuff, but nothing of any earthshattering importance really.

After we'd done the full Marion Circuit, had a minor spat because we never seem to be able to make a decision when we're together, ended up cutting off our own noses to spite our faces, got back in the car and made up again (all very dramatic really) we decided to stop off at the Christmas Shop. And that place still scares me...

We'd actually gone their on the off-chance that they had a specific kind of stuffed animal (they didn't) for a farewell gift, but we can't resist wandering around the general scariness that is that store, especially in Winter when there's nobody else in there. And I found another little toy solider... all wooden (or faux wooden, I'm not sure).

Then I happened to see the GIANT tin toy soldier standing up on the top of one of the shelves... and it was marked down 50%. And Ma offered to get it for me for Christmas... woohoo. He actually looks like he could do with a good bending so he stands up straight... and there is some damage to the base, but other than that it's pretty good.

So that, as they say, was that...

Also, you know when you've cooked something in oil the night before and the air in your apartment still has that vague "grease" smell about it, and it's so gross... or is that just me and my stupid apartment?

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releasing my inner retail diva

Hello, and welcome to today's edition of "I'm Really Annoyed", I'm your host, Yani McYanister... now, let's play our game!

I'm SUPPOSED to be typing this to you on my brand spanky new Logitech Cordless Desktop LX310 Laser system... but do you think, when I connected all the bits and pieces and pressed all the buttons and gizmos and widgets and whatnots that it would actually work?

Of course it freakin well wouldn't... and the instructions that come with it aren't any kind of helpful, and there are three little lights on the "Reciever", one is A, one is F and the last one is 1... do you think I know what the hell any of those lights or letters mean... hell no, because it's not in the freakin instructions is it.

*grrrrrrr*

See, this is what happens when I make snap decisions and don't go off and dither about stuff for several weeks...

Anyway, until I tried to do the whole "make technology work" thing, it had been a fairly full, but very productive day.

There really isn't any need to go into the Supermarket Safari, mostly I bought fruit and/or vegetables, but I did pick up some lamingtons for Monday (as though they're all going to last that long) and what is essentially a slab of little cups of fruit for a low, low price (12 x 140g tubs for $5, which seems reasonable to me). And big raspberry at Coles for no longer having the 2 for $5 special on Iced Coffee... but yay for Woolworths who do...

Then once Operation Drop Off was complete we headed down to Arndale... damn you Big W and your low, low prices on DVDs... and double damn The Reject Shop for having episodes of Lonely Planet Six Degrees for $3. And actually, damn me too for not picking up the London episode of LP6D when we saw it last week, because naturally it wasn't there this week (*grrrr*)... on the upside one of the other ones was. I also spent "too much money" on other DVDs... not as much as I theoretically could have spent, you have to know how to pace yourself with these things, and when to put things back because, really, you don't really want them, you just think you might.

Next up we decided to head down to Marion... they have a Reject Shop down there, so you never know... plus I wanted to look around at the aforementioned cordless mouses and keyboards *mutter mutter*.

Now Ma has been nattering on about getting one of those Japanese (Chinese, whatever) paper parasoles for MONTHS... seriously... but she never quite gets her act together (plus I think she's expecting them to be UV resistant or something... honey, it's freakin paper!), but one of the stores down at Marion had them for 30% off... and you know how I can't resist a bargain. But she was still umming and ahhhing about it, so I said "pick a colour", with the intention of buying it for her... and even then she couldn't make a lifestyle choice. So eventually I just picked the green one that I liked and bought her that. Whether it's going to be something she uses ongoingly or whether it will be a flash in the pan I have no idea, and you know, I don't much care. She was happy with it, and grateful and whatever, and that's the main thing.

Also in the "bargain" column I found the "Daily Bitch" desk calendar at one of those mid-mall calendar stalls where everything was 75% off... $25, down to $7, woohoo...

I'm sure we probably bought some other bits and pieces, but don't ask me what, I have no idea (oh, yeah, that's right... I bought a red polo shirt and Ma bought step ladders)... it did however culminate in going into Big W and buying the Cordless Desktop set. I thought I was getting a good deal... it had been $130 other places we'd looked, but they had it for $80... which is good, right. Except the fucking thing won't work (it's okay, I'll try it again in the morning, and I might be all rainbows, sunshine and fluffy kittens).

Once we were all shopped out we stopped and had some late lunch at this cute little "Organic Green" cafe place... very cute (seriously, I would totally incorporate a bunch of the stuff in there if I won the lottery and was designing a superkitchen) and they do an outstanding chicken schnitzel burger too.

The only other thing we did before we left Marion was grab one of those big storage boxes... I decided that since I'm fast running out of space for DVDs, I could take all my photo albums (that I haven't looked at in FOREVER) out of the little tiny bookcase behind the chair and replace them with DVDs. Which ended up working quite well... although now I have "nostalgia face" because I suddenly have the overwhelming desire to go through all those photos and look at my pre-digital work! (Actually I still have a third of them here, they wouldn't all go in the box I got... so I can have at least partial nostalgia face)

On the way home we decided to call of at The Christmas Shop, Ma never actually got a visit in before Christmas this year, and I wanted to have a look at what they might have had left. Man, what a difference a month and a half makes! I want to say that a fair amount of their stock had gone... but, you know what, I think it had just been moved from the first room you come to into all the other rooms. Plus they seemed to have turned the airconditioning off in every room other than the front one so the place was kinda like an oven after you'd been in there a while... and compared to the half dozen staff they had then, there was one lone, and slightly cute if a little dopey, boy manning the store today. Not surprising really, but kinda interesting.

Like I did before Christmas with toy soldiers, Ma went a little wacky on snowman related merchandise... and all the Christmas stuff was 20% off too *grrr* (hehehe... not that I would have wanted to wait, not everything I got before Christmas was still there, and I got the enjoyment out of it this year which is the main thing). I did see a plastic "crystal" toy soldier though, so that's been added to the collection. I was also proud of myself... there were a few other toy soldiers of varying kinds around the place (most of which I hadn't spotted last time), but they were either the wrong colour or just generally not quite right (although there was one that was a photo frame ornament that was pretty perfect, but it said "Grandpa's Christmas Wanker" or something on it... yeah okay, obviously it didn't say that, but I can't remember what it DID say... but I put it back).

And now the cordless desktop box is sitting on my bed next to me and smirking at me... okay, maybe it's not "smirking", but it's mocking me with it's non-working boxness... bloody thing...

Thank god I have beer...

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montage monday: toy soldiers

A Monday Montage with a difference... this is my toy soldier collection...

The glass ornament (bottom left of the left hand set of four), the red and green stocking and the nutcracker giftbag are the only things from before this Christmas (actually there is another giftbag that has "proper" toy soliders on it, but I'd prefer to have Ma use that for my presents), everything else is new. Which is impressive, yet scary!

I have noticed a theme developing though... first off, they have to be red. Toy soldiers and/or nutcrackers seem to come in red, green and blue (as per the giftbag and the card at the bottom of the post), but for me they have to be red. I don't know if that's part of my ongoing obsession with scarlet or not (or just some part of my brain going for what it considers to be historical accuracy), but if they're not red then they're just not right as far as I'm concerned.

And there also seems to be a theme towards drums. Partly that's incidental, because a number of them just come with drums (however the Jim Shore drummer/soldier at the bottom right of the right hand set is one of the drummers from The Twelve Days of Christmas... which also explains why he's not in red)... but if I had a choice between one with a drum and one with a different instrument, provided they were both red, I'd go with the drum.

Now that I've kind of "bulked out" the collection this year, I'm going to be more choosy (in theory anyway) about what I get from here on out. I'd like something in the soft toy genre (actually, what I'd really like is a little fat knitted soldier, so I might have to hit the craft markets next Christmas), something in a snow globe, maybe a coffee cup and something involving clockwork. But given how hard it was just to rustle up these ones, I think I'm going to be lucky to get that specific.

It'd be nice though...


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