Three Years and Counting

Now the title of this posting refers, not to the duration of lizard-people leadership one shall be enduring after the weekend's exercise in media driven democracy, but to the significantly more joyous occasion of the anniversary of the beginning of the Grand Adventure of Salsa Girl and oneself.


We celebrated the event a week ago with a Hulk free dinner courtesy of Madmog's leet babysitting skills. Hulk, of course, slept through the whole thing so Madmog has garnered herself some babysitting credits for free.

Still for all that celebration not a lot can happen in such a short span of years:

• Moving in together including converting man-cave space to our space
• Bringing life into the world in the form of the aforementioned Hulk
• Becoming property moguls, and also pernicious partners in landlording
• Inumerous Ikea expeditions together

One fully expects the pace of our Grand Adventure to pick up as we continue along our merry way.
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A Grand Day

So this weekend has seen a grand day that shall go down in the annuls of history. Why it shall be spoken of in conversations for decades to come and shouted from the rafters for all eternities!
Well it will at least be noted as: "Oh yeah, that's good".

It was the occasion of oneself and Hulk's first expedition sans Salsa Girl which would allow her some relief from our annoying antics. It was a major undertaking as one left the house, festooned with all of the various paraphernalia that is required for the happy keeping of Hulk.

The choice of excursion was the regular collection of one's 2000AD comics (the home of Judge Dredd) from the newsagent that has been gracious enough to keep putting them aside for one for the past several decades and can endure a bi-monthly collection schedule as opposed to the rather stringent fortnightly that most establishments demand.

So there I was with nappy bag, carry harness, emergency bottle and finally one's own modest excursion bag for the holding of one's newly acquired comics hitting the road on a great trek North and learning much about automobile travel and small humans. It seems that direct sunlight can be quite distressing for the little ones, especially when it is in their eyes directly - as one discovered upon turning into a more exposed street and finding ones aural capabilities under sudden cacophonous assault.
In any case one short stop and adjustment of light blocking gauze later we were on our way again and one of us returned to snoozeville.

After that drama collection was no great hassle, although Hulk does have a no stopping rule when being carried which makes awaiting service at a counter a tad difficult.

Soon enough we were back in our vehicle and bound for a quick visit to Legion3, Madmog, and their little one. Some awesome daddy-led feeding and snoozing ensued and the stay stretched out until we returned home to Salsa Girl who had found out that she may have missed our annoying antics after all.
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Oh, there was another Grand part to the weekend as the Big J mandate had Hulk and myself supporting the Swans in juxtaposition to The Great Sandro who was following his childhood team.
Justice and good prevailed on the day and both Hulk and I were quite chuffed in our red and white.
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Children's Events

Over the past few days one has attended several children's events.

One such event was yesterdays first birthday party for the esteemed progeny of Sir Clive Pitbull.
Salsa Girl and I attended a little late after failing to heed the common sense advice to "never go down Punt Road".

Legion3 also attended along with Madmog and their little one and we all partook of many nibbles, sweets, and lashings of free soft drinks. As the afternoon progressed there was much child play - the pit of small round doom being a baby favourite - and at one stage I was even employed as a horse by The Evil One's offspring.

We left well fed and worn out. As befits such an outing.


The next children's event was the evening musical performance of Days of our Libraries' musical issue.

It was one's first concert attendance for quite some time but one did remember to bring the appropriate accoutrements as one's earplugs were well and truly needed - both from the "metal" music and the direct into the ear conversations with Days.

All in all it was a good to see the up and coming talent. I do have my suspicions that the follow-on act was a parody of death metal given that all their songs sounded the same and the lyrics consisted of constant low pitched growling. Still, each to their own.

Quite good as far as children's events go, and the free beer from Days certainly helped.
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Happiness is an Empty Blog

Well what do you know. Who would have thought that being in a state of happiness would have precluded one from scribing posts for The Tales?

Many things have been taking me away from the blogosphere and towards sublimity. Among them are: many an outing with Salsa Girl whom you may have realised is the successful candidate; the magnificence of the Magpies as we cruise into September footy action - enjoyed along with the Legion2, BrotherStealer, Mirri Cat Warrior and the aforementioned Salsa Girl; and the most recent piece of happiness to come my way is my attainment of Uncle status once more with Legion3 and Madmog providing me with my second niece.

So all in all I'm sure they are all fantastic reasons for one to be away from ones usual writing station and I accept your forgiveness for my little lapse into lassitude.

I'm sure that I shall be returning to a more regular schedule in the near future so keep your eye on The Tales.
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... The Nuptuals of Sir Clive

The big event this week was my attendance at the wedding of Sir Clive Pitbull. There was also some upgrade stuffgoing on as well but I wasn't paying much attention to that as my focus was on the free feed of the Saturday evening event.

I was once again designated Legion driver and packed Legion's 2, 3, Madmog and BrotherStealer into my transportation device for the leisurely drive down to sunny Williamstown.

Upon arrival my suspicions were confirmed - we were at the same venue that had hosted Doom and The Doctor's engagement soiree - so much for expanding my resume of Williamstown venue attendance.

So, while I struggled through my 'nam-like flashbacks of events in the venue, the ceremony and mixed finger-food reception continued forthwith. I could tell I was off my game as I repeatedly failed to be at the serving table as new dishes were brought forth for consumption. I even suffered several attacks of politeness and allowed others to serve themselves before I had taken as much as I could.
Still my condition was nothing as compared to Sir Clive's. His reputation as a fanatical purveyor of all musical things punk, noise and experimental was dealt severe blow after blow as
first: a karaoke machine was wheeled out without nary a whine from him, and
second: pop song after pop song played on throughout the evening.
The ultimate proof of his new status of "you've changed man" was when he took a place as a link in the conga line for Peter Allen's When My Baby Smiles at Me.

Departing at a reasonable hour I was only subject to a mild level of in-car shenanigans from Legion's 2 and 3 who had consumed a reasonable but unspecified number of beverages which still proved to be below the "too many" level.

All were soon home and warm and cosy after a good night out celebrating.
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... The Star Trek Review

So, along with Fantomas and Pirate Dave from my regular Thursday night gaming group, I decided to forsake the game tonight for the only thing geekier - the new Star Trek movie.

It was pretty good using many of the common tropes of the franchise to explain the reboot of the continuity and pave the way for not having to slavishly follow the previous series and films.
Highly recommended.


The geekiness of Star Trek has even managed to eclipse my other big geek event of the week - another Geektogether. The Viking Hat GM organised the first of these in almost a year to try and kick-start his flailing gaming career after the The Blithe Bogan abruptly put an end to its latest burst of activity a few weeks ago.


And in a contrasting non-geeky event I, along with Legions 2-3, BrotherStealer, and MadMog, attended the housewarming for Spare Legion this Saturday past. With Badger and Hector the Nazi also in attendence much drinking and fun and frivolity was had by all.
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... Nursing Legion3

The other morning I was able to shirk off from work in order to collect Legion3 from the hospital.

You see he had decided to emulate his older brother and go in for some minor surgery. Of course it took him some three and a bit years to catch up - and even then he wasn't rugged and manly enough to struggle through the pain and go home the same day (some of my detractors would say that I had no choice being day surgery but I'm sure if I'd begged to stay like Legion3 it would have been possible).

Anyway I arrived bright and early for the collection, unlike the doctor who in the end didn't even pop his head in to say Legion3 could go home and left that up to the nursing staff who all kept assuming said doctor had been in and okayed it and so had to keep going off to check.
The end result is that Madmog and I had to wait around for close to an hour until the staff finally came back to release the patient.
I must say I am quite disappointed with private hospitals - there was no breakfast delivery during our arduous stay, nor a morning tea cake trolley, not even a bowl of fruit in the room! I feel I made it out just in time before starvation took hold.

I dropped them home and headed off to work finally getting some respite from all that "ooh it hurts" and "stop punching me there Phill".
Of course that took me to work where it was all "ooh it doesn't work" and "stop just sitting there Phill".
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