character friday: fairy friend

It's been an... interesting 168 hours (or, you know, week)...

But things are looking good... so let's go for something a little playful for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... Zephyr.

Zephyr is an NPC for an upcoming campaign I'm running for the Friday crew... specifically linked to Fluffy's character for the first part of the adventure. He's a knife throwing, knife juggling, knife tricks essentially. But he's only about 10"/25cm tall.

I haven't really pinned down his personality as yet... I think he's going to be very outgoing and very much a showman when he's performing, but more parental and warm when he's backstage. Like I said, I haven't thought it out fully yet... and it will also kind of just happen at the table when I open my mouth and words come out.

Anyway, he was fun to design and go over the top with his makeup and hair and costume all based around the colours of his wings.

Moving on...

So, I had two apartment inspections on Monday, one in North Adelaide, which was a shoebox and one in Glenunga, which was lovely from the outside (a very green courtyard, small number of units) but inside it was... weird. I wasn't digging it.

Tuesday was the first place I looked at where I thought, yeah I would put in an application on this place. Again the block itself was green and shaded and quite nice, and the apartment was... okay. Okay enough to put in an application anyway.

So Wednesday morning was... a giant fucking headfuck. Because fuck electronic/online rental inspections in every uncomfortable orifice. Also, but the time I was finished with pulling all the dates together and photographing a bunch of my IDs and pulling all the other documents I needed and working out how the fuck I was going to make myself not sound like the worst possible tenant in the world, it took me like an hour and a half and I hated myself and I hated the application and I knew I wasn't going to get it and my application was going to go straight in the recycle bin.

But I did it anyway.

Then Wednsday afternoon I went out to Norwood to look at a place. Again, it was cute enough. Less interesting block, but on a good street, and big enough for my purposes, and also on the second floor, which is fine. Also giving it marks in the plus column was the current tenant's belongings (also, could you be more of a hipster, sir... with your vinyl turntable and your lack of a television... well, I don't remember seeing a TV anyway), which made it look like a home rather than just a box with windows.

I have realised that one of the flaws that I have when I'm looking at apartments... is that I don't actually SEE a lot of the details. Like, I see the space. I see things that seem to make sense to me at the time. I get the vibe of the place... but I don't LOOK properly. In this place I never looked at the kitchen. I think the stove is electric, but I'm not completely sure, and I know it has aircon, but I don't remember actually seeing it.

So Thursday morning was filling out the paper application for that place. Which took 15 minutes. Seriously, it took so little time it was actually disconcerting. I thought maybe I did something wrong. And I only needed to add a photo of my driver's license, AND I was able to actually attach a cover letter explaining my circumstances. So, suffice to say, I felt a lot better about that application. Doubly so because I looked up the land agent and while it should have been weird, because it's a very, very small company, the information on the site made me feel like if anyone would give me a chance, it would be this company.

And even better still when I got a phone call from the Land Agent on Thursday night saying that it was down to me and one other person, she just had to talk to the owner. Who also owns the whole building. And lives there.

Yay.

Of course, I had a nervous night, got up earlier than I otherwise would have done and couldn't really settle to anything.

I also had my chiro appointment. So that at least got me out the house. And of course I fully expected to get a call or a message while I was flat on the table. That didn't happen, but I did get a message right after I sat down in my chiro's office. And I thought that was bad news, because usually they just message you if they're saying no. But no, it was just the agent keeping me updated on the fact that she still hadn't spoken to the owner.

Chiro appointment was business as usual.

Wandered around town for... a tiny bit... came home, and less than a minute after walked through the door, the agent called me. And took me on a roller coaster ride of "ooh that's bad... ah that's good... ooh that's bad... the froghurt is also cursed, etc"... only to say that if I could match the extra rent the other guy was offering (also, fuck that trend... let's not line the pockets of the fucking landlords any more than we need to, shall we?) then it was mine. So of COURSE I said yes.

And then immediately called Ma and when she answered the phone I was just saying "yes, yes, yes, yes...".

So, I have a place to live.

But that opened up a Pandora's Box (no pun intended... because, moving) of... other things I had to then do.

Firstly I called my current land agent to say... "hey, got a place, but you know how I'm supposed to move out at the beginning of February... nah bitch, how's three weeks later, because that's when I can move into the new place... 'k?". Of course it wasn't that easy... he had to talk to the other woman, who was theoretically on leave... so, yeah, call me back bud.

Then there was drama with paying my first two weeks rent, because internet banking decided that you need to download a fucking app that has nothing to do with your bank in order to do some stupid security thing in order to add a new payee to my own fucking account. How does GET FUCKED sound.

And I have been incredibly lax in updating my phone in the last... I dunno... seven years. So I hadn't updated my iOS, which then meant that I couldn't download the app. So I went to the bank. And the woman was, frankly and unsurprisingly, unhelpful and dismissive. Not enough for me to decide to go to a different bank... but, you know... enough to further frustrate my already frustrated and overheated ass.

In the end I withdrew the money from my bank and walked down the street like a peasant in order to pay it in at my land agent's bank. URGH.

But I got it done... 

And on the drive home, not only did the Online Banking Call Centre call me back (after an hour and a half vs the 26-45 minutes they claimed when I said "yes, please just call me back so I don't have to sit on hold for forever") while I was driving, but also the other land agent for my current place I think tried to call me, and then messaged me with a frankly incoherent message. So I was just thinking to myself... "fuck, can I just drive home in peace for five minutes"... is that a thing I can do after having essentially yelled at the bank bitch. I mean, I didn't... but I was yelling on the inside.

Got home, ignored the Online Banking People because fuck you, you can't help me, and I think you try and call back three times and then give up anyway. Called the current land agent... did a little sweet talking and YAY... I can stay here until my moving date.

Because, honestly, I am slowly trying to move any potential moving date further and further away from Christmas and New Years one move at a time... somewhat accidentally given the first move (in 20 years) was like 6 January, the next one got pushed out to 6 February and now we're most of the way through February. Because fuck trying to find something while Christmas and New Year is happening.

Not that I'm going anywhere for a while, honestly.

So, after that I called Ma and ranted for a little bit. And then though... well, fuckkit, let's see what I can do about this iOS issue. So I plugged in my phone, hit some buttons and before I knew it I was leaping about four iOS versions and my phone was chugging away downloading an update when Fluffy turned up. Because I'd asked him to come down a little early, but didn't know when he was actually showing up. So he surprised me.

Wow... sorry... not that you would have noticed, but I kinda got distracted there by reading the two overly long moving posts. Yeah... those are... definitely two different moods. And my feelings about this place now and this place when I moved in are... kind of the opinions of two different people. I mean, I definitely know that other person. But some of those issues got resolved and were, I think, mostly related to having to move at all rather than having to move here.

Anyway, where was I?

Ah, Fluffy. He helped me take all of the art that has been stored in the boxes in my bedroom for the last 6 years out of said boxes, retape said boxes to ensure they will stand another move, then repacked said art into said boxes. So that's done.

Which then led into a) me showing him the photos of my art collection, since said collection is wrapped in bubble wrap in said boxes and b) reminiscing about Burger Theory in all it's glory. Good times.

Then bread cooking, and off to Friday night DnD.

For any number of reasons, not least of all because we haven't seen each other for two weeks, there was lots of chat before we finally got down to the game.

And we set foot into the Belly of the Beast as it were. By which I mean the lair of a goddess... that used to be the home of a tribe of frost giants. So, you know, a regular Friday. We did meet the sweetest talking walrus though... who just happened to have the same accent as my character, which led to my character's accent getting a LOT thicker. Because of course that's what would happen.

So now we just have to go through four trials for the tenets of the goddess... cruelty, endurance, isolation, preservation. Won't that be fun.

Today was... tiring.

We did the supermarket thing as usual this morning, after I detoured past the new place so Ma could see it from the outside/see the location.

After shopping we came back here, and I unpacked my shopping and also unpacked the collection of extra cardboard boxes Ma brought down (thank goodness).

And then it was packing. I wanted to get the apartment "tidied" as best as I could, because it's been a total mess for the last week, much like the inside of my brain. So, with the help of the boxes Ma brought, I managed to pack some things that I tried to pack during the week and couldn't because the boxes I had were entirely too big. Or possibly I didn't think of that particular box. I'm not sure which anymore.

We also ended up pulling the big artwork out of the big box that has been living along side my pantry shelf for the aforementioned 6 years. Retaped the box, put some of the art pieces that used to be in the box back in the box and also added in a few other bits and pieces that fit in the space that I had left.

Ma also displayed her super power.

I was trying to stick a large number of things that were already in boxes into the big box I'd already put together, and they just wouldn't fit. No matter how I tried to put these five or six boxes inside this bigger box, they just wouldn't work. And I was basically "fuck this". Ma wandered over, turned one single box 90 degrees and suddenly they all went in the box pretty much perfectly. Fucking Human Tetris Machine. It's useful, but man, the number of times I tried and failed before she did one tiny thing.

In the end, we cleared 90% of my dining table, packed like seven other boxes, made some decisions about things and got my apartment in a much more organised state.

It's almost as though once I got my head straight after securing a new place to live, I can then get my physical surroundings organised in a way that I couldn't before that point. Who knew? Well, you know, I knew... it made perfect sense to me, even if I kind of made it happen by randomly throwing the shit on the table into a box just to clear it so we could use it to wrap some additional art. Then took it all back out and repacked it. Shit got done basically.

Fun fact: I also have a box entirely filled with tea and tea making supplies. I have too much tea.

We took a couple of breaks, eventually I showed Ma the photos of the inside of the place (because I showed all the properties to her... last week, I think... but that was a whole week away and I don't this she retained all that much of the information. Plus this is the place she actually has to remember now that I'm moving there.

But finally I was absolutely done... and my entire body is still all kinds of sore. Tomorrow will be fun. Plus I worked out while working on this post that I'm going to need to move my chiro appointment next week, because I accidentally booked it on the same day as the move, so that's not going to fly.

Having an appointment the week after the move definitely isn't the worst idea though.

So, yeah... as much as I'm sure I will complain about very specific things once I move into the new place, and if I make it through the process without wanting to murder various utility company staff members it will be a miracle, but right now, everything feels positive.

Just keep your fingers crossed for me if you wouldn't mind... because, you know, one can never have too much extra luck during the process of moving.

Current mood:

character saturday: tenpenny and honeypot

So... this week... yeah, that's a full on conversation.

But first... my purple clad, purple prose writing erotic novelist bard... Harland Honeypot. I knew who his mother was, but until the games before Christmas I hadn't thought about his father much at all.

I knew he had one, but I thought perhaps his mother, Mimosa Honeypot, a "former" courtesan (she still has a few old regulars, but isn't taking on any new clients right now, thank you for asking) and current hostess and entertainer at the Blushing Nymph festhall, maybe didn't know who his father was, or did but hadn't told him, or had don't him but it wasn't a big deal to either of them.

Basically wherever she was in her life at the time and where she is now are two very different places, and a long term relationship doesn't fit anymore.

But then we met some Harpers in the last game we met before Christmas. And I knew that Harland didn't like the Harpers, even though he's is 100% perfect to be a member of said faction, but I couldn't remember WHY (I think it came up in our pre-game relationship dice rolls, but I honestly didn't write most of it down, as I didn't really care). So when we met said Harper agent, Harland instantly disliked her and was honestly kind of a dick about it. Which was fun to play, even if I didn't understand what was driving it initially.

But then I needed to work out WHY. Which led me to dear old dad. He was involved in something he shouldn't have been and the Harpers used him to get to the more important criminals but in the end hung him out to dry. And he ended up in prison because of it. Where he died. Or something. Like, he's definitely dead, because why else would the reaction have been that strong, even if he knew his dad was a bad guy. I'm okay with leaving it a little up in the air because basically I know that whatever the actual story is, Harland doesn't know it. He only knows the story he was told, ostensibly by his dad, who would therefore be an unreliable narrator to his own story.

I also know the Harpers have been through more than one instance of "traitors within", so maybe his dad was a Harper or working with them but was then betrayed by said traitor, maybe dad was a traitor himself. In the end it doesn't really matter.. it's enough for what I need.

And that was how Milo Tenpenny came to be. The poor schlub didn't even have a name before that point.

I don't think he and Mimosa (and I only just realised that they're both M names) ever married, which is part of the reason why Harland uses his mother's name... but also, as an author of erotic novels, which would you rather be called... Harland Tenpenny or Harland Honeypot?

Yeah, same.

Which of course led me to DnD Character Colouring Book for the parents. Partly because they'd just added the new dress at the time and that seemed appropriate for dear old Mum. I also enjoy that Dad is just a little bit derpy. Looking back at Harland's skin tone, I feel like Dad's skin should be darker, but maybe Dad spent too many nights out on the job and too many days catching up on his sleep.

Also, if they had class levels (which they don't), then Rogue and Bard respectively. And probably the Thief and College of Glamour subclasses honestly.

And the fact that it looks like Milo is checking Mimosa's goblet to see if she needs a top up, or has just topped her up, is completely accidental. I was more trying to get across that she's all fine wine and golden goblets and he's all dagger in your back and rotgut rum.

Anyway... 

This week has been... too fucking much honestly.

So, after I finished last week's post, we learned that Fluffy's sister had tested positive, which meant that Fluffy was technically a close contact, which meant that because he spent like half of Friday with me, I was technically a close contact of him, which meant that Mr and Mrs, who we saw for DnD on Friday night were close contacts of the pair of us, and Ma, who I went shopping with on Saturday and then sat around and watched a movie with was also a close contact of me.

Fuckit.

I didn't care so much for myself, but Mrs is immuno compromised and Ma is just old.

So off they went to get tested on Saturday evening... and we had to wait until Sunday for results. I called Ma and advised her to, you know, not do her Sunday plans of going to see her equally old friends and instead stay home.

Sunday morning Fluffy was most convinced he was going to test positive... so I decided, fuckit, let's go and sneak a test in on Sunday morning while the lines are hopefully not super long and so that if the worst comes to the worst, I have my results back sooner rather than later.

So off to Hindmarsh we went. To the Educational Development Centre... retreading old ground from previous lives and all that. And a place that I've been to on more than one occasion under very different circumstances.

And as much as I didn't really dig the "have to get out of your car" aesthetic of the place, I did appreciate that it took me about as long to drive there as it did to get tested and I was back inside of an hour I think.

I also remembered to be very nice to all the staff because they're doing a very necessary job and also one where they don't get thanked anywhere near as much as they should do. And that included the girl whose main job seems to be "print out papers, fold them and place them in the right place for the nurses"... because nobody remembers to thank the admin staff. So I did. Also the nurses.

Anyway... stayed indoors for all of Sunday just to be sure. We got Fluffy's results back midway through Sunday... negative. And my results, when they came through on Monday, also negative.

Thank fuck.

Because, yeah, having to isolate for a week while also trying to find a new place to live, that wasn't going to be any kind of fun.

Speaking of...

I have currently backed 16 small boxes and two large boxes, including all of my books and most of my papers and tchotchkes. Plus I think six plastic storage tubs that I already had. All of my bookcases are stripped down and are just holding the stuff that still needs packing and the house looks like... well, it looks like I'm midway through packing for a move honestly.

Dining table isn't any clearer... every time I semi empty it, I just add more stuff to it, so there's that.

I also went through my CDs during the week... basically enough of them need to go in order for me to just have a single bookshelf worth, which may not make a lot of sense, but otherwise I'd have a weirdly shaped shelf to fill otherwise.

And I went to see two places last week. One said that it was in North Adelaide but was actually in Ovingham on the side of a hill and didn't have a stove. Nor a cooktop. So fuck that noise on any number of levels. If I'd known that before I went, I wouldn't have gone.

Then on Friday I went to another place that was within walking distance of my current place. It just seemed... small and grubby... didn't like it.

Currently I have, I think, at least four open inspections next week. And some, if not all of them, I'm going to need to start putting in applications for, even if they're not 100% perfect.

Fun times.

Also, as I messaged Fluffy mid way through the week... I am currently sick of every single thing that I own. Because either there's too many of them, they're difficult to pack, or I probably should have gotten rid of them at some point but just didn't.

In any event, there will come a time for culling after the move. Especially for random tchotchkes I think. I have a whole storage bin full of them that I never even got out here... or possibly the place before honestly... yeah, it's a whole lot of stuff that I like, but, honestly, if I don't have an actual spot for it, why is it hanging around.

Whether this mood lasts throughout the move and into the unpacking phase remains to be seen.

Anyway...

Due to aforementioned "close contact", even though all of their tests came back negative, Fluffy and the fam still needed to insolate for the week, so no Friday DnD. And I've pulled the plug on Thursday DnD for the month, because I kind of don't have, as mentioned last week, the mental bandwidth for it right now. Plus I need to be able to head out to open inspections in the evenings, just in case.

Also my back has been letting me know that it doesn't appreciate all the bending and carrying of heavy objects... and I don't have a chiro appointment until next week sadly. So, yeah, more fun times.

justquietly... arrggghhhhhh.....

Which brings us around to today.

Which mostly involved me proverbially banging my head against the proverbial wall honestly.

First up, supermarket. And because I didn't buy fuck all last week due to... last week... I needed to make up for it with additional stuff this week. Or, you know, the right amount of stuff.

Then it was back here for unpacking and... coming up with a plan for more packing of a different kind. Fun times. Or something.

So, it was off to the Reject Shop to get a couple more of those plastic storage tubs that are super useful for the more fragile of the tchotchkes. Plus I want to keep the last four of the smaller boxes for kitchen stuff.

And then it was back here to try and work out what to pack and how to pack it. Because most of what's left needs some amount of bubblewrap, it's just working out the how and the.... well, mostly the how of wrapping them up honestly. So we did that... take item out of glass container it usually lives in, wrap item in bubble wrap awkwardly, put item back in glass container, wrap whole thing in bubblewrap awkwardly, put entirely too much tape on it, look at weird lump that results... get next thing.

I also kept finding additional THINGS... stuff I'd clearly put in A Place at Some Time and then promptly forgotten about, only to discover it now and think "sorry, what... why is this a thing and when did I put that there?".

Right now my brain is mostly fried... my hands feel all weird and tingly from having handled too much bubblewrap and tape... and I still am mostly sick of every single thing I own.

Also, I now have a stack of "not moving company" cardboard boxes that I'm sure will come in useful eventually, but right now are just taking up space.

And just so we're clear... on a scale from Underwhelmed to Overwhelmed, I'm currently at Whelmed, dancing furiously on the borderline of Overwhelmed.

Fun. Fucking. Times.

Current mood:

character saturday: animal boys

Some animal themed boys for the first DnD Character Colouring Book of the year. And I probably could have just gone with one of them, but they seemed to work nicely together honestly.

Firstly, the Battlemaster Fighter... the very on-the-nose named Reynard, the redhead, who kind of got his fox based name after his look was done. Because I still haven't really done a redheaded character, even though I've wanted to on a number of occasions. Also, he's only a Battlemaster because that made sense for him... it's not really my favourite subclass.

Valazquez is when happens when you're watching people play video games for a number of hours and something comes up in the game that makes you want to make a DnD character with the same theme.

The video game: Wildermyth. The something: the Crowtouched theme that slowly turns one of your characters into... a crow.

While musing on it, the character became an Acolyte and Aasimar tied to the Raven Queen... because goth and edgy shit. And then a rogue, because the aforementioned goth and edgy shit. See also the Phantom Rogue subclass.

Moving on.

This week was... a lot.

So, although I haven't mentioned it since the first... mention... urgh... I still have to move house at the start of February. Which is all kinds of problems and issues and whatnots.

But between Christmas and New Year I found a moving company, but they seemed... less good than the other company I used during my last two moves... but they decided that they didn't want to operate in Adelaide any more sometime after my last move. So, urgh, again.

So, this week I tried to find a different company. Wow. Moving companies are... the word that comes springing to mind is... bullshit. Or often just a random dude and a truck. Is it out of line to expect, I don't know. An office. And when I look up your company address on Google Maps, that I don't find... somebody's house. Or a place where you theoretically park your truck.

And when you go through Google looking at different removal companies... you start to notice that a lof of the websites look like ass. And... you start to realise that, hey, I've seen that phone number before... so you Google the phone number and find, like five different "companies" with similar looking websites, but with completely different names.

So... Best Movers Adelaide, Same Day Movers, Total Removals, Proven Removalists and Carlo Removalists... I fucking see you all. With your mostly matching websites and your identical phone numbers but different addresses. I see you.

I'll tell you, that for me, I started to a) loose all faith in humanity in general and b) started to kind of loose my tenuous grip on reality.

Also not helped when the company that I had seen that seemed better than the one I'd already spoken to told me when I called them that they're not doing any removals in Adelaide until April. At least I think it was them, I ended up speaking to a number of companies and had a number of stupid conversations.

So what do we do when we start to loose our tenuous grip on reality? We call Ma. And she comes down so that you can have a brief freak out, and then outline the whole problem you're having and then end up calling a couple of other companies who are also... functionally useless.

I mean, they had reasons, and I understand their reasons. But for the most part, none of those reasons didn't help me.

And even trying to find a company that rented/sold moving boxes was doing my head in.

Basically the TLDR is that I had gotten myself into a headspace, and couldn't see my way past any of it.

Basically after I called one of the major moving companies and while I spoke to someone in Melbourne, they tried to put me through someone in Adelaide, but nobody was picking up the phone. Now, I get it... this was the first day back at work for a lot of them after the Christmas/New Years break, but fuck.

So I just went... fuck it. Let's go with the company that I'm already booked with, and even though they don't fucking mention it, they do rent boxes, albeit at a more expensive rate than I would have initially liked (which was one of the things that I was unhappy about when I first spoke to them). And because I know they charged an additional fee to bring the boxes out, so, since Ma was here, I suggested driving out there to pick some up.

I mean, I called them first... but, like every other phonecall I made that day, it was unproductive because it ended up going to voicemail... and they never called me back (I mean, before we got there).

Actually seeing that they had a building, with a sign, and a dinky little office (which was essentially a cube inside the bigger warehouse), and people... made me feel better. I mean, I then had to spend entirely too much fucking money on fucking cardboard. But they're good boxes. And I learned my lesson from the last move by getting the new ones and not the used ones. Because my experience with the used boxes last time was less than ideal.

And of course, because of the way my life works, while I am physically holding onto one of the sets of boxes, with woman from the office getting the other boxes for me... my phone rings. Of course it's the other moving company. I just thought "fuck this" and told the woman who called that I'd made "other arrangements, but thank you".

Then we stopped off at Officeworks on the way back to my place for some more tape and some bubble wrap and some butchers paper. Not the BEST butchers paper mind you, it's a bit... thin. But there's also 250 sheets of it, so... swings and roundabouts.

And that was just my Tuesday.

So, right now, I have... 10 boxes packed, two large ones, 8 small ones, all my DVDs are packed, the papers and shite from my chest of drawers are packed, all of the boxes that I had for my tchotchkes, with the aforementioned tchotchkes repacking inside them are in boxes, and I'm slowly building the Great Wall Of China in my living room.

I mean, what the fuck did I do with all the boxes when I loved in here? There the actual fuck did I put them all? I mean, I know that I didn't have the dining table, or the chest of drawers, or the kitchen workbench when I got here... and everything was all piled up against the bookcases the day after I moved in... 

But I'll be honest, even looking at that photo right now gives me... well, not clinical anxiety... but it makes me all manner of anxious. Also, the photo from like a week previous that showed where I was up to with packing... also makes me all kinds of anxious.

Partially because the rental market is very, very different now than it was five years ago, my overall situation is... worse than it was five years ago, and, you know, looking for places in the Current World Situation is... kinda fucked, honestly.

In a word. Fuck. Just... plain, old, ordinary... fuck.

Anyway... I went and looked at a place on Thursday evening. Two doors down from the Wellington Square apartment. Which made me suddenly remember a) planes flying overhead and b) it's been five years since I've really been to North Adelaide and c) there were entirely too many people/couples looking through the place, which was cute, but, you know... me against couples for an apartment. Urgh.

But it's also the first one I've physically set foot in, so there's that.

On Friday, Fluffy came down in the afternoon and we did a little packing, did a little organising and culling of shite. I mean, I knew that I liked to keep a useful jar. Just in case it was, at a later point, useful. But I didn't actually realise how many fucking jars I had accumulated inside my house.

Well, jars and empty honey containers, because I also hoard those for soup and whatnot. And also other plastic containers that I put up on high shelves in the kitchen and... never thought of ever again.

So now my recycle bin outside is full. Not just, like, a little bit full... "the lid won't close" kind of full. Mostly with jars. I mean, if they were all smashed into glass, then maybe they'd take up less room. but that's going to make all the pretty, breaking noises when they dump it all into the recycle truck next week.

"Hi, my name's Yani, and I have a problem with collecting containers."

But at least most of that is in the trash now and I don't need to worry about it.

And, while I know that I could actually pack more or less fully for a move within, like a week, taking my time is preferable, but the issue, as I mentioned to... well, anybody who stood still long enough for me to tell this week... right now I have to weigh up between how much room the thing is currently taking up in my house and how much room it will take up once it's in a box... and sometimes it can just stay where it is for now.

Which is also why Ma and I didn't do any packing today... next week is definitely going to be a thing... but for this week... nah, I honestly didn't have the mental bandwidth necessary.

Also, to quote an oft used quote from Press Gang, one of my favourite shows from the 90's... my apartment looks like I've "been playing with something thermonuclear". Big wall of boxes, empty spaces in the bookcases, every surface strewn with the detritus of my life. It's a mess.

Much like my life right now... <insert self deprecating grin gif here>

Urgh... speaking of not having the mental bandwidth... let's move on shall we.

Really the only other thing of note this week... or possibly the only other thing that I really remember because past a certain point my brain is just full... is Friday's DnD game.

After several sessions of... not avoiding the main plot... but, doing our own thing... we proceeded full force with the plot. You know, right into the belly of the beast and all that.

And now we get to answer the age old question... what happens when you put the ghost of a sassy bitch into the body of an already sassy bitch. Yes, my girl got a sassy ghost in her head... because initially she went into the head of our monk... and that wasn't going to be a thing we allowed to stand.

So now I have a sassy bitch in my head and a new weasel familiar friend. I mean, it's the familiar of the sassy bitch... but he's a sweet white weasel/ferret... which might actually be a stoat or an ermine based of the art I saw.

Anyway... next up, we're into the fortress of plot and bad stuff... so that'll be... stressful. But a different kind of stress.

Today was... I dunno... Mental Fallout Day, I guess.

We did the supermarket thing... but didn't end up buying very much... partially because, honestly, I didn't know what the fuck I wanted this week and because the weather can't make up it's damn mind about the weather right now.

Oh, yeah, I should also mention... you know how they "came and fixed to roof"... because of leaks. Yeah, it rained really fucking heavily on Friday afternoon... and, you guessed it, the ceiling/roof leaked again. So they didn't fix shit. But I also don't actually need to care about it for all that much longer. After that it becomes my favourite kind of problem... Somebody Else's Problem.

Anyway, we came back here, I gave Ma a bunch of stuff that I didn't want to just throw away... we watched a weird movie on TV, and then she headed home.

So, there's that about that.

Anyway... think nice thoughts in my general direction please. Think apartment thoughts, think successful thoughts, just think me being able to talk my way into what I want kinda thoughts. Or, you know, not... I'm not the boss of you.

Current mood:

movies: encanto

Well... Encanto...

This was a movie I... didn't see coming. I mean, I knew that it was a movie and I knew that it was coming out, and I'd heard good things. But I had no idea what the hell this movie was. Because I don't do trailers anymore, and I prefer going into a movie knowing nothing about it.

And thus, we have situations like Encanto. Where knowing nothing about a movie let's it hit me like a ten-ton truck.

If you haven't seen anything about the movie, but generally like Disney movies, I'd say, go and see it.

Encanto is another Disney movie in an developing list that takes on a different culture and sets it's story deep within that culture. See also Raya and Moana. 

But this feels more successful than either of those, even though I liked Moana very much. And like Moana, this movie has a number of Lin-Manuel Miranda songs throughout, but more on that later.

At it's core though, Encanto is the story of a family. And what that means, both for good and for bad. It's a very special extended family with a set of gifts, but a family none-the-less. The interesting part comes in because it's a Latinx family, who live in a wonderful house, in a non-specific timeframe, in an isolated rural village location in Columbia. It's also great that the movie's cast is predominantly Latinx and a number of them also reprised their roles in the Spanish language dub of the movie, which is nice.

But maybe 90% of the movie takes place in, or very close to that house. They also manage to give the house something of a personality or at least set it apart from other... magical buildings. Plus there are only a handful of other characters with speaking roles or who affect the plot in any significant way.

The movie is visually... lush. There honestly isn't any other word for how beautiful this movie looks. I know that's generally my go-to description of any new Disney animated movie, but this one is set in a colourful house in a jungle location with flowers and bright costumes and magic and colours everywhere.

The movement of the characters, especially when people move to the music without seemingly meaning to or just dance, are beautiful. They're fluid and have weight and feel real. 

It also has some great songs, one of which, "Surface Pressure" is my favourite of the movie, and something of an earworm that has been bouncing around in my head since... well, not since last night, because I watched it again this morning, but it's certainly catchy.

However... here we get to one of a couple of very minor complaints that I have about the movie.

The first of which is that Lin-Manuel Miranda is amazing at writing songs that move the story along and that focus on character and emotion and what's happening in the scene. What I feel like he's pretty bad at is writing a song you can sing along to. 

None of these songs are "Be Our Guest" or "Never Had A Friend Like Me" or "Under the Sea" or "Hakuna Matata".... and not a single one of them are "I'll Make A Man Out Of You". These are lyrically dense songs that work within the confines of the movie, but I very much doubt will endure or find a life outside of the movie.

And as much as I loved the Moana soundtrack (I bought it on CD after all), there are at least a couple of songs on there that are more generically Disney songs (specifically "How Far I'll Go")... this feels like they just let him go full Lin-Manuel. Which is great, but, like I said, these songs won't endure. Or show up as karaoke songs in ten years times or be a thing you randomly quote if somebody happens to accidentally say a line from.

The other complaint is something of a... "good problem to have" I guess. I like a lot of the characters, both visually and for their part in the story... but... there may be too many of them. Because there are character who don't get enough screen time or don't get fleshed out in any significant way. And I really wish they did. 

It's better than having too few characters who don't get fleshed out, but it's still a problem. There needed to be a lot of characters to get an authentic extended family feel, I get that... but at the same time some of the characters don't get much of a personality beyond the singular character traits outlined for them in the opening number of the movie. Too much of a good thing maybe.

It feels like they came up with some great ideas for individual gifts but were loathe to lose any.

Also... beyond being nice... I'm not completely sure that our main character has a full personality. It works within the context of the movie, because we get enough about her for you to go along with her for the movie and what she has to do within it... but beyond "nice" and "the main character", her personality seems to be "wants to fix the thing that is wrong". And yes, the thing everyone wants to point out is that she's the first female protagonist in a Disney movie who wears glasses. Which is... great, I guess, but it's still not a personality. 

I really like her, don't get me wrong. But I'm damned if I can actually come up with a personality trait for her beyond "protagonist". She loves her family and she works out what's wrong at the end of the movie and why, but only because she's following a completely different plot thread and kind of stumbles on the answer by accident.

Which is fine and good and adequate for a family movie. But, on reflection, a lot of the characters are fairly thinly realised.

Like I said though, it still works for me.

I also knew where the plot was (mostly) going, from early on, but I enjoyed the journey of getting there. And it made me cry at the end. Which is really where the ten-ton truck comes in. Maybe a train is a better analogy... I saw it coming on the tracks, I didn't want to get out of the way, and it ran completely over me.

yani's rating: 4 butterflies out of 5

2022

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

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

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

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

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

Which brings us around to New Years Eve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Current mood:

two thousand and twenty one in review

I very nearly didn't do this. In the end, I only really decided to do it because a) tradition but also b) I would very, very, very much like to look back this time next year and breath a sigh of relief that my life has improved in a significant number of ways.

So... there's that. 

Don't expect a lot of introspection though, because, honestly, I don't have the mental bandwidth for that right now. 

I'm also not really in the mood to reminisce about a mostly shit year and one where when everything is potentially about to fall on it's ass in my life in the next month... or at best is going to be majorly fucking stressful. 

Urgh.

But enough of my mental baggage, 2021.

Almost nothing happened this year. Days passed, things happened. But nothing HAPPENED. You know.

Like last year, I would have gone insane if not for my friends. And having a routine that actually got me out of the house more than once a week.

January: Friday night DnD finished our almost year and a half Descent into Avernus campaign. Still sad, still amazing. 

February: I had a bout of dizziness that lasted a couple of weeks, involved a doctor's visit and then disappeared as quickly as it arrived. 

March: My birthday. For which no shits were given by me. I developed a DnD character basically live on the blog. We went to the movies for the first time in over a year. 

April: I shaved my head after threatening to do it about once a month since March 2020. It remains shaved. 

May: We started a "non-campaign" campaign for the Thursday night Dnd Group. 

June: I explored the DnD Cookbook. We started the new major Friday night DnD campaign. Critical Role Series 2 ended with a 7 hour game. 

July: A roof leak. Getting Ma on the internets. Having to isolate for two weeks and it taking five and a half hours for my first test and 10 minutes for the second and third. 

August: Roof/ceiling shenanigans continued, resulting in a hole cut in the ceiling. 

September: I got my first vax shot. And I ran a one shot game for Fluffy's birthday. The hole in the ceiling got patched. 

October: I got told my lease, which expires in February, isn't being renewed. I got my second vax shot. Friday Night DnD's two year anniversary. 

November: My shoulder stopped being fully functional for no well explained reason. They finally fixed the actual roof leak. 

December: The Christmas Tree went up (see also: Fuck Christmas). We did Board Game Christmas with Mr and Mrs again, followed by Movie Night with Fluffy. Christmas happened.

I did make a lot of additional DnD characters or sketches or ideas for use in place of actual photos this year. DnD was once again... very important in my life.

I didn't really do much in the way of movies this year... even older stuff.

What I will say is that Luca was great, Shang Chi was much better than I expected, Cruella SUCKED, as I knew it would, and Raya and the Last Dragon was uneven but 100% is a Disney movie with a lesbian lead/love story.

Current mood:

post christmas round-up 2021

It's Saturday, but it's also Christmas Day... which basically just leads to my brain imploding in on itself at a certain point.

So we're going to do a modified weekly round-up, such as it is, then do the Christmas thing, such as that is.

First and foremost, I need a Bundaberg Spiced Ginger Beer... because that shit is tasty, tasty Christmas in a bottle, and I love it. I don't think I've mentioned it before, but it's fucking great, and I'm 100% here for it.

Secondly... I told you we had one DnD Character Colouring Book Reindeer to go.

Cousin Rudolph. Because, he's definitely not a Jingle Brother. And of course he's a Warlock. And a little bit extra. With Santa as his patron. I do really love how his outfit turned out to be honest. And I also love that the little doll in Hero Forge can be coloured to look like Spiderman... because that's silly and fun. And it's also the thing he "inherited" from Santa. And his Talisman Pact Boon. Or else the doll is the talisman and the staff is the thing he inherited. One of those.

So there's that.

This week was all topsy turvy... 

We had Friday's DnD on Thursday. And it was basically almost entirely a roleplay episode. Because we came back to the place where all the NPCs are right now, so we tend to talk to all of them. And my character got Wine Mom Drunk and spoke Truth to one of the other characters about them being awesome. I mean, she is due... she's had a hell of a couple of weeks.

Thursday was also Supermarket Day. Which I did on my own. At 7:30am.

Only to discover that every other muthafucker had also decided that 7:30am on the day before Christmas and the same amount of people we usually see during the course of one entire supermarket trip were all crammed into the fruit and veg department.

Grrrr.

But I was out of there and back home by 8:30 give or take.

I also wrapped up my Dice Advent Calendar from Mr and Mrs... which ended up in a very eclectic set of dice, plus one red and white Santa themed set, which I quite like. But the weird thing being that, other than that set, I did not get a single d8 dice. Everything else. No d8's. Weird.

I had assumed that while the dice were "random", there would be the Santa set, two full sets of random dice (as in a d20, d12, d00, d10, d8, d6 and d4), then the extra d4 from the Santa set, the special metal dice and... you know... another d20, probably. But not, the dice were super random. I got a lot of d6's... Fluffy got a lot of d20's in his calendar... and it was just... odd.

Anyway...

Welcome to Christmas Day.

I woke up... fairly early... but no earlier than I've been waking up of late.

And because we don't have places to go and people to see these days (and honestly, even if we had, I would 100% have cancelled it, because, The World Right Now), I didn't feel compelled to head down the road super early.

So I messaged Ma, wished her a Merry Crimmas, futzed around on my phone for a bit, got up, had a shower, did my physio exercises (because while my shoulder is 95% there again, I'm still doing the exercises for the foreseeable, just until the little bit of weakness that I can still feel is gone), which watching things on YouTube... 

And then, honestly, it felt very weird that I didn't get to open a window in the Dice Advent Calendar, since that has been a thing every day for the last 24 days.

But I finally packed up the car and headed down the road at about 8:45am. The roads weren't perhaps as empty as they have been when I've done the super early drive, but it was find.

And of course, when I got there, Ma was pulling a bunch of Ham Hearts out of the oven, so yummy ham, cheese and puff pastry morsels for the pre-breakfast snack. Because, fuck it... it's Christmas, and I can have breakfast before my breakfast.

Anyway, we did the croissant thing. Because as much as I loved having to get up two and a half hours before I intended to leave in order to make fresh bread, bake the bread and then take it down the road to Ma's place... honestly, I just fucking wanted croissants. Because I have bread on the regular, I never have croissants.

I could just say here that everything happened in much the same way as previous Christmas Days... but it kinda didn't. I mean, mostly it did, but it also kinda didn't.

And I'm not super getting into it, but for any number of reasons, we barely did presents this year. There were a couple of bits and pieces, but Ma gave me some money, because, honestly, either I need major items that I wouldn't expect to get as Christmas presents, like a *whispers* newlaptop *whispers* (we don't say it too loud so the laptop doesn't hear) or a new TV or a new iPhone... or I don't really need much of anything right now.

Anyway.

We kind of pfaffed around... a lot. I messaged a bunch of people with Christmas greetings. After that we prepped for lunch. After the semi panic of, I think, last year... or the year before... I can't be bothered looking it up, I prepped all of the individual things that went into the salad beforehand, so it was just kinda plug and play.

And then we did... "presents". Most of these were things I got from DnD Christmas with Fluffy, Mr and Mrs... but we do the full list here, because... tradition, I guess.

• The Wild Beyond The Witchlight Campaign Book (from Mr, Mrs and Fluffy)
• Thousand Year Old Vampire (from Fluffy)
• Wyrmwood Dice Box (from Mr and Mrs)
• Q Workshop Dice Advent Calendar (from Mr and Mrs)
• Handmade Embroidered Bear with a Whip ornament (from Fluffy, crafted by Fluffy's Mum, themed around my Asshole Cleric)
• Wooden Incense Box
• Avengers: Endgame DVD
• Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings DVD
• Light Up Crystal Ball (sadly, not as pretty as I'd hoped, but we got it real cheap when they were selling out Halloween shit... and I can make some use of it)

So, there's that.

After all of that prep... including just throwing together a salad dressing with mustard, cranberry sauce, oil and vinegar at the last second (because the one that Ma had was a little too... much)... and I burned the haloumi because fuck Ma's electric stove top.

But thanks to a Jamie Oliver Christmas cooking special was on in the background at some point, I squished the roast potatoes part way through, and they came out really nicely. Sadly, throwing dressing on them makes them much less crispy instantly, but overall, it all worked out.

Then we cleaned up and played a few games of L.L.A.M.A... and then a game of Here To Slay, which we played last year. While mostly ignoring White Christmas which was on in the background.

We made the usual Eton Mess thingy with gin and lemon meringue, mince pie icecream and fresh berries. It's always nice, it's always super sweet and super rich, and I couldn't deal with it more than once a year.

And when White Christmas finished, I packed up and came home.

In a word. Blah.

Current mood:

character saturday: jingle bros part two

The second half of the Jingle Brothers for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book - Xmas Edition.

• Comet - The Light Domain Cleric
  The kindly young healer that lights up the lives of everyone he meets
• Cupid - The Fey Wanderer Ranger
  The quiet and calm bowmaster who got lost in the Feywild as a child
• Donner - The Clockwork Soul Sorcerer
  The debonair arcane spellcaster harnessing the magical power of toys
• Blitzen - The Way of Mercy Monk
  The stern eldest brother with a heart of gold who is beloved by the toymaking elves

Of these four, I think Comet is my favourite. I just love how his colour scheme came out, but I have a bit of a soft spot for Cupid also (even if, in this arrangement of images it kind of looks as though he's about to take a potshot at his brother). Blitzen had to be the stern and serious one because his costume is kind of the silliest... along with the candy cane bo staff.

Those of you playing Reindeer Bingo at home, might be saying to yourselves... "hey, you missed one"... never fear, after all, Christmas Day is on a Saturday.

Moving on...

So... Tuna Noodle Do for food this week. Without eggs, because I ate entirely all of the eggs last week.

Then, on Monday afternoon I went hardcore on Rocky Road, by which I mean I made a big old chocolately mess, filled two foil trays with it and then later on cut it into appropriately sized pieces and filled the bottom shelf of my fridge with it.

I also finished off Fluffy's present, which was a collection of recipes, mostly from the blog, but also from life in general, and a simplified version of a couple of the DnD recipes (because he's got the book, but some of those recipes definitely over explain things... plus you don't want to get the pretty, pretty book out every time, it could get dirty). But it looked quite smart in the display book I got.

Then we get to Wednesday, which was Board Game Christmas with Fluffy, Mr and Mrs. Well, mostly Fluffy and Mrs... Mr had other things he needed to be doing, but he did show up a few times.

I made cheese, chive and black pepper bread, and took Rocky Road for Mr and Mrs. We did the present thing first... and I'll mention those with my other presents next week. Then, we were on for games. We played quite a bit of L.L.A.M.A. followed by several rounds of Coup, a spirited game of Disney Villainous: Perfectly Wretched where I played Cruella, obvs... and Fluffy won, because, for some reason, Fluffy always fucking wins Villainous. Followed up by a seemingly quite short game of Mysterium, and then rounded out with a few more games of L.L.A.M.A. And we fitted lunch in there somewhere. Possibly between Coup and Villainous I think.

It was a fun day. We got there just after 10am and didn't leave until... just after 4 I think.

Then Fluffy and I came back here and watched Christmas movies. The original idea was Bad Netflix Xmas movie, but, honestly, I wanted "camp bad" not "people who can't act bad"... so in the end we went with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (which is freely available on the YooToobs), which is unabashedly, certifiably TERRIBLE, but fun to make fun of. We really knew what we were into when the credits at the start of the movie listed the "Custume Designer".

But, fun fact, that movie is the first documented appearance of Mrs Claus in a motion picture. And the second is in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Rankin Bass stop motion animation classic, which came out three weeks later.

Then we went down the road and grabbed a pizza, came back here and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol, because after all that bad movie, we needed something good to balance it out.

It was a long day, and I want exhausted by the end of it. Which is weird, because it doesn't sound like all that much. But, you know, stuff.

Friday was DnD as usual.

Except, you know, I somehow cast a DnD spell in real life. The short version is that there were some bad guys coming up towards the cave we were in, so my druid cast Call Lightning, a spell that, unsurprisingly, creates a 60 foot radius storm cloud that you can call down lightning from.

And not 10 second after I'd said that I was going to cast that spell, we saw a flash of real lightning outside. It's not even like the day had been stormy or rainy... it had been filthy hot, if overcast, all day, and a lightning storm was the last thing any of us expected.

So, yeah... that was weird.

Otherwise, it was a decent game. We mostly did diplomatic negotiations... well, after we murderised the bad guys at the start. And I talked to plants again. Which, honestly, was more confusing than the diplomacy.

Moving on.

Today was... brief and to the point.

With everything going on right now, the last thing I want to do is to be making unnecessary trips to places... so we did the supermarket, came back here, didn't really do much here, and then Ma shuffled off home.

It does mean that I'm going to need to sneak in a shopping trip sometime towards the end of the week. Most likely first thing on Thursday morning honestly, since the supermarket opens at like 7:30am. And I don't need a ton of stuff, due to, you know, Christmas leftovers, mostly just some salad stuff and some milk products. But, you know, grocery shopping two days before Christmas... everyone pray for me.

But that's that really.

Current mood:

character saturday: jingle bros part one

So, maybe I did a thing.

It started with Prancer. Although not that version... a simpler version. And that was going to be it. But then my mind started doing that thing it does. Then came Dasher. And then, one by one, they all appeared.

Before I knew it, I had the Jingle Brothers, adventurers and defenders of the North Pole and Christmas. And, you know, actually buildable in DnD without any fancy homebrew if you just use the Satyr race as your base and just tweak the non-mechanical details slightly.

They're already Fey creatures, have a faster walking speed, the ability to make an extra long or high leap, they have resistance to magic, they get the Performance and Persuasion skills and they have a Ram (horn) attack. What more do you need really?

You only get four of the brothers this week though... you'll need to tune in next week for the other four.

This week's boys are...

• Dasher - The Arcane Trickster Rogue
  The sneaky but anxious youngest brother (featured with his magical Mage Hand)
• Dancer - The Oath of the Ancients Paladin
  The brave and hot tempered protector of the North Pole
• Prancer - The Path of the Storm Herald Barbarian
  The sweet himbo wielding the power of winter storms
• Vixen - The College of Glamour Bard
  The ostentatious flirt and charismatic musician

I don't quite know why the cow faces (which is what these are) are so damn expressive, but with just some minor adjustments, a range of characters presented themselves... even though they all ended up with the same face, the hairstyle and the same colour scheme (well, for the fur anyway).

So there's that. And there will be more of that next week.

I made another quiche this week... not as good as the previous one. I'll just say, I'm not completely sure mushroom works in quiche. Or else, I needed to cook them down a lot longer and really get most of the moisture out of them. I dunno. It was serviceable.

Shoulder update: The end of the week was much better than the beginning. I'd go as far as to say that I'm mostly on the mend. There's still some weakness there, but I can lift my arm more than 45°... which is great.

This week was the Christmas breakup for the Thursday DnD group. So I made cheese and salami bread. And much like when I took the cookies fresh out of the oven back in June... they descended on said bread like the proverbial seagulls. And it was all gone inside of about 5 minutes. Ten at the most.

But they enjoyed it, which is the main thing.

And we didn't die and my character got himself a fancy magic item, which I didn't expect to be in the book.

Friday was Chiro Day... so insert the rinse and repeat of taking a trip into town, seeing my chiro, sticking my head in at the gaming store, then coming home again.

Friday night's DnD is not stopping for Christmas. I mean, we have to move the game in two weeks, because Friday is also Christmas Eve, but we're still doing stuff right through.

This week's game wasn't bad. We had some interesting moments, but also some combat that felt like it was going to be much more epic than it turned out to be. Not bad, you understand... but I was expecting a number of enemies. But we did the thing we needed to do.

Oh, and my character talked to a thistle. Because spells are fucking weird.

Anyway. A good time was had.

Also, it's funny to me that Fluffy and I are basically headcanoning a whole second campaign for the group of rangers that consists almost entirely of my backup characters (I need to post the image of that whole group at some point), plus my imaginary son. Not that we're doing anything with it, we just keep talking about it on the drive back to his place.

Today wasn't much.

We basically bent the supermarket over, and beat the Christmas right out of it. That, I see now, is a weird sentence. What I was attempting to say was that we bought a lot of the random things you need for Christmas that can just sit in the cupboard or the freezer for a couple of weeks. But we bought a lot of stuff.

Insert my usual quote here about "a lot of fuss and nonsense basically amounting to one meal and nothing much". Bah, humbug, etc.

Anyway... I needed a thingy from Officeworks to finish off a project, so we did that trip and then called it a day.

Current mood:

character saturday: lady lady

This is what happens when I reply to a DnD worldbuilding question on Reddit, and like my answer so much I need to come up with a character that fits into that idea.

The idea being that there are certain High Elf owned/staffed... houses of negotiable virtue... for want of a better term. But that they're more like courtesans or a little like geisha... and are, in world, called Adab Lastar in Elvish... House of the Listener. And the individual houses have names like House of Golden Jade or House of Twilight Rose.

And that's where Lady Orel comes in. A High Elf entertainer who is also a Divine Soul Sorceress whose power comes from the Elven goddess of Love, Hanali Celanil.

With, you know, a dress and a corset and knee high boots and makeup and whatnot. And combining a top and a skirt that are absolutely not meant to be part of a set, but colouring them like it's a dress. Weirdly, she only really came alive to me when I tilted the head to the side a little. I can't quite say why that works, just that I know it does.

Anyway...

I went up to Ma's place last Sunday to enact the Christmas tree decoration ritual... with exactly zero enthusiasm about the whole fucking process.

Doubly so because reaching the top of the tree with only one arm that wanted to go that high is something of a problem.

I undertook the writing inside the box rituals, as I have done through the ages.

And... weirdly there were just two pink baubles that I don't think we normally add to the tree, but I added them this year, stepped back and then realised that I'd given the tree eyeballs. And the line of purple baubles kind of looked like a mouth.

I accidentally made a Muppet tree... and I'm not even a little bit mad at it.

But I put up the tree and didn't hang around after that.

So that happened.

I made a really good quiche this week. And it worked for four days worth of food, so I'm doing the same thing, only with slightly different ingredients, this week.

I also started my Dice Advent Calendar this week... so that's fun. I wasn't expecting the little messages inside each window, that that was an added bonus. They're weird, but fun.

Thursday night's DnD game was one of those rare occasions where we basically did nothing but explore and roleplay. So that was nice. I mean, we're stuck in a mystery where we have no idea what's really going on. But I have ideas... most of which are probably ridiculous and wrong.

Then Friday night's DnD was... roleplay... pretty much just roleplay. And thinking about what happened, it feels like it should have taken about an hour... but somehow it doesn't feel like it should have taken as long as it did. Simple, effective, but yeah, weirdly feels shorter in my head than the actual length of time we played.

Moving on.

Today, we went to the supermarket. We bought stuff. We came back here. And that was it really.

So there's that.

Current mood: