driving and forking saturday

Today didn't quite live up to expectations, but at least it was mostly something different from the usual.

It started in the usual way, although I did get up quite late, threw myself in the shower and then made a vague show of straightening up the kitchen before Ma arrived.

Shopping was about the usual, although neither of us bought a ton of stuff... I did buy way too many mushrooms for my mushroom soup tomorrow... and hopefully that works out okay.

We also had a wander around Target briefly, and I noticed they had some glass cloches on sale... so I grabbed one. Granted it's a bit tall and thin and I have no idea what I'm actually going to put in it... but I'll work something out, even if it means I have to reshuffle some things around.

After we were done and had come back here for the unpacking and associated general things that go along with Saturday mornings, we headed off to pick up Ma's two artworks from the framers.

It was essentially a quick visit, and we were only there for as long as it took him to wrap both frames up in brown paper.

Since we really didn't have any other plans until the afternoon, we ended up taking the two frames back to Ma's place... which isn't the most exciting thing, but we did take the new Northern Expressway, which was kind of groovy, if only because I hadn't driven on it before today. Plus it was quicker going that way than the usual way.

We only stopped at Ma's for long enough to drop off the frames and then headed down to Port Adelaide for the first Fork on the Road in a good while.

Whether it was the fact that we got there later than we would have previously, whether it was because it was in a different spot from the last Fork down at the Port and everything was more closely packed... or whether it was just because there hasn't been a Fork in a good while so it brought out a lot more people than usual...

Or even if it just came down to the fact that the number of trucks was slightly less than other Forks, and a number of them were what I would call "second string" vans.

But it was all a little bit m'eh.

To sum up, everything was fairly close together, which when added to the fact that there were a whole lot of people and not that many vans just meant the lines for everything were fairly nuts and the waiting times were somewhat excessive for the amount of food you got.

The food itself was good, we started with a trio of tacos from Tacocat, then Ma got some sort of pumpkin and coconut soup from one of the newer vans while I waited a good twenty minutes at La Chiva for their Amazon Rice.

I did miss the lime wedge that they usually put on the top, but otherwise the rice was really nice. But by the time I got mine, Ma had order, gotten her soup and eaten it.

We finished up with a Bakers Dozen of honey puffs from the Honey Puff Ladies which are essentially just carbs, fat and honey, but damn they're tasty.

But by that point we were pretty much done.

Hopefully the issues were just about the location, and Fork will be back to full strength by the next one.

And maybe it was just me having a bit of a hipster whinge... "I liked this shit before it was popular, now all the mainstreams have ruined it"... and yeah, that could also be part of it.

But at least it was something different for a Saturday.

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photo friday: wonderbacks

Rory Cochrane said it best as Lucas in Empire Records...

"What's with today today?"

Seriously, what the hell is up with not just today, but this week in general?

So far this evening I have:

• Cried for a solid twenty minutes at the end of the last David Tennant episode of Doctor Who.
• Discovered 90 minutes into a 120 minute show that Channel 10 have either snuck the US version of So You Think You Can Dance on or else this is a clear indication about the amount of free-to-air TV that I watch.
• Sunk further into the obsessional pit that is Fallout Shelter on the iPhone.

But more than that, the last two days have been all manner of weirdness, mostly work related.

Because sometimes you just want to say "Because I fucking said this is how it is, and I've been doing this specific thing for longer than you and I know what fuck I'm talking about, so let's skip all of the back and forth and you just fucking believe me when I tell you this thing."

And all manner of stupidity wildfires seemed to break out this week, so much so that I feel like I spent most of the week trying to beat the stupid back.

Seriously, stop being self involved, stop being lazy and start believing that I/we know what I'm/we're talking about.

Anyway... a slight detour from regular programming... I want to talk very briefly about the games that were either announced or further explained at E3 this week.

This list looks a little something like this...

• Assassin’s Creed Victory
  This was a given, it was announced back in May, I already have it on preorder, so what came out was just new information rather than a full reveal, but I am so genuinely excited to play this thing!
• Fallout 4
  I've never played a Fallout game, however a month or so back I watched all of YouTuber ManyATrueNerd's excellent and twisted Kill Everything playthrough of Fallout 3, so I feel slightly invested in the world, plus this does look really, really good.
• Dreams
  I have no idea what the hell this actually is as a game, but the trailer looks very interesting, and I want to know more.
• Final Fantasy VII Remake
  FF7 was my first really real intro to the second wave of gaming... and I loved it. I didn't even know this remake was a thing, and it definitely blew my hair back. Will I play it? In all likelihood no, but I could be tempted.
• Firewatch
  Again, not sure if I'd actually play this, but it's a great art style, and the trailer intrigued me.
• LEGO Dimensions
  I was more than willing to resist the whole LEGO Dimensions game, although I fully expect that I may be tempted to pick up some of the game pieces depending on the price point... however then they revealed this Portal inspired trailer... and it suddenly got a little harder to resist.
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
  What the serious hell? This was my favourite out of all the trailers I saw. Again, I want to know more about it, but robo-fauna and a kick-ass bow... I loved it!

Beyond all the shooty games, the one trailer that I don't understand people getting excited about is The Last Guardian. I just can't get past the fact that the creature in it is actually pretty damn unappealing... actually, worse than that, I think it's pretty damn ugly... and on top of that the sequence they showed made no damn sense.

Going to back to the Fallout universe for a second, I mentioned at the start of this that I'd been sucked into the abyss that is Fallout Shelter. It's essentially a mobile ant farm simulation genre game (probably the best description of this type of game) and I've been sucked down this particular rabbit hole before with things like Lil' Pirates, Tiny Death Star and Pixel People. But other than the game being a gigantic battery whore, it's actually one of the best examples of the genre that I've played.

Granted with all of these games there comes a certain point where it's essentially just busy work and I get bored with them. Plus it would be nice if you really could just leave it to do it's own thing a little more... maybe the resources renew automatically but your little people don't level up without assistance. And I would do with a little more in the way of instructions for certain things... plus the pregnant women really need a countdown timer.

But overall I'm enjoying all the micromanaging.

Oh, and just to keep the running log of soup choices going, this week was essentially a version of chicken noodle soup... only with a lot of vegetables, and it ended up fairly thick... plus I used powdered mustard to try and give it a little kick, and I won't lie, that mustard has been haunting me the whole damn week. And this week I'm probably going to attempt the mushroom (and bacon) soup.

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gaming related saturday shopping

It's generally the weeks where I think "yeah, nothing I need, not going to spend any money this weekend" where I end up, you know, spending money.

But I get ahead of myself...

There really wasn't any news to report yesterday, hence why I skipped the usual Friday post. It was a short week anyway what with the public holiday, and I spent a good chunk of the holiday playing Red Dead Redemption, which I'm mostly enjoying. I love the whole open world thing anyway.

The beetroot soup I made last Sunday was both successful and disappointing. Successful in that I made it without coating myself and the entire kitchen in purple stains. But really disappointing in that it was a very dull soup to eat. And I got over it fairly early in the week.

I'm going back to fundamentals this week and making a basic chicken soup. I could go a couple of potential fancier routes, but we'll see.

Anyway, I got up this morning and did the usual clean-up thing... slightly more so than usual I guess, since I couldn't be arsed doing anything last night.

Then Ma arrived and we headed off to do the shopping.

It was all pretty standard really, but afterwards we had a wander around Target. I've been thinking for a few weeks that I'd like another small saucepan... I have frypans, giant soup pans, but my saucepan roster is pretty much confined to one. And I can't resist a sale sign, so the fact that Target had a bunch of kitchenwares on sale meant I had to have a look.

And they had a set of three saucepans, almost exactly in the style of the one I already have... and the tag on the shelf said $30... so bargain there, but the boxes themselves said $55, and even when I did the pricecheck thing, it was still $55. So I wasn't having any of that nonsense and went to ask.

Good thing I did, because even though the prices on the shelf were actually for completely different stuff, the woman (who I think was the manager, or at least the floor manager) let me have them for the tag price... so I saved $25!

Yay!

Turned out that Target also had a special on PS4 and three games... better than the previous deals I've seen around, at least for a while anyway. However when I went to ask, the girl told me that they were all sold out, but she could call another store for me.

So before I knew it I had a PS4 on hold. Okay, so the games aren't necessarily brilliant... two are okay, Infamous Second Son and Little Big Planet 3, although I'll have to look up some reviews... but the third is a driving game, so bollocks to that.

But I can always do a trade-in thing.

Anyway, we came back here, did the usual unpacking and whatnot, and then swung past the framing place to drop off Ma's flamenco dancer for some minor modification, then headed into the city.

Of course because we parked on Rundle Street we went past T2 and I picked up some more little coloured tea tins. Now I really need to reorganise my tea shelf and display it all nicely.

We probably should have left the PS4 until we were on the way back, but I just wanted to get it, so I ended up carrying it all around the city. It's not like I was going to come home and plug it in or anything, it's actually going away for Christmas and is kind of half of a Christmas present to myself (and partly from Ma if she gives me some money towards it), and also half a present for being extended at work until at least January.

Oh, yeah, they finally approved the next part of our project at work, so I won't be going anywhere before January, which is about what I expected... it's the post January thing that I'm not sure about. Although it wouldn't make any sense for them to get rid of us then either... but stupider things have happened.

Back to today though...

We took a wander down the Mall, stopped off at Typo, then Haighs, then headed back down Rundle Street, stopping off at Burger Theory for some lunch (specifically the Burger of the Month, the Bacon Kimi-Cheese, which is very spicy... and the Undercooked Brownie Concrete, which is very yum).

And that was about it really.

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movies: tomorrowland

There's a line during the first half of Tomorrowland where George Clooney's character says something to the effect of "It was an ad for something that no longer exists".

And without getting too deep into spoiler territory, that is precisely how I feel about Tomorrowland and it's trailer. I was sold a particular bill of goods by the trailer, but the movie itself is nothing like that. And much the worse for that to be honest.

What the movie ends up being is a fairly heavy handed environmentalism plot line and a story that spends the whole running time waiting to get off the ground (figuratively speaking).

Clooney wanders around being a grumpy old man, but Britt Robertson does a decent job as Casey, even if the majority of her role is to wander around asking questions. And Raffey Cassidy is fantastic as Athena.

But at the end of the day it's a fairly disappointing and lackluster story. And not exactly that original... which would be excusable if it has been more interesting.

yani's rating: 1 pin out of 5

adam hills: clown heart

This was our second trip to see Adam Hills live... and just like with Happyism, it was totally worth it.

And there is just something about Hills in his Adelaide shows that it just wonderful. It's totally not something you see in the recorded versions of interstate shows... I suppose it's best summed up as bonding with the home town crowd (okay, technically he's from Sydney... but he loves Adelaide as much as we love him, so it still counts). He's one of those comedians who, when they're writing the show, must just put at the beginning of the set list "Bond with audience - 10 minutes - but lets be honest, it might go to 15".

Plus it leads to wonderfully inexplicable moments like this.

For the record, those two people did not know each other and were sitting on opposite sides of the audience.

There was also the fantastic moment where Hills just brought out a little crate of Fruchocs he'd been given and gave them out to the audience. Part of this involved lobbing them up into the dress circle without being able to see where he was aiming. And nobody got hit in the head or anything.

It also let me photograph the most Adelaidean thing ever... Adam, at the Festival Theatre, carrying a crate of Fruchocs.

Once he finally made it back on stage he started the show in earnest. As always there's a mix of political/social humour, as well as fatherhood and laughing at death before death gets the last laugh. Plus his Working Class Man/Advance Australia Fair mashup.

There's always a point in the show where things get a little touching... and in this case it was when Adam started to talk about losing his dad to cancer, and his relationship with his dad.

And then he showed the clip from his Adam Hills Tonight show featuring Craig Coombes whose response to having cancer was to get his gear off and take photos every Tuesday. I saw the clip when it originally aired, and it's great... but then Adam came back on and I fully expected him to say that Craig had passed away given how long he was expected to survive and how far back that clip was from.

But no, plot twist, Craig is still alive and kicking and Adam brought him out on stage.

It's clear that these two guys have profoundly affected each other's lives and it was great to see their relationship and how much they care about each other.

And when Craig got a standing ovation from the crowd you could see how special that was to him, especially as this may be the last chance he has to get up on a stage as part of one of Adam's shows.

Of course you can't have Craig up on stage for the finale of the show without somebody taking their clothes off... and yes, that's exactly what happened... both Craig and Adam stripped down to their underwear. I did wonder for a moment if there was going to be full frontal nudity... which would have been a hell of a way to close the show, but thankfully everybody kept their bits covered.

All in all though, it was a brilliant show, I laughed, I got a little choked up, I yelled and screamed and applauded my brains out.

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ma's pre-birthday birthday adventures

Today was pretty much all about Ma's birthday celebrations. Sure her birthday isn't actually until tomorrow, but then we generally celebrate either of our birthdays on the nearest Saturday, unless there's either Fringe stuff or Cabaret Festival stuff happening.

And because it's her birthday, she was having her hair did this morning, so she went off to do that and I had the morning to myself to do the shopping and whatnot.

When I went to grab my bag full of reusable shopping bags this morning it was far heavier than I was expecting, so I opened it up only to discover that the giant Easter egg I got back at the beginning of April was sitting there, still all wrapped up in silver paper. I moved it out of my fridge at some point when I ran out of room, and clearly forgot about it. At least it was a nice surprise.

I'm planning on upping my soup game this week with some roasted beetroot soup... which could be something of a disaster, we'll have to wait and see... but I did buy two big bunches of beetroot and the supermarket and everything else I needed.

I also found a cheap bread knife to take to work... we have one that's supposed to be a bread knife, but it's like trying to cut the bread with a wooden spoon, so hopefully this will be much improved.

Then it was back here to unpack and read the paper before Ma arrived.

I'd wrapped up all of Ma's presents last night... well except for the artwork from Josh (more on that in a minute) which was already wrapped up...

• Princess Mononoke teeshirt
• Ghibli elements teeshirt
• Ghibli ballons teeshirt
• Doctor Who Season 8 box set
• Haighs dark chocolate pastilles in anniversary tin
• Haighs 100th anniversary store magnets
• Joshua Smith's The Art of Letting Go #3

The great thing about the three Haighs magnets is that we've actually been to all three of the stores... the Beehive Corner store here in Adelaide, the Block Arcade in Melbourne and QVB in Sydney.

Beyond heading off to the Cabaret Festive this evening, we really didn't have any plans for the majority of the day. But given that Ma now has a second Joshua artwork, it seemed to make more sense to just take it straight to the framing place rather than Ma taking it all the way home, living with it for a week or two and then bringing it back up to my place to then take to the framers.

It was a pretty simple and straightforward trip actually... because this is the second piece Ma is having done, she wanted to get it done pretty much the same as the previous one. The only downside to that is the fact that the background teal colour is very specific and not something that it's easy to match in a frame colour.

So instead Ma decided to go with black... but otherwise, she should match the flamenco dancer.

Ma also suggested that since we'd be nearby, we should stop into IKEA... and in very much Ma style, I think her exact words were "we don't need to spend any money but they have a sale on". Turned out to be mostly true for her, less so for me.

In fact, the overwhelming theme for the day seems to have been that every time Ma has bought something it's turned out to be cheaper than she thought it was going to be. Unfortunately, I've been the one who has bought the majority of the things today.

Granted my IKEA bill was increased by the fact that I finally bought the illuminated display box... I'd decided I was definitely going to get one the last time we were in IKEA, but then they were totally out of stock. This time I just grabbed one as soon as I saw it on the shelf. I had no idea at the time what the hell I was actually going to put in it, but I've been obsessing over them since they first came out, so I knew I'd find a use for it.

I'm thinking I might rework my bedside table and use it as a bedside light instead of the one I have now (which is fine, just very bright)... and put Aka Usagi and Aozora Inago inside. And it looks pretty good, I must say. I don't have it set up in the bedroom yet, but it looks nice and fancy on the kitchen bench.

After stopping off at Bunnings for a sausage sizzle, we headed over to Arndale so that I could look at stick blenders. I'd had a brief look in Target after doing the shopping and had worked out that they were either really expensive or kind of cheap looking, with not a lot of middle ground. Plus they all seemed to come with jugs and attachments and whisks and whatnot, which I really didn't want.

We had a poke around, found a nice looking stick blender in Big W, but Harris Scarfe were supposed to be having a sale on kitchen things, so we wandered over there to do a price comparison. And let me just say that when your sale price is higher than your competitors full price, well I think I can safely say that you're doing it wrong.

It was actually doubly lucky that I went back to Big W though, since the price was marked as $50, but when I did a price check it came up as $30... so a definite bargain there!

Plus it's red and shiny... like my kettle and my Soda Stream... I am tending to collect kitchen paraphernalia that's red and shiny.

We had some time to kill before dinner but we really didn't want to do all that much, so after we got back here, I messed around on the laptop while Ma watched some awful movie on the teevee. I told her she could pick something from my library to watch, but she seemed content.

There weren't any grand plans for dinner... in fact we hadn't booked anywhere and didn't even make a proper decision about where we were going until this afternoon.

Where we ended up was the Langtang Nepalese Restaurant just down the street on Jeffcott Street. We've only had Nepalese once before as far as I can remember, and that was forever ago, so I was happy to check it out.

I do think that perhaps it's something where you might have to work your way through the menu to discover what you really like. I was lucky when I tried Indian food for the first time, what I had was the thing that instantly became my favourite (Lamb Rogan Josh), and it's the thing that I judge all other Indian restaurants against.

Langtang was pretty good overall... the service was good (although there was only us and a party of about eight or nine in the whole place) and the food was pretty damn nice.

We started with the chicken momos... now I don't know what the hell the tomatoey sauce that was served with them was, but it was so good... I had to resist the urge to lick the plate.

That was followed up with mixed vegetable curry with basil puree (the greeny coloured thing in the bottom right of the photo) and saag chicken... of the two I prefered the mixed vegetables... the chicken was tasty and tender, but the sauce was a little on the thin side.

Then it was off to the Festival Theatre.

We did have a little bit of a panic attack regarding parking and the foozeball game going on at the oval at the same time, I'd kind of assumed that the road would be blocked off going one way, so we went the other way only to discover that we couldn't actually get from there to where we wanted to be. And even more annoyingly, by the time we worked our way back around, the carpark had it's FULL sign up (and doubly annoyingly, by the time we'd done all the shit we needed to do to get a park, the Festival Centre carpark was taking cars again).

We found a park elsewhere and made it to the theatre just after the doors opened. And the seating gods were clearly with me... I'd expected us to be about four rows back given the seat numbers, but the way it was all set up, we were technically in the third row, but the two seats in front of us (well, more so in front of Ma really) didn't have seats in front of them, so we had a direct view through to Adam Hills live on stage, and when we came down off stage to talk to the people in the audience, he was essentially right in front of us.

But more on that later...

After the show we stopped off for a yummy buckwheat pancake with butterscotch and banana and some Italian hot chocolate.

All in all a pretty good day for Ma's birthday adventures to be honest.

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photo friday: three geisha plus one

This week has been... atypical.

Rolling the calendar back to Sunday, I spent about six hours cleaning my apartment for the inspection on Tuesday. Granted that wasn't necessarily six hours straight, I made some breakfast, got distracted by whatever DVDs I ended up watching, fiddled with my phone more than was wise and generally faffed about a bit. But I got it done in the end.

As always I did more stuff than I probably needed to do, but I enjoy the opportunity to really dig in and do a big clean every three months. Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate it while I'm doing it... especially vacuuming the carpet... but I enjoy the end result.

Then I made what definitely has to be THE BEST soup I've made in the last several weeks of my ongoing soup obsession... Bacon, potato and leek... however the recipe called for, I think, two rashers of bacon... I'm not completely sure how many I used, but it had to be upwards of at least eight. Yeah, that shit was goooooood!

Tuesday was a rare occurrence, going to the movies by myself... and I bought popcorn, which is even rarer. I did buy too much though, and I still have some leftover that I brought home.

Thursday was Haircut Day... yaaay! It wasn't a late night as Tink wasn't feeling the best, but it was good to get my hair sorted out. I'm still trying to work out what the final version of this particular series of haircuts is going to be... which is difficult without totally steal the haircut of Banger at work. But it looks so damn good on him, so it's difficult not to go all the way that way.

But at least it's shorter and blonder again, which is always a bonus.

And then today after work I had my chiro appointment, which was decidedly welcome.

Speaking of work, it's been a somewhat crazy week. From things I was convinced we'd put to bed rearing their annoying little heads all the way through things that should have been easy that took all the hours.

I will say that overall it was a less frustrating week than previous weeks. Busy as hell though.

At least this is a long weekend!

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movies: mad max: fury road

I've only ever seen bits and pieces of the previous three Mad Max movies... they never really appealed when I was younger, and then I lost interest in anything related to Mel Gibson.

Fortunately knowledge of the previous movies is not required to watch Mad Max: Fury Road.

To be honest, I'm not even sure that sound is required to be able to watch this movie.

What little dialogue there is is essentially inconsequential, in fact the titular Max only says a handful of things. So much so that there were several times that I wanted to scream "USE YOUR WORDS" at the screen.

And weirdly, Tom Hardy doesn't seem to be able to decide on an accent throughout the movie... there are a couple of lines towards the beginning that sound authentically Australian, but then it does seem to waiver all over the place.

My main problem with the movie though is that I didn't really care about the characters... partly because I didn't know anything about any of them, especially their motivations, but even the names of a lot of them and partly because some of the characters you're supposed to care about weren't particularly likeable. So not caring about the characters meant that I didn't really care what happened to them, which meant that I really wasn't all that engaged during the action scenes.

And given the fact that this movie is essentially one long action scene, that does present something of a problem.

The "second half" was better than the first though... both from an action perspective and a character perspective.

The movie does prove something I've known about Nicholas Hoult for a while now... it doesn't matter if you make him blue and furry... or turn him into a zombie... or shave his head, paint him white and strip him to the waist... he's still a very attractive man. I think it's those big eyes.

Speaking of attractive, there is a lot about this movie that is absolutely beautiful... from the cinematography to the production design to the costumes, it's definitely a visual feast. Just the designs of all the Frankencars alone are a site to see. And knowing that about 80% of the movie is practical effects given the stunts and just the sheer number of risky things that happen makes it even more amazing.

I do feel like it's a little bit style over substance though... it's pretty, sure, but I did find it more than a bit lacking in, you know, story and character.

yani's rating: 2 war boys out of 5

rainy wandering saturday shopping

Today worked out pretty well, even if we did get rained on a few times.

I got up reasonably early this morning and changed my bedding and did a general tidy up. While I was doing that I happened to flick the TV on, which isn't something I normally do, and caught the second half of a Roger Moore movie from 1970, The Man Who Haunted Himself. With an actor who didn't have the emotional range of a teaspoon, it could have been genuinely spooky, but, yeah... good old Roge (and slightly telling that he considers it to be his best ever performance according to IMDB).

I did miss the last ten or so minutes due to having to jump in the shower.

If I'd realised how today was going to end up I might have worn my new grandpa lumberjack cardigan and a beanie...

Anyway, we did the usual shopping thing... although it wasn't that much of a haul for me, partly because there's still a bunch of stuff left in my fridge from last week.

I did get enough ingredients to make ALL the bacon, potato and leek soup though, so that should be entertaining tomorrow evening.

Doubly so because I'll have spent the whole day tidying the house to prepare for my inspection next week. And if I make a mess of the stove I won't be a happy bunny.

Everything we wanted to do today was in the city, so after the usual unpacking, paper reading and the like we headed into town to kill some time for an hour before other things started happening at noon.

We dropped into T2 because I wanted to get some tins to keep my tea in, but the ones I wanted are ones they no longer appear to stock, which is annoying. I did have an amusing conversation with one of the girls in the store... I'm pretty sure she's the one that I spoke to the last time I went in there I let her drag me around the store a little trying out all manner of things... but also because just like last time she mistook me for another customer, someone who works in the hospital.

Go clearly I have a doppelganger in the medical profession... which theoretically makes him the good twin and me the bad twin since he's all helpful and shit.

Anyway, I bought a tea tin and a very expensive fancy teaspoon (if I'd known how much it actually cost I might not have bothered, but I only realised after the fact), plus she gave me some fancy samples which technically aren't being released until Monday. Granted every time I've had samples before it's been some variation on disappointing, but we'll see.

From there we mostly pottered around in the Mall... I bought new cheapass beanie from Kmart and the checkout machine gave me change from a $50 in $5 notes, which, while annoying actually came in handy later.

Then we headed back to the car and shifted it around to Hindmarsh Square to go and see Cameron's exhibition (and Josh)... actually it turned out to be mostly Josh, because we spent about ten or fifteen minutes talking about the art and we were in the gallery for two hours.

From there we headed off to The Market Shed on Holland... they were having a Twilight Market... which, somewhat oddly, started at noon. And had we gone there before we went to see Josh it might have been different, but the place was fairly packed. And there was far too much hipster/hippy alternafood happening.

Just to give a precise snapshot of that vibe, while we were there there was literally a couple in their twenties walking around with brightly coloured crotched blankets around their shoulders. And on the other side, those kind of people who would call their kid Tarquin and never own a television.

So, yeah, I felt decidedly out of place... hence why the cardigan and beanie may have come in useful as camouflage.

We did get a few bits and pieces to eat... nothing mindblowing to be honest, but pleasant enough.

By the time we were heading back to my place it was almost 4pm, and I hadn't picked up my pants from the drycleaner, which closes at 4... and it was actually closed when I got there... but the woman who works on weekends was standing behind the counter. If it had been one of the women who work there on weekdays I would have been fine, they know me, I'm a regular, but this one doesn't and she was a little grumpy about having to open the door and find my pants.

But she did it, and that's the main thing.

So that was it really... I spent more money than I'd intended to today, mostly on food items.

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photo friday: mono beach

Today has been A Very Odd Day.

This whole week has somewhat tried my patience, but what's new really.

But today was just somewhat peculiar... starting with the fact that there didn't seem to be anyone in the office... we were actually down about nine people due to days off and whatnot. Then it was Herschel's last day before she goes off to Europe for a couple of months (having only gotten back from Europe mid way through last year)... so we had a going away afternoon tea... which technically turned into a late second lunch.

And it's always good when you can combine travel advice and Assassin's Creed into a Bon Voyage card message.

The day also started off weirdly with a spirited conversation about chopping boards (how many are too many), dishwashers (I don't believe in them) and the office kitchen (people should wash, dry and put away the fucking things they use). That was followed up later by a conversation about what you would do if you were told you had ten years left to live (consensus: it depends).

All this week there has been what I've been referring to as a wave of stupid... not a big, mass wave like a tsunami, more like a million little drops of stupid, all doing their part to wear down my already limited reserves of patience.

It's times like that that I'm glad I have workmates who know now to make me laugh... even when they're occasionally having a grumpy day too... but overall it makes things better. Plus I work with a bunch of nerds of varying flavours, which is great.

Oh, just for completeness sake... the Rich Red Onion Soup I made last week was, unsurprisingly, just fucking onions. And on top of that it only made three serves. But as least I've now tried it and I can retire those recipes. This week I'm going to attempt a potato, bacon and leek... so hopefully that'll turn out better.

Anyway, I left work at 4pm as usual this afternoon, and didn't walk into my apartment until 8pm... the main reason was because I was heading to Cameron Brideoake's art show that Josh was curating at 6pm, so I decided to just wander around the city for a while, and do a little shopping.

That turned into me preordering the next Assassin's Creed game, even though I don't actually have a console for it yet. On the proviso I'm still working come the end of the year, then I'll buy myself to console for Christmas, maybe get Ma to chip in some money in lieu of other presents. Either way, I'm more excited for this one because this is the Victorian London setting.

From there I wandered around the Mall for a while, got myself some more moisturiser, picked up some fancy things at Haighs for Ma's birthday next weekend, along with a card, and just did a bit of a general amble around.

It was a good amble though, unlike last time I didn't end up just wandering around aimlessly in circles.

Once I was done ambling I headed down to The Space Gallery for Cameron's show. It was good to see him, and his work again, even though I'd already seen the pieces in the catalogue. I also got to show him the tattoo he designed for me in person for the first time.

I stuck around for a while, got stuck talking to literally the dorkiest dude I have ever run into at any of these art shows (but Cam's shows to tend to attract a much different crowd than other shows for some reason), and eventually took myself off.

I was going to head home, but decided that I should head to Burger Theory for some dinner. But of course it's at the polar opposite end of town from where the art show was.

But I enjoyed my grilled chicken burger and left room for the peanut butter and jelly slice frozen custard concrete. A mouthful to say, but a very tasty mouthful.

And that was it really... after I'd finished I wandered on home.

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