photo saturday: opera slices

This week's post is brought to you by the letters "FML" and any number lower than 30.

The numbers, because it would have been nice to have more days with a temperature lower than that... or a night time temperature under 20.

As for FML, partly that's the heat, but we'll get to the rest of it.

I properly felt out of my depth for the first real time running a DnD game this week. I get why... the adventure is much more complex, but I do need to relay to the person who ran it for me and the Thursday numbskulls my admiration for the fact that he did a much better job.

And we have the second half of that adventure still to run this coming Monday. But that should be easier, all things considered.

I pulled the plug this week on the Wednesday night game (just for this week, not forever), partly because the guy who usually acts as taxi wasn't going to be there, which made me taxi-man, plus the heat, plus the fact that our DM had annoyed me earlier in the week.

It turned out to be a good idea anyway, because it allowed us to play for 6 hours at the Wednesday day game. Yeah... it was A LOT. I went toe to toe with the big bad guy and did 100 damage in a single turn, then got my ass handed to me by his minions and the other big bad.

And our DM finally revealed that he'd been sitting on a switcharoo between one of the NPCs and a villain we thought we'd killed already. Damn him... so now we have two different big bads to kill. Not to mention that my character is currently alone, all the party having turned on him thanks to the other big bad's ability to charm creatures.

So they're all planning a wedding, and I spent the last quarter of the game handing from a tree over a mountainous ravine, fully expecting that character to die. I'll be honest with you, I'm kind of disappointed that he didn't. If places had been reversed and I'd been the charmed one, I like to think that I would have just thrown one of them into the ravine without missing a beat.

No idea what the hell I'm going to do next week (although I'm in the process of writing them all letters that the character had already written them... because what use are friends if you can't emotionally manipulate them), but the character is most likely going to try and settle in for a rest, regain his lost health and spells, summon his celestial steed before he tries to head out again. And I also know that there is approximately 0.0000001% chance of me actually being able to do that once we sit back down at the table.

Thursday was a very talky game, but oddly, compared with the very fighty game last week, I lost more health this time. I also got to pretend to be a weird creature (on top of pretending to be my character). So that was a change of pace. Also the second time this particular character has done the body switching thing.

My comments about the group of players from last week remain the same since it was the same group. And will remain the same group for the third part of the trilogy next week.

Otherwise it was too damn hot this week.

Except that this was also Haircut Week and Chiro Week... fortunately not on the hottest of the days.

At least it was a little cooler up in the hills for Haircut Day. It was a very "on rails" visit, we did all the usual things, but Tink Jr was taking up all the air in the room as only a 7 year old can. Not in a bad way especially, but yeah, she is definitely a handful.

Chiro Day came with a side order of "ow my leg"... not from the chiro visit, but my knee had been giving me problems since about Wednesday morning, making life less fun, and my chiro said it was probably caused by my hips being slightly out of whack. Seriously, almost everything that falls apart on me is in some way related to my back.

But because she adjusted both my hips and my knee, it was a little whingy both last night and all day today. I may need to take another visit in the next week or so if it doesn't settle down like I hope it's going to.

Anyway... today wasn't really anything.

Shopping was minimal at best... I just buy too much stuff, don't use it all and it ends up going to waste, so I'm trying to only buy what I need, but I don't know what I need or what I want, so I buy stuff I think is going to be fine, and hope for the best.

Oh and Ma is moving between now and the Fringe. Much as I did in 2016. We definitely know how to move house in my family. Not. Hopefully her move will be much less stressful than my last one (although I do tend to find that moving stress is often inversely proportioned to how eager you are to move out of the old house... as in, from Childers Street to Wellington Square, very eager, from Wellington Square to here, not eager at all).

It also meant we really didn't have anything we wanted to do, and I didn't want to spend the day sitting, because in direct contrast to what you would expect, sitting is worse than walking around when it comes to my knee.

So we went to West Lakes. Which we haven't done in a while... at least since they totally redid the David Jones store down there. And we basically just wandered around the place, poked around in the stores we usually poke around in, and that was about that.

We did stop in the little cafe in David Jones for some lunch though, and that was very pleasant. And much quieter and less urgh than the food court. So we need to remember that in future I think... not just for there, but for DJs in general.

And that's it for the day really.

Current Mood:

movies: how to train your dragon - the hidden world

It's been 8 years and 9 months since I first made the acquaintance of Toothless and Hiccup and How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World brings their trilogy to an end in a heartbreakingly beautiful way.

Lets get the two most important things out of the way first.

I cried... oh baby, I cried. The entire last fifteen minutes of the movie in fact I think.

The effects and visuals in this movie are astounding. There was more than once where I thought that the water could just have been real actual footage of water it was that damn good. And the textures, light and smoke effects, hair, dragon eyes... so many things that were stunningly beautiful.

Okay, now that that's been dealt with.

HTTYD:THW is a beautiful climax to the story of Toothless and Hiccup and the denizens of Berk, both viking and dragon. If anything, it's a simpler story, like the first one rather than the second.

Dean DeBlois has finished off the trilogy with the same heart and deftness of touch that I've come to expect from him and from this series.

And even though the villain, played with requisite malice by F. Murray Abraham, is fascinating (even without a ton of screen time), this story continues to be about the connections between fathers and sons, even if, as in this case, the son is a dragon. It's about letting go of something you love because that's what is right for them, rather than what is right for you.

Jay Baruchel continues to project so much emotion into Hiccup, but has also subtly aged the character vocally from the awkward teenager of the first movie to the man he's become in this one. America Ferrera maintains the no-nonsense Astrid as the Yang to Hiccup's Yin and makes you believe that she honestly loves this man.

To be perfectly honest, I could have probably done with a lot less of the supporting players this time around... Snotlout, Tuffnut, Ruffnut and Fishlegs all feel out of place somehow... or at the very least, mostly surplus to requirements. None of them really add anything to the Hiccup story, they all have a little bit of their own business to do, but it doesn't feel necessary (particularly Snotlout and Tuffnut).

I was glad to see that Cate Blanchett had returned as Hiccup's mother Valka, but it wouldn't have been quite the same if they hadn't also brought back Gerard Butler as Hiccup's father, albeit only in some perfect little flashbacks.

Side note: Both Craig Ferguson and Kit Harington return as Gobber the blacksmith and Eret, son of Eret respectively...and given what the previous movie "revealed" about Gobber (heavy sarcasm on the word revealed there), I can't help but wonder if this movie did the same with Eret, if only due to a very brief and even more subtle scene towards the end. And if so, what does that mean about Gobber and Eret... of course the answer to that could be that I'm reading entirely too much into it.

I also appreciated that the callbacks in this movie are often quite subtle... I'm sure that some of the scenes towards the end are set up almost exactly like similar scenes from the first movie, which gives you that wealth of emotion as your brain makes the visual connections.

And even with my minor complaints, I honestly don't care. This movie concludes the trilogy beautifully and that's really all I care about.

yani's rating: 4 lightfuries out of 5

photo saturday: das circles

This week felt more like a normal week... for a sliding scale of whatever the hell normal is anyway.

There were not one, not two, not even three but four games of DnD... which made my Wednesday a little full on.

Monday's game... yeah, let's assign that to the m'eh pile. I didn't have my full group back from various Christmas things, I was running a very Christmas themed adventure and after juggling the universe for a long period of time to avoid having to interact with a particular individual, there wasn't really a way to avoid having him on my table. I mean it wasn't hideous, but yeah, definitely someone I want far, far away from me in the future.

Otherwise, the session was pretty good... I'd decided to try and go as long as possible without referring directly to "Santa" during the adventure, and made it maybe halfway through before I slipped up. Not that it was surprising anyone, you go to his workshop to make toys and then hijinks ensue for fucks sake.

It's silly, but it's fun. And now it goes back in the drawer until next year.

Wednesday was... good, but frustrating, but also good. We're finishing up a "campaign" (and I use the term very loosely, since I've been at every single one of the sessions bar one over the last eighteen or so months, but I've seen so many others cycle through it's not even funny), and we're at the abode of the big bad... and it's just frustrating. And the DM is a little too lethal, or a little too bent on keeping us at emotional and physical breaking point (as characters)... or at least at the point where we're fast running out of resources.

And I'll say it, not my preferred style of gameplay... yes, it fits the setting, yes it makes narrative sense, but I've already lost one character to this particular campaign (and while I could probably bring her back, I'm honestly not sure it's worth it given the circumstances, since everything she owns bar magic items has also been destroyed). And I think possibly it's just gone on that little bit too long.

Wednesday evening's game was tame by comparison. Given it's a different DM, different DM style and honestly, we all want exactly what our DM is putting into the world for this particular campaign. It did mean that we spent about three hours doing something that the DM expected would take us about 10 minutes, partially because I think we were all a little slow on the uptake.

But it was rich, juicy roleplay, and I loved every minute of it.

Thursday's game let me return to my very first character for the first time in about six months... which was fantastic. And it was someone I haven't had DM a full game for me before, but who I've both played with and run a game for. Plus is was a Tier 3 game, which I've only played a handful of, and only once with this character. Which made it a great game. Sure, there was at least one person I would happily have launched from the table directly into the sun, but that's Adventure's League for you.

I also got to have a chat with one of my DnD friends who I've been a little worried about this week... a bunch of stuff had been going on with him, and I think he needed some of that good, clean Yani energy, because he turned up randomly on Wednesday at the store just to get a prolonged hug before heading on his way, and then he was there on Thursday, not at the same table, but in the room, and I drove him home afterwards and got all of the juicy gossip and delivered much of the hugs.

Otherwise, a slow week... my new headphones (after my other ones mostly gave up the ghost last week, but are still powering on due to the magic powers of superglue) arrived, you guessed it, on the one day I'm actually out of the house, Wednesday. So technically they didn't arrive at all on Wednesday and instead arrived on Friday when the nice man handed them too me and made me sign an electronic pad with my finger.

I haven't used them yet, but they look pretty.

Still a little sad I couldn't find a pair with only one cable like the ones I already have though.

Today we had a plan, but we also needed to do a little bit of hot shoe shuffle in order for us to actually get to our plan.

We started with the supermarketry. I honestly need to work out how much stuff I need to buy currently, because I'm out three nights a week at present, plus the rest of Wednesday, so it's all a bit out of whack to be honest. And I'm still intending to eat my way through basically everything in my freezer, provided I can actually find things that are still edible and not frozen hunks of concrete.

But otherwise, average.

Then back here, usual rigmarole. We decided last week that this week was a good time to go to the movies for the last of the How To Train Your Dragon movies, and we could have gone to Marion again (having only done that a couple of weeks ago), or fill in some time and then go to the GU Film House in the city. Given that it's school holidays and it's a family movie, we decided the city was a better idea, since there would be much less people there (news flash, we were correct, total of about a dozen people I think).

So we killed some time at Big W, Kmart and Officeworks, doing the Goodwood Road, Anzac Highway, city circle. Nothing mind boggling... we looked at pretty much all the things we usually look at, plus some things we don't. Bought a few bits of nothing much. Essentially killed some time.

Then we headed into town and the movies. Only to discover that we were there at 12:30 for a 1:15 session and the movie complex didn't actually open until 12:45, because reasons I guess. So more time was killed.

After the movie (more on that later, as always) we just headed back here and Ma toddled off down the road to home.

Current Mood:

photo saturday: textual

A bit of a nothing week this week really... I mean I know it was New Years and everything, but even so...

Last Sunday I ended up clearing out some of my kitchen cupboards, discovering that I have a bad habit of buying multiple replacements/backups for something I already have. This is why I now have two bottles of tomato sauce, three jars of Dijon mustard and two full tubes of Berocca.

Partly I blame the shit cupboard designs, since they're too narrow and waaaaay too deep, and stuff gets lost.

Anyway.

New Years happened.

Wednesday was my only game of DnD this week... and yeah, it was a bit of a clusterfuck. I did get turned into a silver T-Rex (because my character is a silver dragonborn, so of course) for a brief period, which kept me alive a lot longer.

But that was it... no Monday game because of New Years, no Wednesday night game because people have lives or whatever I guess, no Thursday game because the person who would DM for me is on holidays of some description (also it was too fucking hot on Thursday).

I will say that being pretty much by myself in the house all week, with the exception of Wednesday, kinda did a number of my head. Yeah, not a fan of it.

So, I did sweet fuck all that was interesting this week. Even compared to normal.

Today wasn't overly exciting either... but at least it was something.

We did the supermarket thing... I really do need to use up all of the stuff in my fridge and freezer, so I didn't get a ton of stuff... just bits and pieces really.

Afterwards, we decided to head into the city, not for anything specific, mostly to see if there was anything in the Christmas decoration oeuvre still hanging about... with a side order of whatever else caught our eye.

The answer? Not a lot really. There were a few bits and pieces in Myer and David Jones, but other than some cards that Ma wanted, it was all a bit "shit that clearly nobody wanted even now it's cheap".

 We did wander around one of those slightly more upscale Japanese interesting plastic crap and toys places that has opened downstairs from David Jones... I can't remember the name of it to be honest, but it's a cute store. And I found a black gel pen that was in the shape of a feather made of silicon. Weird, but cute. And it'll be useful when my very last black Lego gel pen gives up the ghost.

Other than that, not really much of a sausage.

We stopped off at Boost when we were in need to a sit down, watched the passing weirdness of the world go past and then called it quits.

And that was that...

Current Mood:

2019

And here we are... 2019.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then I called it a night.

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

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

Otherwise I just phaffed about.

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

Current Mood:

two thousand and eighteen in review

Looking back through this year's posts, a few things became apparent.

Firstly, almost all my weeks are the same... DnD games on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, a monthly haircut and chiro visit, the weekly supermarket/shopping trip. And we didn't go to as many movies, or theatre shows this year either.

It doesn't perhaps make for as interesting a Year in Review as previous years, but 2018 definitely had it's moments.

January: Nothing much to report... a lot of Assassins Creed and not much out of the ordinary.

February: Fringe started.

March: Fringe continued, with a total of 18 shows. I turned 44.

April: I finished Assassins Creed Origins... and was slightly disappointed by the ending. We went to the 2018 Biennial of Australian Art.

May: I didn't realise that running a DnD game on that particular Monday would lead to seven months of running games for a recurring group once a week. And my Thursday group left the game store and started new characters in a new storyline.

June: Ma's 71st birthday. We went to the Waterhouse Natural Science Art show. I kissed a boy I shouldn't have kissed... but am glad I did, even if it broke my brain for a little while. We caught the Musée d'Orsay exhibition before it headed back to France.

July: I got laid in the most spectacular fashion at 3am on a Wednesday morning. I had my 13th bloggiversary. I attended my first ever AVCon, and ran three DnD games.

August: Minor plumbing related issues, one easily fixed, the other which took several attempts for some reason.

September: I sliced the end of my finger off.

October: We went to a Fork on the Road for the first time in what feels like forever (but is probably about 12 months). I had my final appointment with my doctor to change the dressing on my finger. We stopped by the Australian Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year show.

November: I finished up Horizon Zero Dawn, which I haven't written anything about, but really enjoyed. My Thursday DnD group moved our games to Wednesday... for now anyway.

December: All the Christmas things that I was generally unenthusiastic about... tree stuff, chocolate stuff, actual Christmas Day stuff.

Unsurprisingly both the "kissing a boy" and the "slicing my finger off" are the two events this year that haven't completely healed (for want of a better term). The end of my finger is still a little odd... as is my relationship with The Boy, especially now The Boy has A Girl.

For the most part though, I have a routine. Which gets me out of the house and interacting with actual living humans. At least several days a week.

There's also a whole bunch of self reflection there, or would be, if I wanted to dig into it. But I pretty much know what it all is, and why it's there, so to be honest it can stay where it is and mind it's own business.

Like the review, I think my "favourite thing" list for this year is fairly short...

yani's favourite things 2018

More Dungeons and Dragons

Yeah, I've played somewhere in the neighbourhood of 150+ games of DnD this year. And maybe run about a third of those, maybe less.

Me running once a week started off as a way to avoid questionable DMs and players I didn't care for. What it turned into was a group of people (the numbers vary) who came back to my table for seven months. At least one of whom I think is only ever playing on my table.

It's made me a better DM, it's allowed me to give back some of the experiences I've had as a player to other players. It's also let me give some of those experiences back to the DMs who ran for me when I was new. And running for a recurring group has let me play around in the margins of various adventures, making plenty of time for character role play opportunities.

Outside of running, I've played around with who my characters are, I've actually done character voices in a couple of instances, and I feel like I've both knitted groups together and torn them apart (in-game groups that is).

Even the changes to Adventurer's League didn't put much of a dent in my enjoyment (or at least not for long, and it did allow me to have a good long whinge about stuff at possibly the perfect time)... I mean they're still incredibly stupid and I have no idea why the hell they need to be in place... but they're in place and they don't ruin the game, they just create more housekeeping outside of it.

Critical Role

This also comes under the general heading of DnD, and while I was aware of the first season of Critical Role before I started playing, it was only when they started their second campaign that I jumped in with both feet.

I mean what's not to love... professional voice actors (is that a pejorative, are they not just actors? I mean it's how they introduce the show, but still) playing DnD, heavy on the character building and role play (and voices).

Movies

It has been a lean year for movies... we only managed to see 12 things (technically 11, since one was a movie that came out last year).

Either we just never got around to seeing things while they were in the cinemas, or the reviews and word of mouth I heard after things came out made me reconsider wanting to see it.

Only three things ended up with a perfect score... Coco, Black Panther and Call Me By Your Name.

So that's all of 2018 done and dusted.

And as always, today (about an hour ago I think) marks my 9th Twitterversary.

Current Mood:

movies: ralph breaks the internet

What do you do six years after you make a Disney movie about gaming?

Why, you take on the internet of course... so what Wreck it Ralph did for gaming, Ralph Breaks the Internet does for 2018 internet culture.

Or the Disney-fied version of it anyway.

This does feel at times like it's hitting some of the same story themes that the first movie touched on six years ago, but overall it does feel like a more mature story, in a completely Disney way, obviously.

At it's heart, this movie is about growing up and realising that if you love something, you can set it free. But also that it's okay to want to want to stay behind.

Along the way, there's a lot of references to the internet that are going to go flying over the heads of very small children, but at the same time, they do get the message out there that you never read the comments, which is good. Also, Disney princesses... a lot of Disney princesses.

I will say, without spoilers, that I very much appreciated the return of the princesses at the end of the movie, tonally it was just right.

It will be interesting to watch these two movies back to back, given that the first one is beautifully rendered and full of colour and great visuals... but with this much time having passed, I did notice details in this movie I don't remember from the first one... the patch on the back of Ralph's overalls for example... but the lighting, effects and rendering of "the internet" are all amazing.

It's a shame in some ways that there weren't more of Felix and Calhoun this time around. I get it, they've been happily married for the last six years and having them there would have pulled focus from the Ralph and Vanellope story. There is a nice set up and payoff with them at the beginning and end of the movie though.

Of the new characters, princesses notwithstanding, it's a toss up between Taraji P. Henson as Yesss (thankfully not Yasss) and Gal Gadot as Shank... both strong female characters (and in Shank's case, in a role that would probably be male in most video games) but in very different ways.

Just touching on Shank for a minute... or more on Shank's game... and mild spoilers follow. So the world is just going to be cool with having essentially a seven year old girl showing up as a character in a violent online car game? Nobody is going to have a massive internet outcry? Yeah, I think they just might. It's a completely minor thing, and I'm not even bothered, but it's the one moment that threw me out of the movie to be honest.

I will also say that it's one of the few Disney/Pixar movies (this, and the first one are both Disney movies, but honestly feels like they should have been the other side of the street) that is going to age horribly. Yeah, they mostly stayed away from anything on the internet that wasn't one of the larger names, but still, there's going to come a point when things in the movie aren't things that exist any more.

But that's the price you pay for putting internet things in your movie I guess (and the major plot items are mostly made-up companies).

It's a good movie overall though... not top tier for Disney stuff, but lots of fun, especially for people like me who spend too much of their time on the internet.

Oh, and this is definitely a movie that you want/need to stay all the way through the absurdly long credit sequence... you can thank me later.

yani's rating: 3 steering wheels out of 5

photo saturday: boys and blues

I saw a sign today that read "that bit between Xmas and New Year where you don't know who you are or what day it is".... it's very me.

Rewinding, the cold/flu/general ick that overcame me by Christmas Day started to peek it's head into the light on Sunday, but really established itself on Monday.

Even so, I spent Christmas Eve very differently from previous years... I ran six hours of DnD games (a two hour, then a four hour)... which was fun. And they were both Christmas related games (ish)... plus I was able to both run for people I've only ever played with and let people who usually run games at the comic shop actually play, both of which was fun.

Christmas Eve night was the traditional ordering of pizza (although I went to pick it up, since it's a) just down the road and b) $10 cheaper that way) and watching of Arthur Christmas.

And, as I mentioned, I slept crappily that night. But all of that has already been documented.

Boxing Day I did... functionally speaking, nothing. I mean, I got up, I had breakfast, I caught up on some YouTube viewing, but otherwise, not much of anything. It didn't help that I still felt crappy, and the weather decided that Christmas week was when it needed to get progressively hotter and awful.

Actually that was mostly the blueprint for the latter three days of this week. Feel crap, hide inside where it's cool, do nothing.

I made a brief sojourn outside on Thursday morning to buy cold and flu tablets, but that was it.

At least the cold and flu medicine improved things a little... even if I'm still not sleeping properly. And I did develop one of those "wet" coughs (yeah, I know how gross that sounds, it doesn't improve on this side of the screen, let me tell you)... but as of right now, I'm actually able to breathe through my nose, so improvements have happened.

Granted, I'm still partially deaf in my right ear, and that won't be fixable until after the end of the first week in January when the specialist returns to work... so yay. And by yay I mean fuckbuggerbollockshit.

Interestingly, this goes on record as only the second worst Christmas due to illness, directly behind the year from when I was a kid where I started the school holidays with chicken pox and ended them with German measles and Christmas was about the point at which I was at the tail end of the first one and the start of the second one.

Oddly, the only real memory I have from that year is not being able to play outside with the other kids on Christmas Day and instead sitting in somebody's loungeroom (I honestly don't remember who... my aunt and her dirtbag second husband maybe) playing a very early hand held electronic game (but don't ask me what it was).

Weird the shit you do and don't remember.

Anyway... I still feel somewhat like crap, but less crap than earlier in the week.

Thankfully because I wasn't feeling well I managed to avoid missing DnD.

Bouncing merrily down the hill to today.

Today's weather goes in the basket marked "changeable and stupid", for being cooler and windy this morning, followed by muggy and a little too warm this afternoon.

Both Ma and I declared that we didn't need much of anything from the supermarket... and I didn't think we bought all that much stuff, but still managed to come away with four bags of stuff between us. Maybe the checkout boy just didn't pack stuff as efficiently as he could, I dunno.

Afterwards, we came back here, I unpacked, then Ma wanted to grab some money from over at the Village, plus we needed something resembling breakfast, so we wandered over there, came back here, made fun of the bumper December magazine from Coles (somehow we never saw it until three days before the end of the month) and it's "243+ recipes and tips"... yeah, tips is stretching it a bit at times.

From there it was off to Marion to finally go and see a movie.

Marion between Christmas and New Year may have been a mistake... I mean it's been like two days since the stores opened again, you'd think people would have gotten it all out of their system. Seems not so much.

And nobody had any decent leftover Christmas stuff... I know that's partially because some of the places started selling it off by mid December, and I'm convinced the other stores just put what didn't sell this year into storage and bring it all out again next year.

But, to coin a phrase, I can't even with people. Look where you're going, pick a lane/direction/life goal/plan and stick to it. Urgh.

So all I came away with was superglue to stick my "not Lego" Christmas wreath together (it falls apart too easily, and honestly it doesn't need to disassemble into that many pieces at all), and that was it.

I did however run into two people I know... a fellow DnD'er and their small child making a beeline for the movies (they were running late and it's legitimately only because we crossed paths as they dashed past the bottom of the escalator as we were getting off that we exchanged more than a wave at a distance... and then I saw the other chiro from my chiro. And I had one of those moments where you think "hmm, they look a little familiar", then you think maybe they said hello at a distance, you check behind you to make sure they aren't actually talking to other people and then finally you realise who they are.

Yeah, that's who I am right now.

What can I say, it's been a trying week.

Current Mood:

post christmas round-up 2018

You know what sucks? Feeling sick on Christmas. Even when you don't really give a shit about this particular Christmas because of reasons.

And I'd been feeling mediocre before that... mostly due to that seasonal "ear infection" I seem to get this time of year... but this one mostly snuck up on me on Sunday, progressing to basically a full on flu/cold/completely blocked ear.

So, all the fun stuff.

I did my usual Christmas Eve pizza, watched Arthur Christmas and went to bed at a reasonable hour, but unfortunately with a head full of both snot and cotton wool (don't think about that too hard to for too long to be honest), I had trouble sleeping and I think I woke up roughly ever hour from about 2:30am (and I don't think the fact that it's been hot and I slept with the evaporative cooler right next to the bed helped the cold/flu/ear issue).

An auspicious start to the day.

But I got up, had a shower, started to feel a little more human, did a little bit of pottering about, then loaded up the car and headed to Ma's place, arriving a bit before 8am.

Thinking about it, there really isn't any reason that I need to get there that early, especially as we don't go and see La Cousina in the morning any more... but it's what we do, so it's what I did.

As usual, Ma wasn't especially organised when I got there... I mean she was, being in the midst of making the Christmas morning batch of Ham Hearts, but she was also still in her pyjamas. But the baking didn't take that long and I sent her upstairs to get ready while I watched over the heating of the traditional Christmas croissants (with ham and cheese this year).

We followed that up with the also traditional cleaning up, I think I also put the lunch table flatware and cutlery out at that point (I don't know, I know it all happens, but the order of things is somewhat of a mystery, since it all just happens).

Then it was time for presents.

The one bonus to buying things in like April and putting them away for Christmas is that you entirely forget that they're a thing (in this case, that applies to both the Lego and the neon ampersand).

• Lego Dimensions Ghostbusters (2016) Story Pack
• Teen Wolf Season 6, Parts 1 and 2
• Typo Disney 2019 calendar
• Neon ampersand
• Diecast Disney Stitch "Nano Metalfig"
• Christmas tree tongs
• Perrymans gingerbread men/reindeers
• Terry's Chocolate Orange
• Sour Cream and Onion Pringles
• Bassets Jelly Babies Snowmen

Honestly, I think the little neon ampersand we picked up at... Big W (if memory serves) is my favourite thing this year... I mean it's not much of anything, but it's pretty and it will be a good replacement for the neon Christmas tree when that goes away sometime over the next week or so.

Ma knew pretty much everything she was getting this year, but she did like both the calendar and the dice set, which she didn't know about, so that was good.

After we were done with that and I'd taken some photos I was planning to sit down and send Christmas messages out to various people but got beaten to the punch by someone I wouldn't have expected, which was nice... so cue about a five minute montage of me texting or otherwise messaging various people.

I'll be honest, I'm a little crap at those kinds of messages, so it was all just basically "Merry Christmas" along with a couple of appropriate emoji.

Ma did a similar thing when she realised what I was doing... so, yes, insert total Christmas texting montage.

It also turned out that La Cousina and Ma had gotten crossed wires about what the plans were for seeing each other, so we never actually saw them. Which was fine.

Then we started working on putting together the Weber and the stuff to go in it. Between bouts of that Ma put Arthur Christmas on since she hadn't just watched it... and I'll be honest, I probably had more than a few little microsleeps since I'd only just seen it.

We never quite got to the end since there was other prep that needed to happen for lunch.

We ended up sitting down at about 2pm, but everything came together quite nicely, including the dressing I made with apple cider vinegar, oil and cranberry (not quite enough cranberry to be honest, but still tasty).

The potatoes were beautifully roasted, the meats (turkey and sausage) were moist... I ended up having about two bowls worth.

As usual, neither of us particularly felt like dessert immediately afterwards, so we tidied up and then I ran the modified DnD adventure for Ma.

I think she had fun. And she got to see me running a game, doing all the stupid voices and whatnot. And it killed a couple of hours.

And it was better than falling asleep in front of a movie.

Then we had some dessert (the usual "Eton Mess" we've made the last few years), watched a little of the 1966 Batman movie and made fun of pretty much everything (they HAD to know it was a total joke, right?), before switching over for a little Wallace and Grommit.

That was about it... we packed up my leftovers and I headed home at about 6pm.

I didn't do much of anything when I got home... had a shower (the drive home was quite warm), picked at a little bit of food, watched some stuff on YouTube and then called it a night.

So, it was probably an even more anti-climactic Christmas than usual, but it also wasn't the most awful thing ever.

Current Mood:

checking the naughty list

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