Freeloading Phill and ...

... the Anzac Day Footy

I'm back from going to the Anzac day AFL game between Collingwood and Essendon. The boys pulled out a brave, slogging, fumbling win which should greatly help Ms Magpie to recover from recent unfortunate events.
Pies 12 goals 23(!!) behinds : 95
Dons 11 goals 13 behinds : 79

I was there with my long time ArchEnemy from Tuesdays gaming and the day was organized by a soccer buddy from council. It was a good day despite having to line up at 10 in order to get a seat in the members - I feel like I earned the win by being at the MCG for seven and a half hours!

The great Didak was back and played a consistent game so we may be starting to march towards finals again, dare I hope it.

... Maskerade by Terry Pratchett

I finished the first Discworld book I've read for years last night. Pratchet pumps them out at one or two a year and Maskerade was printed in 1995 so I'm way behind.

In any case, I really enjoyed the humorous look at opera in a fantasy world and will have to read the odd one or two discworld books a year since he varies the subject of them quite a lot.

... the Days of Sacrifice, Training, and Renovation

Well what a week it's been.

The unsolvable Beaumaris problem ate Monday.
Tuesday was consumed with planning the training for the LMS upgrade and preparing the Brighton computers (which took most of the next two days as well!)

Thursday was a day that called for me to make many sacrifices in order to get all the Brighton computers ready: I skipped the free Potato lunch at Council HQ, then skipped my regular Soccer game and finally skipped my Thursday night gaming.

Supervisor S did a magnificent job of running the Brighton training on Friday morning and I just hung around, helped occasionally and made notes of the glitches that needed to be fixed.
Friday afternoon, and on into early evening, was devoted to preparing the Beaumaris computers.

As the weekend arrived I was able to relax by cleaning and then painting parts of my new place with Handy Dad. There was the highlight Saturday night of Rugrat Twin's drinks to celebrate the end of a job and the new beginning.

... the Empty Houses

Last Friday was an eight person poker night, including a mass visit to my new place; Saturday was an assessment of what the new place needs with Freeloading Mum and Handy Dad followed by hanging out at home in the evening during the flurry of trip preparation by Legion2 (we are brothers, we are legion) and a cool phone talk with Svetlana; Sunday was more at home time before I dropped Legion2 and his better half at the airport (having to leave them so that my ability to delay transport would stop their plane from being another half hour late in leaving) and now I am alone with two empty houses!

Well that's not strictly true - I do have The Tiger for company.

Anyway, here's the current schematic of how I am going to fit my furniture into the new place. Note the excess furniture lurking in the hallway. (I wonder what it will get up to?)

... Sharpe's Battle by Bernard Cornwell

I finished this one this afternoon. The central Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro (in 1811 during the peninsula war) is well described but I got a little tired of the: all French are callous bastards, Spanish are lazy and untrustworthy, British noble officers are toffs and the only sensible men are from the working classes.

I did enjoy it but I think it'll be quite a few years before I seek out another one to read.

... the end of The Traveller Adventure

This may not make sense to any non-nerdy readers (or should I say nerds of a different stripe as they're likely to be librarians?) but last night my Tuesday gaming group finally finished playing our "latest" role-playing campaign. After five years, 9 months and 72 sessions (so playing about once every four weeks) we ended with a suitably cinematic grand finale.

Future games will be much more short term - from a few weeks to a couple of months maximum.

... the Day of Settlement

After a quiet and anticipatory Easter break I've picked up the keys to my new place.

I've just returned form the first thorough look-through and measure for furniture placement. There are a few strange stains on the carpet in every room that I can only assume are from pot plant placement (although I haven't ruled out a mob hit). I'm still thinking on it but it may mean that Svetlana gets her wish and I do the whole place with floorboards instead of just the living room and hallway.
There'll be some painting involved as well and maybe some additional shelves put in - it all depends on how available Handy Dad is in the coming weeks (and how much free beer I'll have to provide).

All of this domestic busyness was only interrupted once, a call came in from Ms Magpie at Beaumaris branch to reiterate that they are still having their bizarre freezing up problem. I'm going to have to go there tomorrow and let my IT person magnetic field fix the problem without me doing anything else.