The Missing Weeks. Part the Third

As we continue on with our investigation we find ourselves coming to one of those regular seasonal events that seem to occur naturally whenever the season is right.

The Branch Xmas drinks
This years occurrence was located at a different establishment than is the usual case for events such as this.

We gathered in a drinking house recently converted from being an automotive repair business - one presumes that easily hosed concrete floors are an exciting thing for those who earn their livelyhood from the alcohol imbibing industry.

Anyhoo, in attendance were: Mr Prada, Days of our Libraries, Kiwichick, The Pragmatist, Fifi, and even Supervisor Grand Chief K put in an appearance after fixating on my costume accessories for the next evening's party - in particular the handcuffs which just happened to be a part of the pack - and showed a shocking amount of ignorance of who the character I was going as actually was.

Much fun and frivel was had by all. The evening finished relatively early which was fine as the rest of my evening could be spent storing up energy for the next big event.


The 40th
The very next evening was the 40th birthday affair for BestFriendSincePrep. As is his want he had made the whole thing slightly more annoying as it was a costumed ball and therefore costumes had to be prepared. I do suspect though, that it was done purely so that he could wear a wig and experience a warm head all night.

Legion2 and the Brotherstealer where there as were Gavman, StumpyRudolph, MrRogers, MatrixMan, Vengeful Vic and Couch Killer.

My choice of costume - the legendary Snake Plissken - revealed some shocking statistics.
95% of women at the party had no idea who Snake was (one guessed the actor)
20% of men had no idea either - and that's allowing Gavman's guess of Jack Russell in Little China to stand as a success.
This country is obviously in need of a strong education campaign in the area of B-grade sci-fi movies from the early eighties.
I'm not even going to talk about the horrendous sub-100% recognition rate for Legion2's Han Solo costume.

But aside from all that the brilliance of BFSP in having a slushie machine was just one of the many masterstrokes in the nibbles department. All in all a good night and perfect preperation for the next days adventure.

up next: in which our hero traipses from one end of town to the other
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The Missing Weeks. Part the Second

Continuing on in my attempt to document what happened to me in those missing weeks we come now to the biggest event in the library social calendar:

The Library Xmas Party
This year the extravaganza was held at The Administrator's demesne with many of the usual party planning committee being involved in the orchestration of yet another gastronomic triumph.
The theme of the night was apparently "unfinished renovations" as we all had to carefully tread across a floor replete with stiletto catching drill holes and marvel at the true to life renovation look of the party setting.

It was really my kind of party. There was plenty of home carved Days of our Libraries pizza to start and just when you thought you were full out came not one, not two but three kinds of lasagne courtesy of Days, Sonja Roster Queen and others!
And then to top it all of there was a dazzlingly table-collapsing number of deserts whose claim to fame could well be "not even Phill could sample us all".

To top it all off in it's perfection there was a decided lack of librarian karaoke antics throughout the night.


The Knee Update

When the Monday after the party finally arrived it was time for the three week check-up on my knee. According to the specialist all is well.
Below are some pictures taken by the camera that they forced into my knee.
Top right is the before shot where we can see a lovely blossom of cartilage material floating freely around the joint just waiting to catch in the worky bits and cause problems.
Middle right is the after shot with the clean smooth surfaces just waiting to get back into unrestricted moving.
And finally in the bottom two we can see the shadowy lines of future arthritic troubles for our hero in decades to come.

up next: drinks and a 40th
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The Missing Weeks. Part the First

Well I've been out of communication for weeks now.

I could claim that it's some sort of arty project to have this December be a reverse of the previous one and it's 25 blogs of Xmas.

But methinks that's all a tad too much to believe - even of The Tales.

Instead you shall just have to believe that I have been exceedingly busy with stuff. The following list should convince you of my extreme busyness quotient until such time as I have you all caught up on the myriads of interesting events that befell your correspondent in that intriguingly un-blogged time.


SPUN XMAS Meeting
We begin with the annual SPUN Xmas meeting which, true to tradition, I attended without the assistance of the esteemed Mr Prada who once again perplexingly had better things to do than attend a free feed.
I was suffering some trepidation going into this meeting as I feared I may be elected into some official capacity for the coming year. There was also the fear about returning to the ground upon which I had received my recent dose of Wine Poisoning.
I was lucky enough to escape this time with only a mild case - despite the best efforts of Dubrovnik Hater and The Puppies.


The Viking-Hatted Bucks Night
After a brief return home for rest I was off again that night for the next stop in my social itinerary. This was the much anticipated bucks night for The Viking Hat GM. The anticipation came from the fact that The Mad Magyar was responsible for the organisation and I was expecting to get a giant insight into the Eastern European buck's night traditions - I imagined something along the lines of the groom having to win several knife-fights or possibly wrestle a wild animal into submission whilst under the influence of several litres of petrol-grade alcohol.
Apparently though, the way they do it in the old country involves go-carting, rounds of drinks, walking aimlessly through the city not wanting to pay $10 cover charges, and eventually going home when the buck refuses to enter any further establishments.
Hmm, it's a small world after all.

In the end I made it home thanks to the grace of Exploding Ninja Pony who detoured to drop me on my doorstep despite his obvious gut-clenching fear that The Viking Hat GM was only a hair's breadth away from engaging in that wonderful Australian custom of the auto-interior technicolour yawn.


Up next: what happens when you gather 40 librarians in a room with food and drink?
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The Return to Normalcy

So Wednesday was the scheduled day for my triumphant return to LibraryLand and the usual hum-drum of the day to day workday. True to my amazing recuperative powers I was all ready to keep my scheduled return date and was even looking forward to having some human company as The Tiger seemed completely oblivious to my need for careful nursing over the previous week.

So Tuesday night was when a major server decided to "fall over", as we say in the high jargon IT world, just so that many things would have trouble first thing in the morning. Did I mention my plan to take it easy on my first day by arriving around eleven?

So anyway, there I was, up early to do my knee-ish physio exercises - least The Viking Hat GM come around and knee-cap me for being one of those people that don't do the recovery exercises and then whine that the operation didn't fix anything - and lo and behold the phone begins to ring.

So of course it was Sister Serials with some query, only she would be callous enough to value her record as my chief tormentor over my health and call so early on my day of return.
Alas she was not the only call that morning. They followed in quick succession and before long I was busily trying to fix things remotely from home.

So eventually I was able to make it in at about 1pm - just in time for my lunch break.

So that evening there was normalcy at the regular game hosted by The Viking Hat GM as he once again made us face a deadly enemy - luckily we were too good for his shenanigans.


So Thursday there was even more normalcy as I had to struggle through roadworks and Punt Rd traffic to get to a regular morning meeting.
Refreshingly I was subject of some very abnormal behaviour as a chorus of workmates greeted me joyfully as I walked late into the meeting. We even had a post meeting lunch in honour of The Administrator having a birthday that day. Honestly, what some people will do to steal my limelight!

So while we're on the subject of limelight stealing let's not forget the dinner I attended that night in honour of Comrade Treasurer's change of job. You can guess which recently operated upon IT man was not the centre of attention there as well.


So, sigh, only a week after being operated upon and the universe had already run out of sympathy for me.

So such is the normalcy under which I live my life.

(So I've found out with this post that you can start any paragraph with so. Amazing isn't it?)
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